LogFAQs > #953842900

Mead posted...

You arent really registering the time in your mind the first time you look at the clock. Just vaguely noticing it. Then when youre glancing at it later youre startled to see that its the same time as before when really you just had an ambiguous eh its about 12:35 in your head without realizing it.

Being startled about it cements in your mind that it really was 12:35 the first time you looked at it, but that isnt what you actually saw.

Pretty much. We naturally round time to nice, even breakpoints, often in the direction that we like best instead of what's actually closest (i.e. saying it's 10 minutes to lunch when it's actually 14, or that you have 15 minutes before you have to leave when it's actually 11). This typically happens without any sort of conscious input, and is usually more a matter of getting a vague sense of time than anything really concrete. Toss in potential discrepancies between different timepieces, and you've got a recipe for misremembering the initial time.

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