Time

[Radioactive_Springtime]

Lately I've noticed time goes by faster and faster. It started with work shifts going seemingly getting shorter, when they certainly are not, and then I noticed cigarettes seem to last less and less. It may just be me, any thoughts?

 

[Auburn]

It's not just you. According to physicsts, the dimension of time is undergoing changes. As you know, space is curved and not perfectly linear, and time is the same way; wider in some areas and more narrow in others. We're entering one of the more narrow parts of space-time; causing our time to also become more narrow/shorter.

 

[Radioactive_Springtime]

blame einstein, gotcha

 

[Dormouse]

Hmm, but even if time was running faster, wouldn't it seem the same to us? I mean, we aren't independant of time. We don't really have any points of reference on a day to day basis so I don't see how we could notice time running slower...
Please explain this further to me or correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not very well educated in this area.

I've always attributed time seeming to go by faster to the fact that I'm aging, therefore every hour is less and less of a percentage of my life. ( Seriously. When I was a kid, five hours was like INFINITY.)

 

[Auburn]

dormouse, shh~ you're blowing my cover!

It's true! The reason we're able to perceive it is because our consciousness resides outside of the four dimensions, and are therefore able to perceive the other four dimensions altering.

The first four dimensions are deterministic and immaculately calculated by cause and effect most of the time. However, they are sometimes influenced by the fifth, which is the cause of all supernatural happenings in the world, including the existence of life. Since our souls are part of this supernatural dimension, it is also exempt from deterministic "cause-and-effects" and is able to supernaturally affect the first four by it's awareness & also perceive change in the first four.

 

[Da Blob]

It has been a common observation through the ages that the longer one lives the faster Time seems to 'flow' by. A year in my life today seems to last only about 3 months compared to when I was my twenties. I am almost scared to think that 2010 is just a few days away...
There actually has been some research done on this phenomena, but I do not think anyone has found a decent explanation for it, as of yet. From my perspective Time is a spiral, a whirlpool that is pulling me under....

 

[Darby]

I've always attributed time seeming to go by faster to the fact that I'm aging, therefore every hour is less and less of a percentage of my life. ( Seriously. When I was a kid, five hours was like INFINITY.)

my history teacher and philosphy club leader describes the feeling the same way.

I also wonder if people who hate to make decisions just feel this way, like we have too little time, and are always being rushed, I personally feel this way when I am supposed to make decisions

 

[nickgray]

I'd speculate that it happens because as we get older we become more and more "familiar" with many activities, environment, etc. So essentially most of the things become pretty common to us and we tend to perceive (on average) that time moves "faster", perhaps because we don't pay as much attention to stuff as we used to (because we already know it). But that's just speculation

 

[Artifice Orisit]

I agree with nickgray, to a child's relentlessly curious mind 5 hours seems like an eternity because it's 5 hours of intense learning, even a boring waiting room is full of stuff to look at and comprehend; but to an adult (who already has some idea of what's in a waiting room) the time passes by quickly because they don't bother studying the environment or if they do there's nothing worth paying attention to.

This is why a year can pass so quickly in an office job or crawl if one moves overseas.

 

[Darby]

I agree with nickgray, to a child's relentlessly curious mind 5 hours seems like an eternity because it's 5 hours of intense learning, even a boring waiting room is full of stuff to look at and comprehend; but to an adult (who already has some idea of what's in a waiting room) the time passes by quickly because they don't bother studying the environment or if they do there's nothing worth paying attention to.

This is why a year can pass so quickly in an office job or crawl if one moves overseas.

this is interesting, because I worked in a cubicle for a year, and i must say it felt like an eternity, because I wasn't learning, I wasn't enjoying myself. whereas when I am actively learning, it feels like time won't stay where it belongs. I wish time felt slower when i was learning, maybe then I'd be able to learn more

 

[Moocow]

Your perception of time is based entirely on your memory. My guess is that as you get older there is an ever-increasing total of weight on your memory, so it tends to leave more blank spots in between experienced seconds or minutes out of the day.

But I can slow down time if I want. All I have to do is meditate and focus on almost everything being experienced in the very present moment. The sheer amount of information being recorded in my memory as I do that seems to expand my remembered perception of time, in order to encompass all of the senses I have placed my attention upon in each moment.

To support that, it's commonly reported that psychedelics have a way of slowing down time in one's mind. They also generally cause you to experience your senses more vividly in the exact moment that the senses occur.

In one sentence, I really think that time, as we perceive it in our minds, is a flexible variable that depends on how much information is being recorded to memory at the moment.

In fact, I must make a graph to show how this works psychologically. I figured it out a couple weeks ago.

