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Things You Probably Should Have Considered, But Didn't

Perhaps Limited Foresight may be the term? I had, as has been pointed out, sufficient foresight to avoid the combine running me (and the dog) over, pulled into the gateway to allow them sufficient space to pass us, left long enough after its passing to not worry about running up its bottom (we were moving at similar speeds - combine was enormous and heavy and I'm...well, not far off). So I had made all allowances that I though necessary. The wasps were not taken into consideration at all.

And thank you Michael59, dog and I are now fully recovered.

In a synchronous event - fly tipping had been almost unknown in our village and around our lanes, but happened earlier this week for the first time in years!
 
I reached down for the bottle and had another drink. I thought; "that's odd, there's something solid in it!".
Oh, I've been there. Wasn't a wasp, though.
 
Nah, that's a chance in, what, thousands? I certainly wouldn't have expected a wasp to move into my bottle!


Now you've told me about it though it WILL happen. :(
The last time I got stung by a wasp I was cycling – the wasp got stuck between the top of my ear and the bottom of my helmet and stung its way out. That smarted (though there was nowt I could do to anticipate that or prevent it, apart from wearing a bee-keeper's-style net over my head...)
 
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The last time I got stung by a wasp I was cycling – the wasp got stuck between the top of my ear and the bottom of my helmet and stung it's way out. That smarted (though there was nowt I could do to anticipate that or prevent it, apart from wearing a bee-keeper's-style net over my head...)
Yup, I've considered making Techy an Aertex fabric-type helmet cover which would stop insects getting in. He does get the odd bee in his bonnet. ;)
However, he said it would look silly so I won't bother. Insects don't harass me because I keep my head and face covered.

The only sting I've had so far on the bike was when a wasp flew up my shirt sleeve and attacked my armpit.
That was an instructive ride. Lesson learned: don't ride a bike in a running shirt.
 
I was cycling and had something weird run up my arm-sleeve and sting me in the arm. It was after dark, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't a wasp, hornet, or bee. My friend's mom told me to take off my shirt and there was "something" that she couldn't identify. No idea what, never asked because sometimes you're better off not knowing.
 
I was cycling and had something weird run up my arm-sleeve and sting me in the arm. It was after dark, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't a wasp, hornet, or bee. My friend's mom told me to take off my shirt and there was "something" that she couldn't identify. No idea what, never asked because sometimes you're better off not knowing.
It could've been a lost/out after curfew wasp, hornet, or bee which was already feeling angry when your armpit kidnapped it.
 
Does this have a name?

It's those things that happen that weren't inevitable, in fact they may even have been slightly unlikely, but were still foreseeable by someone in the right frame of mind.

For example, this happened to me only the other day. I was out running with my dog down our local country lane (a narrow, single track road). We pulled into a gateway to let a combine come past us - it moved slowly up the lane in front of us. It was huge, very wide, more than took up the entire lane and was well into the verge on either side.

Dog and I start running again, about ten yards behind the slowly moving combine. Dog starts squealing and yelping. I look down and she's a mass of wasps. I, too, am covered and being stung. We dashed on and managed to run out of the swarm of very annoyed wasps within about thirty yards.

Now, I've lived in the countryside all my life. I've encountered wasps nests all my life. I knew that the combine was stirring up the hedges. Should I have considered this to be a possibility when I set out to run behind it?

It's a bit like the thing where you take a milk bottle out of the fridge, open it and then swig down half the contents in one gulp before you realise that the milk is 'off'. (Although the likelihood and possibility of this probably varies from household to household).

Does it have a word? I'm considering 'Minchinhampton' - although I believe this is already taken...

Rural roadside hedge cutting makes me wary, having read about incidents like this -

Retired farmer dies as barbed wire shoots from hedge-cutting machine and strikes his neck

There was a similar accident about 15 years ago when a piece of barbed wire shot off a hedge that was being cut and in through a car window, striking a passenger in the neck and killing her. That was treated as an accident. It made me very cautious indeed.

So if I see this being done when I'm driving I insist on closing all the car windows and if we're cycling I'm prepared to turn back and go another way, if only to prevent punctures.
 
Reminds me of the time I drove past a council crew doing grass-cutting activities on the verge.

Chap using one of those petrol powered strimmers (which didn't have the plastic guard fitted) managed to catch a stone with the blade which propelled the stone at high speed through the rear, right hand side window of my car, smashing it.
They tried to deny any blame for it, until the chap who arrived later that day to replace the glass found the stone embedded in the roof lining inside my car.
 
Hi everyone hope you are all doing ok?

