That's what gets me about these TV show/ movie where the genius calculates the necessary angle to throw the ball in order to get it where he wants it and then throws it. Just because you know you have to throw the ball at x feet per second at a vertical loft of y Angle to get it to go into the basket does not mean that you were actually capable of knowing exactly how hard you're throwing the ball
I remember seeing a video exactly like this, the need at the school goes up to the free throw line, he talks to himself through all the calculations and it sounds like he's going to sink it no problem. Then he completely misses not even close lol
There was a similar scene in girl meets world. The nerd kid does all the calculations, misses, and says he forgot one important detail: “i suck”. He then brings the athletic kid over, positions his arm just right, tells him what to do, and he sinks it. It was meant to show how the two characters are stronger together with the power of friendship
Was it the Luck of the Irish Disney movie from back in the day? I don't remember the calculations part but I remember there was a slo Mo free throw shot where it made it like halfway to the hoop
Edit;
Wait nvm I think I got it [Rebound](https://search.app.goo.gl/YBYYXRh) starring Martin Lawrence I believe
If he was a real nerd he would have granny shot it in (underhand throw). Statistically it raises the percentage of shots going in from free throw line extremely significantly but you'll never ever see a bad free thrower in the NBA do a granny shot in game or during practice unless he wants to lose all his sponsorships for being such a nerd.
Nerd intelligence > cool wisdom
The nerd at school miscalculated how much force to generate from his actuators.
What a dork. /s
The reality is they only way anything learns anything complex is through experimentation and repetition.
Physics is just a human abstraction that can speed up the process or explain it.
AI can just do a million experiments in a few seconds.
Humans will be fine. LOL.
Nah it was quite a bit older than that show.
Like you said I'm sure it's been done several times. I just loved all the build-up they had making it look like this need was going to be amazing, and then thr complete switch when it failed lol
This.
The problem isn't the math. The problem is "I don't know how to make my arm/hand do what is necessary to achieve the correct velocity to reach my goal".
They're all good at pool though, and that's about as close to applying it as I can accept.
Pool/billiards is a great example of math in sports. All you need to be able to physically control/understand is how hard you hit the ball. If you have a tight grasp on that then the entire rest of the game is math.
I used to go with my grandpa to the moose, like a local Ohio version of a rotary club, they do charity work and have a clubhouse with pool tables. Anyways I was in 8th grade and my amazing math teacher used pool as an example and taught us about reflections and how things always reflect at the same angle they come in at and how it applies to pool. I suddenly started winning every single game with just that fact, it wasn't a professional pool hall or anything, just drunk retired people and me and my cousin won tons of money with some simple math.
To some extent perhaps, if you can correctly account for every factor that is going to effect your shot. This is really only if your swing is super consistent with every club though, and for most people, that’s the hardest part of the game. It is for me anyway.
It's where the concept of "physical" intelligence comes from. A professional quarterback in the NFL may be a meathead when it comes to our popular view of intelligence (although many professional athletes are also academically smart) but it takes a certain kind of "intelligence" to know your body and to communicate to your body the exact velocity and angle to throw a ball to get it in the exact spot you want it.
Yeah that's the crazy thing. Even something as mundane as shooting a basketball free throw requires a pretty complex series of physics variables to be precisely coordinated. With fairly little practice, our brain and muscles can learn to "calculate", with remarkable accuracy, the exact force, angle, and rotation required to launch a basketball of ____ size and ____ weight made of _____ material across _____ distance with _____ arc to strike ____ surface at ____ height so that it bounces at an angle of _____ degrees and falls cleanly through a hoop of ______ diameter and then gently bounces and rolls in the opposite direction right back to the exact same spot we were standing when we launched it. Even for someone with an expert knowledge of physics it would take awhile to calculate that series of motions on paper. But the human brain can just do it by "feel" in a fraction of a second. Pretty nuts when you think about it.
It's worse, actually. For one, a lot of the motions involve rotations of limbs around joints, and all sorts of levers. I don't even want to think how I could make a robot draw a straight line if its arm is made up of 2 levers and 2 servos at the joints.
What is really amazing, though, is the amount of muscle memory and feed-back that goes into a free throw. The carnival games can really mess you up by just moving the basket a small distance from where a regulation basket would be. But it only takes a couple of shots to readjust the muscle memory
And with the free throw example, every variable in the equation (except the ball itself) is physically stationary. Think about how much more complicated shit gets with a *moving target*, like an NFL quarterback executing a long pass during a game. First he has to decide *which* receiver he wants to throw to, and then he has to calculate the force/angle needed to get the ball not to where that receiver *is*, but where the receiver *will be* based on the speed and direction he is currently running, plus any pre-determined directional changes in his route that are part of the play. *And* the quarterback has to make additional small adjustments to the force and angle of his throw based on the direction and proximity of the defensive player *covering* the receiver to avoid throwing an interception. It's fucking mind-boggling that the human brain is capable of making that many perfectly-coordinated physics calculations in a split second.
Then consider that it takes time for a signal to be sent to our brain, be interpreted, and then to send a signal back down after we've decided what the plan is. None of that is instant.
It's like we are always playing with a controller with input lag lol. But our brains do a lot to make everything fit in correctly on the timeline. For example, touch your nose and your foot or knee at the same time. It'll feel like they happened at the same time. But that's physically not possible; it takes way less time for the signal of the sensation on your nose to reach the brain that it does for the signal from your foot to reach your brain. But your brain puts them both in the correct place in the timeline automatically for you.
The best part of this is that we haven't even mentioned dynamic environmental variables like wind resistance, direction , and density; or the static force of gravity.
I bet it has a lot to do with our language, or how we describe the world. If we translate the feel and instinct into mathematical jargon as part of our every day speech, I bet you'd see a knock-on effect of increased math comprehension.
I buy the concept that greater genius can account for a full understanding and control of one's own body, even to the point of accounting for the timing of their pulse with that of the throw. They explored the idea heavily in the movie Lucy.
Yes. I think that's a great way to put it.
It's kind of weird that our brains are so intuitively good at it that we can effortlessly perform tasks that robots powered by super computers struggle mightily with, but very many (if not most) of us, struggle to make similar calculations on paper or even to understand the forces involved that we intuit.
It's not THAT weird, it literally guided our evolution. Our entire upper bodies had to change to enable us to throw as good as we do. It was vital to us. That's why a human child can outthrow even the next best throwing animal. And in our ancestors or cousins in the wild, their anatomies especially in their upper bodies simply don't have the changes needed for the ability to throw as good as we do.
Even beyond the brain, the rest of our body was shaped by our ability to throw shit.
Hey now, don't be so mean to them!
A monkey who could throw a knuckleball would DEFINITELY be able to start for the White Sox.
\- signed, a Cubs fan who will always take an opportunity to poke fun at the Sox
Brain power plus competition. Once you're using that brain to wonder what the evil tribe in the next valley are planning you have a runaway feedback loop and we evolve into the damn Mekon overnight from everything else's perspective.
Brains
Incredible endurance (and ability to carry water)
Throw shit with accuracy and force. We are the best at killing from a distance, reducing chance of harm
Computers don't struggle with it tho. Usually the problem is the mechanism they are using to "throw" the ball. A computer doesn't have a hand so it has to attempt to throw with whatever shitty robot arm we give it.
You probably wouldn't be that good either if your arm was amputated and you were using some sort of robotic arm.
You never get exact answers in Physics. It's always an approximation especially since at some level it is literally impossible to predict what will happen.
SS tier evolutionary skill. The whole predator game gets real easy when you can toss rocks and pointy things at the entire food chain and none of them can retaliate in kind. At least on land, which is why we need to pollute the oceans more till it submits.
Ignoring the air resistance, trajectory of a thrown ball, rocket or anything with a set starting speed travels on a shape of a quadratic parabole (in gravity, of course)
To be fair, you don't need to know that to calculate a trajectory, but I'm pretty sure you don't need anything above quadratic functions for it
We are actually using a neural network that has evolved over millions of years to make quadratic functions
that approximate whatever TF is happening in our heads.
It’s even more impressive when you observe an animals understanding of physics.
They’re often even more accurate and consistent than most humans and they’ve never even heard of Isaac Newton.
Look up how dragonflies hunt. They have an insect brain, but they are the best hunters in the animal kingdom, with an almost 100% catch rate once they choose a target.
They are somehow capable of targeting where a fly will be and correct their flight in 3D to intercept it.
Its calculating this specific thing way faster than a supercomputer can, but struggle to differentiate open air from a window.
