h a l f b a k e r yGet half a life.
add, search, annotate, link, view, overview, recent, by name, best, random
news, help, about, links, report a problem
browse anonymously,
or get an account
and write.
register,
|
|
|
Forgive me if this is an area of already extensive scientific research – I did a half-baker’s worth of internet research on it already and found nothing. If it turns out to be well-established, or at least already well considered, I will delete the idea.
I am formulating a theory in my half-educated
brain of differential time perception sense among various species. My theory is that different living beings perceive the passage of time at different rates.
Some of you may recall the episode of the original Star Trek in which a race of beings perceived the passing of our second as we perceive the passing of several hours, or perhaps days (I don’t recall the specifics). I submit that this is a reality among species on our planet.
Consider the starfish, the sloth, the human, the fly – I am postulating, for example, that these four creatures perceive time at four different levels. If you time-lapse photograph the behavior of starfish (sea stars), it is startling to watch them move and interact with each other. Perceived at our rate of perception, they appear near motionless. But film them over a period of a few days, and speed up the film so that a full hour passes in seconds. It is startling to watch them interact, fighting for territory and supremacy over a patch of food, and otherwise behaving in what now appears to be normal speed for such activities.
Also, I don’t believe the sloth is impatient with itself as it slowly reaches for the next spot on the branch. I believe it perceives its own movements at the rate that we perceive our own, and we seem to it to buzz around it in a blur – much like a fly buzzes around us so quickly. Now, the fly appears to our perception to be moving like a person does in a film that is being shown at increased speed. But if we film the activity of a fly and replay it slowly, we can see a creature moving at a rate that matches our own movement.
I don’t know of any way to prove this theory, but it’s fairly interesting. It may even explain why some folks consider others "slothful" who are unable to keep up with them. Perhaps they have a slightly different sense of time. Certainly it is well known that we can chemically alter our perception of time. Perhaps there is a biochemical reason that "time flies when you're having fun" -- perhaps enjoyment increases the time perception rate in humans. Perhaps we can establish a base time percepton rate for humans, call it, say h. So flies perceive at 2h, sloths at 0.5h. Sea stars perhaps at 0.02h. Under the influence of certain narcotics or endorphins, we can increase our perception to, say, 1.01h.
Again, if this is old hat, or a thoery already well under consideration, I couldn't find it. But if it is, I'll be pleased to look into it, because it is a fascinating notion, and could lead to a new understanding of what time is.
Time
http://www.maps.org...v11n2/11245mat.html
Very poetic and informative article; caution, before you nod off while reading it be aware that the article appears in a collection of pro-psychoactive drug literature. [reensure, May 15 2002]
"Time" A New Logic (Revised) [From newsgroups]
http://www3.nf.symp...search/ps/ps109.htm
An interesting collection of logical contraints for time study. [reensure, May 15 2002]
The Perception of Time
http://www.york.ac....gramme/adv/pot.html
University of York Psych. class outline.
"Fundamental facts of time perception will be considered in both human and non-human species, as well as comparative approaches between species." [phoenix, May 15 2002]
The Experience and Perception of Time
http://plato.stanfo...es/time-experience/
The metaphysics of time perception. [phoenix, May 15 2002]
Toward a Unified Theory of Animal Event Timing
http://www.math.uta...du/~hills/time.html
[phoenix, May 16 2002]
What is it like to be a bat?
