brains!

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

At least half of us are below average.
- You mean the median? :3
- It can't be that many.
- 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.
That's quite a reduction and profoundly stupid. First off, the simple fact that-- WOAH, there's a wall here??

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

Are you joking?
- Sadly, no. About 0.5% of our brain mass is microplastics.
  https://pirg.org/articles/new-research-finds-plastic-in-human-brains/

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

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.

I’m an ugly bag of mostly water.

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.

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.
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
- Hi. I'm just curious what part of the world you're from that light bulbs are called a globe?
  Cheers.

Mmm, forbidden bacon

Prions are just like seasoning right?

They're made out of meat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6JFTmQCFHg

All the way through?
- Fitting, really, to be a dream to meat.
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.
- 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.

I Upvoted just for the tapioca mention

Tapioca does sound good.

You momma is FAT (with water and salt)

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

But poltergeist cat is real!

OP has a baby in their head

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

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.
- 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!
- 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.
It was estimated back when incandescent was standard.
Keep in mind that’s not accounting for energy consumed from neurons burning oxygen, which accounts for 20% of a human body’s consumption.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK28194/
- 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.

Aren't the eyes teeeechnically part of the brain?