3 ms·

I can't say if this is why it's 9 minutes, instead of 10, but when the alarm goes off, and I hit the snooze, my brain is anything but fully conscious. So, I see

I can't say if this is why it's 9 minutes, instead of 10, but when the alarm goes off, and I hit the snooze, my brain is anything but fully conscious. So, I see the time "06:00" then "06:09" rather than "06:10", and I know the time has changed- because of the 9. At the next interval, it's "06:18" rather than "06:20". Again, an obvious time differential for my brain. Instead of just 1 number changing every ten minutes, 2 numbers are changing. 06:00 06:09 06:18 06:27 06:36 06:45 06:54 07:03 ... etc. Versus: 06:00 06:10 06:20 06:30 06:40 06:50 07:00 Not enough numbers are changing for my brain to latch on in its semi-conscious awake state, if the time is only changing by 10 minutes. Changing by 9, and it's clear the time has changed, and it's a new time. Thus, I'm not thinking only 10 minutes have passed, when the truth is that 40 minutes has actually passed.

tempestn 13y ago
Huh, never thought of that. That probably is kinda handy.
contingencies 13y ago
This seems closer to engineer-thought reality, IMHO. Also, some people like to snooze multiple times... a low number of times, to be precise. They do this as a regular thing. If I were such a person and I were to snooze thrice, I would know I am really in need of getting up if 30 minutes has elapsed. There is an up to one minute procedural loss on sorta-wake-up, activate-limb, smash snooze button, go back to bed. So I know I'm definitely not sleeping over my 30 minutes of triple-snooze allowance if I have a 9 minute timer. (Yes, the timer could be set from the trigger time rather than the re-snooze time, but at least some ancient embedded devices probably did not function in this way) To further compound this line of thinking, we should remember that getting out of bed is not the only use for timers. Another would be kitchen timers where people might really, really, really want to get the pie out before it burns and some default allowance for human fuzzy foibles is therefore a useful feature. Perhaps we should replace the title of this post with: Engineers: "Nine; it made sense at the time".
cstrat 13y ago
This makes the most sense to me!

tempestn 13y ago

Huh, never thought of that. That probably is kinda handy.

contingencies 13y ago

This seems closer to engineer-thought reality, IMHO. Also, some people like to snooze multiple times... a low number of times, to be precise. They do this as a regular thing. If I were such a person and I were to snooze thrice, I would know I am really in need of getting up if 30 minutes has elapsed. There is an up to one minute procedural loss on sorta-wake-up, activate-limb, smash snooze button, go back to bed. So I know I'm definitely not sleeping over my 30 minutes of triple-snooze allowance if I have a 9 minute timer. (Yes, the timer could be set from the trigger time rather than the re-snooze time, but at least some ancient embedded devices probably did not function in this way) To further compound this line of thinking, we should remember that getting out of bed is not the only use for timers. Another would be kitchen timers where people might really, really, really want to get the pie out before it burns and some default allowance for human fuzzy foibles is therefore a useful feature. Perhaps we should replace the title of this post with: Engineers: "Nine; it made sense at the time".

cstrat 13y ago

This makes the most sense to me!