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Comment by ComputerGuru | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

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