I would guess that most of the DKos community knows better, but the new movie "Lucy" plays on the silly old myth that we humans only use 10% of our brains. Fact is, that figure only applies to Republicans . . . just kidding, they use at least twice that much.
Where that whole idea of the under utilization of our brains came from, I have no idea, but I remember hearing it over forty years ago when I was a kid. As a stupid kid, I had no reason to doubt it, but over the ensuing years I became more and more skeptical, until finally it started irritating me that people were still repeating it as though it were fact.
Well, as you would think (ha ha), we actually use the whole damn thing, 100%. Not all of it simultaneously, but all if it at one time or another.
And, as mentioned in the AsapSCIENCE video in the above linked Huffington Post article, the brain:
represents 3% of the body's weight and uses 20% of its energy
So according to the myth, and the movie that serves to exploit it, if we only use 10% of our brain, and this
Lucy character uses 100%, she would have to provide twice the amount of energy her body is capable of generating in order to do so, and at 100%, there would be no energy available for the rest of her body to function. Neat trick there.
The sad part is, without any untapped brain regions, there is no quick and easy way to fix stupid. Nothing that will instantly turn on some mythical dormant area of the conservative brain, no untapped empathy center that can be switched on, no poorly developed skepticism center that can be fired up.
No, there is no quick way to correct the conservative brain. It's a long, slow process, even when they are exposed to the truth. Their biggest hope is to have someone close to them share their pain. The pain that conservative politics have wrought upon them, casting doubt on the veracity of conservative politicians and their Fox News propagandists. Then, and perhaps only then, will their empathy centers grow a little bigger, their fear centers get a little smaller, and their skepticism centers start working at all.