George Hammond <ghammond at mediaone.net> wrote in message news:<3B0285AB.C0432F49 at mediaone.net>...
>[Hammond]
>The "Secular Trend" in human growth is one of the most massivly
>proven facts of modern biology. This fact alone PROVES that
>the human brain (like the rest of us) is not full grown, and
>therefore we "only use part of our brains". The argument is
>PROVEN SCIENTIFIC FACT.
<and in another post>
> [Hammond]
> It's not a myth, the "Secualr Trend" that causes it is
> a proven fact. Fact is, stupider people have less fully
> grown brains.
[This is a repost (via google) of a post I made with my newsreader on
16 May 2001 16:56:17 GMT, but which did not get through. Since then,
Bill Saidel posted a somewhat overlapping opinion, but he was much
more polite than I am. Sorry for the rant, but this issue comes up
every six months on this group. No offense is intended to the original
poster Karl Self, who was asking an honest question. -MJ]
<rant>
Like many other things being discussed on this group recently, this is
pure and utter nonsense.
There is no evidence at all that we use less than 100% of our brains.
In
fact, if you think about it for a minute, you may see that the
question
itself, "what fraction of our brains do we use" is a rather poorly
formed
scientific question. It does not suggest any way of measuring or
testing
that value, because that definition of what is meant by "use" is never
given. What measure would you apply? I suppose if you could find
neurons
that just sit there and never fire any spikes, ever, then you could
say
that that fraction of neurons is not being used (but one could easily
argue with this). The same goes for glia. I suppose you could argue
that
since neurons tend to fire only occasionally, then they are not being
used during the times that they're not firing. This is a lame argument
though, because it's the same thing as arguing that the spaces
separating
words in this post don't convey any information. That's simply wrong.
The
silent periods convey -exactly- as much information as the active
periods. Many theories suggest that sparse coding is more efficient
than
dense coding, ergo, the silent periods are probably helping to
increase
the efficiency of coding. The list goes on and on. There is no
scientific
support at all for the idea that we don't use our whole brain, and the
whole question is silly.
As for the alleged "PROVEN SCIENTIFIC FACT" quoted above, that also is
nonsense, regardless of how many fancy and incomprehensible new names,
such as "Secular Trend" one might try to attach to it. First of all,
there is no such thing as a proven scientific fact. One does not prove
facts. They simply exist. One proves theorems. Second, in experimental
science, one does not even prove theorems. One hypothesizes things, or
generates -theories-. These theories are -never- proven, they can only
be
disproven (and only if they are well posed, which the current topic is
not). And third, the idea that the human brain is not fully grown is
not
the same thing as saying that it is not fully -used- (assuming that
there's any meaning to the statement in the first place, which I
seriously doubt). A baby's arm is not fully grown either, but it is
fully
used. All the muscles contract, all the nerves that are there
participate
in motion and sensation, etc. Another absurd statement that lends no
support either way, and contributes nothing to answering the question.
Better than answering the question, however, would be to un-ask this
silly, silly question.
Matt Jones
PS:
And no, Hammond, I will not be sure to visit the website.
<\rant>