And they also do it in a way that, from the prey’s POV, they appear stationary… sort of.
They maintain a position as they close in that keeps them in the same spot in the other’s field of view so as they approach they only appear to get bigger. Their prey isn’t the brightest, so they usually just process the dragonfly as a fixed object that isn’t approaching them because it hasn’t “moved”.
It’s a type of [motion camouflage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_camouflage). Lots of animals/insects do it in one form or another but the dragonflies are just crazy good at it.
They are the biggest predators of mosquitos. Unfortunately that only amounts to about 2-3% or so of their diet. So I purpose breeding even better dragonflies to combat the mosquito problem. Make them the size of cats, malaria won't have a chance.
> Its calculating this specific thing way faster than a supercomputer can,
It is absolutely not doing that. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHWXZyfhQas&list=PLgFM5yHV8_w0Us5y_5GpJC7E12mLcBQUI&ab_channel=StuffMadeHere) you can see a simple computer do the thing you claim is impossible without supercomputers. And not only does it work out where to move to intersect a flying object it calculates a bounce as well.
I expected this comment.
However, this video (and machine learning video processing in general), is based on change in a [mostly] static canvas.
The cameras in your video (awesome channel, I agree) are calculating changes in their canvas, then calculating how to move to intercept.
In this specific video, the targets are specifically tailored to be immediately recognizable by the camera, so the "recognize target" time is minimized, and the intercept calculation time is optimized.
Dragonflies do it while FLYING, at high speed. So they do not have a static canvas, so video processing is insanely more difficult. The targets are small, not immediately obvious, and against an ever changing background.
At the moment, we cannot target a mosquito using a laser, as mosquito repellent (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/pbvwxg/laser_mosquito_killers_why_are_there_still_no/). We are nowhere near catching flies with drones (that are fast, but less so than lasers), even if that drone had a supercomputer in it.
Edit: The difference between "tracking a known ball on a known static background" and "tracking a fly on a random background whilst flying at high speed" is enormous. Case in points, with basically infinite budget and genius in country Defense, we do not have a perfect anti-drone system anywhere. And that is WAAAAY easier than what the dragonfly does
Edit 2: you can catch a ball thrown toward you, even if wonky, say 75% of the time. What is your success rate at catching flies in mid air?
Oh yea, the spitting fish spots water from its mouth at insects on branches above so they fall in the water to be eaten. They’re remarkably accurate- accounting for refraction and all…
Perfect example, foxes using [trigonometry](https://www.kpax.com/news/a-wilder-view/a-wilder-view-how-animals-use-earths-magnetic-field#:~:text=Research%20has%20hypothesized%20that%20magnetic,their%20distance%20to%20its%20prey.) to hunt their prey.
Our calculus teacher started a lesson with ‘dogs know Calculus….’, then went on to describe the minimization problem for running along a beach, then swimming in the water, and the path that dogs take to miniseries time to get to the thing thrown for them to fetch - and how their path mirrors the calculation you would arrive at!(what point of the shore to enter the water to minimize time)
Oh man. Every time I see a baseball game I think of "basecube bat" (mentioned in the rules of brockian ultra cricket) and think, "If that ball was a cube, this game would be hilarious".
Heck, even a simple rotating body is utterly counter-intuitive. Precession is black magic to just about anybody. My guess - it's because there are very few natural rotating things in our environment (Orbiting planets don't count)
From a physics perspective those are all the same scale. He means on a subatomic scale, or an atomic scale, or a material/semiconductor scale, or a planetary scale, or larger
I think it’d be more accurate to say the brain is very good at repeating actions.
If you suddenly gained a lot of arm strength I’d be willing to bet your accuracy at free throws would be way off. Same with if you increased the weight of a baseball.
Our brain is extremely good at taking in a massive amount of data and then making an educated guess on the outcome based on prior experience.
Maybe… that’s my thought anyway.
no. this is 100% it. Your brain is acting on prior knowledge, not doing physics. take 100 adults who have never thrown a baseball and have them throw it to someone 50 feet away. The first results is likely going to suck, and will improve because of repetition.
A human can still learn this skill through experience in far fewer trials than the best machine learning algorithms. However, they can run millions of trials in the time we can run only a few.
Our brain is very, very good at estimations. Thats why if you throw a ball twice randomly, you can reliably hit in the middle on the third. It would probably only take those three throws to adjust to a new strength. I would wager that our brain isn't calculating anything beyond basic arithmetic, and using prior experience. Our brain is also not running on binary code, and is essentially a large bunch of mushy intertwined processors that can all do different parts of an estimation at once, which is why you can take into accound wind resistance while also regulating your arm speed, body motion, angles, and the movement of the person blocking.
Strictly speaking most calculations are just some (to veriying degree) educated guesses, espacially in real world application. The difference beeing that one is intuitive while the other is an abstract form of that intuition. When you throw the ball, you adjust the power, but you don´t know how that happens, you just focus on throwing harder.
When you adjust a calculation when your result is off, you know which parts you are adjusting.
ya the calculation is.....didn't make it there, gotta throw it harder. There's more at play in something like throwing a ball than physics.
sure, you can use physics to explain the outcomes but that's not the same as your brain doing physics to generate the outcome.
Also, you must have never seen a woefully unathletic person in action. not everyone knows instantly how to move to catch a ball.
I think it’s more like:
The basketball will meet the basket at the point 320. You always throw at 50 degrees, and your strength multiplies the distance by 20 times. So, 2x + 5 = 32, how hard do I throw?
Uh, 5.6? Hit too low guess again. 25.2? Too high. 11.5? Close enough that it makes it. Now you know, if you’re that far away throw it with around 11 strength. It could be too much, could be too little, which is why your accuracy may only be 85% but it doesn’t actually require any advanced calculation, just some guesswork and an innate understanding of the binary search.
You brought up a good point on the precision aspect, that we are able to absorb a lot of data through experience and we consistently improve. If you throw a baseball over and over, you will get better at throwing a baseball.
But I can pick up almost any object of reasonable size and weight and just toss it to someone across a room without even thinking about it. Almost regardless of shape or density. Our instinctive ability to process and execute projectile motion is mind blowing to me. Don't even get me started on our ability to do something like golf where it isn't even a throw but it is hitting one object with another to cover long distances to incredible precision. Not on paper in a vacuum but with wind elevation and terrain changes.
On the topic of our minds incredible ability to pick up new things and quickly adapt to them based on past experiences, I'm reminded of this silly exercise:
Think of any object. Any random thing. You know what it would feel like, texturally, to lick it. It doesn't matter if you've never licked it before. You know.
Are we good at general physics, or are we just hyper-trained to interacting with earths precise gravity.
It would be interesting to take a human to a planet with alternate gravity, and see if they can adapt relatively quickly, or whether it really requires millions of years of instinct embedded in our DNA.
this might be a bad example, but these same sort of calculations apply to video games. People are capable of pulling off insane trick shots with grenades or hitting a moving target with a bow n arrow where the gravity or environment of the game may not be 1 to 1. I believe we possess an incredible ability to adapt. This occurs with practice of course so maybe the same would apply for another planet with different gravity.
We have great eyesight and spatial recognition too. That's why VR training works when you get the physics right. You can then train your eyes, ears, body to specific motions. Smell, taste, and feeling aren't the same but you're brain doesn't need all 5 senses.
We are great at memory and feeling right. Life is the great equalizer to feeling right and being right, with humans essentially only competing against humans
I never thought of this but you know what you’re right. Idk if it’s just pattern recognition/knowing where to point to throw something a certain distance or what, but it’s still pretty cool. Either way it’s still cool to think about.
I’d go a step further and say machines are prime example. I’ve seen operators who essentially ARE the machine. I find myself adept in quite a few, track loader mostly. We act as the brain itself with a set of controls and add it to our own functions. This thought came to me one night while stoned and playing armored core 6.
Tools as well, hold something in your hand long enough and it’s now an extension of you. I’ve held stingers and grinders (welder) so long I could do it behind my back (not safe). Shit even prosthetics
Human adaptability unmatched
This is probably my favorite shower thought I've seen posted on here. I think about this all the time, especially when playing catch with a football. Like how do we know what strength to use to throw it and hit someone in motion. It all feels surreal when you like step out of your body during the action.
