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Comment by POiNTx | Hacker News Reader

I know these don't map 1-to-1 on real natural synapses, but let's say you can magically replace all your natural synapses in a brain with this. What would be the experienced effect? Would you be able to think faster, or would perceived time slow down? Or something else?

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I wonder if a human's "refresh rate" has been evolutionary optimized for its environment. Maybe there's no need to evaluate things 30000x faster if our bodies can't react that fast. I guess it would make for faster reaction times, e.g. when driving: driver in front of you hits the brakes, the vision signal enters your brain with the same delay (are optic nerves synapses too?), but I guess the difference is your brain would be able to process the meaning of the change (the red lights coming on, the car getting larger in your vision) a lot faster.

The brain then sends a signal for the foot to react, but the amount of time it will take for the foot to move will be the same as normal since the signal takes the same time to reach the foot. I imagine at 30000x, you would notice that it's taking very very long for the foot to move. To notice it would mean to have feedback from the skin inside your socks/pants that the foot/leg is moving against your sock/pants, and the brain will probably think that feedback is taking forever after it sent the signal.

Interestingly our bodies can increase the refresh rate and processing of smaller slices of time when needed. I remember an experiment scientists did dropping people from a bungee with an led display that had a display rate too high or fast for normal humans to see it. During the drop they could see the number it was displaying. :)

Huh, I've heard about this study but recall them having the opposite conclusion.

Edit: I think this is the study we're thinking of. http://psychologyrich.blogspot.com/2011/04/does-bungee-jump-...

They couldn't see the flickering screen any better even though their subjective experience of the duration was longer.

I have to admit you may be right. I can’t find any other paper that contradicts this paper.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

I don’t know how I got the opposite idea from the show I was watching. They were doing the experiment and I swear they said the people could see the numbers better. Perhaps if I had been bungee jumping while watching the show…

Fascinatingly, it seems that it is the perception of time that increases and with it the recording of information.

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/129112147

ABUMRAD: In that instant, our memories go wide open.

Mr. EAGLEMAN: Because thats what memory is for. Its for when everything hits the fan. You want to write it down and remember it.

ABUMRAD: So all of it goes right to your hard drive - the clouds, the feeling of the air. Oh look, theres a guy in a blue shirt.

Mr. EAGLEMAN: So when you read that back out, the experience feels like it must have taken a very long time.

KRULWICH: Hmmm.

Mr. EAGLEMAN: It must have.

KRULWICH: Normally, the trivial stuff gets dumped but in this situation, it gets written.

ABUMRAD: And then you realize how much trivial stuff is in there.

If I thought 30,000x faster I would kill myself. It's sort of like that "Flash nightmare" where he goes so fast he's waiting an eternity for someone just to breath a syllable. Imagine being able to process information 30kx faster but still be limited to communication methods through senses that are radically more limited? That is hell, that is "The Jaunt".

You mean, you'd kill yourself 30,000x faster 8-).

If it matters to communicate outside, sure. But if you're inside a synthworld with everyone at the same timebase, it's not a problem. Essentially, you're evolving 30,000x faster, so with enough minds in the synthworld, interesting things will happen...

I feel like if you adjust the world to equalize, you've just moved your reference point and therefore relative to yourself and everything around you you're still at base 1:1. So normal as here and now.

30000x is bigger than you think!

Wow. This is exactly like a speculative comment I was going to write. Only thing I'll add is the relation seems to hold for other animals. The bigger the animal, the longer the wavelengths in both vocalizations and (to the limited extent we can study), brain waves. Think about the reaction times of a whale vs the reaction times of a small bird. I bet videos of whales speed up kind of look like videos of birds.

Imagine a game world, where all your opponents 30000 times slower, 30000 times less energy efficient. Time and energy central resources in this game, which cannot be faked anyhow. Even if nuclear fusion or antimatter energy sources are everywhere.

Sounds like a very boring game. The two races are basically distinct, just like the human race is distinct from geology. For all we know, Earth's geology might be sentient already.

Here's a partial answer. The perception of time always happens at one second per second.

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