For the past year I've been noticing an interesting phenomenon, the "Why can't I do that on purpose?"-effect. This usually happens when I'm just walking by my computer desk or other piece of furniture, and throw whatever object I'm holding on it, in this case, a balled up bit of tin-foil from a piece of chocolate. The ball bounces off an emptied drumstick of chicken, instead of landing on the glass desk immediately.
Fascinated, I try and hit the chicken drumstick again with the balled tin-foil, without success.
"How the hell did I do that by accident?"
There are actually a number of different things on my desk that the balled up bit of tin-foil could have hit to elicit that same reaction from me; the plastic candy wrappers around the chicken drumstick, the fork next to it, anything. However, if I try to hit the chicken drumstick, my reaction to the balled up tin-foil hitting the candy wrapper instead will be "Why didn't I hit the chicken wing?"
In other words, suppose there's a 50% of eliciting reaction A, due to there being 5 objects, for each of which there is a 10% chance of hitting them. If I hit one of them and elicit reaction A, I decrease the probability of re-eliciting reaction A to 10%, because the other 4 objects, if hit, will be disregarded.
Conscious control of muscles and trajectory is likely far worse than the unconscious, the second is an order of magnitude older afterall.
But why would the subconscious even try to hit these things?