The Thought Experiment That Changes the Way You Experience Time
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In this video, we explore the somewhat terrifying and potentially illusory nature of time. Evidence suggests that ancient humans lived, in a sense, outside of time. In fact, some human cultures today live without any conceptions of past or future. And you have actually experienced this as well—waking life outside time—as a child. For the first several years of life, you don’t know anything other than the present. Time doesn’t exist. Though this all might seem kind of odd, perhaps it gets at something true. Though modern physics uses time to measure and coordinate aspects of reality, when trying to understand the universe fundamentally, time as we know it seemingly disappears.
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@PursuitofWonder
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
Regardless of whether time is real, thanks for spending some of the illusion together here. If you're interested in learning more about all things humanity and civilization, consider checking out "The Book" here: https://mdsh.io/pursuitofwonder and use code WONDER for 10% off. Thank you to Hungry Minds for sponsoring this video.
@333bounce
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
Time is strange, but to find it odd or meaningful that young children might not understand exactly what a minute or an hour or a year is… well, not that meaningful. Until you experience and register the experience of a minute or an hour or a day, its has no meaning. I mean you might as well say it's a gobbledygook to an adult. You have to wait a gobbledygook before dinner. You won't know what a gobbledygook is until you experience it. I don't think kids not knowing this until they are 5 or more means anything particularly mysterious about time itself.
@monermanushwithanjan
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
Nice 👍
@mitseraffej5812
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
Try understanding an attosecond. The recipients of the 2023 Nobel Physics Prize were awarded the honour for being able to produce a light pulse of this duration.
There are more attoseconds in a second than there are seconds since the beginning of the universe, and likely time itself. Good luck with that understanding.
@owlofathena1247
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
8:51 this is why in my language, 'time' and 'weather' are the same word. Our ancestors believed that time was cyclical, rather than linear.
@FirelitHistory-m9w
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
"If no one asks me, I know. If I wish to explain it, I know not." Augustine summed up time 1,600 years ago, and we still haven't found a better answer.
@BernardPutersznit-v6o
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
I am terrified that you are not terrified of us who hate this terrifying hyperbolic usage of the word terrify. A terrible shame 🤔🤣😇🤡
@JayJenny-c2l
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
The more I think about time, the stranger it gets. We just accept that time moves from past to present to future, but what if reality is a lot more complicated than the way we experience it? Stuff like this genuinely messes with your head lol. I’ve been reading "Assumption of Kain" lately, and it’s made me question how many things I take for granted just because they’ve always seemed obvious to me. It’s crazy how easily we confuse the way we perceive something with the way it actually is. Videos like this really make you wonder what else we might be completely wrong about.
@LeftyWilliams85
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
We constructed it most definitely…To make “better”workers.
@asher_chs
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
sun up = light, sun down = dark, once you notice that, you understand time
@tomslaski8597
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
Time doesn’t exist… it was invented by humans… you know who I mean… if you take time out of relativity then it aligns with quantum mechanics…
@stevenfaw8535
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
What time is a rope. The past is concrete. It existed things happened as they did. We may not know it. We may not be able to learn anything about it, but it is history it is the rope itself.. the future is all the infinite threads the yarn the chords whatever you wanna call them all the possibilities they have yet to occur spreading out forever, and we don’t know which thread we are going to weave into the rope. The present is the moment where we grasp onto to each thread and weave it into the rope from the evident possibility. It is the moment at which the infinite possibility becomes the concrete past time is a rope
@Thornofearth
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
I'm in a free fall through time. Is there a floor or a wall that I should be worried about?
@dpsss100
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
What a load of drivel. Why was this recommended to me
@anu0271
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
❤
@OrangeGeemer
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
Philosophers… what a waste of human potential
@premium2681
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
Like the great philosopher T. R. Schnuetzelfrützen once wrote: "Die Zeit kann mich am Arsch lecken". Loosely translated to: "Time can eat my ass!"
@Kloops
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
My mechanic office has a book similar as your book except it’s from the 1970s. Lol. Cool.
@rodmehta5356
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
In the future , will all philosophical concepts be terrifying? Or is that just YouTube?
@edwardgobbo9685
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
But what if you're forty-five minutes late?
@yorsyhernandez88
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
Incredible work
@Germinalx
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
SEEM to reveal…THEORY….a FABRIC etc…. Anyone else get the notion that these ideas are for those DYING to believe them?
@fixedG
October 9, 2026 at 1:45 am
Time is ultimately the only thing any of us really have. To disrespect someone's time is to disrespect everything they are. And this is true before we comprehend time. It's truly the cognitive metric of all existence but it's only an objective overlay to our subjective experience that we teach each other.