Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[TiQuinn]

"You want input? I'd call this Kickstarter uninspired, but that would be an insult to many other terrible Kickstarter that are, somehow, still better than this one. I'm not saying you need to master thousands of years of literature to write, but it would be great if you got past page 2 of your supposed source material. Normally I say, 'Don't give up the day job,' but seeing as your bio lists Kickstarter as your main platform, I'm instead going to recommend finding a day job, but in your wheelhouse. You know, maybe in the exciting field of selling insurance, or stapling papers, or something."

OUCH.

 

[Umbran]

Well, what it comes down to is that the majority of the human race has always had only a limited ability to rationally assess a lot of things (and this isn't a smack at human rationality; its the recognition that any given human just doesn't know a lot about a number of things) so we're stuck with playing pattern recognition for danger.

There's outright neurology behind the phenomenon.

When given a stimulus or piece of information, humans process it seven ways from Sunday all at once. It happens to be that our limbic systems tend to give our emotional responses more quickly than our logical minds do. One will typically feel something about a situation before one has analyzed that situation, so whatever analysis gets done is filtered through, and sometimes overridden by, emotions.

This was incredibly useful in the past, when we needed a way to respond, "Oh sh*t! Jaguar!" It is much less useful when you don't need instantaneous action, and is outright crap when you need to do calculations to assess risks.

We can see this in a lot of places today - much of the irrational response to covid, for example, can be laid on the fact that our emotions can override our ability to rationally assess situations.

 

[Ryujin]

There's outright neurology behind the phenomenon.

When given a stimulus or piece of information, humans process it seven ways from Sunday all at once. It happens to be that our limbic systems tend to give our emotional responses more quickly than our logical minds do. One will typically feel something about a situation before one has analyzed that situation, so whatever analysis gets done is filtered through, and sometimes overridden by, emotions.

This was incredibly useful in the past, when we needed a way to respond, "Oh sh*t! Jaguar!" It is much less useful when you don't need instantaneous action, and is outright crap when you need to do calculations to assess risks.

We can see this in a lot of places today - much of the irrational response to covid, for example, can be laid on the fact that our emotions can override our ability to rationally assess situations.

Here's an example. In motorcycle riding/racing there's an automatic response to going into a corner "too hot", as in faster than you think that you can negotiate the turn. That response is to grab a handful of brakes. The physics of the situation are that, if you do this, the motorcycle will tend to stand up and continue in a straight line, taking you right off the outside of the corner. Newton's Laws are a hell of a thing.

Performance riders need to retrain that reflex so the reaction is to brake gently and lean further into the turn. By doing so you're more likely to successfully make the turn or, if you don't, at least you're then sliding on your butt instead of potentially being flung off the "high side." It takes a lot of work for the vast majority of people to get to that point. I've seen people who have been racing for literal decades have all of that time and training go right out the window, when they go in too hot. The results, at race speeds, aren't pretty. Three and a half billion years of evolution are also a hell of a thing.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Here's an example. In motorcycle riding/racing there's an automatic response to going into a corner "too hot", as in faster than you think that you can negotiate the turn. That response is to grab a handful of brakes. The physics of the situation are that, if you do this, the motorcycle will tend to stand up and continue in a straight line, taking you right off the outside of the corner. Newton's Laws are a hell of a thing.

Performance riders need to retrain that reflex so the reaction is to brake gently and lean further into the turn. By doing so you're more likely to successfully make the turn or, if you don't, at least you're then sliding on your butt instead of potentially being flung off the "high side." It takes a lot of work for the vast majority of people to get to that point. I've seen people who have been racing for literal decades have all of that time and training go right out the window, when they go in too hot. The results, at race speeds, aren't pretty. Three and a half billion years of evolution are also a hell of a thing.

This is true of a lot of trained physical skills; our default reaction set is--unhelpful. As an example in foil fencing, beginning fencers tend to want to bat the opponent's foil out of the way (as in, make really strong reactions). Problem with that is a trained opponent just tips their foil up and around your excessive parry, and then you're completely off-line, and the only chance the opponent probably has is to retreat quickly (and moving your whole body is a heck of a lot harder/slower than just moving your hand and wrist). So you need to usually train yourself to do little motions with the parry most of the time and that's very much not your instinct.

Edit: Heck, even in normal driving, the fact you usually maintain more control going into a curve by accelerating at least slightly rather than braking is not exactly intuitive. I have to force myself to do it sometimes (because I hate angular momentum on an instinctive level probably related to my acrophobia).

