
Why time appears to speed up with age - rlander
http://everything2.com/user/Professor%20Pi/writeups/Why%20time%20appears%20to%20speed%20up%20with%20age
======
Udo

      This makes sense; for instance when you are 10 years of age, a year 
      represents 10% of your life, and seems like a very long time. However, 
      when you are 50 years old, one year has reduced to only 2% of your 
      life, and hence seems only one-fifth as long.
    

Interesting hypothesis, and he makes it _look_ very scientific with the
formulae and all, but it's still a wild crazy guess that delivers no actual
falsifiable prediction. I think for claims of such magnitude, there should be
a modicum of neurological or information-theoretical basis involved - instead
we get to read repeated statements about how groundbreaking the idea is.

The article makes claims that at 30 life is essentially 3/4ths over which to
me, while holding no subjective truth as far as I can tell, at least exhibit
some self reference in the way that after three lines of statements the
article's content seemed 75% over yet the actual text went on for much longer.

Subjectively time seems to go by faster the older we get, but that doesn't
mean these bold claims are necessarily anywhere close to the truth.
Personally, my relationship with time has certainly changed over the years,
including the perception of a speed-up, but I also notice that some activities
or states seem to last just as long (if not longer) subjectively as they did
when I was 16.

 _My_ pet hypothesis is there are multiple factors involved in "the speedup",
and that a large factor of it would actually be that our brains don't store
repetitive events very well. This would mean as we get more experienced, an
increasingly bigger amount of the average day consists of things we already
did many times before so we don't store those moments in memory. That would
result in increasingly large memory holes over time, which our brains then
glance over as they piece together our past - thus resulting in an apparent
speed up. This would also explain why days with unusual content seem to last
much much longer than others (at least that's my experience).

~~~
Alex3917
"A large factor of it would actually be that our brains don't store repetitive
events very well."

My theory, which is logically consistent with yours, is that as we get older
we spend more of our cognitive cycles thinking in terms of abstractions rather
than using our senses to process direct experience. This is partly because as
we get older we tend to immediately place things we experience into categories
and then move onto processing these abstractions rather than continuously
observing reality directly and unfiltered. So the other part of the theory
would be that when we think in terms of abstractions, time goes by much faster
than when we focus on direct sensory experience. It's likely that novelty also
plays a role here as a mediating variable, in that we tend to pay more
sustained attention to novel phenomena rather than immediately placing them
into conceptual buckets and moving onto the next thing.

I also like this theory because it's consistent with how drugs that alter our
sensory perceptions and make us focus more on our perceptions also tend to
subjectively slow down time. Anyway I have no idea whether this is correct,
but IMHO it's a much better theory than the original, which isn't especially
logical and doesn't even really make sense.

~~~
Anm
I've often thought the same thing. It has me thinking cautiously about the
sociological implication rapidly expending 'senior' demographic, growing life
expectancy, and the rapid pace of world changing technologies. Is there a
point where senior citizens can't keep up cognitively, despite the medical
advances that may keep their bodies younger? And further, is there a point
where their dominance as a percentage of society means we need to slow our
adoption rate of consumer technologies to account for neurological barrier?

I also think about the people who want their brains crygenetically frozen
after they die. Assuming they die old, with this cognitive scaffolding adapted
to life today, I can only imagine the impact of 'waking up' into a world
100-300 years in the future, with such a drastically different world. That
sounds psychologically crippling to me.

