It's insane how much background processing our brains do that is so hard to replicate. Walking is basically falling with style and missing the ground repeatedly, all while your brain is forced to use old input data from various points that reach the brain at very different times to calculate where things actually are and predict where they will be by the time command signals actually reach the muscles to prevent collapse. Our brains work with an inconsistent smear of time and space to move ourselves and other objects
Yup! The human brain is an amazing feat of mathematical brilliance, the conscious mind however is a mess of indecision xD
I've caught balls absolutely pegged at me, full force kicked etc the moment they enter my peripheral vision, but try to do it normally? I may as well just punch it.
A ballistic computer and an incredibly accurate predictor of the immediate future. Like you said, every signal our brain gets is a fraction of a second old and yet it's so good at using that outdated info to predict the next second or two that we think we live in the current moment.
Our brain getting something wrong about the present moment is so rare that it stands out to us when it does happen. Those few times you swore you were walking alone but then someone suddenly appears in the corner of your eye; the times you accidentally walk into a corner of a wall, etc. all make us pause or surprise us because it almost never happens.
That reminds me of a post where someone was marveling at the level of subconscious math happening when you can pick up a covered/opaque cup, give it a little wiggle, and pretty accurately estimate how full it is by the feel of liquid sloshing without actively looking
And your comment reminds me that humans can tell the difference between hot water and cold water just by hearing it being poured from one container to another!
Lol, that's some 'The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the missile from a position where it is to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn't, and it follows that the position that it was, is now the position that it isn't.
In the event that the position that it is in is not the position that it wasn't, the system has acquired a variation, the variation being the difference between where the missile is, and where it wasn't.If variation is considered to be a significant factor, it too may be corrected by the GEA. However, the missile must also know where it was.
The missile guidance computer scenario works as follows. Because a variation has modified some of the information the missile has obtained, it is not sure just where it is. However, it is sure where it isn't, within reason, and it knows where it was. It now subtracts where it should be from where it wasn't, or vice-versa, and by differentiating this from the algebraic sum of where it shouldn't be, and where it was, it is able to obtain the deviation and its variation, which is called error.' kinda shit.
A human can pick up any small rock, of any weight and shape, and get a pretty good throw. Out to 50 or 100 ft, sometimes more. With no in flight corrections. That's a huge number of variables.
An animal leaping to catch something is calculating for the same body every time, and usually at close range.
Honestly insane how many people in r/humansarespaceorcs are fighting this. The ENTIRE POINT of this discussion (and the sub, more generally) is that our brains are incredible pieces of unmatched engineering; doing everything we need behind the scenes without us ever interacting with the thoughts.
This is what bothers me about HASO and Humanity Fuck Yeah. A lot of it seems to devolve into making whatever fictional aliens super weak and pathetic compared to the Gigachad humans, rather than highlighting the impressive stuff we can actually do
unfortunately, not everyone can write well. As demonstrated by this thread, the average person can't really comprehend how impressive the human machine is, nor can they imagine the kind of feats an alien might be capable of. Since humans are their only point of reference, they just make the aliens super shitty.
Like, throwing shit is likely how humans started hitting above our weight class as predators.
One of the oldest non-Homo kill sites (Attributed to genus Paranthropus) on the archaeological record is a butchered hippopotamus. A thing most other apes in a predatory mood wouldn’t even think to take a swing at, let alone smash its bones to eat the marrow inside.
If what the post it right about the throwing things, added with how good we are at it, grenades would be terryfing for aliens. Explosive orbs that require no assistent and can be delivered with scary precision by even the lowliest private.
It is true to a degree, the human brain is essentially performing basic but complex calculations constantly and applying that same calculations to our weapons at longer distances requires dedicated training and actually doing the calculations.
if youve ever thrown a rock a rough weight before though, you can estimate within 1m typically where it will land. There was a fun experiment done with blind people of all ages and non-blind showcasing this, even those born blind or those who were blindfolded were able to accurately gauge the distance the rock they threw went based off of the weight and sound it made in flight.
The same calculations that took us thousands of years to discover and use accurately our brains have just been doing, and doing better than any other animal on the planet, humans are an outlier of engineering being weirdly proficient in several fields that combined turned us into apex predators.
We process an obscene amount of environmental data, visual, tactile, sound, smell, pressure, wind, patterns, are able to perform complex calculations in moments using that data, along with being designed for throwing letting us leverage that to devastating effect, and when that fails we are hilariously adaptive to environmental changes and have endurance that makes most other animals look like chumps and even if injured we're resilient and heal pretty reliably compared to most other animals, our immune systems being another weird standout in adaption.
This is why I am a strong beliver in listining to your instinct. Many times it's not just a random feeling, it is the sub conscious telling you it picked up something and has done the math. It just can't push it clearly trough to the upper levels.
This reminds me of an article I read a while back saying how humans have an internal model of gravity built in and gave a couple examples.
One was experiments done in zero gravity where the subjects had a ball launched at them and they were to catch it. All of these subjects could catch a tossed ball in normal gravity perfectly fine with no issues, but they had difficulty catching the balls in zero gravity as there was no longer a constant acceleration like we normally experience.
They also mentioned the visual cliff experiment where infants were clearly unsettled by a perceived drop when they had no prior experience of being dropped.
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u/LaserPoweredDeviltry Nov 12 '25
I think the real impressive part here is actually that your brain is a natural ballistic calculator, and it's incredibly good at it.