The older you are, the quicker you count out a minute | Hacker News Reader

The older you are, the quicker you count out a minute

thecritic.co.uk

79 pointsXzetaU863 comments

Article doesn't give a citation, just says "psychologists have shown".

Also, wouldn't counting the minute faster be the opposite of what you'd predict for someone who was experiencing time as if it was passing faster? Shouldn't they instead be counting in slow motion, as life whizzes by at normal speed? Or are we instead saying that they've noticed the difference and are somehow overcompensating?

The argument as I’ve heard it is that time is relative to what you’ve experienced: when you’re ten years old, waiting out a year is a tenth of your existence, and will feel immeasurably longer than the passing of a year would when you’ve been through a hundred.

To me this seems like the perception of time is more based on uniqueness of experiences. When you're young everything was new and therefore was interesting and mattered more. When you're older you slip into a routine and days begin to blur by.

Maybe it's just because of the pandemic, but if I look at the last 6 months of my life right now I don't really remember too much. Mainly sitting at my desk and programming. Then one time my parents came to visit. Comparing that to the average month of college, of course I would perceive that time as longer as longer than my recent 6 months.

I lean towards the same explanation. I look at it from the perspective of how many memories are created in a unit of time. I've read when your adrenaline is pumping you create many memories. This makes the situation feel like it lasted for a lot longer than it actually did.'

You probably don't create many memories when you do routine things. During sleep you hardly create any memories. That's why time feels like it passed quickly during those activities. Unique and exciting events do create many memories though, so time feels like it passes slower during them.

At least this is the reasoning I've come up with for myself from what I've read.

' It fits well with the perception that music plays slower during exercise.

I hope this is true. It means the solution to the time dilation perception as one ages, is to constantly travel, have new hobbies, meet new people.

> the perception of time is more based on uniqueness of experiences

It might be the study discussed in this article: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15220571-700-why-time...

But it's actually saying the opposite, 3:40 passed while the older subjects counted 3 minutes.

edit: oops, this was already pointed out elsewhere https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24381550

>Also, wouldn't counting the minute faster be the opposite of what you'd predict for someone who was experiencing time as if it was passing faster?

If they psychologically experience a wall-clock minute shorter (than a young person), then they'd tend to underestimate its duration when they are asked to count one.

The wall-clock remains the same and is lived by them the same -- but they feel its a short period, so they call out a short period when they asked to count one.

I would be willing to bet that this isn't true for trained classical musicians. I've been able to very accurately count seconds for 30+ years now and I don't seem to be getting any worse at it with age, at least not yet.

I’ve been a musician for 20 years and I still rush a beat if I’m not careful.

You must be a drummer

Guitarist*

Drummers usually have better time-feel that other musicians...

Hacker News never fails to miss the joke

I will be honest: I'm starting to dread the joke threads appearing on HN. I've noticed an uptick of these reddit-esque joke threads in the past few months and I've been puzzled why since I don't remember this phenomenon happening before.

Yeah, I’m guilty as charged here. I spend a lot time on both sites these days and they bleed into each other for me.

Similar for me, I have a good feel of what a second is and counting a minute I'd be around a second off. Not a musician though, programmer.

Any tips on making time go faster on the treadmill?

Yep, just zone out. Try to cultivate some equivalent of highway hypnosis.

Or just actually go walking out in the real world instead of using a treadmill. It's way more interesting. Bonus points if there's some offroad / bushwalk type stuff in there, it's great for all your control muscles.

Watch a movie or listen to a podcast, you'll zone out if your brain finds it interesting enough. And when you zone out time flies.

I got myself an under-desk treadmill. I walk most of my day, without even worrying. Sometimes I lower it down to like 1.5mph, which is really slow, but otherwise I'm walking most of my day.

I find that I go much faster on a rowing machine if I'm watching a show that has fast-action sequences like fight scenes or chases. I now watch sitcoms only when doing dishes, and keep episodes of faster-paced shows for when I'm exercising.

I only watch Peaky Blinders on the stair master. I look forward to it now...or looked forward to it pre covid

Hm, nice. I'll try that

I've been watching 10,000m races, and it sorta helps...

Hierarchically decompose your total distance and count it out at each order of magnitude. I used to row indoors quite a bit and would count each 100 meters, incrementing to track each 1000 meters. Helps both to focus on short term goals but also feel the progress toward the longer term goals.

