this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2025
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Isn't acceleration just a sense of balance? Like you feel acceleration because the whatever fluid moves in your ears due to acceleration which is the same as balance.
I was going to say you have a static sense of what orientation you are in, e.g. you can tell standing up Vs lying on your front/back/side without relying on other senses and that feels different to the sensation of moving...
But thinking about it I guess the orientation sense is just detecting acceleration due to gravity?
I guess so, but similar to how a lot of taste is actually perceived via smell? I suppose linear and angular acceleration could be two separate senses which encompass the sense of balance.
Eh, it's not really similar though. Yes, a lot of what we think of as "taste" is actually perceived via smell. But separately from that, there is actually a phsyiological sensation of taste that is unrelated to smell, i.e. the five basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and savoury.
Whereas there isn't really any meaningful distinction between the sense of acceleration and balance. They're exactly the same sensation, and the mind only knows which one you're actually experiencing by cross-referencing what your other senses tell you. If you're in a situation where these other senses are unavailable, people generally can't distinguish whether they're accelerating or off balance.
This has led to a number of plane crashes in history, in situations where pilots are in dense cloud cover and can't see the horizon. During stressful situations, if they forget to look at the artificial horizon display, they think the plane is pitching up, and therefore try to pitch down to correct, when in fact the plane is accelerating (due to already being pitched down), resulting in a crash.
well, theres the sense of taste, referring to sweet, salt, sour, bitter and umami. then separately theres the sense of smell, sensing what we call aromas. These are two separate senses.
Our perception of taste could be argued includes the two senses
i'd say the somatogravic illusion being a thing kind of proves you right.
it is why kobe bryant helicopter crashed. the pilot lost in a fog thought he is going up, when he was just accelerating down really fast. there is air crash investigation episode about it.