What's the simplest thing humans are too dumb to grasp?

You ever see a dog that’s got its leash tangled the long way round a table leg, and it just cannot grasp what the problem is or how to fix it? It can see all the components laid out in front of it, but it’s never going to make the connection.

Obviously some dog breeds are smarter than others, ditto individual dogs - but you get the concept.

Is there an equivalent for humans? What ridiculously simple concept would have aliens facetentacling as they see us stumble around and utterly fail to reason about it?

Smokeydope, (edited )
@Smokeydope@lemmy.world avatar

Reality is equal part abstraction and physicality, energy and information are two sides to a coin we are currently unable to percieve in full. Also, there are some aspects to reality that will never be able to be understood through the lens of science or math, due to their need for falsifyable truths within a working model. Some truths cannot be proven, and some non-physical aspects of reality cannot be directly observed through lenses or interacted with sensors or broken down into particles. The moment we start examining conciousness and psychadelics seriously as a new avenue of understanding reality our collective understanding of the universe in its totality will skyrocket.

Tedesche,

You wear diamond-encrusted glasses, don’t you?

Smokeydope, (edited )
@Smokeydope@lemmy.world avatar

Not sure what or who you are referencing with that, I wish though lol

Tedesche,

…cnn.com/…/121021051717-united-nations-every-woma…

ink,

Earth is the only planet that we’re adapted to live on. Nowhere else will be as forgiving of our mistakes.

magnetosphere,
@magnetosphere@kbin.social avatar

I suspect that colonizing Mars (or wherever else) will turn out to be much more than just an engineering problem. If we get things like food, water, atmosphere, and even gravity right, I think we’ll still find an endless list of requirements that we didn’t know were requirements… and some mystery problems that don’t seem to have any cause at all. Those problems will be because of factors we never thought of, or don’t even know how to detect.

There could also be surpluses/deficiencies in our diet or environment that will take years (or perhaps generations) to show up. Again, that would be because of unanticipated, and maybe unsolvable, problems.

fsxylo, (edited )

We for sure will need to exercise, because low gravity turns our muscles into mush.

tocopherol,
@tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I could still see people trying to make it work for generations for some reason, many early colonists in the West died before stable states could be founded.

PrinceWith999Enemies,

I remember sitting in on a briefing from the Biosphere folks when they reached out for collaborating institutions. One of the things that stuck with me was that they discovered that trees that were not subject to wind failed to develop a healthy trunk and tended to fall over and die. That’s not something that the researchers had even thought of.

I suspect that there’s going to be a lot of that.

I_Fart_Glitter,

Can I ask what year that was? We’ve known that greenhoused cuttings need an oscillating fan in order be able to hold themselves upright once they start to gain height for the 30 years that I’ve been growing that way. It’s like a little work out for them.

PrinceWith999Enemies,

It would have been something like 2005 or so. It may have been a known fact at the time, but they mentioned specifically that they were caught by surprise by the phenomenon. I didn’t fault them for it - the whole project was kind of a mess. I’m a biologist and I wasn’t aware of that, so it wouldn’t have occurred to me, either.

That’s weird though. You’d think they would have had multiple botanists on the design team who could have pointed that out.

LesserAbe,

Also there’s that documentary where the group that organized it was kind of cult adjacent. They weren’t scientists first. Still very interesting and impressive they did what they did.

I_Fart_Glitter,

I’m sure it was just that no one realized it would scale to trees, since that hadn’t been done before. As far as I know you don’t have to do anything special in that regard with small seed-grown plants in a green house, only cuttings that root from stems, and so have weaker roots at first and stalks that were previously branches. I’m sorry I sounded critical, I was just curious.

magnetosphere, (edited )
@magnetosphere@kbin.social avatar

Interesting! Plus, that’s exactly the sort of weird, unanticipated thing I’m talking about. How do you plan for everything? You can’t.

The first human colonists (who are just ordinary people) won’t be the rich. They’ll be desperate people who are sold a dream of the future and treated as human lab rats.

Wes_Dev,

Holy shit, you’re right.

We’re playing permadeath on the easiest level, and failing.

TheInsane42,
@TheInsane42@lemmy.world avatar

Humans totally ignore that they are part of nature. Most think that reduced biodiversity won’t include them.

kalkulat,
@kalkulat@lemmy.world avatar

Most of us also ignore that ‘the world’ is a model in our heads that we’ve created with our senses. Some may make better models than others. But what does ‘better’ mean? Stubbing your toe less, getting sick less? Sherlock Holmes?

Also ‘the world’ is very complex and constantly changing. You’re either revising that model or, at some point, you’re living in the past.

Bondrewd, (edited )

I kind of feel the opposite. Most people I know is wary of “destroying nature”.

