10% Brain and Psi Silliness

Wikipedia said:
Some New Age proponents propagate this belief by asserting that the "unused" ninety percent of the human brain is capable of exhibiting psychic powers and can be trained to perform psychokinesis and extra-sensory perception. There is no scientifically verified body of evidence supporting the existence of such powers.

Has anyone actually seen "activating more of your brain" taken seriously by proponents of psionics?

The closest I've ever heard to this claim is that of using meditation or yogas, where experimental evidence has shown development of the temporal lobe. I've also heard discussion of chakras, though this too is often cross-referenced back to meditation.

Is this garbage talk, or am I just not hanging out with enough new agers I wonder...
 
Does anyone take wikipedia seriously anymore? "No scientifically verified body of evidence" I guess those dozens of papers in mainstream journals never existed.
 
Has anyone actually seen "activating more of your brain" taken seriously by proponents of psionics?

The closest I've ever heard to this claim is that of using meditation or yogas, where experimental evidence has shown development of the temporal lobe. I've also heard discussion of chakras, though this too is often cross-referenced back to meditation.

Is this garbage talk, or am I just not hanging out with enough new agers I wonder...
The new upcoming movie Lucy will no doubt give the only 10% numbskulls more validation.
 
Isn't Cearley specifically talking about the 10% nonsense?

I thought it was really weird that they decided to take a knock at psychial research in an article explaining how the 10% nonsense derived from people misunderstanding what a psychologist actually said. I've literally never heard a New Ager reference the 10% meme in the way that article is suggesting, and the citation for that claim appears to be an 11 year old blog post from Snopes.
 
That's good. Now it's time for some theories and experiments derived from them. I want to know what's going on!

I'll post about the one I recently read in another thread. There's a newer study from 2007 where the researcher does some tweaks to avoid senders from feeling like they are "being asked to do the impossible." 32% hits, n=120.
 
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I thought it was really weird that they decided to take a knock at psychial research in an article explaining how the 10% nonsense derived from people misunderstanding what a psychologist actually said. I've literally never heard a New Ager reference the 10% meme in the way that article is suggesting, and the citation for that claim appears to be an 11 year old blog post from Snopes.

Like I said, wikipedia isn't a most reliable source anymore. Not when anyone with access to the internet can edit it.
 
I thought it was really weird that they decided to take a knock at psychial research in an article explaining how the 10% nonsense derived from people misunderstanding what a psychologist actually said. I've literally never heard a New Ager reference the 10% meme in the way that article is suggesting, and the citation for that claim appears to be an 11 year old blog post from Snopes.
It's been a longtime since I've hung out with new agers and I can't recall hearing that used by them. I think it falls into the realm of pop culture mythology. Perhaps a web search may clarify whom actually believes it true.?
 
As far as I'm aware, the 10% myth has been pretty heavily dispelled, at least as far as us only having access to 10% of the brain's capacity goes. Now, I don't doubt that some people only use 10%, but that's a different topic.

At any rate, I've been around my share of New-Agey types, and no, never heard them claim anything like what was mentioned in the OP. They usually say stuff about "spiritual connections" or "connecting with the universe".

*insert statement about Wikipedia being unreliable at best here*
 

The other part of the society that believes in psychic reading insists on the theory that ordinary human beings only use 10% of their brains and those areas that are not used are the ones related to our “sixth sense”.

They say the "other part of society", without citation. I'm curious--though I doubt this has had a study done for it--what percentage of people who believe in psi-like effects believe it has anything to do with the brain percentage myth. Then again I typically don't have an interest in tarot cards, crystal balls or fortune tellers, so maybe my own confirmation bias is the reason I've not seen this nonsense in substantial numbers?

I would be more inclined to suspect the brain's rampant supply of radio-capable crystals within its tissue (for telepathy), or some kind of residual information in DNA particles (for psychometry) than brain usage.
 
Ok. I tried doing a quick Google search on this subject. I found that of the first three pages (the most commonly checked in a search, from my own experience), the majority of results suggesting that the psychic community believes this is skeptic sites claiming that proponents believe it. I was able to find a very small number of pages that claimed psychic phenomenon is a result of increased brain usage, and at least one whitepaper that was studying the MRI results of mediums (but was not--at least from the search vignette--claiming this had anything to do with brain percentile.)

I suspect two things:
  • It used to be a prevalent idea, but has fallen out of favor while relevant indexes remain non-updated, or
  • It's a prevalent idea, but selection bias (e.g. focusing purely on whitepapers from parapsychology journals) reduces the probability of encountering it to be very low.
 
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