Perceived Age (2024) | Hacker News Reader

Perceived Age (2024)

sdan.io

79 pointsjxmorris1261 comments

I would advise the author to be very hesitant about making pronouncements that are supposed to apply to a whole human life, when he's only 22.

Meh, "only 22" doesn't mean they have to be hesitant about making pronouncements about the whole human life. You're living a life, I'm living a life, the 22-year-old author is living a life. Why would any of us need to be "very hesitant" when it comes to discussing the whole human life? It's our life, anyone can talk about it.

> "only 22" doesn't mean they have to be hesitant about making pronouncements about the whole human life.

Yes, it does, because he has a lot more life ahead of him, and he doesn't know what it will be like. Lots of pronouncements I would have made at 22, if I hadn't had the humility to refrain from making them, would have been wrong. Even now, not far from four decades older than 22, I'm still hesitant.

> It's our life, anyone can talk about it.

Anyone can talk about the life they've already experienced, sure. But making pronouncements about a whole human life is going way beyond that. See above.

JW doesn't celebrate their birthdays. I assume they also don't count their age? I always thought it would be cool to live like that. Not JW BTW.

> he doesn't know what it will be like ... lots of pronouncements ... would have been wrong

Sure, but that's not a problem, right? People are wrong all the time, it's fine. Also, it seems quite natural that a person who hasn't lived the entire life yet hypothesizes about what I'll be like, what it should be like and what it's like for other people. Moreover, what they say seems to be based on at least one research paper, so this is basically top quality wrt the internet's standards

Sure I mean it's not a crime or anything, just highlighting you're highly unlikely to get anything like the perspective, wisdom, insight, that - for example - an 80 year old might share.

You could ask a 5 year old for opinions, they're not going to be very well informed.

This is just ad hominem. What in particular do you disagree with

Not GP, but significantly more than half my perceptual life has been lived since I was 22.

This is very un-HN, but it reminded me of a song by Richard Buckner about being dumb and overwrought at "only 22": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvKWmWHOb_U

When I go travelling time slows down. Days and weeks become significant, a month feels like three. Whereas the past two months have felt like one. I much prefer when time slows down and I'd love to figure out how to make that happen when I'm home.

I try to seek novelty as much as I can. It's not about trying a new ice cream flavour, it's novel experiences. I might have to go into work for 8 hours, but there's at least 8 more hours where I don't need to always do the same things as before. And if you get a chance to work remotely and have no strong ties, you can pack up and go live elsewhere for a while.

I also experience this. We were lucky enough to do a three week holiday around Japan, which felt very long. Three weeks of getting up, going to work, and while I enjoy what I do, it flashes by.

I think the driver for me is routine. The more routine, the faster everything seems to fly by.

Yep routine is the opposite of novelty. I'm curious what it would be like to work while travelling, if time would continue to feel stretched. I'd love to try the digital nomad lifestyle for a bit.

> life is half over by 23 or 24

I'm just a few years shy of being 24 years older than 24, but I have to say my lived-experience does not agree with this observation. The time from 24-today seems much longer than the time from 0-24.

I do remember a period in my early 30s where time seemed to move fast, but hasn't felt that way in over a decade.

Though I suspect, agreeing with much of the article, this is because my life has had a fair amount of novelty in it, even as I age. I often marvel at how impossible to predict my life has been even a year out. Even a year ago I would not have imagined doing the job I'm currently doing, traveling to the places for work I currently need to, meeting the new people I have, solving problems in a space I had no understanding of.

As contrast I've often been shocked to talk with former coworkers to find that have had nothing change, not even what they're working on during the day, in the span of time that has resulted in my making multiple moves, changing multiple jobs (arguably even careers), learning new skills, etc. The most extreme was a college roommate I hadn't talked to in 20 years, and barring his marriage a few months after we last spoke, his day-to-day routine was identical to what it was 20 years ago. We only had a chance to meet up because I had briefly moved back near the area we went to school.

The more responsibilities you take on the harder it is to make big changes.

