3 Ideas in 2 Minutes on the Progress of Time
Hofstadter’s Law, Closing Time Effect & the Length of Eternity
I. Hofstadter’s Law
Cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter on how long it will take you to complete a task:
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
—Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid
Looks like we can’t outplan the planning fallacy — especially when we try.
II. The Closing Time Effect
Do people really get prettier the later the night gets, as a German saying goes? Psychologists have been onto this since the late 1970s. Here are the findings of a 2010 paper from Australian researchers Carly Johnco et al.:
87 patrons in an Australian pub rated the attractiveness of opposite sex and same sex participants at three times over the course of a night in a repeated measures design. As the night progressed, Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) as measured with a breathalyzer increased, as did ratings of opposite sex attractiveness. Same sex attractiveness did not change. The increase in opposite sex attractiveness ratings was only partially due to BAC. Because participants with partners showed the same closing time effect as single participants, reactance theory [the feeling that someone’s taking away your choices as the night progresses], the usual explanation for the closing time effect, is not an adequate explanation. Mere exposure and a scarcity effect are better explanations.
—Johnco et al., They Do Get Prettier at Closing Time
It turns out that the Closing Time Effect is real. Even when sober.
III. The Length of Eternity
In his 1921 children’s book, Dutch-American historian Hendrik von Loon beautifully captured the feeling of eternity:
High up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak.
When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity will have gone by.
—Hendrik Willem Van Loon, The Story of Mankind
🐘
Have a great week,
Chris
themindcollection.com
P.S.: Check out my latest post on 7+1 Paradoxical Examples of Mind-Bending Contradictions.