Julian Barbour on Time

I seem to recall that the common perception is that time seems to pass faster as you get older. It does for me, although it doesn't seem to be a "time of the moment" thing, rather it's a "the last 10 years seemed to go by fast" thing.Hypothesis of why I have this perception:1) When you are 50 (to use a round number), 10 years is 20% of your life, relatively short compared to the 50% of your life at 20 years old.2) It's not so much the "time of your life" as it is the "life of your time". My most recent 10 or so years haven't been particularly productive for me ("haven't done that much"). So, I have the perception that I've lived (say) 2 years worth of life in the last 10 years. Thus it feels like 10 years have passed in what feels like only 2 years. Time is passing fast as life is passing slow.The number 2 perception seems to run counter to the "time flies when you're having fun" concept. I seem to maybe be living some sort of psychological paradox. And I must say, or something like that.Moose

I think that my contribution to this topic is rather unrelated to the material of message 1 and in general to the theme of time perception distortion at the time something is happening. I think that Modulous did a nice message pertaining to that main topic theme, in message 33. My input, while not necessarily off-topic, is tangential. To me, this refers to both points 1 and 2 in my message 22: It has occurred to me that there might be some sort of a third part to that #1 of mine, although the rational seems to be quite convoluted (even I doubt I know what I'm talking about). Anyway, somehow my current perceptions of 10 years is influenced by the fact that I'm now much more sensitive about the end of my lifetime (I'm now 57 years old). Now I'm perceiving that the next 10 years may well be a relatively large part of my remaining life. Thus some sort of sense that time is passing too fast.In all, it's not that at the moment that I'm perceiving any sort of time distortion. Rather it's a matter of the perception of chunks of time in the past and the possible future.Well, certainly a message rating high on the babble scale. Perhaps time itself has become somewhat of a babble to me.Moose