Julian Barbour on Time

GDR writes: They have perceived time differently between the time the spaceship left and the time it returned home. Their individual perception of time created their own individual reality.

Catholic Scientist writes: No, it wasn't their perception of time that created their own individual reality.

I just want to add that we know it is not a matter of perception because the twin paradox has been demonstrated to work on pi-meson particles traveling at an appreciable speed of light.

It may be a trick of the brain, but it was his perception unless of course, as you say, it is bogus. However the article does indicate that he is a credible individual.

That would simply mean that he is telling the truth as he knows it. I haven't gotten around to accusing him of lying.

But it isn't just a case of memory. His claim is that he could view individual droplets, whereas if time was passing normally it would just look like a normal stream from a shower.

What is more likely:

1) Time actually stopped behaving as it normally does in some guys bathroom at the same time as he suffered from a brain aneurysm that caused a 'large patch of neural damage'.

2) The guy's perception of time was screwed up as a result of the aneurysm

3) They guy's memory of his shower is partly or entirely confabulated as a result of the aneurysm

Considering the article you linked to speaks about how interruptions to the perception of time are relatively common, names some regions of the brain that can influence time perception and repeatable experiments that show this happening. Consider Temporal Lobe Strokes and Epilepsy.

I have a clear memory of coming off my bike when the pedal snapped off. I had considerable time to think as I rolled over backwards and the bike went over top me. I remember clearly thinking that I was wearing a white jacket that was going to get dirty and then I casually thought that I'd better put me chin on my chest so that I wouldn't crack my head on the pavement. I have no doubt that in some sense time slowed down for me.

Your brain realized it was an emergency and maximised processing - meaning you could think more thoughts, make more discriminations, make more decisions to try and maximise your dealing with the emergency leading to the illusion that time slowed down. It has a name:Tachypsychia.

I think that my contribution to this topic is rather unrelated to the material of message 1 and in general to the theme of time perception distortion at the time something is happening. I think that Modulous did a nice message pertaining to that main topic theme, in message 33. My input, while not necessarily off-topic, is tangential.

Hypothesis 1) 10 years is till ten years regardless of how many decades have gone before. I can see the logic but we still measure time by our spatial relation to the sun so I don't see on that basis why our first ten years of life seems to take so much longer than or 5th or 6th ten years.

To me, this refers to both points 1 and 2 in my message 22:

Minnemooseus writes: 1) When you are 50 (to use a round number), 10 years is 20% of your life, relatively short compared to the 50% of your life at 20 years old. 2) It's not so much the "time of your life" as it is the "life of your time". My most recent 10 or so years haven't been particularly productive for me ("haven't done that much"). So, I have the perception that I've lived (say) 2 years worth of life in the last 10 years. Thus it feels like 10 years have passed in what feels like only 2 years. Time is passing fast as life is passing slow.

It has occurred to me that there might be some sort of a third part to that #1 of mine, although the rational seems to be quite convoluted (even I doubt I know what I'm talking about). Anyway, somehow my current perceptions of 10 years is influenced by the fact that I'm now much more sensitive about the end of my lifetime (I'm now 57 years old). Now I'm perceiving that the next 10 years may well be a relatively large part of my remaining life. Thus some sort of sense that time is passing too fast.

In all, it's not that at the moment that I'm perceiving any sort of time distortion. Rather it's a matter of the perception of chunks of time in the past and the possible future.

Well, certainly a message rating high on the babble scale. Perhaps time itself has become somewhat of a babble to me.

Moose

If time is somehow linked to entanglement then wouldn't that mean the cosmic speed limit is not only being violated, but not even given a reach around.

Is there a possibility that what we call precognition is really that some people under certain conditions having access to information that has yet to happen on a macro scale.

If the brain can operate like a quantum computer then perhaps it can also experiance time on a quantum scale.
Before your done groaning and start leaping to your keypads to respond,,,, I realize this is very speculative and smacks of woodom.

Catholic Scientist writes: Nah, you gotta go really fast for that to happen. Our perceptions don't change reality.

I'm not so sure. I have a couple of books on the subject. One is Biocentrism by Robert Lanza. His claim is that, "it is biology that is primary - life creates the universe and not the other way around". If he is correct then it is quite likely thhat our perceptions create our own individual reality.
The other book I referred to is Quantum Enigma by Roenblum and Kuttner where they come at the sunject from more of a physics angle but come to a similar conclusion.

I'm not saying that they are correct but I contend that their ideas are worth exploring and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. I'll requote JUlian Barbour from the OP>

quote:

---

Every possible configuration of the universe, past, present,
and future, exists separately and eternally. We don't live in a single universe that
passes through time. Instead, we— or many slightly different versions of
ourselves— simultaneously inhabit a multitude of static, everlasting tableaux that
include everything in the universe at any given moment. Barbour calls each of
these possible still-life configurations a "Now." Every Now is a complete,
self-contained, timeless, unchanging universe. We mistakenly perceive the
Nows as fleeting, when in fact each one persists forever. Because the word
universe seems too small to encompass all possible Nows, Barbour coined a
new word for it: Platonia. The name honors the ancient Greek philosopher who
argued that reality is composed of eternal and changeless forms, even though
the physical world we perceive through our senses appears to be in constant
flux.

---

It seems to me that it is worth considering the idea that our individual perceptions form our individual reality that is distinct from everyone else's.

If he is correct then it is quite likely thhat our perceptions create our own individual reality.

Well, you do create your own individual reality in your mind. But that doesn't have any affect on the reality that exists outside of our heads.

It seems to me that it is worth considering the idea that our individual perceptions form our individual reality that is distinct from everyone else's.

But when you see time slowing down, that doesn't affect the time that everyone else is seeing.

It seems to me that it is worth considering the idea that our individual perceptions form our individual reality that is distinct from everyone else's.

When you say "worth considering" do you mean that the idea is likely to be correct, or that there is a likely hood of great reward or insight?

but I contend that their ideas are worth exploring and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand

Why not?

Thanks for posting this topic about another view on time,
It is not the typical view of time but seems valid in some aspects.

I tend to think of time in a slightly different way, that matter is like a boat in a stream, where we think the boat is moving because of the water rushing past the hull, but the boat is anchored, and only the river runs. So time is only one moment in the now, yet all the events of matter are governed in such a way that we perceive - action and consequence, - past and future, movement, change etc.