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Ten Percent of the Brain Myth
- eimrine 4y agoIf Albert Einstein's brain uses exactly same energy as mine, then 90% of latter is going to nowhere.
- daralthus 4y agoFinding something in a sorted list is O(log n) instead of O(n) in non-sorted. Finding a good representation for the problem matters.
- infinityplus1 4y agoEinstein wasn't wasting time on social media. Maybe you need to free up your mind's resources to focus on the things you want to do.
- maaanu 4y agoI don't know... Einstein had a lot of love affairs and debated about philosophy with some friends and was very politically active (e.g. he wrote pro-socialism articles for newspapers). In the context of theoretical physics all of this sounds like wasting time to me. Some brains are just exceptionally wired and people are able to accomplish amazing things, given the right mindset and tenacity.
- scaredginger 4y agoKinda bizarre that people allegedly misattributed this to Einstein, a physicist
- n4r9 4y agoHe's the quintessential authority figure; it's not surprising that people will try to add weight to something by attributing it to Einstein. Most people will just think "Ah Einstein was really clever, if he said that there must be something to it". https://interestingengineering.com/13-inspiring-einstein-quotes-never-actually-said-by-einstein https://interestingengineering.com/13-inspiring-einstein-quo...
- layer8 4y agoA very small hamming distance to “physician”. :)
- pantalaimon 4y agoIt's a bit like saying a piano player will only use 10% of the keys at a time.
- jbaber 4y agoThis is an extremely good analogy that I must remember (if case anyone quotes this myth to me again, which hasn't happened in a couple of decades... :)
- ramraj07 4y agoI don’t think anyone except Luc Besson still thinks this is true anymore tho..
- carlmr 4y agoI know that reference. When I watched that movie I was just like ugh, and then I continued watching, and it just got worse.
- eru 4y agoInception also used that myth, I think, to justify why time runs at different speed in the dream. (Which makes no sense, when they go multiple layers..)
- WorldMaker 4y agoRelated to that, I find I often end up getting into arguments with people over the "computers run at such faster speeds than humans" myths/tropes. It's very common in the cyberpunk genre especially that time "runs faster" for people inside simulation spaces (metaverses/The Matrix/whatever). (Or sometimes the other direction where robots/cyborgs are significantly faster than humans at "thinking".) Computers are very fast at raw, boring mathematical calculations such addition, but that doesn't transfer to entire physics simulations or human scale activities. Think about how much time it takes a large file to download/transfer, for instance. A lot of videogame design through history and continuing through the modern day is fighting to keep the physics simulation close to real time and lot of classic videogame glitches and/or bugs are when it takes longer than real time to simulate. (With the fun that the Halting Problem tells us that we'll never be certain exactly how long it takes to run algorithms, in general.)
- mapcars 4y ago>Studies of brain damage: If 10 percent of the brain is normally used, then damage to other areas should not impair performance This is unbelievably naive to use as some sort of proof, using 10% does not imply that its 10% of the physical organ. Rather 10% compared to what one could do with better training, improved lifestyle, etc. And this does not have to be purely intellectual, it can be imagination capabilities, communication skills or hundreds of other things which a particular individual did not develop fully.
- bryanrasmussen 4y agocounterpoint - people do take damage to brain and recover abilities, suggesting that the brain has redundancies built into it.
- mapcars 4y agoIt looks like it. I am not related to any brain studies so naturally I can not go deep into the topic. The main thing I wonder about here is does this redundancy mechanism come for free or does it come at the cost of some other (possibly untapped) potential?
- technothrasher 4y ago> Rather 10% compared to what one could do with better training, improved lifestyle, etc. If you're talking about 10% of some non-physical concept of brain "potential", then you have to define, potential WHAT? Creativity? Intelligence? Speed of thought? Hand/eye coordination? Something else deemed important? All of it? None of it? How could you possibly attach a 10% potential value to any of this unless you operationalize it down to some tiny measurable part that lose the gestalt? If we're not defining the 10% as physical brain area, then the 10% proposition seems not only unlikely true but likely meaningless, a priori.
- mapcars 4y agoI don't have to define or measure it. And this does not make it meaningless either. In fact most profound things in life can not be measured. Can you measure how much parents love their child? Can you measure how happy someone is to get a present they wanted? Can you measure how funny a joke is? Measuring everything is a stupid approach to life and things like brain development and human potential for sure are immeasurable but are the most significant.
- lotophage 4y agoIt's amazing to think how common these sorts of myths used to be before the internet. If you heard something like this and wanted to challenge it, you would have to get on the bus and spend a couple of hours at the library and return with some photocopies. Now you can pull up Wikipedia on your phone.
