[HN Gopher] Ten Percent of the Brain Myth
___________________________________________________________________
Ten Percent of the Brain Myth
Author : Hooke
Score : 105 points
Date : 2022-07-12 16:45 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| This 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
|
| The famous list:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villejuif_leaflet
| swayvil wrote:
| If you didn't actually make the observation yourself, aren't
| they all scientific myths?
| TillE wrote:
| I 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.
| dhosek wrote:
| There was one time that a group of Santa Monica High School
| kids were at the Sunday farmer's market trying to make videos
| of people being fooled into a moral panic about ascorbic acid
| in the produce. I remember saying to them, "You mean Vitamin
| C?" and the interviewer shook her head and said "You're too
| smart" and she and her cameraman walked away in search of a
| more amenable victim.
| pdpi wrote:
| Let'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.
| t_mann wrote:
| Dihydrogen monoxide is actually a cooling agent for nuclear
| power plants. It's lethal at high doses, with hundreds of
| thousands of fatal accidents per year, and yet they put it
| into our food because it's cheap.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Look 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 wrote:
| I can only cringe so hard from these watered-down jokes.
| Please, for the life of us, stop!
| not2b wrote:
| I 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.
| Scarblac wrote:
| A so-called "enabling component" of acid rain, and found in
| _all_ polluted waterways in the world.
|
| That said, nowadays I don't consider these jokes so funny
| anymore, people really believe similar stuff these days and
| post-truth bs is used to gain real power by people without
| shame.
| radley wrote:
| Or the most insidious of all, Dihydrogen Monoxide aka H2O.
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/dihydrogen-monoxide-hoax
| jahnu wrote:
| I remember those too :) Had them in Ireland as many times faxed
| sheets.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| "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
| mmaunder wrote:
| What makes me optimistic about our ability to adapt, recover,
| heal and improve is neuroplasticity:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity
| 53r3PB9769ba wrote:
| Some people use 100% of the brain from time to time. When they
| do, it's called an epileptic seizure.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Other periods of high brain utilization we call a migraine.
| yehudalouis wrote:
| "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
| lotophage wrote:
| It'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.
| nice2meetu wrote:
| There is even a Wikipedia page for going through all of the
| common misconceptions. It seems to have grown since the last
| time I visited it years ago.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions
| IshKebab wrote:
| This particular myth is self-evidently nonsense if you have
| high school biology nonsense. But yeah I agree with your point
| in general.
|
| Shame that "pull up Wikipedia" is apparently still more effort
| for most people than "tell other people about it on social
| media".
| arnejenssen wrote:
| These myths can be useful flags for quickly debunking an
| article/book. A sign that it is not worth reading the rest.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| This myth does not require Wikipedia to dispel, just the
| knowledge of how to calculate percentages and the knowledge
| that you need a standard of measurement. (Which none exists for
| "brain capacity").
| eru wrote:
| Thinking in evolutionary terms would also make you rather
| suspicious of this waste.
| riebschlager wrote:
| There are plenty of post-internet myths that are humming along
| just fine. :D
|
| It's a crazy phenomenon to watch play out.
| Akronymus wrote:
| > There are plenty of post-internet myths that are humming
| along just fine. :D
|
| Like bielefeld existing?
| lotophage wrote:
| Absolutely 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.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Flat-earth is a conspiracy theory, flat-earthers are told
| that the earth is round, but they don't believe it, they
| usually also believe in all sorts of other theories: fake
| moon landing, chemtrails, covid 5G, aliens, etc... make
| your choice. Conspiracy theories went strong even before
| the internet, some had devastating consequence. At least,
| flat-earth is harmless, it only makes you sound stupid.
|
| And I also believe that there are not that many "true" flat
| earthers. There is a significant amount of trolls and
| people who like the exercise in epistemology.
