I use 100% of my brain!
 

I am always hearing the myth that "the average person only uses about 11% of the brain." Usually this is in reference to the amazing potential available in utilizing the otherwise idle parts of the brain, which may unlock super-intelligence, psychic powers, etc. Similarly, highly intelligent folks are assumed to use more of their brains... "Steven Hawking must use, like, 20% of his brain!"

Well, it's just plain untrue. But a staggering majority of people believe this myth. Why is that, I wonder? What makes it so universally believable?

Oops, gotta go... 89% of my brain just shut down.

Maybe because people would like to think they have more brain power than they really experience? My roommate might subscribe to this, as he often appears to attempt to physically "jump start" his brain when he experiences a "tip of the tounge" problem. If he can't think of a word or mispronounces something more than one time, he hits himself in the head hard enough to create a good thunk. As time has gone on, I think this has caused his brain to function worse.

10% isn't half bad, though. If you can still sustain the functions required to live on that, you're doing good.

It is frequently used to justify claims of ESP. The desire to claim paranormal powers often overwhelms scientific evidence.

I ran across this a while back, and even put two articles about it on my website (here and here). It's just another one of those things that <i>everyone</i> believes, even though a teeny tiny amount of research would prove it completly wrong. Just odd. The ESP comment is dead-on. It's the same reason people are religious: they <b>want</b> to believe they are capable of more, so they give more credit to explanations that are in line with what they want to believe.

It reminds me of how everyone on the planet started insisting that I put mashed up rice cereal into my 4 week old daughter's formula to help her sleep better. Any cursory amount of research would show it to be faulty and potentially bad for them, and yet I cannot seem to meet a person in this region that doesn't believe it.

Why do people believe weird things?

People believe that kind of thing in order to have somehting to believe in. We've taken away all the great myths, so why not have some others?

In the case of everyone I've talked to who refused the pressure from relatives to add rice cereal to formula, their babies started sleeping through the night 1 week after they refused to do it. And the same was the case with me.

The truth is that it's just a coincidence. It's correlational logic to assume that because A happens and then B happens, that B is the cause of A.

How Superstition Works
 

Look under Superstition and behavioral psychology. The ability to learn from experience is an amazing attribute, but it has occasional hiccups.

The Wikipedia link sent me surfing around to cross references until I fould this totally wonderful site ...

http://www.sacred-texts.com/index.htm

El, you are going to DIG this majorly. :)

You've rationalized an explanation that's acceptable to you. That doesn't make it true.:haha:

No, I'm just following the edict that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. And the proof just isn't there, unless you think correlational logic is good.

So wait: if you are using 100% of your brain, and you think of "one more thing", what happens?

:)

You think that much less about everything else, of course!

Well, it's not all in use at any given time. It's like the muscles in your body -- they're all used relatively frequently, but not necessarily all at once.