The sense that time has officially sped up

Hey ATS,

I'm going to touch upon a topic that has been gaining more buzz lately. It's in regards to our concept of "time" and how to some of us it seems to be moving faster than it was before.

What amount of time it used to take to cover a 10 second time frame on a clock now only takes 8 seconds. It would appear that similar to topics like the mandela effect some have noticed this phenomena while others don't seem to perceive any changes in the speed at which time goes by.

I really started noticing how time was moving differently than before around the year 2017. But there were glitches back in 2015 I noticed as well, just not as prominently. I'm aware 2015 was a big year for experiments at CERN in Switzerland, and progressively over these last several years D wave Quantum computers have become more sophisticated. Many believe both of these are having a direct impact on the way time is moving now.

How do you guys feel? Does it feel like time is moving faster for you as well? And If so what do you attribute this to?

My theory on that feeling.
Everyone used to tell me when I was a little kid that time seemed to move faster as you get older.
As I grew older, I experienced that feeling myself. Every year seemed faster than the last.
And it continues to this day.

I think, to a five year old, six months is ten percent of their entire lifetime. So six months seems like a very long time indeed.
To a fifty year old, that’s only one percent of a lifetime, so not very long at all.

Is the subconscious simply putting things into perspective for us in relation to how we perceive time?

a reply to: freedom7

I am very open to exploring unconventional explanations to the phenomenon you describe but have you taken into consideration the following?

Physics explains why time passes faster as you age

I've been told my whole life, time just keeps moving faster.

As we age, we focus more on the big picture, and learn to ignore details that don't matter at the end of the day.

Everyone experiences this, and your own life determines how quickly your days pass by.

As we age we experience fewer and fewer firsts. So, we are able to quickly sort our experiences in to already known commodities. When we are younger everything is new and we spend more time processing our experiences.

Been experiencing the same myself, discussed with daughter and she agrees, mentioned several of her freinds felt likewise.

To me time seems to be accelerating more and more rapidly each year since around 2012. As in a curve going exponential.

This casts doubt on the proportional age increase per year vs total life time speedup theory. Yes each year more you live is proportionately less of your total life, which could possibly lead to a sense of time accelerating.

But the percieved speedup would be less each year, not more. This is because the fraction of your life a year is changes less each year more you live.

I like Terrance McKennas Timewave 0 theory about this, but I certainly wouldn't discount the possibility of cern.

Time is Speeding Up- Terrance McKenna
youtu.be...

The principal device of the Timewave Zero theory is a fractal function (constructed using numerical values derived from the King Wen Sequence of I Ching hexagrams) which maps time onto 'novelty'. This theory was developed by Terence McKenna (1946-2000) from the early 1970s to the late 1990s, and was first described by him in the book The Invisible Landscape (1974), written with his brother Dennis. This theory follows from

the "revealed" axiom that all phenomena are at root constellated by a wave form which is the hierarchical summation of its constituent parts, morphogenetic patterns related to those in DNA. ... We argue that the theory of the hyperspatial nature of superconductive bonds, and the experiment we devised to test that theory, yielded ... a modular wave-hierarchy theory of the nature of time that we have been able to construe, using a particular mathematical treatment of the I Ching, into a general theory of systems, which illuminates the nature of time and organism and provides an idea model which explains the interconnection of physical and psychological phenomena from the submolecular to the macrocosmic level.

— Dennis and Terence McKenna, The Invisible Landscape, original (1975) edition, pp. 101-103

www.fractal-timewave.com...

Funny you wrote this thread. I was just discussing this feeling with my friends today. We all agree that ever since 2014ish, time has been going faster. Maybe it is because we are getting older. We are all in our 20's. Who knows. Is it because the simulation is breaking? Something we don't understand yet with how the universe expands? A change in consciousness?