- riebschlager 4y agoThere are plenty of post-internet myths that are humming along just fine. :D It's a crazy phenomenon to watch play out.
- lotophage 4y agoAbsolutely true, but there somehow seems different quality to them. The myths of old seemed to be little factoids that were not easy to verify and were taken at face value, then just spread until they became "common knowledge". The new ones seem to have an almost religious quality to them. Flat-earthers for example, if someone told me 25 years ago that this would be a thing I would have just laughed.
- MichaelBurge 4y ago> if someone told me 25 years ago that this would be a thing I would have just laughed. Wikipedia says In the modern era, the pseudoscientific belief in a flat Earth originated with the English writer Samuel Rowbotham with the 1849 pamphlet Zetetic Astronomy. In 1956, Samuel Shenton set up the International Flat Earth Research Society (IFERS), better known as the "Flat Earth Society" from Dover, England, as a direct descendant of the Universal Zetetic Society. so flat earth has been around for 170 years. And people did laugh at them: The term flat-earth-man, used in a derogatory sense to mean anyone who holds ridiculously antiquated or impossible views, predates the more compact flat-earther. It was recorded in 1908: "Fewer votes than one would have thought possible for any human candidate, were he even a flat-earth-man." A "modern" conspiracy might be the Sandy Hook, Pizza-gate, etc. but those originate with Alex Jones so not a general example. Maybe "the moon landings were faked" is a good example?
- anothernewdude 4y agoI wonder what the other 90 percent of the Brain Myth is.
- Zealotux 4y agoWait until people learn Maslow never actually created a pyramid to represent the "hierarchy of needs."[1] [1] https://forge.medium.com/maslows-pyramid-is-a-marketing-lie-14202930e20 https://forge.medium.com/maslows-pyramid-is-a-marketing-lie-...
- mmaunder 4y agoWhat makes me optimistic about our ability to adapt, recover, heal and improve is neuroplasticity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity
- 53r3PB9769ba 4y agoSome people use 100% of the brain from time to time. When they do, it's called an epileptic seizure.
- WorldMaker 4y agoOther periods of high brain utilization we call a migraine.
- ajjenkins 4y agoLeft brain vs. right brain thinking is another myth about the brain that seems to be much harder to dispel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateralization_of_brain_function?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateralization_of_brain_functi...
- ncmncm 4y agoAnd human brain, mammal brain, lizard brain, stacked.
- vanderZwan 4y agoThe triune brain model[0]. Both have the issue that the popular interpretation of them are great oversimplifications of models that themselves do seem to have some limited use in neuroscience, but only if you add enough caveats. So unlike the situation with, say, flat earthers, there's some kernel of truth to it that can be misinterpreted or willfully presented in a misleading way. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain
- overlordalex 4y agoIt will be harder to dispel because the underlying general assumption actually is true - in most people the brain does split some functions by hemisphere, but rather it's not a general statement that can be simply applied: > Some popularizations oversimplify the science about lateralization, by presenting the functional differences between hemispheres as being more absolute than is actually the case.[21]: 107 [22] Sources that wikipedia uses: [21] Westen D, Burton L, Kowalski K (2006). Psychology : Australian and New Zealand edition. Milton, Qld.: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9780470805527. [22] Toga AW, Thompson PM (January 2003). "Mapping brain asymmetry". Nature Reviews. Neuroscience. 4 (1): 37–48. doi:10.1038/nrn1009. PMID 12511860. S2CID 15867592.
- retcon 4y agoI intuitively understand that we're using the whole of our brains in the same way that we use the full capacity of NNs and discard the majority of results. In other words the"unused" 90% of our brain is actually importantly figuring out all the less good fits that are essential for the ultimate deductions we utilize.
- sorenjan 4y agoAnother similar myth is the one Malcom Gladwell made up about how it takes 10 000 hours of doing something to become an expert at that thing. It was based on research that used 10 000 as an average for 20 year old violinists. The original researcher, Anders Ericsson, focuses much more on deliberate practice than sheer quantity. https://www.6seconds.org/2022/06/20/10000-hour-rule/ https://www.6seconds.org/2022/06/20/10000-hour-rule/ Related Freakonomics episode with Anders Ericsson among others about how to become an expert: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-become-great-at-just-about-anything/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-become-great-at-just...
