Thread: Time - totally subjective?

Time is perceived by all of us - but our perception of it can change. If you wake up after a dreamless sleep, it may seem like hardly any time has passed. The same could be true with a coma. As Einstein said, an hour with a pretty girl may seem like a minute, but a minute sitting on hot coals may seem like an hour.

That is all pretty obvious. However, this is what I'm interested in; when in situations where we are in great danger, we sometimes notice that time seems to slow. This is because the brain is processing more information than usual. Does this mean that time is just the speed of information intake? Does this mean that our perception of time is not constant for the universe? If we could somehow by made to process a lot more information, and faster, would time slow down further? Could it stop all together? We could make time travel faster by decreasing this information flow, right?

What do you think?

If you're bored time seems to stand still and if you're (Mind is) stimulated time seems to slip away like sand in your hand. I don't beleive time itself is effected though only your perception.

Obviously if you put a person in a coma for 6 months it would likely seem to them time had not passed at all inbetween their awakening and them going into the coma.

It is of interest to note that when the CIA was doing "brainwashing" expirements they needed a way to make the subject forget the brainwashing experiments happend at all.

Their soloution was not very novel, they put the subject into a drug induced coma and thus eventually the person lost their recollection of the "brainwashing" experiments after an extended amount of time in a coma.

So you can always change your perception of time depending on your circumstances. Bored,happy,asleep,in prison but time itself doesn't go faster or slower only your perception of it. I think in some ways time is a concrete things but in other ways it is untangible.

Time is one of the things that confuses me. Is it real or is it only a perception of humans (A purely human conept?

This is why humans have sought an objective way of marking time for as long as history has been recorded; precisely because an individual's perception of time is exactly and solely his capacity to process information and is not dependent on any external constant whatsoever. Unfortunately, we are finding out that our perception of space is probably very similar to our perception of time; and so there really is nothing that we can look at as objectively constant as individual human bodies.

"Time" is the concept of an agreeable constant comparable and measurable change.

Once that idea of change becomes immeasurable and incomparable between individuals our communal idea of "time" goes out the window with it.

I highly doubt people will be able to agree on what "time" it is after Dec. 21 2012...

Our perceptions of "time" will change... They are already changing... They have already changed...

Quick...What "time" is it?

Not to mention the theory of relativity. Time is not only changed by our perception, but it is in fact changed absolutely (clocks, etc. change as they speed up). If I throw something across the room, the time relative to that object has changed. An infinitesimal amount (that we can actually calculate), but it still changes.

As I always say... "Reality is infinity, forget the finite figments..."

Time is an illusion created by memory.

Hence its passing depends on your state of mind.

Originally Posted by SolSkye

I highly doubt people will be able to agree on what "time" it is after Dec. 21 2012...

Different cultures have different time concepts. America is so totally obssessed with time, the clocks rule our lives and we demand they do others too. Our time is fast paced and rigid. In other countries, this is not so.

Time is an illusion. There is no such thing as time in the sense that it exists around us, or that we are moving through it. There is no past or future, only a now that is constantly changing. The reason we have the illusion of time is because of our ability to remember the way things once were. (ONCE) were.

So yes, time is completely subjective. When you get bored sitting in math class, you aren't feeling the "passing of time." You're merely feeling your patience wearing thin, your eyes getting heavy, and your butt starting to hurt. All of which is change from how you felt walking into class. But the guy next to you is in the middle of some awesome book, and he doesn't feel any of that.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that time just means change.

Sometimes you just feel like you're reading your very own thoughts Yes indeed - time is change. Or, as I once realized while riding in a bus, time is movement.

I think its all subjective personally, perception tells us how time feels, but my perception can be much different from an animals perception of time, or an insect...etc

No

Originally Posted by ShredHead

[COLOR="Blue"][I]Time is an illusion. There is no such thing as time in the sense that it exists around us, or that we are moving through it. There is no past or future, only a now that is constantly changing.

If time is an illusion, so is distance, mass, velocity, and temperature. One could say "There is no in front of or behind of, there is only here."

No.

I know this is a little off point, but I just had an idea. Maybe somebody should try showing up for work four hours late, and when the boss bitches, say, "What? Time is subjective."

Time is based of the rotation of the Earth. The Earth is rotating at a certain speed. One rotation of the Earth at a certain speed will always take the same duration (i.e. amount of time). Of course motion is relative and so is time, and while calling it an "illusion" is in a sense correct, the term seems to imply that it is false, deceptive or useless when in reality it's measurable, useful and practical. Weather that one Earth rotation "seemed" to take a long time or seemed to pass quickly is a result of your perception of time and not time itself. If anything is a misleading illusion it is your perceptions.

Time exists. I have a clock next to me, that's proof.

Isn't time also effected by speed?

I mean, I read somewhere that if you were to go to a planet that spins faster than earth for a year or something, then if you were to come back, you would be a year older then others?

I think it had something to do with lightyears...

Originally Posted by slayer

Isn't time also effected by speed?

I mean, I read somewhere that if you were to go to a planet that spins faster than earth for a year or something, then if you were to come back, you would be a year older then others?

I think it had something to do with lightyears...

Yeah, that's a big part of the theory of relativity. Though I haven't even tried to understand relativity so I could never explain how or why.

Yes. It's relatively (lel) easy to understand. Basically the laws of physics are independent of your velocity, so that means that the speed electromagnetic waves (light) must always be measured to be the same. Think about it; this means that if you travel at the speed of light relative to some point of reference, you will never catch up with a beam of light because irregardless of your velocity that beam will always travel away from you at the speed of light. Even weirder in some ways, even if you travel at the speed of light towards an incoming beam of light, you will not measure that light's speed as double what is normal, but still exactly the same.

We all know that speed = distance / time; as speed remains constant, it turns out that what happens when you are moving to explain this effect is that the time actually changes.

If you travel at almost the speed of light away from Earth and back again for say 10 years, when you return a whole century could have passed.

About the OP: I find such subjects very interesting. I reckon causality and hence time is intrinsic to consciousness, but I am not sure how. I'll answer the question with a question of my own:

Imagine you log the activity of your brain throughout your life on a computer. If you play this activity back (ie. simulate it), you'd imagine that 'inside' the machine is a conscious experiencer. The question is this: what if you played the log back twice as slow? Wouldn't one thought take twice as long, and so the the world would pass twice as fast relative to the consciousness? And of course the killer question; what if you played the log backwards? Would the consciousness be going back in time?