Illusions of Time

hey vsauce michael here

when something becomes part of the past can it ever truly be experienced again

obviously my beard will grow back

but it won't be the same beard

and it won't be on the same person it will be on a slightly

older different michael but of course the bearded michael of the past isn't completely

gone no he still exists in our minds

as a memory and in the form of records of the past like images

and video hi i'm the slightly older different michael you heard about i am

130 days older than

that guy wow 130 days you know it really doesn't seem like it was

that long ago just

as an optical illusion is a distortion of our sense of sight a temporal

illusion is a distortion of our sense of time some seem small like how

a minute spent waiting in line can seem to take forever

but an entire day with friends can just fly by some seem deeper like

the uncanny feeling we get from recordings

that make people from long ago seem more real than usual

or the strange way time seems to sneak by for example the songs i

liked as a kid wannabe m-bop semi-charmed life are

as old to kids born today

as the literal oldies were

when i was born how could

that be true am i really

that old now i mean i shouldn't be surprised i know how time works

but yet i don't far from being just mistakes these illusions are the edges

of another dimension of space-time not one given to us by physics not one

given at all but one made by our minds let's begin with the different

ways there are to feel time actually sitting down

and consciously tuning into the passage of time

as it happens is called feeling time prospectively you can't do

that to time that's already happened except you can

if i were to ask you without looking to guess how long you have

been watching this video you'd probably be able to come up with a guess

you were reasonably confident in well you arrived at

that guess by feeling time retrospectively by measuring it

as it appears in your memory now with

that in mind we are ready to approach our first illusion the holiday paradox

a four hour delay at the airport before your holiday can feel unbearably long

while it's happening but once you arrive an exciting day at your destination can

seem to fly by those feelings are all prospective timing a week later retrospectively

the delay often feels like a blip in your mind

and the day of sightseeing feels like a much longer bigger part of your

life these are the long short

and short long patterns of felt time

which one you feel depends on whether what you are doing is empty

or full an empty activity is monotonous unstimulating unimportant to you whereas a full

activity is packed with sensations novelty significance context change

and challenge now i experienced this during my three days in isolation

while i was there time dragged very very slowly a fear i have right

now is that it's just friday

and there's still a lot of time left

but now years later it's hard to believe

that i spent three full days in

that room jeez seems like something i barely did well it's believed

that perspective time feels fast

when an activity is full

because you're not busy thinking about time

if you're not attending to it you're busy with something else well you won't

notice how much time has passed

but to understand retrospective illusions let's ask a different question does time speed up

as we get older many of you may feel the same way looking back

my childhood feels like it lasted

so long but my 20s went by faster

and my 30s are going by even faster than

that a popular explanation is the proportion theory it suggests

that time seems to speed up

as we age because each new unit of time

that we live is smaller relative to all the time

that came before the year you lived

as a nine-year-old was 10 of your entire existence up to

that point but when you're 30 another year is just 3 percent more life

studies have found little evidence

that weeks months or even years are retrospectively remembered

as passing faster by those who are older

but decades yes and

while it's true that the older we get the faster we tend to think

the last 10 years went by

that only appears to be the case until about the age of 50. after

that the speed of decades appears to plateau a leading explanation is

that how long a duration feels depends on how many things in it can

be recalled in my normal life lots of different things happen every three days

but during the three days i was in isolation

so little happened that i have few distinct memories from it my mind sees

that emptiness and perceives

that it was brief

so perhaps a decline in new experiences

and rapid novelty as we age means fewer events our brains decide to commit

to memory so then looking back

because there are fewer distinct memories from more recent decades we assume they were

shorter you know reflecting on all of this it's striking just how many moments

are forgettable john koenig the author of the dictionary of obscure sorrows calls the

awareness of how few days are memorable olika over time our specific daily perceptions

of what happened conglomerate into generalized ideas about how things were themes moods the

big picture what was perceptual becomes conceptual

and concepts are good they lower cognitive load by wringing out details leaving us

with the broader lighter just

but they can also obscure reality

which brings us to our second distortion chronological illusions the world of our experience

is not made of distinct entities it's a continuity of fuzzy overlapping blobs

and we impose concepts on it for example is a hot dog a sandwich

is cereal soup how many holes does a straw have those aren't questions about

reality there are questions about words we made up periodization is the chopping up

of time into contrived pieces like the stone age the renaissance the 80s the

90s but here's the thing

when did the 80s

or 90s really happen i mean mathematically they refer to years

that have eights or nines in the tens place

but conceptually well it's not like on january 1st 1980 people woke up

and were like whoa whoa whoa guys it's the 80s quick everyone change your

clothes concepts say too much

and too little facts

that expose their imperfections are perennial favorites on social media i made an entire

