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Ten Percent of the Brain Myth

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Re: Ten Percent of the Brain Myth

#121

Post by readenough »

technothrasher wrote: post #116
readenough wrote: post #73

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 exploit…

> The key is to let go of those beliefs when the science does show the errors in those beliefs. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, but it sounds to me like you're saying that as long as somebody hasn't disproved a belief, you're justified in believing it. Is this what you're saying? That seems like it might lead you to keep believing things for which you have insufficient evidence to conclude they're true, and as such…

That is not at all what I am saying. The thought that I am taking to task is that some people seem to think ‘myth’ is synonymous with ‘false.’ It is not.

Re: Ten Percent of the Brain Myth

#122

Post by IshKebab »

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.

This particular myth is self-evidently nonsense if you have high school biology nonsense. But yeah I agree with your point in general.

Shame that "pull up Wikipedia" is apparently still more effort for most people than "tell other people about it on social media".

Re: Ten Percent of the Brain Myth

#124

Post by geoelectric »

a_c wrote: post #88

My favourite scientific myth is "cholesterol causes heart disease" evangelized by Ancel Keys [1] in the Seven Countries Study [2]. From there, we developed plant oil. From plant oil, we developed margarine. From margarine, we discovered trans-fat. And we found the trans fat causes coronary heart disease, hence in full circle. Worse still, from the fear of cholesterol, we developed "cereal that lowers your blood chole…

Fear of dietary cholesterol is overrated. You are not (directly) what you eat and that fear was as much deference to magical "Law of Similarity" as anything.

Blood cholesterol is different. At that point, however it got there, the build-up isn't great. I wouldn't lump statins in with the rest of your points.

Re: Ten Percent of the Brain Myth

#125

Post by eru »

WorldMaker wrote: post #118
eru wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inception also used that myth, I think, to justify why time runs at different speed in the dream. (Which makes no sense, when they go multiple layers..)

Related to that, I find I often end up getting into arguments with people over the "computers run at such faster speeds than humans" myths/tropes. It's very common in the cyberpunk genre especially that time "runs faster" for people inside simulation spaces (metaverses/The Matrix/whatever). (Or sometimes the other direction where robots/cyborgs are significantly faster than humans at "thinking".) Computers are very f…

Well, with sufficiently advanced computers, your simulations can run as fast or your cyborgs think as fast as the plot demands.

Many video games are and always have been pushing limits. So you'd expect many them to barely run on their contemporary hardware.

(A notable exception is Tetris. Thanks to being invented by people on obsolete Soviet computers, no western computer ever had any trouble running it.)

> With the fun that the Halting Problem tells us that we'll never be certain exactly how long it takes to run algorithms, in general.

The Halting Problem is barely relevant here: it only applies to arbitrary programs. It doesn't have any bearing on running one specific computation faster.

Re: Ten Percent of the Brain Myth

#126

Post by 7speter »

The first thing that comes to mind with this is the running gag from the movie "Defending you life" where all the attorneys(?) that the protagonist met in the movie were reduced to how much of their brain they used, and how they all ate manwhich looking crud because they could rationalize eating it, while Al Brooks' character, who just recently died and was far too scared and primitive, wouldn't be able to handle it.

Re: Ten Percent of the Brain Myth

#127

Post by pengaru »

rdmirza wrote: post #112
a_c wrote: post #88

My favourite scientific myth is "cholesterol causes heart disease" evangelized by Ancel Keys [1] in the Seven Countries Study [2]. From there, we developed plant oil. From plant oil, we developed margarine. From margarine, we discovered trans-fat. And we found the trans fat causes coronary heart disease, hence in full circle. Worse still, from the fear of cholesterol, we developed "cereal that lowers your blood chole…

Yes cholesterol is a vital building block. However the medical literature consistently shows a strong relationship between LDL and non-HDL cholesterol levels and heart attack and stroke. Various cholesterol lowering drugs, statins being the most widely prescribed but certainly not the only class, show consistent relationship with cholesterol lowering and reduced risk of MACE (MI, stroke). Plaque is made of foam cells…

Cholesterol is mostly produced by the liver, fructose consumption plays a significant role in stimulating that process. AIUI dietary cholesterol is mostly a red herring according to current science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_novo_synthesis#Cholesterol

