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cameliarose's review against another edition
4.0
Your Brain is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time is an eye-opening book. It is a combination of neuroscience and physics on the topic of time, completed with charts and diagrams. Some parts may appear very academic, but the writing is clear and precise without too many jargons.
Your brain is a time machine because, as the author explains, it does the following: 1. remembers the past in order to predict the future; 2. tells time; 3. creates the sense of time; 4. allows us to mentally travel back and forth in time.
The brain has several inner clocks, each works on different time scale and solves a different problem that requires time. The brain's circadian clock tells time like an hourglass instead of a pendulum clock. Time compression and dilation - why you feel things moving in slow motion when you are hit by a car, why time passes faster when you are engaged in an absorbing task and slower when you are bored, and why drugs (such as marijuana) can distort your sense of time. It is not surprising how inaccurate and unreliable our judgments of elapsed time are. How the brain works as a time machine is closely related to how memory works. Patients with damaged hippocampus who can not form new long term memory may also fail to imagine a future event.
Two views of the nature of time: presentism and eternalism. Neuroscience is presentism by default. The second half of the book explores why modern physicists generally favor eternalism. The author has an excellent explanation of why "now" is a perspective to time like "here" is to space, easy to understand to a layman like me.
"Among the many things the brain certainly did not evolve to understand was the brain itself. Another is the nature of time."
The second last chapter discusses deeper questions of the brain and time. Our brain evolved to tell time, to run future scenarios in our brain. This ability sets homo sapiens apart from fellow animals. The idea of after-life was probably invented to deal with our own eventual death. However, the evolution baggage also makes us naturally favor short-term gratification over long-term gains. This temporal myopia is hard to overcome. No surprise why people find it so hard to accept responsibility for climate change, not to mention making an effort to stop it.
"Mental time travel is both a gift and a curse." It turns out "live in the present" is hard, and, on the other hand, is to live in the present the same thing as to abandon the ability to vision the future?
The last chapter, Consciousness: Blinding the Past and the Future, discusses the nature of consciousness, free will and life itself.
Your brain is a time machine because, as the author explains, it does the following: 1. remembers the past in order to predict the future; 2. tells time; 3. creates the sense of time; 4. allows us to mentally travel back and forth in time.
The brain has several inner clocks, each works on different time scale and solves a different problem that requires time. The brain's circadian clock tells time like an hourglass instead of a pendulum clock. Time compression and dilation - why you feel things moving in slow motion when you are hit by a car, why time passes faster when you are engaged in an absorbing task and slower when you are bored, and why drugs (such as marijuana) can distort your sense of time. It is not surprising how inaccurate and unreliable our judgments of elapsed time are. How the brain works as a time machine is closely related to how memory works. Patients with damaged hippocampus who can not form new long term memory may also fail to imagine a future event.
Two views of the nature of time: presentism and eternalism. Neuroscience is presentism by default. The second half of the book explores why modern physicists generally favor eternalism. The author has an excellent explanation of why "now" is a perspective to time like "here" is to space, easy to understand to a layman like me.
"Among the many things the brain certainly did not evolve to understand was the brain itself. Another is the nature of time."
The second last chapter discusses deeper questions of the brain and time. Our brain evolved to tell time, to run future scenarios in our brain. This ability sets homo sapiens apart from fellow animals. The idea of after-life was probably invented to deal with our own eventual death. However, the evolution baggage also makes us naturally favor short-term gratification over long-term gains. This temporal myopia is hard to overcome. No surprise why people find it so hard to accept responsibility for climate change, not to mention making an effort to stop it.
"Mental time travel is both a gift and a curse." It turns out "live in the present" is hard, and, on the other hand, is to live in the present the same thing as to abandon the ability to vision the future?
The last chapter, Consciousness: Blinding the Past and the Future, discusses the nature of consciousness, free will and life itself.
runawaykid's review against another edition
4.0
There are three kinds of time: subjective-time (how we experience time), clock-time (how we measure time) and natural time (time as a component of reality). The author helpfully distinguishes these three in his exposition of time, starting first with an account of subjective time before moving on to time as a part of our physical world. I thought the exposition on the special theory of relativity was
particularly good - can't say I understand it fully yet, but I've glimpsed a little more from this book!
particularly good - can't say I understand it fully yet, but I've glimpsed a little more from this book!
jameswatts's review against another edition
challenging
informative
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
catherine_t's review against another edition
4.0
How do we tell time? What is time, anyway? Are the past and the future as real as the present? Can we travel in time? These are just a few of the questions posed by Dean Buonomano in this book.
Buonomano starts off with a look at how the brain tells time, how neurons fire in order to "time" events, and how the circadian rhythms appear to work. Next, he examines the physics of time, and whether or not time really does "flow", as we feel it does. As with most things, time falls apart at the quantum level. Lastly, he discusses some of the concepts put forward earlier in the book, such as are we living in a 4D block universe in which all time is equally real (past, present, and future) or are we living in a world in which only the present is real?
Your Brain Is a Time Machine is one of the most fascinating books I've read. I never really thought much about the subject of time (except when rushing to the airport!), simply taking it for granted as you do in daily life. Now I find myself wondering if everything I've ever done or will do is predetermined (if the eternalist view is correct), or if my decisions open multiple futures.
If you've ever wondered about the nature of time and the brain, this is the book for you.
Buonomano starts off with a look at how the brain tells time, how neurons fire in order to "time" events, and how the circadian rhythms appear to work. Next, he examines the physics of time, and whether or not time really does "flow", as we feel it does. As with most things, time falls apart at the quantum level. Lastly, he discusses some of the concepts put forward earlier in the book, such as are we living in a 4D block universe in which all time is equally real (past, present, and future) or are we living in a world in which only the present is real?
Your Brain Is a Time Machine is one of the most fascinating books I've read. I never really thought much about the subject of time (except when rushing to the airport!), simply taking it for granted as you do in daily life. Now I find myself wondering if everything I've ever done or will do is predetermined (if the eternalist view is correct), or if my decisions open multiple futures.
If you've ever wondered about the nature of time and the brain, this is the book for you.
brandonapplegate's review against another edition
2.0
I'm sure this is a fine book about time and neuroscience. I, unfortunately, couldn't understand most of it. That isn't really a failing in itself. I'm not that smart. But this does purport to be a popular book, so I think some level of layman explanation is in order (he says suprachiasmatic nucleas so many times I started singing Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in my head). It never seemed to find its focus when it comes to subject matter. Also, it spends an awful lot of time talking about how different kinds of clocks work. I don't think this book did what it set out to do. Maybe I'm wrong. But it wasn't fun.
anesh's review against another edition
4.0
Am I any wiser now in my quest to learn about why humans perceive time the way that we do? Yes and no. This book contains some interesting facts, but mostly it contains many theories that have not been proven to be exact. The brain still eludes us in discovering its machinations so weather time is a construct that we created to help us understand aspects of life, or it's something that we feel innately yet never quite accurately due to our multiple biological clocks and our subjective view on life...well, that's a mystery we'll just have to live with for now. Although...I'm pretty sure we're better off not knowing, lest we discover how truly powerful we are.
One thing is for sure about this book, it does try to paint you a picture of how your brains works and why it does it like that, although the why part is deficient because they've just recently delved in that, and one might stand to grasp this knowledge and use it for their own good.
One thing is for sure about this book, it does try to paint you a picture of how your brains works and why it does it like that, although the why part is deficient because they've just recently delved in that, and one might stand to grasp this knowledge and use it for their own good.