When orange lights screw with your mind
I was driving to uni the other day, and I thought,
“At what point does your decision to stop when the traffic light turns orange, change into your decision to keep going on through?”
I mean, given your speed, reaction time, state of mind, etc, what would happen if you were at the exact distance from the light where this change in decision was to occur? Would you stop or would you continue? Or maybe you’d decide by carrying on, realise that you should probably stop, and then realise you should probably go anyway, and so on in a cycle of indecision that may result in your brain imploding? Or maybe the universe would collapse upon itself, or maybe it would branch into two separate universes?
(I’m also assuming that between the moment of the light changing and the moment of decision, nothing out of the ordinary occurs, ie: someone jumps out in front of your vehicle, which may affect your decision to speed up or slow down, depending upon who the person is.)
It occurred to me that perhaps the mind didn’t have a certain fixed threshold at which the decision varied, but was more of a dynamic threshold, randomly oscillating frequently to a tiny degree. I’m talking about over a very small period of time (ie: fractions of a second), not minutes or hours, within which you may turn from a mild-mannered, polite motorist, into a crazed, maniac courier driver suffering from road-rage.
If then, the light turned orange right on the current threshold for the decision, there may be indecision for a moment, but the changing nature of the mind’s threshold would bring the moment of the orange lights appearance (accounting for time past) above or below the new threshold, thereby resulting in the appropriate course of action.
Of course, that’s just one idea, and although the question may have absolutely no relevance in real life, its still kind of interesting to think about.
“At what point does your decision to stop when the traffic light turns orange, change into your decision to keep going on through?”
I mean, given your speed, reaction time, state of mind, etc, what would happen if you were at the exact distance from the light where this change in decision was to occur? Would you stop or would you continue? Or maybe you’d decide by carrying on, realise that you should probably stop, and then realise you should probably go anyway, and so on in a cycle of indecision that may result in your brain imploding? Or maybe the universe would collapse upon itself, or maybe it would branch into two separate universes?
(I’m also assuming that between the moment of the light changing and the moment of decision, nothing out of the ordinary occurs, ie: someone jumps out in front of your vehicle, which may affect your decision to speed up or slow down, depending upon who the person is.)
It occurred to me that perhaps the mind didn’t have a certain fixed threshold at which the decision varied, but was more of a dynamic threshold, randomly oscillating frequently to a tiny degree. I’m talking about over a very small period of time (ie: fractions of a second), not minutes or hours, within which you may turn from a mild-mannered, polite motorist, into a crazed, maniac courier driver suffering from road-rage.
If then, the light turned orange right on the current threshold for the decision, there may be indecision for a moment, but the changing nature of the mind’s threshold would bring the moment of the orange lights appearance (accounting for time past) above or below the new threshold, thereby resulting in the appropriate course of action.
Of course, that’s just one idea, and although the question may have absolutely no relevance in real life, its still kind of interesting to think about.
posted by Matthew P | 11:34 am
4 Comments:
I think it depends on how tired you are and if you are doing the defensive driving thing of expecting the lights to change. I know when I'm tired I tend to keep going much later in the orange than I usually would because I just can't be bothered going to the effort of stopping. (move foot to brake, change down gears, clutch) It's all just such a hassle, when with a little bit of extra weight on the right foot, you can just sail on through. Also when I'm tired I only tend to notice the orange after I've been through the decision change zone and start wondering how long ago it actually turned orange...
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Could it be that the decison making process here isn't a cyclic process causing equilibruim, or a process thats more like a coin spinning - its ok for now, but its about to fall over - once it does, its fallen over. If that makes sense?
meh
Yeah, I was kind of taking tiredness and such into consideration when I mentioned "given the state of mind".
ie: even when you're tired there must still be some point at which, either side of, will result in a particular decision.
I also considered the critical point to be a point, not a zone, and that at that point the decision was not made (as making a decision takes time). Rather, the point was the exact position in time and space at which you were when the light changed, either side of which would have resulted in a different decision - either to stop or to keep going.
So I probably should of said "at which point would your resulting decision change from deciding to stop, to deciding to carry on?"
Sorry for the ambiguity, hopefully it makes a bit more sense now :)
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