Canadian science influencer Gregory Brown has explained the two different ways that people see time in a new viral video. TikTok / AsapScience
Canadian science influencer Gregory Brown has explained the two different ways that people see time in a new viral video. TikTok / AsapScience
Canadian science influencer Gregory Brown has explained the two different ways that people see time in a new viral video. TikTok / AsapScience
Canadian science influencer Gregory Brown has explained the two different ways that people see time in a new viral video. TikTok / AsapScience

How do you perceive time? Viral TikTok video explains the different ways people interpret the clock


Farah Andrews
  • English
  • Arabic

It's possible that you interpret time differently from your friends and family.

A new video by AsapScience – a YouTube and TikTok channel created by Canadian science content creators, Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown – explains the different ways people see time, and it is dividing the internet.

"You may not know this, but there are only two ways in which we humans perceive time, and I am [going to] ask you a question so you can find out which one you are," says Brown in the 48-second video, which had more than three million views at the time of writing.

Science content creator, Gregory Brown. TikTok / AsapScience
Science content creator, Gregory Brown. TikTok / AsapScience

"If I tell you that Wednesday's noon meeting has been moved forward by two hours, do you now think the meeting is at 2pm or at 10am?"

Brown then explains the two interpretations of time.

"If you think the meeting's at 2pm, that means you have an ego-moving perspective of time. You see yourself as moving forward through time," he explains.

"If you now think the meeting is at 10am, this means you have the time-moving perspective of time. You see yourself as stagnant, [with] time moving forward towards you."

He concludes the video by acknowledging that it's going to unite and divide viewers.

"Now, you might think that this is insane, that someone even sees the world, or time, differently than you, but it's true," he says. "So, ask your friends, ask your family this question and bond with them ... or find out that they actually see the world completely differently."

Watch AsapScience's video in full here:

The video has been posted to Twitter and, naturally, it has divided users.

"No. The word 'forward' in no way implies an EARLIER time than 10. The ONLY answer is 2:00pm. Stop," writes @Mikamouth, a Twitter user with an ego-moving perspective of time.

Judging by the comments, there seems to be a fairly equal divide between ego-moving and time-moving perspectives in the world.

One Dubai Twitter user, who has a time-moving perspective, tried to break it down.

"People say 'bring forward 2 hours' and 'push back 2 hours'. If you bring something forward, it's at the front... earlier. If you push something back, like a deadline... it's later. There is no way it can't be 10am," wrote Kiera Doherty (@kikipigeon).

She added: "Also... can someone clever fact check these terms?!"

We have.

Ego-moving and time-moving perspectives are psycholinguistic terms that come under perceptions of fictive motion, which is "the metaphorical motion of an object or abstraction through space".

Dedre Gentner, American cognitive and developmental psychologist, explains in The Analogical Mind: Perspectives from Cognitive Science: "[With] the ego-moving metaphor, the observer's context progresses along the timeline towards the future, and [with] the time-moving metaphor ... time is conceived of as a river or conveyor belt on which events are moving from the future to the past."

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Fixtures and results:

Wed, Aug 29:

  • Malaysia bt Hong Kong by 3 wickets
  • Oman bt Nepal by 7 wickets
  • UAE bt Singapore by 215 runs

Thu, Aug 30: UAE v Nepal; Hong Kong v Singapore; Malaysia v Oman

Sat, Sep 1: UAE v Hong Kong; Oman v Singapore; Malaysia v Nepal

Sun, Sep 2: Hong Kong v Oman; Malaysia v UAE; Nepal v Singapore

Tue, Sep 4: Malaysia v Singapore; UAE v Oman; Nepal v Hong Kong

Thu, Sep 6: Final

TO A LAND UNKNOWN

Director: Mahdi Fleifel

Starring: Mahmoud Bakri, Aram Sabbah, Mohammad Alsurafa

Rating: 4.5/5

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Three tips from La Perle's performers

1 The kind of water athletes drink is important. Gwilym Hooson, a 28-year-old British performer who is currently recovering from knee surgery, found that out when the company was still in Studio City, training for 12 hours a day. “The physio team was like: ‘Why is everyone getting cramps?’ And then they realised we had to add salt and sugar to the water,” he says.

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3 Take chances, says Young, who has worked all over the world, including most recently at Dragone’s show in China. “Every time we go out of our comfort zone, we learn a lot about ourselves,” she says.

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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Scotland v Ireland:

Scotland (15-1): Stuart Hogg; Tommy Seymour, Huw Jones, Sam Johnson, Sean Maitland; Finn Russell, Greig Laidlaw (capt); Josh Strauss, James Ritchie, Ryan Wilson; Jonny Gray, Grant Gilchrist; Simon Berghan, Stuart McInally, Allan Dell

Replacements: Fraser Brown, Jamie Bhatti, D'arcy Rae, Ben Toolis, Rob Harley, Ali Price, Pete Horne, Blair Kinghorn

Coach: Gregor Townsend (SCO)

Ireland (15-1): Rob Kearney; Keith Earls, Chris Farrell, Bundee Aki, Jacob Stockdale; Jonathan Sexton, Conor Murray; Jack Conan, Sean O'Brien, Peter O'Mahony; James Ryan, Quinn Roux; Tadhg Furlong, Rory Best (capt), Cian Healy

Replacements: Sean Cronin, Dave Kilcoyne, Andrew Porter, Ultan Dillane, Josh van der Flier, John Cooney, Joey Carbery, Jordan Larmour

Coach: Joe Schmidt (NZL)

Zakat definitions

Zakat: an Arabic word meaning ‘to cleanse’ or ‘purification’.

Nisab: the minimum amount that a Muslim must have before being obliged to pay zakat. Traditionally, the nisab threshold was 87.48 grams of gold, or 612.36 grams of silver. The monetary value of the nisab therefore varies by current prices and currencies.

Zakat Al Mal: the ‘cleansing’ of wealth, as one of the five pillars of Islam; a spiritual duty for all Muslims meeting the ‘nisab’ wealth criteria in a lunar year, to pay 2.5 per cent of their wealth in alms to the deserving and needy.

Zakat Al Fitr: a donation to charity given during Ramadan, before Eid Al Fitr, in the form of food. Every adult Muslim who possesses food in excess of the needs of themselves and their family must pay two qadahs (an old measure just over 2 kilograms) of flour, wheat, barley or rice from each person in a household, as a minimum.

THE BIO

Born: Mukalla, Yemen, 1979

Education: UAE University, Al Ain

Family: Married with two daughters: Asayel, 7, and Sara, 6

Favourite piece of music: Horse Dance by Naseer Shamma

Favourite book: Science and geology

Favourite place to travel to: Washington DC

Best advice you’ve ever been given: If you have a dream, you have to believe it, then you will see it.