The human mind is better equipped to think in relative rather than absolute terms - it thinks within known reference frames .

When you're ten years old, a year is 10% of your whole experience - of your reference frame. When you're 50, it has become a mere 2% - a fifth of what it was when you were 10.

I agree completely

The human mind is better equipped to think in relative rather than absolute terms - it thinks within known reference frames .

When you're ten years old, a year is 10% of your whole experience - of your reference frame. When you're 50, it has become a mere 2% - a fifth of what it was when you were 10.

Dear Chris, Is thinking in relative terms consuming less energy by the brains than thinking in absolute terms? Or is thinking in relative terms producing more entropy (or less negentropy) than thinking in absolute terms?

Dear Guido, I think a series of distinctions are to be considered in your question and the answers provided.

As we know a living system is characterized by negentropy (Schrödinger), or by an incessant reduction of entropy.

Your question focuses on developmental psychology. However, it is not to be separated from developmental biology.

An elderly person does not produce more entropy, even if it can be perceived so by him or her, or by his/her social environment.

The pace of the time according to developmental biology is not a fact.

If we place the question in the framework of NET it becomes impossible to speak about the second law of thermodynamics as a sort of fate ("eternal growing entropy"). The very rationale of NET - already since Onsager's and Prigogine's works -, is about the importance of far-from equilibrium structures and dynamics (over against Bolzmann).

Dear Carlos, thank you for your contribution. However even in the far from equilibrium structures you can define an entropy operator defined over the phase space (with a particular topology) and with the instants of time as set of eigenvalues

I think we should not equate the perception of time with the physical time. We know from other examples that this is a slippery slope. To give just one example, we have a very different perception of "temperature" when touching a copper block or a piece of plastic both at the same physical temperature. Time as a parameter which enters the dynamic equations of physics is measured by a clock not by an aging person. Having that said, it all may come down again to the nasty problem of the arrow of time. Indeed there is an arrow of time and this arrow of time is not taken into account by the microscopic description of the physical world. The second law in turn is capable of bringing in the arrow of time which is apparently something in addition to what is measured by a clock.

Christian, as was extensively discussed by the likes of Dieter Zeh et al., the 2nd law does not really indicate an arrow of time, it just displays a mere statistical effect .

There are for instance a near-infinity of states of untidiness for a room but only a handful of states of tidiness - which is why it's statistically very hard to revert to a tidy room without deliberate work.

The shiftover from tidy to untidy is a shift from one particular state, amongst an ensemble of a very few, to one particular state (a specific way the room is messy) amongst zillions of macroscopically and psychologically indistinguishable similar states (of untidiness)

So here, time is in the eye of the beholder. If we favored the state of untidiness rather than the state of tidiness, time would appear to stand still. The arrow of time is a statistical artefact, aided by perceptive & psychological bent, not an objective, intrinsic reality.

Chris, in the context of the question discussed here your statement underlines my point that one should not equate perception of time with physical time. Whether or not there is an arrow of time and whether or not there is a role for entropy in this debate is an issue which I don't consider settled. Special relativity for instance in the interpretation of a block universe would indeed avoid an arrow of time. I am very well aware of the statistical background of entropy. Bringing time into this discussion is problematic right from the start because there is no room for time in equilibrium thermodynamics and non-equilibrium thermodynamics and statistical mechanics is not on the rigorous level where equilibrium thermodynamics is. There is also very well the possibility that ultimately there is no room for time at all in a truly fundamental description of our world. Time my be an effective quantity such as temperature with some usefulness in some context but not fundamental.

Christian, well said, I could not agree more :-)

As physicsist I know that you cannot identify the perception of duration with he physical concept of time. But when becoming older you have more responsability, you have to supervise people, you are charged with administartion (the primer of all entropic activity), and consequently your perception of useless energy (alternative definition of entropy) is raising.

"you are charged with administration (the primer of all entropic activity)," There is nothing more to say. The truth speaks for itself. I can see the the final stages of the universe where future entities audit each other "24/7". The end.

Yes Christian, that should be the end. Fortunately that the actual entities are all far from equilibrium and that fluctuations are always possible

Dear Guido, it seems to me that the subjective notion of the acceleration of time as we get older is not a physical question, but a psychological one. Of course, when we are young, time flows slowly because we don't do and think of many things : a day is long. When we grow older, we are more and more active, interactive, and, I would say," thinkive" ! And as is well known, when we think of plenty of things and do many things, we do not see the time passing...

Shamit, I don't understand how the cumulative nature of the way we create and store memories differs from thermodynamics.  (Perhaps I should ask that as a separate question.)  Information, memory storage, and the arrow of time seem to be inextricably related with one another.  A neural impulse, for example, makes sense in its nick of time only.  Brains use neurons to implement memory as an internal source of information, which in turn can be processed again.  That must drive our perception of time.

Time passes when something happens, inside or outside.  When information is added.  In fact, as we grow older we pay less attention to new facts unless they are outstandingly new.  So, in a sense, we consume less entropy per mile.

Entropy: A concept that is not a physical quantity

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230554936_Entropy_A_concept_that_is_not_a_physical_quantity