5 ms·
I don't believe these metrics, because I can certainly tell the difference between a 10ms ping and a 60ms ping in an online game. Yet there is this cat in my ne
by sowbug 9y ago
I don't believe these metrics, because I can certainly tell the difference between a 10ms ping and a 60ms ping in an online game. Yet there is this cat in my neighborhood that makes me think I'm deluding myself, and that I'm actually a quarter-second behind the real world.
It is a long-haired black cat. It doesn't like us. But it does like taking a shortcut through our front yard. If it sees us, it freezes. It waits, mid-stride. Then when it's satisfied we're not a threat, it starts moving again. If I move my arm or shift my body, it freezes again, sizing me up, sure that this is the day -- after all these years -- that I'm finally going in for the kill.
What's weird is I am convinced that this cat knows when I'm going to start moving. It halts before I move. By the time my head is moving or my arm is waving, it is already frozen and on high alert.
My working theory is not that this cat is telepathic or that it has defocused temporal perception. Rather, I think that because the cat is smaller than I am, its eyes are closer to its brain, its nerve impulses don't have to travel as far, and it really and truly knows before I do that I'm moving. Otherwise I can't explain this cat's superhuman reflexes or its blatant disregard of general relativity.
- adrianN 9y agoDid you ever touch the cat? Can other people see the cat too?
- shellbackground 9y agoDid you show this story to different people? Can other people see that different people?
- mcguire 9y agoI, for one, do not actually exist. Sorry.
- baddox 9y agoCats are certainly known to have good reflexes.
- Izkata 9y agoIt seems likely to me you're just experiencing the stopped clock illusion, especially since you mention moving your head. When your eyes focus on something new, your brain deletes the blur from your memory and fills it in with what you start looking at. The cat could notice and stop during your refocus, and because you can't see it during that period, all you see is it already stopped and perceive it as having been stopped the whole time.
- sowbug 9y agoStopped cat illusion. That might be it. I will experiment.