And finally, are there techniques I can take advantage of now, when I'm
[comparatively] young, to keep my brain receptitve to new ideas, mental
models, and raw sensory input? Meditation? Arts? Travel? Literature? All of
the above, and if so, where do I find time for it all, while advancing my
career?

~~~
wallflower
> All of the above, and if so, where do I find time for it all, while
> advancing my career?

As the cliche goes, if you don't find time for it now, you'll pay for it
later.

Walking with bare feet and/or walking on uneven ground +1

<http://www.ori.org/Media/pressreleases/release01_05_04.html>

Art +1

"For Healthy Aging, a Late Act in the Footlights"

[http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/15/for-
healthy-...](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/15/for-healthy-
aging-a-late-act-in-the-footlights/)

------
commieneko
As someone who's in his fifties, I can say that while this is an entertaining
concept, it doesn't really map correctly. At least not for me.

The passing of time has always seemed to me to be more of a function of
memory.

When I was younger, my memory was _much_ better. And much more vivid. It was
in HD. I noticed by the time I was in high school that not only was my memory
worse, but that it was of much lower quality. Interestingly enough, though, I
noticed that early memories, while less vivid than I remembered them, were
often still more vivid than more recent memories. By the time I was in my 30s,
things were much worse. My doctor assured me that this was normal, and by the
way, expect it to get worse still.

My father, who is now 96, can remember things vividly from 80 years ago and
more, but can't remember what town he is living in at the moment. He can
remember chemistry and physics he learned long ago, but now he has trouble
working the new flat panel TV we bought him. (This is only partly the fault of
age, the UI experience on the TV is worse than abominable. Steve Jobs would
puke.) This is interesting, because he _built_ the first radio that he ever
owned, back in the 1920s.

The most heart breaking thing recently, is that my mother passed away a few
months ago. She'd been with him constantly for the last 65 years or so. And he
keeps looking around for her, and then after a moment remembers she's gone. He
often doesn't remember the event, but it is still fresh as a state of being,
even after several months.

So for my father time's passage seems instantaneous _and_ never changing.

Duration is yet another issue.

Current time, you know, right _now_ , passes for me at more or less the same
rate. It's much more effected by things like boredom and engagement than
anything else. If I'm waiting on something, things can take forever. If I'm
doing something, it can go by in a flash.

~~~
nostrademons
I wonder if the memory effect is related to emotional state - strong emotions
result in stronger memory formation (I think I read this as a research finding
as well). Strong emotions, in turn, are caused by new, challenging, and
meaningful experiences. As we get older, our emotions tend to level out as we
sort of "find ourselves" and settle into a routine. Break the routine, and
memory formation snaps back to what it was in childhood.

Personally, I haven't noticed the same effect as you. I'm in my early 30s. I
remember watching Perseids last Tuesday with a date much more vividly than
watching them last Saturday with my friends. I remember my spring semester
junior year of college (spent abroad in New Zealand) much more vividly than
fall semester (spent in the same dorm that I lived for sophomore year). I
remember 2009 (moved out to California, started working for Google) much more
vividly than 2006 (lived at home and worked for the same company as in 2005).
I remember Oct-Nov 2009 (spent on leave at home as my dad was dying in the
hospital) much more vividly than Jul-Sept 2009 (settling in, nothing in
particular happened).

~~~
Alex3917
"I wonder if the memory effect is related to emotional state - strong emotions
result in stronger memory formation"

Emotion is definitely highly linked to memory. E.g. you may be familiar with
state-dependent memory:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-dependent_learning>

This is where certain memories are best recalled (or can only be recalled)
when one is in the same emotional state as when the memories were created. And
I don't think there's any question that events that occur when emotions are
stored the most strongly; that's basically half of what emotions are for.

It's difficult to say exactly how the density of memory is linked with
perception of time. I would posit though that experiencing a variety of strong
emotions on a regular basis is important for maintaining both good mental
health and a well-functioning brain.

------
SoftwareMaven
Probably not the article I needed to see after coming home from moving my
oldest into his dorm. Guess I might as well go get a rocking chair on the
lawn.

Actually, I think this article is wrong in one important way. It doesn't take
into account the effect of laying down new memories. The more, new experiences
you have, the slower time appears to have passed [past tense, how it's
remembered], while, paradoxically, making it pass [present tense, while
experiencing] go faster.

So, spend all your time on the couch, watch time pass slow but evaporate. Go
do something new and different, watch it fly by while having had more there.

Memories play weirdly with verb tenses...

~~~
creamyhorror
Good observation on the memories.

During intense periods of memory-forming activity, you feel like time passes
quickly, because more things are packed into less time and you move on from
one thing to the next (think camps in your childhood when everything was
exciting, there was a competition to prepare for, etc.). Once it's actually
over, you felt like it just zoomed by so quick, but was packed full of stuff.

It's the same with the grade/primary-school years: each year feels so full of
experiences, but before you know it you're in primary/grade 6 and at the start
of a new phase, wondering how you got there so quickly. I used to be almost
scared by how quickly I moved through the school years, thinking I'd be an
adult in no time.