Re: Ten Percent of the Brain Myth

#128

Post by WorldMaker »

eru wrote: post #125
WorldMaker wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related to that, I find I often end up getting into arguments with people over the "computers run at such faster speeds than humans" myths/tropes. It's very common in the cyberpunk genre especially that time "runs faster" for people inside simulation spaces (metaverses/The Matrix/whatever). (Or sometimes the other direction where robots/cyborgs are significantly faster than humans at "thinking".) Computers are very f…

Well, with sufficiently advanced computers, your simulations can run as fast or your cyborgs think as fast as the plot demands. Many video games are and always have been pushing limits. So you'd expect many them to barely run on their contemporary hardware. (A notable exception is Tetris. Thanks to being invented by people on obsolete Soviet computers, no western computer ever had any trouble running it.) > With the…

> Well, with sufficiently advanced computers, your simulations can run as fast or your cyborgs think as fast as the plot demands.

We've reached the edges of Moore's Law. We're starting to see the horizon where "sufficiently advanced computers" end. You might be fine with plots playing fast and loose with physics limitations and optimistically still believe tomorrow's computers will be "magic". I'm just saying that it is starting to bug me versus realism in the exact same sorts of fashion as "humans only use 10% of their brains" tropes. "Computers only use 10% of their transistors." Just like the bad human trope, it ignores that most transistors are highly specialized (an FPU is not a GPU is not a general purpose CPU).

> The Halting Problem is barely relevant here: it only applies to arbitrary programs. It doesn't have any bearing on running one specific computation faster.

We're talking about extremely arbitrary programs from stories that are being done for the first time ever. "Hacks" that no one has ever done before. "Holodeck simulations" built in magic amounts of time just on a couple of spoken sentences. Humans "diving into" computer dreamscapes and doing all sorts of human scale simulation things in some sort of "quick time" which seems to be directly in the intersection of both the "humans only use 10% of their brains" myths and the "computers run really fast" myths. Those aren't just well studied apps running standalone without human interaction and with just "one specific computation". Those are REPLs and other human input devices including speech to text to ML (?) and complicated physics calculus that isn't just add/subtract things real fast and all sorts of other things that take wall clock time and are being "programmed" for the first time, on the fly. Of course The Halting Problem applies to all of those types of scenarios.

I certainly enjoy watching/reading such magic computer fantasies when I can muster a suspension of disbelief, but I've also started to feel like most of them are written by people that have never faced the contemporary realities of computer programming and believe in a myth of magically faster computers and human interface design that doesn't exist today and pessimistically may never exist.

Re: Ten Percent of the Brain Myth

#129

Post by Rury »

ansible wrote: post #86

I recall hearing this myth being circulated for decades. One of the reasons it likely persists is that people don't have a good understanding of what their brain does on a day-to-day basis, and they don't have a good idea of just how hard some of those tasks are. We do things like walk across a room and pick up an object, and don't really think about all the processing that goes into that. You have an accurate and dy…

Exactly. Notice when someone has a stroke and a portion of their brain dies, and they go numb and can longer contort muscles somewhere in their body? Yeah, it's because a lot of your brain is used for motor control and sensory processing. Like you said, you're just not conscious of it.

Re: Ten Percent of the Brain Myth

#130

Post by mapcars »

technothrasher wrote: post #120
mapcars wrote: post #8

>Studies of brain damage: If 10 percent of the brain is normally used, then damage to other areas should not impair performance This is unbelievably naive to use as some sort of proof, using 10% does not imply that its 10% of the physical organ. Rather 10% compared to what one could do with better training, improved lifestyle, etc. And this does not have to be purely intellectual, it can be imagination capabilities,…

> Rather 10% compared to what one could do with better training, improved lifestyle, etc. If you're talking about 10% of some non-physical concept of brain "potential", then you have to define, potential WHAT? Creativity? Intelligence? Speed of thought? Hand/eye coordination? Something else deemed important? All of it? None of it? How could you possibly attach a 10% potential value to any of this unless you operation…

I don't have to define or measure it. And this does not make it meaningless either. In fact most profound things in life can not be measured. Can you measure how much parents love their child? Can you measure how happy someone is to get a present they wanted? Can you measure how funny a joke is? Measuring everything is a stupid approach to life and things like brain development and human potential for sure are immeasurable but are the most significant.
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