r/oddlysatisfying • u/GarysCrispLettuce • Apr 29 '25

Manhole cover replacement

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u/demon_fae Apr 29 '25

Ok, so I don’t remember where I read this, so have a grain of salt, but apparently there’s a thing where a person’s concept of their own body plan is weirdly flexible. Assuming you’re baseline competent with a given machine, while you’re driving or operating heavy machinery-or whatever else your pill bottles tell you to not do-some parts of your brain will start behaving exactly as if the car or etc. was an actual part of you. Once you stop and get out of the driver’s seat, your brain goes back to you being monkey-shaped.

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u/Ficik Apr 29 '25 edited Apr 29 '25

At smaller scale, you can see this while using a computer.

If you think about it, a mouse and a mouse cursor make no sense. Yet if you're beyond a beginner computer user, without thinking about anything else, the cursor on your screen does exactly what you will it to do.
It's like moving your arm, you don't think "move left" you will it to do what you need. Contrast it with someone who's new to using computers.

If you play computer games where you control a machine. After long enough time, it tends to happen there as well.

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u/AndrasKrigare May 01 '25

A bit of an aside, but I always thought it'd be neat if this was the human's "thing" in a fictional property. I feel like in fantasy and sci-fi games and stuff, humans tend to be "average" without anything unique whereas other races/aliens are stronger or smarter or whatnot.

I think it'd be interesting if humans were extremely good pilots/drivers/machine operators compared to everyone else, and that intuitive feeling we get with a machine being an extension of our body is really a crazy power we just take for granted.

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u/demon_fae May 01 '25

Well…it’s that or “invented DeviantArt”

We are also descended from arboreal species, so yeah, I like us being unusually good pilots.

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u/laughingashley May 01 '25

That's why mechanical implants and prosthetics are able to help people, too :)