Imagine if the universe we lived in had no entropy at all. We wouldn't be subjected to the experience of the flow of time and grow old if we were in say Never-land, would we still have the ability to differentiate the past from the present? If everything seemed the same day in and day out? As a matter of fact, yes! Even in the hypothetical Never-land of ours, we'd be subjected to the experience of flow of time.
This happens because of another interesting phenomenon called the Psychological arrow of time. This is how we inherently experience time, we differentiate between the past and the present because of things called Memories. They help us remember our actions in the past. Let's look at another interesting phenomenon, everyone knows we were once all babies, none of us remember most things about being one, hence that part of our past, our time spent doesn't exist (unless captured in form of pictures and stories). It's interesting because although we grew up through that phase and physically experienced the flow of time, psychologically we didn't (at least not before we started forming memories) and this explains why this arrow of time is so important to understand.
The following two case studies would also help drive home the point:
Jack is a normal guy with no known diseases. He has an average memory. Jack like most of us forms memories of the events that occur to him and labels it PAST. When he describes his life, it's only the collection of things he can remember as he moves forth in life. The things he is yet to experience and memories he is yet to remember is the unknown which w label as FUTURE. Therefore, human beings have an extraordinary ability to experience the flow of time even when it really isn't, in sense we experience flow of time and our life as a movement from the collection of memories(PAST) to an absolutely unknown and yet to experience(FUTURE).
What's left in the middle of these two phases is the present. The ongoing process of forming, collecting and storing of memories.
Let's look at Sarah. She has a form of severe amnesia which makes it almost impossible for her to recollect memories and in essence the past. To a person like Sarah, time is experienced differently. She wakes up in the morning having no memory of yesterday, with help from a few people she might be able to recall a few typical activities to be done, like taking medicines, etc. Unlike Jack, she has no experience of the flow of time. Maybe on a day to day basis. But she is stuck between the PAST and FUTURE in a way where she can't accumulate memories. A deadly loop. In Sarah's world, she's never moving from the memory-rich past to the memory-absent future.
The point of this story was to illustrate how heavily influential our minds are towards the perception of time. That's why it was very interesting to me to point these two things out.
Now that we have an idea about how psychology(simply speaking)[1], let's take a closer look at the specific influences on time and staying true to our heading, the "time flies" vs "time slows down" expressions.
These following experiences that occur are called temporal illusions, i.e. distortion in the perception of time for various reasons, such as different kinds of stress.
These effects are what's called an Oddball Effect, it's described as follows[2]:
"The so-called “oddball effect” occurs when the brain experiences something unusual or out of the normal run of events. In this case, the brain pays special attention and spends more time processing the event, recording as much information as possible on the novel circumstances, which can lead to a feeling that time has slowed down."
This usually happens when the person is in an unusual or highly stressful situations, ever thought why time slows down dramatically when you are about to fall down, get hurt or have a narrow escape? It also seems to occur because of the presence of a potential danger or a potential mate. It is thought that changes in the neurotransmitter norepinephrine (adrenaline) is responsible for this slowing down our internal clock.[2]
Time flies or slows down, is usually spoken in context of emotional events as well. Ever thought why the party or time spent with friends "flies"? The explanation to this is pretty intuitive in the sense that, we don't usually are mentally aware of passage of time, or we overlook the passage of time or aren't consciously aware of it and focus instead on the happy feeling or a feeling of desire and motivation.
One last thing I'd like to talk about is the following question I posed at the end of last post: If you are locked up in a room, where you can't access the outside world and have no sense of day or night, how do you explain the flow of time. How does your body know time is passing by? How does the body make sense of when to sleep?
The Answer: Circadian Clocks or Circadian Rhythm of the body
This is the internal timer or clock to our body, which regulates all our bodily functions, such as, hormone secretion, eating, sleeping and even cellular regeneration. In plants, it takes care of photosynthetic reactions, leaf movements etc.
The experiment I mentioned was carried out in reality by a cave explorer named Michael Siffre in 1962, where he isolated himself underground w/o any exposure to light or clocks. He kept track of when he slept and ate. He noted that even w/o the exposure to any external stimulus his body maintained a consistent cycle of eating and sleeping.
A natural place to observe this is, when you follow inconsistent sleep cycles, or when people experience jet lags. A special note is that circadian rhythm isn't fixed and can be changed, since it depends on external stimulus.[3] The circadian rhythm is synchronized with the time of day which you are usually exposed to for a major period. e.g, since I've lived majority of my time in India, my circadian rhythm is synchronized with the time of day in India. If I travel to the US to NYC I'll experience the phenomenon called Jet-lag, because the ambient light signals will tell my brain about a time different from what I'm supposed to experience in India. This causes my sleep to be out of phase and hence I feel drowsy or sleepy. But after a while we get used to the time in the US in NYC.
So anytime you think about time speeding up or slowing down, as we've seen its just a distortion in perception of time. From our original definition of time, it neither flows nor speeds, it just is, and these arrows guide our perception of it.
So over this three posts, we've talked about time, and two arrows of time that I've found relatable and quite interesting. I hope you keeping wondering about these things and use this to spark more interesting discussions.
Let me know what you think about the posts in the comments and as always,
keep brainstorming!
Footnotes and links:
Check out these resources, I think you'll find it interesting.
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ReplyDeleteAmazing stuff buddy and i loved it!
ReplyDeleteMakes me think about and question a lot of things that i usually wouldn't think of
Thanks a lot for reading! Keep questioning things.
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