Hacker News Reader

Comment by LoSboccacc | Hacker News Reader

> It'll seem like it takes longer than a second to move, then resumes moving as normal.

shit I knew it was real! adolescent me noticed this and had a hard time to explain or figure out information about it (this was about the excite era)

View on HN

Ohhhhhhhhh! So that's why whenever I stop and look up at a traffic light with a timer, the first second always seem longer than the subsequent ones.

This is so cool. It's one of those mundane things that you think only occur to you, when in reality it's way more common and intriguing. Like those eye floaters.

Why would you assume that your experience isn't common to others with the same evolutionary history and environment?

it's an effect that's very hard to describe - john: "hey jim did you notice that last second was longer" it's very personal, if jim was not looking or already looking at the timer from before john's assertion would just sound absurd and it also require being attentive enough to the clock and the sense of time in general.

and personally I kinda had a general feeling that could be at best described as 'the first second of a timer always look longer than the others' which roughly matches what magnio said, and that was it, it's not something I'd widely share unprompted, people already think I'm enough of a nerd as it stands.

I asked my parents once about the eye floaters but they didn't seem to get what it is, so I just assumed it's only me.

Granted, as a kid I had this egotistical sense of self, to which I attributed a number of misconceptions about lots of things.

You might be interested in the concept of qualia [0]

Vsauce did a good video on it, "Is Your Red The Same as My Red?" [1]

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evQsOFQju08

Reply on news.ycombinator.com