Time as a common factor in special interests?

I've been thinking about this in the past week.
Perhaps as a consequence of the lack of an intrinsic sense of time due to the executive function deficit we tend to fixate on external sources of time or temporal events.

My personal childhood interest was the concept of time travel. I mean I knew it was science fiction, but I was convinced that if I could just gather enough information about maths, physics, electronics, physical mechanisms, etc, and spend enough time deep in thought, I would eventually be able to build a time machine. After seeing back to the future for the first time at about age 5 or 6 I wanted to be a Dr Emmet Brown. Though I knew I shouldn't go around telling people I wanted to be a mad scientist, I did let it slip quite often that I wanted to be an inventor.

High on my list of potential periods to visit would be to find out for certain myself if Jesus really existed and what he was like. I also hoped to visit the future and see all the flying cars and robots that we were promised.

Even before that I do remember aligning my routine with what was on the radio. We had BBC radio 4 on perpetually in our house, and between certain programs I would pace around in circles on a circular carpet.

It seems to me that time seems to figure as common factor in many other peoples special interests. The obvious ones being bus and train schedules, Dr Who, TV schedules/themes. Time is a significant factor in music, relates to dinosaurs, history, archeology etc.

Am I on to anything with this?

I do have an interest in time. I have read books about it, but it was never a strong/obsessional interest. It's definitely very fascinating stuff, but I don't think it was ever my "special interest" so to speak. I did have an interest in Albert Einstein, and relavtivity theory is obviously what makes that man interesting (among many other things of course). I even had a (topless ) picture of him in my locker in high school, and other people seemed to find that interesting. One of my teachers even told his wife about the picture in my locker (off topic, I know, but I couldn't resist...)

Oh, and I still pace around in circles to the sound of the radio. It's fun.

mmyes, i think it is the lack of a sense of time that makes it seem fascinating. Time is a tool, maybe, not a reality. a bit like how words aren't 'real'. if you believe in it, it's real?

I think perhaps another reason I was so interested in time travel was because I had a great episodic memory.
Up until about age 7 I truely believed that I remembered everything that had ever happened to me.
I would frequently get very frustrated when other peoples recall of past events/conversations did not correspond with my own.
I was sure I was right about what had happened, but did not have any way to prove it. I still remember quite a few things from before I was 4 years old.

you guys should read " ADa or Ardor, A family chronicle" By Vladimir Nabokov, There is a section in there called " the texture of time" He seperated time and the decay of space. And the time we feel is inside out inner worlds.

I have a quite acute sense of time, i mostly know the time without looking at a watch. I never have enough of it when on a 'mission' though. From as early as i can remember i felt time to be an abstract, intangible. Something that doesn't really happen, something that is only something we perceive. I can't be sure, but i assume to a tree time is not an issue.

One thing i do know for sure, is that the brain can manipulate our perception of time. Surely everyone must have had the experience when a sudden event happened time seemed to slow down, but you feel frozen. Incapable to react. That's not because you are frozen, but your brain just took off the brakes of your sensory input.

In normal circumstances the brain conserves energy by working 'ahead'. It doesn't pass on the information directly, but after processing. For that it needs a buffer. The buffered info gets normalized, correlated to previous events and passed on to the CSU.

Now when an emergency happens, this buffer gets bypassed and you get the 'feed' directly as it happens. Which is much faster then you are accustomed to. So since you 'speed' up, time seems to slow down.

However your reactions are still bound by physical laws and the signal to the muscles to move just doesn't get there as fast as you see events unfolding. So you are 'frozen'.

It is a curious explanation this yours, very interesting. I guess the explanation that, during an emergency, the older phylogenetic systems take over so that a swift reaction is insured is quite compatible with what you are saying. During such happenings, our behaviour is remarkably similar with other animals, which, begs the question whether other animals experience time, perhaps in a different rate, or altogether in a way unimaginable to us - considering them as free of higher order cognitions that we humans alone have developed to such complexity (i.e. grammatical language and so on)?

On the other hand, it perhaps pays to ponder whether time, perception of it or its ontological status, maybe altogether lay beyond the chain of causality and instead embody the memory and other mental functions in way that referring to it causes a circularity that the power of our thought is not equipped to capture?

All the best


morrison33

It is a curious explanation this yours, very interesting. I guess the explanation that, during an emergency, the older phylogenetic systems take over so that a swift reaction is insured is quite compatible with what you are saying. During such happenings, our behaviour is remarkably similar with other animals, which, begs the question whether other animals experience time, perhaps in a different rate, or altogether in a way unimaginable to us - considering them as free of higher order cognitions that we humans alone have developed to such complexity (i.e. grammatical language and so on)?

On the other hand, it perhaps pays to ponder whether time, perception of it or its ontological status, maybe altogether lay beyond the chain of causality and instead embody the memory and other mental functions in way that referring to it causes a circularity that the power of our thought is not equipped to capture?

All the best


morrison33

I've wondered about the animal time thing as well. For sure mammals have, because due to the daylightsaving time, farmers need to take a month beforehand to retrain their lactating animals to give milk at the correct time.

Dogs are quite aware of time, i just doubt they have the same 'sense' of time passing. Although they do get bored, meaning they have a conscious sense of having been idle for a prolonged period. That's probably only a question dolphins or whales can answer as soon as we have mastered their language. (or more likely they ours)