On a similar vein to the original post has anybody had a kind of deja vu where all the events leading up to something are different to 'your vision' (for want of better terminology) but the outcome is something that you remember happening exactly? For instance I was sitting down to watch something on TV with my wife a few weeks ago all very standard stuff when suddenly everything seemed familiar and I asked my wife if she had had a text from a certain mutual friend of ours regarding a job interview they had had and I was able to recount the text before my wife was able to read it out! The odder thing about this is up until I had this feeling of deja vu nothing else was similar to to the events I remember as the originally I remember this happening in the kitchen during the afternoon but the 'real' event happened at night in our sitting room.

My apologies for not being very clear it's quite hard to describe.
 
On a similar vein to the original post has anybody had a kind of deja vu where all the events leading up to something are different to 'your vision' (for want of better terminology) but the outcome is something that you remember happening exactly? ...
My apologies for not being very clear it's quite hard to describe.

It seems clear enough to me ... You got the 'deja vu' / 'been here before' feeling of recognition about what was occurring or going to occur, but the setting and preceding events didn't seem to match a sort of memory that wasn't triggered until you had the deja vu feeling. The recognition of the end result (friend's text message) triggered a memory of getting to that very end state via a different back story. Relative to the point when the deja vu recognition occurred you were spot-on looking forward (to the result) but having something akin to a Mandela Effect moment (clash of memory versus reality) regarding how you arrived at that point.

Just for the record:

- How long had it been since the text arrived before you asked if it had arrived?
- Had you been in the kitchen earlier (in the afternoon) like the setting in which you 'remembered' you'd learned of the text's arrival?
 
It seems clear enough to me ... You got the 'deja vu' / 'been here before' feeling of recognition about what was occurring or going to occur, but the setting and preceding events didn't seem to match a sort of memory that wasn't triggered until you had the deja vu feeling. The recognition of the end result (friend's text message) triggered a memory of getting to that very end state via a different back story. Relative to the point when the deja vu recognition occurred you were spot-on looking forward (to the result) but having something akin to a Mandela Effect moment (clash of memory versus reality) regarding how you arrived at that point.

Just for the record:

- How long had it been since the text arrived before you asked if it had arrived?
- Had you been in the kitchen earlier (in the afternoon) like the setting in which you 'remembered' you'd learned of the text's arrival?

I think you a right in what you say but very interesting when it happens to you.

I had been in the kitchen in the afternoon but alone as my wife was at work and I work from home.

The text is a little more interesting as I only asked about it as I got the deja vu feeling and had not hear a text arrive and it was the fact I asked my wife about it that made her check her phone. I was also able to state what was said on the text, not word-for-word but the general message (our friend had gone for a job interview and the text was stating that she had got the job but had decided not to take it as they had not been clear about how much travel was involved) so relatively specific if one was just trying to guess what the text may say.

However this could all be a mash up of previous knowledge and experiences made into a cohesive narrative by my brain triggered by an unknown stimulus. Thoughts?
 
Two more interrelated questions before I answer ...

- How long had you known (if at all) that the mutual friend was considering or looking for a new job?
- How long had you known (if at all) that the mutual friend had actually applied for the job and been (or was going to be) interviewed?

I'm asking because you'd said:

... I asked my wife if she had had a text from a certain mutual friend of ours regarding a job interview they had had ...

... and I'm uncertain whether you knew such an interview had really occurred (or was due to have occurred) versus having speculated there'd been a job interview as part of the deja vu style realization you experienced. In other words - did you already know there was or was to be such an interview, or was the interview itself part of the impression(?) that popped into your head upon being triggered in a deja vu style manner?
 
I only knew that she had applied when my wife had mentioned it 2-3 weeks prior so until then I had not been aware she had been looking. I can only guess that something possibly on the TV had made me remember this and made me ask my wife if she had heard anything. The text was also from our friend was from that day also.

So I knew a job interview was happening but had not talked about it since then so I hadn't known for certain that she had gone to the interview or had heard back.

Certainly some coincidence going on but I find it fascinating.
 
Fascinating it is ...

In recent times we've become accustomed to thinking of the mind as a sort of computer-like mechanism that handles its operations (e.g., cognition; inference) via linear stepwise processes.

IMHO that's just a convenient metaphor for making sense of how we seem to operate, but it's ultimately misleading in relation to what's really going on. It's more appropriate to describe the mind as a flexible and dynamically stocked / refreshed library of metaphorically-guided associations among which one is able to flit almost instantaneously. We don't have to step through a line of inferential steps to get from A to B; we are able to 'flash' from one to the other all at once.

