179: Chapter 179: He brought a scientific report this time...

Jiang Zhe tapped his phone, and the large screen on the television displayed a global survey report on time perception.

[85.3% of adults report feeling that time is passing at an accelerated rate]

[This percentage has been increasing at an average annual rate of 2.1% over the past thirty years]

"Physical time certainly hasn't changed," Jiang Zhe's voice came through the venue's speakers. "The problem lies within our internal clocks."

He pulled up an animated demonstration of a classic experiment where subjects of different age groups closed their eyes and counted to one minute silently, and the animation's bar chart began to pulse.

[20-year-old group: average estimated time 58.7 seconds, standard deviation ± 3.2]

[40-year-old group: average estimated time 49.1 seconds, standard deviation ± 5.8]

[60-year-old group: average estimated time 42.3 seconds, standard deviation ± 7.6]

"Looking at the bar chart, what a 60-year-old perceives as one minute is actually only 42 seconds."

"Their subjective Time Stream is nearly 40% faster than that of young people!"

A collective gasp of cold air suddenly echoed throughout the audience.

Professor Leng pressed, "The traditional explanation is the proportional theory—for a 5-year-old child, one year is one-fifth of their life; for a 50-year-old adult, one year is one-fiftieth of their life, so it feels shorter. Is this theory valid?"

"Well, it is partially valid, but it cannot explain this—"

Jiang Zhe pulled up three side-by-side brain imaging scans.

The first: [Brain activity of a normal adult when feeling time flying by]—the basal ganglia and insular cortex regions show dense red activation points.

The second: [Typical brain activity pattern of early-stage Parkinson's disease patients]—almost identical activation areas and intensity.

The third: [Brain activity of healthy subjects under the influence of low-dose hallucinogens]—almost highly overlapping.

"As you can see, these three states all exhibit the same time-compression algorithm when the brain encodes temporal information."

"And they have one thing in common: they are all related to abnormalities in the dopamine system."

Professor Leng said, "Dopamine? That 'pleasure molecule'?"

"Yes, it is also the core neurotransmitter for motivation and expectation." Jiang Zhe operated his phone again to bring up a curve showing dopamine secretion levels from birth to age 80—peaking during puberty, starting a slow decline after 25, and accelerating its downward slide after 50."

"As shown in the graph, the higher the dopamine level, the higher the brain's perception of time passing!"

"It's like a video camera..." He pulled up a comparison animation; on the left was 120 frames-per-second high-definition slow motion, and on the right was standard 24 frames-per-second video.

"A young brain records every second at a high frame rate, so it feels like time is long."

"As we age, the frame rate drops in old age, and memories are compressed; that's why looking back, time feels like it has flown by."

Professor Leng nodded, "So, time perception is just an inevitable result of physiological aging?"

"If that were the case, things would be simple. In reality, that is not the case!"

Jiang Zhe continued by pulling up another set of data.

The strengthening curve of the sense of accelerated time reported by various age groups over the past 50 years.

Everyone looked at the large screen, where the curves were all rising steeply.

"A 30-year-old young person in 2020 has a subjective Time Stream speed equivalent to a 45-year-old middle-aged person in 1960." He paused for a second to let everyone digest this, "Meaning, a 30-year-old person feels as though they have lived for 45 years."

Once these words were spoken, the thirty-year-olds in the audience nodded repeatedly, acknowledging it from the bottom of their hearts.

"Professor Leng, this is not individual aging; this is a collective drift in the subjective time baseline of all humanity."

"It's as if an invisible hand is tacitly speeding up the internal clocks of all humanity at the same time; no one can escape this [Great Hand]."

The scene fell into sudden silence.

Someone subconsciously looked at their watch, and the hands seemed to be turning faster.

Jiang Zhe pulled up the final graph: a scatter plot showing the correlation between average daily screen time per capita in major global countries and the national average time acceleration perception score...

"When we fill every gap with fragmented information—scrolling through videos, checking notifications, multitasking—the brain, in order to save energy, actively reduces the encoding of time passing."

"Through these findings, we aren't spending time; we are consuming it. And the characteristic of consumer goods is: the faster they are consumed, the emptier one feels."

He paused for another moment and threw out humanity's ultimate question:

"Professor Leng, do you know that the life review—that is, the life review during near-death experiences—has been proven in neuroscience to be a real brain activity?"

Leng Qingsong was speechless, "I... know."

"Then is there a possibility," Jiang Zhe's voice suddenly became unusually serious, "that a life which has been accelerated, compressed, and filled with fragments—what will happen in that final revolving lantern?"

"It will see..." Professor Leng opened his mouth but could not continue.

"Yes." Jiang Zhe revealed the answer directly, "It will certainly turn into a fast-forwarded montage. 100% of near-death patients in a state of revolving lantern have one characteristic: childhood feels the longest, followed by adolescence, then youth, and finally middle and old age—this report on revolving lantern time perception is 100% consistent with the scientific report on brain time perception I gave earlier!"

"This is not my conjecture—"

"A theoretical article in the 'Journal of Consciousness Studies' in 2018 proposed that if a near-death review is essentially a retrospective integration of life information from the end to the beginning..."

"Then it is isomorphic to the delayed-choice experiment in Quantum Mechanics."

"In the delayed-choice experiment, the observer's [current] choice can affect the particle's [past] behavior."

