Time is not always linear.

[revol68]

what is this idiocy!

a) your perception of time may have changed but it doesn't mean time itself did, I mean for fucksake your example is nothing more than a sexed up "time flys when your having fun".

b) Slowing down and speeding up has got fuck all to do with the linearity of time, everything still happened in order.

 

[ice-is-forming]

personally i used to believe that my perception of time was relative to what i was doing and in what situation, you know same old same old, like boring lectures and being in pain and having fun and all that,

but i now reckon that the ability to anchor myself to the right time is a physical attribute, something like my body knowing if it is day or night when i can't see a clock, an in built hind brain thing, like being aware of where i am in space, so it is with time.

almost like a sympathetic nervous system thing.

i have come to this conclusion because i semm to have managed to break my time 'muscle' and very often i just don't have a bloody clue.

sometimes it is worse than others and tbh i'v got used to it now and rely on other stuff like the suns position etc to know if its am or pm etc....
i used to do this before with uncanny accuracy but now i do it in a more puzzled way cos i have to.

but the main thing that i have noticed is that sometimes 1 minute seems like an hour and sometimes an hour seems like a minute, but its nothing to do with what i'm doing.

it just sort of fits and starts along...like a broken watch....probably getting it 'right' twice a day...iyswim.

leads to a confused but interesting life.

it doesn't help with being in the southern hemisphere either and i have allmost given up on knowing what month it is.

must be one of those things programmed into you really young cos i can't seem to shake saying stupid things like "last christmas" when i actually mean july, cos that is the middle of winter here n all that......so cos christmas is coming i keep calling december winter when of course its summer.

 

[axon]

I am not really saying that I can control it, just that for a moment for me it seemed to stretch in a very real way.

There's also the problem of our memories lying to us. It could be that when you was on the bike, all the thinking you were doing happened very fast and you were not aware of it. Then, when you recall the incident, you have access to the thought processes that were going on at the time, but the "time scale" that went along with the thoughts has now been set slower that it actually was.
Do not trust the brain! It lies, and it often wrongly perceives things.

 

[Divisive Cotton]

Good story weltweit, but when I read it I thought that this has more to do with the concentration of the mind

There are amazing claims by advanced practioners of meditation about the ability of the mind once it is both regularly excercised, so to speak, by being put under regular pressure... such as, the ability to change subjects many times over in just a second.

 

[weltweit]

Strictly speaking, nothing may accelerate past the speed of light. Things that are already going that fast may continue to do so. This is because in e=mc^2, as your kinetic energy, e increases, so does your mass, m. The heavier you are, the more energy you need to accelerate. You end up needing infinite energy to go faster than the speed of light, c.

I accept that the laws of physics say that but my understanding is that we make up laws to describe what we see happening around us and the laws that seem to best describe reality get accepted until they are later disproven when we take up a new law in place of the old one.

Consider Sci Fi, e.g. the Star Trek teleporter, we are made of matter, they break down the matter at one place and reconfigure the matter in another place in an identical way. You have not really moved, you were simply taken apart in one location and re configured in another location .. Yes I know its Sci Fi not reality but not so many years ago it was thought if you travelled more than 20mph you would die of suffocation. In the Star Trek transporter idea you could in fact be present at both locations at the same time or you could "arrive before you left" .. ie. faster than the speed of light.

Time is curved because space is curved. They are not seperate things, but a single thing - spacetime. It's the old iron balls on a rubber sheet analogy. wikipedia knows all

Will try the link but do not understand how time can be curved, except if it can be curved then can it not also be a loop, the Hamster wheel that I mentioned earlier? Which means also that it is infinite.

 

[J77]

A few comments...

Space and time are intrinsically connected.

Einstein taught us that time slows down for a moving observer - time stops when they reach the speed of light (special relativity).

Time is only "bent by gravity" in so far as space is (general relativity), so if you travel along a path at constant speed, it will take longer if than if the gravity wasn't acting - ie. you go further.

On your bike, time didn't vary enough for you to realise. Like Shippy mentioned, it probably goes down to survival instinct - adrenile and faster neuron activity.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

there are so many things wrong with your analogies that i give up (not you j77)

but

do not confuse science fiction and science

and

you seem to confuse metaphors and reality

 

[J77]

From memory...

