The Invisible Clock

[Cuddlefish]

i: I dunno which sub-forum to put this in. Move to appropriate area if needed.

ii: Not sure what to call this. A thought experiment, maybe. But, if anyone has read anything similar by anyone a bit more... coherent than I am, let me know.

iii: No, that's "Clock," with an "L." Not "Cock," you pervert.


I: So, every time you are engaged in an act which you do not wish to "get caught" doing, a clock is activated. The clock starts the moment you are engaged in this action, and counts down towards the "inevitable" moment in which you "get caught" doing whatever it is you're doing, or, you cease your engagement in said act.

The thing is, you can't see the clock, so you don't even know the starting time, let alone how much time is left. The only thing for certain is the longer you're engaged in the act, the more your chances of "getting caught" increase.

However, this is where I get sort of stuck, there is a way to approximate the amount of time on the clock. For instance, if you're smoking a doob in your own house, which you have lived in for years, with decent neighbors, you may have a clock that runs, I dunno, fifty years till you "get caught." But, if you're tugging one out on the corner of a busy intersection during rush-hour, you're probably looking at something in the "seconds" to "minutes" range. Of course, you have to make adjustments as you go: you're putting up your masterwork graffiti tag, and suddenly you see headlights pointing right at you, well, you're clock just dropped a significant amount. If it turns out to just be regular folk and they drive off, you gain a portion back, but the fact that you've been seen, and the fact that regular folk sometimes call the police, it's a net loss. Also, whatever you're doing may effect the time limit. If it is something "seemingly harmless" to an observer, they're less likely to desire that you "get caught," therefore not greatly effecting your total time limit. However, these are just conceptual examples, and mere guesses. I am unable to "do the math."

I feel there's got to be a way to assign values to different types of situations, and create a formula to run those values through to find how much time, roughly, you have on your "invisible clock," in any given situation. I can generally distinguish between a situation that has a long clock (with an "L," people) and a situation with a short one, but by how much is the question...

Oooor, does this just seem like paranoid delusion?

[Bu🤠ns]

Interesting...so would cleaning up your act effectively slow down the clock? And then there's the whole black swan thing..

[NewSpag]

Oh its a wonderfully paranoid delusion.  Well thought-out too.  However I like to think that my invisible clock is ticking towards death rather than getting caught by the system.

[Placid Dingo]

Maybe the thing to do is to look at what factors influence the time?

Circumstance, environment, position etc?

[Cuddlefish]

Interesting...so would cleaning up your act effectively slow down the clock? And then there's the whole black swan thing..

What do you mean by "cleaning up your act?" Because there are many things you can "get caught" doing that aren't necessarily illegal. That's why I left the term a little ambiguous.

[Cuddlefish]

Maybe the thing to do is to look at what factors influence the time?

Circumstance, environment, position etc?

Well, sure. These are things that are always taken into mind (though, usually in a ball-park guess kind of way) and I'm sure a long, comprehensive list could be made. The difficulty I think I would have is actually coming up with a reasonable way to assign the values, and a formula to take those values and turn them into usable data.

[Bu🤠ns]

Interesting...so would cleaning up your act effectively slow down the clock? And then there's the whole black swan thing..

What do you mean by "cleaning up your act?" Because there are many things you can "get caught" doing that aren't necessarily illegal. That's why I left the term a little ambiguous.

Cleaning up your act in accordance with your own values.

[P3nT4gR4m]

This reminds me of how I feel about the notion of fate - it's retroactive. Just as fate is a pattern which is only recognisable when looking backward, all the tiny little steps that led straight to the (often unforeseen) conclusion, so this clock of which you speak can only be examined in any meaningful way, after the event.

[Cuddlefish]

Interesting...so would cleaning up your act effectively slow down the clock? And then there's the whole black swan thing..

What do you mean by "cleaning up your act?" Because there are many things you can "get caught" doing that aren't necessarily illegal. That's why I left the term a little ambiguous.

Cleaning up your act in accordance with your own values.

My act is clean, according to my own values. It's other peoples values that scare me.

[Triple Zero]

your "clock" does not run linearly though, it counts down like an exponential function, similarly to the expectation value of the number of rounds you need to roll a d20 before you roll a natural 20.

at every time interval it is multiplied by the probability of not getting caught in that interval.