Do you "visualize" time ??

[Laura PourMeADrink]

Don't remember how it started...but had a conversation with a friend about time and months and calendars.

We were talking about what you see or think when you are counting/determining how many months until Christmas or summer or something like that.

He visualizes nothing. It is a mere mathematical issue to him. If it's September (9) and he is thinking how many months until Christmas (12) he thinks. 12-9+1

I, am the opposite. I always visualize a "calendar" of blocks organized on a slanted to the right ellipsis. January is on the top and December on the bottom and I count the blocks. (Weird, I know).

Reminds me of the statement "It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it." Some people think painting a picture of the world. Some people think actually house painting every building in the world.

[NightWatcher]

1. That's heavy, dude.....and yes

I see the calendar as a giant analog wall clock, except it runs backwards. January is at 6 o clock, Feb at 5, Mar at 4 o clock and so on.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

4. You are teasing me, right? Do you really see it that way? If yes, it's

way heavier than what I see

[Scuba]

28. I see the calandar in a similar way, except ...

January is at 11, Feb at 10, etc., with December being at 12.

I've thought about this often, but have never understood WHY I see the calendar this way.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

46. Are you left handed?

[Scuba]

48. Nope.

[arcane1]

2. You may have some form of Synesthesia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

[Laura PourMeADrink]

3. Wow...thanks...gotta read this. Do you think it's covered under Obamacare?

[Laura PourMeADrink]

6. think this is what I have, makes sense

Number form synesthesia

A number form is a mental map of numbers, which automatically and involuntarily appears whenever someone who experiences number-forms thinks of numbers. Number forms were first documented and named by Francis Galton in "The Visions of Sane Persons".[30] Later research has identified them as a type of synesthesia.[12][13] In particular, it has been suggested that number-forms are a result of "cross-activation" between regions of the parietal lobe that are involved in numerical cognition and spatial cognition

[NRaleighLiberal]

5. related question - if someone asks you to signify progress, do you think of it as up, in front of

you, or to the right? We asked these types of questions at some team building events during my corporate years. It is amazing to see how people perceive a term very differently.

To answer your question (which I've never really thought about!), I guess I just count forward (so it is March - April May June July August Sept Oct Nov Dec which is 9 months until Christmas)....I think, anyway!

[Laura PourMeADrink]

7. Surely I must be insane. I have thought about it and I don't think

of ANYTHING when thinking about progress. Wonder what that would have meant. What about you? I would guess most people might think left to right. Funny thing is that I am a project manager and prepare plans and progress reports all the time. Think I am always purely focused on remaining tasks vs. what has been accomplished.

Do you count on your fingers and toes. :&gt

I have been thinking about reading up on inductive vs. deductive reasoners since I am in an analysis type business. When something needs to be accomplished most people think, to get there, I have to do steps 1, 2, 3, 4. The other just envisions the end result and can get there somehow but literally can not make a list of the steps it takes to get there.

[NRaleighLiberal]

8. Fascinating! I think our careers and inclinations do strongly influence this.

Readers, scientists, mathematicians - progress is on an X axis, left to right; we read left to right, etc. For some of the group who were not inclined so, progress meant walking straight ahead - because it is moving forward! Cool, hey?

So I did quite a lot of project mgt as well - but my natural inclination (myers briggs enfp) is much more spontaneous - I don't have to go through steps to get to where I want; I can hunt and peck all along the process and sometimes reach the end just by intuition. So my career took alot out of me because I worked out of my "box" (natural inclination) - when my wife and I go on vacation, we tend to "wing it" - drive until we are tired and use a guide book to find a B and B and book it on the spot, etc.

I really enjoy this kind of thing - learning about and understanding the different thinking processes of people!

[Laura PourMeADrink]

11. You know what this means? You are brilliant !

"I don't have to go through steps to get to where I want; I can hunt and peck all along the process and sometimes reach the end just by intuition."

The people I have known who can do this are exceptional. In fact, the woman I worked with who was like you had a 167 IQ ! Problem was, she never excelled or got promoted because people would complain that she never presented a plan to them and she made the methodical types nervous. It's kind of like when presenting big picture ideas - a non-visual person doesn't have to see it in a visual way..but they can understand it if it is. A visual person has to see it. So you go with visual to get both groups.

You are lucky to have found a mate who is like you....to wing it on vacation. Very simpatico !

