Is time really passing faster?
It may be just an aspect of the human condition, particularly among those of “a certain age”. Most people I talk with are almost guarantied at some point in the conversation to make a statement that time is flashing past faster all the time. Even if we ignore the convoluted logic of that statement, the intent is clear - the rate of change is increasing.
Is this perspective just an artifact of the way our brains work? Or is there a fundamental reason underneath this shared sense? Here’s a speculation.
There is a branch of philosophy that claims we are, and live in, a simulation. Let us assume, for the sake of this speculation, that some flavour of that premise is true. For the sake of simplicity, let us assume that our known reality is running as a simulation on some super-computer. What then, is the minimum time increment? Every digital computer has a clock speed. Clearly, for our universe it is the Planck Constant. Our best physics permits no smaller time increment, or length increment.
Let us further assume that even this alien super-computer has limits. Every time a researcher probes deeper into reality, whether at the macro or micro scale, the simulation must accommodate those data. When our known universe only extended to the Crystal Spheres and the Earth was the centre of the universe, the simulation load was small. Galileo and his contemporaries vastly expanded our known universe, forcing the simulation to expand. The discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background pushed the known universe out to about 13 Billion light years. Hubble and now Webb are giving a huge increase in resolution of those far reaches.
What if the computer on which our simulation runs has reached some limit? Maybe it’s running out of memory. Maybe the processors are maxxed out. Whatever the cause, compromises must be made. Humans won’t stop probing physical reality as long as we have an inquisitive technological civilisation. Something has to give.
The simplest solution for our own computers is to spread the load. For example, as you open more browser windows, launch a video editing programme, open a large word processing document, the system responsiveness gets slower and slower. The processor is dividing its’ resources between more and more demands. Each programme, each browser tab, gets less and less attention.
From the perspective of each of those tabs or programmes, the outside world flashes by faster and faster.
Are we each a “thread” running in the master simulation computer? There are now over 8 billion of us, each demanding processor time. Our knowledge of the Universe keeps getting larger, and more fine-grained. Something has to give.
One possible solution might be to reduce the demands on the system. It is a fundamental principle of physics that information can not be destroyed. So knocking us back to the stone age is probably not an option. Reducing the population is, though. Maybe Covid was a test run on a mass depopulation strategy? Not by some secret cabal running our world! No, this would be a strategy of the operators of our simulation. Whoever they might be. After all, something has to give. But population reduction is a temporary solution. The growth of our knowledge base is far faster than the flattening curve of our population growth.
As elements in a simulation, we can probably never reach outside of it and determine who’s behind it all. We could, however, look for inconsistencies and errors in the simulation. Such errors should increase as the data and processing limits of the host computer are further stressed. These errors might show a pattern which would indicate whether we are in fact, in a simulation. If no such errors are found, the lack of evidence would imply that our reality is “real” after all. That would provide solace to most philosophers, and new challenges to physicists and cosmologists!
If we’re not a simulation in some alien or godly super-computer, why is it that time feels like it’s running by faster and faster?