h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this. It's of no consequence whatsoever but is interesting.

You look up at a clock and see the seconds hand (or the seconds counter if it's digital) and that second seems to last a long time - much longer than a 'normal' second - and just for a moment you think the clock is broken. Then, the clock's seconds hands proceeds at normal speed.

Similarly - I don't know if you've ever been bored enough to do this - there's a kind of "Russian roulette" game you may have played when you're calling someone; you can hear the ringing tone and you've been waiting ages for someone to answer and, just for a silly game, you move the phone away from you so you can't hear the ringing tone, and then you move it back and the silence between rings seems much longer than usual and you think you've "lost" your Russian roulette game and a person has answered. But then you hear the ring tone again.

Also, similarly, if you join a film late (only a film you've never seen before) and watch to the end the film can seem longer than if you've watched right from the beginning.

There's a song by the Wise Guys about the clock phenomenon

Similar distortions of Time are reported by those who observe pots put on to boil.

But I'm fairly certain it's a matter of concentrated perception.

That's why Time flies when you're having fun and presumably not paying attention to it. And people who've been involved in car crashes report that Time slows down like a slow motion film.

Whether Time actually slows down when it knows we're watching and speeds up when we're not, remains one of the Great and Important Questions!


~jwf~

What's the Wiseguys song? I like them but don't know it...

B

Yeah...squiggles has got it right.

Consciousness is a peculiar phenomenon. Human perceptual capacity is far more limited than we imagine. Our brains fool us into thinking that we're fully aware of our surroundings, but in reality we can only pay attention to a tiny bit of it at any one time. For the rest of it...if we want to think about something that we haven't been paying attention to, we confabulate what we would normally expect to happen. So we imagine a steady tick-tick-tick or brrp-brrp-brrp - but when we pay attention to the actual stimulus, this may disrupt our simulation with inconvenient reality.

The film phenomenon is slightly different, I think (but related). It's to do with how we use prior information to set up templates which stop us having to think too much. There's a famous experiment in cognitive psychology (Bransford and Johnson, 1972) in which two groups were asked to read the following paragraph:

'The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups. Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities that is the next step, otherwise you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not seem important bu complications can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. At first the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however, it will become just another facet of life. It is difficult to foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the immediate future, but then one never can tell, After the procedure is completed one arranges the materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. However, that is part of life. '

Quite hard to understand, no? But if I ask you to read it again, but this time I tell you the title is 'Doing the Laundry'...

Well, now you've got a familar 'schema' to fit the information into, so you don't have to think so hard to process it.

Similarly with films. The convention is that in the early part of the film, the director will establish the scenario, characters, etc. From then on you can relax and let the film fly by, confident that you won't miss any crucial details. If you don't get the set-up, though, you keep having to pay attention. Thus nyou come out feeling like you've had to do a lot of work - therefore the film must have been long.

I thought it was just me with the second hand phenomenon - but I've never noticed it with the second counter on a digital one.

Here's another one. When you travel somewhere you don't know the way to, the way back always seems to take less time than the way there.

The same. You're having to devote attentional resources to route-finding. On the way back, you can switch to autopilot.

It's quite scary to think how little we're actually paying attention when we drive. Fortunately, it's not *quite* like that. We actually do pay attention...but we free up our brains by forgetting the details a split second afterwards.

That's just multitasking. No biggie!

But yeah, it *is* scary when you snap out of it when you've a wobbly load on a forklift, or you've just exited a serious hairpin bend.

When I used to drive the same route daily to work and back, I would frequently experience having no memory of driving entire sections of my route when I got to the office/home.

RF

But if someone had leapt out in front of you, you'd have noticed and would remember that bit.

I hope so...who knows how many bodies I left littering the streets of South-East London, leaving a trail of destruction in my path?

"I've never been in a road accident - but I've seen loads in my rear-view mirror."

RF

There's a character in "Catch 22" who's trying to extend his life through boredom. He's at war and may die young, but he can make it feel as if he's living a long life by doing nothing in his off-duty hours so that time will pass as slowly as possible.

Mu Beta, do we mean the same Wise Guys? I didn't think these (A German a-capella group that writes all their own songs in German and *has* made it into the charts fairly often) had made it over there.

The bit I mean is this, from "Langsam":

Ich starre schon seit Stunden
auf die Uhr dort an der Wand.
Die Sekundenzeiger-Runden find ich ziemlich interessant!
Immer oben bei der 12
scheint der Zeiger zu verweilen
um nach einer kurzen Pause
seinem Rückstand nachzueilen.
Aber der Sekundenzeiger
bei der Uhr dort an der Wand
bleibt nach der Pause tempomäßig offenbar konstant.
Trotzdem kommt er nach der Runde wieder pünktlich oben an.
Woher weiß der Zeiger bloß, wie lang er Pause machen kann?

Rough translation:

I've been staring for hours
At the clock on the wall
I think the second hand rounds are quite interesting
Every time it gets to the 12
The second hand seems to stop
For a quick pause
Only to hurry to catch up with itself.
But the second hand
Of the clock on the wall
Keeps going at the same speed after its break
And still gets to the top again right on time
How does the second hand know how long it can pause?

Full lyrics: http://lyricwiki.org/Wise_Guys:Langsam

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VfoXMMnSFM


Nothing Earth-shaking. They have better songs

No. Not the same ones. Definitely not.

B

"Similarly with films. The convention is that in the early part of the film, the director will establish the scenario, characters, etc. From then on you can relax and let the film fly by, confident that you won't miss any crucial details."

Unless the director is David Lynch, that is.

Is that also the explanation behind life seeming to get quicker as you get older? Summer was over in the blink of an eye last year when they used to seem last for months when I was a child ...

I was wondering about that, Mu Beta.

>>Is that also the explanation behind life seeming to get quicker as you get older?

Sort of. Possibly. When you're young, everything is new and takes more processing. But also...when you're old, you spend the whole ing summer doing the same old same old and don't get much chance to build sandcastles, run around the park, climb trees, set fire to things (or was that just me?)...etc.

"when you're old, you spend the whole ing summer doing the same old same old and don't get much chance to build sandcastles, run around the park, climb trees, set fire to things"

You don't? Seriously? Stop it. That's frightening.

Yer religious types tell us that we should spend less time worrying about the rat race and concentrate on our 'spiritual' life. I'd never really understood the word spiritual. But yesterday I read something by Tim Harford, the 'Undecover Economist. He reckons they mean 'leisure time'.

As Vonnegut said:

'We're here on earth to fart around, and don't let anyone tell you different.'