Centuries of Sailors Weren’t Wrong: Looking at the Horizon Stabilizes Posture

Association for Psychological Science ^ | January 26, 2011 | Unknown

[decimon]

Sober sailor ping.

[Nervous Tick]

>> Everybody who has been aboard a ship has heard the advice: if you feel unsteady, look at the horizon.

It’s pretty hard to look at the horizon when you’re throwing up.

[The_Reader_David]

Well, that’s good. It’s always nice to see controlled studies confirm what people have known for centuries.

[oh8eleven]

Thomas A. Stoffregen of the University of Minnesota has been studying “body sway” for decades...
Undoubtedly, funded by taxpayers for decades too. What a waste of time and money. Get a feckin life.

[Nervous Tick]

>> if you feel unsteady, look at the horizon

What do submarine sailors do?

[oh8eleven]

Thomas A. Stoffregen of the University of Minnesota has been studying “body sway” for decades...
Undoubtedly, funded by taxpayers for decades too. What a waste of time and money. Get a feckin' life.

[decimon]

What do submarine sailors do?

Horrible things.

[JoeProBono]

[arderkrag]

So, they had this study to discover that sailors are generally right in their own environment. YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK!
Put 'im in the longboat till he's sober,
Put 'im in the longboat till he's sober,
Put 'im in the longboat till he's sober,
Ear-ly in the morning!
(Proud to be from a family of sailors!)

[E. Pluribus Unum]

The underlying assumption here is that nothing is true until state-run media quotes a "scientist" who says it's true.

[Oztrich Boy]

>> Everybody who has been aboard a ship has heard the advice: if you feel unsteady, look at the horizon.<<

OK how does this work again?

[IYAS9YAS]

It’s pretty hard to look at the horizon when you’re throwing up.

When I went through survival school with the USAF, they mentioned that if you were getting sea-sick on the emergency raft, to slide over the side and float in the water. Apparently that has a calming effect on you, and the sea-sickness goes away. Granted, it's considerably easier to do this over a life raft than it is a larger boat/ship.

[stuartcr]

Go down on long black tubes filled with seamen.

[Renegade]

“It’s pretty hard to look at the horizon when you’re throwing up.”

Especially from both ends at the same time ! Lost 10 pounds in 4 hours once .

[libertarian27]

So how much did this ‘decades of study’ cost us?

This has been known for years.

Wonder if he has a study that confirms that drunks sway.......

[Vendome]

Here’s a fun game I like to play on a ship:

Get a bunch of drunk people together on the fore deck and tell them to stand with their feet together while looking out across the bow of the ship.

Now if you do this on a sailboat that is 360 feet long in 12 foot seas, it gets real hilarious, real quick.

The only people who make it are snowboarders and surfers.

[Vendome]

You don’t want to know...

[Dunstan McShane]

This is actually counterintuitive, Stoffregen says.

If thousands of sailors have been doing this for centuries, doesn't this suggest that it is, in one sense, highly intuitive? In an unsteady situation, don't you always orient yourself towards the steadiest thing you can find?

I have a feeling that, for Stoffregen, "intuition" means "the first stupid idea that comes into your head without validation by a many-degreed psych-geek

[Dem Guard]

"What do submarine sailors do?"

Open a window for fresh air ;-)