video about them in fact

but what hasn't been discussed yet is the mechanisms by

which we allow them to do their dirty work let's dig in

and see what we can find

if i asked you to lay down on the floor of a windowless clockless

room and get up after you thought a minute had passed you'd probably do

a pretty good job

but if i asked you to get up after you thought 10 years had

passed that'd be hard we lack an ability to sense

and grasp long periods of time also we can't remember everything

that happens so instead of comprehending history's correct scale

and structure i believe

that our minds often just use how we think about past events to place

them relative to each other in time one way we do this is through

what i call the conceptual comparison heuristic a technique whereby we use the similarity

of elements in our conceptions of things to judge their temporal distance

if our concepts of two things suggest wildly different times it's natural to assume

that a lot of things happened between them

and if a lot happened the duration separating them must be large alternatively

if our concepts aren't too different the time between them must be bearer of

events and so it feels brief it's not a bad strategy

but tyrannosaurus died out 66 million years ago

and when t-rexes began roaming the earth stegosaurus had already been extinct for more

than 80 million years to a t-rex the stegosaurus was even more ancient than

we think t-rexes are here's another example

when we think of marilyn monroe we think of a young woman old hollywood

mid-century glamour americana black

and white when we think of the queen of england we think of an

old woman in color in england

and news headlines because those conceptions are quite different we mentally place each woman

in a different time

so it can come

as a surprise to learn

that they were both born in the same year similarly it can be surprising

to learn that anne frank

and martin luther king jr were also born in the same year

and if they were alive today they would both be younger than the queen

of england when harriet tubman was born thomas jefferson was alive

and when she died ronald reagan was alive this is surprising to many of

us because our concepts of these people are anchored to them

as adults but harriet tubman was a four-year-old

when thomas jefferson died

and when she died ronald reagan was a two-year-old far from just being amusing

chronological illusions can often have teeth america can feel like an idea fixed long

before any of us by the overwhelming bulk of events

that came before but barbara walters has been alive for more than a third

of america's entire history

and if you were 25 you have already lived through

and been a part of more than 10 of america's history chronological illusions may

also be caused by what i call the construal level heuristic a technique whereby

we place things in time based on whether we construe them concretely

or abstractly in social psychology construal level theory describes how abstract

and concrete thinking relate to psychological distance

that is how distant something seems

as opposed to how distant it actually is now unsurprisingly it's been found

that people tend to think about things

that are psychologically distant more abstractly

but studies have also found

that if people are asked to think about an event abstractly they'll consider it

more distant than if asked to construe it concretely this may explain why things

can turn out to be longer ago

or more recent than we thought

if an event recedes especially quickly from relevance

or is suddenly replaced in our daily thoughts by other more urgent events unconnected

to it our minds may shift its construal to a higher level making it

feel further back in time than it really is conversely

if attending to the low level details of an event continues to be important

our construal level heuristic will make it feel closer in time than it really

is our third illusion of time comes from the fact

that time is always moving forward

because of that the psychological distances we feel towards things should also always be

changing but not all of them do the belief

that your place in time is stable is what i call the chronostatic illusion

tim urban pointed out

that it is now the case

that jurassic park forest gump the lion king were all released closer to the

moon landing than today

as a person who remembers the lion king being brand new

and remembers feeling at

that time that the moon landing was old this is all very weird the

lion king seems so much more recent than the moon landing ever did to

me the conceptual comparison heuristic places them far apart my concept of the 90s

will probably always stray from my concept of the present a little less than

it should because the 90s

and now have something in common

that the 90s and the 60s never did

or will me also my construal level of the lion king may resist becoming

abstract because the lion king continues to evolve

and happen the mechanisms i use to place things in time have sunk hooks

into the lion king creating a sort of chronostatic cling

that fools me into believing it's more near the music

that was new when i was young has also been tethered in my mind

to the idea of new stuff only us kids get even

as it has actually been drifting away

as far away as the stuff i used to think was far a chronostatic

illusion is spectacularly broken

when you realize that you have become

as old as your parents were

when you were born it doesn't always seem quite right they came first

and as such should always be older

but suddenly you're aware of a way in

which they aren't your age gap with people in the past is not static

your parents keep getting older right along with you

but the people they were don't this can lead to empathetic realizations they weren't

any wiser or more folded into the world

then than you are now considering the temporal perspectives of other people leads us

