Why do people believe we use only 10% of our brains?

http://m.ajc.com/news/news/national/why-do-people-believe-we-only-use-10-percent-our-b/ngkr4/

by chops • 12 years ago

2 3 12 years ago

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dj-wonk3• 12 years ago

Regarding the study: I am not surprised. Once people believe a myth it is probably harder for them to stop believing it, unless: (a) people actively challenge themselves to dismantle out-of-date beliefs; or (b) people are confronted with something that forces cognitive dissonance.

So why do myths seem to persist despite their questionable veracity? I want to throw out a few thoughts about the lifecycle of myths:

1. Myths are interesting and tell a story that resonates with their audience. This helps get them in our brains in the first place.

2. Myths are credible, at least at first. Perhaps they are based on scientific argumentation or conventional wisdom or (somewhat limited) experience. This gives a myth a mental foothold.

3. Some myths are untestable, at least practically speaking from the perspective of people that believe them. So myth-based knowledge tends to linger.

4. Myths may be repeated (like memes) simply due to associative memory. People's brains work largely by association, so many myths spread because they give a person something interesting to say. This gives myths a way to spread.

5. To some degree, myths are busted for various reasons. But the overall dynamics of myths (call it myth epidemiology if you want) means that they may have already infected a significant portion of the population.

dj-wonk3• 12 years ago

Question for you all. If we frame the myth problem from a Shannon information point of view where a myth is a form of entropy (e.g. let's say a falsehood is disorder), how much energy would be required to reduce the entropy of the system?

Myths may simply be the knowledge "noise floor" of a world given the rate of new information generation and humanity's limited abilities to make sense of it.

dj-wonk3• 12 years ago

Another question for the distributed systems engineers here: what kind of computation would be required for a system of people to rigorously identify and disprove their myths?

In order for Person A to efficiently disprove Myth X in Person B, Person A needs (1) to know that Person B believes Myth X; (2) to know and employ some action (such as a conversation) that will be effective; and (3) not have something better to do (opportunity cost).

Why do people believe we use only 10% of our brains?

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