 

[Ryujin]

This is true of a lot of trained physical skills; our default reaction set is--unhelpful. As an example in foil fencing, beginning fencers tend to want to bat the opponent's foil out of the way (as in, make really strong reactions). Problem with that is a trained opponent just tips their foil up and around your excessive parry, and then you're completely off-line, and the only chance the opponent probably has is to retreat quickly (and moving your whole body is a heck of a lot harder/slower than just moving your hand and wrist). So you need to usually train yourself to do little motions with the parry most of the time and that's very much not your instinct.

Rapier and Smallsword fighting, in general, is also about small movements and changes in angle. It's why I generally head my desk when watching things like the 2011 version of "The Three Musketeers." Well, that and the number of people who die by slashing wounds in it. As in 'almost exclusively slashing.'

At least Douglas Fairbanks had an excuse for how he fought on screen. The people who were doing fight choreography were trained almost exclusively in sabre.

Edit: Heck, even in normal driving, the fact you usually maintain more control going into a curve by accelerating at least slightly rather than braking is not exactly intuitive. I have to force myself to do it sometimes (because I hate angular momentum on an instinctive level probably related to my acrophobia).

That's something that frustrates me on a daily basis, on my commute home from work. There's a wide, sweeping ramp from The Gardiner Expressway (west) to Highway 427 (north) heading out of the downtown core. I have taken this ramp at something like 180 Kmh in the middle of the night. Now, keep in mind that a 4 wheeled vehicle is inherently more stable than a single track vehicle. Every day I end up hitting that ramp at something like 80 Kmh in my car, in rush hour. By the time it straightens out again I'm generally in the 30-40 Kmh range as people are SLOWING to merge with traffic going straight.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Hey @Snarf Zagyg ! Here’s a cutesy little video to help you deal with ear worms:

You know, just in case of:

 

[prabe]

That's something that frustrates me on a daily basis, on my commute home from work. There's a wide, sweeping ramp from The Gardiner Expressway (west) to Highway 427 (north) heading out of the downtown core. I have taken this ramp at something like 180 Kmh in the middle of the night. Now, keep in mind that a 4 wheeled vehicle is inherently more stable than a single track vehicle. Every day I end up hitting that ramp at something like 80 Kmh in my car, in rush hour. By the time it straightens out again I'm generally in the 30-40 Kmh range as people are SLOWING to merge with traffic going straight.

I think the time I've been angriest behind the wheel of a car was when I was behind someone at rush hour who eased down a cloverleaf ramp, got to the bottom, and stopped. There was no way they were going to be able to get up to merging speed before they ran out of merge lane, and there was no way I was, while they were in front of me.

 

[Ryujin]

I think the time I've been angriest behind the wheel of a car was when I was behind someone at rush hour who eased down a cloverleaf ramp, got to the bottom, and stopped. There was no way they were going to be able to get up to merging speed before they ran out of merge lane, and there was no way I was, while they were in front of me.

That one is far more common than it should be. It sometimes happens to me when the lane I'm travelling in actually becomes an additional lane on the new road, so having someone to yield to is virtually a non thing.

 

[Pedantic]

I think the time I've been angriest behind the wheel of a car was when I was behind someone at rush hour who eased down a cloverleaf ramp, got to the bottom, and stopped. There was no way they were going to be able to get up to merging speed before they ran out of merge lane, and there was no way I was, while they were in front of me.

The one that gets me every time is people who completely fail to use the merging lane to begin with. My commute involves entering a (usually crawling speed in the morning) highway on a merge lane that ends, and then the new rightmost lane ends again slightly further along.

If everyone zippered appropriately, there is almost no impact to traffic, as all cars coming on have nearly half a mile of otherwise unused lane. Instead, every morning, someone puts on a blinker and stops immediately off the entry ramp, trapping everyone behind them and leaving all that space unused.

tl;dr: Always drive as far as you can when you're in a lane that ends.

 

[Ryujin]

The one that gets me every time is people who completely fail to use the merging lane to begin with. My commute involves entering a (usually crawling speed in the morning) highway on a merge lane that ends, and then the new rightmost lane ends again slightly further along.

If everyone zippered appropriately, there is almost no impact to traffic, as all cars coming on have nearly half a mile of otherwise unused lane. Instead, every morning, someone puts on a blinker and stops immediately off the entry ramp, trapping everyone behind them and leaving all that space unused.

tl;dr: Always drive as far as you can when you're in a lane that ends.

Unfortunately that doesn't always work. I've got an on ramp, on my way home from work, that hits The Gardiner Expressway as a new lane, continues for a few hundred metres, then ends by exiting out to another surface street. With a lane closed each way for construction, at the moment, traffic is always backed up through there. Rush hour, in Toronto, is basically 4:00am to 11:00pm. If I don't get over to the main lanes as soon as possible, I'll likely be slogging it all the way along Lakeshore Blvd. instead, when I'm forced off The Gardiner.