Nov 26, 2022 01:56 AM
(This post was last modified: Nov 26, 2022 04:26 AM by C C.)
RELATED (scivillage): A science without time: Why isn't it central to physics?
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Is Time Real? (David Eagleman)
https://youtu.be/G4ihCsAPPXQ
EXCERPT: [...] EAGLEMAN: What neuroscience tells us, is that time isn't what we once thought it was. We're not passively tracking the river of time, but instead the brain is actively constructing it. And here's how we know that...
So in my laboratory, for example, I can make you think that something lasted longer or shorter in duration than it actually did, measured by a clock. Or I can make you think that something came before something else even though it was the other way around. Or I can make you think that something is flickering at a very different rate than it actually is.
So I can do all these experiments in the laboratory, and what that means is your brain and my brain might look at the same thing, and just depending on how I set things up, we can see completely different things. What does that mean?
It means time is not Newton's time, where it's the T in the equation that just moves forward and then everything else can be hung on that. So Einstein came after Newton, and said, 'Look depending on your frame of reference, things can get stretched or squished, depending on how fast you're going.'
But it's a lot worse than that, there's a neural relativity going on. So what does it tell us about outside, objective time? Well, it's hard to say. At minimum, it means that it can run differently than subjective time. At most, it means that maybe the whole thing is illusory, maybe the whole thing is a construction of the brain.
In the same way that colors don't actually exist in the outside world. All you have is electromagnetic radiation of different wavelengths, and your brain constructs color. Maybe the brain constructs time, and there's no such thing as that.
Now, of course, that's completely bizarre for us to try to wrap our heads around. But this is the sense in which time might be one of the most stubborn psychological filters by which we're experiencing the world. And it's hard to reach behind that, just in the same way that it's hard to imagine that there's only electromagnetic radiation and not real light in the world.
I mean, just as your brain is locked in darkness inside your skull -- your brain doesn't see, it doesn't experience light or photons itself -- it only gets conversions into electrical signals of photons, and it literally lights up the world, and you see this whole thing here.
KUHN: Okay, so they're really two issues here: what happens in the outside world, and one what happens in the inside world. What you're saying for sure is that the inside world, the subjective sense of time, is flexible. There's a lot of plasticity to it, because of how other things happen in our heads. There's no doubt about that. We may have doubts about what's happening in the outside world, but we have no doubt internally that we will have different senses of time...
David Eagleman: "Is Time Real?" (Closer To Truth) ... https://youtu.be/G4ihCsAPPXQ
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/G4ihCsAPPXQ
- - - - - - - -
Is Time Real? (David Eagleman)
https://youtu.be/G4ihCsAPPXQ
EXCERPT: [...] EAGLEMAN: What neuroscience tells us, is that time isn't what we once thought it was. We're not passively tracking the river of time, but instead the brain is actively constructing it. And here's how we know that...
So in my laboratory, for example, I can make you think that something lasted longer or shorter in duration than it actually did, measured by a clock. Or I can make you think that something came before something else even though it was the other way around. Or I can make you think that something is flickering at a very different rate than it actually is.
So I can do all these experiments in the laboratory, and what that means is your brain and my brain might look at the same thing, and just depending on how I set things up, we can see completely different things. What does that mean?
It means time is not Newton's time, where it's the T in the equation that just moves forward and then everything else can be hung on that. So Einstein came after Newton, and said, 'Look depending on your frame of reference, things can get stretched or squished, depending on how fast you're going.'
But it's a lot worse than that, there's a neural relativity going on. So what does it tell us about outside, objective time? Well, it's hard to say. At minimum, it means that it can run differently than subjective time. At most, it means that maybe the whole thing is illusory, maybe the whole thing is a construction of the brain.
In the same way that colors don't actually exist in the outside world. All you have is electromagnetic radiation of different wavelengths, and your brain constructs color. Maybe the brain constructs time, and there's no such thing as that.
Now, of course, that's completely bizarre for us to try to wrap our heads around. But this is the sense in which time might be one of the most stubborn psychological filters by which we're experiencing the world. And it's hard to reach behind that, just in the same way that it's hard to imagine that there's only electromagnetic radiation and not real light in the world.
I mean, just as your brain is locked in darkness inside your skull -- your brain doesn't see, it doesn't experience light or photons itself -- it only gets conversions into electrical signals of photons, and it literally lights up the world, and you see this whole thing here.
KUHN: Okay, so they're really two issues here: what happens in the outside world, and one what happens in the inside world. What you're saying for sure is that the inside world, the subjective sense of time, is flexible. There's a lot of plasticity to it, because of how other things happen in our heads. There's no doubt about that. We may have doubts about what's happening in the outside world, but we have no doubt internally that we will have different senses of time...
David Eagleman: "Is Time Real?" (Closer To Truth) ... https://youtu.be/G4ihCsAPPXQ