- Retric 4y ago10,000 is a round number representing a large fraction of a young person’s life, ~20 hours a week for 10 years. It seems significant because we assume talented young people can be experts if they spend a lot of time on something, but it really just reflects the criteria chosen for defining experts and time on a subject. A prerequisite of becoming a Doctor for example is learning how to read, but that’s not considered part of the time commitment. Recursively when considering how long it takes to be an expert Heart Surgeon there is a tendency to ignore how long it takes to become a Doctor.
- sorenjan 4y agoEricsson's main point is that talent isn't as important as a lot of people, including other experts in the field, think. What matters is identifying your weaknesses and training specifically to improve those, often with the help of a coach. Just doing something for a long time doesn't necessarily make you great at it.
- watwut 4y agoThen again, weakness of that argument is that all people in the study qualify as talented.
- Retric 4y agoThat falls into the same trap of ignoring all the time perfecting prerequisite skills. An Olympic marathon runner needed to get good at balancing before they could learn to walk, and then very good at walking etc.
- swayvil 4y agoI heard that the brain is for cooling your blood. Completely differently, I heard that the brain is an antenna.
- BrandoElFollito 4y agoThis reminds me of the first "scientific myth" I witnessed. It was in the 80's in France where we had a photocopied page with "the most dangerous additives". The worst was E330. 40 years later, I still remember it. My parents had a copy from sime friends and these well educated people (dad is an engineer and mom a lawyer) checked everything against the list. Just because it was "from the Villejuif hospital". It was a fake and E330 is citric acid, a benin product. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid The famous list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villejuif_leaflet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villejuif_leaflet
- TillE 4y agoI don't remember the exact context at this point, but I've definitely encountered someone complaining about "ascorbic acid" as an additive, which is of course vitamin C.
- pdpi 4y agoLet's not forget the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide. Used as an industrial solvent, its vapours can cause severe burns, yet they put it in food.
- iso1631 4y agoLook at everyone who has committed a murder - you'll find they've consumed dihydrogen monoxide all their lives. Now look at those who have never consumed dihydrogen monoxide -- they haven't killed anyone.
- goldenkey 4y agoI can only cringe so hard from these watered-down jokes. Please, for the life of us, stop!
- not2b 4y agoI first started seeing the "dihydrogen monoxide" or "DHMO" memes a couple of decades ago when there were serious concerns about DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide), a solvent that can carry drugs through the skin, which apparently has some medical use but can be risky. It's a by-product of paper making.
- kosyblysk666 4y ago
- throwawayffffas 4y agoI am just going to plug my favorite podcast here. It's usually about conspiracy theories but they are currently doing a special about how bad ideas occasionally flow from the top with disastrous effect, unfortunately the special is pay-walled. But the conspiracy - Q stuff is pretty good too. https://www.patreon.com/qanonanonymous/posts https://www.patreon.com/qanonanonymous/posts
- FridayoLeary 4y ago“Insofar as she recognized at all that she was dreaming, she realized that she must be exploring her subconscious mind. She had heard it said that humans are supposed only to use about a tenth of their brains, and that no one was really clear what the other nine tenths were for, but she had certainly never heard it suggested that they were used for storing penguins.” ― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
- taylorius 4y agoI always thought this one could be taken apart on simple common sense grounds. The brain is very "costly" for the human species to maintain, in terms of calories required to run it, and risk during childbirth (amongst other factors, no doubt). Given this, why have it, and leave 90% of it unused? Mr Darwin would give a thumbs down to such a strategy.
- IIAOPSW 4y agoIts true. You only think with 10% of your brain. The other 90% are gilial support structure cells. They can't even be used for thinking!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- P_I_Staker 4y agoWhere do these myths come from? That is clearly, incredibly absurd.
- 0xbadcafebee 4y agoFrom people only using 10% of their brain :)
- cal85 4y agoTalking about the brain in terms of what percentage of it you use is silly. But I think there’s an important grain of truth in the idea of vast, untapped intellectual potential in many people. A better statement may be something like “many people only realise a small proportion of their potential intellect”, which I strongly believe. I just think it’s little to do with the brain and mostly to do with emotional associations and implicit limiting beliefs. Anecdotally I have seen countless examples of people being able to do impressive feats of mathematical thinking, but only as long as they don’t realise it’s ‘maths’. And as soon as they realise, it often stops working; the deeply learned negative associations sadly seem to quickly overpower any fleeting buzz of “oh I can do this after all”. I think untold damage is done in schools, instilling into kids associations of maths (or other subjects) as a thing that must be learned (for a grade, or to get a teacher/parent off their back) instead of as a useful tool they can turn to when they want to solve a problem they have.
