The Perception of Time

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Maybe our perception of the passage of time is simply a degree of consciousness. The more conscious we are the slower time passes, the less conscious we are the faster time passes. When I'm pleasantly intoxicated time seems to fly past. If I have a medical procedure and am unconscious I have no memory of time. When I'm recovering and in pain time drags. Maybe cortisol levels have something to do with the phenomenon. I would guess that young members of our species have reduced cortisol compared to older members, on average anyway.

 

[Treedbear]

Maybe our perception of the passage of time is simply a degree of consciousness. The more conscious we are the slower time passes, the less conscious we are the faster time passes. When I'm pleasantly intoxicated time seems to fly past. If I have a medical procedure and am unconscious I have no memory of time. When I'm recovering and in pain time drags. Maybe cortisol levels have something to do with the phenomenon. I would guess that young members of our species have reduced cortisol compared to older members, on average anyway.

I agree. What does perception of time mean though? A greater degree of consciousness means that conscious awareness contains more details and an improvement in the ability to recognize the interactions between processes. It means the brain is more actively engaged with regard to one's own interactions. In other words there are more memories created and they are stronger and more stable. When we reflect on those experiences it seems to have taken more time because there are more memories during some standard duration of time. But it's a relative measurement (as all measurements need to be). You still need to ask that if time seemed to pass slower, then slower than what?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Here's a cool BBC video on the subject:

Why our dreams could be the key to time travel

Talks about precognition and a few other things. Very interesting.

 

[Treedbear]

Here's a cool BBC video on the subject:

Why our dreams could be the key to time travel

Talks about precognition and a few other things. Very interesting.

Maybe I'm having a hard time accepting this seriously because I have some synchronicity going on between Rudy Giuliano's press conference on TV while I'm reading the text of that video, but it boils down to quantum theory being used to explain some wild theory with a scarcity of evidence. Again. "... if their first gut instinct is this doesn't make sense, it's just because we don't understand human capacities as much as we will in the future." So, magic.

 

[Tharmas]

I read a book about twenty years ago by the British physicist Julian Barbour called The End of Time. Barbour’s thesis is that from the point of view of physics and physical theories, the idea of time is an impediment, that physics make more sense if we discard the notion of time, and that the human perception of time is an entirely subjective phenomenon.

This would explain why our experiences of time are so variable depending on mood, cognitive ability, what we are doing, etc.

For example, when I travel somewhere, either by plane, train or automobile, the hours spent in travel seem incredibly long and tedious, but later, looking back on the trip, I remember the destination and my activities there with great clarity, but memory of the actual trip fades into nothing and becomes “timeless” in a sense.

 

[skepticalbip]

Here's a cool BBC video on the subject:

Why our dreams could be the key to time travel

Talks about precognition and a few other things. Very interesting.

Maybe I'm having a hard time accepting this seriously because I have some synchronicity going on between Rudy Giuliano's press conference on TV while I'm reading the text of that video, but it boils down to quantum theory being used to explain some wild theory with a scarcity of evidence. Again. "... if their first gut instinct is this doesn't make sense, it's just because we don't understand human capacities as much as we will in the future." So, magic.

I'm with you. I always cringe when I hear some psychologist, philosopher, or woo merchant explaining some idea they have by resorting to quantum mechanics or especially to quantum entanglement. Their reasoning seems to be that since they don't understand whatever they are trying to understand and they also don't understand quantum mechanics either then the two must be tied together.

 

[Tharmas]

Here's a cool BBC video on the subject:

Why our dreams could be the key to time travel

Talks about precognition and a few other things. Very interesting.

Maybe I'm having a hard time accepting this seriously because I have some synchronicity going on between Rudy Giuliano's press conference on TV while I'm reading the text of that video, but it boils down to quantum theory being used to explain some wild theory with a scarcity of evidence. Again. "... if their first gut instinct is this doesn't make sense, it's just because we don't understand human capacities as much as we will in the future." So, magic.

I tend to agree with you TreedBear. It reminds me of a book I read as a child, An Experiment With Time by J.W Dunne. What's old is new again I guess.

 

[Treedbear]

Here's a cool BBC video on the subject:

Why our dreams could be the key to time travel

Talks about precognition and a few other things. Very interesting.

Maybe I'm having a hard time accepting this seriously because I have some synchronicity going on between Rudy Giuliano's press conference on TV while I'm reading the text of that video, but it boils down to quantum theory being used to explain some wild theory with a scarcity of evidence. Again. "... if their first gut instinct is this doesn't make sense, it's just because we don't understand human capacities as much as we will in the future." So, magic.

I tend to agree with you TreedBear. It reminds me of a book I read as a child, An Experiment With Time by J.W Dunne. What's old is new again I guess.

My own wild and crazy and possibly off the wall theory is that the unconscious mind is indeed a very powerful part of the brain's processes and that most of what goes on there is hidden from conscious awareness. It would just be too overwhelming and largely less than useful factor for how we interact with the world. But those hidden processes are still based on the same logical mechanisms that allow us to create models of our environment. So there is reasoning going on that might be accessible once we clear away wrong ideas about where those inspired moments come from. Such as spirits, religious incantation, or pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo. A better avenue is meditation, mindfulness, and a rational understanding of the self and its relationship to the mind. That way we can form a more honest and open communication with that resource. And form a clearer awareness of possible futures.

