"The future ain't what it used to be."

a question about perception

ruthless

Timekeeper
i would like everyones opinion on this: do you think that it is possible for people to perceive time at different rates?
 
do you think Bruce Lee was really that fast? Or is was his perception slower than yours?

"Bruce had to slow his movements down because on film, he was practically a blur and you couldn't see what he was doing properly!!"
 
Yes, and no, or maybe, or both. Who knows.

When you sleep, what feels like a 30 minute dream turns out to be 15 hours sleep. Your brain does not perceive the other parts to sleeping. The time has still gone (or has it?) and it was there, but you don't remember it... You've perceived 15 hours in 30 minutes. Or, 30 minutes of 30 minutes of sleep and missed out on 14 and a half hours.

But the question remains what are we using to compare these rates of time. How do you know that clock you've been staring at for hours is broken, or, like my computer clock, set to the wrong time? How do you know that the clock that you watch (sometimes '5 minutes fast'/'5 minutes slow') is not in it's own timezone altogether?

What if it was like the clock I had in my exam... which remained in-sync with all other clocks, but did not move from the same position when I started my first page... and ended my second (which, roughly accounted to '15 minutes'). Did that have it's own timezone? Did I have a different timezone? Did I perceive it differently? Did my hands write at faster than the speed of light? Did the examiner (who also saw the clock not budge) have the same timezone as me, or did I perceive him else-wise, or did he perceive it else-wise, or were we both out of sync... How many possibilities?

What does perceive mean? Interpret? How does someone interpret time? By how fast they move, how fast another object moves? What they can do in a period of time? What is time exactly? A measurement? Is it not like Centimetres or Inches? How does it work? Who knows the EXACT time (seconds, milli-seconds, nano-seconds) right now? Can you sense time? What is a rate? How many ticks? How many clinks and clonks? Does that mean some people perceive themselves dying faster than others?

Alright, enough perplexing questions that would make a streamroller stop. Now, lets approach the question theorically. Firstly, literally, then, finally, philosopically.

Since everyone perceives everything in a different manner to everyone else it is indeed possible for someone to be able to perceive time (albeit as a measurement) differently from someone else. Some people don't like waiting, others have the 'patience of a saint' so to speak. When you wait for a website to load, time seems to take forever to pass. When you're playing a web game, time seems to rush you by.

If I may insert my own AI research (and experience here) to shed a proper theory, and a reason why, this may be as a result of information and memory. When you're waiting for something to happen, your memory is free, and your brain is able to document everything that occurs within that waiting period. Since it doesn't miss anything, it appears to take ages as it notes how many seconds, how big that bar is compared to before, the colour of the taskbar, the browser, the name of the site... When you play the web-game your brain is bombarded with more information than it can process and store, so it loses track of everything. See it like someone yelling "HEY CATCH!" and you have to catch all these falling papers before they hit the ground or they get soggy and wet.

The second, philosopical theory, perceive meaning viewing, time being how a series of events occur and the rate being how fast it does this, no (despite my own experience to the contary). The physical format cannot desync between parts as this would generate a noticable application that can be viewed by more than one person, which would generate a contradiction of people being able to perceive things differently.

Hope I have not suffiently answered this question so you may apply other ideas as well.
 
"When you sleep, what feels like a 30 minute dream turns out to be 15 hours sleep. Your brain does not perceive the other parts to sleeping. The time has still gone (or has it?) and it was there, but you don't remember it... You've perceived 15 hours in 30 minutes. Or, 30 minutes of 30 minutes of sleep and missed out on 14 and a half hours."

thats very strange. im alot different than you. i go through thousands of years in my sleep, only to wake up and realize that its only been a few hours. i have to go around and remember everything cause its been so long since ive seen it. i either dont dream, or dream so much that everythings jumbled when i wake up.
 
"do you think Bruce Lee was really that fast? Or is was his perception slower than yours?

"Bruce had to slow his movements down because on film, he was practically a blur and you couldn't see what he was doing properly!!"

one thing i am an expert on is mr. bruce lee. i am like him in many ways. i even named my son brandon lee felts in honor of him.

this is one reason i asked this question and i find it funny that the inspiration for the question was brought up.

i sometimes THINK i percieve time differently than others, and i thought bruce lee did too, hence his speed. but its probably just the fact that we trained our mind and body to do that and would not accept anything less than perfection.

or it could be that i have an overly inflated ego. :D who knows...
 
i would like everyones opinion on this: do you think that it is possible for people to perceive time at different rates?

Ruthless,

Absolutely, yes.

That's why physicists often talk about the different "arrows of time". At times they talk about the thermodynamic arrow of time (enthropy), the cosmological arrow of time (the evolution of the universe) and the psychological arrow of time (how humans perceive the passing of time).

They all seem to point in the same direction but the psychological arrow greatly depends on the state of mind of the person. Get busy and distracted and it runs faster...time just slips bye. Get bored and it trudges along...you end up clock watching at work and it takes forever for the old tick-tock to go from 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm.
 
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