Sep 8, 2026 04:24 PM
How ‘hyperselection’ is making modern life efficient, pleasant - and boring
https://theconversation.com/how-hypersel...ing-290862
EXCERPT: This is an example of what my colleagues and I call hyperselection in a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. This idea refers to what happens when competition becomes so intense, and we become so adept at identifying and optimising what succeeds, that we repeatedly select for the same characteristics while alternatives are eliminated. Beyond music, hyperselection is making many parts of our world more efficient and optimised while simultaneously making them more predictable, mediocre and sterile. (MORE - details)
Your perception of time is, in fact, warped
https://www.noemamag.com/your-perception...ct-warped/
EXCERPT: You don’t have to look very far to find ample evidence that we are experiencing a metaphysical crack-up around time. There’s a growing conviction among people from all walks of life that time is moving faster than it did several decades ago - or even prior to the Covid pandemic. While this belief crept into the zeitgeist like a sly, slinking fog, the refrains are now so pervasive that they’ve started to supplant idle chatter on the weather. Our focus has shifted from rejoicing in cloudless days or grousing over gloomy skies to fixating on the dizzying speed at which our lives are hurtling by.
[...] But while we’ve long established that humans perceive time in an elastic, subjective way, that knowledge could not have prepared us for the Covid pandemic. [...] This points to a crucial aspect of time perception, one that continues to captivate me: We gauge the speed of time based on one set of factors in the moment - how engaged or stimulated we are - while using a distinct set of criteria to evaluate it retrospectively (the degree to which we formed memories)... (MORE - details)
https://theconversation.com/how-hypersel...ing-290862
EXCERPT: This is an example of what my colleagues and I call hyperselection in a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. This idea refers to what happens when competition becomes so intense, and we become so adept at identifying and optimising what succeeds, that we repeatedly select for the same characteristics while alternatives are eliminated. Beyond music, hyperselection is making many parts of our world more efficient and optimised while simultaneously making them more predictable, mediocre and sterile. (MORE - details)
Your perception of time is, in fact, warped
https://www.noemamag.com/your-perception...ct-warped/
EXCERPT: You don’t have to look very far to find ample evidence that we are experiencing a metaphysical crack-up around time. There’s a growing conviction among people from all walks of life that time is moving faster than it did several decades ago - or even prior to the Covid pandemic. While this belief crept into the zeitgeist like a sly, slinking fog, the refrains are now so pervasive that they’ve started to supplant idle chatter on the weather. Our focus has shifted from rejoicing in cloudless days or grousing over gloomy skies to fixating on the dizzying speed at which our lives are hurtling by.
[...] But while we’ve long established that humans perceive time in an elastic, subjective way, that knowledge could not have prepared us for the Covid pandemic. [...] This points to a crucial aspect of time perception, one that continues to captivate me: We gauge the speed of time based on one set of factors in the moment - how engaged or stimulated we are - while using a distinct set of criteria to evaluate it retrospectively (the degree to which we formed memories)... (MORE - details)