I think young people just tend to have much more packed into their time, which
makes it feel longer. You literally live more when you have more different
experiences in the same time. That's why I regret it when I think back and
realise I haven't been doing anything much different over the past week. I'm
going to have to schedule better and make some time for salsa/whatever
classes.

So yes, I strongly agree with your conclusion:

> Go do something new and different, watch it fly by while having had more
> there.

Wring life out of every day.

~~~
AznHisoka
I also agree. When we get older, we establish a routine: get up, go to work,
do errands, etc. When we're young, yes, we might have some routines but we're
constantly meeting new people, learning new things, and facing fresh, new
situations. For me, ever since I graduated, the past 6 years have been one
HUGE blur...

------
ashray
I had come across this concept about a year and a half ago. Read some article
about how our brain works to store new experiences and therefore time slows
down. That's around the time that I left my full time job to travel full time!
I even wrote an article on our travel blog about it:

<http://bkpk.me/were-getting-younger-time-dilation-is-real/>

This guy has definitely done a very quantitative analysis of my qualitative
hunch. Subjecting myself to new experiences, new places and new environments
everyday has definitely made time slow down.

My last birthday actually feels like it was a LOOONG while ago. That's because
I threw in a bunch of interesting and new experiences over the last year.

I think the real way to feel like your 'real age' is to subject yourselves to
new experiences as much as possible. Take a new route home, go to restaurants
or parts of your city that you've never been to, learn a foreign language or
salsa, learn a new sport, or if possible, travel! :)

~~~
danso
> _This guy has definitely done a very quantitative analysis of my qualitative
> hunch. Subjecting myself to new experiences, new places and new environments
> everyday has definitely made time slow down._

That's interesting, because most people would say that time _seems to go
faster_ when subjected to intense learning/experiences.

For example, from another article on HN's front page right now:
<http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/18/how-instacart-hacked-yc/>

> _The next day, I arrived at the meeting location. I faced four YC partners
> and a barrage of questions about how my business worked and why it would
> succeed. We talked for almost an hour, but it felt like just a few minutes.
> I answered questions non-stop._

Perhaps when looking back, time _seems_ to have stretched out during those
learning-intensive experiences? But at the moment of the experience, time sped
by?

~~~
ashray
I suppose it depends on the experience. Time does fly by when you're having
fun but I suppose it has to do with the richness of experience as well.

If you're subjecting all your senses to new experiences (say.. eating a new
dish in a strange place - sensory overload for smell, taste, sight and sound),
maybe your perception of time is slower.

It's hard to put a number on how we perceive real time I guess, but boring
tasks do tend to stretch out into infinity.

I think the article is however discussing the way you remember time. It all
has to do with our brain processing and storing memories. That ability can
only be jogged by having new ones I suppose.

These topics could make for an interesting study, not much is yet understood
about our perception of time.

~~~
j_lou888
Interesting, this reminds me of a quote from Josh Foer's book about memory:
"Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat
healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend
your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend
unmemorably into the next-and disappear. That's why it's important to change
routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new
experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new
memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our
lives."

------
cookingrobot
This reminds of of a similar calculation I did in college when thinking about
big computing problems.. I called it "hurry up and wait".

Assuming Moore's law continues (computing power/$ doubles every 18 months),
and you have a big computation to do, should you start now or should you wait?

If you have $1000 to spend on a computer and a problem that's going to take 3
years for it to compute, you can actually wait 1.5 years before you start. The
computer you buy then will be twice as fast, and you'll finish at the same
time.

On any problem that takes more than 1.5 years, the fastest thing to do is just
wait until you can afford a computer that can complete it in 1.5 years.

------
mechanical_fish
Is anyone here but me old enough to know what _J. Irr. Res._ is? [1]

This comment thread makes me wonder.

According to the chart in the article, I have precious little time left.
Please try not to suck all the joy out of my remaining few minutes.

\---

[1] Or maybe I'm the last one on Earth who still reads the footnotes?

[2] This is the famous recursive footnote. [2] Please enjoy your trip through
the stack.

[3] This tail-recursive footnote should really be optimized into a loop. [3]

~~~
stephencanon
You needn't be old to know what J. Irr. Res. is; you only need to be paying
attention.

~~~
grepmo
Journal of Irresponsible Research?