My friend had an interesting thought. Maybe we are all in a type of cryogenic sleep. The last of humanity on a ship, nearing its destination. We are in a simulation to keep us occupied and time is speeding up the closer we get to where we are going. All I know, is that the last 5-6 years have felt like 2 years to me.

originally posted by: Breakthestreak
My theory on that feeling.
Everyone used to tell me when I was a little kid that time seemed to move faster as you get older.
As I grew older, I experienced that feeling myself. Every year seemed faster than the last.
And it continues to this day.

I think, to a five year old, six months is ten percent of their entire lifetime. So six months seems like a very long time indeed.
To a fifty year old, that’s only one percent of a lifetime, so not very long at all.

Is the subconscious simply putting things into perspective for us in relation to how we perceive time?

I’ve often referred to time as a pie. When you’re 1, you get the whole pie, when you’re 2, pie is split in half and so on and so forth. Same idea, just easier to explain to people who can’t figure out percentages without a pencil and paper.

It's what happens when you get older. Because time experience is relative. So as a 7 year old, 7 years is a LOOOONG time. But as a 57 year old, it's a small fraction of your life.

Relative.

Time has not sped up.

We’ll probably never know why, exactly, but psychologists have put forth some interesting theories:

1. We gauge time by memorable events.
As William James hypothesized, we may be measuring past intervals of time by the number of events that can be recalled in that period. Imagine a 40-something mom experiencing the repetitive, stressful daily grind work and family life. The abundant memories of her high school years (homecoming football games, prom, first car, first kiss, graduation) may, compared to now, seem like much longer than the mere four years that they were.

2. The amount of time passed relative to one’s age varies.
For a 5-year-old, one year is 20% of their entire life. For a 50-year-old, however, one year is only 2% of their life. This “ratio theory,” proposed by Janet in 1877, suggests that we are constantly comparing time intervals with the total amount of time we’ve already lived.

3. Our biological clock slows as we age.
With aging may come the slowing of some sort of internal pacemaker. Relative to the unstoppable clocks and calendars, external time suddenly appears to pass more quickly.

4. As we age, we pay less attention to time.
When you’re a kid on December 1, you’re faithfully counting down the days until Santa brings your favorite Hot Wheels down the chimney. When you’re an adult on December 1, you’re a little more focused on work, bills, family life, scheduling, deadlines, travel plans, Christmas shopping, and all of that other boring adult stuff. The more attention one focuses on tasks such as these, the less one will notice the passage of time.

5. Stress, stress, and more stress.
As concluded by Wittmann and Lehnhoff (and replicated by Friedman and Janssen), the feeling that there is not enough time to get things done may be reinterpreted as the feeling that time is passing too quickly. Even older individuals (who are, more often than not, retired from work) may continue to feel similarly due to physical handicaps or diminished cognitive ability.

blogs.scientificamerican.com...

a reply to: freedom7

Thanks OP.

This prompted me to look up a book I've been meaning to read for ages (or it seems like ages.)

Felt Time: The Psychology of How We Perceive Time

I'll get around to it eventually, ideally before I reach 50.

"We have widely varying perceptions of time. Children have trouble waiting for anything. ("Are we there yet?") Boredom is often connected to our sense of time passing (or not passing). As people grow older, time seems to speed up, the years flitting by without a pause. How does our sense of time come about? In Felt Time, Marc Wittmann explores the riddle of subjective time, explaining our perception of time -- whether moment by moment, or in terms of life as a whole. Drawing on the latest insights from psychology and neuroscience, Wittmann offers a new answer to the question of how we experience time. Wittmann explains, among other things, how we choose between savoring the moment and deferring gratification; why impulsive people are bored easily, and why their boredom is often a matter of time; whether each person possesses a personal speed, a particular brain rhythm distinguishing quick people from slow people; and why the feeling of duration can serve as an "error signal," letting us know when it is taking too long for dinner to be ready or for the bus to come. He considers the practice of mindfulness, and whether it can reduce the speed of life and help us gain more time, and he describes how, as we grow older, subjective time accelerates as routine increases; a fulfilled and varied life is a long life. Evidence shows that bodily processes -- especially the heartbeat -- underlie our feeling of time and act as an internal clock for our sense of time. And Wittmann points to recent research that connects time to consciousness; ongoing studies of time consciousness, he tells us, will help us to understand the conscious self.

a reply to: freedom7

It happens as you get older.

