This doesn't provide an actual mechanism though. You'd need evidence that our perception of time is dependent on that ratio and then show us a mechanism for it. On the other hand, the article gives a possible mechanism for a different theory.

The proposed mechanism is that all recalled long-term memories (older than this week) are weighted independently of recency, so as you get older more of your memories are from the past years than the latest year, so the latest year seems less substantial.

This is just more elaboration of the hypothesis. It doesn't actually explain anything neurologically. What's the implementation? How do you plan to test for it?

The article doesn’t explain it neurologically either other than saying “more brain connections means long time to traverse the brain” which is just a bunch of handwaving.

I don't understand how that explains the sense of speed-up?

E.g. when I read a novel, the last few pages don't fly by any faster than the first ones do.

I actually disagree with your novel example. When I read a novel, the first half of the book is building up to the second half. There's so much uncompressed information that I take in. Learning the characters, learning the environment, etc. While I read the same WPM, the second half FEELS faster to me because now I'm on to the good stuff and the details are behind me. I'm over the hump.

I agree with your theory much more than that of the article. I’m not sure why, but I’ve always had the same theory so maybe it’s just confirmation bias.

At any rate, I’m old and I can confirm that the speeding up isn’t just a myth.

It’s not immediately obvious to me why this would result in the perception that time moves more quickly.

The theory in the article did strike me as quite plausible.

It is kind of horrifying though - it is in your face evidence of cognitive decline.

Right, and as a long term participant in this realm, I can definitely say that the speeding up is far greater than any cognitive decline I’ve had so far. To be sure - since it’s certainly possible that one wouldn’t notice one’s own decline, I do online courses periodically to 1) learn new stuff and 2) assure myself that the decline isn’t yet too severe.

> I can definitely say that the speeding up is far greater than any cognitive decline I’ve had so far.

"Cognitive decline" is probably the wrong way to think about it. Your cognition changes as you age.

When you're young, you're inundated with lots of information. You can process that information quickly, but you don't know which signals are important.

As you age, you learn what information is important, and what can be filtered out. So even if you're slower, your brain can work more efficiently. It also knows how to take shortcuts.

...at least, that's what I remember reading in my college Psychology textbook five years ago, and it jives with the current article.

I think a lot depends on what timescales you consider to be "speeded up". I don't think the perception that a huge amount of stuff happens between the ages of 16 and 18 and seems like it was only last week between the ages of 30 and 35 has much to do with cognitive decline. Feelings of WTF it's two hours later and I feel like I've only been editing for 10 minutes and just need 10 minutes more, likely are linked to cognitive decline, but I'm young enough to only have that feeling when I'm really, really tired, and I sometimes had it when I was 20 too...

To put it a different way: for the 2 year old last week was about 1% of their entire existence.

For that 50 year old it was just 0.03%.

This is mathematically true, but it does not explain the effect. It reminded me of the calories in, calories out thing.

You gain weight because you eat more calories that you burn. This is, again, mathematically correct, but it offers no explanation of the why

Why do you eat more than you burn ? you move too little ? you eat too much ? your brain malfunctions and it is unable to detect food intake ?

I think I'm wired with the potential to eat more than I burn because the opposite is dangerous (long-term) and its hard to anticipate future burn when I eat. There would need to be a lot of food 'abundance' for the negative effects of this to ever come to fruition to the point of influencing evolution, and fixing the brain malfunction.

(Maybe I misunderstand your angle).

Had this thought when my daughter was born. Saying, "Hold on a minute" is asking a lot more of her than for myself.

That's a common argument. Veritasium explores this and IMO the alternative arguments are more compelling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIx2N-viNwY

I've heard this on HN before and it seems less likely than an actual neuroscientific interpretation - we don't perceive time in a fractional sense on a moment-to-moment basis.

I wonder what Taleb would say about this calculation.