"Similarly, if a person's end is determined from the moment of birth, and every detail from childhood to old age is determined—then at this very moment, you, Professor Leng, lying on a hospital bed in the future—will proceed to conduct a [full-age-range observation] of your past life."

"Theoretically, you, about to die, will indeed affect your subjective experience from ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty years ago, and even fifty years ago in some form—"

"This influence will be regulated through the dopamine system I mentioned earlier."

"For example, when you go somewhere and inexplicably feel someone is watching you, you turn around suddenly, but there is nothing there."

"You occasionally hear a voice that doesn't belong to you, and you turn around suddenly, thinking someone is calling you, only to find nothing behind you; many [personal physiological experiences] that are regarded as hallucinations or auditory illusions have been dismissed as nothingness."

As he finished this, he saw the stunned expressions on the faces of Professor Leng and the three professors beside him.

"Everyone, no need for such expressions, especially you, Professor Leng. This is based on survey reports and scientific findings."

"Professor Leng, our real lives already quietly ended at some point. What we are experiencing now is merely the lingering shadow of memories being played back at an accelerated speed during a near-death review—childhood plays slower, youth plays faster, and middle and old age play even faster..."

"Now, my answer appears: human time is not being accelerated, but rather human life has already reached its end and is being replayed at this very moment, and the playback speed is getting faster and faster. When the playback speed enters the [moment when an elderly person sits at the door of their old home in the village, watching people come and go, and all the bustle has nothing to do with you], at that time, your life and mine will also reach their end, and memories and life will both... come to an end!"

As this series of shocking words fell.

On the TV screen, the male host had his mouth open, wanting to speak but stopping, his face full of horror.

On the judges' panel, all four professors were frozen in their seats, dumbfounded.

In the audience, a girl suddenly covered her mouth, and tears welled up without warning.

And in the seating area of the Huaqing University delegation, the boy in the black suit clenched his fists tightly, his nose inexplicably stinging.

At this moment, the entire studio, with over three hundred people, was silent, their faces blank.

After a long while, the sound of rustling discussions finally arose in the hall.

Many audience members subconsciously hugged their own arms or leaned tightly against the people beside them.

For the first time in their teens, twenties, or thirties, they heard this, and for some reason, while unable to refute it, they also acknowledged it from the bottom of their hearts.

Is this, could it be, the truth?

In the Huaqing University delegation, the students, all top-tier scholars, naturally understood every word Jiang Zhe said.

A physics student said with a horrified expression, "This lucky audience member's brother applied the concept of Quantum Mechanics' delayed choice to the scale of life—holy cow, this is too crazy, this is too crazy, but logically... damn it, that's awesome!"

He didn't continue, because logically it was surprisingly hard to refute, because it was right, it was damn right!

Professor Leng gasped, having one feeling—the one hundred thousand yuan was money well spent!

The philosophy professor beside him murmured in shock, "This is no longer psychology; this is already existential horror!"

At this time, in Xiaoyu's livestream room, the comments also went silent for a moment, then erupted like a tidal wave.

"Although the big brother mentioned it before, this time he brought a paper!"

"Those data citations are just too damn hardcore!"

"Are the people at the scene okay? They're hearing it for the first time, they must be scared, right?"

"..."

At this moment, Manager Wang Shulin, who was at the company's annual meeting, and several other brothers leaned in, ignoring the music, lights, and noise of the hotel hall.

Even listening to Jiang Zhe's livestream again, they still felt their hair stand on end.

On the other side, in the Beijing family compound, in the living room.

Professor Chen Runzhi took a sip of tea, "Even though I've heard it once before, this time, paired with these research reports, I still have goosebumps."

Old Qian beside him nodded repeatedly, "Yes, this time he came with scientific weapons to launch a dimensional strike!"

After a long while, Professor Leng's trembling voice slowly came out, "Too shocking, too unbelievable!"

He took a deep breath, his gaze looking fervently in the direction of the connected screen, "Good, this one hundred thousand yuan was money well spent."

"The next question might sound a bit incomprehensible, or even bizarre!"

Professor Leng looked left and right, as if making up his mind, and finally stated the problem on the television program, "I encountered a psychological phenomenon that I cannot understand and that keeps me awake at night."

He took out his phone and began to operate it; a street photograph was projected onto the large screen.

In the photo, a middle-aged to elderly man who looked exactly like Professor Leng was sitting in an open-air café on the Left Bank of Paris, sipping coffee.

His attire was the same dark gray suit that Professor Leng was currently wearing, and even the wear marks on the right cuff were exactly the same.

It was as if their daily habits were almost identical!

"I stumbled upon this photo on foreign social media a year ago; the poster was an account of a French art historian, labeled [An old friend encountered in Paris]. But the problem is—" Professor Leng paused for a moment and took a deep breath, "I have never been to Paris."

In the television studio, a wave of incredulous discussion suddenly erupted.

At this time, in Xiaoyu's livestream room, the screen was being flooded with comments.

"Holy crap, these two old uncles look exactly the same!"

"Are they twin brothers?"

"But Professor Leng just said he has never been to Paris!"

"Thinking about it is terrifying!"

Even the top students in the Huaqing University, Dabei University, and Shanghai top student zones widened their eyes, feeling it was unbelievable.

Just at this moment, Jiang Zhe's calm and unhurried voice came through.

"This is a very obvious physical world doppelgänger phenomenon, an extreme condition that truly exists—one that biology, genetics, and psychology cannot explain; only Quantum Mechanics can explain it!"