I think meh. It is just getting streamlined. We are getting for the next phase of human civilization. We are more like an organism with white blood cells and well separated and controlled compartments of bacteria filled sacks. It is bound to get more homogenous.

Higher civilization means the meaning of biodiversity will change domains.

Ilovethebomb,

In a lot of ways we aren’t though. The vast majority of people spend the vast majority of their time in a built environment of some type.

Even when we’re in the “outdoors”, most of us spend most of our time on manmade tracks or paths.

We engage with nature on our terms in a way that is very unique.

bluGill, (edited )

Deer mostly travel on trails they built themselves. They also change their environment greatly (the act of eating thins the trees)

Ilovethebomb,

They don’t drop off tonnes of gravel by helicopter to build a walking track to somewhere though.

bluGill,

That is a difference in degree though.

tal, (edited )
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paradoxes

List of things that, at least to some people, don’t work they way they’d expect.

I think that the Monty Haul problem is a good example on there.

Deceptichum,
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

Intentionally blank page: Many documents contain pages on which the text "This page intentionally left blank" is printed, thereby making the page not blank

Thats not a paradox. The pages are blank in terms of the topic of the book, and the note is to inform you that it’s not a mistake.

tal,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

It’s not particularly confusing, but there are a whole class of paradoxes that rely on the same mechanism – the truth of a statement is being altered by the existence of the statement, because it is self-referential in some way.

I think that the Berry paradox is the first one of these that I ran into, and it’s a little more confusing to most, I think.

Deceptichum,
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

See I’m really dumb, but how is that a paradox?

It just sounds like some guy said a false claim, which was proven to be false by its own wording, and thus because it’s false it’s a paradox?

I_Has_A_Hat,

Probability is a big one for me that I can’t wrap my head around because the rules just don’t seem to line up with reality. Like, if I roll a die 10 times and get 6 all 10 times, what is the probability of me rolling 6 again the next roll? It’s 1 in 6. But that’s insane. I just rolled 6 10 times in a row. That’s so wildly unlikely, it feels wrong that the odds I’d roll 6 again are only 1 in 6.

bluGill,

You have good reason to suspect those dice are not fair.

angelsomething,

Statistics and large numbers.

MacNCheezus,
@MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

I studied statistics and the Law of Large Numbers is honestly mind boggling. I mean, I understand that it’s true and I’ve studied the proof, but it’s still enormously counterintuitive. It’s not surprising that anyone who isn’t familiar with it (which is the vast majority of people) to have no understanding of this phenomenon at all.

bluGill,

Unintended consequences. People like to propose grand schemes that will "fix everything", but refuse to accept that there are downsides to that grand scheme.

MacNCheezus,
@MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

Oh boy, that’s going to offend all the communists.

anti,

In the same vein, refusing to consider something that will have a small positive effect, or a partial solution, because it won’t fix everything.

intensely_human,

The past and the future do not exist

crawancon,

this one slowed my roll a bit

shandrakor,

Welcome to the eternal now! You’ve been here all along!

benni,

When people want to enter a bus, especially a crowded one, it makes a lot more sense to wait for the people who want to get out of the bus to leave first.

This one is so baffling to me, it’s really changed my view of how stupid some people really are. What do they even expect, that the other passengers magically disappear? It’s really not an abstract problem if the other passengers are trying to leave right in front of you. Trying to enter a bus is also not a rare situation, so you’d expect people to understand this at least after the first few times. Unbelievable.

rosymind,

Same with elevators!

v81,

Worst with trains

Skanky,

Or getting baggage from the baggage claim at the airport

Fly4aShyGuy,
@Fly4aShyGuy@lemmy.one avatar

This one so much. How can people not realize if everyone stood back in a larger halo around the carousel, it would be so easy for everyone to get their bag when it’s up. I usually stand back at a distance, and if people have it completely blocked standing right next to it I grab right around them getting uncomfortably in their personal space.

ZosoRocks3,

Things that take place over too long a period of time. Like heart disease, injustice, climate change, diabetes, addiction etc. We’re evolved to prioritise short term pleasure over long term benefits, hence that cigarette, drink, line, burger is so difficult to say no to.

teichflamme,

I think uncertainty plays a big role here.

You could bump a line and smoke a pack a day and get to 90.

You could do nothing harmful and die at 30.

Even if you make it to 90 avoiding lots of fun, was it worth it or would you rather trade 20 years for more fun?

