Humans have been using knots for thousands of years, and we continue to do so in our daily lives, but now, a study reveals that with the naked eye, We are unable to appreciate its strength.
Researchers of the Johns Hopkins Universityin the United States, showed participants images of various knots and asked them to point to the strongest one. They couldn’t.
They also showed people videos of each knot, where the knots rotate slowly so they could see them well from afar. Still, they failed. People couldn’t even do it when researchers showed them each knot along with a diagram of its construction.
“People are terrible at this,” said study co-author Chaz Firestonewhich studies perception. “Mankind has been using knots for thousands of years. They’re not that complicated, they’re just a tangled rope. However, you can show people real pictures of knots and ask them to judge how the knot will behave and they won’t have a clue.” , said.
The work, recently published in the journal of cognitive science Open Mindreveals a new blind spot in our physical reasoning.
The experiment is an original idea of Sholei Crooma doctoral student in the Firestone laboratory and an embroidery enthusiast. Croom was working on a project, turned it into the complicated and overwhelming tangle of embroidery threads, and couldn’t figure it out, even though it was her own craft. Croom, whose field of study is intuitive physics, or what people understand about the environment just by looking at it, suspected that knots might be a rare vulnerability.
“People make predictions all the time about how the physics of the world will develop, but there was something about knots that didn’t feel intuitive to me,” Croom said. “You don’t need to touch a stack of books to judge their stability. You don’t have to touch a bowling ball to guess how many pins it will knock down. “But knots seem to test our judgment mechanisms in interesting ways,” he added.
The experiment was simple: the researchers showed participants four knots that are physically similar but have a hierarchy of strength. People were asked to look at the knots, two by two, and They will point out the strongest.
The participants were constantly wrong. What’s more, the few times they got it right, they did it for the wrong reasonspointing out aspects of the knot that had nothing to do with its resistance.
The knots ranged from one of the strongest in existence, the reef knot, to one so weak that it can come undone with a light tug, the aptly named grief knot. Even between those two, side by side, people couldn’t point out the strongest.
“We tried to give people the best opportunities we could in the experiment, even showing them videos of the knots spinning, but it didn’t help; if anything, people’s responses were even more mixed,” Croom said. “The human psychological system simply fails to extract any physical knowledge of the properties of the knot,” adds the doctoral student.
According to Croom, objects that are not rigid, such as strings, may be more difficult to understand than others. Not even our deep experience with knots, such as those made when tying shoelaces and untangling ropes, can overcome this deficiency, although Croom believes that a sailor or a survivor whose livelihood depends on the strength of the knots might perform better in the experiment than the non-experts who participated in the test.
“We can’t get a clear idea of the internal structure of a knot just by looking at it,” Croom said. “It’s a good case study in how many open questions still remain in our ability to reason about the environment“he concludes.
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