|
| I think the reason flat earth get so much visibility is
| that it is one the most obviously wrong belief there is,
| people like to point out dumb people in order to feel smart
| by comparison. In fact, the meme is not the idea that the
| earth is flat, it is that there are people out there who
| believe the earth is flat. It is almost a meta-myth, I
| mean, what proof do you have that flat earth as a community
| is a thing? I know there is rather good evidence that it is
| the case but who bothered to check?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Flat earth is _not_ harmless. Like many conspiracy
| theories, it posits an "evil controlling organization"
| that for some reason (usually to hide god?) is able to
| direct the entirety of the earth towards its goals.
|
| These kind of conspiracy theories, if you are willing to
| keep asking questions, almost always blame "The Jews".
| People pushing these conspiracy theories are, whether
| they understand it or not, pushing the ideas that 1: You
| have zero control over your government and cannot gain
| any control, 2: Science isn't the goal of many science
| institutions, and instead they are merely mouthpieces for
| this global cabal, 3: This global cabal even has the
| power of fooling your own senses, like many of these
| believers would not be swayed if you put them on a rocket
| and let them see the earth from space. These people are
| prone to dismissing strong evidence with hand wavey
| excuses like "oh virtual reality" or similar.
|
| I would argue the point of these is to push 1: voter
| apathy and general detachment from the ways society can
| be changed and improved through their effort, 2: anti-
| science and anti-intellectualism sentiments, 3: "You
| can't trust anyone but us", 4: "The Jews" bullshit
| MichaelBurge wrote:
| > 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?
| usrn wrote:
| Alex Jones isn't real and the man who plays him is part
| of a massive conspiracy inside the deep state.
| ta988 wrote:
| That's true but only a few of us know and it is better
| like that.
| knicholes wrote:
| Oh my gosh, there are tons of them. My mother-in-law
| ensures I hear about them all, passionately, each time
| she visits.
|
| Bill and Melinda Gates are cyborgs whose bodies have been
| replaced. They're trying to track everyone with vaccine
| microchips. (There were variations on this theme
| including 5G)
|
| Michelle Obama is a man.
|
| 9/11 buildings were vaporized by a high-powered,
| government laser.
|
| Chemtrails are full of heavy metal and are being used to
| control our minds.
|
| Putting hydrogen peroxide in your ear can cure all sorts
| of things, including cancer and cystic fibrosis.
|
| "The Jews" are disproportionately represented in the
| government and media and are behind the whole woke
| movement to punish white people.
|
| Any number of things about George Soros and ANTIFA.
|
| The moon landing was faked.
|
| The list goes on and on. Every time it's something even
| more crazy than the last.
| overheard wrote:
| lotophage wrote:
| I don't doubt that the belief has always existed
| somewhere; tribes with barely any outside contact, for
| example. I suspected that the belief was once reserved
| for a few eccentric crackpots and didn't have the
| momentum to be a movement until the last decade or so,
| but maybe I'm wrong. Flat-earth theory probably wasn't
| the greatest example. I think a "myth" connotes something
| a bit more innocent than a delusional belief or
| conspiratorial thinking (I'd call the Loch Ness Monster
| an myth, but I'd call the "moon-landing was faked" a
| conspiracy).
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| Pre-internet, it was harder to debunk myths but also harder
| to spread them. Nowadays, it's easier to debunk myths but
| also much easier to spread them. These do not necessarily
| cancel out; as they say, "the amount of energy needed to
| refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to
| produce it."
|
| As an extreme example, pre-internet, a conspiracy theory-
| inclined person might randomly run across a handful of full-
| blown conspiracy theorists in his day-to-day life. This makes
| it easier for him to question his leanings, since he only
| observes a small minority of people going all-in on the
| conspiracy theory. Nowadays, a conspiracy-inclined person can
| easily find online communities comprising all other full-
| blown conspiracy theorists everywhere the world. This quickly
| reinforces his belief in the conspiracy, since he sees an
| apparent majority of people in this online community
| believing the myth.
| havblue wrote:
| I honestly think it's easy to get secondary sources now,
| but it's still hard to get primary sources. If people have
| different views of preventing covid they're arguing over
| different news articles. They aren't arguing about specific
| studies that they have easy access to.
