

Why Does Time Go Faster As We Get Older? - rantfoil
http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/volume_9/v9i39_yaffe.html

======
robotrout
My view on this subject, which I've also devoted significant thought, is
fairly close the authors, but without the whole anticipation/retrospection
aspect.

Our perception of the passage of time is, in my opinion, merely a summation of
our memorable experiences. Our brain filters out some large percentage of it's
input, to keep from being overloaded. It filters out what it's already
familiar with.

As a kid, you're not familiar with much. A yield sign is interesting, for
example, and you notice it. Later, you see a yield sign, and can't even
remember you saw it.

If you travel to Australia, and the yield sign says "Give Way",you notice it
again. That's why travel is so memorable. Your brain filters less when you're
in unfamiliar territory filled with new perceptions.

As we get older, unfamiliar things and new perceptions are fewer and fewer, so
we're getting less input per unit time. Thus it seems that time is passing
faster.

My own philosophy, which I often forget to follow, is to optimize my perceived
lifespan by doing as many unfamiliar things as possible. Unfortunately,
sometimes I just want to get a hamburger instead.

~~~
andreyf
Yuk, why is everyone suggesting say-so theories without any suggestions for
testing them? Truth isn't truth if it isn't falsifiable. Instead, how about:

In hindsight, length of time is perceived as change in world view. The more
your mental state has changed in a given period of time, the longer it seems.
The reason the decade from 5 to 15 seem so much longer than 55 to 65 is
because of the drastic changes in your world view that occur during childhood.
It's the same reason not a lot of 5 year olds are friends with 15 year olds,
yet I imagine most 55 year olds can be good friends with most 65 year olds.

This hypothesis would predict several micro and macro phenomena which are
testable:

For the micro scale, two groups of subjects are placed into an environment
with no way of tracking time (no windows, no clocks) for a month. The control
group is provided with books/TV shows/news programmes of their choice, asked
to pick ones that they've read/seen and enjoy. The test group is asked to pick
books/programmes they think they'll enjoy, but have never read or seen. After
about a week, notable events are planned - maybe the light bulb burns out, or
the sheets are changed to ones which are bright red, or maybe the food in the
cafeteria changes. At the end of the month, the person is asked to estimate
the amount of time that passed between certain events. If the hypothesis is
correct, the control group should perceive less time having passed between the
events compared to the test group.

For the macro scale, my theory would predict people with monotonous,
repetitive, jobs to experience the effects of "time passes faster with aging"
more than those which expose them to new phenomena. So a Java-only career
engineer will experience the effect more than someone who spends time learning
new languages.

~~~
dmm
>> Truth isn't truth if it isn't falsifiable

A truth that isn't falsifiable isn't useful.

~~~
DougWebb
I disagree. If you know that something is true, but can't really prove that it
is true, you can still use the assumed truth to guide you. For example, I
believe that Barak Obama is an honorable man. I can't prove it, but I believe
it strongly enough to use that 'truth' to guide my voting decision.

I'm playing with the definition of 'useful' here, using a much less rigorous
meaning than you probably intended. But even scientific frameworks start with
axioms that are unprovable but accepted as true. Those are useful truths which
the rest of the framework is built upon.

~~~
dmm
Honor is falsifiable, to the degree is can be defined. An honorable person
acts differently that a dishonorable one. Just because I say something is
falsifiable doesn't mean I'm asserting I can prove it. It just means that it
is meaningful to prove it.

For example, I cannot prove that everyone in china is right handed, but that
is certainly a falsifiable idea. One could go to china and ask each person:
impossible, but meaningful.

An example of an idea that is not falsifiable is that my garage is inhabited
by undetectable dragons. What use is this idea? What use is it to speak of
things which cannot in any way be detected?

~~~
sofal
The repercussions of the unfalsifiable idea can be useful and falsifiable to a
degree. They aren't always negative, either. For example, "I feel safer and
sleep better at night because I believe my garage is inhabited by undetectable
dragons."

------
huhtenberg
A simple answer they taught us in the high-school was that you always compare
any time period to how long you have lived so far. The older you are the
greater the divider.

~~~
shorbaji
I agree. To elaborate:-

A given duration of time pales away in comparison to one’s age as he/she grows
older.

For example, a 20-year-old sees a decade as half a lifetime. For the 100 year-
old it counts as just 10%.

~~~
robotrout
I disagree. Just do this thought experiment. What seemed longer to you? Your
senior year of high-school, or your freshman year of college? I bet the
college was longer, even though by your logic, it should have been shorter.

