[HN Gopher] Richard Feynman on looking at the world from another...
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Richard Feynman on looking at the world from another point of view
(1973)
Author : shafyy
Score : 73 points
Date : 2022-12-18 15:51 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cassandradispatch.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (cassandradispatch.org)
| [deleted]
| m3047 wrote:
| When I replay hitting a deer on a motorcycle at 60+mph I was
| already flying through the air when I grabbed a handful of brake:
| this is not the 4D (3D + time) reality of the unfolding of
| events, but it is how I see it. It tells me something about how
| we see the world, and how we're wired.
|
| (Wasn't my first slide, being able to walk wasn't entirely luck.
| Being able to ride away was.)
| [deleted]
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| is there a transcript somewhere? (I'd ask if one can download
| .srt's or the equivalent from YT, but their auto-generated subs
| leave much to be desired)
| shafyy wrote:
| I've looked and didn't find one, I'm sorry!
| LogicX wrote:
| Oddly enough there was a different recent submission to HN a
| few below this for me... here it is:
| https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=GNhlNSLQAFE&t=1
| cratermoon wrote:
| Yeah, Youtube's built-in transcript system. It's hidden
| behind the 3 dots at the bottom right of videos
| xqcgrek2 wrote:
| What point of view was he looking at when he abused people?
|
| https://slate.com/technology/2019/01/richard-feynman-physica...
|
| https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/surely-youre-a-creep-mr-fey...
|
| https://caltechletters.org/viewpoints/feynman-harassment-sci...
| labrador wrote:
| "To Err is Human, to forgive divine" - Alexander Pope
|
| I'm going to assume that none of Richard Feynman's mistakes
| affected you personally, so you have no reason to take it
| personally and judge or be offended. Let's imagine that the
| women involved forgave him. Where does that leave you?
| Cancelling him in his future and missing out on his best ideas.
| NickRandom wrote:
| I have been in true 'life or death' situations (in other words,
| I'm alive because others were slower or less able to draw their
| weapons and fire).
|
| In those sorts of situations time truly does slow down. I replay
| those times endlessly in my dreams/nightmares but either way it
| seemed like both at the time and in my mental replaying of the
| events that time slowed down to a crawl.
|
| During endless sessions with various mental health professionals
| it seems that people involved in car crashes have the same
| slowing down of time. Based on what I've learnt, the time
| differential boils down to muscle memory (much like a batter hits
| a fast ball) that can and does initiate a response before the
| brain processes the event and that the mind catches up afterwards
| and is able to replay the events in a somewhat coherent way.
| retrac wrote:
| I once found a loved one in grave condition, without a pulse.
| What followed was like a surreal movie that has its frames out
| of order. I remember a thought of surprise at basically
| flinging furniture out of the way. Very much a passenger in my
| body at that point. I began CPR. Muscle memory is right. I was
| not really conscious throughout most of it.
|
| One of the few things that resembles a thought during the
| entire episode is something like "you cannot think about this
| right now if you do you will collapse". A jumble of eternal
| instants. It dragged on. And on. And on. Eventually, very
| eventually, the paramedics arrived. I had another thing
| resembling a thought. I can collapse now. I can look away now.
| I have no basically no memory until the next day when I saw
| her, awake, in the hospital.
|
| I know the day and time it happened. I checked the logs after.
| The paramedics took less than 5 minutes to arrive. But it was
| outside the normal linearity of my experience. It doesn't fit
| between the day before and the day after. For a while, the
| jumbled movie would play in my head, involuntarily. I think I
| was trying to make sense of it, fit it in, when it really
| doesn't fit. Experiences and memories I couldn't easily process
| because I didn't really experience them consciously when they
| occurred? Maybe something like that. It went away with time,
| and does not bother me these days, but descriptions of PTSD do
| make a lot more sense to me now.
| somrand0 wrote:
| > _I was not really conscious throughout most of it._
|
| I disagree. hear me out. I think you were just using a non-
| linguistic mode of consciousness.
|
| We are far too accustomed to thinking and being (and
| imagining that we are) made out of words, or things that can
| be put into words. But I have chosen to believe that this is
| merely one amongst various others ways to think.
|
| Language is a tool. A human being is not made out of words
| (from a language). Nonetheless, a lot of what we imagine
| ourselves to be is made out of words (from a language).
|
| Let's not keep on making the mistake that what we are is
| something that can be *completely* put into words.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _I remember a thought of surprise at basically flinging
| furniture out of the way. Very much a passenger in my body at
| that point._
|
| This is a known phenomenon called an amygdala hijack.
