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S U M M A R Y


DIARY: September 9, 1996 12:53 PM Monday; Rod Welch

Landauer comments on common view people use only 2% of mental capacity.

1...Summary/Objective
2...Opportunity to Lift Capacity to Think, Remember, Communicate
3...Why People Use Only a Fraction of Mental Capacity
4...Modified Article


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CONTACTS 
0201 - University of Colorado             303 492 2875 fax or 800...
020101 - Mr. Thomas K. Landauer

SUBJECTS
Mental Capacity, Only 10% Used, Improved by
Writing Improves Creativity, SDS Synergy
PMI NCC Newsletter, Turning Straw into Gold
Gist 5% - 10% People Remember Events, Reading
2% People Only Use 2% of Mental Capacity
Laundauer, Tom People Use Only 2% of Mental Capacity is a Myth Not Su
Landauer, Tom

1509 -
1509 -    ..
1510 - Summary/Objective
1511 -
151101 - Follow up ref SDS 12 0000.
151102 -
151103 - Tom Landauer advised today that the common understanding (myth) that
151104 - people use only 2% of mental capacity is not supported by the
151105 - literature, so revised the paper on Turning Straw into Gold, and
151106 - re-submitted to everyone.
151107 -
151108 -     [On 961014 confirmation that people are getting too much frivolous
151109 -     information. ref SDS 14 4032
151110 -
151111 -
151113 -  ..
1512 -
1513 -
1514 - Progress
1515 -
151501 - Submitted via internet ref DIT 1 0001 to Tom Landauer asking for help
151502 - finding research and/or studies to verify or otherwise develop a
151503 - source for the proposition that people use only 2% of their mental
151504 - capacity, per analysis on 911121, ref SDS 3 2582, and paper submitted
151505 - to PMI NCC, ref OF 3 0001
151507 -  ..
151508 - Also would like to get information on people who kept a diary, like
151509 - Madison, Getty, Churchill, per Covey's position reported on 921205
151510 - that keeping a daily journal improves mental acuity, ref SDS 4 1121
151511 -
151512 -
151514 -  ..
1516 -
1517 -
1518 - 2015 received response
1519 -
151901 - Tom submitted ref DRT 1 0001 responding to my letter, ref DIT 1 0001
151902 -
151903 - He says it is only a myth that people typically use only a small
151904 - portion of their mental capacity, and indicates it may have come from
151905 - a since discredited study on rats.  There is no definitive source for
151906 - the proposition.  He asks that it not be passed along.
151907 -
151908 -
151910 -  ..
151911 - Opportunity to Lift Capacity to Think, Remember, Communicate
151912 - Why People Use Only a Fraction of Mental Capacity
151913 -
151914 - The article prepared for PMI explaining limited use of human
151915 - memory....
151916 -
151917 -                      Turning Straw into Gold
151918 -
151919 -
151920 - ... ref OF 3 0001, recognizes that people have vast reservoirs of
151921 - "memory" that are rarely used, and indeed are never used for the rest
151922 - of a lifetime, discussed with Morris on 921121. ref SDS 3 2582
151924 -  ..
151925 - The obvious issue arises from the fact that people can read a book, a
151926 - report, a magazine article, or even a one page letter, and cannot
151927 - remember even one sentence verbatim.  People remember the "gist"
151928 - pretty well that correlates content in writing, conversation, and
151929 - observing events with prior experience based on the context of needs.
151930 - People can reconstruct a story fairly accurately for a short period of
151931 - time based on Campbell's explanation of "Baker Street reasoning" that
151932 - uses common sense to fill in the gaps of missing details by drawing on
151933 - experience with how the world generally works, reported on 900303.
151934 - ref SDS 1 4456
151936 -  ..
151937 - This is important because human reasoning is driven largely by memory,
151938 - shown by research on 900319. ref SDS 2 0005  In daily work, most of
151939 - this reasoning is driven by memory of what people see and hear in
151940 - meetings, calls and documents.  The chance of forgetting, of false
151941 - memory and of commingling parts of different stories must be quite
151942 - high relying on remembering only the "gist" of information.
151943 -
151944 -     [On 000307 report people only remember 5% - 10% of reading
151945 -     material. ref SDS 15 1122
151947 -      ..
