For some reason this reminded me of one of my favorite Wikipedia pages:
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions</a><p>I read through it every couple of years and am amazed at the number of things considered "common knowledge" which are completely untrue.
This article does not really debunk anything as it seem to use some very poor chains of reasoning:<p>"If we are using only 10% of our brains, that means a person would be fine if the other 90% of the brain got removed. 10% of the 1400g average brain is 140g—that’s the size of a sheep’s brain.4 Since I doubt sheep have their own 90% hidden potential myth, it makes no sense that humans have advanced so far as a civilization by using only part of their brains equivalent in size to a sheep’s brain."<p>1. That using 10% of brain means 90% can be removed. Where did that logic come from?<p>2. That size of the brain is important (i.e. the size of a sheep brain is relevant to human intelligence, this is a poor argument as an elephants brain is much larger than a human's)
When the article mentioned brain size, it reminded me of a story about Einstein's brain.<p>He donated his brain to science and one of the first things noted after his death was that his brain was roughly average sized. This was a big setback for the "brain size correlates with IQ" crowd and was one, of many data points, showing that brain size and volume did not correlate with IQ.<p>Years later, as we got better understandings of the brain and its sub-components, it was realized that he was actually MISSING a part of his brain. I forget the exact piece but what was most interesting is that it was the portion of the brain that "pushes" up against another of the brain believed to be used for visualizing problems.<p>Because he was missing the first component, it allowed the visualization portion to grow to roughly double the size of a normal person's. It's thought that this "supercharged" his ability to mentally visualize complex physics and math problems in a way average people couldn't.<p>To me, it's fascinating that missing part of you might lead other parts of you to becoming more efficient and/or more powerful.<p>EDIT: Fixed some grammar.
> If we are using only 10% of our brains, that means a person would be fine if the other 90% of the brain got removed [...] There are instances in history when people were injured and got parts of their brain removed (although not as close as even 10%)<p>Actually you can do much better. There are people who had 50% of their brain removed and were fine. [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy</a>]<p>And there are examples of people who lost up to 95% of their brain and still seem pretty normal. (Actually, some are claimed to be be <i>smarter</i> than average, leading to the suggestion that the rest of the brain is just cramping our style, but that's probably an exaggeration.) [<a href="https://www.gwern.net/Hydrocephalus" rel="nofollow">https://www.gwern.net/Hydrocephalus</a>]
It's like saying only one cylinder of a four-cylinder engine is 'working' at any given time. Technically true in a way, but somewhat misleading.
It's a metaphor for general ability, not a concrete estimate of actual physical brain usage. People who use it tend to mean "You, yes <i>you</i>, could amazing and magical things if you were more focussed."<p>That's very unlikely to be literally true in the way they hope. But given how poorly most people are educated, and how often they're fed lies and distortions in adulthood, there's likely to be some metaphorical truth to it.<p>So the population as a whole certainly could be smarter, more aware, more effective, and probably more creative too.<p>But it's not something you could easily put a number on. Certainly a one dimensional measurement like IQ won't capture it.
Not sure how this is on the front-page. The article chases to debunk something that is only used as a metaphor for the capacity of the mind. IMO the idea that we only use 10% of our brain is oversimplified way to get the attention of a child when conveying the minds power. For example, you only activate 10% of your brain when reasoning a difficult math problem, or recalling a memory. I don't think anyone ever asserted that 90% of your brain is turned off.
Evolution doesn't waste resources unnecessarily. The human brain requires substantial energy to operate, why would brains have evolved they way they have unless there was a purpose for very close to all the power of the brain?