|
| _This emotional brain activity processes information
| milliseconds earlier than the rational brain, so in case of a
| match, the amygdala acts before any possible direction from
| the neocortex can be received._
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala_hijack
| Waterluvian wrote:
| One subjective thing I discovered in a decade of playing ice
| hockey is that it seems like there are people where time slows
| down during high intensity situations. Sadly I'm not one of
| them.
|
| Maybe I'm just describing something obvious related to
| adrenaline or fight vs. flight. But I wonder if some people are
| just physiologically better wired for these situations. Would
| that make them better at sports or warfighting?
|
| It also reminds me of birds and other animals that seem to
| effortlessly perform incredible feats at high speed. But to
| their frame of reference and perception of time, maybe the
| world is just _very very slow moving_.
| jvm___ wrote:
| I wonder this about Messi. Does he just have better
| perception of his own body as well as another sense of where
| the competition is in the field and how best to adapt his
| play in light of their changes.
|
| Can he perceive time better which is why he's so good at
| soccer.
| version_five wrote:
| I'm reminded of something I once heard about a type of sea
| slug that follows another slug's trail and eventually
| overtakes and eats it. The whole thing happens at slug-speed
| but you can picture from the perspective of the slugs that
| they are in a high-speed life-or-death race
| NickRandom wrote:
| I experience what is known as 'Survivors Guilt' (in other
| words I wonder those exact same thoughts as you do except
| from the other side of lens with respect to the those that
| were 'able to / vs. not able to lens').
|
| Those that can - survived, those that couldn't/didn't - died.
|
| In terms of natural selection (for want of a better term) it
| often leaves me puzzling that very same thought late at night
| sometimes before I'm brought back to reality by the shrinks
| that relate it back to those that made the major league vs.
| those that faded into obscurity.
|
| [Edit]: Sorry, the above comment makes war and death seem
| like a game of baseball which it very much isn't and
| trivializes the needless suffering of entire populations on
| behalf of the vagrancies of politicians across the globe.
|
| YMMV.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > In those sorts of situations time truly does slow down. I
| replay those times endlessly in my dreams/nightmares but either
| way it seemed like both at the time and in my mental replaying
| of the events that time slowed down to a crawl.
|
| Interestingly, in at least one measurable, quantitative sense,
| time does _not_ slow down, not even subjectively:
|
| > Using a hand-held device to measure speed of visual
| perception, participants experienced free fall for 31 m before
| landing safely in a net. We found no evidence of increased
| temporal resolution, in apparent conflict with the fact that
| participants retrospectively estimated their own fall to last
| 36% longer than others' falls.
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
| johndhi wrote:
| Interesting! I have the same experience with the one time a
| group of teens attempted to mug me. I can remember the sneer on
| the kid's face as he cocked back and readied to punch me, I was
| holding textbooks under my right arm, standing 3/4 of the way
| toward the street on a brick sidewalk at a particular
| intersection in DC.
| chubbnix wrote:
| Well go on, finish the story!
| tarl0s wrote:
| I guess that the story is already quite explicit as it is:
| simply recalling all that amount of details is a clear
| indicator of how much the time slowed down for the gp
| during the event.
| amelius wrote:
| Isn't it the adrenaline that causes this?
| watwut wrote:
| Adrenalin experience have that effect. I had same time slow up
| in sports where I was in very little real danger, but in stress
| and subjective fear (white water kayaking and falling while
| climbing). And yes, also car crash.
|
| I think it is typical effect of adrenaline.
| foobiekr wrote:
| My experience with an attempted carjacking is like this. Even
| now there's the crystal clear memory an ultra slow tap pause
| tap of a pistol on the window and the accomplices beelining to
| the passenger door.
|
| Intellectually I know that it all went down in a few seconds
| but I have no access to a normal speed memory of the event.
| Only tapppppp delay taaaappp (and then flooring it and nimbly
| pivoting between accomplice one and two).
| mordechai9000 wrote:
| Last spring a moose charged me out of nowhere, then followed
| me through the woods, off trail and in deep snow, and charged
| me again. Each time I fell on my face in the deep snow and
| had to pick myself up and try to get behind cover. In my
| memory, I was moving excruciatingly slow. In reality I think
| I was moving as fast as I've ever moved in my life. It was
| almost like I was standing outside myself, observing and
| telling myself what to do.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| I think there's also some effect if the flood of adrenaline and
| other chemicals causes your body and brain to essentially
| accelerate. Like a slowmo camera. Time didn't slow down, but
| you're acting and recording at a higher framerate for lack of a
| better analogy. So the recording (memory) feels like time
| slowed down.
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