Edit:

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/7936/timegraph1200.jpg

That's my theory.

 

[Moocow]

Also I don't think I really buy into the whole proportion idea, that time just seems shorter because you measure your age against your entire potential lifespan. I think that is a much more broad, long term thing that you almost have to consciously consider for it to have any impact on how you think. I have no idea how long I'm going to live, so I can't create a proportion based on a guess.
Also I don't think I can measure the length of a day against how many days I've been alive for a proportion, because I don't put any regular thought or consideration into my age. Does anyone else take a second or two to remember how old they are when asked?

 

[Da Blob]

Cool graph!
Yes, there is a relationship with Time and Memory, yet I believe it does have a lot to do with processing speed and amount of input. However, despite what has been said about children, I have found the busier I am the 'faster' time seems to flow, this kind of refutes the idea that time is slower for a child because they are more mentally active than adults...(?)

 

[Moocow]

Children aren't particularly busy the same way adults are. When we are busy with a very specific task, it ought to give the feeling that time has sped up, because our attention is placed in just that task for a long time. Children are busy without focusing on one thing specifically for a long time, because there is so much new and fascinating to them. That's why it time would seem slower.

 

[Nicholas A. A. E.]

Your perception of time is based entirely on your memory. My guess is that as you get older there is an ever-increasing total of weight on your memory, so it tends to leave more blank spots in between experienced seconds or minutes out of the day.

I've only a smattering of knowledge in psychology, but I'm pretty sure this is false. Our memory capacities are practically infinite - it is only when some part of the system is damaged that memory loss increases. Either the memory isn't being stored properly, or isn't being retrieved properly, but there's always enough storage space.

I definitely forget why this is thought to be the case though.

 

[Moocow]

I've only a smattering of knowledge in psychology, but I'm pretty sure this is false. Our memory capacities are practically infinite - it is only when some part of the system is damaged that memory loss increases. Either the memory isn't being stored properly, or isn't being retrieved properly, but there's always enough storage space.

I definitely forget why this is thought to be the case though.

Yeah, you're probably right. That was just a guess anyhow.

 

[Moocow]

Ok I have something interesting to report back.

I've been putting my theory to test. I've been meditating upon my attention, narrowing my attention to just one sense in order to speed up time, and broadening it to encompass all my senses at once to slow down time. After broadening it to as many senses as possible, for brief moments I could see my monitor's 60hz refresh rate creating diagonal, quickly flickering lines on the screen, and the music in my ears slowing slightly in tempo.

A few other mental phenomena seem to occur as well... one of them is that my vision balanced so that my left eye was no longer dominating, and it seemed to sharpen my sight briefly.
I have a slight headache now too.

 

[whoare..plworld.]

Formula? If you have understand.Let prove that a thing reduction in length as it moves faster than.By formula.

 

[Nicholas A. A. E.]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_contraction
With particular focus on the introduction and the section "A trigonometric effect?".

 

[fullerene]

I always thought it was just in proportion to how much of your life you've lived so far. At least, this is what my dad told me when I noticed the school years speeding up when I was in elementary school (not joking).

He said "well, to an 8 year old, a year of your life is 1/8 of your whole life. When you're 20, it's only 1/20 of your life. By the time you're 50, it's 1/50. Years always seem to get shorter as you age because it's a lower proportion of the time you've already experienced."

Thinking back on it, that might've been one of the most reasonable explanations for anything he's ever given... but I never found anything wrong with it.

 

[Tyria]

I think it has something to do with life experience and focus. I think kids are much more focused on things because so many things are new to them.

I think the concept of time is different for adults because of their attention spans (and being forced to have sat through school classes). I think that they lose focus through familiar activities and are somewhat less invested in the 'here and now'. Their focus is (probably) not as much on the task at hand as it is on their schedule that they run on. Kids have their schedules pretty much set up by other people.

 

[whoare..plworld.]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_contraction
it is formula.author is Albert Einstein.
you see monitor of computer.length of it is 17 inch.
what is mean of length?
it is h( f(x,y,z,time of above point), f(x,y,z,time of bellow point))
it is one function.
that function have some conditions (speed of light is max,max + const =max)

--->it is mean of length.if who know then go on.

 

[Nicholas A. A. E.]

Actually, George FitzGerald came up with that one first. Hendrik Lorentz independently proposed it too, and Lorentz's treatment was taken further. All this came around several years before special relativity.

Lorentz was a pretty cool dude.

 

[whoare..plworld.]

At tomorrow.
I will prove formula about length by another way.
Function f in expression:
h (f (x, y, z, time of above point), f (x, y, z, of bellow point))
will have one way to see clear.