- readenough 4y agoOne of my favorite myths is that an idea can be declared false simply because the science does not yet exist to prove it true. I think we all have beliefs that have not yet been verified. The key is to let go of those beliefs when the science does show the errors in those beliefs. Myths have played an important role in helping us understand our surroundings. Certainly, though, they have often been misused and exploited. One of the myths I learned early on was that the world was somehow created. Science tells us that this world did not always exist and formed over time in the past. So rather than getting dispelled, this idea is now both a myth of the past and a modern day fact as verified by scientific observation. Notice that the referenced Wikipedia article very carefully does not say this myth has been dispelled by science. It uses its strongest suggestive statement to disagree with only a very narrow interpretation of the myth. So, while we're sure the original intent of the mythology is misleading and inaccurate, we cannot rely on science to prove us right. Give it some time.
- ConstantVigil 4y ago
- technothrasher 4y ago> The key is to let go of those beliefs when the science does show the errors in those beliefs. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, but it sounds to me like you're saying that as long as somebody hasn't disproved a belief, you're justified in believing it. Is this what you're saying? That seems like it might lead you to keep believing things for which you have insufficient evidence to conclude they're true, and as such would be a less than ideal epistemological tool.
- readenough 4y agoThat is not at all what I am saying. The thought that I am taking to task is that some people seem to think ‘myth’ is synonymous with ‘false.’ It is not.
- EL_Loco 4y agoAnd how about the bumblebee's impossibility of flight myth? I've also hear it regarding generic 'beetle', and with specific beetles. I always thought it was pretty obvious that we just didn't understand the aerodynamics, or aerodynamics per se, enough. I mean, there's a special kind of insect that gets to bend the laws of physics? Really?
- technothrasher 4y agoFrom the first time I heard this bit of folklore as a child, I assumed the message was not that bumblebees are magic, but that our scientific models will likely always need continued revising. The argument as to whether we actually do understand bumblebee flight is interesting to entomology, but doesn't really impact the point of the myth.
- JohnJamesRambo 4y agoHalf of the page on mobile is Wikipedia donation spam. Completely insane.
- yehudalouis 4y ago"They say 3% of people use 5-6% of their brains, 97% use just 3% and the rest goes down the drain... I'll never know which one I am, but I'll bet you my last dime, 99% think we're 3%, 100% of the time." -- Statistician's Blues, Todd Snider. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUK6zjtUj00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUK6zjtUj00
- ansible 4y agoI recall hearing this myth being circulated for decades. One of the reasons it likely persists is that people don't have a good understanding of what their brain does on a day-to-day basis, and they don't have a good idea of just how hard some of those tasks are. We do things like walk across a room and pick up an object, and don't really think about all the processing that goes into that. You have an accurate and dynamic mental model of the room, your body, and how it can function. You do an enormous amount of processing just to see and recognize anything. And it (usually) "just works" and we don't have any real insight into ourselves for how it works, for how much processing effort goes into it all. If you have someone start down the path of programming a robot to do that "simple" task, they'll have a much greater appreciation for all the things their brain does for them. Trying to precisely coordinate the actions of tens to hundreds of muscles, receiving an enormous amount of raw sensor input (the feel of the floor under your feet, etc.) that is then filtered and prioritized for high-level consumption, all the motion planning to dodge the chair in your way, etc. We do so much for such a simple, everyday action, that it seems "easy" and "simple" when it is nothing of the kind. That's what that "other 90%" of your brain does, you just aren't conscious of it.
- wishawa 4y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox
- Rury 4y agoExactly. Notice when someone has a stroke and a portion of their brain dies, and they go numb and can longer contort muscles somewhere in their body? Yeah, it's because a lot of your brain is used for motor control and sensory processing. Like you said, you're just not conscious of it.
- a_c 4y agoMy favourite scientific myth is "cholesterol causes heart disease" evangelized by Ancel Keys [1] in the Seven Countries Study [2]. From there, we developed plant oil. From plant oil, we developed margarine. From margarine, we discovered trans-fat. And we found the trans fat causes coronary heart disease, hence in full circle. Worse still, from the fear of cholesterol, we developed "cereal that lowers your blood cholesterol" and the drug statin [3]. And also by focusing cholesterol, we down played the health hazard of consuming sugar because there is no such thing as cholesterol industry while sugar does. I'm overly generalizing here without much reference. If there is interest I will dig up more material. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancel_Keys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancel_Keys [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Countries_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Countries_Study [3] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13260239-the-truth-about-statins https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13260239-the-truth-about...