| bolasanibk wrote:
| Hard agree. It's very easy to find people who agree with
| whatever your particular brand of crazy is. And it does not
| help that online people can say things they would never say
| face to face.
| pohl wrote:
| Moreover, now it's now easy for adherents to some myths to
| find each other on the internet. IMO this is not a good
| tradeoff.
| wildmanx wrote:
| Also feels like they are more common on mainstream-ish
| TV.
| EL_Loco wrote:
| And 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 wrote:
| From 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.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Its 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!
| sorenjan wrote:
| Another 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/
|
| Related Freakonomics episode with Anders Ericsson among others
| about how to become an expert:
| https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-become-great-at-just...
| TillE wrote:
| I don't think Gladwell is a particularly insightful guy, but as
| someone who has actually read a couple of his books, I feel
| like the "10,000 hours" thing is frequently misrepresented.
|
| The claim isn't "put in 10k hours and you'll magically become
| an expert". It's "if you want to become an expert, you have to
| put in 10k hours". Necessary but not sufficient.
| borroka wrote:
| Another missing point, and this happens frequently also in
| rigorous treatment-control studies, is the heterogeneity of
| responses to treatment. Say, 10k hours might be the average
| deliberate practice time needed to reach "expert level" (not
| true), but for some it can take 1k hours, for others 15k, for
| others infinite time (but they can drop off), and so on.
| Idiotfucker wrote:
| I also read that specific book/chapter where he discusses 10
| 000 hours, and the implication based on his bill gates and
| hockey example, were as you said, that it is a necessary
| condition. And those examples in particular I think point out
| how having had the time and experience to get ahead of your
| "cohort" (people of a similar age or time period)
| amelius wrote:
| Not necessarily. You can become an expert in your self-
| defined programming language without putting in 10k hours.
| mminer237 wrote:
| You probably need ~10k hours in programming in general.
| Just a lot of the skill transfers over in that case.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| The feels more like a violinist learning a new song, and in
| this case one they made up, rather than learning an
| entirely new skillset.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| You can become an expert in cooking a hot dog without 10,000
| hours of practice.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Has anyone ever recognize "expert" skill in hot dog
| cooking? Cooking, certainly, but hot dog cooking?
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| What does it even mean to be an expert? What are we
| allowed or not allowed to be an expert in? Who's the
| judge that sets what fields you can be an expert in? Is
| there a range of expertise? Do I have to be in the top
| 10% of people in a field? The top 2%?
|
| The whole idea of _being an expert_ is an arbitrary
| social designation backed up by hogwash. We think we know
| what it means but it 's really just hand-waving.
| locuscoeruleus wrote:
| The 10k hours number is also dubious. It just happens to be
| the average number of hours students at some special violin
| school have spent in solitaire practice by the time they turn
| 18 (or what ever age they apply for the school).
| Retric wrote:
| 10,000 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 wrote:
| Ericsson'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 wrote:
| Then again, weakness of that argument is that all people in
| the study qualify as talented.
| Retric wrote:
| That 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.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| Similarly, 10,000 being a round number is how it was chosen
| arbitrarily by the Japanese for the 10,000 steps thing that
| has since caught on globally.
| mistersquid wrote:
| > 10,000 being a round number is how it was chosen
| arbitrarily by the Japanese
|
| According to a 2019 article from Harvard Health, "10,000
| steps" was a marketing term for hardware made by a Japanese
| company. (Not sure if the original root goes back to
| Japanese folklore, but the article implies it doesn't.)
|
| > Dr. Lee discovered that the origins of the number go back
| to 1965, when a Japanese company made a device named Manpo-
| kei, which translates to "10,000 steps meter." "The name
| was a marketing tool," she says. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/10000-steps-a-day-
| or-few...
| ugjka wrote:
| And 10,000 things
| taylorius wrote:
| I 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.
| swayvil wrote:
| I heard that the brain is for cooling your blood.
|
| Completely differently, I heard that the brain is an antenna.
