Answerer

Well guys, so how many percentage of our mind do anyone of you think that we are using?20%? 50%? 90%?

<img src="confused.gif" border="0">

Asha'man

Well, since our "soul" is in the unused 90%, we clearly don't use our "soul," right?

Alternately, does having a "soul" make that 90% unusable? I guess that explains why so many theists refuse to think, and just blindly accept what they are told. Some supernatural parasite has taken over their brain and shut 90% of it down.

Ok, would you like a more serious answer about why people only use 5% of their brain? I think it is clearly Laziness. 100% is available for use, but thinking takes effort, so people don’t bother.

NialScorva

Did you read my other post?

The snopes article does not use ridicule to support it's claim, the entire article is about how 10% myth, *not* to support the 100% figure. The vast majority of the article tracks how the myth is promoted and the psychic charlatans that use it to support their unsupported claims. Where does the article appeal to ridicule?

You're completely mistaken about the intent of the article, it's not to support the 100% figure at all, and it was not presented by Daggah as such. It's a reply to the title of this thread, involving the low percentage as a myth. You are the one presenting a red herring by claiming that we have to support 100% usage in order to refute the 10% myth.

I believe you need to review what claims are present, and most of all, you owe MrDarwin an apology.

MrDarwin

I'm afraid I still don't see the objection to the Snopes article. It pointed out (and everybody seems to agree) that there is no support whatsoever for the 10% figure, and that in fact nobody even knows where it came from.

So do we use "100%" of our brain? Leaving aside for the moment the ambiguity of just what that means, most people who know about these things sure seem to think we do--but that doesn't mean there aren't parts of our brain we can live without, or that aren't redundant. Clearly there are. But I'd like to point out the logical fallacy of believing that because we can live without various parts of our brain, or even function more or less normally, we don't use them. (Heck, I rarely use the back stairs on my house, and could get by without them... but if there's ever a fire, I sure like to know they're there!)

Here are just a few web articles I found on doing a quick google search (and note that several were written by medical doctors):

<a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/tenper.html" target="_blank">Do We Use Only 10% of Our Brain?</a>
<a href="http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/brain-myth" target="_blank">Myths About the Brain: 10 percent and Counting</a>
<a href="http://www.theness.com/articles/brain-nejs0201.html" target="_blank">90% of a Brain is a Terrible Thing to Waste</a>
<a href="http://www.epub.org.br/cm/n04/brainstorming/capacity.htm" target="_blank">What Is the Capacity of Our Brain?</a>
<a href="http://www.csicop.org/si/9903/ten-percent-myth.html" target="_blank">The Ten-Percent Myth</a>
<a href="http://www.radioalchymy.com/news/articles/myth10brain.htm" target="_blank">The Myth of the 10% Brain
</a>

Although these are primarily devoted to debunking the 10% myth, there is a pretty clear consensus that we use all of our brain.

And finally, I guess I need to be a little more clear on one point because Veil of Fire missed it entirely: if you disagree with something (e.g., the Snopes article), please do more than just whine and complain about it. I've found that it's one thing to say somebody is wrong, but unless you find virtue in laziness, it's infinitely more satisfying to prove it.

[ June 13, 2002: Message edited by: MrDarwin ]</p>

scigirl

Depends on what we are doing at the time, I suppose.

And do you mean on average, or in a given moment? On average, we use nearly all of it. In a split second, maybe only half? You'd have to look at serial MRIs or something.

I think Dr. Rick made a good point: redundancy doesn't mean uselessness. So our kidneys have millions of nephrons when we really only need thousands. That doesn't mean that some nephrons are doing all the work, and some are just sitting there. I suspect that many of our neural connections are redundant, but if you took all that redundancy away, you would probably lose some type of cognitive function.

scigirl

[ June 13, 2002: Message edited by: scigirl ]</p>

elwoodblues

Assigning a percentage to the amount of brain we use... Really, that's a bit meaningless. How do you assign it? By % of time your neurons are firing? In that case, 5% might be pretty close. Of course, you'd assume that 100% would be maximal, but that's not true. By that measure, 100% would be constant seizure and almost instant death.

% of regions of brain that are activated and 'accessed' on a regular basis? Well, that'd be close enough to 100% for the vast majority of people for the difference not to matter. Very little population variation there. And very little meaning, as well.