Is there a term for this? Quick thinking in a crisis.

[Minimalist]

OH SHIT!

[Whateverist]

There is a term for it (I can't remember it atm, ironic), and no..it's not actually an adrenaline rush.  It's an issue of an overactive amygdala, a common human response to danger.   To simplify it, your brain is taking more notes when you think you're in trouble.  The time seems slow because it's relatively "full" of memories.  The conclusion of critical thought seems certain for the same.  The amusing bit, is that it's an illusion in retrospect.  Time doesn't actually slow down, and human beings don't exhibit enhanced critical abilities in crisis.  

Had it gone another way, you'd still have the then-and now retrospective effect of time slowing, but you would have been presented with an agonizing list of your failures in that regard (rather than a sense of enhanced competence).  People spend lifetimes broken over a second by second report in the memory of how they fucked up and plowed their family car into a post.

On the one hand, this little tick of mind is terrible, but on the other.......it expresses one of the most useful learning routines imaginable.  Some disaster is occurring (minor or major) and you're dodging the debris.  This would be a good time to make an exhaustive list of what worked.  For better or worse, you're about to learn something of immense value..or..you know....die.  The response itself is a work of art.  Rather than crush itself under the weight of trivial memories, danger acts as a selection trigger for enhanced retention of information.   It's not actually doing anything faster or better, just doubling up the reports it keeps about events that satisfy the selection condition.

I've had that experience a couple of times, both when at physical risk. I imagine being in combat would be quite the trigger. I became a bit of an adrenaline junky, but I've given that up. Don't like the bumpy ride.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

In a sense you do, is what I'm saying.  The same effect is at play in both scenarios, simply applied to different narratives.  The sense of making sharp, timely decisions in the now is part of the illusion.  Your memories are creating that sense of time distortion -and- competence retroactively, even in what you percieve as "the now", simply by providing more detail.  It's not actually happening, or something that happened as reported.  It's a detailed report of success, however.  Had things gone a different way, you'd have a slow mo misery show on your hands.  The amygdala is success indifferent, when it cranks up it cranks up - the difference is not in effect -or- ability, but in outcome.

(this was tested and controlled for by dropping people off a building, no shit, and I wish I was there that day, lelz.)

I'm familiar with the feeling, myself.  We all are.  It's a feature, not a bug...it's just not the feature it seems to be, that it reports as.  Which I think is interesting in counter-intuitive way.

I have had plenty of opportunity for the "slo mo misery show", but never experienced it.

---

There is a term for it (I can't remember it atm, ironic), and no..it's not actually an adrenaline rush.  It's an issue of an overactive amygdala, a common human response to danger.   To simplify it, your brain is taking more notes when you think you're in trouble.  The time seems slow because it's relatively "full" of memories.  The conclusion of critical thought seems certain for the same.  The amusing bit, is that it's an illusion in retrospect.  Time doesn't actually slow down, and human beings don't exhibit enhanced critical abilities in crisis.  

Had it gone another way, you'd still have the then-and now retrospective effect of time slowing, but you would have been presented with an agonizing list of your failures in that regard (rather than a sense of enhanced competence).  People spend lifetimes broken over a second by second report in the memory of how they fucked up and plowed their family car into a post.

On the one hand, this little tick of mind is terrible, but on the other.......it expresses one of the most useful learning routines imaginable.  Some disaster is occurring (minor or major) and you're dodging the debris.  This would be a good time to make an exhaustive list of what worked.  For better or worse, you're about to learn something of immense value..or..you know....die.  The response itself is a work of art.  Rather than crush itself under the weight of trivial memories, danger acts as a selection trigger for enhanced retention of information.   It's not actually doing anything faster or better, just doubling up the reports it keeps about events that satisfy the selection condition.

I've had that experience a couple of times, both when at physical risk.  I imagine being in combat would be quite the trigger.  I became a bit of an adrenaline junky, but I've given that up.  Don't like the bumpy ride.

I loved being shot at, made life interesting. My teammates had different opinions about that.

[The Grand Nudger]

I have had plenty of opportunity for the "slo mo misery show", but never experienced it.

Our responses to danger or fear, like the outcomes of those events, are inconsistent (I think that we could both share colorful anecdotes to elaborate on that).  Interestingly, the researchers I alluded to early settled on dropping people from buildings because rollercoasters wouldn't uniformly produce the effect.  People did not uniformly report time distortion or feelings of enhanced competency.  Apparently, you really have to scare the shit out of someone.  That suggests that, despite those opportunities for the slo mo misery show....you did not uniformly recognize or respond to them as such for whatever reason...like you probably would if you were pitched off a building with no wires. You provide one explanation for that above, if you enjoyed a good firefight...then at least one example of what you're describing as an opportunity for that particular variant of this shared experience is non-applicable to you.

Another alternative, is that you did have those experiences, plenty of the time.  Think back to running your bike into something as a kid (if you can, lol).  You knew it was coming, you knew you fucked up, and all that was left to do was to watch the handlebars grab that tree.  Perhaps you simply don't remember them as well as you remember positively reinforcing outcomes....success, whipping the bars at the last second, avoiding a collision, going HAM on contact.  

Or maybe you've simply never had such experiences at all..though I find this unlikely. If you've had the one, the machinery clearly works...and that pretty much ensures you've had the other, unless you've led a particularly blessed life.

(there's another contributing factor to the effect of time distortion and being in "the zone" that might interest you. It's our ability to transmit information internally. The larger the ratio of overall transfer is with regard to some specific event or activity, the less we notice or find ourselves able to focus or remember other tasks and details. Musicians are a testbed for this, at present.)

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Really, you're just projecting. I'm sorry I don't find the standard model.

Not really, fuck the standard model.