Dec. 29th 2011
The Big Bang Theory
I recently watched an episode from the Big Bang Theory. For those that don’t know, it is an American sitcom, it’s a comedy show. The specific episode I watched was when Leonard, one of the main character in the show bid and won a Time Machine on ebay. He and his other super nerdy physicist friends took turns playing with the Time Machine. However, Leonard regrets buying the machine and wishes he could go back in time to not buy the machine, in which his roommate Sheldon tells him that in doing so would create a paradox because if he really could go back in time to prevent himself from buying the time machine then he wouldn’t have been able to time travel in the first place. What Sheldon described is actually known as a Temporal Paradox.
[My Serendipity]
It got me thinking about how time has the ability to subconsciously control how we view the world and thus our decision making.
How Time Perspective Influence Our Behavior and Decision Making
Although, I have come across a temporal paradox story before, I decided to Google up “the time paradox” and up comes Philip Zimbardo’s The Paradox of Time lecture video (Sources at the bottom). It is quite an interesting lecture to listen to since it provides insight on how humans view time and thus their decision making. It describes how there are 2 types of “Time”, the objective kind such as hrs, minutes, etc and the subjective also known as psychological time which is in terms how one views time. Subjective time is broken up into 3 perspective: past-oriented, present-oriented, and future-oriented. Each of these categories are broken into 2 types.
Fundamentally, we all must make decisions throughout our life, our day, etc and that we make these decisions based on past experiences, present moment, and future consequences (+ and -). Zimbardo broke it up into 6 different time perspective zone
Past
Positive- Thoughts and memories of the good times
Negative- Thoughts and memories of the bad times
Present
Hedonistic- High risk takers, living for the immediate pleasures
Fatalist- One’s destiny is predetermined and there’s nothing I can do to change it so I’ll just accept whatever I get.
Future
Life goals - Goal planning, achievements in the future.
Transcendental- Living with the vision of an after-life
The video has a better and more detailed explanation.
Living in Multiple “Time Zones”
It seems that each one of us are actually living in several “time zones”. No one is living in the absolute or extreme side of any spectrum, we don’t live in only a single time perspective, but rather multiple time perspectives. Sadly, most of us live predominantly in one time perspective which prevents us from making the most and the best of what we have. Therefore, the challenge is learning how to balance living in those time zones in order to optimize our life experience by shifting views to meet our personal affairs. Zimbardo suggests the mixture that will optimize our life is
High- in Positive Past Times
Moderately high- Future goals
Moderately high- Present Hedonistic
Low- Negative Past times
Low- Present Fatalism
This video pretty much answers a lot of my questions. Like why some people do the “stupidest” thing.
Sources
http://fora.tv/2008/11/12/Philip_Zimbardo_The_Time_Paradox#fullprogram
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200911/life-in-balance-timely-makeover
“Yesterday is but a dream, tomorrow but a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope.”
-The Social Nerd
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