Humans time blinks so they don't miss information | Hacker News Reader

Humans time blinks so they don't miss information

telegraph.co.uk

27 pointsnreece16 comments

This is pretty well known already: in Kendo, students are taught to monitor our opponent and attack when he blinks. Likewise, you need to be aware of your own blink and be prepared to defend yourself when you do.

That doesn't really sound like great advice. Human reaction time is about 200ms (http://getyourwebsitehere.com/jswb/rttest01.html if you wish to verify this for yourself), whereas the blink duration is 100 to 150 ms. By the time you reacted the blink would be over.

If you see him blink and react, then he only has 50 ms to react to your attack, which you just stated is not enough time.

Yes, it would be advantageous to begin your attack during an opponent's blink. However, the blink is faster than your reaction time. If you see him blink and react, his blink is over before you react. His eyes are open when your attack begins.

You react when you think he is going to blink, then.

I wonder why evolution hasn't made it possible to blink with each eye separately, so that no information is lost.

Now that is really an interesting question.

I wonder if blinking with one eye would be disruptive to the sterovision that is going on. An interesting test would be to train oneself to blink one eye at a time.

I think you answered yourself: stereovision support. The mental context-switch needed to go from stereo to mono to stereo again is probably more expensive than just going from stereo to nothing and back to stereo. I just tried it and closing one eye at a time made me sorta dizy.

(disclaimer: not a trained eyetician ;-)

and what if something interesting happens in the line of sight only visible to the eye you just blinked with?

if you blink with both eyes, you are sure you missed something, if you only blink with one at the time, you will never know if you missed something.

(and besides only blinking with one eye at the time would look kinda silly :)

Dr Tamami Nakano should monitor people playing Guitar Hero, and watch how infrequently they blink their eyes.

My first thought was: well of course, this is just like timing your 'reloads' in various shooter games (where you point offscreen and fire to reload).

It always amazes me how _we_ control our body for the most part, and yet so much of it remains a mystery.

I know, right? Every time I read something new about the human body, I'm struck with this thought like, "Wow, I'm really awesome and I never knew it."

Stories like this make me think of Haldane quote:

"I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

You've been blinking all your life, I'd think it obvious that on a subconscious level you would learn to time those blinks to come at the most opportune times.

It was hard to read the article, as I concentrated so hard on my own blinking.

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