113 - Conjoined Consciousness
I assume by now you’ve probably seen the twins speaking in unison while describing a run-in with a gunman in Queensland Australia, if not, this, as far as I can tell, is the original footage:
Aside from the overall bizarre and humorous aspects of this, it speaks leagues about how we define consciousness, because here, if anywhere, is evidence of a single consciousness split between two individuals.
Since this became viral there have since been numerous interviews with these two posted, and they’re all like this, even laughing at the same time and making similar facial expressions.
It’s uncanny.
I first saw this on Jimmy Kimmel and was reminded of the bit Fred Armisen and Kristen Wiig have done on SNL when they improvise a song they've created on the spot and they try to match each other's melody and lyric. These sisters have been doing this for so long, to most everyone else, it looks spontaneous and uncanny that they can seemingly say the same things at the same time. But there are clues that show they are really, really good at hearing each other's breathing, speech patterns, rhythms, sentence structure and vocal range and have learned to make good (most times spot on) guesses as to what they will say next. They are not actually speaking from one brain as may be implied; I think there may be one sister who is more dominant - who initiates more often -but the distinction is pretty subtle.