That said, my fitness incremented by orders of magnitude by getting outdoors and when confined to indoors finding a way to play video games at the same time. This week, I've done 3 rides greater than 50 miles for what it's worth.

How do you play video games and maintain proper form?

Nintendo Switch controller. One half per hand is ideal for cycling, IMO. I wound up getting an adapter to play PS4 games with a Switch controller (also PC emulators). But there are a bunch of good turn-based strategy games for Switch which work really well.

How do you bake a perfect cheesecake?

Maybe obvious, but music. I find upbeat “guilty pleasure” music works great for me. Or just anything with a fast enough beat that you enjoy. For me, this is a good opportunity to listen to kinds of music that I would find too distracting to use as background for other activities.

Ya, Rage Against the Machine is my go-to

I listen to a lot of audio books with noise cancelling earbuds. I try to remember to pay attention to each word so that I don't have attention left for the legs and situation.

Fall on treadmill, sustain brain injury, spend several months in coma.

Good running technique and concentrate on your breathing.

Not faster but some variant of HIIT helps. I do 6 cycle of 30 sec high intensity with around 3 min low intensity. It takes away the boredom you feel on treadmill.

I remember this effect being mentioned in the documentary miniseries "Time"[0] hosted by Michio Kaku. It looks like it's on YouTube if you're interested[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_(British_TV_programme)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL03F2D49431E2A889

I remember that and thought they came to the opposite conclusion. That the older you are the slower you count out a minute. I performed the experiment on my grandfather shortly after finding out and he counted out a minute in about 2.5 minutes. It'll take a while to go through the videos to reset my memory though.

You might be right! It's been a long time since I watched it.

No it Was not a long time ? ;)

I think that would make sense, because time seems to speed up as you get older, so if you think only a minute has passed when it was actually 2.5 minutes it would definitely feel like time had gone much more quickly than anticipated

I believe you are right, here is another article from 1996 supposing the opposite it true as well. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15220571-700-why-time...

Oh, I had some trouble wrapping my head around the idea. The older people count out slowly by as much as 40 seconds. They are inferring that the perceived time for the older folks is faster.

The article is wrong. From the book itself: "The older group, ranging in age between sixty and eighty, were off by forty seconds. Not far off, but if we were to extend the counting for, say, one hour, it would amount to more than thirteen minutes."

That's 30min + 13min.....they are counting slower....not finishing the task faster...

Time sure seems to be running much faster than when I was a teenager fifty years ago.

But I tried counting out to 60 with Google stopwatch running at my side. I was a bit astounded to find counting to 60 took me 75 seconds. So count me as skeptical about this story.

Earlier this year my heart rate dropped down to about 35bpm before I ended up in the hospital. Watching seconds tick by on the clock went by very quickly. On the other hand, I was fortunate to have access to but unfortunate to experience a cardiac MRI, which synchronizes the scan to your heart beat. I had to hold a breath for 30+ seconds at a time, which felt like an eternity considering my rate went down to 21bpm at the time.

Humourously your 'ability' to judge the passage of time is part of a field sobriety test in many parts of the US

Yep. Police Forces really need to reform these silly baseless psuedo-science ideas.

Given that they end up with a breath test anyway, either there on at the station, and the field sobriety isn't typically admissible, I suspect that they do it for other reasons. It's either theatre to intimidate the suspect, or an excuse for overtime for the other 2-4 offices that show up

I imagine it's fun for the officers to watch a drunk person try these things too.

Yes, they’ve already made up their mind about what they want to do, so once you’re suspected the testing is just a formality.

> Given that they end up with a breath test anyway

You might not have a lot of say in whether you’re taken in for a breath test, but that doesn’t make it admissible in court. A cop only needs reasonable suspicion to pull you over and ask if you’re drunk. A cop needs probable cause to arrest you for breath test.

The purpose of the field sobriety test is to help with the probable cause part. It’s also worth noting that (in the US at least), you are never under any obligation to participate in one. Refusing one can’t be weighed against you as probable cause, and participating in one will never help you. Especially considering police will judge as sober field sobriety test participant as impaired about 50% of the time.

Roadside breath tests are quite a different matter though. But they’re still used for the same purpose. The actual evidential test will be a blood/breath test performed after arrest.

It's more than that.

