On Wednesday, 26th August 1992, William Henry Timmins wrote:
> Note:
>
> Does ANYONE have any DIRECT evidence of that 'humans only use 10% of
> their brain' statistic?
>
> As far as I know, that's an urban legend. Anyone you are likely to ask
> has 'heard' of this statistic from someone else.
I think the actual quote is 35%, but I get your general idea. I "heard" it
from Albert Einstein (in a quote by him, but I forget the source). It is not
a fact, merely a theory, but I'd say that it is based on some observations
such as neural activity, etc.
> Now, what I think the problem is, is the difference between two
> statements-
>
> Statement 1-
> You only use 10% of your brain's potential.
> Statement 2-
> 10% of your brain is active on the average.
Considering that the brain is a dynamic thinking tool, then if only 10% of
it is used on average, then there is the potential that all of it can be used,
though current knowledge does not know a method of using more of the brain
that is used by natural thinking.
> Statement 1 is, I believe, a misunderstood version of statement 2. Only
> part of your brain is active at any one time- signals tend to sweep from
> one area to another, as information is processed. HOWEVER, this does NOT
> mean that we aren't utilizing part of our brain.
>
> It has also been noted that more 'intelligent' people often have less
> brain activity when solving a problem that less intelligent people. The
> theory is that high brain activity indicates a lot of thought.
> Intelligent people's thoughts are organized in ways that solve problems
> better, so it takes less thinking.
Personally, I don't know how they could have approximated what 100%
brain usage would be. Perhaps their 35% is actual 100%, and persons
displaying more than that have highly active neural patterns.
> The upshot is, there is no good way to expand a human mind. Also, you
> CAN'T treat the mind as a computer bank. Computers and brains operate in
> very different ways. (Yes, there ARE similarities, but people seem to be
> taking huge liberties with information theory!)
Perhaps interfaces would be a good start. Dedicated neural storage expansions
that have a human though interface, so that the human host recognises it as
another part of the brain. One downside of this, is that overuse would
end up in the brain "becoming lazy" and spreading it's workload out uniformly,
so that if the interface is removed, there could be withdrawal symptoms or
worse. If the brain decides that the best place to put it's life support
processes/workload/whatever is the expansion memory, then look out when it
is removed.
another idea would be a maths processor interface, this would react to
a function like input from the mind directly, and would return the correct
solution in milliseconds. The only problem is that optimum use can only
be had by a person familiar with matematics to start with. But education
of the future will probably focus on maths anyway... who knows?
Regards,
Mike.
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Internet: [email removed]
"I have a cunning plan..." - Baldrick (Black Adder)
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Michael Glew - School of Math Phys Comp & Elec - Macquarie University
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