Great "B" myth in the flying guillotine, but incredibly boring "A" myth in the C4. It didn't help that they had just done a similar myth a few episodes ago (the one with the explosive detonating from a car crash).
Mythbusters: The Flying Guillotine!
- Thread starter Trekker4747
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Blind people probably wouldn't produce accurate results or really prove any "point" they were trying to make.
Blind people compensate for their lack of site in other ways, namely their senses of sound and touch, the walking stick is one of the ways that helps them walk in a straight line. Sense one of the ways the Mythbusters went about this was to eliminate sound, this would give a blind person a bit more of a hindrance they're not accustomed to.
It's possible a revisit will use blind people to see how they compensate and are able to function but, really, the myth didn't seem to be about that.
They said at one point, though, that there's no correlation to handedness in the way people waver off their straight path. What I've always heard is that handedness has a large part to do with not being able to walk in a straight line. If you're right-handed you're right-footed so you step a bit harder with your dominant foot. If you're not walking to any particular place you don't compensate for this and, well, you end up walking in a circle. Judging from the tests it looked like in Adam's fist walk he went a bit to the left (suggesting he's right-footed) in a second test he wavered to the right (suggesting he was over compensating for his right-footedness.) I would also thing uneven terrain coupled with footedness would compound problems.
On the driving I wonder if they test drove the cart any to see if it had any mechanical flaw or there was in flaw in the runway that's cause the vehicle to not drive straight. Hell, even a car on a new highway with perfect alignment isn't going to drive straight without minor inputs from driver. And is it even possible to swim straight even with your vision? I'd think the current in the body of water and just the oddities of swimming would make a task difficult.
On driving straight while blinded, didn't they already sort of test this? A couple of seasons ago they tested whether a blind man could be coached to drive by a sighted person and they actually pulled it off pretty well. Was how Jamie was directing the blind man to drive including minor steering adjustments to keep the car straight? Or was that, again, showing that either sense of sound or some heightened "sixth sense" of orientation was working in the blind man?
I think in this episode the "B" myth was the C-4 one, the episode was titled after the flying guillotine, suggesting that was the primary myth of the episode.
Blind people compensate for their lack of site in other ways, namely their senses of sound and touch, the walking stick is one of the ways that helps them walk in a straight line. Sense one of the ways the Mythbusters went about this was to eliminate sound, this would give a blind person a bit more of a hindrance they're not accustomed to.
It's possible a revisit will use blind people to see how they compensate and are able to function but, really, the myth didn't seem to be about that.
They said at one point, though, that there's no correlation to handedness in the way people waver off their straight path. What I've always heard is that handedness has a large part to do with not being able to walk in a straight line. If you're right-handed you're right-footed so you step a bit harder with your dominant foot. If you're not walking to any particular place you don't compensate for this and, well, you end up walking in a circle. Judging from the tests it looked like in Adam's fist walk he went a bit to the left (suggesting he's right-footed) in a second test he wavered to the right (suggesting he was over compensating for his right-footedness.) I would also thing uneven terrain coupled with footedness would compound problems.
On the driving I wonder if they test drove the cart any to see if it had any mechanical flaw or there was in flaw in the runway that's cause the vehicle to not drive straight. Hell, even a car on a new highway with perfect alignment isn't going to drive straight without minor inputs from driver. And is it even possible to swim straight even with your vision? I'd think the current in the body of water and just the oddities of swimming would make a task difficult.
On driving straight while blinded, didn't they already sort of test this? A couple of seasons ago they tested whether a blind man could be coached to drive by a sighted person and they actually pulled it off pretty well. Was how Jamie was directing the blind man to drive including minor steering adjustments to keep the car straight? Or was that, again, showing that either sense of sound or some heightened "sixth sense" of orientation was working in the blind man?
I think in this episode the "B" myth was the C-4 one, the episode was titled after the flying guillotine, suggesting that was the primary myth of the episode.
^ True. I was just thinking in terms of Adam and Jamie being the "A" team.
Well, they are the "A-Team" doesn't mean they always get the "A-Myth" 
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.Mister Johnson
Ensign
My problem with the walking-in-a-straight-line myth was that they cut off sound, too. The myth was about doing it blindfolded, not with all sensory input cut off.
I'm surprised there's any question about the straight line thing. I thought they proved it pretty damn convincingly myself.
Seems like people still want to cling on to the same flawed, "common sense" thinking that Adam and Jamie did-- that of COURSE it's possible to do... even though it isn't. lol
Seems like people still want to cling on to the same flawed, "common sense" thinking that Adam and Jamie did-- that of COURSE it's possible to do... even though it isn't. lol
Mister Johnson
Ensign
I don't. I just don't understand why they went for total sensory deprivation in a myth that, at it's heart, is about compensating for a lack of sight with your other senses.
I don't question the results, I just thought the methodology was a bit weak.
But is that what the myth is about? The myth is that you can't walk in a straight line while blindfolded, period. It's specifically about sight, not other senses. Remember, this show is about testing the myths as they're generally believed or stated, which is often quite distinct from realistic considerations. And since the myth as stated is specifically and exclusively about sight, they focused their testing on that sense.
One could argue, though, that they failed to isolate the variables in a proper scientific way. Since the myth was specifically about the impact of sight, then sight should've been the only variable they altered -- i.e. the other senses should've been left unaffected. On the other hand, though, it could be argued that we usually don't rely on our hearing to navigate when our vision is unobstructed, so in that sense, taking hearing out of the picture would be isolating the variable of sight.
Also, the myth was somewhat about testing the kind of real-world conditions in which you might have to navigate without seeing, such as whiteout conditions in a blizzard or heavy fog or the like. And those are conditions that would tend to cut off your hearing as well as your vision.
Of course it's difficult for people who are used to relying on their eye-sight to do something like that, that's not much of a myth. But the question is: can you train yourself how to do it, can you learn it?
I think people are making way too much out of the hearing thing. For the average person, having all those random sounds of nature coming at you wouldn't have made much of a difference, and in fact might have confused the senses even further.
Heck, even blind people still have to rely on a cane or dog or the sense of touch to navigate around in the world. You certainly don't see many walking carefree down the sidewalk, without any assistance, in a perfectly straight line.
Heck, even blind people still have to rely on a cane or dog or the sense of touch to navigate around in the world. You certainly don't see many walking carefree down the sidewalk, without any assistance, in a perfectly straight line.
Mister Johnson
Ensign
Yes, it is about sight. Or more correctly, a lack of sight. Fortunately when you lack sight, you still have your other senses, most notably sound. The myth wasn['t about being blind and deaf. It was about walking while being blind.
They completely and utterly failed to test the actual myth.
No they didn't. They focused it on sight and sound.
No. The whole point is that when you're denied your sight, can your other senses compensate and allow you to walk in a straight line. If you're going to deny more than sight, you might as well deny all the other senses, too. And there's a lot of them. Sense of balance, sense of touch, sense of time, etc.
I don't recall ever once being deafened in fog.
Never mind. I've made my points, trying to consider both sides. You seem unwilling to consider more than one side. There's nothing more I can say.
Again, sounds like you're in the same denial Adam and Jamie were. Even with no sense of sound, they were nearly always convinced they were walking in a straight line... until it was revealed to them that they weren't.
In any case, I rewatched some of the videos and they weren't wearing the headphones for every test. For swimming and walking through the woods, they only had the goggles.
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