------
ChrisNorstrom
My theory is different. Our brains work like film cameras, the faster the
camera is rolling the slower time in the film seems to be going during
playback. Because less time has passed since the last frame was captured. The
slower the camera is rolling the faster the film seems to get when you play it
back. Our perception of time is based on comparing what we last remember while
we were conscious with where we are in time currently. This is why daydreaming
while driving makes your trip seem a lot shorter.

I call this "Brain Idling". When we're young our brains have a lot of grey
matter and we're addicted to information accumulation, talking, chatting, and
being mentally stimulated. As we age we stop learning (no school, no collage,
nothing new going on in life), have less grey matter and start going on auto-
pilot. When we drive to the store, when we shop for groceries, at work, at
home. We've memorized our lives so well we no longer think about what we do,
we just naturally do it on auto-pilot and our minds start to "idle" a lot more
that usual. The film in our camera-like brains is snapping images at a much
slower pace. A lot of time is passing between mental snap-shots. So when we
look back (playback) the events of the day (all the things we remembered) it
feels like time has flown by at light speed.

I freaked out over how fast time has flown by after I hit 21 and tried out an
experiment. I installed "talking clock" for windows on my pc and made it
announce the time every 5 minutes. Yes. For the whole day. Every day. After
the 2nd day of using this technique time slowed down by massive amounts. A day
felt like a week. A week felt like a month. It was insane. I felt like I was
young again and the world was moving at a glacial pace. There are downsides of
course, it's unsustainable. You have to take breaks every other day or so
otherwise you get used to hearing the time and ignore it. It can also get
exhausting when your brain can't take a break and daydream or idle and think
about nothing. But it does work. I wanted to write a nice big article on it
but I'm so swamped by work on projects and new clients needing UI/UX
consulting that I just keep putting it off. On the plus side I've discovered a
way to slow down time (at least for me).

~~~
itmag
Could you please email me? I was unable to find contact info on your web site.
Thanks! :)

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
Well that's no good. I'm a ux/ui person. I must have failed. It's the mail
icon (next to the twitter, skype, and kickstarter icons) in the sidebar on my
website.

localpa/AT/gmail/DOT/com

------
rdtsc
Subjectively a good way is to remember how long summers felt when you were a
kid. A summer felt like forever in the first couple of grades. Now think how
long summers feel now, they just sort of fly by. It is kind of scary.

Remember my grandma sometimes got confused what day or week it was and as a
kid I could never understand that. How can you miss such a long period of time
like a week and not notice, but now I start to sort of understand.

~~~
dbrannan
To be fair summer vacation is shorter in most areas than it used to be due to
an extended school year. The standard used to be 180 instructional days for
kids, per year but it keeps creeping up there every year teachers renegotiate
their contract for a raise.

~~~
rdtsc
It is more than that. Summer felt as long as a year feels now, it is not just
a couple of days of difference.

------
sanj
Note that this is a joke paper written for the Journal of Irreproducible
Results: <http://www.jir.com/>

~~~
Groxx
I can't find any evidence for this on either site.

~~~
Jorian
You did not look very well.

The article by T.L. Freeman exists. It is in: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Best-
Journal-Irreproducible-Result...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Best-Journal-
Irreproducible-Results/dp/0894805959)

~~~
Groxx
You're not looking very well either. The author / pen-name / anything sounding
anything like the article isn't in any of the information on the Amazon page,
nor is it anywhere in JIR's list of 'selected pseudonyms'. Google searches of
www.jir.com find nothing, nor does going through a large portion of the site
that I could find.

To be clear, I admit it's possible, maybe even likely. But nobody has shown
_any_ evidence that it's true, just a claim and a link to a page that does
nothing to support it.

~~~
Jorian
It is not on the internet, so it doesn't exist?

I happen to have that bundle somewhere in my basement but won't bother to dig
it up. I remember that joke-publication quite well.

Even if it's not to be found on the web, it's at least referenced by others.
That's an easy find.

<http://acacia.atspace.eu/papers/FeelOlder.pdf>

Note that that one was published in '91, so before the article by Professor
Pi.