[NRaleighLiberal]

14. Ha! I never got to where I might have in my career mostly because I was a bit of a rebel!

It is amazing - companies spend a fortune on team building, strength finders, myers briggs, you name it - then never apply any of it to create diverse teams. It is always managers wanting and promoting their clones. I don't know how I lasted 25 years....

At least in my "new career" as garden writer, lecturer, etc I am my own boss....and much happier (and much poorer!)

[Laura PourMeADrink]

18. Ok...found how we are alike since I am not the "brilliant" type :>)

After giving me a personality trait test when I was hired, they told me that they had never ever seen anyone score an absolute zero on any trait til me....Conformity.

Lecturer? You'll have to create one for us here at DU !

My husband just got home from the basketball tournament....gotta go act like I was doing something productive!!

Cheers !

[talkingmime]

9. Weird. I do both. It might be residual neural rewiring from my pot days.

I'm a math geek, but I see math visually, not in numbers. I do the same with time. I know the math behind it, the physics behind it, and still see it visually. I can usually guess Earth time within 15 minutes regardless of where I am, even at night. I don't know how, but I can.

I know it sounds silly, and most people think it is. I don't see a calendar as blocks, but I do understand the ellipsis analogy you used. That's a similar figure to what I use, mostly because of the orbit of Earth. Mine's slanted like Earth's orbit. The moon plays a big part in it as well. I know the stars and generally know which bright dots are which planets. I've seen Jupiter with four visible moons from a relatively small telescope. Man is that intense. Saturn's rings are also incredible. I haven't caught any of her moons yet. I will one day.

Time's a strange thing. Sometimes it passes quickly, other times really slowly, especially at the end of a work shift (or jr. high school class period). I've been in comas and lost several days at a pop, sometimes just a few hours, but usually days. Medical condition. Time gone. I can't get those hours or days back. A coma is now my concept of death - everything goes away. No time. No life. No interaction. Just gone. If I never came out of one I wouldn't know it. I no longer fear death at all.

In stress situations everything slows down to a movie special effect, but that can make you feel like Superman with your reaction time. Nothing really changed, but it feels like it did. You can move at whatever speed you want depending on your mental state.

I haven't found a theory that supports travel back in time but we know (and have proven) that travel into the future is possible. Not by a lot mind you, fractions of seconds mostly, but it happens. Light from 15 billion light years is just reaching us. Are those stars still alive? What about the ones that are travelling as fast as we are from the center of the universe? We can't even see them because the light will never reach us, nor will ours reach them. We're in the dark space just as they are in ours.

Sometimes I wonder if time actually exists. Many consider it the fourth dimension, but there were at least 17 dimensions when the universe was created. Space isn't 3-dimensional. Time is an arbitrary measurement of what transpires. We base ours on the rotation of Earth. If there's life on Jupiter, how would the inhabitants calculate time? How about Io? Mars has a year that's a little over twice that of Earth. We really don't know what time means.

Then again, most people are oblivious to such concepts and just park themselves in front of the boob tube and get lost in drivel. To them, time is just the difference between one show and the next. Prehistoric humans had a better grasp of time than most contemporary humans.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

17. Are your sure you are not Neil deGrasse Tyson???

Your comments about time reminded me so much of his talk on life on other planets:

I am sorry about your medical condition. And that is so interesting about your equating comas with death. I assume this translates to no life after death ?

[talkingmime]

33. That was GREAT!!! What he described at the end is sort of the premise behind...

...the movie "Star Trek: First Contact". There's a line in there essentially saying that humans were considered a primative species until a routine Vulcan patrol ship detected a warp signature and decided to check out the launch site of The Phoenix. Same basic idea. The movie never explained how The Phoenix managed to land back on Earth (it wasn't built for that), but that's just a geek detail.

The one thing I disagree with Mr. Tyson on is the ability to communicate with other species. Koko communicates with humans with over 1000 ASL words (far more than I know) and she understands far more in spoken English - and she's nine years younger than me. She'd probably consider me an idiot if I tried to speak with her in ASL. I should probably learn the word "idiot" ahead of meeting her should I ever get the opportunity.

She clearly had a communication channel with her first kitten, All Ball (she named it), and with her second two after All Ball was killed by a car (Lipstick and Smokey, also her names), as well as a stray macaw she called Devil Tooth.

