2 ms·

That is far from a definitive experiment. It's not testing the perception of time, just visual acuity during unrelated stress event.

2four2 2y ago
Most psychological experiments are far from difinitive due to the complexity and difficulty to measure abstract measurands like "perception".
- gchamonlive 2y ago
  Can they produce useful results then? Do you know of any instance where even though the experiment was limited it led to breakthrough? Not asking to trap you into the induction problem (believing that something that happened in the past will happen in the future). I'm just curious.
  - munificent 2y ago
    A negative result is still a useful result. Before this experiment, no one knew if a high-stress environment would speed up visual perception. Now we have some evidence that it does not.
    - gchamonlive 2y ago
      Only if paired with a follow-up hypothesis, otherwise you only mapped the outer boundaries of your domain, but gained no information about the domain of study itself.
aym62SAE49CZ684 2y ago
>> read the watch > It's not testing the perception of time It's literally testing the perception of time?
- saghm 2y ago
  It's testing the perception of reading numbers representing time while falling at a high speed and then bouncing a bit suspended off of a cliff or bridge or something. It's not obvious to me how you could conclude that the inability to read the numbers could be due to reading being hard when plummeting several hundred feet rather than due to any perception of time; if the experiment was trying to test whether the slowed perception of time could cause you to read times at finer granularity, how can you conclude whether it would be possible with slowed perception while stationary?
  - aym62SAE49CZ684 2y ago
    All objective observations of time involve reading numbers. You can't test subjective perception. Ok ok, so the experiment actually just tested whether an individual frame of a high frame rate display could be read while while falling. Since it could not, we do not have objective evidence for the subjective "time slowing down" experience. We just know that there was no difference from the control, i.e. subjects were unable to read display at high frame rate under normal conditions. That's all you know. Sure, maybe stressful conditions make it harder to read, but then again the watch is stationary with respect to the eye while falling.
    - saghm 2y ago
      > All objective observations of time involve reading numbers. You can't test subjective perception. Not all experiments testing the perception of time require the person undergoing the experiment to read the time themselves, though. > Sure, maybe stressful conditions make it harder to read, but then again the watch is stationary with respect to the eye while falling. My point wasn't that the stress could cause it to be harder to read, but that the physical act of falling could cause it. The experiment intended to test if a psychological phenomenon (the slowed perception of time) could be caused by a certain psychological cause (stress), but they tested it in a way where both the cause _and_ the effect could be unrelated to their testing; we don't even know if falling makes it physically harder to read independent of stress, so I don't know how you can conclude anything psychologically about what might be going on. The watch being stationary relative to the eye also doesn't rule out vision impairment regardless of what's being looked at; the strain on the eyes from the air rushing by could be enough to make it hard to see clearly.

2four2 2y ago

Most psychological experiments are far from difinitive due to the complexity and difficulty to measure abstract measurands like "perception".

gchamonlive 2y ago
Can they produce useful results then? Do you know of any instance where even though the experiment was limited it led to breakthrough? Not asking to trap you into the induction problem (believing that something that happened in the past will happen in the future). I'm just curious.
- munificent 2y ago
  A negative result is still a useful result. Before this experiment, no one knew if a high-stress environment would speed up visual perception. Now we have some evidence that it does not.
  - gchamonlive 2y ago
    Only if paired with a follow-up hypothesis, otherwise you only mapped the outer boundaries of your domain, but gained no information about the domain of study itself.

aym62SAE49CZ684 2y ago

>> read the watch > It's not testing the perception of time It's literally testing the perception of time?

saghm 2y ago
It's testing the perception of reading numbers representing time while falling at a high speed and then bouncing a bit suspended off of a cliff or bridge or something. It's not obvious to me how you could conclude that the inability to read the numbers could be due to reading being hard when plummeting several hundred feet rather than due to any perception of time; if the experiment was trying to test whether the slowed perception of time could cause you to read times at finer granularity, how can you conclude whether it would be possible with slowed perception while stationary?
- aym62SAE49CZ684 2y ago
  All objective observations of time involve reading numbers. You can't test subjective perception. Ok ok, so the experiment actually just tested whether an individual frame of a high frame rate display could be read while while falling. Since it could not, we do not have objective evidence for the subjective "time slowing down" experience. We just know that there was no difference from the control, i.e. subjects were unable to read display at high frame rate under normal conditions. That's all you know. Sure, maybe stressful conditions make it harder to read, but then again the watch is stationary with respect to the eye while falling.
  - saghm 2y ago
    > All objective observations of time involve reading numbers. You can't test subjective perception. Not all experiments testing the perception of time require the person undergoing the experiment to read the time themselves, though. > Sure, maybe stressful conditions make it harder to read, but then again the watch is stationary with respect to the eye while falling. My point wasn't that the stress could cause it to be harder to read, but that the physical act of falling could cause it. The experiment intended to test if a psychological phenomenon (the slowed perception of time) could be caused by a certain psychological cause (stress), but they tested it in a way where both the cause _and_ the effect could be unrelated to their testing; we don't even know if falling makes it physically harder to read independent of stress, so I don't know how you can conclude anything psychologically about what might be going on. The watch being stationary relative to the eye also doesn't rule out vision impairment regardless of what's being looked at; the strain on the eyes from the air rushing by could be enough to make it hard to see clearly.