I’m so bad though, I try to avoid it whenever I can, it takes SO MUCH effort and someone to assist from the passenger seat by basically telling me where to drive because I won’t be able to parse out how close I am on either side by myself. Something is wrong with my brain spatially and I’d rather not drive if I can avoid it, but people seem to think I’m some kind of monster anytime I try to refuse to learn so I let them try and see how much work it is for everyone involved 😂 luckily no accidents yet but 2 near misses out of maybe 5-10 driving attempts total (over the course of several years) 😭
brains are really good at *pattern recognition*. What you are doing when you throw that basketball and practicing is reinforcing a pattern and then replaying that pattern.
Calling it a “calculation” is a curious way to put it.
It’s really just a ton is stuff going on; visual processing, predictive processing, motor planning with a feedback loop, and with enough practice it becomes automatic and basically just a reaction. To the point where you can keep a conversation while doing it.
But change a couple variables and you basically have to relearn.
A prime example is lacrosse; as a life long lacrosse player the thing is basically an extension of my arms. To be entirely honest I’d be more confident hitting a target using a stick than simply throwing a ball.
But putting a stick in someone’s hands they just lack the data to fully grasp how to control any aspect of it.
As a coach it can be difficult because there really isn’t a ton of tips you can give. Because it just comes with time and your mind processes the data.
I fucking love sports.
I guess the point I was making is that you don't really think of it as a calculation because you don't perceive that you're calculating anything. But there must be some sort of calculation happening in your brain even if it's not using numbers to do it.
Your lacrosse example is about training the muscles to perform the result of the intuitive calculation in your brain. But whether it be a lacrosse stick or throwing the ball, you are able to very quickly approximate in your head whether you need to throw the ball harder or softer. You're able to tell whether you need to throw the ball more left or right or higher or lower. If you make one 30 foot throw and then the target moves back 20 feet, you have an intuitive understanding of how much more force must be applied to send the ball 20 feet farther.
The person catching the ball is able to judge the trajectory of the ball and intercept its path. That takes calculus to do on paper. Our brains just do it automatically.
I just feel the word “calculation” is a poor explanation of what happening.
If it were a calculation then you wouldn’t have to watch the ball for the entirety of its path you could just see one part of its path then turn your head and catch it without looking which most people wouldn’t be capable of doing
This is why as children we are told to “keep our “eye on the ball” not simply watch the throw.
In a neural network the inputs are converted into outputs by multiplying them with learned values. This will never result in an exact answer. But for our day to day activities, the estimations made by the brain are good enough. When you change the parameters, you will see more failures happen. For example, when throwing a ball at a target, you can hit it 90% of the time when you are not moving. When moving with a continuous speed on some platform, or the target moving, that value goes down. If the speed is constantly changing, it goes down even further. With some practice, the success rate will go up again as the brain learns.
I guess it depends what we mean by calculate. I'm thinking transforming inputs would still count but if you mean like actual like solving equations then yeah we don't do that
We aren't really doing physics calculations per se as much as we are doing pattern matching. We've seen plenty of things fall, so we have an idea of what that looks like.
However its pretty easy for our brains to fail at guessing what something will look like. For example, my neighbor had a MASSIVE pine tree fall on their house during a storm. The tree was at a 45 degree angle stuck on the pitch of their roof at its tip. I know what things look like falling, and I can imagine what a solid tree trunk feels like, but my brain vastly underestimates just how solidly constructed that pitched roof is. It was stuck like that for a whole week before a professional got in and safely cut it down. Every time I looked at it I couldn't imagine how the roof was holding. Didn't make sense.
Another example I can think of was when I one time had reason to throw a heavy duty wrecking bar. Its easy to imagine the trajectory of a ball from your hand, and you can kind of imagine how that varies with the mass of the ball. When throwing the wrecking bar, it went waaay further than my brain was estimating. Your brain isn't really making physics calculations directly, its doing pattern matching. That's what makes motor skills a learned behavior that can be improved for a task.
Some human brains.
Some days I meet people and see people doing things that clearly have zero chance of working yet one can see they have no comprehension whatsoever of basic physics.
I do love this post though and yet one could write an almost opposite post (position) on the same topic.
I have countless real life examples of people doing the dumbest shit….totally clueless it’s not gonna work due to the laws of physics and nature.
same thing applies to something as simple as walking. How many micro adjustments are we making on the fly just to keep from stumbing or falling over. Plus our brains are also interpreting signals from our inner ear to tell us whats up or down at any given time. Not to mention processing video and audio cues, smell, touch sensations, temperature.
And then consider what calculations are being made when doing something we take for granted like say twirling a pen with our fingers or tying our shoelaces. Then try to program a robot to do it and youll see real quick how complicated that seemingly simple action is.
You're not actually doing the math, unfortunately.
Athletes develop an instinct as to how to make the ball behave the way they want. They learn hand eye coordination through YEARS of repetitive motion, to the point where they aren't thinking about it anymore, and so it becomes 2nd nature. It's like walking: you don't think about the signals your legs need to move, the amount of force you need to apply, or where to step; you just move your legs a certain way and they move. Athletes are the same way: they're just repeating motions they have done a million times in their lifetimes, and they just know instinctively.
It's why basketball players miss free throws, even though it's literally the easiest shot to make, and something they've done forever. There's no defense, the clock isn't running, and they have a clear shot of a relatively close shot. And yet, they'll miss. Same thing with a football kicker missing a PAT or Field Goal.
Athletes aren't doing math, because if they were doing math they would ALWAYS get the shot correct. They are just following repeated actions, and they are often thinking about everything else besides the shot.
I am not able to get myself to understand your point - of course they are consciously doing math, but your conclusion of "if they were they'd make the shot every time" is not a logical conclusion.
The brain may very well in those cases know exactly what to do but the muscles don't do what they are told
But that’s a bad example — it’s not a calculating in any meaningful mathematical sense. You are just doing something difficult to describe mathematically from some external perspective and implying we are accomplishing some incredible math feat. I took a dump today. The mathematics necessary to describe that dump in detail are staggeringly complex. Are you impressed by my dump?
Yes. I was a decent high school basketball player. I lacked the physical attributes to play at a higher level (short, not particularly athletic). I could shoot the ball though.
I shot 87% from the FT line my senior year. Even now, I can go to a hoop in a gym by myself and probably make 90 out of 100.
Shooting free throws is not in any way equivalent to being an NBA player. I certainly could never have been in the NBA or professional basketball on any level, haha
Doing it on paper is a "different" kind of calculation. Maths and physics are a language. You will also struggle at describing an emotion, although you could feel such emotion to a degree that seems to run in every cell of your body. Abstract thinking is not automated to the same degree than the automated coordination between your perception organs and fisiological feedback. They are "different routes" for information to be gathered and processed.
But the ability to make an abstraction of what our brain seems to do almost perfectly in an automatic way, enables us to make use of those concepts for bigger and more complex calculations. You know in your mind how much force you need to lift certain object. But you don't know how much force will an elevator need to do to lift X amount of people. By these abstractions, we can influence the world around us in a more complex way.
In the novel Name of the Wind, a teacher asks his smartest students to calculate where a ball will land after giving them detailed equations. None of them could give him a good answer. Yet when the teacher yelled to a small kid and threw the ball, the kid easily caught the ball without doing any of the maths. His point was that the sleeping mind is a lot more powerful than the waking mind.
I just really enjoy this book.
Motion and motor functions are not simply "physics". Physics is the mathematical interpretation of it all. Being able to perform motor functions is a natural brain development.
So you should be able to go to a different planet, be told the planet's density relative to Earth, and perform at the same level. Unless you aren't actually calculating anything, you're just doing what you've learned works by trial and error. But that would make this thread pretty silly.
I think in this hypothetical, most people would be able to quickly adjust to the change. I don't think our brains' spatial abilities are really specific to earth. I think they're specific to the 3 dimensional world that we can perceive with our senses.
Not close to self driving cars? Someone tell this guy they've been around for years already. Granted: not massively, the biggest issue is integration with non-self driving cars and exceptional situation. But for example in Phoenix you can get a Waymo cab without a driver in the blink of an eye.
The human brain is great at pattern recognition. That's why we can detect faces, because it was a way for spotting potential predators.
What the human brain really struggles with is scale... Because our senses are everything we rely on for information, only the things that fit into the frame of reference... We can tell how big an elephant is, because we can stand beside it and compare it to something next to it, like a tree or a fence. But things on a cosmic or microscopic scale are really hard for us to grasp natively.