"If time exists at all surely it must be independent of the universe"

No, time is an intergral part of the universe and is considred to have started with the big bang therfore rendering anything before the big bang or even the concept of a "before" imposible to comprehend

The big bang is linked with the so-called "Arrow of Time"; that is, the reason time always marched forward.

As time increases, entropy increases - this is a measure of disorder.

The lower the energy, the higher the entropy.

Thus, the universe starts from high energy - at the big bang - loses energy in the form of eg. black holes, ending in the state of lowest energy but largest disorder (entropy).

I think this is the big crunch.

Some people conjecture about white holes which add energy...

 

[weltweit]

Weltweit, you seem to be confusing your own subjective experience of time with Time - during this period of frozen/reversed time you perceived in your head, the cells in your body still died and reproduced, your food was still digested by stomach acids and enzymes etc, and you still carried on moving forwards;

Yes that is an interesting argument because I knew I did not have time to reach either of the brakes to slow the bike, I knew that was futile as by the time I had reached either of the brakes I would have already hit the car, yet time was in slow motion but brain time was speeded up 100 fold, I had enough time to do a lot of mental work searching my memories even though I did not have time to reach the brakes.

what you brain perceived was affected by chemical changes in your brain happening in response to what was a high-stress situation, which is something that humans have evolved as primarily a subconcious technique, but one that can be trained into the brain to be used in everyday life - for example, professional cricket and tennis players are capable of hitting balls travelling far faster than you or I could because they train to ignore the see ball-think about movement-make movement conscious process, and rely on trained reactions (there's also stuff about recognising body/bat/ball position which can generate the same response).

I understand the cricket analogy, fast bowlers are very fast and hitting the ball has to be instinctual, there is not enough time to think.

When athletes talk about being 'in the zone' they are usually referring to a mental state where they are in a different form of consciousness to 'normal', and one that is optimised for say, reacting to the sounding of a starting gun. I remember reading an article about studies that show that human physical endurance is at least partially a function of the mind - that if you think about something being a long distance your body will respond according to that, or possibly your brain will make you think your body is responding like that, you feel tired, fatigued etc.

Oh I am sure that physical endurance is at least in part a function of the mind, the mind tells you if you are in pain for example and if you train it right, or perhaps have the right kind of brain, you can provide your own pain killers to overcome what might cause others to stop.

Phrases like 'it's all in the mind' seem to have a ring of truth about them...

Yes also phrases like “time stood still” or “the second ticked by like hours”

All I am saying is that in this extreme situation in which I was convinced my life was threatened time seemed to slow down, a lot, and that enabled me to find a way to save myself from very serious injuries or death. The whole episode was probably not more than 2 seconds long.

After the accident I was completely in shock, because I had been convinced I was about to die but somehow had managed to save myself but it did not really make sense.

Thinking about it since I have the firm conclusion that time seemed to go into slow motion.

I accept that physical things, the direction of the bike, my inability to get to the brakes even to skid broadside into the car rather than driving straight into it, they all continued as they had, but even they seemed to be occurring in slow motion while my brain was able to work at super speed.

 

[weltweit]

what is this idiocy!

a) your perception of time may have changed but it doesn't mean time itself did, I mean for fucksake your example is nothing more than a sexed up "time flys when your having fun".

Yes "time flies when you are having fun" could be described as a truism, an obvious truth or platitude. But there is a reason why truisms are obvious truths, and that is because they are

I object to your accusation that it was sexed up it was very bloody and I still have scars from the experience, you may get scars from sex but personally I am not into that kind of sex

b) Slowing down and speeding up has got fuck all to do with the linearity of time, everything still happened in order.

You are quite right the thread title was a mistake, I am not questioning the linearity of time that was an error, I am saying it seemed to *stretch* for me i.e. 2 seconds seemed like perhaps 5 minutes.

 

[Crispy]

I accept that physical things, the direction of the bike, my inability to get to the brakes even to skid broadside into the car rather than driving straight into it, they all continued as they had, but even they seemed to be occurring in slow motion while my brain was able to work at super speed.

That's pretty much it. Seemed is the operative word of course - time can seem to pass at a number of different rates, dues to varying brain chemistry.

 

[weltweit]

That's pretty much it. Seemed is the operative word of course - time can seem to pass at a number of different rates, dues to varying brain chemistry.