This metaphorical / associative character allows us to correlate things in all (figurative) directions - e.g., up / down (generality / specificity); forward / backward (future / past); sideways (unexpected jumps); etc. These correlations aren't entirely random - they're mediated by experience such that some are more 'probable' than others based on what you know and what you've learned. This provides a basis for projecting outcomes that can't be proven or quantified, but in which one senses some degree of confidence can be invested. It's the sort of thing that allows one to say, "I see where this is going" or to take action based on what seems to be no more than a gut feeling.

I suspect that you were (let's say 'subconsciously' ... ) primed in that you knew the friend was looking for a new job, had applied for one, and there'd been enough time since application for something to have come of the application. The more interesting and more remarkably forward-looking aspect of this priming concerns the extent to which you already knew the amount of travel entailed in the new job would be an issue in her deciding whether to take the job.

Deja vu seems to be a phenomenon in which a current situation somehow triggers a feeling that it's happened before (i.e., that it's 'once before' as well as 'here and now'). IMHO this most probably results from a metaphorically based correlation that isn't accurate - i.e., a backward-facing projection to the effect 'I've been here before.' If one accepts the more associative / metaphorical nature of the mind this isn't all that strange a possibility.

I suspect you're right - something in your evening experience triggered the coalescence of a storyline / scenario that was coherent / 'whole' enough to seem like a memory, but which represented a projection woven from a constellation of loose ends in memory about your friend's job search.

The most unexpected and specific bit in your 'prediction' of the text's content was the bit about travel being an issue. I wouldn't be surprised if the stimulus that triggered your thoughts about the friend's job search had been something to do with travel (e.g., on TV). I suspect the most specific item or focus in your coalesced thought-scenario was directly related to the triggering stimulus that seeded the coalescence.
 
That is an excellent way of expressing the situation I found myself in. Also knowing this friend quite well I was aware that long travel would be a deal breaker for her so I suppose realistically if everything else you have said is correct there was only one bit of 'guess work' needed in that I didn't know the job involved travel everything else my mind could have pieced together. With that I suppose if I had of 'guessed' wrong it would have not been memorable and I would not have mentioned it here today and it would have just been a moment in time with no real significance to me.

I also believe you to be correct in that the mind isn't a static filing system but more of a RAM system with the more 'used' or 'likely' pathways being easier to navigate (remember) but most things being accessible at least with the salient points that are needed and the route there (the narrative) sometimes changing to enable us to get to the important stuff.

Great discussion thank you
 
Pivoting back to the original focus of this thread ...

There's a limit to the amount of forward-looking associative / metaphorical projection we may bring to bear in generating our constantly shifting situation awareness within our constantly shifting situated-ness (in terms of, e.g., time, space, actions, emotional states, etc.). These limits pertain to both the scope or range of factors we consider in evaluating a situation as well as the depth or detail to which we evaluate those factors we do consider.

This, I believe, is the basis for what catseye called "Limited Foresight." Such 'foresight' is like a flashlight in a dark space - it only illuminates what it's pointed at. As a thought process, it is one's mind / mindset which does the 'pointing', and the effectiveness and relevance of the 'pointing' depends on a mental state that is itself shifting in the moment.

Not considering the possibility of the combine stirring up stinging insects isn't so much a failure in a presumptive responsibility / capability to review all the possible follow-on outcomes (of the combine's passage) as a simple and understandable 'miss' in 'pointing' one's limited projective attentions toward the particular area of possible effects (pissed-off stinging insects) that turned out to be relevant.

If catseye had already noticed wasps flying around and concluded they represented a risk in that place at that time one might ascribe a small amount of blame for not taking them into account as a possible side-effect of the combine's passage. If the same situation arose on a cold winter day (when wasps wouldn't be active) catseye might be faulted for considering a risk that wasn't reasonably possible in the first place. It all depends ...
 
Rural roadside hedge cutting makes me wary, having read about incidents like this -

Retired farmer dies as barbed wire shoots from hedge-cutting machine and strikes his neck

There was a similar accident about 15 years ago when a piece of barbed wire shot off a hedge that was being cut and in through a car window, striking a passenger in the neck and killing her. That was treated as an accident. It made me very cautious indeed.

So if I see this being done when I'm driving I insist on closing all the car windows and if we're cycling I'm prepared to turn back and go another way, if only to prevent punctures.

Round here the farmers turn off the hedge cutters when someone approaches. In fact I was out running yesterday and watched a poor farmer having to turn the cutter on and off about five times because, although it's a quiet country lane, there were tourists about.

He also turned it off for me as I ran past with the dog.