I have two-way communications with birds in their languages (not with worms, though). I don't really understand bird, but obviously I'm saying something they find interesting enough to respond to even if all they're saying is "Fuck you, stupid human." Dogs and cats communicate very clearly, even with just their eyes, and they understand human language extremely well.

My service dog is completely "on the job" when she's in uniform and won't let me cross the road if a car is so much as slightly moving. But she also responds to subtle leash movements and anything I say to her. Out of uniform she's a wild little thing, but still obedient. Both dogs listen so well that people think we have an electric fence (we don't). She was never formerly trained. She just knew what she had to do and did it.

This sort of communication crosses species barriers as well. We use "eh, eh, eh" when a cat is doing something seriously wrong like walking on the kitchen counters. One of ours turned around and used the exact same noise to discipline our puppy. It worked. And when she KNOWS she's being naughty and you catch her in the act, she makes the same noise before we get a chance to say anything. It's hilarious.

And my dad had a recent experience with his parrot (Darwin). He left Darwin's room to head for bed and Darwin kept saying "Good-night, baby" (what my step-mother says to him at night). He wouldn't stop saying it. Finally my dad (who Darwin must have thought was totally dense) figured out that he'd left the hall light on. As soon as he turned it off, Darwin went silent.

There was a fairly recent story about a dolphin that approached a group of night divers and presented a flipper in a very submissive way. The diver it approached noticed that it had a fishing line and hook wrapped around it. He proceded to remove the line and the dolphin surfaced twice for air and returned to continue the process. When he finished, it swam off. (Side note: dolphins are the only other species than humans known to have sex for pleasure.)

Another recent story involved a baby sea lion that hitched a ride on another night diver's kayak and would not leave. Although it had what looked like a shark bite on its rump, the story didn't indicate that it received medical attention. It rode all the way back to shore, spent about 45 minutes warming up, and then headed back out to sea. I'm not sure how much of that constitutes communication, but it was cold and felt safe seeking help from the diver.

I think humans are the ones who need to wake up about how intelligent other creatures are. In general we assume we are obviously superior and most people treat other creatures the same way they do a styrofoam cup. Those of us who know better work with them to give them a feeling of self-worth. Every creature communicates in some way, generally best within their own species, but they still communicate. Just because a creature isn't using human speech doesn't mean it can't communicate. Then again, I'm not going to sniff a dog's butt. I KNOW they understand that!

It is unlikely to happen in my lifetime, but I'm sure we will detect signs of life, past or present, somewhere else in the universe. And if the Internet is still around by then I'm sure this post will be locked away in some memory hole site and all I have to say to the future is "told ya so."

And yes, I do equate a coma with a state equal to death. Lights out. No thoughts. No dreams. No me. No anything. I used to believe in an afterlife, but not anymore. Perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel is from the room outside the birth canal. Nobody can say for sure. I think it's just the end of the story. If I'm wrong, I guess I'll find out when a pitchfork pushes me into a pit of fire and brimstone.

And what kind of drink do you want?

[Laura PourMeADrink]

35. Talking Mime - you offer so much to comment on so I will pick just one thing at a time

This sort of communication crosses species barriers as well. We use "eh, eh, eh" when a cat is doing something seriously wrong like walking on the kitchen counters. One of ours turned around and used the exact same noise to discipline our puppy. It worked. And when she KNOWS she's being naughty and you catch her in the act, she makes the same noise before we get a chance to say anything. It's hilarious

.

You are saying your dog actually says "eh eh eh" How cool is that. Dogs are amazing when they pick up on right and wrong.

I got sick of buying rawhide bones, only to have my dog Larry, take them outside and bury them and then they filthy dirty.

So, I stopped letting him take them outside, I say "drop" at the door before he goes out.

Well, guess during his naps, he must have been dreaming about how to sneak them out.

His first attempt, he stood by the door, waiting for me to let him out. He looked odd. I then realized he had the entire bone in his mouth - must have been half way down his throat, with his lips pursed. I thought this was such a clever deception, I rewarded him and let him out with it.

His second, he did the same thing only he had a bone sideways, check to check, so he had bulges on each side of his mouth. It was hysterical.

His third, he somehow had enough room to have the entire bone in his mouth, but with an added twist, a chew toy as a decoy in his mouth which was fully visible (chew toys can go outside)

I never knew how deceptive an animal could be.