http://www.silcom.com/~teragram/bat.html
Thomas Nagel's essay suggests we can have no knowledge of the subjective experience of other species. [pottedstu, May 16 2002]
"Dust" short story
http://www.sfreader...ad_review.asp?ID=31
Excellent short story by Greg Egan involving subjective vs objective time [Jeremi, May 16 2002]
Why Time Speeds Up As You Get Older
http://www.amazon.c...202-3011005-0203823
Somebody obviously takes the subject seriously. [DrBob, May 12 2005]
[link]
|
| |
c r o i s s a n t - m a y i s l e e p o n i t ? |
|
| |
1 year to a cat is said to be equal to 7 human. Don't know
if this helps. That makes my first cat (3 cats mad) 49 years
old. He's certainly grumpy enough. |
|
| |
Time within a species must alter, time went so slowly as a
child, in recent years it seems to be flying by. |
|
| |
it works on a sliding scale though arora - first year longer then following years - try to find a link.. |
|
| |
One hour daytime sleep equals two hours nighttime sleep. |
|
| |
I suppose 'normal speed' is simply in the eye of the beholder, so yeah, this makes basic sense. <Tolkien's Ents> Let's not be hasty... </Tolkien's Ents> |
|
| |
I do believe it's fairly well established that - all things being equal - the faster an organism's metabolism, the smaller the slice of time that organism is able to perceive. |
|
| |
I'll see if I can find a link. |
|
| |
So is that why the years seem to go by faster as I get older? My metabolism is slowing down comparatively? |
|
| |
Hmmm..Interesting concept, [Globaltourniquet]. But you chose starfish, sloths, and houseflies as your examples, all of which have far shorter ( and perhaps less interesting) lifespans than most of your readers. I looked around at the redwoods surrounding my ranch house that have not succumbed to bark-beetle, and thought, "Hey, I don't remember that tree-trunk being so close to the eave 20 years ago."...and "When did that tree's roots start getting so close to the foundation below my bedroom?" |
|
| |
Now, it might just be the woods closing in on me or, then again, it just could be a diabolical scheme within an incomprehensibly long-term ( and, hence, slow-paced) time frame, but it occurs to me that the trees (especially redwood, sequoia and baobab species) are out to "get" (that is, eradicate or exterminate or, at least, condemn to permanent albinism, fungi and/or rust) all human life as we know it. Other writers have portrayed these trees as benevolent, omniscient, sentient beings. But having read your idea, [globaltourniquet], I now suspect them of far more malevolent motives and impossibly intricate plans than most humans are capable of imagining. |
|
| |
Probably due to the unseasonably dry winter we have had in the Western US this year, we are seeing quite a few large fires rather earlier in the season than we would normally expect. Is this another natural phenomenon, or are the "Pyromaniacs" around us actually "Pyro-Saniacs", with an understanding that those big, long-lived trees are actually plotting the human race's eventual destruction? Hmmm. |
|
| |
[Note to all readers: This is NOT an invocation to go out and burn a tree. This is all tongue in cheek. If you feel compelled to burn something, burn me in effigy.] |
|
| |
Makes sense to me, gt. I have often wondered, when trying to quash an annoying fly, and seeing it escape time and time again, whether it was perceiving my movements as if in slow motion. |
|
| |
I think it's misleading to view different animals as perceiving time differently, since there is no way to quantatively compare subjective perception, even assuming animals can be said to have subjective perception. Since every animal is perceiving the same world (in its own way) that external world is the only reference point we have. Consciousness is necessary for the perception of time passing. There is no evidence that any animals other than human beings have consciousness. |
|
| |
For further information, read "What is it like to be a bat?" by Thomas Nagel (see link), which discusses the impossibility of comparing the experiences of different animals, although I don't necessarily agree with all his points (he believes all mammals are conscious). |
|
| |
//There is no evidence that any animals other than human beings have consciousness.//
I would dispute that (though not in a way that involves us getting annoyed at each other). I seem to remember that a researcher working with chimpanzees noted that, if a chimp with a red disc stuck onto his forehead saw himself in a mirror, he would reach towards his own head, not the reflection. This was taken to indicate that he realised that the image was himself, not some other chimp, and thus that he was self-aware. Whether this is the same as consciousness is moot. Unfortunately, I don't remember where I read this (it may have been that my wife told me about it). |
|
| |
If consciousness = sense of self then it certainly is not required in order to perceive spans of time as I have described. The sloth can perceive its own movements or those of things and creatures in its environment at some rate without having any sense of "I"-ness. As can the fly. Though I agree with [angel], that many animals do have some measure of this sense. |
|
