This episode of TIMC was less objectionable than most. I enjoy listening to Moore pontificate. What annoyed me was the citation of the Eagleman study, which tested the possibility that human perception “speeds up” under stress. They used a visual tool to measure this and didn’t get a result.
For over 100 years we’ve taken advantage of the time-perception limitations of vision to entertain ourselves. When films get exciting, people don’t suddenly notice how jerky things are, so why should our perception of numbers get any more discerning while falling? 120Hz CRT refresh rates (as opposed to 60Hz) were a thing because even very sensitive persons were “fooled” by that relatively slow frequency.
Eagleman tested sight because that’s how he remembered his childhood fall from the roof, but our auditory senses are much more discerning in the moment. Perhaps the idea that the effect is visual is a fallacy. Experienced mechanics, for example, are able to discern subtle misfiring and other transitory (not periodic) phenomenon that are too fast to see on the screen of an old non-recording scope. Touch may be quicker as well (though more delayed from travel through the PNS), using similar processing. Smell not so much. That’s probably a quality/emotional thing rather than a space/time thing.
But in the several years since this flawed study came out has anyone tested other senses or even mentioned the fact that Eagleman was attempting to measure something that isn’t really measurable? Even though our vision can’t keep up, our brain may speed up it’s survival processing and we may be able to measure it using auditory or kinesthetic cues (same sense widgets) rather than visual. As one of the monkeys on the show mentioned, we create memories more quickly in those circumstances. Something really is going on when we’re in physical danger.
