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Comment by grosswait | Hacker News Reader

I disagree. The human brain reinforces circuitry that is used often, meaning the human brain is generally quite adaptable. Ancient (and modern) hunters sit still and silent for hours waiting for game, with their brains ready to take over in an instant on the rare occasion something happens.

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Right but you don't get in car accidents or near-accidents often. Ergo your brain becomes wired for the 99.9999999% of driving that is completely uneventful.

Hunters are a self-selecting group of people who enjoy the activity you describe. If you don't like it or can't do it, you just don't do it.

Virtually every single adult in America has to drive, however, to live a functional life.

I try to watch car crash dashcam videos once a month or so on Reddit or YouTube. I feel like it recalibrates my brain to be more aware of the things that could happen that are out on the tail end of the distribution, like you say.

That is interesting! Yeah I suspect that would help a ton.

Do you do this for the purpose of calibrating your brain? Or more just some morbid curiosity of yours? :D

Eh, I think it started out as morbid curiosity and then I noticed it changed how I drove. Seemed like a good idea to do deliberately.

You are avoiding cars constantly when driving with a non-zero amount of traffic. Way more incidents than predators in the savanna while doing persistence hunting.

Not sure what you're arguing.

Your brain gets used to in-distribution events.

Car accidents (and the conditions that cause them) are out-of-distribution events.

It's that simple.

That’s not how the brain works. It is evolutionary adapted to stay alert for out of distribution events.

Correct, and by the time an out of distribution event happens in a car, you are milliseconds from collision (if that).

Most car accidents are effectively instantaneous. The fact your brain perks up as a bumper is coming through your side window is not very helpful.

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