You only use 10% of your brain AT ONE TIME. You use the whole thing in total, just not at once. And the 10% is an approximation, anyway.
If you were using 100% of your brain at one point in thime, you'd be having and epileptic fit.
Crispy wrote:
People can't think as well when they're tired. Known scientific fact. Personally, I get tired if I stay up to 1am, let alone 4am; and if I have less than 7 hours of sleep a night, I can definitely feel the effects the next day; I get tired again more quickly, which is especially noticeable on a school day because I start to work more slowly. We love you Crispy. Well, I do, I don't know about these other guys. | |
I think that if we only used 10% of our brain, the other 90% would have been removed by the process of evolution long ago. It's not like running such a huge brain is cheap!
My personal theory is that it's like those randomly-generated circuits - they work, but they contain other circuits next to them that don't appear to be doing anything. However if you take those out then the "main" part of the circuit stops working; so obviously they are having an effect, we just don't understand what it. *grin* Any chance you could poke JRChat back online, Lummox JR? I tried contacting you through your AOL address but it seems not to have worked, and I don't have any other good means of letting you know, so I'm trying here instead. :-) | |
I think they use it because it's that or admit that they aren't as smart as they think they are. Which isn't too easy a thing to do. Even the newbie programmer is usually known for being 'good with computers' to their non-computer savvy friends/family/co-workers.
When they get into this whole new ballpark where their super smart computer abilities are standard (and usually below standard) they're somewhat embarrassed and it can deal a big blow to their selfesteem. Especially when they're not working on a complex problem. It's really not the sort of thing that you should be making jokes at. How would you feel if you asked a simple question and the answer went over your head? | |
Elation wrote:
People use more than just 10 percent of their brain. I don't know quite what you mean by brain 'power'. Ill take that as a you have no idea what the heck your talking about when it comes too the brain. Tell ya what. You go read a crap load of imformation about the brain. Then come back and tell me a little more how bout that. | |
http://www.csicop.org/si/9903/ten-percent-myth.html
Read through that. You can use 100% of your brain, most just don't use it. As it said on the site, most people just don't use ti anymore because there is no need to use it. Obviously people do use it, or we wouldn't have gotten this far. When you do use it, you are able to ask better questions and it becomes a little easier to figure out ther answers, the result being all the advances made so far. | |
I don't agree with this explanation either, but I agree with it more than the 10% total. I believe we use all of our brain, just not at the same time. Some of it is for memory, some of it is for unconcious processing, some is for the senses, and some is for conscious thought. I don't believe the conscious thought portion is actually that large by default.
However, I am a believer in the theory the more work you make your brain do, the stronger and more numerous the connections between synapses get, thus you can make your brain more of a workhorse with much study. REM sleep almost proves this theory. REM sleep is thought to be the brain's way of sorting and filing information. Whereas a normal person's REM cycles are relatively short, a person who has studied intensely just before sleep has significantly longer REM cycles. REM is said to make the brain hotter. I think this is because the brain is sending tonnes of electrical impulses all over the place, strengthening some areas and disconnecting others. Anyway, point is, Nadrew, I do think the human brain isn't quite the processor we believe it to be, I see it as intensely and fundamentally flawed, but at the same time, it's the best we've got. Run a CPU on 100% and see how long it takes for it to burn out. I think the brain is the same way. It can't possibly handle more than about 30-70% usage for any kind of long period without a few cycles to cool down. | |
Psychic ability is science fiction. Nobody has been able to support definite evidence of any kind of psychic ability. So your argument that humans at 100% brain functionality would be able to read minds is completely unfounded.
Maybe humans are the smartest animal on the planet, but they aren't quite as smart as you think they are. Look at it this way, humans evolve away what they don't use. If we truly used 10% of our brains, the rest that we didn't use would fade out. Look at wisdom teeth, the appendix, etc. The appendix is slowly but surely being evolved away. There is a definite difference in size and shape in a lot of people, showing a different evolutionary stage of the said vestigial organ. Wisdom teeth are also vestigial. I believe both wisdom teeth and the appendix's uses were very similar. The wisdom teeth were great for grinding up things that were rather tough, as they are very sharp, such as muching bones to get to the nutritious marrow, tearing apart tough chunks of raw meat, etc. As for the appendix, I'm certain that it was once used to remove toxins from food that you eat. It was kind of a stop along the way to digestion, as the large and small intestines are very dangerous to put anything rancid or toxic in. Since humans got used to eating cooked meat, and harvesting their own fruits and vegetables, their appendix has outgrown its usefulness. Some people don't have wisdom teeth at all, they never grow in, again, showing a difference in evolutionary stages. Sure, you might argue that some people are born without arms, but the population of people with no wisdom teeth is much larger than the number of freak mistakes that occur during child development. Again, if we don't use it, we make steps to get rid of it. If anything, I believe three castes of humans are emerging, the intellectual, the physical, and the useless. Most of the useless seem to be pouring from America. This is another topic for another day, though. | |
Have some sympathy for those of us that need our sleep. =)