Time Passing Faster Than Usual!?!?

Discussion in 'Free Thoughts' started by TruthSeeker, Dec 16, 2004.

?

Why is time passing faster than usual?

  1. Physical reason

    5 vote(s)
    21.7%
  2. Social reason

    8 vote(s)
    34.8%
  3. Other reason (please explain)

    10 vote(s)
    43.5%
  1. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    15,162
    I was thinking.... many people have been saying that time seems to be passing faster than usual. At first, it seemed that this was only true to older people, that as we get older, time seems to pass faster. But now, even some kids have told me that time seem to be passing faster. Why would that be?

    I have two ideas:
    1) Physical Reason
    Time is somehow accelarating. Maybe that happens because the accelaration of the expansion of the universe? Space-time dilating faster?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    2) Social Reason
    Time is not passing faster. That is only an illusion caused by our fast-paced modern lives. We do so much at a time and so fast that time seems to pass faster and faster. If we would stop for a while and just appreaciate the moment, time would seem to pass much slower.


    I'm kinda inclined to the second idea, altough I think the first one should be considered. Any thoughts?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  2. Guest Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Persol I am the great and mighty Zo. Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,946
    Every year feels shorter for most people. I think the answer is fairly simple... we're used to it. When you're 5 a year is 20% of your life.... compared to what you've previously experienced that is huge. When your 50 it's 2%... not such a big deal.
    Nah, our brains would also be 'accelerated'... so we wouldn't notice. It would be like taping sombody walking slowly and then playing it in fast forward... they'd cancel out. Unless somebody shows that the brain doesn't need to obey the laws of physics, this idea is bunk.
    I'm not sure about you, but the last 20 years haven't really gotten much more fast paced... people just point it out more.
     
  4. Guest Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. curioucity Unbelievable and odd Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,429
    I'd say, rather than social, it's more a psychological thing (ironically, though I'm aware of this, I just can't stop blaming time for just about everything). Joy is often short-lived, while grief can make you waste days...........
     
  6. Guest Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    Terence McKenna has a theory about this which is a combination of the two. Society and time are both accelerating towards an attractor, the nature of which is unknown, but it involves the end of history.

    QUOTE:
    "It seems more likely to me that all this complexity is better directed toward the end of the cycle when, after billions of years of evolution, everything finally comes together. Alfred North Whitehead proposed this same idea. He said that history grows toward what he called a "nexus of completion." And these nexuses of completion themselves grow together into what he called the "concrescence." A concrescence exerts a kind of attraction, which can be thought of as the temporal equivalent of gravity, except all objects in the universe are drawn toward it through time, not space."
    http://www.deoxy.org/t_adt.htm#tim
     
  8. Closet Philosopher Off to Laurentian University Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,785
    I think it's the fact that people today seem to have to do more and more so there seems to be less time in a day. When I was working at two jobs and going to school, the weeks seemed to fly by. As soon as I left one job, time seemed to slow down because I had nothing to do for a couple of hours in a day.
     
  9. certified psycho Beware of the Shockie Monkey Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,943
    I have noticed that if I don't pay attention to time then time seems to pass by pretty quickly. That could be different for other people.
     
  10. Starthane Xyzth returns occasionally... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,465
    I agree with Persol about our perspective of time changing as the year becomes a lesser proportion of our lifespan to date. I'd also say that, with the gradual slowing of metabolism and lower bodily energy levels which tend to set in as we age, each hour may seem shorter because we can fit less activity into it. Not to mention that our boredom threshold is generally lower in early life... Although a 60 year-old professor may have a mind just as acute as that of his 18 year-old student, his naturally more sedentary daily routine will seemingly shorten the day for him.

    For OAPs, the years roll swiftly by; for a child, a month is an eternity.
     
  11. vslayer Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,969
    time isnt going faster .(full stop, point made)
     
  12. Calvin Teach the americans!! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    72
    time is going faster in your mind because we are evolving. So as time goes towards the end time seems shorter. However as evolution progresses it goes from zero/infinite ( which is basically nothing ) to infinite. As we can be certain the universe could not end nor begin ever fully. As far as the physical reason, we do not know how long we can live for. Originally we started out with only 1,000,000,000 heartbeats like all the other "animals" have. time itself is a constant though so it doesn't do anything. Its all in your mind.
     
  13. dsdsds Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,678
    I can remember entire days from when I was 10 but I can't remember what I did yesterday. Time does seem to go much faster as we get older. I don't think it's due to our "fast-paced" society. Because time flies even when I home doing nothing. Actually, A worthwhile experiment is to spend one day doing absolutely NOTHING. No reading, no TV, NOTHING. Just me and time alone, .. get reacquainted.
    I would give anything to slow the clock down. I think the key is to make a conscience effort to appreciate every insignificant moment. There must be a way by meditation, hypnotherapy, etc. .
     
  14. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    15,162
    I think you are getting closer, dsdsds....

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    Altough I liked all the ideas...

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  15. marv Just a dumb hillbilly... Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    743
    "Time" doesn't speed up or slow down because it's only a metric and has no physical existence. Therefore, any "acceleration" of time is only due to our perception of the sequence of events which we perceive.