| |
*rereads idea* Yes, I agree consciousness isn't necessary for the sort of work gt describes: if you're interested in measuring speeds you just need stimulus-response. |
|
| |
It's only if you want to know how animals experience time as a subjective thing, you need consciousness: I guess there's a few components to experiencing time: |
|
| |
the idea of time as a sequence of events that can be ordered |
|
| |
the idea of cause and effect with effects following causes |
|
| |
the concept of the arrow of time (which may relate to memory and to cause and effect) |
|
| |
the perception of how long things take (time flies when you're having fun) |
|
| |
being able to estimate what time a clock will show (knowing it's 6 o'clock without knowing how you know it is) |
|
| |
In addition, there is the idea of reaction time and the idea of simultaneity and handling events that happen in quick succession (which we sometimes get the wrong way round), which is related the minimum time interval that can be perceived, and all the quantitative things discussed above. |
|
| |
Regarding Rayford's observation that time seems to pass more quickly as you get older. I've long expounded the theory that this is because as you get older each day represents an increasingly smaller percentage of your life and a smaller part of your store of memories. It is therefore entirely logical that you perceive the days as passing more quickly as you get older. Perhaps we can redefine death as that state wherein the days seem to pass so quickly that you are unable to perceive them at all? |
|
| |
DrBob, I reached the same conclusion long ago. I even once posted an idea incorporating the concept on the halfbakery, suggesting that one could slow down the perception of rapidly running out of time at the end of life by (somehow) erasing early memory (not suggesting that's without significant cost!). The idea was rapidly buried in fish. |
|
| |
Further to angel's point about the classic 'mirror test', pottedstu, I'd have to argue that the evidence for 'consciousness' in some other animals is at least as convincing as the evidence for 'consciousness' in other humans. The trick is not to look for awareness-of-self, which we can't exactly point to, but to look for 'Theory of Mind' - the idea that another animal is, like us, aware of itself and it's surroundings, and the expectation that it will, like us, respond as a sentient individual to our actions. The classic example of this is the low-status male monkey who's liable to get the shit kicked out of him by the alpha if he so much as makes a move for a female. So what does Monkey Machiavelli do? With one hand he hides what he's doing from the alpha, while, with the other, he masturbates in full view of the female. She spots it, clocks what's going on and heads off to a secluded spot away from the alpha, where Monkey Machiavelli has an illicit rendezvous with her. Like all good cheaters, they return separately so no-one is any the wiser. |
|
| |
Whether or not *we* consider this or that animal to be conscious, it is clear from this, and many other examples of primate behaviour, that many of them treat each other as conscious. It also strikes me as an example of fairly good abstract reasoning, and, short of spurious spiritualist metaphors like the 'soul', I see no reason to distinguish us bald, brainy apes from our hairier cousins. OK, they're not rocket scientists, but the question here is one of sentience - sensation - rather than sapience, and this specific type of awareness, it seems to me, is just a highly complex form of kinaesthetic sensation; that all those individual sensations of hunger, pleasures, pains, sights, sounds, etc., are integrated and articulated into a sense of self seems no more earth-shattering to me than the fact that we can use both of our legs together in order to walk. |
|
| |
Anyhoo, where the physiology that we relate to basic, psychological responses such as disgust, anger, fear, misery, happiness and surprise is matched in other species together with the external behaviour that we usually consider to be the 'acting-out' of an inner, emotional state, denying consciousness seems to me to require a fairly sophistic definition of consciousness. |
|
| |
Oh, and, to finally address the actual topic: interestingly enough, studies of mammalian *play* behaviour have found that if you slow down the squeaks of mice (and other animals, I believe) they sound like giggling, so much so that scientists are looking at the 'chuckle response' as something in-built in mammals, at least. And mice are pretty fast little critters... so maybe there is something in what you say, gt. |
|
| |
I imagine, beauxeault, that the fish were for the whole notion of erasing memory, rather than the feasibility of the idea. Because the idea itself would work. If you could only remember the last six days, why one day would feel like forever. But just because it would work doesn't make it a good idea. |
|
| |
Just my bigger fan base at work, beaux. :0) |
|
| |
DrB: I fly a lot; I try to keep my fan base small so it fits in the seats. :o) |
|
| |
I wonder if it'd be more palatable if you could pick the memories you want to erase. And although Alzheimer's sufferers lose more recent memories and retain earlier ones, I wonder if they nevertheless experience "now" with a "higher Q." |
