time relativity

[fantastical]

In a 1-year passage of time, a 50-year-old person lives through 2% of his life. In the same time period, a 5-year-old child lives through 20% of his life.

How does a person's conception of time depend on this trend? I just turned 26 years of age. This year I will operate in 3.85% of my total life. The last year was 4% (1/25). What does that 15-hundredths of a percent-difference mean, please?

[landie]

Isn't this why time seems to go more quickly as you age?

[fantastical]

does it necessarily? I can see reasoning in competing ideas - it's like a paradox.

[landie]

A year when I was a child seemed like an eternity, now it seems like a week.

[bernardo]

It means that you are wasting too much of your life asking meaningless philosophical questions to which there are no correct answers, and that you need to get out more.  (As indeed do I)

[fantastical]

maybe so bernardo, but it's an interesting question to ponder. I get stuck on with what approach to take on the topic though. The trend lies on a contiuous scale - as does life itself. Nothing exists in discreet intervals - only categories with which humans seperate phenomena into, purly for human subjective self-interest gain. We live in the "now," so for me to pose a question as the one above is for my own self-interest. The paradox lies somewhere between approaching the matter from different angles.

[Elfin]

Well you could look at the continuous scale from the other end.  You can assume that your whole life will be 100 years, for an easy example, so the year in which you are 25 will be 1/75 and the year you are 75 would be 1/25 of the total life you have left.

[stevie21]

It makes absolutely no difference whatsoever to me. 24hrs last just as long now as they will do 30 years from now and this type of "thing" (that's the edited description) is exactly why I hate philosophy. In my mind it is utterly pointless to think about this as it has no bearing on my day to day life.
I hope I don't sound like I'm having a go at anyone but your answer would be skewed if only people who agreed wholeheartedly were to post.

The only thing which I would say is that I've heard an old wife's tale about a man who calculated how many weeks he had left to live (based on average lifespan) and had a container full of marbles to represent each Saturday. Each weekend he'd take out another marble to remind him how little time he had left & to prompt him to make the most of his time.
Thinking about this wasn't high on his priorities :-)

[fantastical]

no offense taken from what or whomever, but the fact is is that there is nothing to "agree" with in this topic; for the trend I speak of simply is the way it is. It's a fact of life - the numbers can't be dismissed.

Everyone is subjected to the changes in the trend; that's life. The way people react to the dynamic trend is where differences come into play: different people react differently to it. It's like Einstein's idea of relativity (I'll bet you he had some not-too-different ideas on the topic). You're right though, this question is philosophical (the conceptual answers are ideological), but each perception of the concept is a reality.

I see a lot of insight in my original question. I just wanted to know if anyone can try and explain their idea of this omnipresent reality. It's there...everyone gets an answer.

[landie]

My doctor prescribed some tablets for me which he, in said, I would be taking for the rest of my life. He only prescribed 100.

[fantastical]

not very happy with these posts all. I've been AB'ing for about a year and I expected more thoughtful posts than these. But...thanks to those who did post their insight/opinion. I guess I got what I wanted.

[stevie21]

Are you unhappy that you didn't get people here eulogising over how deep and thought provoking your question was?
Maybe what you have here is the most accurate answer that a sample of the population can give you : that it's just not something that people give much thought to, or even that having thought about it, I for example, have concluded that it's meaningless.

Or maybe the results are skewed by the fact that you asked it in "Science" and not something a bit more arty that'd lend itself to philosophising such as "Body & Soul".

[landie]

Time is relative not static as einstien, and others, theorised. It can be observed when listening to a vehicle siren approaching and departing, the frequency of the sound doesn't change to those within the vehicle but a pedestrian, for example, would hear two completely differing frequencies.

Also, doesn't time seem to pass more quickly when you're having fun or working against a deadline, rather than waiting in vain for something good to happen?

[fantastical]

alright guys (maybe girls too); all the posts are valid. The time-relativity-kick puts this q in this section (or so I thought). I'm not real unhappy, that was to generate some controversey (sorry if taken badly).

I just think it's cool how time works; the study of time is something no one will completely understand. There are some components to it that are utterly meaningless (ie they don't contribute to the proliferation of knowledge in any meaningful way).

Thanks for the discussion to all who posted.