I don't know how they reconcile this theory with everyday activities.
When I'm reading, my eyes movement scanning the page must be in sync with my perception and reading or the words. I'm not reading words that my eyes scanned half a second ago. Otherwise I'd be "reading" the last word of a line when my eyes are already at the start of the next line?
To take another example, when I'm cooking, my hands movement are certainly in real-time sync with what is happening at that very moment in the real world, otherwise I'd have few remaining fingers after cutting a few vegetables.
I'm no claiming that perception is instantaneous, but clearly we do many activities successfully that implicitly require perceptions to be near real-time.
If the theory is correct but the timing difference is small enough that these objection go away, then I feel the theory is just a change of nomenclature. What they call memory is just the perception delay.
That's actually not true. The brain has a LOT of hacks around eye movement including saccades that involve rewriting temporal history. Sorry, but there are temporal illusions that take advantage of these hacks and they are a good way at disproving the "common sense" conclusions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronostasis
We live in a simulation in our own minds. Your eyes do not behave as cameras, but instead detect the bare minimum detail needed for your mind to recreate the world around you. When your first born you blind and one of your first achievements is learning to see.
It makes sense that what we see is a memory, as how else could we transfer not just the visual, but smells, feelings, etc... into our long term memory. Efficiency
The examples you provide all sound like examples of "muscle memory." The brain develops a specialized, unconscious "pathway" for activities you often repeat, such that you can perform those actions without careful thought.
Have you ever used a password or PIN for so long that you consciously forget it? You can only remember it with your hands?
Likewise, have you ever driven home accidentally, lost in thought, when you intended to travel somewhere else?
> Rather than perceiving the world in real time, we’re actually experiencing a memory of that perception.
So yeah, the "perception" is a memory, and the processing happens in near real-time.
This also seems to tie well with the research on visual perception that states that much of what we "see" is a projection of the brain based on things we have seen in the past (like how you see a face when you look at a power outlet.)
I am not at all even a hobbyist on this topic though.
You cannot perceive anything without your brain processing it. That amount of time is on the scale of 250ms for sight.
Further, the reality you perceive is not True reality, your brain is encoding the information it receives and shows you an evolutionarily successful version of reality.
You can only perceive your surroundings by creating a mental representation of it in your brain. Part of that mechanism involves memory.
> When I'm reading, my eyes movement scanning the page must be in sync with my perception and reading or the words.
Consciousness is the experience of your eyes being in sync with the reading.
> my hands movement are certainly in real-time sync with what is happening at that very moment in the real world, otherwise I'd have few remaining fingers after cutting a few vegetables.
That is what happened. It just happened in the past relative to when you're experiencing it.
How do you talk to people then? I think all those things happened when they did. But the thing inside your brain that plays back the sound and the sensations of making decisions, those emotional things, is delayed.
That leaves interesting questions for what happens if you (for example) get hit by a car and die.
You won’t get to replay your recollections in time, so depending on what the delay is, you might (from your perspective) just suddenly plop out of existence when crossing a street.
I guess it doesn’t really matter, but it’s interesting to think about.
The point is, your unconscious mind is doing all those activities in real time, “you” the conscious mind are only reliving them as a memory, but it feels real time
When I'm reading, my eyes movement scanning the page must be in sync with my perception and reading or the words. I'm not reading words that my eyes scanned half a second ago. Otherwise I'd be "reading" the last word of a line when my eyes are already at the start of the next line?
To take another example, when I'm cooking, my hands movement are certainly in real-time sync with what is happening at that very moment in the real world, otherwise I'd have few remaining fingers after cutting a few vegetables.
I'm no claiming that perception is instantaneous, but clearly we do many activities successfully that implicitly require perceptions to be near real-time.
If the theory is correct but the timing difference is small enough that these objection go away, then I feel the theory is just a change of nomenclature. What they call memory is just the perception delay.