|
| |
If you want to interact with other species, first you have to try to put yourself into their time frame. Make some reasonable assumptions about their attention span, primary sense (eyes primary? or nose or ears--which I think is how dogs are biased), and what is known about their capabilities, and usually they will suprise you with what seems to be direct, non-verbal communication that convention says is anthropomorphism or automaton-like actions. |
|
| |
I feed the little birdies. I like to look at the little birdies. So sue me. The Jays soon learned how the feeder works--it is a hopper type, and the hoppers are of thin, flexible plastic. I don't know whether they learned on their own, or watched me, but at some point they learned that if they tap on the hopper, more seeds come out at the bottom. So now, when the feeder is empty, oft times a Jay will seem to more demonstrably land on the feeder, look at me, then whack the hopper a couple times, then look at me again, apparently trying to influence my behavior, trying to communicate that THE FEEDER IS EMPTY AND WE ARE HUNGRY SO WHY DON'T YOU GET US SOME MORE SEEDS YOU BEAKLESS WONDER! |
|
| |
Is really time moving forward ? Or is our perception that makes it to appear like that ? |
|
| |
I totally had this idea, myself, when I was a kid. I saw gerbils scratching themselves at a rate that I couldn't come close to, bugs jerking about, etc... yeah |
|
| |
Scientific American, september 2002 special issue, "A Matter Of Time" covers everything discussed here and more. Cover stories include -Times mysterious physics, - Building time machines, - The mind and time, - Ultimate clocks, - The philosophy of time, - The bodys clocks, and - Time and culture. It was an excellent issue and dealt quite extensively on other species' matabolisms and their frames of reference when it comes to perceiving the passage of time. |
|
| |
Perception of time varies from person
to person depending on how their brain
functions and parses information. It's
completely subjective. And when a sloth
looks at you, all he sees is a blur. Okay I
made that last part up... |
|
| |
My personal theory on the the subject goes something like this....... |
|
| |
Time appears to to be always there, overall a big constant that can be relied on......like the ocean. |
|
| |
Also, like the ocean, there are unseen currents that shift and flow different directions at different times. |
|
| |
And there are tides, and surges, and other varying conditions that help explain why the last 10 minutes went so quickly, or the next day is going to crawl. |
|
| |
Mark my words, the physics to back me up will become apparent someday. Now I'm going to take a nap. |
|
| |
you speak of waves in the time/space
continuum and how does a "perspective
on reality" get +'s? Isn't it an MFD? |
|
| |
heroin binges seem to take forever. |
|
| |
{benfrost}, Is that a bear trap for a cat?
Shakes head to clear it. Time. Every been in an accident where you still had control of the outcome?
As long as no one talks, Time slows to nearly nil.
Another oddity - I was playing basketball & we were about to be beaten & lose the right to the court. I was exhausted, but felt it would be a blow to my honor to be the reason for losing. The man I guarded threw up an ally-oop (a pass to another player that looks like a shot, where the other player grabs the ball near the hoop & either dunks it or gets a layup)
In a fraction of a second I diagnosed what was happening. This is not the wierd part, I took two steps backward & jumped. (I used to have an amazing vertical leap) The sun was in my eyes and the ball dissapeared behind it. Oh no! I thought. Now we will lose as I can't see the ball. I had the sensation of flying for it seemed 15 seconds and then I hear in real time "see look at that, I told you"
after it seemed another 15 seconds I began to wonder how on earth I was not already back on it.
Just then I started to feel myself floating rather than flying. & guess what?, the ball emerged from the sun. Next I thought "Oh crap, It's too high. I'll never get it. I decide to extend my body as far as possible & stick my hand in the ball's path.
Now I am thinking - Why am I still airborn? It doesn't really make any sense.
at this point I hear the footsteps of two people behind me. I think - there is the person who is about to catch the ball when I miss it & dunk it. I also think - I do think I remember someone on my team pretty closely guarding him. I hope he can bat the ball away when I miss it.
The ball & I both are floating slowly, very slowly, & somehow my hand touches it. "w o a h!" I hear people say.
I think now It's game point & I need to get both hands on the ball before it bounces off my hand. I do this, feel myself start to slowly begin falling & then time returns to normal.
I bet all of what I described happened in 3 seconds, but it really seemed more like 2 minutes to me. |
|
| |
Very odd thing, our perception of time. |
|
| |
Think of when you were a school kid - six weeks of summer holiday was an eternity. Fast-forward to now. Your boss gives you a six week project. Panic! |
|
| |