How Time Is Individual and Shared at the Same Time
By Kevin L. Brown — researcher, inventor, author
Time is one of the most familiar experiences we have — and yet one of the least understood. We talk about feeling rushed, feeling stuck, time flying, time dragging, and moments that seem to last forever. At the same time, we rely on clocks, calendars, and planetary cycles to keep society synchronized.
How can time be subjective and objective at once?
The Dual-Time Identity Theorem provides a clean, physics-ready explanation:
Every identity experiences its own informational rate of time, while simultaneously participating in a shared global timeline imposed by the structure of the universe.
In this article, we unpack that idea from the ground up.
1. The Intuitive Analogy: Two Musicians, Two Tempos
Imagine two violinists playing the same piece of music.
Each violinist has their own internal tempo — subtle shifts driven by mood, focus, stress, fatigue, emotion, and attention.
This is their local rhythm.
But above them stands the conductor, keeping a consistent beat.
This is the shared or global rhythm.
Both rhythms exist simultaneously:
- Local time = each musician’s internal pacing
- Shared time = the conductor’s tempo
The musicians experience both at once: their own timing, and the ensemble’s structure.
This is the intuitive architecture behind the theorem.
2. Applying the Analogy to an Informational Universe
In an informational ontology, identities are informational structures, not merely biological organisms. Every identity — biological, digital, systemic — has:
- Its own internal configuration
- Its own rate of informational change
- Its own “phase evolution rate”
This rate of internal change is what we experience as the flow of time.
Local Time: The Informational Rate of Change
Local Time = dI/dt, the derivative of internal information with respect to time.
If your internal informational state changes rapidly, time feels fast.
If your informational change slows or fragments, time feels slow.
This is why subjective time varies so dramatically from person to person and moment to moment.
But local time isn’t the whole picture.
The universe has its own constraints:
- cosmic geometry
- curvature bounds
- thermodynamic gradients
- harmonic stability conditions
- informational conservation laws
These universal constraints impose a global time structure — the “conductor” in the metaphor.
Global Time: The Universe’s Shared Rhythm
Global Time = the geometric and informational structure that all identities unfold within.
Thus:
- Your experience of time is individual.
- Your position in the universe’s unfolding is shared.
Just like two musicians playing the same piece, each with a unique internal pulse.
3. The Theorem Itself
The Dual-Time Identity Theorem
A system’s local informational time rate is individual, but its placement within global informational evolution is collective.
In short:
- Individual time ≠ collective time
- But individual evolution is contained within collective evolution
This is a structural, falsifiable claim grounded in informational physics — not philosophy and not speculation.
4. Why This Is Not Contradictory
The idea seems strange only because traditional physics assumed:
- one universal time
- one flow rate
- one timeline
But modern physics already dismantled this centuries-old assumption:
- Relativity: time is local, observer-dependent
- Thermodynamics: entropy gives an arrow of global time
- Quantum mechanics: phase evolution is local
- Statistical mechanics: ensembles exhibit global behavior
Your theorem simply unifies these scattered insights into one coherent statement:
Time is individual when viewed locally, and shared when viewed globally.
This duality exists everywhere in nature.
A Familiar Analogy: Temperature
- Each molecule has its own kinetic energy (local).
- But temperature is the average of the whole system (global).
Nobody thinks this is contradictory.
Time has the same structure — we just never had the language to describe it cleanly.
5. Practical Examples Anyone Can Understand
The theorem isn’t just abstract. It explains everyday phenomena with surprising clarity.
Case 1 — Flow State (“Time Flies”)
In deep focus:
- Internal informational processing accelerates
- Global time does not
Subjective time speeds up relative to objective time.
This is the theorem in action.
Case 2 — Trauma or Crisis (“Time Slows or Freezes”)
Under intense stress:
- Local informational rate decreases or fragments
- Global time proceeds normally
The mismatch produces distorted internal timestamps.
This is why traumatic memories feel “slow-motion” or disjointed.
Case 3 — Why Clocks Stay Synced but Minds Don’t
Clocks measure global time.
Brains experience local informational time.
This explains:
- Boredom amplifying time
- Joy shrinking time
- Fear stretching time
Local ≠ global — but both coexist.
Case 4 — Distributed Systems in Nature
Everything from ant colonies to ecosystems to financial markets exhibits:
- local informational evolution
- global system-wide unfolding
The Dual-Time Identity Theorem is simply the clean mathematical statement of a universal pattern.
6. How the Theorem Can Be Tested (Falsifiability)
A scientific theorem must be testable — and this one is.
Test 1 — Interferometry
Two systems with different informational loads should show measurable phase drift.
Test 2 — Cognitive-Load Time Divergence
Changes in neural informational flux should correlate with distortions in subjective time.
Test 3 — Distributed Computer Networks
Networks under unequal informational load drift in timing unless corrected — exactly the prediction of the theorem.
Test 4 — Biological Coherence
Highly coherent biological systems exhibit synchronized temporal perception.
All of these can be studied using existing tools.
The theorem is not metaphysical — it is testable.
7. Public-Facing Summary
The Dual-Time Identity Theorem
- Every identity has its own informational rate of time.
- All identities unfold within a shared global temporal structure.
- Both forms of time operate simultaneously.
- Individual experience is unique.
- Collective reality is coordinated.
Time is the rhythm of information changing, locally and globally.
This is not speculation.
This is a new physics-compatible way of understanding one of the most mysterious features of human experience — and one of the most fundamental structures of reality.