• blandfordforever@lemm.ee
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    30 days ago

    Contrary to popular belief, we’re all profoundly stupid. Even the smartest among us spend enormous effort in their struggle to comprehend our surroundings.

        • yogurtwrong@lemmy.world
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          28 days ago

          But in a perfect bell curve, isn’t the median always the same as the average?

          And even if it’s not a perfectly symetrical bell curve, aren’t they generally close enough to ignore the differance

            • blandfordforever@lemm.ee
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              29 days ago

              I understand that you’re saying there are more incredible geniuses than full on retards.

              However, IQ scores are a normal distribution with an arbitrarily defined mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15.

              So, IQ scores of 0 or 200 are both 6.6 standard deviations from the mean. If IQ is truly a normal distribution, you’d expect the number of people with IQ scores <= 0 and the number with scores >= 200 to be exactly the same, simply because this is how the scores are defined.

              If you try to look up what proportion of the population falls outside 6.6 standard deviations, the z-tables don’t go out this far. It’s essentially 0% (0/100) but how many is it out of 8 billion?

                • blandfordforever@lemm.ee
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                  28 days ago

                  I have to disagree.

                  IQ as a measure of intelligence doesn’t work that way. The number can’t just get higher and higher because a person is really smart. A supreme, godlike intelligence doesn’t have an IQ of say, a million.

                  IQ has a statistical definition and although intelligence may not follow a perfect normal distribution, IQ Score does.

                  If there are about 8 billion humans, then 1 of them is “the smartest” in some way. 1/8,000,000,000 is 1.2x10^-10, this has a z score of 6.33.

                  The current smartest person will have an IQ of (6.33x15)+100=195. No one has an IQ of 200. This isn’t because a person can’t be any smarter, it’s because this is how IQ is defined. If a pure, perfect, godlike intelligence exists in our current human population, their IQ is 195.

                • shneancy@lemmy.world
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                  28 days ago

                  any article that lists historical figures with even estimates their IQs can be discarded as bullshit. IQ has specific testing criteria and imo the most important part of it is its basis in general distribution - if we don’t know the IQ of the average peasant, we can’t know the IQ of Shakespeare

                  besides, IQ is a borderline pseudo science to begin with. i was made to take an official IQ tests and the second i stepped out of the test room i started wondering how is this going to accuratly portray my “innate” intelligence when the vast majority of the things on the test can be learnt or otherwise trained to be better at

      • abbadon420@lemm.ee
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        29 days ago

        If we’re talking about IQ, than no. An IQ between 85 and 115 is considered average. This entails 68% of the population. So, only 32% of people are not average and only 16% are below average.

        • Eheran@lemmy.world
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          28 days ago

          The average is exactly one value and nobody has exactly that value. Since average~mean 50 % are below and 50 % above average.

          What you are talking about is a range that is around the average, specifically one standard deviation (=15 points) around the average/mean value, which is a completely arbitrary range and I do not know why you assign “average” to this range. 90 to 109 is a range I know to be attributed “average”, still arbitrary, but at least an actually established range.

    • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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      28 days ago

      That’s quite a reduction and profoundly stupid. First off, the simple fact that-- WOAH, there’s a wall here??

  • pimento64@sopuli.xyz
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    30 days ago

    Maybe the brain will one day invent something more tiresome than watching reddit users exchange tautologies.

  • 👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.de
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    30 days ago

    I often describe myself as “3lbs of mostly fat piloting a meat mech.” To the point that my wife sometimes refers to injuries as malfunctions/damage to her meat mech.

  • papertowels@lemmy.one
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    30 days ago

    Fun fact, the average adult brain also has a credit cards worth of plastic inside. So that bacon has some company!

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
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    29 days ago

    If we are talking facts, neurons don’t use electricity, it’s a cascade of released ion potentials. Thats why nerves are so much slower than electrical signals.

