Urban Myths that Even Smart People Believe

For the most part, urban myths are believed only by stupid people. These conventional urban myths are typically stories with tragic endings and some sort of implicit lesson about not trusting people or not following fads or what have you. They're not only pervasive in themselves -- it's also become so prevalent lately to debunk them that they're really not that interesting.

I'm more interested in the little factoids that everyone thinks are true and passes around as givens -- except that they are completely wrong. I'm invariably suprised to learn that these aren't true -- and then I'm invariably pleased that they aren't. These factoids tend to be used as justifications for some sort of prosaic little life lesson, and it's saisfying to see these little lessons exploded. An example is in order:

"You only use 3% of your brain." Sometimes they say you only use 10% of you brain, sometimes more, sometimes less. It's all dead wrong. You use your entire brain. If there was a part that you didn't use, it would waste away -- the brain works according to a "use it or lose it" rule. Evolution would eventually take care of any large useless thing -- it would simply be wasteful to keep feeding oxygen to something that is never used.

The whole idea is founded on a mistaken understanding of the brain. It seems to suggest that the brain has many distinct departments that work independently. In fact, there are some areas that are more active during certain tasks, but for the most part an entire network of neurons throughout the entire brain work together on any given task.

I've heard several different versions for how the "3% idea" came about. The one I like best postulated that it came from an early brain researcher who discovered that a very important part of a major motor task was accomplished by a relatively small part of the brain. It turned out he was wrong, that the task took much more of the brain than he thought. But regardless, he used this result, extrapolated out for all the brain tasks he could think of, and then found there was lots of brain space left over.

But the "3%" idea really gained prevalence with Uri Geller, who repeated it a lot. He was a "mentalist" who would bend spoons, etc., supposedly with just the power of his mind. Of course, he was actually just a magician who used typical magician tricks to do these things -- but he wanted people to believe that they were also capable of telekinesis, and that they had vast stories of untapped brain potential for accomplishing these things.

Nowadays the "3%" idea is used to justify all sorts of things. It gives people hope that they have tremendous abilities that they are not using. Well, I'm happy to say that they're wrong. Whatever you're able to do right now -- that's about it. And over time, even those abilities will decay. You're welcome.