What do we really understand about the perception of time speeding up as we get older? Every time I have seen it brought up one of two explanations are given. Either time is speeding up because we have fewer novel experiences which, in turn, lead to fewer new memories being created. Then, supposedly, our feeling of time passing is dependent on how many new memories we have in a given time frame and so we feel time is speeding up.
The other explanation I have seen is that time speeds up because each new year is a smaller percentage of your life up to that point. For example, it is easier to distinguish a 2kg weight and 4kg weight than a 50kg weight and a 52kg weight. So the argument goes that a similar thing holds for our perception of time passing.
These arguments both feel sketchy to me. Is there a more rigorous investigation into this question?
I think the second explanation is correct, especially since your life up to the present doesn’t have a definite beginning point in your memory. Even if there is a first thing that you remember, you also know that that was not really the beginning of your life. So your life as you remember it is basically indefinite, but it is still objectively a finite quantity of time. And since you don’t have any particular objective measure of time, the only way you can measure a month or a year passing now is to compare them with your past experience of time. This gives you a fairly precise measure of how much time should be appearing to speed up. For example, the time from age 10 to age 20 should pass about as quickly as the time from age 20 to age 40. In my experience this seems about right to me.
What do we really understand about the perception of time speeding up as we get older? Every time I have seen it brought up one of two explanations are given. Either time is speeding up because we have fewer novel experiences which, in turn, lead to fewer new memories being created. Then, supposedly, our feeling of time passing is dependent on how many new memories we have in a given time frame and so we feel time is speeding up.
The other explanation I have seen is that time speeds up because each new year is a smaller percentage of your life up to that point. For example, it is easier to distinguish a 2kg weight and 4kg weight than a 50kg weight and a 52kg weight. So the argument goes that a similar thing holds for our perception of time passing.
These arguments both feel sketchy to me. Is there a more rigorous investigation into this question?
I think the second explanation is correct, especially since your life up to the present doesn’t have a definite beginning point in your memory. Even if there is a first thing that you remember, you also know that that was not really the beginning of your life. So your life as you remember it is basically indefinite, but it is still objectively a finite quantity of time. And since you don’t have any particular objective measure of time, the only way you can measure a month or a year passing now is to compare them with your past experience of time. This gives you a fairly precise measure of how much time should be appearing to speed up. For example, the time from age 10 to age 20 should pass about as quickly as the time from age 20 to age 40. In my experience this seems about right to me.