At the end of the day it is a matter of personal risk tolerance towards an impossible to quantify risk.

otter,

As someone who treated their 20s like that, I strongly suggest at least dabbling in restraint along the way. Hell, shibari counts.

psion1369,

Gambling has been mentioned already, but I think it’s also the statistics of gambling that gets lost on people. If something has a 1 in 30 chance of a payout, it doesn’t mean that in 30 tries there will be at least one payout, it means that there is a thirty percent (I don’t know the percentage accuracy right now) chance of that single attempt to payout. When I worked in a liquor store and sold scratch off tickets, people would look at the odds on the back and buy so many thinking this way.

deo,

Yup. There’s no number of scratchers you can buy that gives you a 100% chance of winning. Sure, your chances go up the more you buy, but it never reaches 100%.

The formula is: 1 - (1-p)^N where p is the chance of winning and N is the number of scratchers you buy. Basically, you have to NOT win for N scratchers, so we multiply (since this is an AND condition, ie: you must lose scratcher A and scratcher B and scratcher C, etc) the chance of not winning (1-p) by itself for the number of scratchers bought. That’s the overall chance of not winning, so we subtract that from 1 to get the chance of winning. You could instead use the chance of winning directly, but the formula is much longer (until you simplify the equation, which would give you the same answer as above) since you’d need to add (in this case we are using OR conditions) the chances of winning 1 scratcher or 2 scratchers or 3 scratchers, etc.

1 in 30 is a 3.33% chance of winning (a 96.67% chance of not winning, for those still following along). If you buy 30 scratchers, your chance of winning is only 63.83%. For 300, it’s 99.9962%. The chance will never reach 100% because you have a number between 0 and 1 raised to the power of a positive number in the formula. The chance of winning at least 1 of N scratchers can only be 100% if the chance of winning a single scratcher is already 100%, and they don’t sell those.

However! There are rules dictating the distribution of winning scratchers in a roll. It’s obviously not 1 every 30 exactly, but it’s also not perfectly random (which could lead to long strings of losing scratchers or long strings of winning scratchers). That’s why sometimes you’ll have to wait in line behind someone while they make the gas station attendant open a whole new roll because they want to buy 100 contiguous scratchers and there were only 99 left in the old roll.

Turns out, humans don’t think true randomness “feels” random. There’s actually a game design trick where you tell the player odds that are lower than reality because the true odds “feel” lower than the reported number. Pokemon did not use this trick, so Hyper Beam (reported accuracy of 90%) feels unfair, since you remember more strongly all the times it missed when you really, really needed it to hit vs. all the times it hit.

ryathal,

If you buy all the scratchers you will win, you probably wouldn’t net a positive amount, but you would win.

otter,

Ah, yes, bask in the "technically correct"ness. 🤌🏼

Fedizen,

1 in 30 payout would be like ~3%

blackstampede, (edited )

Scope.

Imagine we both live in the US. I show you an article about an immigrant raping someone, and you say something like “well that’s just one guy.” I show you another, and another, and another. I show you a thousand. I show you ten thousand. Either you eventually admit that immigrants are predominantly rapists, or you look increasingly, ridiculously, obviously, wrong. And stubborn. And irrational.

But you are not wrong. I am wrong.

Because there are 331 million people in the United States, I can find an inexhaustible supply of immigrant-rapist stories.

Now take that inability to grasp large distances, large quantities, long periods of time, and apply it to everything. This is why young earth creationists exist- because a billion years is literally unimaginable. This is why people play the lottery- because you’re saying there’s a chance, right? This is why we don’t react emotionally upon hearing of a genocide, or learning that 70 billion animals are slaughtered each year for meat.

We are not equipped to function at the scale that we are currently working at, as a species. We have been haphazardly constructed by evolutionary pressures to operate in small bands and villages, and we do not have the appropriate intuitions for any scope larger than that.

AnarchistArtificer,

To be fair, in many cases, the observable behaviour of things is different at scale. A single water molecule has different properties to a cup of water, in much the same way that a high density crowd of people (greater than 4 people per square meter) starts to behave as a fluid.

I study biochemistry and I’ll never stop finding it neat how when you get down to the teensy tiny level, all the rules change. That’s basically what quantum physics is, a different ruleset which is always “true”, so to speak, but it’s only relevant when you’re at the nano scale

I suppose what I’m saying is that I agree with you, that fathoming scope is difficult, but I’m suggesting that this is a property of the world inherently getting being a bit fucky at different scales, rather than a problem with human perception.

otter,

Great to know that “fucky” is an officially accepted sciency term.

blackstampede,

In some cases that’s probably true. I’m not sure it applies to things like war, time, etc.

GnomeKat,
@GnomeKat@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Emergence is a hell of a thing

middlemanSI,

turn signals

ZoopZeZoop,

Heavy groceries do not go on top of eggs, fruit, etc. Cold groceries together. Dry groceries together. If there’s a bunch of bags inside of a bag, use those before the bag that’s holding the other bags.

Wtf, Publix baggers? I get you don’t get paid 6-digit salaries, but this is not heart surgery.

