8 ms·
The gunfighter's dilemma
- gaius 17y agoSo much for first-mover advantage.
- mattheww 17y agoYou can't skip the story about Niels Bohr at the bottom.
- RiderOfGiraffes 17y agoNiels Bohr should know something about reactions and reaction times - in 1905 he played professional football (soccer) for Akademisk Boldklub, playing goalkeeper.
- dkarl 17y agoSeems like a pretty crappy experiment to pit the reaction time of an ex-professional athlete against (presumably) more typical people.
- RiderOfGiraffes 17y agoI can't tell if you're joking or not ... are you? Given the context it seems odd that you should interpret the anecdotes as being entirely serious and make such a serious comment, but perhaps I'm just having a sarcasm-detect failure ...
- dkarl 17y agoIt's dual-purpose. Anyone who thought the article was tongue-in-cheek can assume that I too am being light-hearted. Anyone who thinks the article took Bohr's results seriously can take my comment seriously. Between the dry humor of Brits and the general idiocy of science reporting, I don't think there's any way to tell which is more appropriate.
- jcl 17y agoIn a series of mock gunfights with colleagues Bohr always drew second and always won. Heh... Considering that all the participants were scientists, I'm surprised they concluded that one event caused the other.
- patio11 17y agoSomebody tried making that objection but reviewer N.B. blocked his paper during peer review, citing inadequate references to existing literature. The scientist lost his funding, was denied tenure, and now lives in a van down by the river.
- pbhjpbhj 17y agoDid he play with Heisenberg? "We knew where both people were, no idea how fast they drew."
- edw519 17y agoI know what you're thinking. "Does the nucleus have six electrons or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this uncertainty I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is an isotope of uranium, responsible for slow-neutron fission, and would blow your city clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?
- rubinelli 17y agoHah, this is a trick question; the nucleus doesn't have electrons. And if it blows up, you don't bury the survivors.
- InclinedPlane 17y agoHah, this is a trick question; the nucleus doesn't have electrons. Well, technically, in an s-orbital there is a substantial, non-zero chance of the electron being inside the nucleus.
- graphene 17y agoNot true, you may have been thrown off by the fact that s orbitals are generally shown as spheres; but the radial extent (probability amplitude) of the wave function goes to zero for small radii, for all s orbitals, see http://www.chem.umass.edu/people/botch/Chem121F06/Chapters/Ch15/OrbitalsRadialProbArgon.jpg http://www.chem.umass.edu/people/botch/Chem121F06/Chapters/C.... A classically-behaving point particle with the same charge as an electron would drop into the nucleus, but the wave nature of real electrons forbids it. Due to the uncertainty prinicple, there is a nonzero chance of finding the electron in the nucleus, but to say it is substantial is false.
- cunard3 17y agoThis link to an audio interview was posted previously: http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4325.html http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4325.html Gamow talks about meeting Bohr and his wit: He says that he was startled to see a horseshoe nailed above the door to Bohr's house. Gamow asked Bohr why he had it there. Bohr said "I've heard that it works even if you don't believe in it."
- InclinedPlane 17y agoThere are existing studies which show that people react faster when startled than when not. There's a nifty little online test to check your own response times: http://www.mathsisfun.com/games/reaction-time.html http://www.mathsisfun.com/games/reaction-time.html As far as I know this is the first test to show that startle response extends beyond reaction time, it's an interesting piece of data. It's worth noting that it's possible to force yourself into a state of mind similar to being startled, which may very well eliminate the advantage to "shooting" second.
- JoeAltmaier 17y agoThat game is very telling. Try it at "arms length", then again with your face right up to the screen. See if you don't do much better when the dot fills more of your visual range. Speculation: a startle reflex depends upon the magnitude of the nervous signal, which is larger when more retinal cells fire.
- ajuc 17y agoStrange, I had 0.267 with normal measures, and over 0.5 with surprise measure.
- zck 17y ago>In a series of mock gunfights with colleagues Bohr always drew second and always won. I'm hoping the author of this article just didn't want to elaborate, but Bohr never thought it could've just been that he was faster at drawing than his opponents? Switching it so he was the first to draw some of the time would have been better design.
- fh 17y agoThis part of the article is most likely intended as a funny anecdote, not as an accurate description of a scientific experiment. Rest assured that Niels freaking Bohr would have thought of that.
- DougBTX 17y agoAnd possibly decided that it would be more fun to leave a good story behind and not be seen to loose :-)
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- flatline 17y agoI could see this being the case, but it's got to be very narrow timing, and it probably only applies for the same type of action. A friend and I used to do a drill with his Glock 9mm. (After ensuring the gun was unloaded) one of us would point the pistol right at the other's head. The pointee would initiate action by grabbing the gun and the pointer would try to pull the trigger. It was impossible to pull the trigger in time, action was always faster than reaction in this case. We did it many times over, both of us with the gun. Semi-automatic handguns will not fire when you keep the slide from moving, which is what happens when you grab the whole barrel like this, though I don't think I'd be willing to try the maneuver in real life.