When it becomes just a breath test, next step is to set up road blocks and breath test everyone. We know because it happens in countries.

The idea is human beings should be considered innocent by default and allowed to live their lives without being medically tested at random.

Suspicion -> suspicion -> breath test -> blood test.

Do you(/they if you're not from the US) not have breathalyzers?

We do in the US, but the general public (and jurors) can be skeptical of breathalyzers, no matter how accurate they are. So the police are forced to come up with ancillary evidence in case someone contests that they were drunk. As a law clerk I watched a jury find a guy not guilty of a DUII who blew a .18 on a properly calibrated breathalyzer because of a bunch of wonky arguments by his defense attorney about how the officer did not conduct other field sobriety tests.

- At a .18 BAC you are drunk and on the brink of blacking out, unless you are a full-fledged alcoholic.

Wow, a .18 is pretty solidly drunk. In Australia you're fined for being over 0.05 and automatic 6 month loss of license for 0.08.

Cops will use them if they suspect you are on other drugs or if they want to detain you longer, too.

Not this old sysadmin.... count slow when waiting to reboot cable modems.... or you have to wait and do it again.

“My grandfather used to say: Life is astoundingly short. To me, looking back over it, life seems so foreshortened that I scarcely understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that -not to mention accidents- even the span of a normal happy life may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey.”

- Franz Kafka

I dunno how this fits in here, but Covid/WFH makes me feel like last Christmas was 2 decades ago. And I’m OLD.

As best as I can tell, this article simply has the effect backwards from what Mazur claims. Rather than counting too fast, the usual psychology studies show that the elderly count too slowly. Mazur cites Mangan et al (1996), which (seems to) claim:

When 15 healthy adults ages 50 to 80 counted seconds to estimate a time period of three minutes, they took 3.7 minutes on average, scientists at the Clinch Valley College of the University of Virginia at Wise reported recently at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

In contrast, 25 students ages 19 to 24 estimated the three-minute period accurately.

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-1996-12-03-96112901...

So when this article says "if they counted seconds for an hour they’d think the task done with around the 47-minute mark", it's backwards. If we assume linearity (should we?) it should say that the average elderly person would take about 1 hour 15 minutes to count an estimated hour.

Confusing the issue, though, there do appear to be more recent studies claiming the opposite effect. This 2015 paper seems to clearly show that the elderly do take less than 90 "real clock" seconds to count off 120 "brain clock" seconds:

Objective: To measure a 2 min time interval, counted mentally in subjects of different age groups.

Method: 233 healthy subjects (129 women) were divided into three age groups: G1, 15-29 years; G2, 30-49 years; and G3, 50-89 years. Subjects were asked to close their eyes and mentally count the passing of 120 s.

Results: The elapsed times were: G1, mean = 114.9 ± 35 s; G2, mean = 96.0 ± 34.3 s; G3, mean = 86.6 ± 34.9 s.

https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S000....

Unless I'm reading it wrong (the terminology of 'estimated' vs 'real' can be confusing), this seems to flatly contradict the earlier work by Mangan. It doesn't cite Mangan, though! And I can't actually find any of Mangan's studies online --- his CV lists his work (http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/pm46/vita.html) but without DOI's.

Because it's an increasingly smaller amount of time over the total amount of time you've experienced.

I remember feeling like it took an eternity when I was a kid.

Now it's a constant barrage of "shit, it's that time already?"

Routine makes time move faster.

Not having your mind wander as much when you're older makes it faster to count through a minute.

Does anyone else think this seems like a lot more "pseudo" than "science"? Is it specifically supposed to be more of an exposé of this one guy's subjective view? Why does it focus on just this one mathematician? The author briefly touches on Max Planck's work, but then seems to conflate objective reality with human perception?

The key insight (that older people count out seconds faster) is based on experimental science. The rest is more speculation.

FWIW, I'm convinced that seconds felt slower when I was a child, and they now tick up faster than they used to. Obviously there's no way to measure this, because this is my perception, not measurable reality.

Larger brain need more time to propagate waves, so smaller brains have advantages. Also, with age our brains become more convoluted, which makes wave propagation even slower. Fly sees world at 400Hz, human: at about 16-20Hz.

Try to play games, which requires fast reaction and deep thinking at same time, and speed of your brain will increase a bit.

heart rate related?

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