JubilantJaguar,

Obviously some dog breeds are smarter than others

“Obviously”, hmm? The balance of expert opinion is in fact that dog breeds do not vary in intelligence. Which makes sense given that dog populations have significantly fewer millennia of genetic divergence than human populations, and these days nobody much claims that some human breeds are smarter than others.

Falling into your own trap!

But otherwise a decent question.

Anticorp,

thesmartcanine.com/…/smartest-dog-breeds-list/

I_Has_A_Hat,

Are you trying to claim that an average Shih Tzu and an average Border Collie have the same intelligence?

Anticorp,

They clearly don’t, and this has been evaluated scientifically by leading dog psychologists and is well documented. Idk what OP is on about.

thesmartcanine.com/…/smartest-dog-breeds-list/

JubilantJaguar,

You sound very certain that they are. Perhaps you should be the one who provides evidence?

As I understand it, in dogs most differences are between individuals, like in any other species. What can be said about breeds is that differences concern the application of their intelligence rather than how bluntly “smart” they are. For instance, labradors are a bit better at understanding social cues, and collies at acting on certain commands.

A recent study went into this. One point it made:

We did not find breed differences in tasks measuring logical reasoning or short-term memory

This makes sense. Dogs were domesticated more recently than the human lineage split between, say Aboriginal Australians and southern Africans. Would you be happy about making IQ statements for that case? If not, why exactly would it be different?

Intelligence is a pretty ill-defined measure, verging on pseudo-science in lots of case. Personally I think it is all but useless and that we would be better talking about easily measurable traits instead.

deo, (edited )

Yeah, i think working dogs and highly social breeds seem smarter, but that’s just because they have been trained and/or bred for aptitude in tasks we humans deem important. If my metrics of intelligence included being an annoying little shit, I’d think chihuahuas were the smartest breed.

lvxferre, (edited )
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

Infinity. We’re simply too dumb to grasp it. Example:


<span style="color:#323232;">3*(1/3) = 3/3 = 1
</span><span style="color:#323232;">3*(1/3) = 3*(0.333...) = 0.999...
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0.999... = 1
</span>

That “…” means “it continues to the infinite”. And yet when you show this reasoning to people, they keep “looking” for the last 9, to claim that 0.999… is not the exact same as 1.

And that applies to all humans. You might counter it rationally, you might train yourself to recognise “it’s infinite, so theoretically it’ll behave in a certain way”, but you don’t grasp it. I don’t, either.

Deceptichum,
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

Why would it be the same as 1, wouldn’t it always be 0.9 unless you round up at some point.

Darkaga,

There's lots of proofs for this but this is the simplest one.

.333... = 1/3
.333... • 3 = .999...
1/3 • 3 = 1
Therefore .999... = 1

Deceptichum, (edited )
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

Why is .333 being treated the same as a third?

You could have .3 of 2.7 and that wouldn’t be a third. So I don’t see why .3 times 3 would be anything other than 0.9?

LostXOR,

0.333... represents 0.3 repeating, which has an infinite number of 3s and is exactly equal to 1/3.

HeartyBeast,
@HeartyBeast@kbin.social avatar

I don't agree that they are the same.

It's just that the difference is infinitely small

magic_lobster_party,

The difference is zero, so they’re equal.

HeartyBeast,
@HeartyBeast@kbin.social avatar

Well, you state that as a fact, but I’m going to say that the difference is infinitely small, so they are equal

Hillock,

In this case you literally divide 1 by 3. And that's 0.3333 . And if you multiply 1/3 by 3 you get 1 and if you multiply 0.3333 by 3 you get 0.9999. So these two are the same.

Darkaga,

.333... Not .333

The "..." Here represents an infinitely repeating number.

In this context 1/3 = .333...

Deceptichum, (edited )
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

Just pretend I added dots. But that still doesn’t change anything?

Imagine a pizza, I can divide that pizza into halves, thirds, quarters, etc. because conceptually they represent splitting a defined thing into chunks that are the sum of its whole. 1/3 can exist in this world of finites.

0.333… is unending. I can’t have 0.333… of a pizza, because 0.333… is a number and that makes as much sense as saying I’ll have 2.8 pizza. Do I mean 2.8 times a pizza, 2.8% of one? Etc.

Darkaga,

1/3 being equal to .333... Is incredibly basic fractional math.

Think about it this way. What is the value of 1 split into thirds expressed as a decimal?

It can't be .3 because 3 of those is only equal to .9
It also can't be .34 because three of those would be equal to 1.2

This is actually an artifact of using a base 10 number system. For instance if we instead tried representing the fraction 1/3 using base 12 we actually get 1/3=4 (subscript 12 which I can't do on my phone)

Now there are proofs you can find relating to 1/3 being equal to .333... But generally the more simplistic the problem, the more complex the proof is. You might have trouble understand them if you haven't done some advanced work in number theory.

