I think we all have different radars - and also what we perceive consciously and unconsciously differs.
For example, my wife has a much keener recognition for something that's messy - a full sink or a shirt laying on the floor of my office will "scream" at her louder that it does at me. Although, I suspect the mess still "affects" me - eg I might be less focused/happy in the messy environment despite not thinking about it consciously.
Something completely wild is what my 3 year old sees. A few days ago I was stopped at a red light and he said "daddy, what are all these arrows?" My first response was "what arrows?" Then I saw the arrows on a sign that explained the intersection. Then I saw the arrows on the overhead exit sign. Then I saw the ones drawn on the lanes itself to show which ones can turn and which ones go straight. Then I saw the one-way street sign. Then I saw the red arrow on the traffic light. And probably a bunch more other stuff, including my blinker signal. So at the instant he asked me about arrows, I was consciously aware of 0 arrows, while in reality there were like 12 in our field of view. Now obviously this is because I've been driving for a long time and I don't need to be consciously aware of the arrows to process their information. But it also tells you how much we might omit / filter out because our minds don't think it's worth surfacing to conscious attention.
I once went on a flight in a glider. I fly RC planes, so I know how to fly (in theory), but I wasn't able to fly the glider well. The pilot, on the other hand, obviously flew with no problem.
I noticed that this wasn't because I didn't know what to pay attention to, but I didn't know what to ignore. I knew very well that I needed to pay attention to my speed, attitude, etc, but there was so much sensory overload that I didn't know what to process and what to just ignore.
Sure, knowing what to notice is good, but knowing what you can safely ignore so you can free up bandwidth for processing the useful information is critical.
This really rings true to my early experiences with driving. As a novice, every moment driving was a sensory overload. Check the rearview mirror! Am I going at the right speed? Is anyone overtaking me? Am I staying centered in the lane? How long has that light been green? Plus all the little mechanics of actually operating a motor vehicle, actually moving your hands and feet the right amounts.
Now, a lot of getting better at driving was just building up muscle memory and good habits, yes, but I think a lot of it was really improving my selective perception and being able to quickly filter out the irrelevant to focus on exactly what was needed to drive safely and effectively.
I also play a lot of fighting games in my spare time, like Guilty Gear, and I feel this there as well. Pick up a new fighting game - especially if it's your first one - and quickly get overwhelmed by all of the things happening on the screen and all of the precise button presses you're expected to make. But then over time, you filter out all the noise and just track the minimum information - the positions of characters, the strategies, the higher-level gestalts at play - and end up spending much less cognitive effort for more effect.
I don't think it's that people don't notice or see, it's that the recognition is mostly subconcious.
I was once driving on a 3 lane highway with a semi going slowly in the middle lane. I was in the left lane and passed him but needed the right lane for an upcoming exit. I pass the semi, slide into the middle lane and then wait. I realized I was waiting on a small blue car that, sure enough, popped out of the right lane going faster than either one of us.
And I realized I had processed that a small blue car was also passing the semi going faster than either the semi or myself and that I needed to wait for them before completing my move into the far right lane.
I think often times things get processed at a subconcious level and I imagine that's what was happening with the anecdote about arrows.
Getting overloaded is common in stressful situations in aviation where it's often called getting behind the airplane. It's the reason we're taught to aviate, then navigate, and then communicate. It's a graceful degradation where by purposefully ignoring what's not currently most important you can focus on what's most important rather than failing at everything. For me flying gliders, the most stressful situations I've been in are winch launch rope breaks with questionable land ahead possibilities. In those cases I've never made a call that I'm entering a modified circuit. Despite a decent amount of experience, I'm just too busy.
Relatedly, gliders are really good at flying themselves. I heard a story about an aerotow where due to a miscommunication the instructor and student thought each other were on the controls. They only discovered this once the instructor praised the student for their best take-off yet. Similarly, learning to land feels like it's about doing the minimum possible. Keep the nose up and just wait. So not only are good pilots paying less attention to distracting inputs, they're also spending less effort controlling the glider on the output side.
I don't know how passenger gliders are designed, but if they're anything like well-designed RC planes, they'll stall by dropping the nose, cruise with a slight up pitch, and have a tendency to right the wings.
That does make a craft very stable in flight, to the point where some RC craft I've used land themselves (albeit a bit hard) when they lose power.
