a fun fact
every time you dart your eyes around, not only does your brain automatically erase the data of "that smeared blur i saw for a moment", it also takes what you see when your eyes stop moving and retroactively inserts it as a memory for that moment. that's why if you look at your watch, it seems to take longer for the second hand to tick the first time
human senses are garbage
if you set up a computer program to listen for a keystroke, delay for a short amount of time, and then flash the screen, a human that presses the keys will eventually stop perceiving that delay
then if you remove the delay, the human will believe that the computer is anticipating their keystrokes
human senses are garbage
both of your eyes have a blind spot. each of them covers for the other one
close one eye? now your brain is just guessing
ugh. humans.
@monorail my brain's been just guessing since i hit puberty tbh
a literal cat 
@monorail@glaceon.social this is a plot point (sort of) in my book lol
sort of spoilers for a book i'm writing
@monorail@glaceon.social nerd comes up with a hypothesis for how dragons make themselves invisible, comes up with one based on that fact, determines that this implies there must be a maximum field of view they can affect and the solution for this is to see them Up Close
@monorail Fun Fact: It's possible to see the blind spot if you force your eyeball to stay still for a few minutes.
@monorail We very technically live slightly in the past and that's fucking batshit
@monorail bold of you to suggest that this brain is ever not doing that tbh
@monorail I learnes that the eye also is never standing really still because of that.
Always noving around a bit to get a voew of that blind spot - and then I think the brain inserts it the same way as when you're consiously move your eyes somewhere.
@monorail Imagine one of those, like, “writer’s text editor” that’s marketed as bringing focus and helping you get your ideas out without a lot of frills that had that keystroke delay thing built in and cut it off after being the in-focus app for… however long.
@monorail Like… It gains focus and keystroke delay is 0. The delay slowly ramps so that you don’t notice, but resets as soon as you switch focus or if you haven’t typed for, say, 10 minutes. After the delay gets to whatever level matters, it sits there for a bit so the human is acclimated, then cuts it off.
@monorail So that the experience feels like you start typing and if you stay in it the editor starts anticipating your thoughts and it’s all so effortless.
I want to use this as an experiment. I want to experience this thing.
@monorail Whooaa. Brains are /cool./
@IceWolf yes but it's also unnerving how often they lie
@monorail this is actually accounting for far away humans yelling, for instance
I agree the for most part but sound is quite slow so it totally makes sense for the human brain to sync up latent sound with visual information.
If someone is playing an instrument through an amplifier (like a guitar) the latency caused from distance between the person and the amplifier can actually be quite relevant at the scale of time it takes to play with good rhythm.
When it comes to syncing up a number of visual events with associated audio this is a pretty powerful utility!
@Alonealastalovedalongthe it is but it's just one more way the human brain is always lying about everything
Yuh.
The one that blows me away is the massive mismatch between how much longer you believe you will be emotionally affected by things vs how long things typically emotionally affect you. (Affective forecasting I think its called?)
Its something I am totally aware of but still can't convince myself deep down that its true.
@monorail wish this was true for my brain :(
@monorail citation needed
@monorail I'm not sure brains fix that first one
@monorail yea that fucks me up
@monorail garbage..... *AND* amazing...
Joking
Luckily that doesn't happen to me. What I see is unambiguously true. But yeah, for everyone else it sucks
@monorail "look at your watch's hands"
...
*turns to dust*
@monorail also it's a shame the second hand on my watch just slides along then, it has nothing to retcon so all I see is a fluid moving second hand
@monorail here's a fun experiment with this phenomenon (known as saccadic masking)
go in front of a mirror, look at one eye, then look at your other eye. you'll never see your eyes moving.
but if you try this using a phone's front camera as a mirror, the extra delay means that you *can* see your eyes moving, since by the time your phone has processed the image and is displaying it back to you, your eyes have finished moving and the masking has stopped
if you watch a video where the sound is slightly delayed behind the picture, your brain will basically fix it in post. if you watch a video where the picture is slightly delayed behind the sound, your brain will freak the fuck out