
The older you are, the quicker you count out a minute - XzetaU8
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/september-2020/time-flies-relatively-speaking/
======
Strilanc
Article doesn't give a citation, just says "psychologists have shown".

Also, wouldn't counting the minute faster be the opposite of what you'd
predict for someone who was experiencing time as if it was passing faster?
Shouldn't they instead be counting in slow motion, as life whizzes by at
normal speed? Or are we instead saying that they've noticed the difference and
are somehow overcompensating?

~~~
ComputerGuru
The argument as I’ve heard it is that time is relative to what you’ve
experienced: when you’re ten years old, waiting out a year is a tenth of your
existence, and will feel immeasurably longer than the passing of a year would
when you’ve been through a hundred.

~~~
neckardt
To me this seems like the perception of time is more based on uniqueness of
experiences. When you're young everything was new and therefore was
interesting and mattered more. When you're older you slip into a routine and
days begin to blur by.

Maybe it's just because of the pandemic, but if I look at the last 6 months of
my life right now I don't really remember too much. Mainly sitting at my desk
and programming. Then one time my parents came to visit. Comparing that to the
average month of college, of course I would perceive that time as longer as
longer than my recent 6 months.

~~~
Aerroon
I lean towards the same explanation. I look at it from the perspective of how
many memories are created in a unit of time. I've read when your adrenaline is
pumping you create many memories. This makes the situation feel like it lasted
for a lot longer than it actually did.'

You probably don't create many memories when you do routine things. During
sleep you hardly create any memories. That's why time feels like it passed
quickly during those activities. Unique and exciting events do create many
memories though, so time feels like it passes slower during them.

At least this is the reasoning I've come up with for myself from what I've
read.

' It fits well with the perception that music plays slower during exercise.

------
Bud
I would be willing to bet that this isn't true for trained classical
musicians. I've been able to very accurately count seconds for 30+ years now
and I don't seem to be getting any worse at it with age, at least not yet.

~~~
dundercoder
I’ve been a musician for 20 years and I still rush a beat if I’m not careful.

~~~
elliottkember
You must be a drummer

~~~
1vasari
Guitarist*

Drummers usually have better time-feel that other musicians...

~~~
elliottkember
Hacker News never fails to miss the joke

~~~
piva00
I will be honest: I'm starting to dread the joke threads appearing on HN. I've
noticed an uptick of these reddit-esque joke threads in the past few months
and I've been puzzled why since I don't remember this phenomenon happening
before.

~~~
elliottkember
Yeah, I’m guilty as charged here. I spend a lot time on both sites these days
and they bleed into each other for me.

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elchief
Any tips on making time go faster on the treadmill?

~~~
gnicholas
I find that I go much faster on a rowing machine if I'm watching a show that
has fast-action sequences like fight scenes or chases. I now watch sitcoms
only when doing dishes, and keep episodes of faster-paced shows for when I'm
exercising.

~~~
iscrewyou
I only watch Peaky Blinders on the stair master. I look forward to it now...or
looked forward to it pre covid

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will_pseudonym
I remember this effect being mentioned in the documentary miniseries "Time"[0]
hosted by Michio Kaku. It looks like it's on YouTube if you're interested[1].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_(British_TV_programme)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_\(British_TV_programme\))

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL03F2D49431E2A889](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL03F2D49431E2A889)

~~~
Buildstarted
I remember that and thought they came to the opposite conclusion. That the
older you are the slower you count out a minute. I performed the experiment on
my grandfather shortly after finding out and he counted out a minute in about
2.5 minutes. It'll take a while to go through the videos to reset my memory
though.

~~~
rwesty
I believe you are right, here is another article from 1996 supposing the
opposite it true as well.
[https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15220571-700-why-
time...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15220571-700-why-time-flies-
in-old-age/)

~~~
rwesty
Oh, I had some trouble wrapping my head around the idea. The older people
count out slowly by as much as 40 seconds. They are inferring that the
perceived time for the older folks is faster.

~~~
ewat456
The article is wrong. From the book itself: "The older group, ranging in age
between sixty and eighty, were off by forty seconds. Not far off, but if we
were to extend the counting for, say, one hour, it would amount to more than
thirteen minutes."

That's 30min + 13min.....they are counting slower....not finishing the task
faster...

------
rmason
Time sure seems to be running much faster than when I was a teenager fifty
years ago.

But I tried counting out to 60 with Google stopwatch running at my side. I was
a bit astounded to find counting to 60 took me 75 seconds. So count me as
skeptical about this story.

------
sgtnoodle
Earlier this year my heart rate dropped down to about 35bpm before I ended up
in the hospital. Watching seconds tick by on the clock went by very quickly.
On the other hand, I was fortunate to have access to but unfortunate to
experience a cardiac MRI, which synchronizes the scan to your heart beat. I
had to hold a breath for 30+ seconds at a time, which felt like an eternity
considering my rate went down to 21bpm at the time.

------
pacaro
Humourously your 'ability' to judge the passage of time is part of a field
sobriety test in many parts of the US