I moved to a new country when I was 29 and it wasn't too hard. Doing it again, at 40, with 2 kids, was probably 50 times as hard (if anything I am understating it)

My mom, at least, tells me that life can get more interesting once the kids are 10 or so, apparently.

It’s seems bizarre and alien to me as a relatively new parent that you don’t seem to consider that a big change but instead an impediment to your travel plans.

Ummmm… I think you misunderstood what I meant, or I failed to communicate this well. Becoming a parent was the biggest change in my life and nothing else remotely compares, but with kids my day to day life follows a pretty standard routine and novelty usually makes them tired and cranky.

I barely remember the first 10-12 years of my life and had extremely little agency, so I've always seen age 24 as "having about ten years of experience being alive". You have the potential to learn so much in the first decade or two of adult-hood that it can entirely change what you even consider life to be.

Many people don't but life isn't over just because some people quit.

> A study asked different age groups to mentally count 120 seconds. People under 30 averaged 115 seconds; those over 50 just 87. That's a 24% reduction in perceived time.

This seems bogus to me. I’m 51; I set a timer on my phone for 2 minutes, put it aside and counted to about 128 before it went off.

Why would your ability to count seconds change over time? A second has always felt a little slow to me, probably because my resting pulse is above 60.

(I think it’s also ambiguously described? Maybe they meant the opposite, in which case it took me about 114 seconds to count to 120.)

> This seems bogus to me.

There is a quote from the show Ted Lasso which I love: "Be curious, not judgemental".

Rather than proudly declare that "this seems bogus", I think it's more productive to ask why your perceived experience may not match with the study. FWIW it only took a few seconds of googling to find the study in question, likely much less time than it took you to write your comment, and then you're free to examine the methods and outcomes of that study:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27097002/

> "Be curious, not judgemental"

Let's define curiosity as seeking knowledge. What is the mechanism that allows for observation if not some minimal amount of judgement? How else does one encode the senses into a coherent thought?

What is the distinction between curiosity and judgement? Is it the amount of judgement? Is the quote asking to dismiss reason and avoid integrating new knowledge with other existing knowledge?

> "Here, we examined the common sensibility encapsulated in the statement: "time goes faster as we get older""

Does anybody ever mean "seconds go by more quickly" by that statement? I've never heard it used that way...

That's fair.

I guess I've had various reasons to count time, and every once in a while check how well I count time, and if I didn't, perhaps I would start to count time faster. Thanks for the reference and clarification.

Seems counter-intuitive to me, because common sense tells us that old people think slower and therefore the world seems fast to them. So why would they be counting faster than actual time?

It also seems to contradict the thesis of the OP, as others pointed out. Years flying by is the opposite of counting time faster than the clock.

Oh well. Time is confusing!

Time passes quickly because of jobs. We go in on Monday, we skip the week and come out on Friday, flushing 70% of our time down the toilet.

It's tragic, and I don't want to suffer that fate. Alas, there's no escape for common trash without at least 3 million in assets.

i’m ready to prove anyone interested to invest that it is feasible for 1 million

i think it scales down as much as you want, just depends on what quality of life that you want.

Meh, move to a lower CoL country, reduce your expenses, work four days a week, get an easier job. There are many alternatives, unfortunately nobody wants to hear that they should spend less money.

Do you really need all the stuff? Yes, stuff is nice, but is it as nice as more time with friends and family? That's the choice.

Are your friends and family going to move to Vietnam with you?

I wonder what "stuff" you have in mind. I don't spend money on luxury items.

That list wasn't "do all of these things", you can pick and choose. What is luxury depends on each person, but usually there is scope to cut expenses by 20% to gain an extra free day.

Yes, an extra free day is possible. More than that? You tell me.

If you feel that way, you might want to find something else?

I also don't understand why having more money would change how you spend most of your time. It tends to be the other way around. What you do is what you make.

Money lets you choose what you do.

Sam Altman says "don't waste time", because he has the choice what to spend it on, and possibly the illusion that most people have that choice.

