Post by OziRiS on Sept 8, 2015 20:51:19 GMT
This is an old myth, but I don't believe it's ever been tested on the show.
The general idea is that when someone is lost, they will often (to the point of being claimed as "almost always") circle back and end up where they started, or at least very close to it. This is also a very popular trope in books, movies and TV, where a sentence like, "I feel like I've seen that rock before," has been used many times over.
Supposedly, this phenomenon is even more clearly visible if someone is blindfolded in an open field and sent walking. In this case, the claim isn't even that they will "almost always" walk in a circle and start circling back very shortly after setting off, but that it's more or less a universal rule, like there's something built into human beings that make us do this, whether we want to or not.
This one makes for some fairly simple testing, but the part about getting lost without being blindfolded might be a little time consuming. Especially if they're going to test the "almost always" claim, since that would require multiple runs of getting lost and calculating an average of how many times each test subject circles back. It could be done in a day with plenty of volounteers, though, but the question is how entertaining it would be to watch a bunch of volounteers walking aimlessly around a forest or large building with many similar looking rooms...
Thoughts?
The general idea is that when someone is lost, they will often (to the point of being claimed as "almost always") circle back and end up where they started, or at least very close to it. This is also a very popular trope in books, movies and TV, where a sentence like, "I feel like I've seen that rock before," has been used many times over.
Supposedly, this phenomenon is even more clearly visible if someone is blindfolded in an open field and sent walking. In this case, the claim isn't even that they will "almost always" walk in a circle and start circling back very shortly after setting off, but that it's more or less a universal rule, like there's something built into human beings that make us do this, whether we want to or not.
This one makes for some fairly simple testing, but the part about getting lost without being blindfolded might be a little time consuming. Especially if they're going to test the "almost always" claim, since that would require multiple runs of getting lost and calculating an average of how many times each test subject circles back. It could be done in a day with plenty of volounteers, though, but the question is how entertaining it would be to watch a bunch of volounteers walking aimlessly around a forest or large building with many similar looking rooms...
Thoughts?