Deceptichum, (edited )
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

I get its basic shit that’s over my head. I’m just trying to understands

If the only reason is because 1/3 of 1 = 0.9, than id say the problem is with the question not the answer? Seems like 1 cannot be divided without some magical remainder amount existing

If I have 100 dogs, and I split them into thirds I’ve got 3 lots of 33 dogs and 1 dog left over. So the issue is with my original idea of splitting the dogs into thirds, because clearly I haven’t got 100% in 3 lots because 1 of them is by itself.

Likewise would 0.888… be .9? If we assume that magical remainder number ticks you up the next number wouldn’t that also hold true here as well?

And if 0.8 is the same as 0.888888888…, than why wouldn’t we say 0.7 equals 0.9, etc?

lvxferre, (edited )
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

I get its basic shit that’s over my head.

It’s over the head of everyone. That’s why I shared it here.

Likewise would 0.888… be .9?

No, but 0.899… = 0.9. This only applies to the repeating sequences of the last digit of your base. We’re using base 10 so it got to be 9.

If I have 100 dogs, and I split them into thirds I’ve got 3 lots of 33 dogs and 1 dog left over. So the issue is with my original idea of splitting the dogs into thirds, because clearly I haven’t got 100% in 3 lots because 1 of them is by itself.

Then you split the leftover dog into 10 parts. Why 10? Because you use base 10. Three of those parts go to each lot of dogs… and you still have 1/10 dog left.

Then you do it again. And you have 1/100 dog left. And again, and again, infinitely.

If you take that “infinitely” into account, then you can say that each lot of dogs has exactly one third of the original amount.

ivanafterall,
@ivanafterall@kbin.social avatar

Is there a number system that's not base 10 that would be a "more perfect" representation or that would be better able/more inherently able to capture infinities? Is my question complete nonsense?

bluGill,

Different bases would have different things they cannot represent as a decimal, but no matter what base you can find something that isn't there.

For real world use base 12 is much nicer than base 10. However it isn't perfect. Circles are 360 degrees because base 360 is even nicer yet, but probably too hard to teach multiplication tables.

exscape, (edited )
@exscape@kbin.social avatar

No, because that "some point" will never happen. There is no last nine to round up, because if there were a last nine, they wouldn't be infinitely many.

There are many different proofs of this online, more or less rigorous.

ArumiOrnaught,

.333... Is a third. That's just a quirk of base 10. If you go to a different number system you won't run into that particular issue.

The most common other base people know of is binary. Base 2. So in binary the fraction would be 1/11 and then 1/11(binary)=1/3(base 10).

I remember talk back in the day that base 12 is good for most common human problems. Some people were interested in trying to get people to switch to that.
1/3 of 12 is 4.
So 4/12=1/3=3.33333.../10

.333... Is just the cursive way of writing 1/3.

I still don't "grasp" infinity. I'd recon you'd need an infinite mind to grasp infinity.

Deceptichum, (edited )
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

1/3 of 10 is 3
3 x 3 is 9

Yet

1/3 of 1 is .3
.3 x 3 is 1?

Just does not compute for me.

ArumiOrnaught,

1/3 of 10 is 3.333...

1/3 of 1 is .333...

It's like when people come to America and are surprised when tax isn't included in sale prices. The .0333... you forgot to add on will get you in trouble with the universes math IRS.

magic_lobster_party,

One way to tell if two numbers are equal is to show there’s no real number between them. Try to formulate a number that’s between 0.999… and 1. You can’t do that.

Deceptichum, (edited )
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

But between 0.999 and 1 is 0.9999.

If something comes ever increasingly close to, but never physically touches something else, would you say it’s touching it?

magic_lobster_party,

0.999… means infinitely repeating 9s. There’s no more 9 to add that hasn’t already been added. If you can add another 9, then it’s not infinitely repeating.

Deceptichum,
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

So it never ends, and it stays 0.9… infinitely?

Still not a 1.

agent_flounder,
@agent_flounder@lemmy.world avatar

It’s an infinite number of nines after the decimal.

Or think of it another way. What number would you subtract from 1 to get 0.999… ? The answer is 0.

FishFace,

let x = 0.999…

so 10x = 9.999…

subtract first line from second:

9x = 9

divide by 9

x = 1

MrRazamataz,
@MrRazamataz@lemmy.razbot.xyz avatar

an asymptote 😎

lvxferre, (edited )
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

Because it isn’t 0.9; it’s 0.999… with the ellipsis saying “repeat this to the infinite” being part of the number. And you don’t need to round it up to get 0.999… = 1, since the 9 keeps going on and on, so their difference is infinitesimally small = zero.

