Hacker News Reader

Comment by aym62SAE49CZ684 | Hacker News Reader

All objective observations of time involve reading numbers. You can't test subjective perception.

Ok ok, so the experiment actually just tested whether an individual frame of a high frame rate display could be read while while falling. Since it could not, we do not have objective evidence for the subjective "time slowing down" experience. We just know that there was no difference from the control, i.e. subjects were unable to read display at high frame rate under normal conditions.

That's all you know. Sure, maybe stressful conditions make it harder to read, but then again the watch is stationary with respect to the eye while falling.

View on HN

> All objective observations of time involve reading numbers. You can't test subjective perception.

Not all experiments testing the perception of time require the person undergoing the experiment to read the time themselves, though.

> Sure, maybe stressful conditions make it harder to read, but then again the watch is stationary with respect to the eye while falling.

My point wasn't that the stress could cause it to be harder to read, but that the physical act of falling could cause it. The experiment intended to test if a psychological phenomenon (the slowed perception of time) could be caused by a certain psychological cause (stress), but they tested it in a way where both the cause _and_ the effect could be unrelated to their testing; we don't even know if falling makes it physically harder to read independent of stress, so I don't know how you can conclude anything psychologically about what might be going on. The watch being stationary relative to the eye also doesn't rule out vision impairment regardless of what's being looked at; the strain on the eyes from the air rushing by could be enough to make it hard to see clearly.

The hypothesis here is that bungee jumping -> stress -> slowed perception of time -> increased ocular frame rate -> increased ability to perceive short frames. It's either difficult or impossible to properly test for stress, perception, and ocular frame rate (whatever that's called), so you use the ends of the chain.

If you get a positive result with your wacky experiment, then you go back and control for confounding variables. If you get a negative result, you can't really conclude anything other than you need more grant money to do some other click bait.

This is just how the business of science works. It's sort of like the economy. You try a bunch of random things as quickly as possible and follow up on what looks promising. Or, like in this case, you just try to do click bait and you skip even really bothering with delivering value at all. It's stupid and I don't like it either.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com