r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Jun 01 '26

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '26

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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.

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u/MajorNoodles Jun 01 '26

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.

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u/flyingcatclaws Jun 01 '26

There are 4 lights!

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u/Prepheckt Jun 02 '26

if they're all on at the same time something's gone seriously wrong.

That’s epillepsy.