- rdmirza 4y agoYes cholesterol is a vital building block. However the medical literature consistently shows a strong relationship between LDL and non-HDL cholesterol levels and heart attack and stroke. Various cholesterol lowering drugs, statins being the most widely prescribed but certainly not the only class, show consistent relationship with cholesterol lowering and reduced risk of MACE (MI, stroke). Plaque is made of foam cells that consume cholesterol. They grow and obstruct arteries, and eventually rupture causing critical flow obstructing events.
- pengaru 4y agoCholesterol is mostly produced by the liver, fructose consumption plays a significant role in stimulating that process. AIUI dietary cholesterol is mostly a red herring according to current science. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_novo_synthesis#Cholesterol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_novo_synthesis#Cholesterol
- geoelectric 4y agoFear of dietary cholesterol is overrated. You are not (directly) what you eat and that fear was as much deference to magical "Law of Similarity" as anything. Blood cholesterol is different. At that point, however it got there, the build-up isn't great. I wouldn't lump statins in with the rest of your points.
- seydor 4y agoI'm concerned about the low level of neuroscientific knowledge in the general population. This is just an example, "humans generally use only 10 percent". There is no "human" who "uses the brain", the brain is the human, or rather the human is in the brain. Due to a high level of societal and political inertia we are indiferrent to facts of the brain that affect our biases , memory, ethics and judgement. This will become a problem the more we understand (and manipulate) the brain.
- gavmor 4y ago> There is no "human" who "uses the brain", the brain is the human, or rather the human is in the brain. Much of the human is said to be outside of the brain; many neurons, even, live outside the brain, and much "thinking" is done, for example, by gut neurons in concert with microbes with whom they're constantly exchanging chemical signals. So, in a sense, the human is in the gut, and the human is in the microbes. The human is a leaky abstraction! For further explorations on the permeability of the human, try Annie Murphy Paul's "Extended Mind."[0] 0. https://anniemurphypaul.com/books/the-extended-mind/ https://anniemurphypaul.com/books/the-extended-mind/
- seydor 4y agoNah, the person is a representation that is aware of itself, and requires a sort of neural network ,neural density and interconnectivity, that simply does not exist in peripheral sensory systems.
- gavmor 4y agoIf you define these systems as "peripheral," then it's tautological that they're not host to central aspects of self-awareness, but I'd argue that "gut feelings" and proprioception are indispensable components of human consciousness.
- seydor 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_nervous_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_nervous_system
- nathias 4y agolike left hemisphere is for creativiy, right is for math and other such nonsense it seems to be the right fit for motivational posters/memes so popular in the corpoculture
- x3n0ph3n3 4y agoThere's a very simple counter to the claim: Saying that you only use ten percent of your brain is like saying we only use 33% of a normal traffic light.
- cryptica 4y agoI've always felt that people use close to 100% of their brain capacity. Some people just don't have any surplus mental energy to spare to learn anything complicated; they would get angry and frustrated if they try; this emotional reaction is their brain telling them that it's too much. They do not have enough mental capacity for this and they will suffer negative mental consequences if they continue. Too much thinking can make some people crazy. IMO most people are hardwired to be irrational; it's their evolutionary strategy. Irrationality is bad for the system but it's generally good for the individual. You need an irrational mind to be able to come up with ideas which will resonate with the average (irrational) person.
- entropicgravity 4y agoSo it seems that the only people who only use ten percent of their brain are those who think we only use ten percent of our brain.
- luxuryballs 4y agoSounds like a misunderstanding similar to how people misquote Occam’s razor. Maybe the average person really does only reach 10% of their mental capacity, but they’re still using 100% of their brain to do so.
- yanngagnon 4y agoEven if we knew nothing about how the brain works (since we know very little in the grand scheme of things), this idea breaks down immediately from an evolutionary perspective. Given its energy requirements and the fact that brain development is essentially delayed in humans so that the baby may exit the birth canal, it would make on sense for any portion of the brain to be unused.
- t_mann 4y agoLearnt about the interesting biography of poor James Sidis through this article, who was an involuntary experimental subject of this theory through a 'forced prodigy' upbringing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James_Sidis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James_Sidis On the face of it, the experiment seems to have succeeded at making him extraordinarily intelligent, and also pretty much screwed up his life.
- 7speter 4y agoThe first thing that comes to mind with this is the running gag from the movie "Defending you life" where all the attorneys(?) that the protagonist met in the movie were reduced to how much of their brain they used, and how they all ate manwhich looking crud because they could rationalize eating it, while Al Brooks' character, who just recently died and was far too scared and primitive, wouldn't be able to handle it.