If he does it again soon, I am going to just stand there and wait to see what he does. Surely, it's uncomfortable. I imagine if he could he would spit out and say "OhhhhKAY....you win ! "

[talkingmime]

45. Actually it is the cat that uses "eh eh eh" - the dog just accepted the discipline from her.

Ever try to pill a cat? They can be REALLY good at pretending to swallow it and then spit it out in a remote corner.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

36. Have you read Neil deGrasse Tyson's first hand account of 9-11 ??

http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2001/09/12/the-horror-the-horror

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

10. I do. A year is a clockwise circle with January on the top, just past 12:00.

The circle goes all the way around to December, which is back on top of the circle. Weeks are elliptical, and they go counterclockwise. Months are more linear, but I visualize them within my circular year. Sounds weird but that's the way I think.

Also, some things that aren't visual have colors in my head. Music in D minor is always dark blue, for example.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

12. Wow...my weeks are right to left (like counterclockwise) too ! Wonder why a year would

be clockwise. I see no color like you - wish I did. But you REALLY need to read that link above ..so interesting.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

13. Yep, a mild case of synesthesia.

I know a guy who thinks of each letter as having a different color. That would be really interesting.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

47. did you ever work at a paint store ? :>)

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

49. No, but maybe somebody who thinks the same way

came up with that. Interesting.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

50. It's kind of hard to see, but it looks like Zodiac signs too. Interesting

how it has a north and south pole that is slanted to the right adding another dimension

[NRaleighLiberal]

15. by the way...you've created one of the most interesting posts on DU of the day!

it is always great when you are posed a question that really makes you think and self-reflect!

[hibbing]

16. great post...hmm

Hi,
This is a really interesting topic and some great replies. I guess visualize time in a linear way, left to right. I'll have to think about this some more, but thanks for posting this.

Peace

[Ron Obvious]

19. Not exactly...

No, not exactly, but I associate colours with ordinary words that are absolutely fixed and immutable.

For example, Monday is yellow, Tuesday and Friday are grey/silver, Wednesday and Thursday are green, Saturday is beige and Sunday is red. I've always seen the names for these days that way, and -- assuming I lived that long and my brain were intact -- you could ask me in 50 years time and I'll still mention these colour couplings.

To me, these associations are completely obvious and self-evident.

My best theory is early exposure to a desk calendar or TV guide that used those colours.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

31. I would think your best theory might be right. To me, beige is a downer color

which wouldn't typically be associated with Saturday - I mean who hates Saturdays??? haha

[Laura PourMeADrink]

43. RO....Maybe it all started with an older version of something like this ????

[Ron Obvious]

52. Not in my personal case, I don't think...

I'm pretty sure I never had clothes laid out for me like that, and most of my underwear would have been starched white in any case/

I don't really have strong emotional responses to either colours or days of the week. Red is warmer than blue of course, and beige is bland. Sunday's are kinda dull, and Saturdays... Hmmm... No particular feelings. Monday... My mother would do the laundry, I think... I can't think of anything else.

This has been a fascinating thread. I always assumed I wasn't the only one with these colour associations, but it's been interesting hear of others, even if they're the sort of infidels who see green days as yellow!

[vanlassie]

20. My sister in law sees each vowel as a certain color.

It is a GREAT help with spelling. She has no idea why she does it.

[pinboy3niner]

21. Sure...

[Laura PourMeADrink]

32. thanks so much for giving Dali the idea to paint this !! nt

[Solly Mack]

22. Depends. Needing to know a date, I count. It's math. How many months until...math.

But the flow of time is different. I think of it in terms of seasons, passages, water (fast/slow moving currents), events, memories. Triggers, as it were.

And then there's looking at the night sky and thinking of time - time is then at a standstill and in an instant. For me, anyway. The world moving in a blink. Time is bigger at night. Again, to me.

But a blue sky is always that moment and just that moment. Time is then a breath you hold.

Rain is time moving through a veil.

[nolabear]

23. I have color/taste synesthesia. Numbers mean nothing to me.

Funny stuff . If I envision time I see it as quantity of something, very matter-like, contained in a specific sized container. The container is time. But that's purely sensory. As metaphors go, it's simplistic.

[pinboy3niner]

25. A quantity like a week or a month?

Seeing time as a quantity seems unfamiliar to me, as I see it only as a continuum.