When you're a kid school takes up much of your day and yet it makes time feel like it's passing more slowly.

I think agency and expectations have a lot to do with it.

At one point you think the adults are keeping you from doing more fun stuff. You think when you're older you'll make your own decisions and things will be better.

Vs... you have no plans to make your future any different than your present. You know you're decades away from being old enough to retire. The evening means "not working" but it also means "nothing of any real interest or meaning." You aren't hoping to make the baseball or dance team next year. You aren't new to everything, trying to figure out relationships with friends and more for the first time.

i agree with the time passing because of jobs, but not with needing money to escape. all you need is to look for work abroad. i left with literally zero budget. sure, you are still doing a job, but in a different country, with a different language, culture, etc, and everything old to the locals is new to you.

Counterpoint: I've been semi-retired for almost 10 years. No money pressure. I spend most of my days on light hobbies and a few hours of work on a hobby business. I still feel like the years are going extremely quickly.

I think our brains are addicted to novelty, and memory formation / time perception is intrinsically linked to variety. Personally I have a very nice life close to family and a good daily routine, I have little desire to change how I live. But I still recognise I'm missing out on perception of time past. I'll probably move my work hours up and take on more responsibility just to solve this problem. It's that or have a kid.

I'm sorry, but if you have all the time in the world and you decide to spend it on a "good daily routine" then I don't think there's hope for you.

The length of a minute depends on which side of the bathroom door you are on. Maybe it is not so much about learning, but about the brain having enough free cpu cycles to keep track of time.

Anyway, it sounds attractive the idea of the brain is somewhat younger if you kept learning all the way. But it may not be about “age” but flexibility or other things that we may not associate with older people.

This is a pretty sad post and touches on something I read on Cal Newport’s blog today where he referred to a similar piece written by another ambitious and established 22-year-old in the WSJ titled, “‘Work-Life Balance’ Will Keep You Mediocre"

https://calnewport.com/does-work-life-balance-make-you-medio...

https://archive.is/VCAih

I’ve come across tropes about how Millennial discontent is based on figuring out that the idea of grinding through your 20s like it’s twenty years ago is a trap. Or something like that.

Seems like the idea is rearing its head again.

But the last paragraph of this post tells me that he’s aware that his optimism and will has its limits. “COVID came and went,” ta-huh!

lotta folks have no work life balance and hardly any money

the majority of people will have average-or-worse results - just definitionally

there are a lot of advantages - of circumstance, of timing, of availability, of placement, of health - that nobody has control over

if someone tells you that you can just grind yourself to generational wealth they're trying to sell you something, don't listen

you can't guarantee yourself success with the right attitude and actions

BUT

you can guarantee yourself failure pretty damn easily with the wrong ones. you don't need to be a workaholic. but you need to be willing to work for what you want. and you need to be willing to work to find what will satisfy you beyond just high scores in bank accounts. there's mental poison on both ends, both will likely leave you bitter and unfulfilled when you don't replicate someone else's tens of millions of dollars by age X

My dad, who is now 80, recently told me that the years do seem to pass quicker, but the future is still as far away as it has always been. I can definitely feel that myself.

Reading this gives me flashbacks of my ~22 years old self who was, as most of us do, trying to come to terms with how life, responsibilities and the experience of it changes in your early adulthood.

At that age we all read academic literature, philosophy and short form texts from "thinkers" and then start believing that we have had a deep profound insight into life.

However at that tender age most of us have not experienced life enough to have those insights. We have not experienced profound love or heartbreak, nor hardship and relief. Life changing events that put everything else into perspective. To someone that young there hasn't formed a deep enough well of experiences to pull from to give those ideas perspective.

For me this was 20 years ago, and were I to stand infront of that young man now I would grab him by the shoulders and tell him to stop over analysing everything and worrying about how life might end up being and instead just get on with living it.

There is so much to see, do and experience, and so little time!