151948 -     [On 000927 research cited on people only remembering the gist of
151949 -     things. ref SDS 16 PO4F
151951 -  ..
151952 - For example what we had for Thanksgiving dinner in 1956. Whether the
151953 - light was green when we reached the corner of Stevens Creek and
151954 - Highway 9 on January 4th 1963.  What Bill said to Jim about approving
151955 - a contract change on the Air Freight Terminal project in 1971.  My
151956 - general sense is that this information is in the mind, but has become
151957 - so disconnected from the needs of the organism that it cannot be
151958 - recalled, and therefore cannot be used, unless unlocked by a mechanism
151959 - that opens a path.
151961 -  ..
151962 - It seems likely that the mind has a lot of unused information because,
151963 - when the right triggers arise, the mind conjures up obtuse "data,"
151964 - including what was served for dinner for Thanksgiving in 1956.  It
151965 - could not do this, if everything a person has ever done or thought
151966 - about was not stored somewhere in the mind.  The pointers and paths,
151967 - i.e., mental maps, are the critical factors. Over time common pointers
151968 - used regularly in the mind are routed to new paths, with the result
151969 - that only specific conditions, that do not point anywhere else, enable
151970 - the mind to locate less used information.  As a result, particularly
151971 - in the heat of battle, information is remembered incorrectly, as seen
151972 - from work on 960721 reporting frustrations and extra cost due to
151973 - unproductive meetings. ref SDS 7 0896
151975 -  ..
151976 - Is there another professional way of identifying unused information,
151977 - as distinguished from information that is used regularly.  Are there
151978 - electrical charges that become weaker and weaker with time, because
151979 - the mind has only so much current and the more the mind encounters the
151980 - more it redistributes the current?  Is it a matter of pointers being
151981 - stretched, as in SDS, or do connections actually disolve, or in fact
151982 - are caused to point in another direction?  It seems likely pointers
151983 - are constantly changing, as when people remember very strongly, but
151984 - incorrectly under Landauer's explanation of "meaning drift" on 960518.
151985 - ref SDS 6 3734
151987 -  ..
151988 - Are there any studies that reflect the rate at which people begin to
151989 - loose effective use of infrequently used information.
151990 -
151992 -  ..
151993 - Modified Article
151994 -
151995 - Maybe a simple solution for this article is to change from using the
151996 - phrase "mental capacity" which has an elitist ring anyway, to instead
151997 - use "mental capital" to refer to the totality of mind's memory from
151998 - life experience.
152000 -  ..
152001 - I changed the thing, ref OF 2 0001, by creating ref OF 3 0001 to
152002 - reflect this change, but it lacks the zing of the orignial that used
152003 - 2%.  So, I left that in and simply say the fact that it cannot be
152004 - verified is small comfort to managers who feel overwhelmed by the pace
152005 - of communications.
152006 -
152007 -
152009 -  ..
1521 -
1522 -
1523 - 2213 re-submitted article
1524 -
152401 - Submitted via email ref DIT 2 0001 to Tom explaining the changes and
152402 - included the revised material. ref OF 3 0001
152404 -  ..
152405 - Sent copy to Bill DeHart explaining the need for revising the article.
152406 - Included in a separate email Tom's comments, so Bill can see them.
152407 -
152408 -     [See follow up with Bill at ref SDS 13 line 90.]
152409 -
152411 -  ..
152412 - Sent Morris another email, ref DIT 3 line 30, of Tom's response, and
152413 - the revision I submitted, so he has a complete record supplementing
152414 - the letter sent on this matter on Monday, ref DIP 3 line 28 at
152415 - ref SDS 12 line 82.  Included this record in the submission to Morris,
152416 - so he can see how it used to tie stuff together, beginning with our
152417 - telecon in 1991, ref SDS 3 line 213.
152418 -
152419 -     [Morris later said this transmission did not come through in a
152420 -     readable format, so I sent the thing to him again as an
152421 -     attachment and also in printed format. ref SDS 14 line 80.]
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Distribution. . . . See "CONTACTS"