But if our brains can appear to make time go faster or slower and we experience reality with our senses and our brains, time is actually going faster or slower .. in our realities .. yes btw I do think we make our realities.

The only reason I wear a watch is out of politeness to others, so that I can meet them at a point in time as we arranged, I had a meeting earlier today but that is already history a memory of a past now, the only fact is .. NOW .. this instant .. the past is just memory and the future just expectation .. expectation of more nows.

Surely there is a reason that "time stood still" is a truism, perhaps because it is true?

 

[weltweit]

.......<snip>........but the main thing that i have noticed is that sometimes 1 minute seems like an hour and sometimes an hour seems like a minute, but its nothing to do with what i'm doing.

Yes I agree, time does not always seem to travel at the same speed, my example was an extreme one but most of us will have had to listen to a boring speaker and the seconds have seemed to take .. hours ....

Perhaps that explains our perception of time rather than the reality that it perhaps always ticks at the same speed.

 

[revol68]

it's not a truism cos if your sitting there with time standing still in your own mind the bus drivers just pulled off and your missing your plane.

 

[kyser_soze]

But if our brains can appear to make time go faster or slower and we experience reality with our senses and our brains, time is actually going faster or slower .. in our realities .. yes btw I do think we make our realities.

What, so instead of being independent entities that share the same physical universe we are in fact engaged in some kind of mutual hallucination that includes our physical existance?

 

[weltweit]

[for revol68]

Ah but when time stands still you live a whole life in a single moment, perhaps a life every day, everything slows down to your speed ..

and

The bus stands still also ..

dunno about the plane though

 

[kyser_soze]

No it doesn't stand still - it leaves you waiting in the rain with a beatific yet somewhat stupid looking expresison on your face.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

What, so instead of being independent entities that share the same physical universe we are in fact engaged in some kind of mutual hallucination that includes our physical existance?

shit... that explains the foxgirl with the jar of pickles

 

[weltweit]

What, so instead of being independent entities that share the same physical universe we are in fact engaged in some kind of mutual hallucination that includes our physical existance?

No we are independent entities that share the same physical universe but we all interpret it differently, perhaps sometimes interpreting the passage of time differently.

That might explain my interpretation that time went into slow motion when I needed it to, yet physical things still carried on (also in slow motion) doing what they do according to the same rules as we understand them.

 

[kyser_soze]

perhaps sometimes interpreting the passage of time differently.

So would mean we each have a separate, subjective experience of something that is a physical constant?

That might explain my interpretation that time went into slow motion when I needed it to, yet phisical things still carried on (also in slow motion) doing what they do according to the same rules as we understand them.

See further what everyone else on the thread has been saying...

 

[Crispy]

So would mean we each have a separate, subjective experience of something that is a physical constant?

I'd say so. Most of the time, that experience is broadly the same. I'm pretty sure you experience "RED" the same as me. Fill me full of psychedelics, however, and the colour red could look very different. Similarly, my experience of time will shift and change. Altered brain chemistry alters the subjective experience of the world. Adrenaline and othe stress factors (short + long term) alter your brain chemistry.

 

[weltweit]

There's also the problem of our memories lying to us. It could be that when you was on the bike, all the thinking you were doing happened very fast and you were not aware of it. Then, when you recall the incident, you have access to the thought processes that were going on at the time, but the "time scale" that went along with the thoughts has now been set slower that it actually was.

I understand what you are saying, when I recall the incident the explanation I selected to explain what seemed to have happenned was that time went into slow motion. You could be right but I do recall the incident quite clearly even though it actually took place 20 years ago.

It is the only time in my life so far when I was absolutely certain I was going to die, I think that makes it quite a strong memory.

Do not trust the brain! It lies, and it often wrongly perceives things.

Actually I have to say that my own brain and my own senses are just about the only things I do trust !! .... perhaps I am unwise to.

 

[kyser_soze]

I'd say so. Most of the time, that experience is broadly the same. I'm pretty sure you experience "RED" the same as me. Fill me full of psychedelics, however, and the colour red could look very different. Similarly, my experience of time will shift and change. Altered brain chemistry alters the subjective experience of the world. Adrenaline and othe stress factors (short + long term) alter your brain chemistry.

I was called an 'empiricist' for saying this on Max's 'Does a tree make a sound...' thread.

 

[kyser_soze]

Actually I have to say that my own brain and my own senses are just about the only things I do trust !!

