This is poppycock. The people who are really good at something like that so something as simple but much more general. They have an associative memory of lots of balls they have seen and tried to catch. This includes not only the tracking sight of the ball, but things like the feel of the wind, the sound of the bat or racquet, and so forth. They know from this experience which ones went over their heads when they only stepped back instead of running, and which ones came right to them, and so forth.
Simple example -- in tennis, at the net, you have to make split-second decisions about whether to try to hit balls going over your head depending on whether you think they'll go over the baseline, 30 feet behind you. Gaze angle is hopeless. Memory interpolation / experience works great. Why do you think it takes ten years of full time application and practice to become expert at any given human pursuit? BTW, Simon is the only Nobel laureate among the founding fathers of classical AI, and it was for bounded rationality. Anyone with a hope of a prayer of a claim to AI literacy ought to know about it. On Tuesday 29 April 2008 05:05:26 pm, Mike Tintner wrote: > Josh, > > Gigerenzer doesn't sound like old stuff or irrelevant to me , with my > limited knowledge, (and also seems like a pretty good example of how v. > much more practical it can be to think imaginatively than mathematically, > no?):: > > "how do real people make good decisions under the usual conditions of little > time and scarce information? Consider how players catch a ball-in baseball, > cricket, or soccer. It may seem that they would have to solve complex > differential equations in their heads to predict the trajectory of the ball. > In fact, players use a simple heuristic. When a ball comes in high, the > player fixates the ball and starts running. The heuristic is to adjust the > running speed so that the angle of gaze remains constant -that is, the angle > between the eye and the ball. The player can ignore all the information > necessary to compute the trajectory, such as the ball's initial velocity, > distance, and angle, and just focus on one piece of information, the angle > of gaze." > ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
