1. Why does waiting a few days to check email result in a confidence that when it is checked, there will be something good to read? Basic odds, I guess. More junk but also higher likelihood of receiving something of interest. It’s a curious, sad, and funny phenomena.
2. Why, when looking at a digital clock from above and at an angle so that a seven is indistinguishable from a one, does it turn out to more often be a seven? Does this mean that, given the option, time will always opt to jump ahead? In many cases it doesn’t have the option, such as its inability to make 1:14pm 7:14pm, because a difference of 6 hours, as opposed to 6 minutes would be noticeable. Imagine the chaos that would ensue, people would be liable to become psychopathic after convincing themselves that the passage of time is variable and reality is a headfuck.
First, what cannot happen. What cannot happen is that a jump forward in time of 6 minutes (for example from 1:21pm to 1:27pm) occurs at the same time for everyone. This cannot happen because, given the billions of people on this earth, at any given moment there are bound to be a number of people looking at a clock. If the 6 minute jump occurred at the same time, the people who had been looking at the clock would become psychopathic, as previously described.
Now, what must happen. What must happen is that, at some point, the jump forward in time of 6 minutes must occur for everyone. Otherwise, people who rarely look at clocks or keep track of time would be living weeks, months, and eventually years ahead of everyone else, and they would be confused when they looked at clocks in public places. So, for example, if the 6 minute jump occurred for person A at time t=0 but could not occur at the same moment for person B because person B had been looking at a clock at t=0, then the jump forward would occur for person B after they had stopped looking at the clock, say at t=2.
Given the above necessity and its associated restriction, it becomes clear that the factor limiting the occurrence of a 6 minute jump forward in time is less that it not be perceived by the individual it occurs to, and more that it occurs at a moment when the jump forward can be propagated the world over, domino-like, in a timely fashion. Asked how long it would take for the world to absorb a 6 minute jump in time, I would’ve guessed on the order of years, given that the change must happen at the opportune moment for each person so as not to arouse suspicion. Imagine the difficulty for clocks which are always in the presence of large crowds!
But time is a skilled concept, since 6 minute jumps are resolved far faster than in years. I know this because roughly once a month I have had to change my angle of view to decipher the ambiguity of the 1 or 7 digit and in almost every case it has turned out to be a 7. Statistics tell us that half those times the 7 genuinely is supposed to be a seven, no time leaps involved. Still, that means there are about six 6 minute jumps that take place and are resolved in the world each year. A phenomenal coordination feat. Hats off to time.