what is the potential of the human brain?

I would think and it looks more like a bell curve
- having intelligence peaked in the middle aged years.

I think, not sure, just think that the assertion that we only use a small proportion of our brain is not true. But I'll be happy to be proven wrong on that one.

There is a limit on our ability to "know". I don't know enough to even speculate any further on that but I will even the most gifted individual on earth is limited by the restrictions of being human. Crappy answer I know but best I can do right now. I'm thinking that I remember that even Einstein died before he could come up with a general unified theory (I am totally ignorant of science but I like what it can tell me) - okay that just started a conspiracy thread about God bumping off Einstein before he could work everything out.

Anyway on a more abstract point - would we want to know everything anyway? I suppose that's another thread topic though.

Everyone uses 100% of their brain. It is such an energy hungry organ (20% of your calorific expenditure goes on your brain alone) that if parts weren't used they would be deleted. Wonderful thing the human brain - robust, but just like a Swiss Army knife. Some bits are just there for the sake of being there - sometimes because of the architecture and connectiveness NEW THINGS TAKE PLACE that were not in the 'original' design.

This is the concept of 'spandrels' - a feature that is part of the design, but only occurs because it HAS to be there and can be recycled into something useful.

Re: what is the potential of the human brain?
semidevil

A normal brain has the potential of 132 good ideas, 24.673.153 bad ideas, 853.555.102 ideas from others. Ah, and 2.986.675 dreams.

As Mr Stillwater said, we use 100% of our brains. I read someone say, "If we only use 30% of our brains, I'm sure you wouldn't mind having 70% of yours removed." I think the origin of this thinking is that we only use some parts of it at any given time: certain parts for certain activities - motor skills, emotion, problem-solving, etc.

As for the potential of the mind, I think it's a purely evolutionary question. People are not any smarter today than they were 3,000 years ago, and it might be true that we could double or triple that figure before we came across any truly inferior intellects in the global sense.

Having said that, will people be smarter in another 3,000 years? Maybe, maybe not. There has to be an evolutionary push toward smarter individuals before that would happen, and this generally requires the mechanisms of sexual selection. And you're never going to see this when the idiots of the world have more children than the geniuses.

There's a great book about this called The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature by Geoffrey Miller.