to a fourth distortion the chronocentric illusion the belief

that our own relationship to time is the best

or only frame of reference

or that it's more important

and more real than any other my grandparents used to tell me about how

when they were kids they didn't have television

and i always thought

that sounded so weird i mean obviously i knew it was true

but like what the heck did they do with their free time it wasn't

relatable at all people back

then must have been

so different not real in the same way i was

but i remember a time before the internet before mobile phones

and it wasn't that weird the internet

and cell phones are still in my mind an additional thing we now have

but for my daughter they will be what we've always had

and when i tell her about a time

when no one had the internet

and didn't even know they needed it it will likely sound to her just

like the old stories i heard about growing up with no tv

and that's bizarre my grandparents childhood was weird it was the olden days mine

was totally normal protagonist syndrome is the belief

that you are the main character of the universe recognizing

that you aren't is what john koenig famously called saunder the realization

that other people like

that stranger over there you will never see again have full lives just

as important and consuming to them

as yours is to you i'd like to add to protagonist syndrome the concept

of above syndrome abovo means from the egg from the very beginning in literature

it describes a story

that begins at the start ab ovo

as opposed to in the middle in medius res ab ovo syndrome is the

belief that the movie of the universe began

when you began that the times of your life are the plot

and contain the climax

and that everything before you was just backstory everything after merely sequels

when you realize that that's not true

that you were not born ab ovo

but in medius res

that you'll die before the credits

and that everyone who has ever lived was a fully fleshed out protagonist in

their own minds that feeling is what i call chrono saunder saunder not just

for people over there

but for people over

then overcoming the chronocentric illusion isn't always easy it doesn't help

that people from the past are finished unlike us who still have choices to

make they tell the same story over

and over again they're also separated by barriers made of their own evidence the

world wasn't actually black

and white in the past

and it didn't suddenly become vertical in the present obviously we all know

that but the arbitrary technical properties of a times recording media can influence our

perception of the past nonetheless

if silent films didn't look

so much different from what could be done just a few decades later would

it be nearly as surprising to learn

that charlie chaplin lived long enough to watch star wars

when i was in high school i saw 2001's pipe dream for the first

time and it blew my mind my friends

and i honestly believed

that it was a real thing someone had built

but recently i looked it up on youtube

and i was like this is clearly a computer animation what the heck was

wrong with us and what do you know the top comment was exactly

that sentiment our perception of the past is constantly evolving

as technology does and that's significant we don't just think about the past we

also think about the past the material properties of an artifact can influence our

relationship with what came before

and push it further away faded yellowy color sepia sd pixelated video technological features

can make the past seem like it was never

as real as the present

but some kinds of evidence collapsed

that chronocentric divide one way they can do it right now is by being

demotic ordinary personal candid such recordings are much more similar to the media we

exchange with each other right now in the present this footage of people goofing

around in a 7-eleven in 1987 has more than 6 million views not just

because of nostalgia but

because it's like visiting past people in their natural habitat at a time zoo

this isn't some pageant with timeless ambitions it's a view out the window of

a time machine they don't know is there another way evidence can corrode chronocentric

illusions is by containing a convention more normal than we expect people in old

photos look like serious robots

because back then you had to stay in the same pose for a long

time to get a picture taken

but also a long-standing trope in the world of images up to

that point was that smiling

or looking goofy wasn't a sign of happiness

but of drunkenness or stupidity

but every so often this image pops up online

and people vehemently debate whether it's actually old

or not sure it's black

and white but the expression seems too normal to really be on a person

from the past it is however actually an honest to gosh picture taken in

the early 1900s one of the earliest known photographs of a human smiling in

fact the juxtaposition of an expression someone today might make with a medium

that suggests a technology of the past creates an opportunity for chronosaunder the subject

is both dead and undead gone

but not as unrelatably far

as we may have thought the past was finally the chronocentric divide can fade

when we find the past captured in a medium

that was rare at the time

but more common now this is footage taken by an early hd camera of

new york city in 1993. it's pretty cool

but there's something almost uncanny about it watching it isn't exactly like time traveling

back to 1993 but it looks more like video taken today than many of

us expect it's like peering through a telescope we can see them

but they can't see us they appear closer more actual than usual we lean

in to get grasps of what it was like that's part of the allure

of time travel as lp hartley said the past is a foreign country they

do things differently there

but it hasn't always been

that way time travel wasn't a common feature of fiction until the 19th century

not because people hadn't thought of it before they had

but the past and future weren't rich with interesting destinations in the same way

they are to us now in the year 1008 it wasn't an insult to

call someone 1000 and late one thousand years ago the culture

and technology around you was unlikely to be foreign to your parents

or grandparents or great-grandparents

and outside of an act of god

or gods you didn't expect them to be foreign to your children

or their children either one thousand years ago there were no 80s parties

because the 980s weren't interestingly different pre-modern societies viewed the present

as a continuation of the past changes were interpreted

as temporary disturbances of the natural state

but today we see the present

as something special change is significant enough

and rapid enough now

that we would imagine ourselves quite differently had we been born 10 years earlier