Down to the way we compare time.

When you are a child a decade seems like an eternity because you have never experienced one before.

40 years down the line and its a whole different story.

Then again they do say time flies when you are having fun, and we are here for a good time, not a long time.

Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer to the end it gets, the faster it gets to the end.

a reply to: HalWesten

Covered in crap and rather 2 dimensional, i tend to agree.

Apparently life is what we make it.

That being said, geography and social standing, generally dictate one's circumstance and chance in this world.

a reply to: freedom7

the passage of time is constant (until you approach C speed of Light squared)

you squeezed in the word seems regarding our precieved sense of time speeding up ...

Well, as we approach the end-of-the-age the need for events to actually 'develop' into reality is done away with

we suddenly find ourselves with a fully evolved Communist Party and Army Amongst us... conducting terror attacks on a bakers-dozen large cities across the nation (seemingly OverNight)

the 'underground' is thriving in daylight, Hedonism is ascending (yay, finally) like pre-nazi Berlin once was...

~ come & knock-on-my-door..... threes' company..... ~ PM for sanctuary GPS

Time has sped up for me....everyone who gets older says the same thing. It seems like it is Winter, then in a few months it is winter again...Oh yeah, I guess I do live in the UP of Michigan, it was June second before the snow was gone from around the driveway and we usually get snow before Halloween.

As you get older, you gain more knowledge even though you do not know you do. To sort through all the extra knowledge it takes more time and so it seems like time is speeding up when in fact it is just that it takes longer to sort through a bunch of experience and everything slows down for you.

When you are young, you do not double and triple check everything, comparing it to all the past experiences you have, mistakes are more common, but you do get lots more done. When you get older, most people have paid the price for rushing without thinking, it can hurt if you do something without thinking when you do something stupid. Both financially and healthwise. This is Coming from a person who has injured themselves multiple times from working or not thinking enough before doing something..

It's actually life and the world that moves faster as we get more technologically advanced.
Consider how long it took (added time) to make phone calls in the days before cell phones...today, we have instant responses to calls (we even become irritated when someone doesn't call (or text) us back immediately).

Look at how computers have changed how we get or process our news of what's happening in the world.
Again, we used to pick up the newspaper at our leisure...and read about what happened a day ago.
Now, we get news almost as fast as it happens.

People are now processing more information much faster than they used to. The things we experience are what we use to mark/measure our time. As life moves faster...more ground is covered more quickly...thus time, itself, seems to be moving more quickly.

a reply to: freedom7

I heard one study on British people..................... They are walking right now 10% faster than they did at the turn of the millennium! If that is the case then everything will feel faster maybe? We are running around chasing our tails maybe?

Cyberpunk comes out in November
Starfield comes out in ?

If you are a gamer, and you have been wildly anticipating these games to be released since their announcment, you will notice time has all but stopped and the wait seems endless

So..perspective

I recommend getting a hobby that has releases you become overly hyped about to change your perception of time from going too damn fast to crawling at a snails pace.

a reply to: freedom7

Yes Indeed, that is what I am experiencing the last 5 years or so. Before that I knew that the used mantra was that how older you get the faster time seems to pass by. But that is not appicable the way I feel about time anymore...something is going on and "they" know it. Anybody I ask does feel the same way..that time flies. The usual explanation is of course the older you get story.. I have not met someone who says the opposite..that time slows down..or doesn't feel as if time goes faster.

It is a real hard nut to crack for sure because clocks will be clocks and stars will be stars. Only mechanical clocks can tell the truth.. everything digital can be corrupted.