Hack 62. The Broken Escalator Phenomenon: When Autopilot Takes Over
Your conscious experience of the world and control over your body both feel instantaneousbut they’re not.
Lengthy delays in sensory feedback and in the commands that are sent to your muscles mean that what you see now happened a few moments ago and what you’re doing now you planned back then. To get around the problem caused by these delays in neural transmission, your brain is active and constructive in its interactions with the outside world, endlessly anticipating what’s going to happen next and planning movements to respond appropriately.
Most of the time this works well, but sometimes your brain can anticipate inappropriately, and the mismatch between what your brain thought was going to happen and what it actually encounters can lead to some strange sensations.
6.2.1. In Action
One such sensation can be felt when you walk onto a broken escalator. You know it’s broken but your brain’s autopilot takes over regardless, inappropriately adjusting your posture and gait as if the escalator were moving. This has been dubbed the broken escalator phenomenon.1 Normally, the sensory consequences of these postural adjustments are canceled out by the escalator’s motion, but when it’s broken, they lead to some self-induced sensations that your brain simply wasn’t expecting. Your brain normally cancels out the sensory consequences of its own actions [Hack #65], so it feels really weird when that doesn’t happen.
Taken from : Mind Hacks
