As a person who (like many) spends a little too much time on Facebook lately, I’m a little perplexed by reasonably intelligent people who spend a lot of time taking inane personality and pop culture tests, and then publicly displaying the results. I guess it’s a kind of vanity combined with curiosity, which in an ideal world would be true self examination. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that when given expert advice, the brain shuts down, which this Wired article tries to use to explain why we listen to idiots like Jim Kramer of CNBC. Be careful though, because if you listen to Jim too much, you’ll end up poverty-stricken, and that’s not good for your brain either. It’s kind of sad that in a world where people’s brain development suffers because of malnutrition, people are not only eating perfectly good brains (I mean, you’d expect this from a politician, but y’know…), they’re also slicing them up for research to figure out how they work. Don’t they realize that HowStuffWorks.com already has it figured out?  I also find it interesting that in spite of the fact that we have mindmapping tools to offload some of our processing, a tech support person can still be dumb enough to be indistinguishable from a chatbot. Which is pretty disturbing to know if you’ve ever tried to carry on an intelligent conversation with the award-winning artificial intelligence named Elbot. Anyway, if you really feel like taking a quiz, try these tests on the BBC Science site. They have the benefit of not making you look like an idiot on Facebook. I personally scored perfectly on everything except morality. And if you want to enhance your brain power, read Brain Rules. And we’re experts, so just let your brain shut down and go buy it. Now.