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  • Eranziel@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyz[Thread] Mental Math
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    1 year ago

    I mean, that’s easy enough if you’re trying to catch the ball with your face. Usually that’s not the goal, so you’ll be standing slightly to the side or the object is moving toward your stomach. ;)

    Even then, that’s discounting the whole image analysis part of the equation, which your brain does dozens of times per second with incredible accuracy. Your waste bin example would have had to do enough to differentiate the ball from the background, and that definitely qualifies as a complex algorithm.

    ETA: also, closing your hand at the right time does require your brain to know how close the object is, not just that you’ve positioned yourself in its path.


  • I worked on an industrial robot once, and we parked it such that the middle section of the arm was up above the robot and supposed to be level. I could tell from 50 feet away and a glance that it wasn’t, so we checked. It was off by literally 1 degree.

    Degrees are bigger than we think, but also our eyes are incredible instruments.







  • I kind of disagree with you, in that when I think about the standalone meanings of the words in each phrase, I think they do say the same thing.

    The meaning of the words “You are welcome [to the help I gave you]” implies, to me, that there wasn’t actually anything to offer thanks over. You’re acknowledging their thanks, but telling them that they are welcome to take/use whatever it is you’re talking about. [EDIT: normally when someone tells me I’m welcome to something, I feel less compelled to ask and thank in the future. “You’re welcome to anything in the fridge”, for example.]

    It does not imply, to me, that I would appreciate them returning the favour. That might be implied meaning in the phrase, but it’s definitely not what those words mean by themselves.

    In any case, “You’re welcome”, “no problem”, “no worries”, etc… are all idioms that mean something different than what their individual words mean. The phrases as a whole carry a different meaning than the words themselves suggest.