Theories of Time's Passing: Clearing the Cache

This letter was in response to a posting on TimeGoesBy.net - a phenomenal blog on growing older. Here's the editor's original post.

For the sake of intellectual efficiency, our minds cache vast amounts of information for quick, later reference. Just as Web browsers store images of frequently and recently visited sites, the human brain stores parts of the world that we interact with everyday such as the shape of an eggplant, the golden retriever that belongs to our neighbor, our neighbors themselves.

As a result, much of what we think of as experience is actually the act of accessing the cached data rather than processing the real-life visual or auditory or other experience.

As there are fewer experiences, over time, involving new data and an increased number using cached data, the world seems to move faster because we are processing old data for the second, fiftieth, hundredth time (so it really is faster). And because there is a fundamentally different experience in seeing something for the first time and seeing it again, in one sense, we do not experience cached data, we merely process it.

To explain it another way, think of the computer again. If we access an image locally (the cache in our minds), it is pretty much guaranteed to be exactly what we saw before (yawn). If we have to go out to the network (ah, the world) to get the information, there is the chance the world may surprise us with something different.

Metal and silicon computers use the cached data only when it is exactly the same as the current reference. Humans, however, are much less strict. We are willing to replace even modestly similar experiences with a cached reference. This is a separate abstracting function in our mind: this golden retriever is close enough to the last one I saw that I don’t have to “see” it again. It could be a very different animal – a temperamental golden lab, for instance - but a person still sees that other referenced benevolent dog.

(A digression: as my nine-month-old son is learning what a book is, he uses what seems to be a parallel process in learning the abstraction that his Very Hungry Caterpillar and my Incomplete Education are both books.)

To summarize: time seems to accelerate as we get older because:

We tend to increasing refer to cached data because that cache seems increasing to encompasses our experience.

We tend to access cached data in cases where it is not an exact match with current experience (a false assumption).

The process snowballs as we gain a sort of self-righteous confidence that the world is what it is (the grumpy old man problem), and our ennui makes us lazy. Our mind-set biases us towards dipping into the cache versus dipping into the world.

If you accept this theory, the answer to slowing down time would seem to be to find creative ways to “clear the cache.” My modest experience has been that travel can do this. That is, if you go to a very different place and experience it as it is, then you can return to the your world and experience things fresh again. (A month in rural India or Morocco or, for most of us, The Bronx should do the trick.)

If travel is not available, there are more commonplace rituals we can use to clear our personal caches. Meditation and other methods of mindfulness may be a route.

It could be that one of our worst difficulties occurs interacting with other people. It probably accelerates the caching (Point 1); increases the false assumption rate (Point 2); and definitely exacerbates our belief in grandiose assumptions that we know what all people are like (Point 3). I haven’t really thought too much about this last part, but I have a gut sense this is true.

Lastly, I keep thinking of this Thomas Hardy quote from Tess of the d'Urbervilles:

“Experience is as to intensity and not as to duration.”
I think that’s really the crux. Experience (in time) is not really related to time (per se) but to intensity of the experience. And the level of intensity depends on how intimately or powerfully or emotionally we are interacting with the world versus our cache.

Comments

[trish]

I hope you don't mind, but I'll be linking to this and to Ronni's original piece, as well as my comment to her in my blog...possibly today, if the thunder and lightning hold out. This relates to another question, raised by another blogger I read, on how to increase our wonder and joy.

[kalai]

i like to hear more from you

[matt]

i like the idea. it's simple and resonates clearly. thanks.