The worst thing about them round here is the amount of thorny debris that gets left on the verges. Dog is constantly picking up blackthorn in her paws.
 
Round here the farmers turn off the hedge cutters when someone approaches. In fact I was out running yesterday and watched a poor farmer having to turn the cutter on and off about five times because, although it's a quiet country lane, there were tourists about.

He also turned it off for me as I ran past with the dog.

The worst thing about them round here is the amount of thorny debris that gets left on the verges. Dog is constantly picking up blackthorn in her paws.

That's very considerate of the farmers! Round'ere during the lockdown all the hedges were cut to within an inch of their lives. I reckon it gave the workers something to do.
 
Dog is constantly picking up blackthorn.....
good boy.png
 
That's another personal rule of mine - never drink from a bottle or can that you haven't SEEN opened.

Saw someone drink piss from a can. I learned from that.
That rule probably accounts for the demise of Party Sevens. That and the lowlifes who would put cigarette butts in them - yes, been there, at the consuming side of the 'joke'

A long time ago now!

I seem to recall reading somewhere that the subconscious can act on external stimuli before the conscious brain has had time to process the input from the eyes etc.
 
... I seem to recall reading somewhere that the subconscious can act on external stimuli before the conscious brain has had time to process the input from the eyes etc.

True ... It requires a very small (in milliseconds) increment of time before an image is sensed, transmitted through various neural circuits, gets translated into recognizable form, and finally 'appears' in conscious awareness. It's possible for some fundamental feature of the latest image 'capture' (e.g., a sudden bright flash) to trigger a reflexive response before the conscious mind registers it.

It's analogous to the way certain neural nodes in the pathways for touch sensitivity can trigger a motor response (e.g., withdrawing your hand from something that hurts) before your conscious mind receives / registers the pain.
 
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I guess that is why I don't remember getting knocked of my bike by that car then, but I do remember realising I was suddenly laying in the road, all broken and ouchy.
 
Does this have a name?

It's those things that happen that weren't inevitable, in fact they may even have been slightly unlikely, but were still foreseeable by someone in the right frame of mind.

For example, this happened to me only the other day. I was out running with my dog down our local country lane (a narrow, single track road). We pulled into a gateway to let a combine come past us - it moved slowly up the lane in front of us. It was huge, very wide, more than took up the entire lane and was well into the verge on either side.

Dog and I start running again, about ten yards behind the slowly moving combine. Dog starts squealing and yelping. I look down and she's a mass of wasps. I, too, am covered and being stung. We dashed on and managed to run out of the swarm of very annoyed wasps within about thirty yards.

Now, I've lived in the countryside all my life. I've encountered wasps nests all my life. I knew that the combine was stirring up the hedges. Should I have considered this to be a possibility when I set out to run behind it?

It's a bit like the thing where you take a milk bottle out of the fridge, open it and then swig down half the contents in one gulp before you realise that the milk is 'off'. (Although the likelihood and possibility of this probably varies from household to household).

Does it have a word? I'm considering 'Minchinhampton' - although I believe this is already taken...
I think its a post-forsight conundrum
 
As a 14 or 15 year old I had a 10-speed Raleigh Magnum bicycle to get around on. I recall one day, planning to go on a ride, and filling a plastic water bottle (an 1980s equivalent to this one) with Orange Quosh (for those of you old enough to remember that stuff) and setting off on my journey.

I'd gone some way and stopped for a breather. I removed the bottle of juice from its clip on the bike, uncapped it, had a swig, returned it to the bike and continued on my journey.

A short while later, whilst still cycling, I reached down for the bottle and had another drink. I thought; "that's odd, there's something solid in it!". Then the "something solid" stung me, twice, just on the inside of my lower lip. I'd neglected to recap the bottle earlier, and presumably a wasp, attracted by the sweetness had squeezed inside while I was stationary.

Something that I really could/should have anticipated on a hot Summers day, but which only became obvious to me in the seconds and minutes after the event. A complete failure of foresight on my part. :doh:
This reminds me of something that happened a while ago to a friend of mine, he was at the beach with my cousin and some other friends (i wasnt there at the time but the story was told to me with much hilarity shortly afterwards) the friend was always known as a greedy b*stard, the group had brought some orange juice in one of those litre cardboard cartons to share, at some point during the day, with the carton about half empty, the friend took it upon himself to gulp down the remaining juice straight from the carton, he ended up spraying half of it back out as a wasp, that had been in the carton, stung his tongue, leading to much cursing on his part and much hilarity and 'serves you right you greedy b*stard' comments from the others, luckily he wasnt allergic and his tongue didnt swell too badly
 
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