Pretty much yes. Trim to your desired speed in level flight and you can go hands free. Large fins mean strong yaw stability, long wings mean strong roll damping, dihedral on those long wings is relatively large as well so you're stable in level flight. Nearly all gliders are very well behaved in stall and mush forwards without being likely to drop a wing.
As far as pitch, elevators tend to be close to neutral or produce negative lift. There's generally not a noticeable pitch on the aircraft simply because you want the fuselage as closely aligned to the airflow as possible to reduce drag.
This is why "hours" are so important for pilots, but not just pilots. "Hours" for pilots is just a way of saying experience, but cooler. Every aspect of life has different ways of letting others know your experience in something. Ranks in the military, Senior/Junior dev titles, intern, apprentice, black belt. Some are just more mundane, and also get ignored!
>I noticed that this wasn't because I didn't know what to pay attention to, but I didn't know what to ignore. I knew very well that I needed to pay attention to my speed, attitude, etc, but there was so much sensory overload that I didn't know what to process and what to just ignore.
Keith Johnstone's book Impro recommends an exercise involving looking around and naming everything you see out loud, but deliberately giving the wrong name in every case. Look at a chair, say "banana!", stuff like that. Can be done with a partner or a group, too. A few minutes of that is supposed to have a perspective-shifting effect—making things feel off such that you notice more details—lasting hours or days.
I tried it once, just for just a few seconds, and it did seem to have an effect. Need to try really doing the exercise one of these days.
Rather apropos, you explained precisely something I felt when I read your OP's comment (but, humorously, did not consciously notice). I loved it, but couldn't articulate why.
It hit too close to home.
I pictured driving down the road through town, the "turn only" lane indicators painted on the asphalt, the wash of signage, lights, traffic cones—the background noise of our civilization that provides passive information we've grown so familiar with it fades out of our vision.
Just want to say - this comment means a lot. I thought the experience with my kid and the arrows was really poignant for me and I am glad I could get it across.
Really good example. I try to do this regularly around me. Take stock of the small things. It's almost meditative, although not quite. More just a intentional consciousness of and concentration on the world around me.
There's a strange song I heard that talks about noticing things like that and just considering them. It's called My Dog's Eyes by Zammuto. There's a line towards the end that says, "These were children who hadn't yet lost their sense of wonder.", and to me, that beautifully encapsulates what I want to do: Maintain that child-like sense of wonder for everything in the world for as long as I can!
> For example, my wife has a much keener recognition for something that's messy - a full sink or a shirt laying on the floor of my office will "scream" at her louder that it does at me.
This may be because she's trained more that there are negative consequences for her, or that she's responsible for that stuff. I don't really pay attention to tickets I'm not assigned, for example, unless they're on stuff that I'd be the go-to-guy for if anything broke. I figure stuff like that works the same way: at least when I was growing up it was ok for me to be a bit lackadaisical with my living quarters whereas my sister was considered filthy for leaving a makeup brush unwashed too long.
You'd probably get in trouble too if they found your makeup brush :) But on a serious note, I think the difference in attitude between me and my wife is deeper.
She puts a higher premium on solving problems right now and doesn't mind solving the same problem multiple times, whereas I am more interested in solve-it-once-and-for-all type situations, and please less emphasis on something being fixed right now vs a bit later.
Not surprisingly, her personality is a perfect match for emergency medicine while mine for engineering and product management.
For example, my wife has a much keener recognition for something that's messy - a full sink or a shirt laying on the floor of my office will "scream" at her louder that it does at me. Although, I suspect the mess still "affects" me - eg I might be less focused/happy in the messy environment despite not thinking about it consciously.
Something completely wild is what my 3 year old sees. A few days ago I was stopped at a red light and he said "daddy, what are all these arrows?" My first response was "what arrows?" Then I saw the arrows on a sign that explained the intersection. Then I saw the arrows on the overhead exit sign. Then I saw the ones drawn on the lanes itself to show which ones can turn and which ones go straight. Then I saw the one-way street sign. Then I saw the red arrow on the traffic light. And probably a bunch more other stuff, including my blinker signal. So at the instant he asked me about arrows, I was consciously aware of 0 arrows, while in reality there were like 12 in our field of view. Now obviously this is because I've been driving for a long time and I don't need to be consciously aware of the arrows to process their information. But it also tells you how much we might omit / filter out because our minds don't think it's worth surfacing to conscious attention.