The Endgame

Newsletter #41 - Time

Toronto, October 8, 2023

Time

Some people say that time speeds up as you age. A languid day in youth is a momentary flash in senescence. But how could that be? Time is time. It’s an objective measure. It doesn’t matter what your personal characteristics are. Time is the same for everybody.

That’s wrong. Einstein said so in his 1905 Special Theory of Relativity. Einstein said that the rate at which time passes depends on your frame of reference. Scientists, psychologists, and philosophers have more or less agreed with Einstein, each in their own peculiar and often unconvincing way.

Does an old person’s frame of reference speed time up? That would be a cruel joke. Can it be, that as time becomes more and more precious, as the amount available dwindles in the face of death, it disappears at an accelerated rate? It’s an unpleasant idea. Old people tend to have time on their hands. Surely they should be able to savour time before it trickles through their fingers.

What’s happening here (if anything at all is happening)? Has it something to do with neural processes? Or is so-called ratio theory the explanation? Ratio theory as applied to time says the apparent length of a given span of time varies inversely in proportion to your age, e.g., one year seems five times shorter to a fifty-year-old man than to a ten-year-old boy because a year is one-fiftieth of the man’s life and only one-tenth of the boy’s. I find this analysis mechanical and entirely unconvincing.

The philosopher William James argued that when we’re young virtually every experience is new and vivid, but as we age life is less memorable and more forgettable. When you’re old, time goes fast because not much is happening to slow it down. Is this true? I don’t think so. Many old people have memorable experiences—sometimes, far too memorable. There’s a lot happening in the lives of many old people, and, ironically, we’d like to forget some of it.

Maybe the idea that time passes more quickly for the aged is simply not true. Maybe it’s just a folk belief, an old saw. That’s what I think. (For a full discussion of all this, see Alan Burdick’s 2017 book, Why Time Flies. Burdick is sceptical of the claim that time goes faster for old people).

What is true is that each of us has a personal, often idiosyncratic, relationship with time. For example, some people (I’m one of them) tend to discount the future to a foolish extent. I don’t mean discounting in the way economists think about it, which sensibly recognizes that future benefits count for less than present benefits (a dollar today is worth more than a dollar next week). I’m talking about the tendency to commit to future obligations without careful thought, to agree casually to do something that, when the time comes, you really, really, don’t want to do. Why would you make that mistake? Oh, I don’t know, maybe to please a friend or colleague, or avoid conflict. “Camping over the May long weekend next year? Sure, why not?”

Another example is the curious ebb and flow of anticipatory dread. Say you have serious dental work scheduled for Thursday. In my experience, the feeling of dread starts about Monday, gets worse on Tuesday, and peaks around Wednesday lunch time. What’s strange is that, for me at least, the dread is almost gone by Wednesday night. By Thursday morning, when you set off for the dentist, you’re matter-of-fact about the impending ordeal. Time has been working in some weird way.

The poet asks:

 “Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,

And make the earth devour her own sweet brood...”

(William Shakespeare, Sonnet #19)

Notes from readers

A reader who lives in Montreal, inspired by Endgame #40, says she plans to ride the Montreal Métro end to end. Other Montreal readers pointed out that people over 65 can ride Montreal transit for free.

Also in response to #40, a French reader wrote, “The Parisian subway network is very similar to its Korean counterpart (309 stations, 210 km long). Even if tomorrow it became free, I and I suspect many other French people in the same situation would never consider riding it for the sake of riding it. Free buses would perhaps be different because you can see what is going on around you (it would be even more true if the old buses “a plateforme,” meaning that the back of the bus was “open” and you could stand on the plateforme, still existed).

Another reader, commenting on #39, wrote: “My sisters taught me - all of us being under 10 at the time, I think - to lick the tip of our index finger, put it on the palm of our other hand, and then hit that spot with our fist, when we saw a white horse.”

And a Canadian friend who moved to Edinburgh, also reacting to #39, wrote: “White horses! I saw four, walking in a row along a park path, the first year I was here. Appeared out of nowhere, around a corner. Riders had knowing smiles. I took it as a sign I should hang in, as was beginning to falter a little on this adventure.”

Someone noted that Costco now offers one ounce gold bars online (see #34 ).

Finally, I recommend David Wolinsky’s frequent memo, “Intermittent random thoughts from my shelter in place shelter.” It’s funny, energetic, eccentric, rude, insightful, and free. I think David will put you on his mailing list if you email him and ask. He writes: “Generally I try and limit my regular readers to people whom I know won’t be offended by my bizarre humour, and views on politics, religion, guns, sexual preferences etc. I write mostly to amuse myself and have no desire to offend.” I have not been offended—not yet.