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Mon 13 Aug, 2012 07:22 am
I don't know if the question has been answered whether animals, with different lifespans, perceive passing time differently? (Shorter life, time passes more quickly?) But, for humans, can different people perceive time passing differently? For example, when we say a person had been "burning his/her candle from both ends," and then has a shorter than average lifespan, did that person conceivably perceive time passing faster?
@Foofie,
The older I get the slower I go, but time, time goes faster nd faster and faster. A math teacher friend once gave a very logical explanation: When you're ten years old a year is one tenth of your life. When you're fifty a year is one fiftieth.
There"s also the element of been there done that to each new year's cycle. The trip back usually feels quicker than the trip out.
@nextone,
I agree with that analysis.
I think that's why kids perceive time so differently than adults do. The bits of time that pass are a larger percentage of their total experience. So the passage of time for human beings is perceived in relationship to the amount of time that we have already experienced (and remember). I assume it is similar for other mammals depending on how much they remember.
@nextone,
nextone wrote:
The older I get the slower I go, but time, time goes faster nd faster and faster. A math teacher friend once gave a very logical explanation: When you're ten years old a year is one tenth of your life. When you're fifty a year is one fiftieth.
There"s also the element of been there done that to each new year's cycle. The trip back usually feels quicker than the trip out.
I've heard/read your explanation too. However, could there be a co-factor that at a young age our brains are less involved with the world we live in, since so much of our lives are charted out for us, be it lunch, school, etc., and as adults, we have an increasingly involved existence, with many "nodes" in our brains for this or that, so in our "busyness" we perceive time going faster, since we do not seem to have that much time to fly a kite, like we did as a child?
@Foofie,
Quote:a shorter than average lifespan, did that person conceivably perceive time passing faster?
doubtful
Quote:whether animals, with different lifespans, perceive passing time differently?
The perception is probably based on relative size. A housefly for instance doesn’t perceive himself as buzzing but slowly flapping his wings
@Foofie,
RReminds me of Bob Dylan's "....and those not busy being born are busy dyin".....going downhill is alot faster than going up.
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