| cryptica wrote:
| I'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.
| [deleted]
| anothernewdude wrote:
| I wonder what the other 90 percent of the Brain Myth is.
| entropicgravity wrote:
| So 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.
| seydor wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| > 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/
| seydor wrote:
| Nah, 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 wrote:
| If 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 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_nervous_system
| gavmor wrote:
| The name of a thing is not its behavior.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| Sounds 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.
| kosyblysk666 wrote:
| Zealotux wrote:
| Wait 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-...
| t_mann wrote:
| Learnt 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
|
| On the face of it, the experiment seems to have succeeded at
| making him extraordinarily intelligent, and also pretty much
| screwed up his life.
| nathias wrote:
| like 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
| scaredginger wrote:
| Kinda bizarre that people allegedly misattributed this to
| Einstein, a physicist
| layer8 wrote:
| A very small hamming distance to "physician". :)
| n4r9 wrote:
| He'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-quo...
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| Where do these myths come from? That is clearly, incredibly
| absurd.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| From people only using 10% of their brain :)
| eimrine wrote:
| If Albert Einstein's brain uses exactly same energy as mine, then
| 90% of latter is going to nowhere.
| infinityplus1 wrote:
| Einstein 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| daralthus wrote:
| Finding something in a sorted list is O(log n) instead of O(n)
| in non-sorted. Finding a good representation for the problem
| matters.
| a_c wrote:
| My 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
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Countries_Study
|
| [3] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13260239-the-truth-
| about...
| rdmirza wrote:
| Yes 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.
| ajjenkins wrote:
| Left 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_functi...
| ncmncm wrote:
| And human brain, mammal brain, lizard brain, stacked.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| The 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
| overlordalex wrote:
| It 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.
| cal85 wrote:
| Talking 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.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| It's a bit like saying a piano player will only use 10% of the
| keys at a time.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Not really because that's actually true. It's more like saying
| that the grid only uses 10% of its wires at a time.
| Jensson wrote:
| We use only 10% of our roads, cars only need the parts that
| their tires touches so we could save 90% by just building those
| parts and skip everything else!
| balfirevic wrote:
| Well, yeah, but then we'd call it railroad :)
| jbaber wrote:
| This 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... :)
| mistermann wrote:
| It's a good analogy for the hardware (brain) aspect, but
| there's also the software (mind) aspect.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| I don't think anyone except Luc Besson still thinks this is
| true anymore tho..
| carlmr wrote:
| I know that reference. When I watched that movie I was just
| like ugh, and then I continued watching, and it just got
| worse.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Somewhat coincidentally, I watched it - the film Lucy -
| yesterday and can confirm that it does indeed get worse.
| I would have liked it better if the story arc was more
| like 'Flowers for Algernon'.
| eru wrote:
| Inception 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 wrote:
| Related 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.)
| vageli wrote:
| > It's a bit like saying a piano player will only use 10% of
| the keys at a time.
|
| In a pedantic way, it is close to the truth as most pianists
| use up to 10 keys at a time (a few more if you count pedals).
| There are many keys available to the pianist but the pianist
| remains constrained by their input capacity.
| oliveshell wrote:
| Generally true, but people can surprise you.
|
| I remember seeing Ben Folds once slam his forearm on the
| keyboard as a deliberately dissonant sort of percussive
| stab... that was 15-20 keys with just one arm!
| wildmanx wrote:
| Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrQnnhAXLt0
| around 3:16. It's not just a percussive stab. It is
| actually a valid chord (all black keys) in that key.
| mapcars wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| counterpoint - people do take damage to brain and recover
| abilities, suggesting that the brain has redundancies built
| into it.
| mapcars wrote:
| It 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| retcon wrote:
| I 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.
| readenough wrote:
| One 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 wrote:
| technothrasher wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| That 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.
| ansible wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| There'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.
| yanngagnon wrote:
| Even 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.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Half of the page on mobile is Wikipedia donation spam. Completely
| insane.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| I 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
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