> A study asked different age groups to mentally count 120 seconds. People under 30 averaged 115 seconds; those over 50 just 87.

This can be interpreted in two ways, which lead to diametrically opposite conclusions.

1. I say "start" and you say "stop" when you think 120 seconds have passed, and the result (115 or 87) is the actual elapsed time.

2. I say "start" and some time later (which happens to be 120 seconds, but you don't know that) I say "stop" and ask you how much time you think has passed. The result is your response.

On the first interpretations, everyone's internal clock runs fast (everyone gets to 120 ahead of the actual time), and an old person's run faster than a young person's. On the second interpretation, everyone's mental clock runs slow and an old person's run slower than a young person's.

I don't understand. If I feel like two minutes passed when only one has passed, am I not actually experiencing time as twice as slow?

I thought two minutes have passed, yet I have a whole other minute to live. I thought time passed quickly, but I get to experience twice as much time. By that logic, we think we're 80 when we're 40, and we have another subjective 80 years to live.

How is that "time flies by"? Time would fly by if it went by so slowly for me that ten hours had passed when I thought it had only been a minute.

That’s exactly how I thought about it.

If you imagine a hypothetical person with a 2 year lifespan. During the first year the perceive time 1:1. But during the 2nd year they perceive 9 years passing during 1 year.

At 50% of their lifespan they will have 90% of their total perceived experience of time remaining.

I see what you mean, thanks. I'm not sure I entirely agree that life goes by more slowly, but at least they'd perceive enjoyable things as taking nine times longer.

I'm (ahem) over 50 and I just timed 120 second in my head and came out to 2 minutes 9 seconds. I cheat though, since I count to the beat of ZZ Top songs. These days the CPR people use Staying Alive, which feels faster to me, so I tried that, and got 2:10.

Then I tried it without counting -- 2:12. That can't be considered fair, since I already read the part about how over 50s mark time faster, so I could have subconsciously slowed my roll. Still, it's fascinating to me that I'm 3 in a row within 3 seconds.

My head canon is that death is a choice your body can make when you stop experiencing anything new. In the past 20 years I have lived in:

   - Tujunga, CA
   - Marina Del Rey, CA (Two very different places)
   - St. Louis, MO (Three very different places)
   - Bethesda, MD
   - New York, NY
   - Lisbon, Portugal
   - Seattle, WA
   - Bangkok, Thailand
   - Seattle, WA (very different place)
   - Jersey City, NJ

I hope to keep this up for the rest of my life. I like new places a lot.

I wonder if you can train yourself to perceive time “properly”

Like if you practice counting everyday a few times, each time trying to correct when you’re over or under

Beyond that though, more importantly, I wonder if this would have a noticeable effect in your life - if so I wonder what that would be

Interesting with the role of dopamine and how we perceive time. I've been having anhedonia for a while and damn time fly by fast. I do however have one routine and it's working out almost every day, so I'm in decent shape at least.

My computer presents way less fps in same games as when i bought it 10 years ago. I myself am not as fast neither in games nor catching fast balls as when I was 20 instead of my almost 40 years now.

Surely the degrading hardware gotto play a role aswell.

Maybe the computer needs a dust and some fresh thermal paste. The body also benefits from care and maintenance. But yeah, we do still age of course.

I see your point. Im at my lifes best health tho. Single food ingredients and got 12 pullups from deadhang to chest at 92kg, got some pistal squats in me and I can hang with one arm for 22 sex. I used to be real fat but real quick competing in dota. Also, im way more flexy now. I even worked on the wrists.

My computer has gotten some proper dusting however the ram needs and electrical engineer. Cpu has been well cooled and i even got a new gpu.

Ive got bunch of variety and novelty in my life aswell.

Im just pretty sure in getting less FPS by the years none the less.

In that case it might be security updates to the kernel or even the microcode, making things slower

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltdown_(security_vulnerabili...

So there is now software that has come out making it worse even running the same applications.

I suppose the same can be said of people with all the digital distractions we have now. The hardware might be the same but I certainly can't focus as well as I used to because the mind is full of irrelevant content.

