When I referred to that, I was thinking of it as an example of the speed of non-conscious, highly practiced, control as compared to conscious control using what we normally call “thinking”. At that age, the captain of a visiting English select team said that he thought only one professional player in English cricket was faster at the “gully” position I played. How could I talk about how that feels from inside without referring to myself? I simply don’t know what other elite players of any sport or game feel inside when they do what most other people cannot do. Is it pretentious to ask that kind of question having a data point in hand?
I suspect all high-level athletes (which selection for Canada asserted that at least some people thought I was) do the same, make the right move much faster than they could do by conscious thinking control, as do chess grand masters who are said to require thousands of hours to attain their standard. Is it pretentious to use one’s personal experiences as a data point in a scientific discussion when they are not the kind of experiences most people ever have?
Right now, I think as I have written in PPC and as many people have suggested in different ways, we learn non-conscious control at least in part by synaptic strengthening and weakening when the same thinking leads to the same control actions many times – the “I’ve seen that before and fixed it this way” effect at a grand scale when “many times” is inserted before “before”.