Another thing showing that they’re the same number is that there is no number between them. For example:

  • 0.9 (no ellipsis) and 1 are different because 0.95 is between them
  • 0.95 and 1 are different because 0.97 is between them
  • there’s no number between 0.999… (with ellipsis) and 1, so they are the same. inb4 no “last nine” because it’s infinite.
bluGill,

In the real world when you see .9 you often should round it. You rarely have as much precision as presenting - .5 should generally be seen as 1 unless you have reason to believe the measurement is that precise.

MxM111, (edited )
@MxM111@kbin.social avatar

0.999… means the value of the limit of a sequence {0.9, 0.99, 0.999, …} as number of 9s (or length of a sequence) goes to infinity, and the limit is very clearly 1 in my mind.

owenfromcanada,
@owenfromcanada@lemmy.world avatar

My “easier” way to think of this one:

1 - 0.999… = 0

That is, if you subtract 0.999… from 1, what is the result? It’s an infinitely small value, which can only logically be expressed by 0.

Mr_Blott,

Is it not 0 . …1 ?

owenfromcanada,
@owenfromcanada@lemmy.world avatar

That’s exactly what it is–but when the “…” is infinitely long, you never get to the “1”. There is no “1” at all.

jaidyn999,

Actually infinity is easy to understand.

If you were to walk in a straight line, you would never get to the end of the earth - it is infinite.

Its finitism that is impossible to understand.

3*(1/3) = 3/3 = 1 3*(1/3) = 3*(0.333…) = 0.999… 0.999… = 1

This a problem of the number base you’re using, not infinity. One third is a finite number which cannot be expressed in base 10.

Boozilla,
@Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

Thinking that tailgating the vehicle directly in front of them will make thousands of other vehicles in front of that vehicle magically go faster. And many other reckless car-brain stunts.

cheese_greater, (edited )

Is this the root pathology behind traffic? Like, I never understood traffic, is there someone at the front refusing to go fast enough or is it the result of some distributed error like this that everyone mis-optimizes for that in aggregate results in traffic?

lvxferre,
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

Based on a game* I think that the root issue is that there are multiple bottlenecks, unavoidable for the drivers, like turning or entering/leaving lanes, forcing them to slow down to avoid crashing. Not a biggie if there are only a few cars, as they’ll be distant enough from each other to allow one to slow down a bit without the following needing to do the same; but once the road is close to the carrying capacity, that has a chain effect:

  • A slows down because it’ll turn
  • B is too close to A, so it slows down to avoid crashing with A
  • C is too close to B, so it slows down to avoid crashing with B
  • […]

There are solutions for that, such as building some structure to handle those bottlenecks, but they’re often spacious and space is precious in a city. Or alternatively you reduce the amount of cars by discouraging people from using them willy-nilly, with a good mass transport system and making cities not so shitty for pedestrians.

*The game in question is OpenTTD. This is easy to test with trains: create some big transport route with multiple trains per rail, then keep adding trains to that route, while watching the time that they take to go from the start to the end. The time will stay roughly constant up to a certain point (the carrying capacity), then each train makes all the others move slower.

royal_starfish,

Laughs in good public transit(rail based is based, but buses are good too), where it can achieve 10~100x the capacity in the same footprint

With rail, as long as you have a good timetable and a robust signaling system, 27tpdph with multiple service patterns is achievable, and >33tpdph if you run just one service pattern, all while having a top speed of 120km/h and an average speed of >50km/h

Railway in general (excluding Line-of-sight based light rail and trams) can move stupendous amounts of people at full speed really quickly due to signaling and mass transit inherently being more efficient in general

bluGill,

Most of the time and places a city doesn't need that capacity. Since your rail cannot get the garbage from my house, or my new bed to the house, we need roads as well. Thus for most a bus running in mixed traffic (remember most roads do not have heavy traffic!) is good enough and a lot cheaper. Where you need capacity a train is really good, but you don't need it.

That said I support trains in a lot more places because trains can run fully automated and thus in the real world can achieve the high frequency people need to choose transit even when a car isn't a problem to own (they can afford it and there is no traffic). This is however just a stop gap since self driving buses don't exist (yet?). In most "first world" countries cost of labor is high and automated trains are thus useful in places where a bus could do the job.

rdyoung,

You forgot one solution.

Teaching people how to drive safe and smart. Way too many people focus on the car in front of them instead of the traffic ahead. If you watch for brake lights as far up as you can see and let off the gas when appropriate, not only will you be less likely to be in or cause a wreck, you will also save wear and tear on your brakes and use less gas (even more pronounced with regenerative braking).

