Originally posted by DA Morgan:
The 10% number is pure nonsense. Always has been. Always will be. All humans use all of their brains.
The question that should be asked is "to do what?"
Some use them to guess who the survivor will be on a reality show. Some use them to remember meaningless metrics about who pitched a perfect no-hitter in a baseball game 20 years earlier. And some explore the cosmos and develop cures for scourges like polio.
As with many things ... stupid people are concerned with quantity rather than quality.
Well it's interesting that you should put it like that, because that is just what I was suggesting. That the brain utilizes and focuses on a limited number of tasks at any given moment to make sure the job is executed properly (quality). By saying that we use all of our brains all of the time seems to be more of a quantity argument to me.
I'm sure that the using 10% of our brains argument is just a throw away comment, but to answer the question of how much of our brains we use at any given moment would involve defining "use." If "use" involves every function that the brain performs, be it voluntary or involuntary then, yes, we do use all of our brains all of the time just to stay alive. But if we are just discussing what we would call conscious thought, then it may be less.
