Gradual change blindness

Finding a picture of myself in my mid twenties is the one way I realize I got older. Compare it to my profile pic and you might wonder how this is the same person. But if you had seen me every day since then, you wouldn't have detected the changes that got me from then to now. The same happens when I see pictures of my kids and I am in awe of their past cuteness, wondering where these years have gone. Change that happens gradually, over a timescale that is much longer than the typical sensory timescale, is hard to see. Sometimes, even change that happens quickly goes undetected if it affects traits that are out of our area of focus (that's how magic works). But here I am talking about a more intrinsic type of change, that it is happening right in front of us without even hiding. Only by comparing the beginning and the end of the process, the then and the now, do we realize that it happened.

Try this "game", a short YouTube video (link) that illustrates gradual change blindness. It is mind blowing.

And reflect on the many timescales that coexist in our world: we are only attuned to a tiny slice of temporal events.