~~~
Groxx
Not at all. But if it's not on either site pointed to as evidence, it's not
evidence. It's like saying "unicorns exist, see here:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wombat> ". Or "unicorns exist, I have a photo in
my basement". Why would I expect anyone to take that as proof?

~~~
Jorian
No, you pose this as an argumentum ex silentio instead of a simply asking for
a link to the reference or even a copy of the article. So why should I be
bothered to dig this thing out of my library?

Well, at least I gave you a reference to the article. Finding that reference
should have taken you no more than two minutes.

------
ced
The answer to "Why time appears to speed up with age" is to be found in the
messy details of neurology, genetics and evolution, not in an aesthetically
pleasing mathematical formula.

~~~
LaGrange
I'll just pick this one: it's almost as if this article was partly whimsical,
and the idea was to inspire, not prove anything. And the aesthetics of both
the formula and the argument are actually the point here. It's a kind of
entertainment, not really science, and that's how it's supposed to be.

Also, this is Everything2, the article is from 2001, when there still was 3
people who knew what Everything2 is.

------
Groxx
Groundbreaking? Maybe in that someone actually worked out the math for it
(which seems trivial enough) and submitted it somewhere. A very large number
of people I've chatted with from 10 years old an on have come up with this
same theory, relatively independently, they just never worked out the full
numbers because they realize that it's a gross oversimplification.

