Perception of time (as an evolved trait?)

Yes Jerng, it's all about the cognitive limitations, and I believe to some extent that these cognitive limitations are self imposed.

What makes humans able to have coherent thought? What gives us self awareness and consciousness that a machine does not? In fact, this applies even in animals : what gives them consciousness?

I believe one big factor is the ability to slice infinitely small sets of data from the huge datastream we are constantly receiving through our data inputs, filtering what is important and discarding the rest.

Imagine if you could not. You would receive sensations from millions of nerve endings, all competing for attention.

Ditto for our perception of time if we experienced time "all at once" we would be unable to handle it the same way we would be unable to handle simultaneously being aware of every single response our nerves are firing at us. We would become catatonic and die.

Our brain has evolved to discard unnecessary information and only process the 0.1% that actually matters. Evolution and survival of the fittest. The idea is that species that evolve to experience time sequentially, in the "present" as needed, would have the best chance of survival.

Any mutation which had brain function experiencing time with a 1 minute lag or 1 minute precognition of the future would be doomed to failure. A rabbit would not be able to escape a predator : a predator would not be able to catch his prey. This would be such a hardwired function that virtually every lifeform on this world would have this characteristic of experiencing time sequentially in the present tense, the same way we expect "almost" every life form to be carbon based.

In theory it is possible that some brain mutation might cause a person to experience time simultaneously now and some time in advance (or past) : but with the superposition of two different realities onto the same sensorium, being unable to divide both datastreams, the world would be so confusing that it is unlikely he will be able to make any sense of the world and progress much beyond the mental age of a 4 year old, for example. This draws parallels with some forms of mental disability where the victims show an inability to focus or concentrate on tasks : yet nonetheless display a high degree of intelligence.