    • psud@aussie.zone
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      29 days ago

      He should have said “power” not electricity

      Humans dissipate power in the range of old tungsten lamps - on the order of 100W at rest, brains use about 20% of that, so 20W - about the same as an energy efficient globe

    • SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      29 days ago

      It’s really both, neurons communicate electrochemically. Neurons establish a voltage difference across their membrane, typically positive outside, negative inside, by concentrating ions on one side or the other. In a single neuron, the action potential (signal) results in the electric polarity of the cell membrane switching to negative outside, positive inside, with the change in gradient cascading down the length of the axon as ions are allowed to flow across the membrane by voltage-gated ion channels. After depolarization, ions are actively and selectively pumped to either side of the membrane, repolarizing it.

      There’s a lot more to it than that but it’s 100% charge dependent. The change in charge is mediated by the flow of ions across a membrane instead of the flow of electrons through a conductor, hence why it’s slower.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      28 days ago

      I really don’t like that version because they just look like us and I don’t think they should. Especially with the part about tongues. It doesn’t really make sense.

      This is the original short story by Terry Bisson that it’s based upon.

      https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html

      I don’t know if anyone has done one with CG robots or something, but they should. Bisson must have been inspired by The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem, one of my all-time favorite books. Incidentally, I recently found out that book was an inspiration for Will Wright when he came up with SimCity.

      • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
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        28 days ago

        For what it’s worth, it’s a bit nostalgic seeing that “look” of 90s film making and I grew up sorta near that diner.

        It was a student film as well, and I appreciate how both good and bad the acting is. Why would the one with authority be in a band-leader getup, if not because in their fractured understanding of us it would make sense?

        Dunno, lots of small interesting touches to it.

      • kautau@lemmy.world
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        30 days ago

        Yeah your momma’s so big she’s not even FAT she’s exFAT and can store files up to 120 petabytes

        • rmuk@feddit.uk
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          30 days ago

          Yo mama’s like exFAT; she’s got no permissions so anyone can access anything and her low requirements mean she gets embedded everywhere.

  • bjorney@lemmy.ca
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    30 days ago

    Brain uses more wattage than a lightbulb, unless we are counting incandescent bulbs because it makes the stat seem more impressive.

    • SuperIce@lemmy.world
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      30 days ago

      That phrase first came out when incandescent bulbs were the most common, so they consumed like 60W vs 7W for an equivalent LED bulb. The brain is somewhere around 20W.

      • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
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        30 days ago

        I don’t give a damn about Lemmy points, but you just said essentially the same thing as the above commenter and the Lemmy points are diametrically opposed. I love it!

      • bjorney@lemmy.ca
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        30 days ago

        Yeah and LED bulbs were the norm 15-20 years ago. my point is this is a repost of a Reddit repost of a Tumblr comment that was reposting a factoid that was already wrong when it was originally posted 5-6 years ago.

        • SuperIce@lemmy.world
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          30 days ago

          Your timeline is incorrect. 15 years ago was 2009, when CFLs were most common. A 60W equivalent CFL was 13W and 100W equivalent was 23W. My house was still mostly incandescent bulbs with some CFLs for bulbs that had died and weren’t on a dimmer. Commercial LED bulbs intended for residential use only started being released in 2009-2010 with incentive from the US government.

          • bjorney@lemmy.ca
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            30 days ago

            Ok, not in the US so idk. the last CFL bulb I bought was long before 2009.

            Either way, the brain still uses more power than a 13W CFL, and the tumblr post is from 2018, and the Reddit post is even more recent. “It would have been technically correct if it was posted 20 years ago” doesn’t really change the fact that it’s not true anymore

            • psud@aussie.zone
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              23 days ago

              LED was available in the early 2000s I have a few remaining LED lights from about 2001 (and definitely from before 2004) still working. They are much heavier than modern LED lights due to large finned heat sinks and didn’t fit in my nicer light fittings. They weren’t in supermarkets then, you had to look for them, I may have bought them online

      • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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        30 days ago

        20% of your bodies energy is about 20 Watts.

        Normal-weight humans burn about 2200 kilocalories a day, which is about 9.2 megajoules. There are 8640 seconds in a day, so that works out to roughly 100 joules per second, or 100 Watt. 20% of that is 20 Watts for the brain.