I haven't read your book but I see it got mostly good reviews on Amazon. It seems like the author's experiments on tracking one's dreams can have positive benefits for memory performance.

 

[rousseau]

But another idea he presents is that as we age and acquire more and more experience we also achieve more of an understanding of out environment. Our model of the world becomes more complete and as it does so there is simply less need to remember recent experiences because older, more established ones have become sufficient. It's not a defect so much as the natural result of what the brain has been doing for a lifetime. Not that inactivity is a good thing. Eagleman stresses that continuing to actively seek mental challenges is crucial to the brain's health.

This is an interesting idea. I wonder if you could change time flies when you're having fun to time flies when you're engaged / challenged. For some, maybe it's not necessarily fun, but built-in difficulty in their life that keeps them moving, thinking, striving - their minds aren't occupied by time, but instead real challenges.

Whereas I look at my life now and at 34 I've achieved most of what I need to support myself for the rest of my life - a pretty accurate model of reality, an advanced trade that I'm skilled at and that is in demand, sufficient savings given my age. The overwhelming number of my days feel effortless - there is no type of real exertion, and consequently minimal engagement.

I also find it interesting as I read poetry how common of an experience this is in various poets. It's astonishing how many male poets I've read who speak of boredom. It's like they figured it out, and after a while are forced to kill time.

 

[Treedbear]

But another idea he presents is that as we age and acquire more and more experience we also achieve more of an understanding of out environment. Our model of the world becomes more complete and as it does so there is simply less need to remember recent experiences because older, more established ones have become sufficient. It's not a defect so much as the natural result of what the brain has been doing for a lifetime. Not that inactivity is a good thing. Eagleman stresses that continuing to actively seek mental challenges is crucial to the brain's health.

This is an interesting idea. I wonder if you could change time flies when you're having fun to time flies when you're engaged / challenged. For some, maybe it's not necessarily fun, but built-in difficulty in their life that keeps them moving, thinking, striving - their minds aren't occupied by time, but instead real challenges.

Whereas I look at my life now and at 34 I've achieved most of what I need to support myself for the rest of my life - a pretty accurate model of reality, an advanced trade that I'm skilled at and that is in demand, sufficient savings given my age. The overwhelming number of my days feel effortless - there is no type of real exertion, and consequently minimal engagement.

I also find it interesting as I read poetry how common of an experience this is in various poets. It's astonishing how many male poets I've read who speak of boredom. It's like they figured it out, and after a while are forced to kill time.

It seems that time is a useful metaphor for many things. I think that probably time seems to move faster "when you're having fun" and "when you're engaged / challenged" because those activities limit our otherwise normal state of awareness. As there are fewer of those reference points to be remembered the time seems to have passed more rapidly. Just as when in a fast moving train we notice fewer landmarks. The experience still needs to be relative to some standard duration of reference. Time passes quickly on a roller coaster at an amusement park. But if the coaster suddenly runs off the tracks the context changes to one of total awareness and afterwards it seems like time slowed down.

I guess poetry is a good outlet for an atypically active mind. There are far worse ways to "kill time". Alcohol and the stock market being two that come to mind. It seems you're unlikely to lean in those directions. I'm know you'll find strength in building your family. Maintaining the trust in and for others in ways only a family can provide is the best way to avoid going down life's many narrow and dangerous paths that seem to occur just when we think we've figured everything out.

 

[DBT]

The passage of rate of change in the physical world as processed and perceived by a brain...perception being relative to a brain.

 

[rousseau]

But another idea he presents is that as we age and acquire more and more experience we also achieve more of an understanding of out environment. Our model of the world becomes more complete and as it does so there is simply less need to remember recent experiences because older, more established ones have become sufficient. It's not a defect so much as the natural result of what the brain has been doing for a lifetime. Not that inactivity is a good thing. Eagleman stresses that continuing to actively seek mental challenges is crucial to the brain's health.

This is an interesting idea. I wonder if you could change time flies when you're having fun to time flies when you're engaged / challenged. For some, maybe it's not necessarily fun, but built-in difficulty in their life that keeps them moving, thinking, striving - their minds aren't occupied by time, but instead real challenges.

Whereas I look at my life now and at 34 I've achieved most of what I need to support myself for the rest of my life - a pretty accurate model of reality, an advanced trade that I'm skilled at and that is in demand, sufficient savings given my age. The overwhelming number of my days feel effortless - there is no type of real exertion, and consequently minimal engagement.

I also find it interesting as I read poetry how common of an experience this is in various poets. It's astonishing how many male poets I've read who speak of boredom. It's like they figured it out, and after a while are forced to kill time.