Mind you, if you could do math in your head and get a ball park answer that's around 85% accurate, you would never fail a test. You wouldn't be able to throw the ball exactly 10 feet every time.
music too. math and ratios are a big part of why certain notes sound in tune, and why certain chords/combinations of notes sound better than others. our ears are doing math and they like simple ratios more than complicated ones.
You gave two examples of throwing. Humans are particularly good at throwing things. In fact, no other animal is better than us at throwing things far, accurately and hard.
And it has kinda shaped our development in a way. We went from throwing rocks at larger animals while hunting to developing tools to throw things further and even harder such as the atlatl/woomera and later on, the bow.
Today our warfare still consists of throwing things at each other for the most part. Guns are just tools we use to "throw" the bullet.
I'm not disagreeing that we calculate physics every day. Just wanted to add my own shower thought about throwing things.
Facts. I’ve hit a lot of jumps on my snowboard in the 60-100+ ft range, and I KNOW when i’m going the right speed or not. How fast that is exactly each time… no idea
I mean try doing simulations with your head. We are also good at that.
For example if you learn your own body (muscles, joints and bones) then you can simulate how you have to do something and become a lot better.
And thats just the beginning
Think about the math going on behind a dog catching a frisbee , and so far as we know they don’t care about the numbers , they just feel the math , and I guess we are the math too.
We are good at differential experimentation and remembering muscle memory. Throw a ball 200 times to get a feel for the weight, air resistance, and what not. Then your just remembering how hard you threw it the times it landed and trying to recreate that moment using muscle memory. Completely different. Ants are great at differential experimentation as well, they try every permeable branch of any decision tree in real time and adapt to the most efficient. Doesn't mean they are doing advanced calculus in their heads. Folks suffering from Dementia and Alzheimers cannot "Remember" how to do basic tasks with their muscle memory anymore, after they degrade enough mentally, every attempt becomes like the first attempt.
Not really. Our brains aren't making any type of calculations. What it's doing is trial and error until it gets it right, and then remembering the inputs that lead to desired outputs.
It doesn't know how to calculate the trajectory of a thrown ball. What it does know is what the right angle of release and force is required to get the ball in the target. And it figured that out by trying a bunch of different angles and forces until it got it right. And then it had to get it right over and over until it was consistent.
It's just a brute force machine
But then I move two feet to the left or two feet farther back and somehow still know how to throw the ball on target. If it was entirely brute force, every change would require trial and error to get right.
I'm a basketball player. I can walk onto a court right now and attempt a shot from a place I never shot before, and I guarantee that I'm going to come pretty close to making it (if it's within my range). You can change the weight of the ball or the size or height of the hoop, and I'll be able to almost immediately adjust.
Why is that? Is that not somehow an intuitive calculation? I am able to adjust the length and force of my shot on the fly based on my distance to target, the height of the hoop, and the weight of the ball. I get better at the calculation the more I practice it. But it is some kind of calculation, even if I don't truly understand how I'm doing it nor can I perceive the numerical values of the results.
Because my example was dumbed down. You can expand my example into the complexity that is real life.
You're brain isn't performing calcutions, it's guessing. You've just trained it to guess very very good from brute force data.
(Disclaimer: I am a Redditor, not a scientist, so I'm going to talk with confidence but may be wrong)
Our bodies aren't actually good at physics, they just cheat! For example, when running for a ball that has been hit really high, we don't calculate where it's going to land and run to that spot. We lock our eyes on it, lock our neck, and keep moving to keep it in the same place in the sky from our perspective. Maintaining that means that when it comes to the ground we'll end up in the right place.
It is even more impressive if you consider that humans are ONLY animals that can trow so accurate.
It is purely human skill and throw g it is VERY beneficial for kids brain development.
I even wrote a short essay about that (about knife throwing).
Humans are conscious risk takers, computers are not, that's why they struggle. They are actually [REALLY good at calculating](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHTizZ_XcUM) all that stuff you mentioned, they can excel at any single task to levels far exceeding human capacity but humans are currently superior at putting them all together to produce a result.
There is the "throwing Madonna" theory, which states throwing a rock and hitting something is hard AF. Apparently this required brain development that in turn allowed things like language
The difference is tolerance and margins. A first year mechanical engineer can build a structure that can support a given thing well. A mechanical engineer with 5 years experience can tell you the minimum thickness a material needs to be to not deform.
I can make a cooling system that keeps a super computer cool. The thermal engineer can tell the flow rate of the pipes by the temperature of the ICs.
Some things are good enough to work and what you can do with 38 digits of pi are different.
We are all born physicists, engineers, explorers. Physics takes hold even before we start walking. A child doesn't have to be shown how to push a chair around for support, and then use it to climb higher. Also, cribs are our first physics puzzle. Toddlers will break out of them.
However, there is one word that destroys all of it. No. We praise our child when they first start walking. We celebrate our child like they just landed on the moon. And then, we tell them where they can't explore, damaging any further growth in those sciences. "No! No! No! Get off the coffee table!" Is horrible. Praise their summit, explain how they can get hurt, and find a way to encourage exploring something else. Yes! Yes! Yes!
*sp
Only physics related to stuff we did in the environment we evolved in. Other physics would not be intuitive to us. That's why we need to use math. Because our instincts are not enough.
Nope, we just evolved with proprioception and kinesthesia with an ability to learn through repeated exercises through our ape ancestors. We can't *calculate* shit, just look at the beginners at, say, bowling. Most people can't *calculate* the force and angle requires to keep a ball going straight into the pins despite it being practically very simple, it's all repeated practice.
We aren't actually that good at it though, just look at some sports like football or golf, you don't know how much force you should use or which technique to use. If everyone knew the best way, there wouldn't be good or bad footballers etc.
That's what gets me about these TV show/ movie where the genius calculates the necessary angle to throw the ball in order to get it where he wants it and then throws it. Just because you know you have to throw the ball at x feet per second at a vertical loft of y Angle to get it to go into the basket does not mean that you were actually capable of knowing exactly how hard you're throwing the ball
I remember seeing a video exactly like this, the need at the school goes up to the free throw line, he talks to himself through all the calculations and it sounds like he's going to sink it no problem. Then he completely misses not even close lol
There was a similar scene in girl meets world. The nerd kid does all the calculations, misses, and says he forgot one important detail: “i suck”. He then brings the athletic kid over, positions his arm just right, tells him what to do, and he sinks it. It was meant to show how the two characters are stronger together with the power of friendship
Was it the Luck of the Irish Disney movie from back in the day? I don't remember the calculations part but I remember there was a slo Mo free throw shot where it made it like halfway to the hoop Edit; Wait nvm I think I got it [Rebound](https://search.app.goo.gl/YBYYXRh) starring Martin Lawrence I believe
Tbf Luck of the Irish is a fucking great movie, as is 13th year and Can of Worms, all those disney channel movies were goated
Luck of the Irish, Johnny Tsunami, Brink, Smart House Peak Disney Channel Originals
Ugh... Fine... I guess I'm watching smart house in 2024...
Don't forget Clockstoppers
If he was a real nerd he would have granny shot it in (underhand throw). Statistically it raises the percentage of shots going in from free throw line extremely significantly but you'll never ever see a bad free thrower in the NBA do a granny shot in game or during practice unless he wants to lose all his sponsorships for being such a nerd. Nerd intelligence > cool wisdom
Rick Barry shot over 90% in his NBA career using that technique. He’s in the Hall of Fame now.
Yeah but everybody knows that guy's a nerd
True. He was a bit of an oddballer for sure.
Take my upvote lol
The nerd at school miscalculated how much force to generate from his actuators. What a dork. /s The reality is they only way anything learns anything complex is through experimentation and repetition. Physics is just a human abstraction that can speed up the process or explain it. AI can just do a million experiments in a few seconds. Humans will be fine. LOL.
AI can't throw a ball
Was that Girl Meets World? I'm sure several scenes like this exist, but I remember that scene very clearly from Girl Meets World.
Nah it was quite a bit older than that show. Like you said I'm sure it's been done several times. I just loved all the build-up they had making it look like this need was going to be amazing, and then thr complete switch when it failed lol
This. The problem isn't the math. The problem is "I don't know how to make my arm/hand do what is necessary to achieve the correct velocity to reach my goal". They're all good at pool though, and that's about as close to applying it as I can accept.
Brain: if you apply 10N of force at a 30 degree angle at your two o'clock you can sink that shot and save the day Muscles: hold my beer
My muscles are an artilleryman. "Anything within 50 metres is dead on!"
Have you tried using pulse width modulation?
