From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Aug 23 2000 - 18:10:46 MDT
> On Wed, 23 Aug 2000, Ronald Jump wrote:
>
> > Hi, all --
> >
> > Does anyone know what psychologist it was who first said that the
> > bulk of human thinking capacity in the brain is unused?
This is a silly little urban legend.
I have never heard any reputable source for this statement, and it is
both falsifiable and false. Neuroanatomy has already assigned functions
to considerably more than 50% of the brain, as measured by weight,
volume, number of neurons, number of synapses, or any other standard you
care to name. Heck, the visual systems alone account for around half of
the cerebral cortex. I don't claim that we've found *all* the functions
for these pieces of neuroanatomy, but we do know they're not standing
idle.
As for the old line about 90% of the brain going unused, forget it.
Nobody with the vaguest acquaintance with neurology could ever dream of
making such a statement.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://singinst.org/home.html
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