or later zachary sarah schiffman points out we failed to realize

that people before the 18th century did not see themselves this way instead of

having a history they regarded themselves

as having an unchanging nature

or essence whose full realization might be impeded

or impelled but not otherwise shaped by events nostalgia existed

but for moments and places gone simply

because they were prior to

or away from here

and now not because they were fundamentally different

and categorically irretrievable as the discovery of antiquities

and new worlds and new species accelerated

as the invention of new technologies

and new ways of recording accelerated the present became less

and less like the past reinhardt caselk has argued

that between 1750 and 1850 the acceleration of history reached a speed at

which static or cyclical views of time had to be replaced with our modern

view which understands the past to be essentially different from the present it used

to be that things passed now there is a past

as technological and social change accelerate the window of time within

which things can be trusted to remain stable shrinks in such a world to

stand still is scary hartman rosa observed the pre-modern experience of being excluded is

replaced in modernity by the constantly present fear-inducing possibility of becoming excluded in the

sense of getting left behind things change faster

and faster and we keep keeping up

because we are afraid to die whoever lives twice

as fast can realize twice

as many worldly possibilities

and thus as it were live two lives in the span of one whoever

becomes infinitely fast no longer needs to fear death the annihilator of options acceleration

becomes a secular substitute for eternity to achieve this salvation we try to make

things faster and easier to save time

but one of the greatest hoodwinks we ever pulled on ourselves was not noticing

that the things we do to save time leave us with less of it

and more alone in it no technological change is only technological the car allowed

people to travel more quickly

and whenever they wanted

but once available it meant people could live further from where they worked

so cities and towns changed personal associations changed roads divided neighborhoods created new opportunities

while ending others jobs

and industries and cultural forms of expression

and a whole different society sprang into existence simply

because we found a way to move faster likewise smartphones

and the internet made information access

and communication easier and faster

but that's not all they did along with them came new social conventions new

communities new levels of exposure to ideas

and conflict a new understanding of what it meant to be available that's a

lot to have to adapt to they even redefined what now is made of

digital spaces are filled with not just what's being said

but also what has been said

and it's all right there not tucked into a library across town

or on a tiny plaque on a statue covered in bird poop it's in

our hands and outside of time things used to acquire signs of age veneers

that tucked them appropriately into their place in time now they're automatically updated to

always look like now digital spaces are

so packed with timeless messages between bygone people

that we don't even ask is anyone here anymore instead we ask is anyone

now in order to adapt to all of this we have to consume information

in an increasingly dehumanized decontextualized

and decentralized way each next bit is often unrelated to the last our participation

is not acknowledged or assumed

and it's all fed to us by machines we don't know

and didn't build that only put it in our eyes

and ears the sheer weight of all of this accreting information

and its growing accessibility is awe-inspiring it may even be our purpose i mean

what else produces such detailed records purposefully

or not we record save collect organize

and preserve events like nothing else in the universe i've said before

that if humans were to go extinct the sun would still shine the universe

would keep expanding jupiter would continue being gassy

but the universe would lose its best autobiographer

but the technologies of this project have yet to address our bodies enter the

tv paradox remember the short long

and long short patterns of time well a new pattern has been emerging

and growing in frequency short short it was first observed in people watching tv

alone they reported feeling like time flew by quickly oh wow have i really

been watching for four hours

but later they didn't remember their tv session

as a major moment of significant import

or duration they didn't attend the passing of time during it they didn't feel

bored or like time dragged

but they also didn't accumulate a lot of new significant memory-worthy experiences rapid stimulating

streams of experience provide a fullness

that makes time fly by

but fractured decentralized one-way experiences feel unconnected to ourselves

and our larger life histories retrospectively they don't fill up a lot of space

they burn our time on both ends it feels shorter during

and after interestingly short short has not been found

when people engage with content they have connections with for example things they own

memorabilia of made friendships through attended conventions about

so the pace of life may be taking your life from you

but standing could give you your life back in the future we will surely

find other ways to overcome the negative side effects of the faster experiences we

crave the development of digital media

that engage the other senses more linked

as they are with long-term memory

or that build contexts for us could help

so could surgical solutions like removing the parts of the brain

that make us not like doom scrolling probably first any anxieties will be recognized

as a condition treatable with medication now this is all to say

that we live in a transitional period the conquest of space made the world

smaller and now the conquest of time has made our lives smaller we live

after the conquering of time

but before its resurrection in the meantime make some time for time to control

you be bored miss out fall behind feel time passing lose track of time

while experiencing only what your body can alone you might not have the time

of your life but you'll have more time of your life i'll see you

next time and as always thanks for watching a great way to engage all

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