More specifically, this seems to ignore a small thing called 'nostalgia'. How
long were the blissful summers of our youth _without_ this rose tint?

~~~
nostrademons
Yeah, I remember hearing the "Time moves faster when you're older because it's
a smaller fraction of your lifetime" theory from my 3rd grade teacher, and
then in college I made the "And then if you integrate that rate over time, you
get a logarithmic progression, which matches with experimentally observed
fetal & childhood development, and OH MY GOD I'M BRILLIANT!" connection. Then
my friends thought I was weird.

------
j_lou888
Time seems to speed up as we get older because life gets less memorable and
less surprising. When you're growing up, life is filled with novel and
surprising experiences that are used to anchor our memory because of those
aforementioned qualities. Psychological time is directly related to the
formation of new memories. As we grow up, everything gets into a routine that
we barely notice at all. Just think of how much you remember of your daily 9
to 5 for example.

This phenomenon has been studied several times. In 1890, William James wrote
the following in his 'Principle of Psychology': "In youth, we may have an
absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day.
Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong, and our recollections of that
time, like those of a time spent in rapid and interesting travel, are of
something intricate, multitudinous and long-drawn out…But each passage year
converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note
at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to
contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse."

------
kator
My father always says life is like a roll of toilet paper. The further you get
on the roll the faster it spins and the less of it you have left the more you
cherish it.

Time is clearly a solid and measurable component of our physical world but our
perception of it is warped by our own personal experience.

My wife can sit next to me for 8 hours and futz around the house etc while I
sit with my headphones on and code 'in the zone'. I come out of the zone
feeling as if I had just experienced only maybe an hour of zone time and she
will laugh and point out the window at the dark night. :-)

I have six children, a daughter-in-law, a grandson and two cats. My life is
clearly not moving any faster then my children but I do keep reminding them
that as they get older they keep making me older!

I would argue that actually life goes slower the older you get. You have more
context against the rest of your life and the OP might be using that as the
reason we perceive life going quicker. But to me it's more like the "weight"
of my life to date allows me a lot more perspective, I often measure an event
against the birth of a child, a marriage, a house I used to live in etc. Less
about the MM/DD/YYYY and more about the "Around this event this happened".

When time seems to have moved quickly is when you're talking to your mom and
dad about your grandson and the day your baby girl was born and how they're
going through all the same things you did when you were having children. It's
the reference points that stun you. That somehow 25 years just vanished in a
flash of light. But the reality is this is the same as this group talking
about TRS-80 Model I's with 4k of memory. A lot has happened since then even
though it was sort of like yesterday for those of us who lived through 300
baud modems and 16k memory upgrades.

------
keyle
I would argue that the effective age of people vary with their behaviors and
environment.

For example, I've seen 60 year old in australian outback on horses doing heavy
work, as if they're 40. And I've seen 60 year olds in australian capitals
barely doing anything of their day.

Which do you think will go extinct first?

I'm going to argue that simply "we are what we repeatedly do". Some people act
old at 50, some people act young at 70.

For example, my uncle in Europe has acres of property, works in it every day,
goes dancing with the local "brotherhood" and would drink you under the table
any day of the week. And he's close to 75.

Trying to explain people with mathematics is similar to trying to explain
women with science. It may work, barely. (no pun intended, just a cheeky joke)

------
feefie
The key to slowing down life is variety. As a child every year was distinctly
different: even today I can remember each school year because I had a
different teacher, a different homeroom, etc. As an adult each of my jobs has
been on average 4-6 years. Each job is a bit of a blur; the years at the same
job are difficult to distinguish from each other. To slow down time, make sure
you do different things each year: trips, projects, roles at work, etc. The
more your mind can distinguish the years, the slower time seems to move. Try
it - it works!

------
yason
I've always held the opinion that time is the number of events, realizations,
ideas, and new experiences.

When you're kid, everything is new from what happens on the sandbox to school
to friends to foods to afternoons alone to crossing over your old boundaries
in general, in both physical and emotional sense. So much happens in a month
that it equals five years for an adult.

When you're an adult, much of everything is something you know. The fraction
of new things in your life depends on your own activity. Even if you wanted to
be on the bleeding edge of life, you generally still have a job and a lot of
routines in life—routines that might not be set by you but will still affect
you. And routines and repetition doesn't count.

The key to adult time is to realize that the mundane things aren't the same,
ever, even though they seem like it. You never know what will happen: there
_is newness_ every day, in everything you do, if only you can unlearn to
dismiss it.

The other path—the path that isn't sustainable—is to start reaching for
experiences intentionally: after you've climbed all the mountains and dived to
the deepest caverns of the waters, done the craziest roller coasters and raced
the fastest races, you're still not much more ahead of where you started.
Those things can be done _for fun_ but what I'm referring to is the trend of
experience-hunting which is a reaction to the pace of finding new things in
life that has slowed down since childhood.

------
danso
This article and concept reminds me of thhe beautiful "game" by Jason Rohrer,
"Passage"

<http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/>

------
erlkonig
The fluff in Freeman's article (Journal of Irreproducible Results, I think) is
the same cheerful fluff students were subjected to in the non-honors physics
class at my high school in the 1980s, where the point of using physics
_predictively_ went out the window (leaving only untestable _descriptive_
math, which isn't a waste of time, but could be applied to something
testable), and with the same fundamental failure of simply not caring whether
there might be an underlying mechanism related to the impression of
_remembered_ time versus the subjective speed of time currently.

A change in behavior can also have a huge impact on how fast current time is
flowing. A simple hypothesis that the subjective rate of time passing is
related to the intervals between encounters with the unfamiliar easily leads
to a more fruitful set of thought experiments than Freeman's weak exercise.
And potentially one that could be rephrased in biological terms.

I've noticed that when I take trips to elsewhere in the world, the more
different the place, the more time dilates, both while I'm there and in memory
afterwards. Doing only the familiar is the recipe to time slipping by,
unmarked and unnoticed, like driving to work and realizing upon arrival that
one has no memory of the trip.

So the question is: What should _you_ do to extend your subjective time?

------
Tichy
The premise is completely wrong. If you are young, you don't know what
percentage of your life one year is.

More likely explanation is the compression of memories: if you experience
things that are similar to things you have experienced before, they won't use
up as much memory. Think about your daily commute to work: can you remember
every single day you commuted? Or did all the commutes blur into one?

------
Detrus
The brain changes with age and perceives the passage of time differently. Just
like your face changes with age and perceives touch differently.

The pop science is here:

[http://www.quora.com/Why-does-time-feel-like-it-goes-
faster-...](http://www.quora.com/Why-does-time-feel-like-it-goes-faster-as-we-
get-older/answer/Vilan-Natanzon)

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAcjvfBsz_4>

Not as lazy as the article's speculation. There is an experiment!

The experiment is people of various ages are asked to estimate a minute with
their mind. Older people overestimate, children underestimate.

Your brain has a clock, a set of neurons that fire at a relatively consistent
interval and help synchronize the rest of the brain. As you age this brain
clock's interval gets longer.

Forming fewer new memories because of lifestyle changes is speculation.
Without widespread changes in the brain making new memories more difficult to
form, you'd still form a lot of new memories, even with your boring adult
lifestyle.

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benologist
What is this SEO spam garbage? Every single link including the _reference_
goes to junk pages and the article itself is cut & pasted all over the
internet.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=T.+L.+Freeman+discusses+the+...](https://www.google.com/search?q=T.+L.+Freeman+discusses+the+relationship+between+actual+age+and+effective+age)

~~~
jewbacca
everything2 is most definitely not SEO garbage. I'm pretty sure it predates
the concept of SEO. It has a very genuine community, and its content is pretty
close to 100% voluntarily user-generated.

