Time Is Contagious | Hacker News Reader

Time Is Contagious

nautil.us

131 pointsdnetesn15 comments

> “The effectiveness of social interaction is determined by our capacity to synchronize our activity with that of the individual with whom we are dealing,” Droit-Volet writes. “In other words, individuals adopt other people’s rhythms and incorporate other people’s time.”

Reminds me of all the other mimicry humans will unconsciously engage in, like mirroring body language or even subtly mirroring an accent in conversation.

But mimickry of conversational tics is only one side of the coin - as much as we all like to lather ourselves in a common medium, it's also pleasant to distinguish ourselves from our peers, not just for an ulterior audience, but also one-to-one. What of course tends to happen - in a nice conversation at least - is that you lead each other in a kind of dance, with wilful flattery one moment, and cheesy antagonism the next.

Maybe time's the same - too much stimulating newness or aggravating nagging, and you zone out.

I think that distinction urge tends to be very superficial. People distinguish themselves as Mac or PC users, but don't generally put much of their identity into being a purple baboon instead of a Mac user.

This study supports the notion that are all truly interconnected in ways that are beyond our conscious comprehension.

It's an important reminder we do not exist in a vacuum and our actions have an indirect impact on a large number of people.

Best example to me is how population density impact the use of time:

https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/03/why-people-cities-walk-...

Interesting article, but I couldn't help feeling that non of the hypothesis we're actually correct, and Levine and co are observing are correlations rather than causation's.

My immediate rationale for faster walking pace in denser cities is that there is far more to do in a big city, particularly one with high population. In addition things like trains and buses also get overcrowded and filled, causing unplanned delays to your journey. The reality of living in a city means that there are lots of risks to your schedule when 'taking your time' so the population does what's most logical, and tries to move as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

How many people on HN have decided to pay the Nautilus subscription?

I can sympathize. This article has been on the front page for hours and only has 50 points. Doesn't anyone else find this suspicious? Every single time a Nautilus article is submitted it seems to hang around for hours. Can @dang weigh in here?

I think Nautilus articles do well, but never well enough to induce the activity penalty that the really popular stuff on HN gets hit with. They also tend to generate a number of comments over time, but not so many that they trigger the excessive discussion parameters that kick things off the front page. I would also assume that they basically never get flagged as the articles are generally not controversial.

Doesn't anyone else find this suspicious?

No. 50 points is more than enough to keep something on the front page for a day. It happens with lots of links. Nautilus (and The Atlantic, and a few others) are more visible on HN because they publish the sort of content HN readers submit every month without hiding it behind a paywall.

At least one, myself. It's beautiful in actual print and I feel much smarter when I read it. In my case it jolts me out of the tech-tunnel-vision and the mix of sciences and humanities I find it refreshing. I kick myself for not reading it more often.

I second this, they have a very, very good print designer, and they splurge for nice paper. That's all paired with good writing on interesting topics. It feels like luxurious reading. It may be too nice to survive, though.

I just bought one. Loving the content so far. Totally worth the price to help them stay independent and pay the bills (they're a nonprofit).

It's super easy to buy one too and it feels like an honest business. For example, the print version includes Online/Kindle/iPad and the price is extremely fair for a year subscription.

They don't even require a subscription for you to read - they don't paywall much of their content.

I bought one a few months ago, when the article about Nautilus experiencing problems was posted here.

Got two physical copies in the mail last week. It took quite a while ... two months? Guess they're not very fast with delivering to Europe

I just bought a year print subscription for $39.

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