Oh dear. I hate to say this, but you simply have not read my reply properly. I guess I should leave it at that, but I’ve got some time on my hands, so let me talk you through where you’re going wrong.
“Yes, Craniopagus twins are rare”
No, no, no, that is pointedly not what I said. I actually sort of implied that craniopagus itself is fairly common, as birth defects go, but that’s a matter of perspective. What I said was, that among the many, many craniopagus twins we have studied, the abilities the Hogan twins demonstrate appears to be extremely rare, if not unique. If your contention is that all craniopagus twins might have the ability to share thoughts, you are categorically wrong. This is not a case of “maybe, we don’t know” - it’s a case of “we have thoroughly checked, it isn’t true”. To repeat: it is not craniopagus that I said was rare, it is specifically the Hogan twins.
“as geneticists learn more about this new field of research, many are changing their views on this”
Okay, hold up. The original question was “why haven’t geneticists explored this”. Now you’re lecturing me about what geneticists views are? Why did you ask the original question if you already had such a keen insight into what geneticists think? This whole discussion is starting to sound pretty disingenuous.
“By pointing out the Hogan twins, my intention was to provide proof that #1: two brains can be neurologically wired together; #2: that individuals whose brains are wired in this way can achieve normally in mental skills; #3 that these individuals can know what the other is thinking, operate each others limbs and even share senses.”
Nowhere in any of my responses did I dispute any of this - although I did say in my original post that this almost never happens, which is precisely true: almost never. My point is that this situation depends on an incredibly specific situation (the fusion in the thalamus) that is demonstrably not present in the extreme majority of craniopagus cases. At the risk of beating this point to death: we can do neurological tests on craniopagus twins to demonstrate that, on the whole, they do not show the remarkable abilities that the Hogan twins do. Case closed: you cannot generalise from the Hogan’s case even to other craniopagus twins, let alone to much more distantly related situations like twin chimerism.
“You mentioned the tendency for young children to believe they have a twin and so suggesting that this nullifies Taylor having the thought herself”
Again, that is not what I said. I was very careful to say that I completely believe that people in Taylor’s situation usually had an experience like this as a child. The part I dispute is that it constitutes any kind of compelling evidence Taylor was receiving messages from her chimeric twin. I even went out of my way to acknowledge that it’s not formally impossible - just profoundly, incredibly implausible, especially placed next to the possibility that this is just a coincidence. You are hanging quite a lot of really far-out speculation on one extremely flimsy piece of evidence.
“In other words: Taylor’s twin has relayed the thought of being a twin to Taylor via their joined neurological network”
What do you think the words “joined neurological network” actually means? Because, to me, a joined neurological network is a physical thing that you can fairly easily interact with and verify. The Hogan twins clearly and demonstrably have one, you can do some straightforward tests to confirm it. Virtually every other craniopagus twin ever studied demonstrably do not have one - they may have two distinct neurological networks, but they are demonstrably not joined. Taylor Muhl, as far as I can make out, only has one neurological network so there’s frankly nothing for it to be joined to. Again, if it were, this would be a super easy way to show that there was something interesting going on here - get Taylor Muhl into a MRI machine, and point to the anatomical structure that represents her supposed twin’s neurological network. That would be an instant Nature publication, I’m pretty sure.
Instead, you seem to be imagining - by invoking some vague concept of DNA and genetics - that simply by being a twin chimera, that she somehow has a whole second brain - which must be at least sophisticated enough to have enough conscious experience to communicate with Taylor like a ghost talking in her ear - and yet be otherwise completely undetectable.
Again, even granting the deeply sketchy premise that Taylor was getting messages from her incorporeal twin as a child, this simply cannot be the same mechanism by which the Hogan twins communicate. We know how the Hogan twins communicate - through their fused thalamus. That’s a tangible structure that you can see on a brain scan, and Taylor Muhl - as far as I know - does not have one. And bear in mind, Muhl’s story is that she went through years of testing to diagnose the autoimmune condition caused by her twin chimerism - if there was something weird about her “neurological network”, it’s pretty likely it would have shown up there.
I’m probably wasting my breath here - you’ve not really shown that you’re interested in actually reading my responses to understand them, just beating flimsy straw-man caricatures. I’m probably going to draw a line under the discussion here.