I guess poetry is a good outlet for an atypically active mind. There are far worse ways to "kill time". Alcohol and the stock market being two that come to mind. It seems you're unlikely to lean in those directions. I'm know you'll find strength in building your family. Maintaining the trust in and for others in ways only a family can provide is the best way to avoid going down life's many narrow and dangerous paths that seem to occur just when we think we've figured everything out.

It's true. Health is the only way forward - all else follows from there. I just have to deal with the boredom. I actually spent the past 3 or 4 years doing away with alcohol completely. I still have a sizeable liquor collection, but might have a half ounce every month or so.

Oddly enough I've read and understood so many mindfulness techniques as well as Eastern philosophies that these days I'm likely more sound than most.

 

[Swammerdami]

Here's a cool BBC video on the subject:

Why our dreams could be the key to time travel

Talks about precognition and a few other things. Very interesting.

I was wondering about "retrocausality" long before I'd heard that term, and long before I'd read Huw Price's Time's Arrow and Archimedes Point^*. It sounds like such thinking has become more mainstream!

If we start accepting precognition as real and due to "quantum retrocausality" we might also wonder if evolution of Earth's life operates faster than random due to a teleology!

Even without retrocausality, life seems to depend on quantum effects. A chlorophyll molecule, for example, directs incoming sunlight energy to a specific reaction center with higher efficiency than any "random walk" much in the same way that artificial quantum computers achieve fast searches with Grover's algorithm. And Roger Penrose hypothesises that the microtubules -- of which there are a preposterously large number -- in the neurons of mammalian brains operate on quantum principles.

* - Huw Price's book is a good read, I think, for laymen who want an overview of the basis for retrocausality, which Price claims is precisely what should be expected in a world based on quantum mechanics. Price's PhD is in philosophy, not physics, but he has many end-notes showing his conversations with physicists, many of whom agree with Price.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This conversation reminds me again how different this TFT board is from another Board that bills itself as the "Ignorance Fighting" center of the Web. Any attempt to discuss retrocausality there is met with derision, non sequiturs and silence.

ETA: I think retrocausality deserves its own thread: it's only tangentially related to this thread topic. Perhaps the Board has a professional physicist willing to start a discussion.

 

[Treedbear]

...
This conversation reminds me again how different this TFT board is from another Board that bills itself as the "Ignorance Fighting" center of the Web. Any attempt to discuss retrocausality there is met with derision, non sequiturs and silence.
...

How revolting! Mind sharing a link to that board?

 

[Swammerdami]

...
This conversation reminds me again how different this TFT board is from another Board that bills itself as the "Ignorance Fighting" center of the Web. Any attempt to discuss retrocausality there is met with derision, non sequiturs and silence.
...

How revolting! Mind sharing a link to that board?

That board has a rule against mentioning other message-boards! Assuming that's not an issue here, Google "Fighting ignorance since 1973" and select 'Message Board' from the first hit. That board has much higher traffic than TFT, I think. Some months ago, they made a big software change with user interface and look-feel completely different from before. (Many users are dissatisfied with that; Searches now seem to work poorly.)

I've stopped participating on that board. When I did participate it was with a username different from 'Swammerdami.'

 

[Jayjay]

Here's a cool BBC video on the subject:

Why our dreams could be the key to time travel

Talks about precognition and a few other things. Very interesting.

I was wondering about "retrocausality" long before I'd heard that term, and long before I'd read Huw Price's Time's Arrow and Archimedes Point^*. It sounds like such thinking has become more mainstream!

If we start accepting precognition as real and due to "quantum retrocausality" we might also wonder if evolution of Earth's life operates faster than random due to a teleology!

Greg Egan's Teranesia is a science fiction novel with a similar premise. It posits a mutation in DNA, that allows natural selection not based on random recombination, but by looking at all possible mutations and choosing the mutations that are most prevalent across all possible worlds. This accelerates the evolution in weird ways.

Personally, I think that if retrocausality was possible, we'd see examples of it across the board, not just in brains of humans or complex mammals. There would be worms and plants that could see the future and take advantage of it. So far there is no such evidence, hence I don't think it's happening for humans either.

As for the topic of the thread, I think that it is inherently very difficult to measure one's "speed" of perception. It's different for every person and there is no way to compare it to anything. Smarter people with higher IQ probably do perceive more in the sense that their brains can process information faster (this is what IQ tests mostly measure), but that doesn't map directly to our experience of time. For example, in a stressful situation time seems to slow down, but it doesn't actually do that: we just tend to remember more details from a dangerous situation and our brains construct that as having happened in slow motion. It's an evolutionary trait that allows us to learn from close calls.

 

[Swammerdami]

Personally, I think that if retrocausality was possible, we'd see examples of it across the board, not just in brains of humans or complex mammals. There would be worms and plants that could see the future and take advantage of it. So far there is no such evidence, hence I don't think it's happening for humans either.

In a rushing river, there will be very few molecules moving upstream (though a few fish may consume much energy and move upstream).

Similarly, with the strong directed rush of entropy in our part of the galaxy, 99.9999% of macroscopic causal connections will have the usual past-future ordering.

Precognition is still hard to explain, even if one accepts quantum retrocausality.