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This reminds me of the movie Limitless, in which a drug is invented that gives people who take it access to the 80% of their brain that they don't normally use.
by drumdance 14y ago
This reminds me of the movie Limitless, in which a drug is invented that gives people who take it access to the 80% of their brain that they don't normally use.
- batista 14y agoOnly the "we only use 10%, 20% of our brain" thing is false, basically an urban legend.
- gnaritas 14y agoThere are people who use 100% of their brains, they're generally flopping around on the floor.
- glogla 14y agoThat's not true, for reasonable definition of "use". There is grain of truth on the "we only use 10 % of our brains" saying, that we don't usually use our whole brain at once. It is possible, but not very comfortable, the closest you can get would be something like solving differential equations in you head and driving a car at the same time, while singing and thinking about you wife.
- ajross 14y agoNor is the original. The whole fallacy stems from a misunderstanding of "use". Only 10% of brain regions are active at any given time, so they're "unused". Of course, activating ("using?") them all at once is something medically known as a seizure. The same is true of circuits. If you're a pipeline stage in a multiplier inside an ALU, you're only "used" when a multiply instruction passes by. If only 10% of instructions in a given program are multiplies, you're 90% idle. That doesn't mean that the multiplier is a useless circuit.
- noonespecial 14y agoI always tell people "its like saying you only use 20% of the boat to float".
- Drbble 14y agoLimitless was also a work of fiction, so it's OK.
- drumdance 14y agoSorry, I should've been clear that I don't actually believe the myth. Only that the movie Limitless is about it.
- theorique 14y agoScientists claim that we only use 10% of our brains ... but I think that we only use 10% of our hearts.
- gnaritas 14y agoScientists do not make that claim.
- thesis 14y agoDr. Wedding Crasher once said that.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- masklinn 14y ago> Scientists claim that we only use 10% of our brains ... I've never seen a scientist make that actual claim. New-agers yes, eastern philosophers yes, comic books yes, scientists? Can't say I can remember any such instance. > but I think that we only use 10% of our hearts. The only way to only use 10% of your heart is to suffer from massive ischaemia, and that leads to death on pretty damn short order.
- liber8 14y ago(It's a quote from Wedding Crashers)
- jsprinkles 14y ago(Which is why it's being downvoted.)
- theorique 14y agoSigh, yep, I figured (1) that would happen and (2) there would be a few lulz worth the karma.
- ThomPete 14y agoThe only people who use 20% of their brain are people claiming we do. Humans use 100% of their brains. Evolution doesn't leave large buffers like that.
- jorleif 14y agoI agree with your claim, but attributing that to evolution as an efficient optimizer is a bit strange. If you are building a brain with trial and error, there is bound to be lots of bits and pieces of it that are not operating optimally for the current organism, but are there because of the evolutionary path that was taken.
- ThomPete 14y agoWhat parts should that be? The brain has evolved over time. It has an amazing amount of elasticity with and a bunch of hardwired features. But other than that it's not filled with secret potential.
- jacquesm 14y agoThe brain not 'using' all of it all the time is a measure of power conservation, not of what could be if you lit it up all at once.