Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room
how do you represent 'time' in your head?
nudone:
well, i was expecting the descriptions that people gave to be all the same - assuming that the brain dictates how time would be perceived but from app's description it's clear there is room for individual symbols and imagery. i certainly don't think in circular pictures or different colours so that is very interesting to hear about. i imagine there will be cultural differences also.
i'd also like to know more about ampa's story. it reminds me of the alien creatures in Kurt Vonegut's 'Slaughterhouse Five'. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Slaughterhouse-Childrens-Crusade-Dirty-dance-Death/dp/0099800209/ref=pd_bbs_1/202-3363255-7096613?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191048545&sr=8-1
suleika:
I liked that story too!
People represent time in very different ways, according to NLP practitioners, who find it useful to know how an individual's timeline is constructed. More information in facsimile here (access to 25 page a day).
Ampa:
Here is the book... The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories, and review which mentions the worm tale.
Ampa
urlwolf:
Ok, without having to withdraw to special relativity this soon :)
There's an entire literature on the representation of time in cognitive psychology. Just do a search on google scholar for "representation of time". There are all kind of theories. Those that emphasize one-dimensional scaling seem to propose log compression as well. There's even funny graphs on years etc taken from synesthesic people (i.e., people who map sensations cross-modally : days of the week to colors, etc). For some of them, time is not a continuous at all it seems.
I could find a couple of review papers and send them to you if you want.
I'm currenly reading one on memory that proposes that memory has an scale-invariant character, and that our perception of phenomena that are time-based (mostly everything) can be understood as ratios, not as absolute values.
nudone:
google scholar sounds more than enough for my purposes but i have to admit that i will quickly lose interest the moment jargon creeps in. i'm more of an 'idiots guide to time' kind of person, well, perhaps not quite that bad as i can imagine how terrible such a book would be.
from what you have read yourself would you be able to comment on whether there is any mention on the 'borders of temporal perception' - you know, like where the beginning and ending of 'now' is. maybe it's a trivial matter that has been well theorised about or well explained but it strikes me as something that's impossible to discuss. perhaps that is because i'm simply lacking in the language that is used in this area of research.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version