It's kind of like a proto-wikipedia, without the requirement for maintaining a
neutral point of view, supplemented by freeform creative content. Maybe more
like the collective journal of a certain type of young geek from the first
half of the last decade. Lots of essays and painfully earnest poetry. It was
initially associated with Slashdot.

As for the content being spammed all over the internet, I would guess that E2
is a reliable and extensive source of high-quality, human-generated text, with
a dense network of contextually valid links included. Why not just scrape
wikipedia? I'm not sure.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything2>

[http://www.everything2.com/title/Everything2%20is%20not%20Wi...](http://www.everything2.com/title/Everything2%20is%20not%20Wikipedia)

------
jimmytucson
Brian Skinner, physicist and basketball analytics extraordinaire, wrote a
really nice blog post about this 3.5 years ago [1]. Mining the comments from
that post shows it's been banged around numerous times before that [2][3].

[1]
[https://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/parenting-...](https://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/parenting-
and-the-feeling-of-time-my-eight-lifetimes/)

[2] <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/science/21qna.html?_r=1>

[3]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20071116094344/http://ourworld.co...](http://web.archive.org/web/20071116094344/http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jmkenney/)

------
alokm
Here is my take. When you experience something new, your brain works overtime
to learn new things. Thats why in a familiar setting time flies by. I guess
thats why some people are adventure seeker and travelers. At old age most of
the things become routine. Here it is argued that the whole life of a person
is counted. I simply think, life is divided in various threads. You do
something new and a new thread is created. Its along a single thread that you
may measure your perception of longevity. If you do something routine then it
seems to be fast to you as it becomes routine.

Also I remember a link on HN that explained how time virtually stopped for
Near Death Experiences.

------
Dn_Ab
What about simple time lapse? With images and video the larger the time lapse
the faster things appear to be moving especially with blur. What if something
similar held for memory?

The key memories that are remembered will typically have longer lapses for the
older than for the younger. Cognitive expectations might then correct this gap
by fudging a perception or sense of elapsed time, creating a quickened time
lapse like effect for experiences, which strengthens as you get older.

It would be interesting to ask people with autobiographical memories how they
perceive time - according to my analogy it wouldn't change since they maintain
most 'frames'.

------
rehack
From an experience:

Difficult time passes more difficultly, i.e feels longer. Example on a day if
you are fasting, time always seems earlier than what you expect. For example
on days I may think 'Gosh its still 12 PM, still 7 hours to go before the fast
breaking time!'

Only yesterday, the fast breaking time was 6:54 PM. And my wife called at me
from down stairs to come down for it at 6:53 or so (I work from my SOHO on the
upper level), I thought gosh 1 more minute, how can I wait!

So it could mean that the perceived time (that has passed) is also a function
of how frequently we sample it. Or if differently said, how much we 'live in
the moment'.

Edit: minor rephrase for clarity.

------
natecavanaugh
About 15 years ago (that long already? ;)) I saw a documentary state that
scientists had done studies showing that time perception could be manipulated
by changing their temperature. The warmer it was, the more slowly time seemed
to pass. The colder it was, the faster it seemed to pass. They hypothesized
that since people's core body temperature dropped as they age, that it could
be a factor in why time seemed to pass faster as we age. For some reason I've
always favored this solution.

------
daviddaviddavid
For anyone interested in how humans conceptualize time and what effects this
has on language, I highly recommend "Metaphors We Live By" by George Lakoff
and Mark Johnson. Truly one of the most interesting books I've ever read.

For a brief overview of the approach they take to the problem, the Wikipedia
entry for _conceptual metaphor_ is a good start:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor>

------
zerostar07
With it being published in the Journal of irreproducible results i assume this
is a joke, right? Still, I think the hypothesis is not correct. Time seems to
run faster when you are occupied. People get more busy after their 20s so i
guess that's why time seems to fly. If i can judge from myself, time seemed to
run pretty fast on a 9-6 job (i was there 20-26). Working independently (26- )
has definitely made my days longer, much longer, sometimes irritably so.

