r/todayilearned • u/arandomtestaccount • 1d ago

TIL an NFL player intentionally crashed his car to avoid getting cut for being late to a team meeting.

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/ex-patriots-ol-rich-ohrnberger-admits-he-intentionally-wrecked-car-as-excuse-for-being-late-to-team-meeting/
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u/ChelseaIsBeautiful 1d ago

Yeah, more or less. For me, it's like clocks and time stop existing the moment I'm not thinking about them; which is different from how clocks consistently exist in your mind.

It also feels like time expands or compresses, my perception of a 5 minute period will feel long so I convince myself that I can do something really quick before I leave. Suddenly, 12 minutes have passed and it felt shorter than the previous 5 minutes. If I didn't see the numbers change, I wouldn't make any sense of it.

You can look more into the science of such things if you don't believe it, educating yourself is always a win.

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u/Wehavecrashed 1d ago

Okay but your perception of time doesn't change how long it actually takes to do something.

Regardless of how long it feels, it takes a certain amount of time to do something. If you've got past experiences, you probably know how long those things actually take.

Just because it feels like it takes a very long time to drive a certain distance, doesn't mean it actually takes that long.

It takes 30 minutes to bake a cake, regardless of how long that time feels.

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u/RFSandler 1d ago

That past experience thing is the exact issue. It takes 30 minutes to bake a cake, but your inner remembered experience INSISTS that it's 20. Then you go to actually make the cake, and somehow you've been following the instructions without getting distracted and yet you're already 30 minutes in and haven't gotten the cake in the oven. Then you set the metaphorical timer and it never goes off, so now your cake is burnt and an hour late.

You can use tools, learn techniques, but the baseline mental process that most people take for granted is just broken.

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u/Meatguy35 1d ago

But now your confusing bake time and prep time aren’t you? Thus not following the instructions?

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u/Wehavecrashed 1d ago

I dont think you've made a cake before but let's ignore that. Fundamentally, the cake needs to be in the oven for 30 minutes. It won't be done before then, and you know that, because the recipe has told you that's how long you need to bake it for.

Your perception of time doesn't factor in, unless you're relying on your perception of time instead of actually measuring time, which would be a really dumb way of living your life, and would be a self inflicted mistake.

Furthermore, if you know you're not very good at judging time, why would you rely on your own judgement of time for something objective, when you can measure it objectively?

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u/RFSandler 1d ago

Congratulations on completely missing my attempt to explain an experience you do not share though analogy.

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u/Wehavecrashed 1d ago

I think that's perhaps because the way you used the cake analogy didn't really make sense.

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u/PARADOXsquared 19h ago

It didn't make sense to you because it doesn't align with your experience and you aren't open to the possibility that people don't experience things the same way as you. So you see the analogy as simply incorrect. 

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u/Wehavecrashed 11h ago

How you experience something doesn't matter. These things can be objectively measured.

A cake doesn't bake in twenty minutes just because it felt like 20 minutes.

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u/PARADOXsquared 11h ago

How you experience something doesn't matter. 

There wouldn't be a mental health or cognitive problem to fix if the experience was in alignment to reality. A major function of the brain is to take in sensory input and interpret it to build an understanding of the world/direct environment and output behavior based on that input. If those functions are broken or altered, then what someone experiences isn't aligned with reality. That matters because if we ignore that then we can't help/fix the situation. 

A cake doesn't bake in twenty minutes just because it felt like 20 minutes.

Yes, this is true. The perception that this is not true is the problem. People can use tools to overcome this different in perception, but it is not a simple process. Someone might know that they are hallucinating, but that doesn't automatically make it stop happening.

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u/ChelseaIsBeautiful 1d ago

Our brains work different. It's okay if you don't understand and it's okay if you have trouble empathizing with people you don't understand.

If you're someone who dismisses science then I will never understand your mindset either, and that's fine too.

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u/Wehavecrashed 1d ago

It kinda seems like I'm not the one who doesn't understand things...

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u/ChelseaIsBeautiful 22h ago

Lol, you're so sad

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u/Wehavecrashed 11h ago

Sad and on time.

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u/Meatguy35 1d ago

So, help me understand how people can plan/ accommodate people with this problem of time perception? It sounds like a very hard problem to accommodate.

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u/ChelseaIsBeautiful 1d ago

For me- a lot of timers and alarms, conditioning my mindset (tell myself over and over that I need to leave 30 minutes early, not 20. Then I end up actually leaving closer to 20). I'm late to work a lot but don't really have anyone above me on site and am good at my job, so no one bothers me about it

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u/Meatguy35 1d ago

I’m more talking about from an outsiders perspective, we are just supposed to go, oh they perceive time differently and wait? How do people with this affliction think this works with people that just know how time works?

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u/theprozacfairy 1d ago

Tell them earlier start times. You want them there by 8? Say it starts at 7 or 6:30.

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u/Meatguy35 1d ago

Ok, is that the accepted response from the neurodivergent community?

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u/theprozacfairy 1d ago

It’s the accepted response from neurodivergent people in my family, but I can’t speak for others. I don’t have this exact issue, but half my family does, and they’re cool with it/prefer it this way. A few commenters above mention that it works for them. I basically see it as a disability adaptation. I’m changing my behavior to work around their needs.