We've known this for over a decade at least https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-03/how-time-flie...
Why time seems to pass faster as we age
151–160 of 272 posts
Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age
#152There is already a body of research on the perception of time as a function of age, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception#Changes_with_a... . It stems from a few things, and novelty is only one factor. (Also, it is not only that the world begins (to us) as full of novelty, but also most people gradually transition from exploration to exploitation.) In addition to remembering previous events, there is also…
The ticks per second thing is very interesting because of a something weird i encountered the other day - i suddenly realised seconds are WAY faster than they used to be. I play music so have a pretty good feel for rhythm and i distinctly remember the clock in a family members house ticking each second being way, way slower as a kid. Slept there the other day and it was fast as hell. So incredibly weird. I'm sure my…
I had the same realization a few years ago and it horrified me. Is it gonna keep getting faster?
Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age
#153It would be interesting to know when the subjective midpoint of your life is. I mean, if you lived to 80, and time seemed to speed up as you get older, is the subjective middle of your lifespan more like age 35, or more like age 25? I recognize it's impossible to answer this question from inside a life, but I have wondered it many times.
Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age
#154I've been journalling for 10+ years. In addition to forcing me to actually write down what happened that day, reviewing old entries provides a feeling of history that makes life feel soooo long and so rich. I can review my now-wife's rocky courtship and feel grateful we made it. I looked back 3 years ago and found the day our children were conceived :D (we have twins). I can review the anxieties of my PhD years, etc…
I do something similar, but with photos. I have a 4k display on the wall with a rpi/python script that picks photos from today +/- 15 days for all years, then makes collages to display, 1 per minute. So the photos are from the same time of year, but for years past, and every day new photos cycle in and out. Another neat way to stir up memories of old, if you have a pile of photos around.
Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age
#155I've been journalling for 10+ years. In addition to forcing me to actually write down what happened that day, reviewing old entries provides a feeling of history that makes life feel soooo long and so rich. I can review my now-wife's rocky courtship and feel grateful we made it. I looked back 3 years ago and found the day our children were conceived :D (we have twins). I can review the anxieties of my PhD years, etc…
You're apparently in a good place so looking back is your path to your joyful present. I'm in a bad place so looking back is my seeing back when I was still hopeful for my various life goals. I'd meet someone and have someone to share my life with, do activities with, travel with, raise kids with, etc. I never met that person and now at 60+ that's nearly impossible so looking back hurts. It hurts a-lot. Seeing the op…
> then committing 10 of them to move to a foreign country to immerse myself in a new language feels very different than when I've got 60 years left
Could you elaborate on that? As someone who is younger I have noticed that many (but by no means all) people over 60 often do not want to commit to these kind of 'life-changing' escapades, despite now having the time (kids out of the house and/or retired). I assumed it was more around lack of (youthful) energy/health and the fact that you're so used to how you've lived for decades that change is far more difficult or feels more daunting.
You're saying that having a relatively shorter amount of 'time left' makes such a move different, wouldn't that fact make it easier? (YOLO and so on...)
Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age
#156One thing I love about the speedup of time is that picking a compounding habit (say, doing something for 10 minutes each day) feels like having an almost instant pay-off. "Oh wow 3 years already passed" -> "Oh wow I got pretty good at this thing I picked up just yesterday" I picked up biking during the pandemic, and 3 years later I have legs of steel, 10k miles under my belt, and people know me as "the bike guy", whe…
It kinda sucks that you learn much slower when you’re older though. I’ve been practicing piano an hour or two a day for 7 months and I don’t really feel like I’ve improved at all. I was intermediate when I started and I am taking professional lessons. Mid 30s here.
learning curve of the piano is crazy. and if you stop playing you go back to zero really really fast
Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age
#157One thing I love about the speedup of time is that picking a compounding habit (say, doing something for 10 minutes each day) feels like having an almost instant pay-off. "Oh wow 3 years already passed" -> "Oh wow I got pretty good at this thing I picked up just yesterday" I picked up biking during the pandemic, and 3 years later I have legs of steel, 10k miles under my belt, and people know me as "the bike guy", whe…
It kinda sucks that you learn much slower when you’re older though. I’ve been practicing piano an hour or two a day for 7 months and I don’t really feel like I’ve improved at all. I was intermediate when I started and I am taking professional lessons. Mid 30s here.
Weird that with no other information you just immediately attribute this to your (not-very-old) age
Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age
#158According to this book: https://valsec.barnesandnoble.com/w/slow-down-time-the-power... , it basically happens because the number of snapshots you encode per second goes down. Snapshots are visual cues that we encode. The best example is that if we are watching a fan start, after a certain speed, we cannot tell how many wings are there on the fan. We are not snapshotting fast enough. Younger people can probably tell the number of wings on a faster fan :). Various things slow down this snapshotting in our brain, and the best antidote is to get in the zone and do things with immense attention.
Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age
#159One very simple explanation I’ve read is that time perception (as time itself) is relative. Time goes slower when you are a child because your perception of time is relative to the totality of time you’ve experienced.
So for instance, when you go from 1 to 2yrs old, it’s double the amount of your entire life, but from 80 to 81 it’s just a small fraction.
Not sure if this has been proven or is even possible to prove.
Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ticks per second thing is very interesting because of a something weird i encountered the other day - i suddenly realised seconds are WAY faster than they used to be. I play music so have a pretty good feel for rhythm and i distinctly remember the clock in a family members house ticking each second being way, way slower as a kid. Slept there the other day and it was fast as hell. So incredibly weird. I'm sure my…
I had the same realization a few years ago and it horrified me. Is it gonna keep getting faster?
Extrapolating from my own case time seems to have doubled in speed from 5 to in my 30's, if that doubles when im 70, then when im 100 it's 8 times as fast, wow.
I wonder what that would mean for life extension, imagine this exponential - then you'll get very little effect from living past 200 years:
Pretty interesting thought experiment.