On the "10% of your brain" legend, here [urbanlegends.com] is a pretty cool writeup. The best quote from the article:
In other words, the "humans only use 10% of their brains" canard would more correctly be phrased "humans only use 10% of their brains for walking around and smelling things"...
What you have to understand is that nobody selects. I mean, an insect is really less evolved than a human, not to say an amoeba, and they are not marked for extintion per se.
Actually an insect is arguably more evolved than us, since it's generation time (and that of it's ancestors) is much smaller. An amoeba is incredibly more evolved, in the sense of total change since it's last common ancestor with mammals.
Selection is not an invisible hand striving for perfection, there's not a biologist on the planet worth his weight in salt who'll say that. Selection is a instantaneous direction, a random walk through the fitness landscape. At every given moment, the selection pressure is for what would most benifit a population (not individual) right now, with no consideration for the future or perfection. There's no appeal to a nature-god, no inferior or superior (let alone perfection), just a constant changing of directions for the immediate survival.
Since most of a modern CPU's transistor count is cache memory you'ill probably find that outside the control unit at any one time even less than 10% of the transistors are active. If you include the number of transistors present for main memory in the mix that percentage gets even lower.
"they were of normal or above-normal intelligence... their cerebral hemispheres had been compressed into a slab less than an inch thick"
If kids can lose large portions of their brains and still grow up bright and healthy, then I think that suggests pretty strongly that most of the brain is either functionally redundant or simply unused.
That's a great quote about the 10%, though.
What I want to know is why large animals need a larger brain to handle their bodies, and brain:body mass ratios are considered more important than absolute brain mass. It shouldn't require more data processing just to run a larger body, when most of its processes are regulated without the brain. Furthermore, it sounds like that wasn't the case for dinosaurs, some of which had little bird-sized brains in enormous bodies.
Great writep (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, the "humans only use 10% of their brains" canard would more correctly be phrased "humans only use 10% of their brains for walking around and smelling things"...
Re: Great writep (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually an insect is arguably more evolved than us, since it's generation time (and that of it's ancestors) is much smaller. An amoeba is incredibly more evolved, in the sense of total change since it's last common ancestor with mammals.
Selection is not an invisible hand striving for perfection, there's not a biologist on the planet worth his weight in salt who'll say that. Selection is a instantaneous direction, a random walk through the fitness landscape. At every given moment, the selection pressure is for what would most benifit a population (not individual) right now, with no consideration for the future or perfection. There's no appeal to a nature-god, no inferior or superior (let alone perfection), just a constant changing of directions for the immediate survival.
And what about modern CPU's? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And what about modern CPU's? (Score:5, Funny)
We are more efficient than silicon so they use us.
It doesn't make it sound like a legend... (Score:4, Interesting)
If kids can lose large portions of their brains and still grow up bright and healthy, then I think that suggests pretty strongly that most of the brain is either functionally redundant or simply unused.
That's a great quote about the 10%, though.
What I want to know is why large animals need a larger brain to handle their bodies, and brain:body mass ratios are considered more important than absolute brain mass. It shouldn't require more data processing just to run a larger body, when most of its processes are regulated without the brain. Furthermore, it sounds like that wasn't the case for dinosaurs, some of which had little bird-sized brains in enormous bodies.
Re:It doesn't make it sound like a legend... (Score:4, Funny)
Forget dinsaurs. I know people who have half their brains in their ass.
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