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Anticipation

Anticipation is quite a powerful sensation -- you're no doubt experiencing it right now looking at this pic. Unaware, perhaps -- your mind is playing out the scene above, and you - your brain - is almost literally seeing all these eager commuters hitting the blacktop. As such, your body can respond to these anticipated events.

Anticipation is obviously an evolutionary advantage if used correctly - foreseeing future events, and thus a possibility of changing that future. For example:

You're driving. You see the car ahead of you edging slightly to the left side of the lane. You pass on the left and as you do, you see the driver talking on a mobile. You now anticipate this person not paying attention to you and also moving into the left lane. As such, you pre-emptively move into the even further left line, knowing it to be empty from a previous glance, moments before the other car does indeed move into the lane.

Magic? Not at all -- based on a series of visual cues and combined with recollection of similar events in the past, your brain calculates out future scenarios, and that's a possibly deadly one. The better you get at reading the informational cues and recalling past lessons, the more powerful your anticipation becomes.

It then becomes possible to envision that given enough data cues and other, similar scenarios, one could entirely anticipate all of the future. Unlikely though, of course.

2 comments:

Sonja said...

Its a clencher!

Anonymous said...

Just roll with it mon