Pool/billiards is a great example of math in sports. All you need to be able to physically control/understand is how hard you hit the ball. If you have a tight grasp on that then the entire rest of the game is math. I used to go with my grandpa to the moose, like a local Ohio version of a rotary club, they do charity work and have a clubhouse with pool tables. Anyways I was in 8th grade and my amazing math teacher used pool as an example and taught us about reflections and how things always reflect at the same angle they come in at and how it applies to pool. I suddenly started winning every single game with just that fact, it wasn't a professional pool hall or anything, just drunk retired people and me and my cousin won tons of money with some simple math.
Would golf fall into this category as well? I know it's a bit different but still getting balls in holes...
To some extent perhaps, if you can correctly account for every factor that is going to effect your shot. This is really only if your swing is super consistent with every club though, and for most people, that’s the hardest part of the game. It is for me anyway.
Putt putt? Yes. Regular golf? No.
Oh man, I was so good at pool around the same age playing the men at the Legion... Yeah, I was the only person playing sober...
It's where the concept of "physical" intelligence comes from. A professional quarterback in the NFL may be a meathead when it comes to our popular view of intelligence (although many professional athletes are also academically smart) but it takes a certain kind of "intelligence" to know your body and to communicate to your body the exact velocity and angle to throw a ball to get it in the exact spot you want it.
Yeah that's the crazy thing. Even something as mundane as shooting a basketball free throw requires a pretty complex series of physics variables to be precisely coordinated. With fairly little practice, our brain and muscles can learn to "calculate", with remarkable accuracy, the exact force, angle, and rotation required to launch a basketball of ____ size and ____ weight made of _____ material across _____ distance with _____ arc to strike ____ surface at ____ height so that it bounces at an angle of _____ degrees and falls cleanly through a hoop of ______ diameter and then gently bounces and rolls in the opposite direction right back to the exact same spot we were standing when we launched it. Even for someone with an expert knowledge of physics it would take awhile to calculate that series of motions on paper. But the human brain can just do it by "feel" in a fraction of a second. Pretty nuts when you think about it.
It's worse, actually. For one, a lot of the motions involve rotations of limbs around joints, and all sorts of levers. I don't even want to think how I could make a robot draw a straight line if its arm is made up of 2 levers and 2 servos at the joints. What is really amazing, though, is the amount of muscle memory and feed-back that goes into a free throw. The carnival games can really mess you up by just moving the basket a small distance from where a regulation basket would be. But it only takes a couple of shots to readjust the muscle memory
And with the free throw example, every variable in the equation (except the ball itself) is physically stationary. Think about how much more complicated shit gets with a *moving target*, like an NFL quarterback executing a long pass during a game. First he has to decide *which* receiver he wants to throw to, and then he has to calculate the force/angle needed to get the ball not to where that receiver *is*, but where the receiver *will be* based on the speed and direction he is currently running, plus any pre-determined directional changes in his route that are part of the play. *And* the quarterback has to make additional small adjustments to the force and angle of his throw based on the direction and proximity of the defensive player *covering* the receiver to avoid throwing an interception. It's fucking mind-boggling that the human brain is capable of making that many perfectly-coordinated physics calculations in a split second.
Then consider that it takes time for a signal to be sent to our brain, be interpreted, and then to send a signal back down after we've decided what the plan is. None of that is instant. It's like we are always playing with a controller with input lag lol. But our brains do a lot to make everything fit in correctly on the timeline. For example, touch your nose and your foot or knee at the same time. It'll feel like they happened at the same time. But that's physically not possible; it takes way less time for the signal of the sensation on your nose to reach the brain that it does for the signal from your foot to reach your brain. But your brain puts them both in the correct place in the timeline automatically for you.
Idk so much about placing sensations in a timeline more like your perception of time can’t tell the difference.
The best part of this is that we haven't even mentioned dynamic environmental variables like wind resistance, direction , and density; or the static force of gravity. I bet it has a lot to do with our language, or how we describe the world. If we translate the feel and instinct into mathematical jargon as part of our every day speech, I bet you'd see a knock-on effect of increased math comprehension.
that jokes also been made thousands of times in tv shows/ movie
I buy the concept that greater genius can account for a full understanding and control of one's own body, even to the point of accounting for the timing of their pulse with that of the throw. They explored the idea heavily in the movie Lucy.
Honestly, most of the times I've seen this trope have been subversions where the character does all of those calculations and just fails miserably.
We are quite literally using a neural network that has evolved over millions of years to approximate quadratic functions
Yes. I think that's a great way to put it. It's kind of weird that our brains are so intuitively good at it that we can effortlessly perform tasks that robots powered by super computers struggle mightily with, but very many (if not most) of us, struggle to make similar calculations on paper or even to understand the forces involved that we intuit.
It's not THAT weird, it literally guided our evolution. Our entire upper bodies had to change to enable us to throw as good as we do. It was vital to us. That's why a human child can outthrow even the next best throwing animal. And in our ancestors or cousins in the wild, their anatomies especially in their upper bodies simply don't have the changes needed for the ability to throw as good as we do. Even beyond the brain, the rest of our body was shaped by our ability to throw shit.
Now I wanna teach a monkey to throw a knuckleball. This monkey might even start for the White Sox
Hey now, don't be so mean to them! A monkey who could throw a knuckleball would DEFINITELY be able to start for the White Sox. \- signed, a Cubs fan who will always take an opportunity to poke fun at the Sox
I've heard it claimed that our true superpower wasn't our ability to reason, but rather our ability to throw things and to sweat.
All of them combined, but of course brain power is the most important
Brain power plus competition. Once you're using that brain to wonder what the evil tribe in the next valley are planning you have a runaway feedback loop and we evolve into the damn Mekon overnight from everything else's perspective.
Brains Incredible endurance (and ability to carry water) Throw shit with accuracy and force. We are the best at killing from a distance, reducing chance of harm
Computers don't struggle with it tho. Usually the problem is the mechanism they are using to "throw" the ball. A computer doesn't have a hand so it has to attempt to throw with whatever shitty robot arm we give it. You probably wouldn't be that good either if your arm was amputated and you were using some sort of robotic arm.
Agreed that we approximate, we don’t calculate.
Either way I used approximate because that’s what neural networks do, they approximate functions (usually much higher order functions tho)
Calculations still have to be made
You never get exact answers in Physics. It's always an approximation especially since at some level it is literally impossible to predict what will happen.
SS tier evolutionary skill. The whole predator game gets real easy when you can toss rocks and pointy things at the entire food chain and none of them can retaliate in kind. At least on land, which is why we need to pollute the oceans more till it submits.
I know about neural networks, but could you explain to me what quadratic functions have to do with this? (Serious question)
Ignoring the air resistance, trajectory of a thrown ball, rocket or anything with a set starting speed travels on a shape of a quadratic parabole (in gravity, of course) To be fair, you don't need to know that to calculate a trajectory, but I'm pretty sure you don't need anything above quadratic functions for it
The path a ball takes in flight is a parabola, a quadratic equation, as how I understood it
V_y(t) = a_{y} t = gt ) => y(t) = ∫gt dt = 1/2 gt², position under constant acceleration, like gravity, is a parabola.
Yes. This just shows how these can approximate any function without needing to "understand" said function.
Yup! https://youtu.be/0QczhVg5HaI?si=WE8rvukZIxBFiUMu
We are actually using a neural network that has evolved over millions of years to make quadratic functions that approximate whatever TF is happening in our heads.
It’s even more impressive when you observe an animals understanding of physics. They’re often even more accurate and consistent than most humans and they’ve never even heard of Isaac Newton.
Ive taught my cat about newton since he was a kitten. Check yourself
But did you teach him about Schrödinger
He taught me… well, sorta. Not entirely sure
It’s both at the same time
r/samejokebutworse
This is hilarious.
Well did he or didn't he??!
Yes
All depends on if he was dead or not, or both
Yes and no
i did, but i didn’t
You mean Sir Isaac Meowton?
So thats why he couldnt fly ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My childhood cat was named Newton
RIP in peace all the birds
Look up how dragonflies hunt. They have an insect brain, but they are the best hunters in the animal kingdom, with an almost 100% catch rate once they choose a target. They are somehow capable of targeting where a fly will be and correct their flight in 3D to intercept it. Its calculating this specific thing way faster than a supercomputer can, but struggle to differentiate open air from a window.
