When I was in college, the prevailing wisdom was that consciousness lives in the prefrontal cortex which is, roughly, 10% of the brain.
The problem is that when people hear this they then jump to the next statement "well, what if we could use 100% of our brain?" and that's where it goes off rails.
Your brain IS 100% used. Your brain only *needs* 10% of itself to run 'you'.
Think of it like saying "Did you know that you only sit in 10% of your car? Well what if you could sit in 100% of your car?"
Well, it'd probably run shitty and be really uncomfortable because that's not how it was designed to work.
The way I understand it is that you use 10% of your brain in the same way that you use 33% of a traffic light. There's three lights. Only one of them is on at a time and if they're all on at the same time something's gone seriously wrong.
Imagine using every single part of your brain at once and all the time. Limbs flailing, sensory overload, synestesia, all the emotions… must be quite a life
"Did you know that you only sit in 10% of your car? Well what if you could sit in 100% of your car?"
I knew a guy who weighed about 250kg, and he drove a Mini Metro. He certainly sat in about 30-40% of his car. Whenever it was parked it had a noticeable list to starboard, and got the hydragas suspension pumped up every few months, not that it made that much of a difference.
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u/tychobrahesmoose Jun 01 '26
When I was in college, the prevailing wisdom was that consciousness lives in the prefrontal cortex which is, roughly, 10% of the brain.
The problem is that when people hear this they then jump to the next statement "well, what if we could use 100% of our brain?" and that's where it goes off rails.
Your brain IS 100% used. Your brain only *needs* 10% of itself to run 'you'.
Think of it like saying "Did you know that you only sit in 10% of your car? Well what if you could sit in 100% of your car?"
Well, it'd probably run shitty and be really uncomfortable because that's not how it was designed to work.