Kind: captions
Language: en
[Applause]
I remember when I was a kid waiting an
hour for my favorite TV show to come on
which was Sharon Lois and Bram that felt
like eternity but as I've gotten older
everything seems to have sped up time is
going much faster that's something
virtually everyone agrees upon yeah I
feel like I feel like it does oh man so
much H sort of gets faster and faster
but why is This Is It Just An Illusion
or are there good scientific reasons why
time appears to go faster as we get
older well I'm working with the national
Geographic channels brain games a show
that explores the inner workings of the
human Mind through experiments and
interactive games to test out some
theories about why this actually occurs
there is a reasonable sounding argument
that says each year goes faster because
it makes up a smaller fraction of your
entire life let's say I was only 20 one
year is only 12 12th of my age when I'm
67 one year is 67th of my age this graph
shows one year as a percentage of your
life at each age
but what I find weird about this is if
you add up the area underneath the curve
you'll find that you've already lived
half of the total by age six so I really
don't think this is how our brains
perceive time you really think that like
a day now of course
not I think there are better reasons why
time appears to speed up as we get older
so I've come to Venice Beach to find two
groups of people the older and younger
to see if their perceptions of time
differ so what I want to do is I want to
set my timer going and without counting
you tell me when you think a minute is
up let's go start okay everywhere around
the world when this experiment is
performed older people typically
overestimate while younger people
measure it quite accurately all right
probably stop yep wa 1 minute 2 seconds
a minute and 2 seconds a minute and five
as we get older the rate at which our
neurons fire or our neuron conduction
velocity it decreases and you can think
of this firing rate a little bit like an
internal clock and so if our internal
clock is slowing down that would make
everything else external time seem to be
speeding up I'm going to tell you the
time now now 1 minute that's it that was
1 minute 1 minute minute 17 seconds not
bad right not bad I thought I'd be a lot
closer actually but I guess I wasn't do
you want to know what it really
was 1 minute 47 no way it was almost 2
minutes actually almost 2 minutes it
really is amazing how fast time flies by
it really is our sense of time or
chronoception is not like one of the
standard five senses it has no
specialized receptor cells and it does
not appear to be localized in just one
part of the brain perhaps this suggests
that it's not one coherent thing at all
but it does seem that our perception of
time is very fundamental studies of rats
have shown that even with their
neocortex removed that is the higher
order thinking part of their brains they
are still able to learn how to time 40
seconds accurately that's quite
remarkable and it suggests our sense of
time evolved early and is one of the
fundamental functions of the brain but
that doesn't mean our brains always
represent time Faithfully for example
have you noticed that really good movies
seem to go by much faster than they
actually are or do you notice that your
vacations fly by there are good reasons
for this when we're focused on something
we don't notice the time is passing and
that makes them feel in the moment
shorter than they actually are at its
best this result in a mental state
called flow this can happen when playing
sports or video games or artists when
they're fully engrossed in their work or
people meditating so I would argue
another reason time speeds up as we age
is because we are more often engrossed
in what we're doing another thing that
appears to make time speed up is
repetition I'm going to show you a
series of images and I want you to
consider how long each one appears on
the screen are you ready go
so which one appeared to last the
longest if you're like most people you'd
probably say the dog but all of those
images actually appeared on screen for
the same length of time the dog seemed
longer because it was novel and
therefore your brain had to invest more
energy in processing it what's
remarkable is that our sense of how long
something is or subjective duration it
correlates highly with how much energy
we're using in our brains now if you
study how much energy people use in
their brains over the course of their
lifetime you find that it Peaks around
age five if you think about it this kind
of makes sense because when you're a kid
almost everything is novel to you and
therefore your brain needs to use more
energy fully 66% of your resting energy
intake that's used by the brain because
of all of the novel experiences and that
must at least in part explain why time
appears to go more slowly so what can we
do to slow time down well Studies have
shown that being afraid increases our
perception of time when arachnophobes
were forced to stare at spiders for 45
seconds yes this is a real experiment
those arachnophobes judge that
experience as lasting much longer than
45 seconds as you would kind of expect
plus experiments involving skydivers or
people falling show that they judge
their experience to last much longer
than it actually is another time when
time appears to pass slowly is when
you're bored you know when you're
waiting and waiting that's all you think
about so it seems like time drags
forever since there is so little to
focus on you are acutely aware of just
how much time is passing and so these
boring moments drag on and on so if you
really want to slow down your experience
of time you could scare yourself take up
extreme sports get into accidents and
intersperse all of that with periods of
boredom but this Viewpoint ignores one
important fact which is that we don't
experience time as just one thing we
think about time as it passes but also
as it has passed before before when we
remember it and those two ways of
looking at time they don't align so for
example holidays they feel like they go
by really fast but when you think back
upon them they last a long time that's
because you had a lot of Novel
experiences and your brain formed a lot
of memories and it judges the duration
of that vacation by the number of
memories that were formed all that
novelty means lots of memories means it
feels like it took a long time but in a
moment it felt fast this is the Paradox
the great Paradox of our perception of
time if you want time to go slowly there
are a lot of things you can expose
yourself to that will slow time down but
they won't necessarily be pleasant so
maybe the happiest life and the longest
remembered life is one where time really
seems to fly it's like Einstein said put
your hand on a stove for a minute and
it'll feel like an hour but sit next to
a pretty girl for an hour and it'll feel
like a minute so what would you like
your life to feel
like I want to thank the National
Geographic Channel for sponsoring this
episode of veritasium and if you want to
introduce more novelty into your life
then you should check out their series
brain games the new season begins
February 14th at 98 Central and this
season they have an episode about all of
your senses including your sense of time
chronoception so if you want to find out
more then check out the link to their
website in the descript description and
thank you for
watching did that feel like that lasted
long