13 replies to this topic

[Tron]

I thought it would be interesting to spread a thought which resurfaces in me on a regular basis. That there is a horrificly small number of seconds in an average lifetime.

1 hr = 60min * 60sec = 3600 sec
1 day = 3600sec * 24hr = 86,400 sec
1 year = 86400sec * 365days = 31,536,000 sec
70 years = 31536000sec * 70years = 2,207,520,000 sec

So, to reflect, there is only 2 Billion seconds in 70 years !!!! Perhaps, I've gotten used to seeing numbers of this magnitude. However this means that I cannot hope to count to 1 billion, let alone actually read and comprehend 1 billion written words. My intuition tells me this is small and gives me a bit a fright and a reality check that I will not have the time to do everything I want to or rather even very much. Remember, you are probably using a good number of seconds even reading this and reflecting!! 1.... 2.... 3.... 4....

Now, you should be thinking by now, that you have even less that 2 billion seconds.
----Half of your life you need to get refreshing sleep. So really, you only have 1 billion seconds of awake time.
----If you are in your late 20s, you probably only have 30-40 good years left if that. So 500 million seconds !!!
----Half of the time you are distracted by normal life of work, money, family/friends, or entertainment... 250 million sec
----Considering how long it takes to have original thought or understand something, say 1 concept every 20 minutes(1200 sec)... 250,000 concepts in your lifetime!!!

This assumes that you are on this schedule until you are 70 years old, and every 20 minutes of freetime produces a concept.
This blows my mind every time. 250 thousand concepts is not very many. Hopefully, before my 100 thousandth concept, Ageing is widely accepted as a disease, and not a natural part of life.

This is a wakeup call, to become industrious and useful towards solving ageing, or things that can directly help.

[Tron]

Actually, a concept that I had come up with along these lines is the creation of a large circular clock, where it is geared down so that one rotation was perhaps 70 years. This would probably be best as a clock layed down on a surface like a table. That way you can walk up to the moving arm, and actually see it move!!! If this wasn't alarming, I dont know what would be. It could actually reveal the scarcity of time in ones life.
However, it would have to be big to sense movement every second or minute.
Perhaps an architect could design something like this into a public building...

[brokenportal]

That is alarming to think of it in that way. We couldnt count to 3 billion if we tried. There are a limited, set number of thoughts we can have about the profoundness of life and what we should do about it and where we should go from here. I imagine something like being trapped on an island. There is only so much time you can spend building a raft and planning a way out. With other time you have to sleep, gather food, make fire, rest your thoughts, try to maintain your sanity, make tools, tend to bites, injury, sun burn and what not. Can you look into clock making? See if it can be done, how much it might cost, etc?

Its the same general idea as this calendar concept. Though simple, I think these sorts of things are important to get done. It seems we might be able to generate more awareness, and lift away more of that heavy burdensome killer indifference with this sort of thing.

[niner]

If you want to get people agitated, just do a digital counter. There would only be ten digits, and people could see the number shrinking before their eyes. Add a tenths column for more frenetic activity. It would be kind of like the national debt counter that people are always showing. You could make it interactive, and have people enter their birthday in order to personalize it. It could be based on their remaining statistical lifetime.

[brokenportal]

I like many of the potential ways this could be done. Digital reminds me of this video, I dont know if it will embed, but if it plays then around a quarter of the way into it you can see them above the peoples heads, and I think its a powerful representation.

Edited by brokenportal, 23 July 2011 - 07:33 PM.

[userix]

I like many of the potential ways this could be done. Digital reminds me of this video, I dont know if it will embed, but if it plays then around a quarter of the way into it you can see them above the peoples heads, and I think its a powerful representation.

<iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.c...ed/_JQiEs32SqQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Video works fine ...

[brokenportal]

<iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.c...ed/_JQiEs32SqQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

If you have to enter uncomfortable situations to tell people about indefinite life extension, if you have to take time out of your day, if you have to forgo other activities, if you have to face unknown personalities, some of them prickly or callous, if you have to put effort into it, is it worth it? Is it worth saying it to them? Is it worth saving them? Is life worth the trouble?

"And say it for me, say it to me
And I'll leave this life behind me
Say it if it's worth saving me
Hurry I'm fallin'"

[Droplet]

There's also this wonderful video in a similar vein:

[brokenportal]

There's also this wonderful video in a similar vein:

Droplet could you gather some clock parts and put together a digital display for a hat like that people can wear?

[Droplet]

There's also this wonderful video in a similar vein:

Droplet could you gather some clock parts and put together a digital display for a hat like that people can wear?

Sadly not, as I know nothing about assembling clocks nor electronics. I could make something but it would be useless, as I would not have the know-how to make it function in a useful manner. For example, I could nick the egg timer from the kitchen and make it into something that straps to someone's head and even make it look pretty but it only goes up to sixty minutes. :p

Edited by Droplet, 16 February 2012 - 06:55 AM.

[hivemind]

A guy who lived 120 years could only shake hands with half the amount of people currently living, if he started immediately after birth and shook hands at the rate of one person per second.

[Droplet]

A guy who lived 120 years could only shake hands with half the amount of people currently living, if he started immediately after birth and shook hands at the rate of one person per second.

Saddest thing is that many of us currently will never live long enough to accomplish half of what we could if we actually had time on our side. With time comes experience and wisdom but sadly also degeneration. It's a cruel fact of life that we can become so much only to degrade to frailty and nothing. Sadder still is that some people never live long enough to become anything.

[brokenportal]

A guy who lived 120 years could only shake hands with half the amount of people currently living, if he started immediately after birth and shook hands at the rate of one person per second.

Saddest thing is that many of us currently will never live long enough to accomplish half of what we could if we actually had time on our side. With time comes experience and wisdom but sadly also degeneration. It's a cruel fact of life that we can become so much only to degrade to frailty and nothing. Sadder still is that some people never live long enough to become anything.

Thats right. One of the main challenges it seems to me that we face is in helping more people to understand just how fleeting their life is. We are just like, a string being plucked in the song about a millennium. We are here today, but gone tomorrow. There will be countless blue moons in this solar system, but there are only around 15 left in your traditional lifespan.

One of the things that drives this home for me most often is when I think or read about past families. For example, if I read something like, "My mother passed away 10 years ago," and it is being written in 1845, then I find myself in that persons shoes. Then I sense it from my own point in time, and at that point I can really feel the fleetingness of time. I can feel the full impact of the notion that not only is her mom gone, but she is 150 years in the dirt herself now, and then I think about how that is just one layer in that notion. To write it out doesn't capture the expansive reality that it puts me in the frame of reference of.

Im sure some, if not many of the general worlds population get that perspective too, but the key is to put some focus on it, and not forget it.

[PWAIN]

Interesting to look at the numbers in different context:

100 seconds - 1.66 Minutes
1 000 seconds - 16.66 Minutes
10 000 seconds - 2.77 Minutes
100 000 seconds - 27.77 Hours
1 000 000 seconds - 11.57 Days
10 000 000 seconds - 115.74 Days
100 000 000 seconds - 3.17 Years
1 000 000 000 seconds - 31.69 Years (11 574 Days)

Oldest lived person: 122 years 164 days OR 44 724.5 Days OR 1 073 388 Hours OR 64 403 280 Minutes OR 3 864 196 800 Seconds