    TruthSeeker, you're twenty and I'm sixty-six. Ten years is half of your lifetime and you've been pubescent only six or seven years. Ten years is less than 1/6th of my lifetime. Your father would likely be the age of my son.

    Having said that, and tried to put this in perspective, the synapsis in my brain are so full of memories that it's difficult to retain those from last week. I still retain strongly those from infancy, through childhood and into early adulthood and later. But the more that gets stuffed into my brain, the less room there is for new things to form a permanent synapse.

    Therefore, when I "think back" to recent events, it seems, at least psychologically, that greater "time" has passed at a faster rate because there are fewer connecting events between the more distant ones which are recorded in my brain; e.g., "My god, is it almost Christmas? We just had Thanksgiving! Whatever happened to December 2nd?"

    I don't know if that made sense or not, but that's my opinion. And maybe that's why you generally hear older people say, "My, how time flies.", and kids might say, "Aw, Christmas will never get here!"

    One more thing about our psychological perception of "time". Young people, with their lives ahead of them, are the most impatient. I know this because I was. But the older you get, and as your remaining years diminish, you seem to get more patient about things.
     
  16. Gambit Star Universal Entity Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    317
    I think the reason is more of an event that is happening between our physical and our spiritual. The earths vibrations and magnetic structure could easliy disturb vibrations in a quartz rock or in the minds eye.

    Considering we are on times plain, it is all perception anyway, it is only going to be a matter of events elsewhere in the universe before we become distant or closer to our sun, which could totally disturb the fragile biological system that the earth is based around.

    Considering our perceptions are created before we existed, Id have to say that marv is correct.
     
  17. Starthane Xyzth returns occasionally... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,465
    This reminds me of cosmological projections which assume an open, unending Universe which expands for ever: as it ages, entropy increases to an assymptotic limit and the energy available for life or consciousness grows ever less. Eventually, thought may be preserved in vast and tenuous magnetic latticeworks of leptons spread across desolate space or surrounding black holes, long after all stars and planets have dissolved due to proton decay. With unimaginable distances and infinitesimal temperatures, information-processing (thinking) would be incredibly gradual... but what is the urgency, when eternity lies ahead?

    Even once all the black holes have evaporated and their Hawking-radiation enrgy source is gone, the diffuse cosmic medium of electrons and positrons might still form the basis for circuitry, formed of magnetic fields and currents spread over volumes of space billions of time greater than today's whole observable Universe. Quadrillions of years will pass for every instant this residual consciousness perceives.
     
  18. Calvin Teach the americans!! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    72
    I think a quadrillion divided by infinite still equals approximately zero. in fact a google/infinite will give similar results. There is no limit.

    This is also to say that there no limit to how many universes exist either.

    When i say the social reason time is moving faster it is because we have decreased the time between incidents in our lives. Then you realize that you are the universes you will have the ability to move time faster or slower at will. The tricky part here is to figure out how (its quite simple really).

    Heres a good explanation, if you can apply it to thought process. "the universe is shaped exactly like the earth, if you go in a straight line then you end up where you were." - modest mouse

    The universe is constantly going inwards as it is outwards. it vibrates at an infinite rate. it will never physically get bigger or smaller. and because of this it can be seen by any scale as being as big as nothing. oh yeah one more thing, you couldn't have possibly written this. Muhahahahaha!!!!
     
  19. one_raven God is a Chinese Whisper Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    13,433
    TruthSeeker,
    I don't see how saying that kids tell you really makes much of a difference at all.
    If they are saying time is moving faster the must be comparing it to SOMETHING.
    Thus, regardless how young they are, they are still older than they were when time seemed to be going slower and as they age, time speeds up.
     
  20. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    15,162
    marv,

    I understand what you are saying, but a 15 kid also told me that time is passing faster. That's why I started this thread, cause it might not be just an age thing.


    one_raven,

    I don't know. It's just that it seems quite universal. But marv might be just right....
     
  21. marv Just a dumb hillbilly... Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    743
    The passage of time is measured as the difference between two or more non-simultaneous events, much like the "ticks" of a clock. But our perception of time is psychological. So "time flies" when you're having fun, yet it drags during those long, boring lectures.

    That doesn't mean that growing old is a fun time. It only means that a memorable event at fifteen is less so at thirty, and even less than that at sixty. Room to store them gradually diminishes as we accumulate more and more junk.

    Consider this; when you sleep at night, you're not aware of the passage of time because your brain isn't storing new events.
     
  22. top mosker Ariloulaleelay Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    458
    Since time is just an invention of man, it isn't a social or physical reason. Change occurs - this we know. Right now, we live in a world which changes at an incredible rate.

    In any case, I think spidergoat (with McKenna's help) got the closest to what I am trying to say. I personally don't think we are heading to some unknown point, but I like McKenna's ideas on change.
     
  23. Starthane Xyzth returns occasionally... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,465
    No indeed... I am not sure I understand it, either.

    If what you want to say is "time is all in the mind," why not just write that?
     

Share This Page