John Duffield wrote:Something I think about from time to time as I cycle around NYC. The difference between an ugly accident and a rude gesture can be a fraction of a second. Someone that doesn't have quick reaction times simply isn't going to survive. Same thing in the mountains. It is, as you say, Mother Nature selecting between those that think they're fast enough and those that really are (fast enough).
Couldn't agree more.
Reaction times for rational cerebral responses are not all that correlated to reaction times for emotional, amygdallic responses.
The kinds of reaction-time tests you can take on the internet only test your rational reaction time.... In other words, it tests the amount of time it takes for you to observe, interpret, and rationally decide to react.
However, the sort of reaction that matters in sudden survival situations (like jumping out of the way of a car) is purely emotional and never gets rationally considered, as the amygdala intercepts stimuli that have been (evolutionally or experiencially) learned and triggers an instant reaction before the stimuli can even be forwarded to the cerebral cortex to be processed rationally.
Thinking you're fast means bupkiss. Surviving repeated close-encounters actually proves something.