[md_]

The famous experiments from Benjamin Libet seem relevant here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet#Implications_of....

In particular, see Daniel Dennett's response (the relevant aspects of which are quoted on the Wikipedia article linked above).

I will say, I don't think this is a terribly interesting _example_; as others have noted, it's not uncommon to actually wake up minutes before the alarm goes off. (I commonly wake up 20 or 30 minutes before my alarm goes off; I can be reasonably sure my subjective experience is accurate because I look at the clock!)

But what the author hits upon (apparently naively, but it's nonetheless a useful insight) is that cognition (if one is a materialist) is not a monolith and that, as a result, various timing issues can confuse observers (as with Libet).

[3pt14159]

During high school I had an alarm. I would wake up within about 1 to 3 seconds of it going off, stand up, walk to the alarm that was in my washroom and turn it off just as it was starting. Every school day for years.

I became convinced that the precision of the brain at a task is partially a function of its reliability long before learning anything about machine learning.

[projektfu]

Yes, I believe this is the same phenomenon as the "long second", where you glance at a clock and it takes longer than your perception of 1 second for the clock to move, then it ticks along normally. This is because the brain noticed you changed your view and didn't want a discontinuity in processing so it makes itself think that there is a fraction of a second more of the initial image. (or something like that, probably more complicated.)