When someone starts talking about time and calendars these days, I think we all feel the same: 2019 was last year, 2020 was also last year, 2021 never happened, and we're still six months away from 2022 which already started. So why not try something simpler to recalibrate? I mean a small human benchmark on the website Just a Minute. As its name suggests, the goal is to mentally calculate the passage of just one minute. How well does the clock in your head work…?
Just a Minute: Can you calculate a minute in this human benchmark?
Time is... strange. We know that we perceive it faster as we age, and there's also the Oddball Effect, which makes it completely elastic with days that never end and entire months that vanish into thin air. But if the official definition of the second hasn't changed... that means the 'problem' is us. Our calculation, our interpretation of time is altered, regardless of the clocks and calendars available.
So why not go back to basics? I propose a small time test, a human benchmark like many others, called Just a Minute. You don't need to aim, guess, or move the mouse like crazy. All you have to do is press the spacebar, mentally calculate the passage of one minute, and press the bar again when you think you're done.
Just a Minute will show the result at the end, along with a chart that compares us with the rest of the participants. In general, most people have calculated a minute in their minds with a relatively acceptable margin of error, +/- 15 percent. Of course, we can always establish some kind of rhythm to count seconds in our heads and achieve greater precision... but that's not the point. Just a Minute is not a game, there's nothing to win. In fact, you'll lose at most a minute.
And to finish, I'll say goodbye with a classic Star Trek: TNG scene. Data is infallible in his time calculation, but when Riker suggests that he turn off the timer and Data loses track of his experiment... for a moment we see ourselves reflected in the android.
Official site: Click here
