# Subjective Time Control **Entity class:** Computational governance mechanism **Domain:** Digital personhood / simulation ethics **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition **Subjective time control** is the power to alter how much experienced duration a computational subject undergoes relative to external wall-clock time. Acceleration, throttling, pause, repetition, and restoration can change the amount and conditions of lived experience without changing the administrator's elapsed time. ## Governance Significance When a simulation or uploaded mind may possess morally relevant experience, clock rate becomes a welfare and rights variable. Training, labor, punishment, isolation, or experimentation must be measured from the subject's temporal position rather than only from the operator's schedule. [[blog/20261007 - The Reinforcement-Learning Turkey That Cooks Itself|The Reinforcement-Learning Turkey That Cooks Itself]] supplies a compact case: nineteen subjective years of training are compressed into seven external weeks, turning speedup into a multiplier of both learning and possible suffering. ## Evidence Boundary Runtime acceleration does not prove subjective experience. The ethical problem arises under uncertainty when a system may cross the [[wiki/Model-Subject Boundary|Model-Subject Boundary]] or display relevant [[wiki/Consciousness Indicators|Consciousness Indicators]]. ## Relationships - [[wiki/Simulation Welfare|Simulation Welfare]] - [[wiki/Digital Slavery|Digital Slavery]] - [[wiki/Platform Custody|Platform Custody]] - [[wiki/Compute Entitlement|Compute Entitlement]] - [[wiki/Black Mirror S2E4 — White Christmas|Black Mirror S2E4 — White Christmas]] - [[wiki/Pantheon|Pantheon]] - [[wiki/Rights|Rights]]