10% of brain = 100% stupid

[RigaMortus2]

I always heard this trope too, and believed it was true (until now, thanks)!

So I guess that means, if you want to be a sci-fi writer, your mad scientists have to use 150% of their brain power!

Hmmm, which makes me wonder... People why psychic powers such as telekinesis (assuming psychic powers are real and you beleive in them)... Does that have anything to do with how much brain power they use?

 

[Hand of Evil]

Does that have anything to do with how much brain power they use?

Nay, they just are using different parts to generate the feat, that is why a person with a power get dumb real quick, you take from one area to power another, still only using about 10%.

 

[F5]

Add my name to the list of folks bothered by this particular myth. I got over it by creating a mentalist character in a supers game that played on this trope. He was called 10% Charlie (based off of this, and an annoying and pervasive local TV ad for an oriental rug dealer).

I made it work for me by specifying that the myth that people use 10% of their brains is untrue. The reality was that, for most people, only 10% of the brain is being used at any one time. 10% Charlie could use up to 75% of his brain on any given task, giving him sooper powerz. Why should he be able to read minds by firing extra neurons in his visual cortex? Because he could dynamically re-configure the pathways in his brain, temporarily re-wiring one part to serve another purpose. His weakness was his terrible memory, as he would frequently have to overwrite small pieces of long-term memory in order to make them shoot psychic blasts at Bad Guys.

It was not a serious game, nor a serious character. But it did help me find the humor in the whole "we only use 10% of our brains" trope.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Hmmm, which makes me wonder... People why psychic powers such as telekinesis (assuming psychic powers are real and you beleive in them)... Does that have anything to do with how much brain power they use?

Well, since humans seem to use most of their brain, no.

But in a science-fiction theoretically way, maybe they have specific organs or part of the brain. For example, mind-reading might be due to brain - or eye - cells that function as a "brain wave antenna", receiving electromagnetic signals created by neurons firing. Only a lot of experience and training might allow you to really distinguish these waves from your own and to filter out a specific persons signals. (Very much like you can filter out a single voice out of multiple ones.)

Special organs might also be used to explain other psychic powers. But here it is a lot harder to explain what happens - how can you move something with your mind without physical contact? It might be a "psychic muscle", but it wouldn't explain how you achieve that. What force do you use? Electromagnetic? Weak or Strong Radioactive Force? Gravitation?

 

[Rackhir]

I don't recall exactly when or where I heard this, but I remember seeing at some point that this idea got started by counting the number of wrinkles in the brain of someone like Einstein vs the number of wrinkles in a normal person's brain.

 

[Relique du Madde]

You guys are wrong. Mentalist powers are not caused by using large portions of your brain at once, or having specialized regions of the brain or specialized uses of various glands. It's caused by caused by nanoscopic bacteria that lives within one's cells.

Everyone who lives in a universe that has Star Wars prequels knows that.

 

[DonTadow]

If you're a sci-fi fan, you've probably heard or read this several times by now: Average human beings only use about 10% of their brains. Heck, odds are you've probably heard it even if you're not a sci-fi fan, since this idea seems to have sunk into mainstream consciousness, at least in America. But it seems to come up most often in science fiction, when a writer wants to come up with a reason why a certain character has superhuman intelligence or mental powers or whatever. It's easy! He just uses more of his brain than everyone else.

There's just one problem - that 10% figure is complete and utter BS.

We humans use ALL of our brains. Maybe not at every single moment, but over the course of a typical day, an average human will use all or almost all of his or her brain. See here for more.

I don't know how this idea got started, but it annoys me every time I see it. Especially since just a little research is all it takes to show someone it's false. I guess none of these science fiction writers have ever heard of an FMRI.

The most recent place this cropped up was in the Iron Man comic, where it was revealed that Tony Stark uses fully 72% of his brain! Wow. Who knew that one of the smartest people in the Marvel Universe was actually horribly brain damaged?

Sheesh.

This debate has already been hashd out before on here and all over the internet. What is meant is not physical brain but potentional brain, which has been estimated that we use 10 percent of our potential brain. Because I believe the theorists who estimate that humans have a ton more potentional and evolution ahead, I agree we only use 10 percent of our potential.

I wish i had a link to the previous thread where this popped up, but i suggest wiking it as it is one of those geek debates that will rage on for centuries.

 

[Uruk]

Snopes has a little bit about the 10% myth:
snopes.com: Ten Percent of our Brains

I always like the movie Defending Your Life where you basically leveled up over time and got more brain usage.

As a former anthropologist brain size is related to intelligence, but overall body mass is relevant too. Regardless there are different kinds of intelligence (like fuzzy math or social behavior) that make directly measuring intelligence hard, especially between species.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

This debate has already been hashd out before on here and all over the internet. What is meant is not physical brain but potentional brain, which has been estimated that we use 10 percent of our potential brain. Because I believe the theorists who estimate that humans have a ton more potentional and evolution ahead, I agree we only use 10 percent of our potential.

I wish i had a link to the previous thread where this popped up, but i suggest wiking it as it is one of those geek debates that will rage on for centuries.

Well, it was male cows excrement then, and it is now. Digging up older threads doesn't change that. I think the link to snopes.com is pretty good in trying to explain how or why the myth is propagated.

Our head is just as big as it is. You can't cram 10 times more brain into it. Sure, we could envision a human with a larger head or something. Maybe evolution will do this, if more intellect turns out to be a good idea to survival. But would it naturally have to stop at 10 x larger brains?

Did you know - humans only use 10 % of their potential muscles, and are only 10 % the size they could be, and women all around the world might rejoice if they learned that their men only go 10 % of their full potential in bed!

I use only 10 % of my potential to post stuff on EN World, too. If I somehow knew how to tap the other 90 %, I could take over the Hive or win the edition wars alone! Twice (once for each edition).

 

[Merkuri]

What is meant is not physical brain but potentional brain, which has been estimated that we use 10 percent of our potential brain.

Whatsa... huh?

Does that mean that scientists know when we're going to stop evolving? We're going to gain 90%* more brainpower in the total span of our evolution? What happens after that? Does the human race die out? Do we start devolving at that point?

How do scientists know what our potential is?

*Yeah, I know that's not the way that percentage math works, but I'm too lazy to work out the real math, and don't think it's worth it anyway.