- Super_Jambo 17y agoFrom what I remember of KravMaga gun disarms they agreed with your experiments. They taught moving your head out the way at the same time as grabbing.
- omgsean 17y agoA Krav Maga gun disarm involves twisting the body while redirecting the shot. Grabbing the gun isn't supposed to prevent the gun from firing, it's supposed to prevent the shot from killing you. In a real life situation when someone's got a gun to your head you probably don't have time to think about the gun's mechanics.
- Super_Jambo 17y agoWell thats why you're thinking about it ahead of time. I distinctly recall the instructors commenting they'd rather face an idiot who gets too close to you with a gun than an idiot who gets too close to you with a knife, the knife will still cut you if you grab it. They also suggested you comply with anyone who has a weapon unless you have good reason to think they'll kill you anyway. I Really should take Krav up again, was good stuff.
- omgsean 17y ago
- Super_Jambo 17y agoSo optimally you want to be startled into action by something other than your opponent drawing. Then you get the speed advantage & a head start... Wonder if anyones done any research on training this for martial arts.
- ErrantX 17y agoA friend who does Aikido says it's not explicitly taught quite like that - but that he does train to watch, for example, an attackers shoulders for slight movement prior to their attack.
- philwelch 17y agoWhich implies that you could probably throw off someone like that just by, for instance, feinting the shoulder movement.
- ErrantX 17y agoMy thought to. Believe me: doesn't work ;)
- dmv 17y agoHaving the body control to produce false, seemingly involuntary signals - while suppressing true involuntary signals - implies a level of physical mastery to the extent that you, likely, already possess a substantial advantage in the bout. This is like selling a fake tell in poker while not actually having a tell - even James Bond would tell you that's hard.
- philwelch 17y agoYou could just sell enough fake tells--produce enough false signals--to throw your opponent off of whatever actual tells you have. I wonder if this is similar in concept to the "drunken" kung fu style.
- ajuc 17y agoI don't know any martial arts, but it reminds me of basketball - dribbling is exactly the same - every second you decide to start or not, you can make fake moves, and your oponent has to guess and react faster. And if his guess is wrong he allows you to pass him. Sometimes you can just feel the rythm in which oponent will react, and then passing him is easy and pleasurable at the same time. And looks cool. That's why I love basketball :)
- v3rt 17y agoApparently, it's incorrect that the winning strategy is to move second - while the drawing motion take ~20ms less when reacting, it takes ~200ms to react in the first place, leaving you quite dead. See http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2010/02/why_does_the_gunslinger_who_draws_first_always_get_shot.php http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2010/02/why_does_th... Did the BBC misinterpret the data, or did the scienceblogs article make a mistake?
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- run4yourlives 17y agoI was just thinking the same thing... the 20ms difference only matters if the start time of the action is less than 20ms before the start time of the reaction. Just because you can do something faster, it doesn't always mean you finish faster.
- electromagnetic 17y agoAiming isn't taken into consideration with a button press, so I wouldn't exactly call this study accurate. Bohr did a more scientifically valid test without anything more than a pair of pop guns.
- electromagnetic 17y agoNot necessarily, it depends what causes the defender to draw. It may take you ~200ms to react, however it also takes the drawer time to act on their decision, and may take longer as there's an incentive to aim as there's no point in shooting first and missing. Button pressing /= drawing and aiming. The defender has less incentive to aim, and besides your brain already has the calculations made. In hunting the snapshot is a frequent killer due simply to reaction with no conscious aiming. IIRC the NRA has ~40,000 bullseye shooters who have to have rapidfire accuracy on multiple targets to attain the grade. This requires the ability to make snapshots. I'm not going to believe any result on gunslinging until someone picks up a properly weighted pistol that has to be aimed and fired (whether it be a blank or using an LED sighter). Otherwise it's not scientific, you're fucking with the variables and the very nature of the experiment.
- billswift 17y agoIt would also depend on the first-mover not being adequately trained/experienced. The goal of training, and the effect of extensive experience, is to automatize the action, so that it will occur without conscious intermediation.
- pbhjpbhj 17y agohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TANC4VI8vF4#t=1m18s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TANC4VI8vF4#t=1m18s - draws and shoots and returns gun to holster in 0.02s. I don't feel lucky!
- roundsquare 17y agoNiels Bohr, liked to take time off from figuring out the structure of the universe by watching westerns. Bohr noticed that the man who drew first invariably got shot, and speculated that the intentional act of drawing and shooting was slower to execute than the action in response. Haha, really? So he formed a hypothesis based on movies? I'm fairly sure its just poorly written in the article but if it is not thats just silly. Edit: Formatting
- proemeth 17y agoThen, since Solo shot first, he was a fine duelist. This reconciles the argument: he can be a good guy AND shoot first. Solo did not _intend_ to shoot first, but while reposting his instincts made him the fastest.