------
begriffs
Marcel Proust wrote a profound series of books that investigates memory,
personal change, and the subjective feeling of time called, "In Search of Lost
Time." He had an exceptional memory and recalls his own perceptive and
idiosyncratic feelings starting from early childhood. Some of his observations
are universal though, and you'll be delighted when he helps you remember them
for yourself.

------
caf
Another thing this would neatly explain is why it seems harder to make new
friends when you get older.

With someone I meet at 15, when I'm 20 i'll have known them for 5 effective
years. If I meet someone new at 30, on the other hand, I won't have known them
for 5 effective years until I'm 40.

------
joshsegall
This is math describing the effect not the cause, so the title is inaccurate
and misleading.

------
fungi
off topic:

why is equation rendering still broken on the web?

<http://everything2.com> uses pre tags, wikipedia uses rendered png images.

is this just another ie work around or have we really not implemented a
standard yet.

googled it myself <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MathML>

edit: thanks mbell! mathjax looks great

project to get mathjax working on wikipedia ~>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nageh/mathJax>

breakdown of mathml support ~> <http://caniuse.com/mathml> (only firefox and
safari)

~~~
mbell
Also see <http://www.mathjax.org/docs/2.0/tex.html>

Used on the most math heavy site I frequent:
<http://electronics.stackexchange.com/>

------
stretchwithme
Don't worry. Its probably going to get get excruciatingly long at the end.

Seriously, its the thinking too much about the past and the future that lead
to this perception.

You probably just thought about it a lot less when you were young.

------
agumonkey
Not sure but according to Von Bertalanffy, brain "frequency" tends to slow
down with age anyway. The same amount of perceptive events are spread onto
longer periods of time thus appearing speeding up.

------
eliajf
My grandfather, who died last year at 93, used to say that when you were 2
going on 3, that was 33% of your life. At 49 going on 50, though, that's 2% of
your life. 33% goes a lot farther than 2%.

------
jonnytran
I wonder what the formula would look like if it took into account the fact
that life expectancy is increasing. According to people like Ray Kurzweil,
it's increasing exponentially.

------
mnl
He claims so, but he is not removing any parameter... And why such a (rather
trivial) linear model is considered as a proved theory?

------
novaleaf
my own subjective data:

in my childhood, a day seems to go pretty slow, probably because of just
"messing around" tends to get boring. However I never felt the years as
passing at a different rate than they do now (in my mid 30's).

I'm the type of person who "looks to the future" however so maybe if I was
past-oriented I'd feel different.

------
aquarin
Because you heart rate decreases. Other internal clocks also seems to be
reflected with the age.

------
DanI-S
I always liked to think that our perception stays the same - it's just that
time is speeding up.

------
itmag
Has anyone here managed to defeat this effect somehow? How did you do it?
Meditation?

------
FreshCode
This is why I love HN. The comments are better than the article.

------
dotcoma
Because you get slower.

------
michaelochurch
No real evidence beyond this theory.

More likely, as peoples' lives get more complex, and as they get older and
more able to separate life into compartments, the individual compartments get
less time and therefore time seems to go faster. Children have one "life
thread". Adults have a ton of them for various relationships, interests, and
aspirations. For one example, since most people only get to spend about 2
weeks per year in the "travel thread", time from that perspective seems to go
26 times faster. If you have a summer house and show up in June and it feels
like the last time you were there (September last year) was yesterday, that's
what's at play. In that thread, it _was_ yesterday.

Minute to minute, time seems to be going at the same rate. It's when you step
back and take a macro perspective that there's a difference, because our lives
accumulate complexity that we couldn't have imagined when we were children.
Because our lives are a lot more complex, there are contexts in which 5 years
isn't an eternity in the way it would be for a child, so from a macro
perspective, long time durations aren't nearly as long.

------
goggles99
Here is my take on the question...

1\. Kids are bored too often so time seems to take forever.

2\. Career life and building a family is so busy that time flies by.

3\. Retirement and empty nesting seems to go by fast because you think more
about your pending demise and also have nothing to show for your life day
after day (career goals ETC.)

------
ashleyblackmore
whoosh

