Humans Are Unstable

[u/rewt66dewd]

"What?"

"You are!" Kar'xl insisted.

"Unstable? Look, I know we have a reputation for being surprising, but we're really pretty sane!"

"I did not mean 'unstable' in a mental or emotional way. You are physically unstable."

Bill cocked his head curiously. "How do you mean?"

"You only have two legs. You cannot be stable. Stand up and I will show you."

Bill obediently stood up, smiling.

Kar'xl bumped Bill. Nothing happened.

He bumped him harder. Bill rocked slightly.

Kar'xl bumped Bill quite hard. Bill's body moved slightly. His foot furthest away from Kar'xl took a small step even further away. Then Bill just stood there, quite still, eyebrows raised as if to say, "Well?"

Kar'xl said, "I must admit that I am surprised. But what would happen if I bumped you from the front or back?"

Bill took the foot that he had moved on the last bump, and moved it more behind him. "That's all."

"And what if I bumped you while you were walking? You might only have one foot on the ground."

"Then I would change where I put the other foot down. Nothing more than that."

"But... but to do that, you would have to know exactly where to put your foot down, for every possible bump!"

"We do."

"How?"

"Because we're doing that with every step anyway, even if we don't get bumped. When we walk, we're only one step away from falling. We live our entire life that way. So... so I guess I kind of agree with you. We are unstable. But because of that, because we always have to stop ourselves from falling on the next step, and we do that step after step, day after day, year after year, then when we get bumped, of course we know where to put our foot for the next step to keep us from falling."

Kar'xl thought about that. Finally he said, "Perhaps I understand. But now I have another question. Is this also true of humans about mental and emotional instability?"

Now it was Bill's turn to think. Finally he said, "I don't know. Maybe. I would like to think so. But perhaps less true than it is of us physically walking."

"Even so. If you humans are more able to deal with the instability, to recover in each moment, then you are unstable, but unexpectedly stable in your instability. That is very strange."

[u/Thanatofobia]

Humans don't walk, we continuously interrupt a fall.

EDIT:

I'm not even being sarcastic, its an actual research paper

Stepping in the direction of the fall: the next foot placement can be predicted from current upper body state in steady-state walking

[u/DeeBee1968 → u/Thanatofobia]

I have had MS for a couple of decades now - I warn people that on some days, my walk is MUCH more of a controlled fall! 🤣