This post is not about whether time is speeding up or not. I believe it is and lots and lots of other people would agree. This post is about why it might be happening.
Let's take video games. Video games run at certain framerate. If the game runs at, say, 60 fps, then each second contains 60 separate frames. Now, let's say that character makes a move that takes a certain amount of time. For example, jump. Let's say that jumping in this game takes a bit more than a second. So, at 60 fps a jump would take about 80 frames. At, say, 100 fps the same jump would take about 140 frames or so.
Higher framerates mean that every action, every event uses up more individual moments (frames) than lower ones. Or, in other words, each individual frame is less eventful than on lower framerates. Keep in mind, that objective time stays the same. That jump still takes a bit more than a second regardless of framerate. Even if framerate is ridiculously low, like 5 frames per second, it still takes the same amount of objective time. It's just that each of those 5 frames will contain more events, more advancements than on higher framerate.
I guess, by now you can see where I'm going with this. Our time is speeding up because the actual framerate of our reality (simulation?) is lower than it used to be. The framerate of our simulation is slowing down. Or you could also say that the server our reality is running on is starting to lag and that is the reason why our perceptive time is speeding up. Coincidentally this indirectly proves that we are indeed living in a simulation.
Crazy shit, I know... It's just an idea I had yesterday and decided to write it up. It explains and ties together several phenomena quite neatly and nicely. What do you think?
I know about physics and gravitational time dilation. That is not what I'm talking about. Also, I'm not entirely sure that theory of relativity is not a total bullcrap, but that is a discussion for another time.
Besides, time is not slowing down. It is speeding up. And I'm not talking about long timespans in tens or hundreds of thousands of years (which would be required for gravitational time dilation to take place). I'm talking about very short timespan. About 10 years or so. Time is speeding up very noticeably since about 2015 or so. And no, it is not change of perception due to aging or because of phones and social media (as reddit bots are very quick to explain this phenomena).
This right here is one of the possible explanations of that. Which ties together very nicely with simulation theory and if we indeed are living in a simulation then obviously all of the physics are simulated as well which makes all your explanation kind of moot.
On a similar note, regardless whether we are indeed living in a simulation or not, I do kind of doubt that matter is even real. I do think that it is entirely possible that consciousness is primary and all the matter around us is being constructed (thought of) by that consciousness. Modern physics, of course, take a totally different approach stating that matter is primary and all consciousness is being created in the matter by shooting neurons back and forth in our brains or whatever.
Prove it. Because it has been resoundingly proven otherwise.
Easily.
(1) A lot of people of different generations are noticing time speeding up. Not just boomers, not just millenials... Every generation notices this. If it would be due to age, only boomers would notice this and, come to think of it, I've seen very few boomers talking about this.
(2) If it would be simply due to age, then we would hear the same from even older generations before 2015, which is absolutely not the case. Our grandparents and our grandgrandparents would talk about it, it would be written about in old books and so on. Actually, what we witness is completely opposite. Old age was considered a time of peace and calm and you won't find any of this time speeding up crap in there.
(3) If it would be only because of proportionality, then the very rate of time speeding up would actually slow down (because each year lived makes increasingly smaller part of your life) which, again, is not the case. Not only time itself is speeding up, but the acceleration rate is speeding up as well.
So, no, it is not due to age. I understand completely your proportionality argument, but I do not buy it. It is a kind of a low hanging fruit.
Just to be clear, you are completely convinced that time is speeding up and consider a "lowering of the frame rate of the simulation" to be a plausible explanation for this, but you are "not entirely sure that theory of relativity is not a total bullcrap" lmao.
While I think Prof_Chaos is wrong for the reasons I listed in my reply, there is a grain of truth to what he is saying. When subject to time dilation due to being in a deep gravitational well, what one sees when one looks out into space is "everything moving in fast motion" so to speak. While this does not explain the effect you are talking about, which is what I told Prof_Chaos, it does show that being in time dilation will make it seem like time is speeding up. In fact, time dilation is similar in principle to "cutting the frame rate" as you put it.
Time dilation responds instantaneously. It depends only on the local metric (that is, gravity) and your character of motion. However, all effects we are subject to are impossibly small.
FWIW, I think everyone is getting older. The zoomers are getting older too.
Well, when I was zoomer age, I did not feel any time speeding up. So there... Also, I imagine you could ask some boomers did they feel time is running like crazy when they were 30 and ask the same question people who are 30 now. Of course, answers will wary, but I'm quite certain that there will be much more 30 year old people now who feel that time isn't right than those who were 30 in, say, 80s or 90s.
I don't think this has anything to do with physics at all. Consider it a thought experiment of sorts. If we really are living in a simulation and time is speeding up on a systemic level, then internal logic of the simulation itself will not be impacted. Like in that game which runs in a ridiculously low framerate. The internal logic of it will still work. It'll be janky as hell, it will lag, but barring some very poor coding decisions (like tying some internal logic directly to framerate) it will all still work pretty much correctly.
Also, I did not state that I consider it to be rock solid explanation. However, I do feel strongly that time really is speeding up and it can't be explained simply by age or smartphone use. This is happening on some kind of a fundamental level.