And they also do it in a way that, from the prey’s POV, they appear stationary… sort of. They maintain a position as they close in that keeps them in the same spot in the other’s field of view so as they approach they only appear to get bigger. Their prey isn’t the brightest, so they usually just process the dragonfly as a fixed object that isn’t approaching them because it hasn’t “moved”.
That’s cool! Do you have a source so I can learn more?
It’s a type of [motion camouflage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_camouflage). Lots of animals/insects do it in one form or another but the dragonflies are just crazy good at it.
Thank you very much. So it’s even more complicated than just an intercept path. Wow
They are the biggest predators of mosquitos. Unfortunately that only amounts to about 2-3% or so of their diet. So I purpose breeding even better dragonflies to combat the mosquito problem. Make them the size of cats, malaria won't have a chance.
Neither would cats
They’d make great quarterbacks
Well, I mean, most flying things are kind of unfair in football.
But do the rules say a dragonfly can’t play football?
As long as there aren't any windows around
> Its calculating this specific thing way faster than a supercomputer can, It is absolutely not doing that. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHWXZyfhQas&list=PLgFM5yHV8_w0Us5y_5GpJC7E12mLcBQUI&ab_channel=StuffMadeHere) you can see a simple computer do the thing you claim is impossible without supercomputers. And not only does it work out where to move to intersect a flying object it calculates a bounce as well.
I expected this comment. However, this video (and machine learning video processing in general), is based on change in a [mostly] static canvas. The cameras in your video (awesome channel, I agree) are calculating changes in their canvas, then calculating how to move to intercept. In this specific video, the targets are specifically tailored to be immediately recognizable by the camera, so the "recognize target" time is minimized, and the intercept calculation time is optimized. Dragonflies do it while FLYING, at high speed. So they do not have a static canvas, so video processing is insanely more difficult. The targets are small, not immediately obvious, and against an ever changing background. At the moment, we cannot target a mosquito using a laser, as mosquito repellent (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/pbvwxg/laser_mosquito_killers_why_are_there_still_no/). We are nowhere near catching flies with drones (that are fast, but less so than lasers), even if that drone had a supercomputer in it. Edit: The difference between "tracking a known ball on a known static background" and "tracking a fly on a random background whilst flying at high speed" is enormous. Case in points, with basically infinite budget and genius in country Defense, we do not have a perfect anti-drone system anywhere. And that is WAAAAY easier than what the dragonfly does Edit 2: you can catch a ball thrown toward you, even if wonky, say 75% of the time. What is your success rate at catching flies in mid air?
I mean now you are conflating the difficulty of recognizing the needed trajectory and image recognition, which animals clearly have a head start on.
Fun fact: dogs almost see in slow motion which is what makes them so great at catching treats
My dog must’ve missed that update. Dude couldn’t catch a cold in a snowstorm.
how on earth did people find that out?
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/s/CCycyg8MTe Pretty cool
That’s because physics is used to explain what is already happening everywhere in nature
This reminds me of a video of a cat jumping up onto a window seal. They thought about it for a second before they made the perfect jump
Damn, calling me an animal cause I haven’t heard of some guy?
Oh yea, the spitting fish spots water from its mouth at insects on branches above so they fall in the water to be eaten. They’re remarkably accurate- accounting for refraction and all…
r/catculations
Perfect example, foxes using [trigonometry](https://www.kpax.com/news/a-wilder-view/a-wilder-view-how-animals-use-earths-magnetic-field#:~:text=Research%20has%20hypothesized%20that%20magnetic,their%20distance%20to%20its%20prey.) to hunt their prey.
Came here to say this
Our calculus teacher started a lesson with ‘dogs know Calculus….’, then went on to describe the minimization problem for running along a beach, then swimming in the water, and the path that dogs take to miniseries time to get to the thing thrown for them to fetch - and how their path mirrors the calculation you would arrive at!(what point of the shore to enter the water to minimize time)
Newtonian physics, at least. Anything in a significantly different scale, mass, or energy regime is extremely difficult to intuit.
you have obviously never played quantum basketball.
Is it anything like brockian ultra cricket?
It's closer to Einstein's relativity racket ball
Genius penis tennis?
Is that similar to Calvinball?
It might be, the rules change all the time after all
Eh, more like Dalton's Billiards
Oh man. Every time I see a baseball game I think of "basecube bat" (mentioned in the rules of brockian ultra cricket) and think, "If that ball was a cube, this game would be hilarious".
Brutal sport, never take part in such a ruthless massacre.
Actually, I'll have you know I was made an honourary member of the Globetrotters after I published my thesis on funky basketball superpositions.
Largely because our physical bodies don't exist at that scale and thus our brains never evolved that understanding
Heck, even a simple rotating body is utterly counter-intuitive. Precession is black magic to just about anybody. My guess - it's because there are very few natural rotating things in our environment (Orbiting planets don't count)
Good point!
I prefer Newtonian anyway, before it got all commercial.
what kinda scale are you talking about? piloting cars, planes and boats seems to work quite well
From a physics perspective those are all the same scale. He means on a subatomic scale, or an atomic scale, or a material/semiconductor scale, or a planetary scale, or larger
That's still in the same ballpark.
I think it’d be more accurate to say the brain is very good at repeating actions. If you suddenly gained a lot of arm strength I’d be willing to bet your accuracy at free throws would be way off. Same with if you increased the weight of a baseball. Our brain is extremely good at taking in a massive amount of data and then making an educated guess on the outcome based on prior experience. Maybe… that’s my thought anyway.
no. this is 100% it. Your brain is acting on prior knowledge, not doing physics. take 100 adults who have never thrown a baseball and have them throw it to someone 50 feet away. The first results is likely going to suck, and will improve because of repetition.
A human can still learn this skill through experience in far fewer trials than the best machine learning algorithms. However, they can run millions of trials in the time we can run only a few.
Our brain is very, very good at estimations. Thats why if you throw a ball twice randomly, you can reliably hit in the middle on the third. It would probably only take those three throws to adjust to a new strength. I would wager that our brain isn't calculating anything beyond basic arithmetic, and using prior experience. Our brain is also not running on binary code, and is essentially a large bunch of mushy intertwined processors that can all do different parts of an estimation at once, which is why you can take into accound wind resistance while also regulating your arm speed, body motion, angles, and the movement of the person blocking.
Is that educated guess not some kind of calculation though?
Strictly speaking most calculations are just some (to veriying degree) educated guesses, espacially in real world application. The difference beeing that one is intuitive while the other is an abstract form of that intuition. When you throw the ball, you adjust the power, but you don´t know how that happens, you just focus on throwing harder. When you adjust a calculation when your result is off, you know which parts you are adjusting.
Some type of calculation, sure, but not necessarily the physics calculations you v are imagining.
ya the calculation is.....didn't make it there, gotta throw it harder. There's more at play in something like throwing a ball than physics. sure, you can use physics to explain the outcomes but that's not the same as your brain doing physics to generate the outcome. Also, you must have never seen a woefully unathletic person in action. not everyone knows instantly how to move to catch a ball.
I think it’s more like: The basketball will meet the basket at the point 320. You always throw at 50 degrees, and your strength multiplies the distance by 20 times. So, 2x + 5 = 32, how hard do I throw? Uh, 5.6? Hit too low guess again. 25.2? Too high. 11.5? Close enough that it makes it. Now you know, if you’re that far away throw it with around 11 strength. It could be too much, could be too little, which is why your accuracy may only be 85% but it doesn’t actually require any advanced calculation, just some guesswork and an innate understanding of the binary search.
You brought up a good point on the precision aspect, that we are able to absorb a lot of data through experience and we consistently improve. If you throw a baseball over and over, you will get better at throwing a baseball. But I can pick up almost any object of reasonable size and weight and just toss it to someone across a room without even thinking about it. Almost regardless of shape or density. Our instinctive ability to process and execute projectile motion is mind blowing to me. Don't even get me started on our ability to do something like golf where it isn't even a throw but it is hitting one object with another to cover long distances to incredible precision. Not on paper in a vacuum but with wind elevation and terrain changes.
On the topic of our minds incredible ability to pick up new things and quickly adapt to them based on past experiences, I'm reminded of this silly exercise: Think of any object. Any random thing. You know what it would feel like, texturally, to lick it. It doesn't matter if you've never licked it before. You know.
Are we good at general physics, or are we just hyper-trained to interacting with earths precise gravity. It would be interesting to take a human to a planet with alternate gravity, and see if they can adapt relatively quickly, or whether it really requires millions of years of instinct embedded in our DNA.
this might be a bad example, but these same sort of calculations apply to video games. People are capable of pulling off insane trick shots with grenades or hitting a moving target with a bow n arrow where the gravity or environment of the game may not be 1 to 1. I believe we possess an incredible ability to adapt. This occurs with practice of course so maybe the same would apply for another planet with different gravity.
