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Ten Percent of the Brain Myth

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Re: Ten Percent of the Brain Myth

#71

Post by amelius »

TillE wrote: post #46
sorenjan wrote: post #36

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 And…

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.

Not necessarily. You can become an expert in your self-defined programming language without putting in 10k hours.

Re: Ten Percent of the Brain Myth

#72

Post by cal85 »

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.

Re: Ten Percent of the Brain Myth

#73

Post by readenough »

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.

Re: Ten Percent of the Brain Myth

#74

Post by arnejenssen »

lotophage wrote: post #12

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.

These myths can be useful flags for quickly debunking an article/book. A sign that it is not worth reading the rest.

Re: Ten Percent of the Brain Myth

#75

Post by balfirevic »

Jensson wrote: post #26
pantalaimon wrote: post #7

It's a bit like saying a piano player will only use 10% of the keys at a time.

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!

Well, yeah, but then we'd call it railroad :)

Re: Ten Percent of the Brain Myth

#76

Post by EL_Loco »

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?

Re: Ten Percent of the Brain Myth

#77

Post by mminer237 »

amelius wrote: post #71
TillE wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not necessarily. You can become an expert in your self-defined programming language without putting in 10k hours.

You probably need ~10k hours in programming in general. Just a lot of the skill transfers over in that case.

Re: Ten Percent of the Brain Myth

#79

Post by mistersquid »

nibbleshifter wrote: post #45
Retric wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

> 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...

Re: Ten Percent of the Brain Myth

#80

Post by dhosek »

TillE wrote: post #43
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #39

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…

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.

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.
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