congratulations on completely missing the original point of the thread, which im assuming you havent read entirely. and i dont think anyone actually did say we only use 10% of our brains. the whole point of the thread is not what are we capable of naturally, but what are we capable of with the help of scientific advances and substances etc. there are plenty of examples of how the human body has excelled past its 'natural' ability with the use of supplements and all sorts of things. perhaps not at an academic level, but to think that in the future there wont be drugs that can enhance brain power is incredibly closed minded. the mind may be a very complex and impressive instrument, but its only a matter of time before scientists know it inside out and will be able to alter it.
im actually wondering if youre taking the piss.
Dude, chill out
I didn't miss the original post, it's a moderately interesting question to speculate on. The thing is, this is a discussion thread on a discussion forum where people discuss stuff. This means that people say stuff, then others comment on that, and so on. Not everything in a thread is a response to the original statement or question. That's how discussions work. Imagine if a one hour conversation involved a group of people all responding to the first person's statement in that conversation, or a 10 page thread where all posts were in direct response to the original post. It wouldn't work and it wouldn't be worth bothering with. I wasn't responding to your original post, I was responding to stuff posted after it, which wasn't even posted by you, so need need for you to twist your knickers
If you want me to comment on your original post, sure, why not. I'm interested in that sort of stuff, my last day job was in a medical research lab.
I'd say it's much like the rest of the body. You can eat good food and exercise, and your body will be better. You can take more extreme chemicals and get better results out of them, which often has negative side effects. The improvements are generally not all that extreme compared to what's possible without the extreme chemicals/treatments.
It's a pretty similar thing with the brain. We can frig around with it, but basically, millions of years of evolution have done a pretty good job of making a machine which works pretty well. Drugs basically flick switches which are already there, they don't give new abilities. They might make muscles grow stronger by locking the corresponding switch to keep at it the 'make the muscles stronger' setting, beyond the natural limit. Yep, the body is capable of doing that, but it doesn't do it naturally because it doesn't want to go beyond what is good for itself. The body always 'could' have done that, but it 'knows' if it does, it's going to screw itself up a lot, which isn't worth the slight benefit (if the benefit:harm ratio was a good one, that setting would already be achievable or locked in place). This is why 'extreme' chemicals/drugs have side effects which on the whole are worse than the positives. If it was an advantage to do something, evolution would already have done it. If you want to stick the brain into overdrive you can, there are lots of psychoactive drugs available legally and illegally, some of them can improve mental performance... for a while. Overall, you're generally better off without them though. In some cases, some illicit drugs actually can temporarily help you to be more creative or concentrate harder or perform better in all manner of ways. The positive attributes of illicit drugs aren't widely publicised though, because it would encourage people to use them (and none of them are good for you other than in the short term, most are outright hideous, and even the good ones totally screw many people up right from the start). Of course, most illicit drugs will just turn you into a jerk and possibly make you lose your job, house, car, wife and respect. Don't do drugs, drugs are bad, etc. etc. disclaimer etc.
Where we might be able to greatly improve the brain (and the rest of the body) is by making cyborgs. I think that was already mentioned in the thread. We can't really make the existing body (including the brain) much better without massively developing our DNA technology beyond what I can imagine coming in the next hundred years or more. However, by adding to it or replacing parts we could improve it a heap. Think Robocop. We can't make your arms massively better, but we could make something heaps better and replace what you have, or add it as an extra. We're getting heaps better at making cyborgs, the technology is getting very exciting. If we were able to use the existing brain and add auxiliary memory and calculating power we might be able to create a genuine supermind which is capable of far more than any previous brain or computer. Functionally it's far beyond current technology, but with the rapid advance we're seeing in the technology in the relevant areas, it's difficult to predict how long it will take, and it might not be that long. The precursor technology is already in use, and when that sort of thing happens it's often not long before massive leaps forward are made. Exactly how well it could work is pure speculation at this stage. It might create that amazing supermind or it might never be quite as good as (or only very slightly better than) carrying around a laptop, a calculator and a phone which interface with your eyes and ears and fingers and stuff rather than directly with your brain. The physical limitations of the brain itself might not allow for much better a direct integration than indirect (through sight, touch, etc.) anyway.