Comment by pffft8888 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pffft8888 | Hacker News Reader

I met Ed (randomly ran into him) at a Buhddist meditation retreat. Hi Ed, if you're reading. He was concerned with how time seems to go much faster as we age. When I found out he was ex President of Pixar and knew Jobs, I felt intimidated and kind of acted awkward from that moment on. It wasn't about being around wealth, but being around brilliance.

Later on, I tried emailing him as he had invited me to do so about my hypothesis that the neurons that produce the perception of time start firing slower as we age so time seems to be moving faster (a lower-resolution sampling of time, like a skipping stone arcoss a pond rather than through it moving much faster) He never replied.

Then I emailed him again to congratualte him on his receiving the Turing Award, a year later, and once again no reply. I felt even more awkward for emailing him twice.

Reading this complaint from his co-founder, I surmise that Ed may not be very good at maintaining relations. A bit disturbing to hear that he omitted his co-founder from being mentioned.

Or maybe he's just an asshole: https://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/ed-catmull-on-wage-fixi...

He tarnished his reputation altogether with that in eyes of many, despite his early graphics research advancements and later business success.

Alvy Father of alpha channel Ray Smith had quite a success and recognition as well and is a well-known founding figure in CG.

Regarding the perception of time as we age, I recall some research which found that the perception of time on a short level is actually the same. In other words if you put a child and a senior into a room and give them an activity (or no activity) and ask them in regular intervals how much time has passed they both will estimate that similar time has passed.

Supposedly, the reason that when looking back long term an older person things that e.g. the last year passed much faster is, that they remember more years, so the one year represents a smaller fraction of their memory. This is similar with forgetting things, older people are not more forgetful (provided there is no dementia...), but they know more things that they have forgotten.

Time goes faster as we age, maybe because of lack of novelty. When most things are as you expect, they are less engaging. But we want to use our hard-won expertise; we don't want to feel stupid, ignorant or foolish; and we don't want to lose our position, prestige or mortgage.

Maybe this contributed to him leaving his career. Jobs liked the saying "stay foolish".

Intuitively this feels right. When we are young, everything is new. As we age, more experiences are repetitive, or one falls into a routine. During the pandemic every day felt the same, too, so I am even more convinced of it now.

When we are 3 years old, we perceive 1 year as a pretty long time, it’s a third of our life after all.

When we get older the same year is becoming a smaller and smaller fraction of our lifetime, thus the time feels to go by much quicker.

At least that was always my personal conclusion.

I like a metaphor that it's about connections, combinations and permutations. As we mature the number of opportunities, changes, permutations lowers. Perhaps those older people who dont experience life going quickly are also able to see opportunities and variablity more?

Possibly also the times when you get stuck in something and think "oh wow this is dragging on" decreases as you age. But it's not the number of times a situation happens (e.g. traffic is getting worse over time) but that reaction to it happens less. Perhaps we get more patient with time and let it pass over quicker.

Veritasium has a video about this subject:

https://youtu.be/aIx2N-viNwY

It turns out that when we're older time passes more quickly even on the scale of minutes.

> when we're older time passes more quickly even on the scale of minutes.

And understatement for anyone who has kids.

My theory is it's just about boundary pushing. When you're younger, the boundaries are closer and easier to find because you have limited experience with the world. As you get older, The boundaries appear to extend farther and farther away, and you get more comfortable staying away from them.

I say this because anecdotally, I have a few years in my twenties that seem like they flew by, because I was living a pretty boring life working in an office. But then later in my thirties I have some 3-month periods that stretch wider and longer in my memory then those entire years in my twenties, because I was out and exploring.

I believe we perceive time as "accelerating" because we make fewer memories (just because the brain is less flexible). The perceptual "length" of year is actually how many things we can remember happening in that year.

I may have as many memories of what happened when I was 7 than what happened when I was 27 (despite the time difference).

Evidence for this hypothesis: sit down and write down month by month everything you did in the last year (vacations, jobs, birthdays, whatever), will make the year feel fuller.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com