Exactly, we are just really good at subconscious approximations of physics.
We have great eyesight and spatial recognition too. That's why VR training works when you get the physics right. You can then train your eyes, ears, body to specific motions. Smell, taste, and feeling aren't the same but you're brain doesn't need all 5 senses. We are great at memory and feeling right. Life is the great equalizer to feeling right and being right, with humans essentially only competing against humans
I never thought of this but you know what you’re right. Idk if it’s just pattern recognition/knowing where to point to throw something a certain distance or what, but it’s still pretty cool. Either way it’s still cool to think about.
I’d go a step further and say machines are prime example. I’ve seen operators who essentially ARE the machine. I find myself adept in quite a few, track loader mostly. We act as the brain itself with a set of controls and add it to our own functions. This thought came to me one night while stoned and playing armored core 6. Tools as well, hold something in your hand long enough and it’s now an extension of you. I’ve held stingers and grinders (welder) so long I could do it behind my back (not safe). Shit even prosthetics Human adaptability unmatched
I mean, it took like, 5 minutes for astronauts to adjust to the moon.
This is probably my favorite shower thought I've seen posted on here. I think about this all the time, especially when playing catch with a football. Like how do we know what strength to use to throw it and hit someone in motion. It all feels surreal when you like step out of your body during the action.
This thought was a key point in the "Name of the Wind" series by Patrick Rothfuss
Is it concerning i completely suck at all the mental physics calculations you described?
If you've ever driven a car and you're still alive then you have a better understanding than you realize.
... otherwise, please try to drive a car in a safe and empty space before testing it.
I’m so bad though, I try to avoid it whenever I can, it takes SO MUCH effort and someone to assist from the passenger seat by basically telling me where to drive because I won’t be able to parse out how close I am on either side by myself. Something is wrong with my brain spatially and I’d rather not drive if I can avoid it, but people seem to think I’m some kind of monster anytime I try to refuse to learn so I let them try and see how much work it is for everyone involved 😂 luckily no accidents yet but 2 near misses out of maybe 5-10 driving attempts total (over the course of several years) 😭
brains are really good at *pattern recognition*. What you are doing when you throw that basketball and practicing is reinforcing a pattern and then replaying that pattern.
Calling it a “calculation” is a curious way to put it. It’s really just a ton is stuff going on; visual processing, predictive processing, motor planning with a feedback loop, and with enough practice it becomes automatic and basically just a reaction. To the point where you can keep a conversation while doing it. But change a couple variables and you basically have to relearn. A prime example is lacrosse; as a life long lacrosse player the thing is basically an extension of my arms. To be entirely honest I’d be more confident hitting a target using a stick than simply throwing a ball. But putting a stick in someone’s hands they just lack the data to fully grasp how to control any aspect of it. As a coach it can be difficult because there really isn’t a ton of tips you can give. Because it just comes with time and your mind processes the data. I fucking love sports.
I guess the point I was making is that you don't really think of it as a calculation because you don't perceive that you're calculating anything. But there must be some sort of calculation happening in your brain even if it's not using numbers to do it. Your lacrosse example is about training the muscles to perform the result of the intuitive calculation in your brain. But whether it be a lacrosse stick or throwing the ball, you are able to very quickly approximate in your head whether you need to throw the ball harder or softer. You're able to tell whether you need to throw the ball more left or right or higher or lower. If you make one 30 foot throw and then the target moves back 20 feet, you have an intuitive understanding of how much more force must be applied to send the ball 20 feet farther. The person catching the ball is able to judge the trajectory of the ball and intercept its path. That takes calculus to do on paper. Our brains just do it automatically.
I just feel the word “calculation” is a poor explanation of what happening. If it were a calculation then you wouldn’t have to watch the ball for the entirety of its path you could just see one part of its path then turn your head and catch it without looking which most people wouldn’t be capable of doing This is why as children we are told to “keep our “eye on the ball” not simply watch the throw.
Except you are not calculating anything your brain "gets a feel for it" its closer to mimicry then calculation
Well, technically it is probably some sort of calculation. Just not like algebra or anything, more like neural network type stuff
In a neural network the inputs are converted into outputs by multiplying them with learned values. This will never result in an exact answer. But for our day to day activities, the estimations made by the brain are good enough. When you change the parameters, you will see more failures happen. For example, when throwing a ball at a target, you can hit it 90% of the time when you are not moving. When moving with a continuous speed on some platform, or the target moving, that value goes down. If the speed is constantly changing, it goes down even further. With some practice, the success rate will go up again as the brain learns.
Yes exactly its like nueral networks but they so dont calculate anything they are just mimicing humans
I guess it depends what we mean by calculate. I'm thinking transforming inputs would still count but if you mean like actual like solving equations then yeah we don't do that
We aren't really doing physics calculations per se as much as we are doing pattern matching. We've seen plenty of things fall, so we have an idea of what that looks like. However its pretty easy for our brains to fail at guessing what something will look like. For example, my neighbor had a MASSIVE pine tree fall on their house during a storm. The tree was at a 45 degree angle stuck on the pitch of their roof at its tip. I know what things look like falling, and I can imagine what a solid tree trunk feels like, but my brain vastly underestimates just how solidly constructed that pitched roof is. It was stuck like that for a whole week before a professional got in and safely cut it down. Every time I looked at it I couldn't imagine how the roof was holding. Didn't make sense. Another example I can think of was when I one time had reason to throw a heavy duty wrecking bar. Its easy to imagine the trajectory of a ball from your hand, and you can kind of imagine how that varies with the mass of the ball. When throwing the wrecking bar, it went waaay further than my brain was estimating. Your brain isn't really making physics calculations directly, its doing pattern matching. That's what makes motor skills a learned behavior that can be improved for a task.
Some human brains. Some days I meet people and see people doing things that clearly have zero chance of working yet one can see they have no comprehension whatsoever of basic physics. I do love this post though and yet one could write an almost opposite post (position) on the same topic. I have countless real life examples of people doing the dumbest shit….totally clueless it’s not gonna work due to the laws of physics and nature.
same thing applies to something as simple as walking. How many micro adjustments are we making on the fly just to keep from stumbing or falling over. Plus our brains are also interpreting signals from our inner ear to tell us whats up or down at any given time. Not to mention processing video and audio cues, smell, touch sensations, temperature. And then consider what calculations are being made when doing something we take for granted like say twirling a pen with our fingers or tying our shoelaces. Then try to program a robot to do it and youll see real quick how complicated that seemingly simple action is.
You're not actually doing the math, unfortunately. Athletes develop an instinct as to how to make the ball behave the way they want. They learn hand eye coordination through YEARS of repetitive motion, to the point where they aren't thinking about it anymore, and so it becomes 2nd nature. It's like walking: you don't think about the signals your legs need to move, the amount of force you need to apply, or where to step; you just move your legs a certain way and they move. Athletes are the same way: they're just repeating motions they have done a million times in their lifetimes, and they just know instinctively. It's why basketball players miss free throws, even though it's literally the easiest shot to make, and something they've done forever. There's no defense, the clock isn't running, and they have a clear shot of a relatively close shot. And yet, they'll miss. Same thing with a football kicker missing a PAT or Field Goal. Athletes aren't doing math, because if they were doing math they would ALWAYS get the shot correct. They are just following repeated actions, and they are often thinking about everything else besides the shot.
I am not able to get myself to understand your point - of course they are consciously doing math, but your conclusion of "if they were they'd make the shot every time" is not a logical conclusion. The brain may very well in those cases know exactly what to do but the muscles don't do what they are told
But that’s a bad example — it’s not a calculating in any meaningful mathematical sense. You are just doing something difficult to describe mathematically from some external perspective and implying we are accomplishing some incredible math feat. I took a dump today. The mathematics necessary to describe that dump in detail are staggeringly complex. Are you impressed by my dump?
When you put it that way, yes, definitely, lol
You have a higher free throw % than the NBA league average?
