DarkSideoftheWall
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2007
- Messages
- 712
LSA probably gave me the worst time dilation so far, although the dose was far larger compared to the other substances.
Frames per second thoughts:
I had the thought that our TVs show at 24-30 frames per second which is parallel to how much information our brains can take in at one second. Birds and many other animals whose lives are shorter seem to move so much faster
than us. Could it be possible they take in many more frames of information per second than humans? If this is true, this could mean their lives are relatively much longer based on those passing moments (or frames).
psood0nym said:This is a fascinating question, and you asked, so I'll give you the gist of what I've learned about it.
There have been cases of stroke sufferers that suffer motion blindness. For example, during a conversation a victim of one of these stokes may hear another's voice and be perfectly able to follow a conversation, yet never see the person's lips move, instead occasionally taking in a single frozen visual frame. In these cases only visual consciousness is staggered, but there are other disorders where, for instance, a victim can observe a sink being filled in preparation for doing the dishes at a point when the water is only a few centimeters high, and next see it overflowing as the water spills on their feet, in effect starling their "projector" into rolling again.
Studies of lucid dreamers who are able to use simple signals to communicate with researchers while dreaming indicate that we take in information at the roughly same rate while dreaming as we do while awake. This means that when we dream that more time has passed during the night ("It seemed like a week had passed") than is actually possible, it is because we have a sense of time that is at least partially independent of the true density of content in our experience. Therefore, even if we, or animals, could experience more "frames of time per second," it would not necessarily mean our lives would feel subjectively longer.
In a truly profound experiment conducted by a team led by Antoine Lutz at the University of Wisconsin, it was found that the human brain is so malleable to the dictates of the mind that, through thought alone, we can increase the frame rate of consciousness itself.
If a series of letters interspersed with two consecutive numbers is played very fast on a projector (such as: f-u-m-h-u-6-4-t-s), and a viewer is asked to relay the numbers she saw, more often than not the second number is not perceived. It is theorized that the recognition of the first number absorbs the great bulk of perceptual resources and the second number is veiled in unconsciousness—as though the participant's own internal projector light blows its fuse and cannot be replaced soon enough to flash for the next frame in time.
An intensive three-month training program in focused attention meditation overseen by the researchers and extensively trained monks created experiment volunteers that were able to perceive the second number at significantly higher frequencies than before their training, or compared to those uninitiated to the mental technique but with similar practice at the projector game. The training consists, in essence, of simply focusing on an external object, such as a mark on the wall, or a specific sensation, such as breathing, to the exclusion of all else--very diligently.
Lutz and his research group concluded that the training resulted in a reallocation of finite perceptual resources so that, in the brain of the participant, those perceptual resources were more evenly distributed, and could, after training, be accessed in time to illuminate the second number with consciousness.
fastandbulbous said:With serotonogic psychedelics, my personal opinion is that the time dilation occurs because we're used to judging time from the amount of external srtimulus perceived. With say LSD, you get such a flood of sensory input that in a minute you get more tan possibly an hour normally. Because of that, the brain goes,"whoa, all of that couldn't have happened in 5 minutes" so that for example 5 minutes feels like 1 hour