I thought this would be about "how do we recognize the age of a person by looking at him"

I thought it would be about how people perceive their own age vs how other people perceive it.

Well a couple of points as a senior techie over 50 now - considering the youth culture of the tech world, first of all this “hacking youth, hacking life” is all mostly ineffective in my opinion, it’s not so much a metric based existence that helps counter life’s speed but living better and learning the common wisdom of past generations that is more useful in my opinion :

1. Youth is wasted on the young - people in their twenties generally have not found their identities and this means they will often ‘discover’ and change their outlook into their 30s, 40s etc- things well known to older generations and why so many hippies become square, why so liberals become conservative, why so many skeptics take on religion. It’s human nature to rebel and discover the same lessons that past generations did and then pretend like their generation is the first to gain wisdom..

2. A substantial amount of life is not planned for, do not make the mistake of assuming your plans will bear fruition -life is what happens while you are making other plans -

3. Older age often means the things That gave you pleasure in your 20/30s will not as you age- that is part of your journey

4. Again life is a journey not a destination- live your life with optimism and instead of crazy ambitious year by year plans focused on achievement instead focus on the moment and your own personal health: I often see young people afraid to be adventurous, and young men in particular, fail to take care of their bodies, fail to take care of their mental needs and instead take on the road of overwork, stress, isolation and bad health (especially with the sedentary and isolating nature of programming)

5. As you really grow old (I’m not talking about you kids in your 20/30s here, you will find your tolerance for learning new things will lower, as will your skepticism of the new stuff, , it’s natural but it’s the antithesis of this industry- you will be yesterdays news and ageism in this industry is not something I see ending anytime soon. So find a way to stay relevant, maybe that means a career change, location change etc.. honestly the tech world as it today is not the insular but friendly optmistic and often artistic place of the 70s, 80s and 90s - when programming was as much an art as a corporate discipline, now it’s vastly larger industrialized and corporatized and corrupted by endless metrics, VC capitalism and social media doomscrolling and hype. (And Who really knows, how fast AI will change these modalities either negatively or positively)

5. A spiritual life of some kind is worthwhile- this article was about how fast life moves: IT DOES, I cannot believe how old I am, for example. The only counter to how fast life moves is savoring the moment - I think that an inward view is important in that regard, especially if you are an agnostic/atheist. That doesn’t mean to go out and adopt a dogma wholesale, but don’t be close minded and exclusionary and willfully obtuse, be willing to open yourself to others, be willing to forgive yourself too, above all Know Thyself… that takes decades

> first kiss, first job, first time living away from home

never had that. or worked a job. or lived away

sounds cool!

Not to judge, and assuming you’re a straight male, doing the last two might help with the first. Women tend to prefer men with jobs who don’t live with their parents.

If the years feel like they fly by, shouldn't the older group give responses of greater than 120s for the 120s timer?

I say this in threads whenever this concept comes up, but I doubt the feeling has anything to do with something intrinsic in the brain, but is just representative of the variety of novel activities you do, and for most people their novel activity seeking wanes as they get older. Giving your brain more time to go on "auto pilot" and lose track of time.

The year I spent at a desk when I was 24 feels significantly shorter than the 3 months I spent at 39 traveling in strange lands.

The less new activities are performed the faster time is perceived when looking back. During the events it might be the opposite and actually feel longer.

> The less new activities are performed the faster time is perceived when looking back. During the events it might be the opposite and actually feel longer.

There is another side to this: So much novelty that you have no time to consolidate memories and everything feels like it’s zooming by. I’m in that situation right now and it’s shocking to look back 1 year. It feels both like 10 years have passed and like it was yesterday.

>greater than 120s

That’s how I thought about it as well.

If you imagine a hypothetical person with a 2 year lifespan. During the first year the perceive time 1:1. But during the 2nd year they perceive 9 years passing during 1 year.

At 50% of their lifespan they will have 90% of their total perceived experience of time remaining.

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