'Your eyes deceive you, don't trust them'

Obi-wan 'Ben' Kenobi

 

[weltweit]

Good story weltweit, but when I read it I thought that this has more to do with the concentration of the mind

I accept that my perception that "time went into slow motion" was my perception and perhaps other people have had similar experiences with different explanations. But I have heard of others who think the same way I do.

There are amazing claims by advanced practioners of meditation about the ability of the mind once it is both regularly excercised, so to speak, by being put under regular pressure... such as, the ability to change subjects many times over in just a second.

Well I would not know about that a very untrained mind here.

 

[weltweit]

Space and time are intrinsically connected.

Hi J77, which space, outer space or space as in volume?

Einstein taught us that time slows down for a moving observer - time stops when they reach the speed of light (special relativity).

Time is only "bent by gravity" in so far as space is (general relativity), so if you travel along a path at constant speed, it will take longer if than if the gravity wasn't acting - ie. you go further.

No I cannot follow that, does not make sense to me.

To me the concept of time is : time ticks ever onwards, the passage of time, lots of seconds one after the other, lots of discrete moments in time in consecutive order going forwards, always here possibly infinite or if there was a start there will be an end.

Possibly described as a strand of time stretching back into the past and forward into the future, down or along which we all travel in the days hours mins and seconds of our lives.

Some Big bang theorists seem to suggest that time started at the big bang, but then where did all the matter for the universe come from, I feel matter existed before the bang, perhaps it existed for x trillion years and that is a measure of the length of its existence, we even explain the universe as having an age, not that time was not present before, just that time can be used as a unit of measure to describe the age of the current universe.

On your bike, time didn't vary enough for you to realise. Like Shippy mentioned, it probably goes down to survival instinct - adrenile and faster neuron activity.

But on my bike my impression was that time went into slow motion.
It seems to me there can only be two explanations :

1) Time slowed down and i was able to do a lot of thinking in what would normally have been a split second but took much longer.

2) I mentally speeded up and was able to do a lot of thinking in what was a split second.

I have never been able to think that much, that fast with such clarity before or since, even when mentally very excited, so for me "slow motion" sounds good.

 

[axon]

But time would have only slowed down for you. It didn't slow down for anyone else on the planet. This leads to a third possibility, that your perception of time changed. This seems most likely to me.
Or option 4, which is that your memory of how fast time was going is wrong. This doesn't mean you're are remembering wrong, it means you are remembering correctly, but the "time tag" on the memory was incorrectly recorded at the time.

 

[weltweit]

But time would have only slowed down for you. It didn't slow down for anyone else on the planet. This leads to a third possibility, that your perception of time changed. This seems most likely to me.
Or option 4, which is that your memory of how fast time was going is wrong. This doesn't mean you're are remembering wrong, it means you are remembering correctly, but the "time tag" on the memory was incorrectly recorded at the time.

Yes time only slowed for me that is certainly I think true.

ok

3) my perception of time changed yes I guess that is possible.

4) your memory of how fast time was going is wrong. possible also

Not sure I follow you on the memory being good but the time tag being bad though perhaps you can expand on that for me.

 

[dada]

time is a ball of yarn with knots intertwining locking each other.

 

[fela fan]

Hey, nice thread! Weltweit, just goes to show that the art of not panicking is a pretty useful skill to have!!

From the study of language and of neurology, you will find that we have three bits to our brain in terms of comprehending things: a sensory store which absorbs all incoming stimuli - taste, visions, sound - a working memory and a permanent memory. If you just imagine for one minute having a conversation with somebody. Just consider the extreme speed with which you're able to not only understand (ie, hear + interpret) what people are saying to you, but also with which you're able to reply. This speed probably makes a bullet seem quite pedestrian.

[what you hear constantly triggers memories and virtually automatic replies]

What actually happens is that a stimulus (in your case the sports car) is recorded by your sensory store, and your working memory then consults your permanent memory to find an appropriate way of dealing with this stimulus. To understand language this process needs to operate at exceptional speeds (hence problems with understanding a second language that you might be learning). This process is thus primed and can therefore deal with non-language stimuli in the same way.

All the thoughts that came into your head in that split-second was your permanent memory informing your working memory. And it worked, coz you saved your life.

Those that get into dodgy situations and panic have closed down this process and therefore become fallible and open to external events.