~~~
taneq
Do you(/they if you're not from the US) not have breathalyzers?

~~~
Fezzik
We do in the US, but the general public (and jurors) can be skeptical of
breathalyzers, no matter how accurate they are. So the police are forced to
come up with ancillary evidence in case someone contests that they were drunk.
As a law clerk I watched a jury find a guy not guilty of a DUII who blew a .18
on a properly calibrated breathalyzer because of a bunch of wonky arguments by
his defense attorney about how the officer did not conduct other field
sobriety tests.

\- At a .18 BAC you are drunk and on the brink of blacking out, unless you are
a full-fledged alcoholic.

~~~
taneq
Wow, a .18 is pretty solidly drunk. In Australia you're fined for being over
0.05 and automatic 6 month loss of license for 0.08.

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mikewarot
Not this old sysadmin.... count slow when waiting to reboot cable modems....
or you have to wait and do it again.

------
gnatman
“My grandfather used to say: Life is astoundingly short. To me, looking back
over it, life seems so foreshortened that I scarcely understand, for instance,
how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being
afraid that -not to mention accidents- even the span of a normal happy life
may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey.”

\- Franz Kafka

------
ojbyrne
I dunno how this fits in here, but Covid/WFH makes me feel like last Christmas
was 2 decades ago. And I’m OLD.

------
nkurz
As best as I can tell, this article simply has the effect backwards from what
Mazur claims. Rather than counting too fast, the usual psychology studies show
that the elderly count too slowly. Mazur cites Mangan et al (1996), which
(seems to) claim:

 _When 15 healthy adults ages 50 to 80 counted seconds to estimate a time
period of three minutes, they took 3.7 minutes on average, scientists at the
Clinch Valley College of the University of Virginia at Wise reported recently
at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

In contrast, 25 students ages 19 to 24 estimated the three-minute period
accurately._

[https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-
xpm-1996-12-03-96112901...](https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-
xpm-1996-12-03-9611290165-story.html)

So when this article says "if they counted seconds for an hour they’d think
the task done with around the 47-minute mark", it's backwards. If we assume
linearity (should we?) it should say that the average elderly person would
take about 1 hour 15 minutes to count an estimated hour.

Confusing the issue, though, there do appear to be more recent studies
claiming the opposite effect. This 2015 paper seems to clearly show that the
elderly do take less than 90 "real clock" seconds to count off 120 "brain
clock" seconds:

 _Objective: To measure a 2 min time interval, counted mentally in subjects of
different age groups._

 _Method: 233 healthy subjects (129 women) were divided into three age groups:
G1, 15-29 years; G2, 30-49 years; and G3, 50-89 years. Subjects were asked to
close their eyes and mentally count the passing of 120 s._

 _Results: The elapsed times were: G1, mean = 114.9 ± 35 s; G2, mean = 96.0 ±
34.3 s; G3, mean = 86.6 ± 34.9 s._

[https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S000...](https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0004-282X2016000400006&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en).

Unless I'm reading it wrong (the terminology of 'estimated' vs 'real' can be
confusing), this seems to flatly contradict the earlier work by Mangan. It
doesn't cite Mangan, though! And I can't actually find any of Mangan's studies
online --- his CV lists his work
([http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/pm46/vita.html](http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/pm46/vita.html))
but without DOI's.

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huffmsa
Because it's an increasingly smaller amount of time over the total amount of
time you've experienced.

I remember feeling like it took an eternity when I was a kid.

Now it's a constant barrage of "shit, it's that time already?"

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momokoko
Routine makes time move faster.

Not having your mind wander as much when you're older makes it faster to count
through a minute.

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_underfl0w_
Does anyone else think this seems like a lot more "pseudo" than "science"? Is
it specifically supposed to be more of an exposé of this one guy's subjective
view? Why does it focus on just this one mathematician? The author briefly
touches on Max Planck's work, but then seems to conflate _objective reality_
with _human perception_?

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
The key insight (that older people count out seconds faster) is based on
experimental science. The rest is more speculation.

FWIW, I'm convinced that seconds felt slower when I was a child, and they now
tick up faster than they used to. Obviously there's no way to measure this,
because this is my perception, not measurable reality.

~~~
drran
Larger brain need more time to propagate waves, so smaller brains have
advantages. Also, with age our brains become more convoluted, which makes wave
propagation even slower. Fly sees world at 400Hz, human: at about 16-20Hz.

Try to play games, which requires fast reaction and deep thinking at same
time, and speed of your brain will increase a bit.

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crazy5sheep
heart rate related?