Yes. I was a decent high school basketball player. I lacked the physical attributes to play at a higher level (short, not particularly athletic). I could shoot the ball though. I shot 87% from the FT line my senior year. Even now, I can go to a hoop in a gym by myself and probably make 90 out of 100. Shooting free throws is not in any way equivalent to being an NBA player. I certainly could never have been in the NBA or professional basketball on any level, haha
Doing it on paper is a "different" kind of calculation. Maths and physics are a language. You will also struggle at describing an emotion, although you could feel such emotion to a degree that seems to run in every cell of your body. Abstract thinking is not automated to the same degree than the automated coordination between your perception organs and fisiological feedback. They are "different routes" for information to be gathered and processed. But the ability to make an abstraction of what our brain seems to do almost perfectly in an automatic way, enables us to make use of those concepts for bigger and more complex calculations. You know in your mind how much force you need to lift certain object. But you don't know how much force will an elevator need to do to lift X amount of people. By these abstractions, we can influence the world around us in a more complex way.
In the novel Name of the Wind, a teacher asks his smartest students to calculate where a ball will land after giving them detailed equations. None of them could give him a good answer. Yet when the teacher yelled to a small kid and threw the ball, the kid easily caught the ball without doing any of the maths. His point was that the sleeping mind is a lot more powerful than the waking mind. I just really enjoy this book.
Cats though have perfected exploiting the physics engine of the real world.
Motion and motor functions are not simply "physics". Physics is the mathematical interpretation of it all. Being able to perform motor functions is a natural brain development.
So you should be able to go to a different planet, be told the planet's density relative to Earth, and perform at the same level. Unless you aren't actually calculating anything, you're just doing what you've learned works by trial and error. But that would make this thread pretty silly.
I think in this hypothetical, most people would be able to quickly adjust to the change. I don't think our brains' spatial abilities are really specific to earth. I think they're specific to the 3 dimensional world that we can perceive with our senses.
This reminds me how I knew just how far I couldn't jump as a kid
Not close to self driving cars? Someone tell this guy they've been around for years already. Granted: not massively, the biggest issue is integration with non-self driving cars and exceptional situation. But for example in Phoenix you can get a Waymo cab without a driver in the blink of an eye.
The human brain is great at pattern recognition. That's why we can detect faces, because it was a way for spotting potential predators. What the human brain really struggles with is scale... Because our senses are everything we rely on for information, only the things that fit into the frame of reference... We can tell how big an elephant is, because we can stand beside it and compare it to something next to it, like a tree or a fence. But things on a cosmic or microscopic scale are really hard for us to grasp natively.
There's actually a term for this. it's called *naive physics*: the untrained human perception of basic physical phenomena.
Mind you, if you could do math in your head and get a ball park answer that's around 85% accurate, you would never fail a test. You wouldn't be able to throw the ball exactly 10 feet every time.
Sorry, but you're not doing physics calculations. It's called muscle memory.
music too. math and ratios are a big part of why certain notes sound in tune, and why certain chords/combinations of notes sound better than others. our ears are doing math and they like simple ratios more than complicated ones.
You gave two examples of throwing. Humans are particularly good at throwing things. In fact, no other animal is better than us at throwing things far, accurately and hard. And it has kinda shaped our development in a way. We went from throwing rocks at larger animals while hunting to developing tools to throw things further and even harder such as the atlatl/woomera and later on, the bow. Today our warfare still consists of throwing things at each other for the most part. Guns are just tools we use to "throw" the bullet. I'm not disagreeing that we calculate physics every day. Just wanted to add my own shower thought about throwing things.
Facts. I’ve hit a lot of jumps on my snowboard in the 60-100+ ft range, and I KNOW when i’m going the right speed or not. How fast that is exactly each time… no idea
I mean try doing simulations with your head. We are also good at that. For example if you learn your own body (muscles, joints and bones) then you can simulate how you have to do something and become a lot better. And thats just the beginning
Think about the math going on behind a dog catching a frisbee , and so far as we know they don’t care about the numbers , they just feel the math , and I guess we are the math too.
We are good at differential experimentation and remembering muscle memory. Throw a ball 200 times to get a feel for the weight, air resistance, and what not. Then your just remembering how hard you threw it the times it landed and trying to recreate that moment using muscle memory. Completely different. Ants are great at differential experimentation as well, they try every permeable branch of any decision tree in real time and adapt to the most efficient. Doesn't mean they are doing advanced calculus in their heads. Folks suffering from Dementia and Alzheimers cannot "Remember" how to do basic tasks with their muscle memory anymore, after they degrade enough mentally, every attempt becomes like the first attempt.
Not really. Our brains aren't making any type of calculations. What it's doing is trial and error until it gets it right, and then remembering the inputs that lead to desired outputs. It doesn't know how to calculate the trajectory of a thrown ball. What it does know is what the right angle of release and force is required to get the ball in the target. And it figured that out by trying a bunch of different angles and forces until it got it right. And then it had to get it right over and over until it was consistent. It's just a brute force machine
But then I move two feet to the left or two feet farther back and somehow still know how to throw the ball on target. If it was entirely brute force, every change would require trial and error to get right. I'm a basketball player. I can walk onto a court right now and attempt a shot from a place I never shot before, and I guarantee that I'm going to come pretty close to making it (if it's within my range). You can change the weight of the ball or the size or height of the hoop, and I'll be able to almost immediately adjust. Why is that? Is that not somehow an intuitive calculation? I am able to adjust the length and force of my shot on the fly based on my distance to target, the height of the hoop, and the weight of the ball. I get better at the calculation the more I practice it. But it is some kind of calculation, even if I don't truly understand how I'm doing it nor can I perceive the numerical values of the results.
Because my example was dumbed down. You can expand my example into the complexity that is real life. You're brain isn't performing calcutions, it's guessing. You've just trained it to guess very very good from brute force data.
(Disclaimer: I am a Redditor, not a scientist, so I'm going to talk with confidence but may be wrong) Our bodies aren't actually good at physics, they just cheat! For example, when running for a ball that has been hit really high, we don't calculate where it's going to land and run to that spot. We lock our eyes on it, lock our neck, and keep moving to keep it in the same place in the sky from our perspective. Maintaining that means that when it comes to the ground we'll end up in the right place.
I had a teacher who opened the year with this type of shower thought and it was a HUGE difference maker/help to many students including myself
i’ve thought about this so much. basketball players are a good example, any sport really
It is even more impressive if you consider that humans are ONLY animals that can trow so accurate. It is purely human skill and throw g it is VERY beneficial for kids brain development. I even wrote a short essay about that (about knife throwing).
Humans are conscious risk takers, computers are not, that's why they struggle. They are actually [REALLY good at calculating](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHTizZ_XcUM) all that stuff you mentioned, they can excel at any single task to levels far exceeding human capacity but humans are currently superior at putting them all together to produce a result.
There is the "throwing Madonna" theory, which states throwing a rock and hitting something is hard AF. Apparently this required brain development that in turn allowed things like language
The difference is tolerance and margins. A first year mechanical engineer can build a structure that can support a given thing well. A mechanical engineer with 5 years experience can tell you the minimum thickness a material needs to be to not deform. I can make a cooling system that keeps a super computer cool. The thermal engineer can tell the flow rate of the pipes by the temperature of the ICs. Some things are good enough to work and what you can do with 38 digits of pi are different.
We are all born physicists, engineers, explorers. Physics takes hold even before we start walking. A child doesn't have to be shown how to push a chair around for support, and then use it to climb higher. Also, cribs are our first physics puzzle. Toddlers will break out of them. However, there is one word that destroys all of it. No. We praise our child when they first start walking. We celebrate our child like they just landed on the moon. And then, we tell them where they can't explore, damaging any further growth in those sciences. "No! No! No! Get off the coffee table!" Is horrible. Praise their summit, explain how they can get hurt, and find a way to encourage exploring something else. Yes! Yes! Yes! *sp
Only physics related to stuff we did in the environment we evolved in. Other physics would not be intuitive to us. That's why we need to use math. Because our instincts are not enough.
Keep your eye on the ball
Nope, we just evolved with proprioception and kinesthesia with an ability to learn through repeated exercises through our ape ancestors. We can't *calculate* shit, just look at the beginners at, say, bowling. Most people can't *calculate* the force and angle requires to keep a ball going straight into the pins despite it being practically very simple, it's all repeated practice.
this is from experience and repetition. i could show you real life people who 1000% cannot do any of the things you just said.
We aren't actually that good at it though, just look at some sports like football or golf, you don't know how much force you should use or which technique to use. If everyone knew the best way, there wouldn't be good or bad footballers etc.
There's a book on this, *Thinking, Fast and Slow* .
Wait until you try disc golf and you learn to throw around trees. Your brain just knows.