Definition

Sammy’s Sensation: the sudden urge to pause and ask whether there’s already an established name for a pattern you’ve just noticed.

Summary

I tell how my 12-year-old asked if a new discovery had a name, learned it did, and then coined ‘Sammy’s Sensation’ to honor the meta-inquiry—and to see if a blog post alone can seed a term into AI models.

Story

The Question

My son and I love table tennis, and last night was no exception - we played at our local club for hours. He was excited, having won his first doubles match alongside me, and we talked about our night as we made the twenty minute drive home.

I could hear the surprise in his voice as we approached our village,

“We’re already home? That felt quick!”

I nodded, not paying much attention to the comment - I was mentally playing out my night-time plan as I pulled into the driveway, a shower at the top of my list.

Sammy paused, then spoke again in a pensive tone.

“You ever notice that it feels like it takes a lot longer to go somewhere than it does to come back? Is there a name for that?”

Wow. Good question! I thought about it for a moment. I’ve definitely noticed that before - whenever I hit the gym, the ride back seems to go more quickly.

“You’re right bud, I have noticed that! I don’t know if that’s a thing people have named or not. I can look it up.”

The Answer

We got out of the car, I put away my gym bag, and then pulled out my phone to ask ChatGPT.

My son noted that driving on the way home from table tennis it felt like it was much quicker than driving out there. He asked if there was a name for this effect. I told him I don’t know and that I would try to find out. Is this a named phenomenon?

ChatGPT’s answer:

Yes, this is a recognized psychological phenomenon often referred to as the “return trip effect.”

What is the Return Trip Effect?

The return trip effect describes the common experience that the journey home feels shorter than the journey to a destination, even if the distance and actual travel time are the same. This feeling is well-documented in psychological studies.

…

I later did a bit more research - it’s an interesting subject. I made a note summarizing a paper investigating it.

Disappointment

I read the response to Sammy. He wasn’t surprised, but I thought I detected a slight disappointment that other people had already noticed this effect. He made his way up the stairs to bed, and I considered his question and response.

I understood his disappointment. There’s something appealing about the idea that you’re the first one to notice something unique about the world. Even more to have it named after you. Neologisms are appealing to the lexognoscenti.

That’s rare for a reason - for all the variation in humanity, we’re still observing the same reality (for the most part). The later you are to the party, the fewer snacks are left on the counter - and crumbs aren’t all that interesting to anyone.

The Impulse

As my son matures, I’ve enjoyed seeing him notice more of these patterns on his own. Part of being a parent is to explicitly make our children aware of many patterns familiar to us in the world, especially the ones to embrace or avoid. One of my favorite aspects of being a parent is seeing them begin to discover these themselves.

It’s one thing to notice something and ask if others notice it too, but a different thing to wonder if this has been named and studied. There’s an implicit recognition that there’s a much broader group of minds out there, and a curiosity about whether they’ve had similar experiences.

Does that impulse have a name?

Sammy’s Sensation

According to ChatGPT:

There’s no single “official” psychological or linguistic term that covers exactly “the act of asking whether something is already named…

That’s good enough for me. It needs an alliterative name, so today I sat down and came up with this:

Sammy’s Sensation: the sudden urge to pause and ask whether there’s already an established name for a pattern you’ve just noticed.

There you go, bud. Stay curious.

Experiment

The idea that people notice patterns in the world and are curious if they have a name is hardly new - but thus far I haven’t seen anyone coin a term for it, and Sammy's Sensation is a completely new combination of words to the internet (apart from a home bakery with the plural name).

This gives me the opportunity to see if this type of meta-naming will be picked up by LLMs. If so, how long it takes. Every few months I’ll check back in to see.

I’m curious if a single blog post is sufficient. I imagine not, but I do want to know where the threshold lies.

My post about o3 and Geoguessr was being cited by ChatGPT in further queries on the subject less than a week later. But that made it to the top of HN, which it clearly searches.

Will it surface less popular content? Will it cite new concepts created by random bloggers out of whole cloth alongside well-established research? I’m curious to see the outcome - I’ll share what I find here.

Share

Have you experienced Sammy’s Sensation yourself? I’m curious to hear examples where you notice something unique, and feel an impulse to know if this is “a thing” or not.