In addition to the above. When you are driving a route you know well, get the fuck over from which ever side is more likely to be used to turn off. For most highways this means moving left before you near an onramp. Plan ahead and get over before you need to do so you don’t have to speed up or slow down to let people in.

bluGill,

That won't help much. By the time anyone notices the roads are slowing down there are six times as many cars on it as it can safely handle. Driving skills will help on backroads, but that isn't where most people are driving. No amount of training can make heavy traffic safe.

rdyoung,

This is false and sets a bad example.

It will most definitely help. All it really will take is a certain percentage of people driving smart to make a difference.

As for safety. Heavy heavy traffic at a crawl is much safer than lighter traffic moving at or usually way above the speed limit. Yes, the chances of a rear-end collision are higher but no one is going to flip their car at 10mph. It’s the lighter traffic with idiots weaving in and out that makes it even more dangerous and more likely that someone dies when said idiot makes someone swerve out of the way or misjudges and hits something or someone they didn’t see coming.

I drive more miles in a couple of days than most people drive all month. I’ve probably racked up 500k+ miles in the past 25 years of driving. I’ve been almost run off the road more times than I can count and it wasn’t when traffic was at a crawl at the pinch points where traffic merges on to the highway.

lvxferre,
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

Driving safely and smart is essential for other reasons, it does prevent additional bottlenecks (you mentioned one, wreckages), and it reduces the impact of the unavoidable bottlenecks (because the cars won’t waste so much time re-accelerating after them). But if my reasoning is correct, most of the time there isn’t much that drivers can do against traffic besides “don’t use the car”.

bluGill,

Traffic is a numbers game. I've often observed that in free flowing traffic where I live (a tiny city with only about 700k people in the entire metro) that if you take two cars that are a safe following distance apart there will be 5 cars in between. If we put in 6 times as many lanes (already a 3-4 lane freeway each way, so we are talk 20 lanes for my tiny city!) traffic wouldn't go any faster, but they would space out to most maintaining a safe following distance. (if you put in 7 times as many lanes they would get farther apart yet, but still not go faster)

getseclectic,

There is research showing that adding lanes only helps for maybe six months. Then people realize that the route is better and change the routes they take, which leads to more congestion again. Fewer lanes can actually decrease congestion.

smv.org/…/how-does-roadway-expansion-cause-more-t…

bluGill,

That research is useless! Sure they measured it, so it isn't wrong. However it is useless. What it is really saying is your city was so bad that people were not taking advantage of living in the city because they couldn't conveniently get places. Those people could have lived in rural Montana for all the good a city did. Cities are about all the things you can do by living in it, so if people change because of new roads then you are a city were not meeting their ideals.

Also note that they measured one lane. I already asserted that by the time a city is thinking about adding one more lane they already need to add 6 times as many lanes (not 6 more lanes, 6 times!) IF your city needs 6 times more lanes than it has, no wonder people are choosing alternates, and once a lane exists they will start using it.

Again, the moral is build transit in cities.

NewNewAccount,

If I’m understanding correctly, your example wouldn’t apply to a highway that is experiencing heavy congestion.

bluGill,

It would, but worse. Both are a case of more cars than there is space. Heavy congestion would just need a lot more lanes to fix - maybe 10x as many. (don't ask me to pay for that or where those lanes go)

Or in short, support better transit for your city. For that cost of miles of 15 lane highways you can put in a lot of transit.

NewNewAccount,

Transit? PUBLIC transit? Wow that sounds a lot like socialism! Why do you hate freedom?!

/s

bluGill,

No, PRIVATE transit. I don't support the government building roads - that is meddling in the natural state of things and makes private industry unable to compete. If you must have socialist roads than you must have socialist transit as well, but I reject that.

Boozilla,
@Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

It may be helpful to think of it as a stream or a river, and not a collection of individual drivers. We can only control ourselves, not the stream. People working so hard to put themselves and others at risk are maybe shaving a minute or so off of their commute. Just not worth the risk.

ShadowCatEXE,
@ShadowCatEXE@lemmy.world avatar

Or constantly inching forward at a red light as if you moving the extra 5 feet will make any significant difference in the time it takes for you to get where you’re going.

rdyoung,

That actually has purpose, sometimes. Some lights are triggered by a sensor in the road. If I feel like the light has been red longer than it should be I’ll inch up in case my car didn’t trigger the sensor. Same happens in reverse, cars will be stopped too far back to trigger it so everyone sits until either they move up or the programmed cycle kicks in.

The above said. You aren’t wrong. Plenty of people do that where there aren’t sensors, they also stick their nose way too far out, especially in the left turn lane.

