> Our eyes suck. Our attention spans suck. Our reaction times suck. To paraphrase my one of my favorite xkcds, “There is nothing in our evolution that could have prepared us for driving heavy boxes at high speeds”.
I disagree. Our brains have massive plasticity, even into adulthood, and can quite literally rewire themselves for how they're being used.
The first time you really get on the throttle on a sportbike, the effect is almost universally a "Woooooaoaaaaaaah!" sort of thing - the universe around you "goes plaid," and it feels like the hand of God has grabbed the horizon and yanked it to you. Hard. And then you get used to it, and people who ride powerful motorcycles or race them are perfectly capable of doing so for long periods of time, at high concentration. Go watch some clips of a motorcycle race, if you haven't. That's not born, that's learned.
Same goes for driving cars, for flying planes at Mach 2, for... really everything humans do. I wasn't born knowing how to use a keyboard, but I've been using one so long that I don't even think about it anymore.
The human brain is insanely adaptable, which is how it works well in all these cases.
And I'll also disagree that our eyes suck. The human visual processing system is damned good at handling a 3D world. It's got a few quirks, but overall? It's properly impressive.
I disagree. Our brains have massive plasticity, even into adulthood, and can quite literally rewire themselves for how they're being used.
The first time you really get on the throttle on a sportbike, the effect is almost universally a "Woooooaoaaaaaaah!" sort of thing - the universe around you "goes plaid," and it feels like the hand of God has grabbed the horizon and yanked it to you. Hard. And then you get used to it, and people who ride powerful motorcycles or race them are perfectly capable of doing so for long periods of time, at high concentration. Go watch some clips of a motorcycle race, if you haven't. That's not born, that's learned.
Same goes for driving cars, for flying planes at Mach 2, for... really everything humans do. I wasn't born knowing how to use a keyboard, but I've been using one so long that I don't even think about it anymore.
The human brain is insanely adaptable, which is how it works well in all these cases.
And I'll also disagree that our eyes suck. The human visual processing system is damned good at handling a 3D world. It's got a few quirks, but overall? It's properly impressive.