~~~
gruseom
For most people, those two years are so close together that the incremental
fraction might not be perceptible even if the theory is correct.

~~~
raleec
Agreed. A better metric is a journey of constant distance, I've been making
long journeys(4-6 or 8-10hrs) since early childhood. They definitely feel
considerably shorter now. Of course, that doesn't clarify whether the
discrepancy is because I've seen it before, or simply because of the ratio of
distance/lifespan.

------
grandalf
My explanation is a bit different:

I propose that what happens is that as people age they get better at avoiding
boredom. Also, youth is boring compared with adulthood.

Consider grades K-6 where most students have little choice of what subjects to
learn about, are often in the care of a single teacher for most of the day,
and whose assignments involve lots of repetition (math drills, handwriting
drills, spelling drills). This _is_ just plain boring, and so the mind works
hard to avoid boredom by daydreaming, planning, etc... but still struggles to
stave off boredom.

As we age we get more choice about what we want to do, and life gets a bit
more dramatic and less boring. I recall being bored during recess in grade
school b/c I really didn't like tag or four square. Put a mixed gender group
of adults together and who knows what might happen.

So the increasing speed of the passage of time is a result both of life
becoming less boring and also of the _learned_ ability to minimize boredom. I
read articles on my phone when waiting in line or when riding the muni. In
general most of my work and leisure time is highly focused to avoid boredom
and thus just flies by.

Occasionally I have a reminder of how slowly time can pass -- such as when
sitting in a waiting room with no reading material or poor quality reading
material, etc.

------
jasonkester
_I copy/pasted this from<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=685811>, so
apologies if it sounds familiar:_

I notice a huge difference in how much "stuff" happens in my life when I'm
traveling vs. when I have a job.

Home life is measured in weeks and months, and when you ask somebody what's
new, they'll say "not much" and maybe tell you what they did last weekend. Or
the weekend before that.

Road life is measured in hours. I'll find myself telling somebody a story of
this amazing thing that happened earlier on my trip, possibly in another
country, and suddenly realize that it was only 3 days ago. A month of
travelling compresses so much life into such a short span that it's really
strange checking in with friends back in the world that can account for that
same month with a single sentence.

There are times when life in the 'states can approximate that (the first weeks
of a new startup for instance), but it's so easy to drop back into steady
state where life is measured in calendar time.

------
henryl
Could be that our memory just gets worse and worse. Kinda like how when you're
knocked out for an operation, it feels like it goes by instantly.

~~~
thras
Yes. Neural degeneration is my preferred explanation as well. Not the sort of
thing people like to think about, though, so I doubt the theory will be too
popular.

------
drawkbox
It might be the theory of relativity in action or even a scale thing
(physically and logically). When you are a kid walking it takes twice as many
steps. Just like when you learn something new you have to iterate over
documentation and tests/result/feedback loops more, seemingly taking longer.

I saw something that I can't find right now, about compounding exponential age
or relative perception of age in that when you are 1-10, 10-30, and 30-60
these are all thirds of your life, seemingly. So 1-10, 10-30 and 30-60 all
feel about the same length of time. Maybe there is some sort of memory
filtering system that contributes to that.

~~~
Flankk
The passage of time could be compared relative to your current lifespan, as
you said. I don't see how the theory of relativity applies here.

Also, if tasks take longer to accomplish wouldn't time appear to pass faster,
not slower?

------
lisper
The definitive work on this subject was done by T.L. Freeman in 1983:

[http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=932040&displayty...](http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=932040&displaytype=linkview&lastnode_id=932040)

Originally published in the Journal of Irreproducible Results. :-)

------
jonsen
Well it just might be that time actually goes faster.

I.e. the dimension of time accellerates.

~~~
frossie
Eh? That doesn't make any sense. Are you saying that radioactive nuclei decay
slower near old people?

~~~
jonsen
Yes, it's called gerontactivity ;)

No, I meant if time as such speeds up causing all events to happen faster and
faster.

Young and old would experience the same "speed" of time and feel that "speed"
accelerating with age.

------
vinutheraj
Hmm I can certainly buy this explanation. From the perspective of a child(me
as a child) every day is nearly always an anticipation, because nearly
everyday you have school and every morning I would wake up hoping its not a
working day, only to be disappointed ~70% of the time. And every week I would
be hoping for the weekend to arrive. I would keep dreaming about the time I
will be allowed to drive, the first time I can taste alcohol, etc.

Well looking back at all the weekends and my first drive and my first sip of
alcohol, it all seems to have gone so fast :(!

------
andreyf
Yuk, why doesn't it bother anyone that this is proposing a say-so theory
without any suggestions for testing it? Truth isn't truth if it isn't
falsifiable. Instead, how about:

In hindsight, length of time is perceived as change in world view. The more
your mental state has changed in a given period of time, the longer it seems.
The reason the decade from 5 to 15 seem so much longer than 55 to 65 is
because of the drastic changes in your world view that occur during childhood.
It's the same reason not a lot of 5 year olds are friends with 15 year olds,
yet I imagine most 55 year olds can be good friends with most 65 year olds.

This hypothesis would predict several micro and macro phenomena which are
testable:

For the micro scale, two groups of subjects are placed into an environment
with no way of tracking time (no windows, no clocks) for a month. The control
group is provided with books/TV shows/news programmes of their choice, asked
to _pick ones that they've read/seen_ and enjoy. The test group is asked to
pick books/programmes they think they'll enjoy, but have never read or seen.
After about a week, notable events are planned - maybe the light bulb burns
out, or the sheets are changed to ones which are bright red, or maybe the food
in the cafeteria changes. At the end of the month, the person is asked to
estimate the amount of time that passed between certain events. If the
hypothesis is correct, the control group should perceive less time having
passed between the events compared to the test group.

For the macro scale, my theory would predict people with monotonous,
repetitive, jobs to experience the effects of "time passes faster with aging"
more than those which expose them to new phenomena. So a Java-only career
engineer will experience the effect more than someone who spends time learning
new languages.

------
quizbiz
I would be very interested in techniques used to make lengths time feel
slower. Productive but stretched out. To what extent can we control our
perception of time?

------
iterationx
I think its because tasks take longer as an adult. For example to accomplish
something as a child takes a few hours, homework for example. But to
accomplish something significant as an adult could take months or years, like
software. So I think we appear to have less time because we can only get 4
significant tasks accomplished a year instead of say 100.

------
kqr2
My take: As we become older, we become more aware of our mortality, in other
words, time is running out; therefore time seems to go by faster just like it
does when you procrastinate right before a deadline.

If we were immortal, I wonder if we would continue to perceive that times go
by faster?

------
tybris
Because our lives tend to become less interesting (as in: new experiences)
over time.

------
helveticaman
Thank goodness. Highschool and elementary are shitty times for nerds.

------
4n00n
The relative term is called tangential acceleration.

