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how do you represent 'time' in your head?

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Deozaan:
An interesting thing is that I picture time as linear in my head, but when I think about it I know it doesn't work that way.

In a sense I guess that's kind of like from a child's limited understanding, looking at old photographs he might wonder when the world started having color. In his mind, it went from grayscale to color, even though that's not really the way it happened.

Or something.

TeaTime:
Ask my brains, they must know better than I. My perception of time does exist, but I have no idea how I represent it to myself. To answer that question, the only reference I see is in what may feed and drive my thoughts when I try to guess what time it is. I think that I try then to grasp a feeling based on something I feel I know, I feel is known, like when you slap hands in the rhythm. I think I represent time by trying to evaluate the drift of an automatism. Strangely enough, more I try to evaluate it, further I get from the right answer. But I do have to evaluate a minimum. Like in poetry, take your time to feel, but question those feelings quickly, otherwise our thoughts parasitize the mystery of the revealed perception ... "I know I know this face, but from where" ...
It's getting late :D

mouser:
This seems very relevant:

http://www.icastic.com/time/visualize.php



from http://infosthetics.com/

Ralf Maximus:
Quick answer: I don't think about it much, except as a connected series of events starting when I wake up.  Clocks mysteriously jump ahead whenever look at them.

Thoughtful answer: I subscribe to the "many-universes" theory of the universe, in that everything exists simultaneously, and the billions of decisions I make cause my perception to jump from reality to reality, giving the illusion of linear experience.  Every decision is made the other way by parallel versions of me.  I die many times, every day.  I also win the lottery, get divorced, learn to play the piano, and bake cookies every day.  Some versions of me are deaf & mute, rocking silently in a strait jacket at the home for old Visual Basic programmers.  I have also won the Nobel peace prize and other versions of me have been tried for war crimes -- you get the idea.

Sometimes when I dream these other realities leak over, and I see "the future".

If anyone ever succeeds with inventing a time machine, they will discover causality is what you make of it, that killing your grandparent *is* feasible, and getting back to "your" time virtually impossible.  Despite these issues, sales of the device will skyrocket because nothing is cooler than having a picnic while watching a herd of tricerotopses.  Also, a certain percentage of folks will want to go back in time and have sex with themselves.

mouser:
Ralf's post compels me to reply again.

Time is mysterious, but one thing we know definitively -- it does *NOT* work the way it intuitively seems to us that it does.  Since Einstein's work on relativity it has become clear that our intuitive notion of time does not mesh with reality.  I really recommend the book "http://Fabric of the Cosmos" if you want to have a whirlwind tour of modern physics in an exciting way.  An audiobook version of the book is also great.

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