Of course, you always have the Nolabear Exception.

[jcboon]

26. Synesthesia--I have it bad

Days of the week have colors, I thought everyone knew Wednesday was yellow, numbers have personalities and genders and I don't even want to talk about sounds and flavors.
I've always been fascinated with the way other people's thought processes worked and this thread is a treat.
Most people don't talk about this stuff unless they're high. . .

[Laura PourMeADrink]

29. How long have you seen the days of the week in color? As long as you can

remember? I am so curious about this. I wonder if you independently associated a color to
a day or if it was something that dates back (no pun intended) to an association with something
you saw - like a childhood calendar.

When you said yellow for Wednesday, it made me think....yellow is a happy color...and Wednesdays are hump day if you work.

What color is Sunday? Sunday's a bummer to me since it means tomorrow you have to go back to school/work

[jcboon]

56. For me there's no real logic to it

It just is. I suspect that some associations were influenced by some trippy children's illustrations in books from the 20's. Perhaps all that visual stimulation just gave me the vocabulary of imagination as it were.
Monday is red, Tuesday=blue, Thursday=green, Friday is maroon with gold stars, Saturday is indigo and Sunday is pink.
The Moody Blues are totally purple.

[Ron Obvious]

53. Wednesdays are green!

I don't have it as strongly as you do, but words definitely have colours. They're as closely part of their identity as nouns have genders in languages like French or German. You need never to have heard the word before, you instantly know which article it takes, and I'd know its colour as well.

Time to put on the Pink Floyd!

[uselessobot]

27. Time is a made man concept and one can mark or measure time in anyway they see fit

[Tuesday Afternoon]

30. DU Rec and thanks for posting this and

Laura, pour me a drink, too.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

37. Irish Coffee !! You have my all time favorite DU name. My Moody Blues favorite !!! nt

[Tuesday Afternoon]

39. ah, thanks - LPMAD -

yours always makes me smile, too ...

[Laura PourMeADrink]

38. PS My roomate in college tried to commit suicide over the song Nights in White Satin

She had NIWS playing, took pills and then screamed out the window toward the nuns quarters that she
"hated this place so much she wanted to kill herself"

Sorry not a nice way to share a story about a great song, huh

[Tuesday Afternoon]

40. wow. intense. --

evening time to get away ,,, ah geeze. poor girl. hope she went on to live a good life.

[Bucky]

34. That concept is so purple I can almost smell its music

[hunter]

41. It's all wave forms to me, and strongly attached to my biological clocks.

That's just one reason I hate Daylight Savings time.

Mechanical time pieces are an abomination.

I hate clocks.

With modern microprocessor technology we could build time keeping devices that resonated with the actual rhythms of this world. Heck, we could even get rid of time zones and go back to local times using time pieces that stretched or contracted the minutes as one traveled east or west based on GPS data, tables, and local broadcasts.

My personal compromise is to ignore clocks as best I can.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

42. When someone wants to schedule something with me, I sometimes say...

"Let me check my map." I meant to say calendar but 'map' slipped out.
In a way I do think I map out my time, scheduling things for the most efficient routes to all the things I need to do, moving things around like game tokens on a Risk board.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

44. Interesting. Kind of a combo between a Gaant Chart and Frogger video game !nt

[olddots]

51. I used to visualize time as a waste of time .

If time is our own concept does it stop when we cease to exist ? When we say someone has no concept of time maybe their concept is different than ours but its still frustrating .

[Quantess]

54. Yes, I do!

Finally someone asked, so I don't need to feel too different about this.

I see the months of a year in sort of an oval shape, or an ellipse shape. Or is it more of a teardrop shape? December and January on the left side of the shortest end, then it bubbles out on the right side at June, apex at July, then at August the shape is headed back toward the right again.

I despise weed, but, one of the few times I was stoned I realized that I think of the sequence of the events in my life as a stacked, leaning, twisted and tottering shape, somewhat similar to a bonsai.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

55. Cool ! don't you wish DU had a feature where you could draw something ! Your

ellipse has so more complexity than mine.

It strikes me that if you had a bonzai represent your life, I would think of a branch for a different aspect. The branch would bulge and contract based on good, high points. For instance, to me, as you get older, pure unadulterate, silly fun diminishes. So that branch would look more like a bowling pin. Wisdom/Serenity would be the inverse.