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Let’s say human lifespan could be extended indefinitely and we could live for billions of years. We also figured out Neurocybernetics and more efficient data storage to augment our memory storage capacity to deal with all those memories. That just leaves the question of time perception.

Time is not controlled by one spot in the brain and it is relative to the user (usually based on age). That being said; how will the brain “adjust” to this naturally? It will have to and can due to neural plasticity.

Here’s a good example. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old and we have 5 billion years left before the Sun dies. How much do you think “perceived time that we experience” is equivalent to 1 billion years (geological time) approximately?

Max
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  • Depends on their character traits and circumstances (both unspecified) which are outside our remit here. There doesn't seem to be a worldbuilding problem to solve here. An exploration of feelings and how to present them might work on our [writing.se] stack, but be sure to take their tour, read their help centre first. – Escaped dental patient. Nov 11 '23 at 21:30
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    I can't help but think of Marvin from Douglas Adams' TRATEOTU: "The first ten million years were the worst, then the second ten million years - they were the worst too. The third ten million years I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.". – Escaped dental patient. Nov 11 '23 at 21:33
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    See related, possible duplicate if you were to clarify what you want: effects-of-immortality-on-human-brain-and-consciousness – Escaped dental patient. Nov 11 '23 at 22:14
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    @Escapeddentalpatient While the title question is dependent on the character's personality (i.e. off-topic), chronoception is an actual field of study in psychology with reliable answers to any individual. This means the body question may be viable. I'm not sure we can reasonably extrapolate these studies to an immortal being with vastly increased memory, however ^^". – Tortliena - inactive Nov 11 '23 at 22:57
  • Does this answer your question? Effects of immortality on human brain and consciousness – Joachim Nov 11 '23 at 23:26
  • I agree with Monty's close reason. This is what we call an off-topic high concept question. They're notorious for being a "small thing" that leads to writing a library-sized answer. They're off-topic for being opinion-baed, open-ended, hypothetical, leading to all answers having equal value, and being too broad... all prohibited in the [help/dont-ask]. To make matters worse for your question, without substantially changing the nature of society, you'd have a very high rate of suicide. (*Continued*) – JBH Nov 12 '23 at 01:36
  • ... who wants to be in financial debt (economic slavery) forever? Who wants to live with the same power struggle/idiots in political power forever? Who wants to deal with the class struggle, the arguments over abortion, religious zealots, crazy people with guns, and the constant need to replace your car forever? How people would perceive time is the least of your problems. – JBH Nov 12 '23 at 01:38
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    To help try and visualize just how insanely long a (couple) billion years is compared to say... the entire existence of our species, the good folks over at Kurzgesagt put together a video on the entire history of earth where each second is one and a half million years. – Samwise Nov 13 '23 at 10:54

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Slow, then quick

I remember as a child that an hour seemed to drag on like the slowest thing in the known universe.

Then I became an Adult, and an Hour was a pretty reasonable unit of time.

Now that I have children of my own, I sit down for a moment to do something and an Hour has already passed by.

There was a study, I believe, on this - that different age groups were asked to judge how long it was until a Minute had passed - 20 somethings were consistently the closest, with children underestimating (30-40 seconds IIRC) and older people were overestimating (about 1:15 seconds or so).

My personal theory on this is that our perception of time is relative to how long we've been alive.

When you've been alive for 5 years, your entire reference frame is 5 years, going from 5 to 10 is double everything you've ever known.

When you get to 40, double is getting to 80, whereas going from 40 to 45 is a big non-event. Hell, I swear it was Christmas 2022 not too long ago...

And so, I think that the perception of time would be some form of base 2 function (e.g. doubling or halving)

That's my theory anyway.

TheDemonLord
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  • Something along these lines is what I was thinking of. When you're young, every experience is new. Your brain is cataloging everything in detail and time takes forever to go by. Now I'm in my 50s. Almost nothing surprises me any more. My ability to predict consequences based on previous experience is good. A good chunk of my life is lived "on automatic" (like driving... that worries me periodically). But a lot of my life is also the same thing over-and-over (wake, shower, work, family, sleep...) and the consequence is that whole years go by and feel like a couple of weeks. – JBH Nov 12 '23 at 01:32
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999,999,930 years of hip pain. And boredom.

Which makes me think that a billion-year sentient being is going to need to be rejuvenated. Repeatedly. Whether that rejuvenation occurs in a biological body, a cybernetic body, or something completely different remains to be seen. In any case, I presume that the "self" of the being is the only continuous element.

Interim thought: Maybe look back a few decades at Asimov's R. Daneel Olivaw for inspiration. And maybe read Scalzi's Slow Time Between the Stars for a current angle.

So, if a sentient being is rejuvenated every 100 or 1000 or 10000 years, what does that mean? Will they remember specific details from prior revisions? Or will old memories fade into some sort of genetic memory? And what is the significance of genetics anyway? And now to worldbuilding ...

What does this mean for the species? Can there be mixing and matching among entities with each rejuvenation? That would have a fascinating effect on the evolution of a society.

Specific entities who can live almost forever might place a premium on the speed of communication instead of the speed of transport. How would that shape exploration and colonization?

Pops
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