One Frame Of Time: NFL Quarterback

RainmanTime

Super Moderator
Often on these forums I speak of the fact that Time is non-linear, but that the human organism loves to try and linearize Time around the moments we have to react and respond to.

There is no better example than to consider the timeframe for perception, consideration, and action than your average NFL quarterback has to live in, after every single snap from under center...

The average NFL quarterback starts counting on the snap, and if he has not gotten rid of the ball within 4-5 seconds max, he is going to be reached by the defense. On average.

The quarterback linearizes all of his experiences within those few seconds, and learns to sense, think, and respond in a very non-linear manner (if he is to be successful, that is).

Compare the timeframe of the NFL quarterback to that of longer timeframes of decision & action. When you have more than 5 seconds to consider and react, your performance may improve in certain aspects. Your decisions on how to act and react for a longer timeframe may be very different than your decisions on how to react in short timeframes.

Understanding how each of us balances our LONG timeframes (e.g. on the order of our lifetimes) with our SHORT timeframes (days, hours, minutes, seconds) is fundamental to understanding how the human mechanism is a very specific "time machine".

RMT
 
And when you consider these varying timeframes, then a natural question should come to mind (for those who are learned in mechanics):

Euler

or

Lagrange?


RMT
 
RMT:

As was once mentioned, Quarterbacks John Brodie and Lynn Dickey reported a phenomenon I have experienced twice in moments of potential danger, once on the back of a run-away horse, and secondly in an accident on the San Bernardino Freeway near downtown L.A.

You can think of it as external time slowing down, or internal time speeding up. I suspect that it is really our normal rate of perception, but we prefer to live at a slower, dumbed-down, rate.Else there is so much emotional crap in our software that we are living life at a rate that the "inner child" can keep up with.

It is as if a switch in one's head is flipped, "click," and you truly move into a different mode of thinking. It is very abstract and disinterested, and seemingly much faster than normal thought. You have, it seems, an unlimited amount of time to make a decision because the world is in slow motion.

In the case of the horse I became aware I was atop an uncontrollable animal and needed to take action; after a careful review of possibilities, it occurred to me that if I forced the animals head to the left by pulling on the rein as hard as I could, the horse would blindly collide with a barnyard fence (which was not made of barbed wire).With the horse plunging blindly ahead I waited (yes, waited) for the right moment to hop up and crouch on the horse's back. I knew that otherwise my leg might be crushed against the fence. I waited until the moment of impact and then leaped off, protecting my head with my arm, and rolled (it was into a strawberry patch,lol.). I suffered no injury from this episode.

There was nothing forced, strenuous, or unusual-seeming about this state of altered perception. And I must say one feels super-rational and in command of events.

The entire distance the horse ran during this experience must have been about sixty feet or less!


:D
 
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