[HN Gopher] The Logarithmic Time Perception Hypothesis
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The Logarithmic Time Perception Hypothesis
Author : rzk
Score : 46 points
Date : 2025-10-22 15:20 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.kafalas.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.kafalas.com)
| rzk wrote:
| https://archive.ph/7Yskr
| esafak wrote:
| If nothing is going on in your life, it is as the article says.
| However, if you experience novel and memorable stimuli, good or
| bad, time dilates. Traumatic experiences are particularly
| memorable because the brain wants to make sure you learn your
| lesson. It is a consequence of the brain's compressive learning
| algorithm, discarding the familiar and making sense of the new.
| downboots wrote:
| More trauma, longer life. Got it. \s
| stronglikedan wrote:
| More trauma, longer _perceived_ life. not\s (something to be
| said about quality over quantity tho)
| kstrauser wrote:
| I'm convinced you're right. Consider how long your first road
| trip to a place feels, versus the 10th time you've taken that
| route. When you're processing all new data, it stretches out.
| munificent wrote:
| Agreed completely. I don't think we perceive the passage of
| time at the macro scale. We perceive the acquisition of novel
| experiences and new memories.
|
| I've had months of work I can barely remember, and three-day
| vacations that feel like a year's worth of memories.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I have the exact opposite. The first time seems to flash by,
| but the 10th time takes forever.
| abirch wrote:
| One benefit of this, is once you'd done something once, the
| other times kind of melt together.
| holyknight wrote:
| Yeah, this is a the answer. Our brain only remembers novelty,
| our firsts years and even decades are plagued by it. But after
| you are already 5 or 10 years onto your "adult" life you
| basically do exactly the same each day. 80% of what we do in
| our daily life as adults is not memorable at all and get
| completely ignored by our long-term perception. In short, it
| feels like the time flies because you did only 2 or 3 memorable
| things in the whole year.
| quentindanjou wrote:
| > Traumatic experiences are particularly memorable because the
| brain wants to make sure you learn your lesson.
|
| Weird, I have always been told that when the brain is
| functioning "normaly" (outside of disorders/syndromes, such as
| PTSD) that it has a tendency to forget bad things, to help us
| get over traumatic experiences.
| withinboredom wrote:
| I don't think they mean literally traumatic, but more like a
| bad breakup, or falling out of a tree. You survive -- maybe
| barely -- but its no more traumatic than a scrape or a bump.
| I still remember the first "major" injury I have (from
| jumping off a the top of a car at 4 years old). Not like it
| was yesterday -- no PTSD there -- but it was the first time I
| scraped my knee. I'll probably never jump off a car again.
| Qem wrote:
| My hypothesis is a bit different. Instead of logarithimic time
| perception, informational time perception. Children have brains
| with high plasticity and huge new information acquisition
| (learning) rates. Those rates drop as plasticity decreases when
| one gets older. Those "bitrates" of new information flowing into
| long-term memory act as sand flowing through a hourglass. A fixed
| amount of sand represents a fixed amount of subjective time. When
| those rates drop, we feel time runs faster, because now the same
| amount of sand (subjective time, information) stretches over more
| clocktime.
| munificent wrote:
| I think you're onto something, but I don't think it has to do
| with plasticity, but novelty.
|
| Consider the brain as a giant recording device with very good
| compression based recognizing patterns from previous data. So
| the first time you eat an apple, it stores a lot of data
| because it's a new experience. The next time, it stores
| something more like "like the last apple, but a little more
| tart".
|
| I think our perception of time (at the macro scale) is roughly
| a perception of how much new data our compression-oriented
| brain is storing. It's the sensation of accumulated novelty.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| With this in mind, the length of one's life is not
| chronological (by a clock) but the integral of the novel
| information they experience.
|
| So a monotonous 60 year existence is a fraction of the
| perceived duration of 60 years of a wild and adventurous,
| constantly reading, learning new languages, making new deep
| human connections - existence.
| mxkopy wrote:
| Thats the same thing, no?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory)?w...
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Well yes some of us do believe in the Shannon basis for
| Quantum Gravity.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| I think everyone intuitively understands this too. If you spend
| the next 3 months sitting in your boring office job that you've
| done 1000 days before, those 3 months may disappear entirely
| from your memory. Compared to taking the next 3 months and
| traveling to some strange land far away from home, and I bet
| those 3 months will stick out in your mind until your dying
| days.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Controversial take: isn't this a strong point in favor of
| having as many romantic partners as possible during one's
| life?
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| No? Because then the norm is just passing from one person
| to another.
| pmg101 wrote:
| I don't think it has anything to do with age but with the rate of
| new experiences.
|
| Take a year off work to travel the world and you'll find your
| subjective sense of time passing slows right down.
|
| Does it matter though? Does it matter how many experiences you
| collect? You can't take them with you. Better to develop
| relationships that can be a source of joy (I imagine. I have not
| done that).
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It may not matter in any objective sense, or even a subjective
| one.
|
| But if you want your sense of time passing to slow down,
| increasing the rate of new experiences might be one way to get
| there.
| bibimsz wrote:
| if you want your sense of time passing to slow down, go sit
| in an empty silent room with nothing to do
| Legend2440 wrote:
| I mean, you can't take the relationships with you either.
|
| Do whatever makes you happy.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| You can though. Pharohs were interred with their living
| concubines.
| holyknight wrote:
| If you give me back 3 month of vacations in summer as when I was
| a kid, they will also feel long.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| Even 3 weeks feels long now
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I'd love to know how long a 3 week vacation feels! One day,
| maybe...
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| It's easy if you get fired or quit! lol
| weinzierl wrote:
| Is there anyone else who never felt like time is passing faster
| as they age?
|
| Sure, I sometimes think: _" Wow, another year passed so fast."_,
| but I distinctly remember the same feeling from when I was a
| child. School years seem to have flown past me the same as
| calender years do now.
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