ShadowCatEXE,
@ShadowCatEXE@lemmy.world avatar

Nah, this is in Toronto. Almost every light has so many cars waiting, it’s not a sensor thing. People are just so eager to get going.

spacecowboy,

We saw on mythbusters that tailgating is really good for fuel economy so we’re all just amateur scientists collecting data.

Rentlar, (edited )

At highway speeds, tailgating 10 ft behind a 53 ft tractor-trailer will net you about a 39% boost in fuel economy. And further your fuel usage will drop by 100% after the trailer flattens your hood from a sudden stop maneuver!

neumast,

Also, the closer you are to the trailer, the safer you are! Because the speed difference is much smaller, when you touch the trailer!

Sterile_Technique,
@Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world avatar

I just drop a mph every couple seconds until they fuck off. Don’t break check, as that’s super dangerous for you and everyone around you; don’t change lanes to accommodate them (unless you’re the source of the bottleneck and camping in the fast lane, in which case GTFO), since transitions are when accidents tend to happen; but you can absolutely slowly annoy a tailgater until they leave your bubble.

ramble81,

If you do this in the left lane and cars are passing you on the right, you in fact are the asshole.

bluGill,

Sure, but I'm the guy doing the speed limit in the right lane.

Sterile_Technique,
@Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world avatar

Very strong emphasis on the “unless you’re the source of the bottleneck and camping in the fast lane, in which case GTFO” part of my post!

bluGill,

I get tailgated all the time despite being in the right lane . Sometimes I can see that person hang up their phone, finally look and move over. (This was on a rural highway, I was doing 20 under the limit and over 15 minutes 3 other cars passed without issues, which accounts for a 5 cars going my direction in that time)

Boozilla,
@Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

LOL, I also do the passive-aggressive slowdown thing. 99% of the time it works. But then there’s that rare psycho that refuses to get off your ass just to…uh…prove a point…by slowing themselves down? There was a post on schmeddit several years ago where a guy came to a complete stop in the middle of nowehere with the tailgator just sitting 1" from his bumper.

formergijoe,

My favorite are the red light racers who have to pass me while I’m going the speed limit and zoom to the next stop light… Just so they can wait at a red light longer than I do.

pHr34kY,

You get off the line to get across the intersection so that everyone queued behind you can get across before the light turns red again.

I’m amazed that so many people fail to realise that there is a solid time penalty for dawdling off the line.

formergijoe,

I’m not dawdling off the line though. I’m just not going 10 over the speed limit like this guy in the lifted truck wants.

bluGill,

Sadly it works out for them overall. It only takes a few times of getting to the next light as it turns yellow and they are way ahead while you are sitting there at a red light. Sure sometimes you get to see them when it doesn't work out, but when it works out they are long gone.

Timing traffic lights is a hard problem.

rdyoung, (edited )

This isn’t my experience. Traffic lights are extremely easy to time. Assuming you can see the other lights, watch them. There are a few lights in my city that have a right turn light while the other is red, when the turn light goes yellow that means the red will be green soon. I regularly blow past people sitting at the red while I coasted towards the red and gunned it as it turned green.

They also won’t be going anywhere when they get t-boned by someone else doing the exact same thing or straight running a red. It’s not worth the risk.

Oh and this isn’t a race. The goal is to get to your destination safe and sound without hurting yourself or anyone else. The sooner more people realize that, the safer all of us will be.

bluGill,

I was referring to the city engineers timing all the lights in a city. As a driver paying attention can help, but when you have several square miles of road network, with roads unequally spaced, different speed limits and all the other weird stuff they do in a real city it is not easy. It gets worse if you go from city to a metropolitan area.

I have concluded we will never convince people of that enough to change behavior (they will answer the question correctly when asked, but drive the same) thus i'm supporting transit as much as possible.

rdyoung, (edited )

Again not my experience. I grew up in Tampa and have lived/worked in other big cities like Charlotte. On the big main roads through town, the lights are usually timed so if you hit one green your golden (outside of extenuating circumstances) if you hit a red you’re screwed. They are also usually timed so if you hit a green and do the speed limit you should be fine and have all greens. It’s the idiots speeding or crawling that mess that up for themselves or others.

In addition to the above you have big cities like NYC, Vegas, etc that have a central traffic control and will change the timing to account for traffic. In my current city we don’t have that but a lot of the lights will go into red/yellow flashing mode where the main drag can cruise through but the cross street should be stopping but is free to go without waiting for the full cycle.

I’m not sure where you have lived or worked but in most places I’ve lived there have been only a couple of main thoroughfares and the rest all neighborhood roads that take twice as long even with traffic. Where I am now most of the time you are using the interstate to get across town east/west or for north/south you have like 3 options depending on where you are going. Some places you literally can’t get to without getting on the interstate or going some long ass way around.

Boozilla,
@Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

A friend of mine calls that “racing to stop”.

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