By David William Jedell UPDATED November 12, 2025
(From Philosophy of Time, Space and Now (With A.I. Review)) https://thejedellreport.blogspot.com/2025/11/philosophy-of-time-space-and-now-with.html
“It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” - Mark Twain.
There Is No Time But Now and Never Was in Normal Human Existence
Contents
Section Two: Interactive Memory of Now
The Following Section Shall Be Designated as Interactive Memory of Now in this Paper (akin to the delusional idea of subjective "Time").
Interactive Memory of Now makes your personal perception of the number of revolutions of the earth around the sun shrink as it interacts with memory. We will explore how the Interactive Memory of Now gets smaller as our body biologically ages and earth continues to revolve around the sun, each revolution known as a "year."
Getting "older" is correlated here with Objective Now subsequent to many of the earth's revolutions around the sun; however it is only the biological division of cells and other harmful health factors that are truly "aging."
Interactive Memory of Now is the interactive memory and recall of the distance between "events" in Now, and our current sensory perception of Now. Our largest subjective feeling of Interactive Memory is when we are first aware of being conscious, sometime in the first Objective Year of life, as will be discussed below.
Imperical Evidence of the Interactive Memory of Now
In 2005, Wittmann & Lehnhoff systematically asked large samples of younger and older people how they experienced time. In the study, 499 German and Austrian participants aged 14 to 94 were asked how fast so-called "time" (Interactive Memory of Now) usually passed for them. The study indicated that this set of people feel "time" passing more quickly as they get older.[1]
Wittman and Lehnhoff found that everybody, regardless of age, thought that "time" was passing quickly. The question, “How fast did the last 10 years pass for you?” yielded a tendency for the perception of the speed of "time" to increase in the previous decade. This pattern peaked at Objective age 50 years, however, and remained steady until the mid-90s.
Dr. William Friedman proposed a theory of Proportionality, originally proposed by William James in 1877 (labelled the "Father of American psychology"), to explain this phenomenon as follows[2, 3]:
“As we get older, each year is a smaller proportion of our lives. For example, a year is 1/10 of the life of a 10 year old, but 1/70th of the life of a 70 year old. Therefore each year feels shorter relative to all the time we've lived and thus seems to be going by faster.” This phenomenon is also colloquially known as "The Proportional Theory of Time."
Mathematical Treatment of Dr. Friedman's Statement and its Implications
The t-axis represents the number of revolutions of the earth around the sun colloquially labeled a "year";
y = f(t) = 1/t
Interactive Memory of Now for a point on the t-axis is designated as a point on the y-axis curve.
The cummulative Memory of Now = ∫ y dt.
dy/dt = the rate of change of y at each t-point on the t axis
The Interactive Memory of Now during the Objective interval (t1, tn-1) is the cummulative area (integral) of Interactive Memory of Now between (t1, tn-1)
∫ y dt
y
t =>
The curve represents the Interactive Memory of Now as a function of Objective clock t. The shaded area under the curve is the Area of Interactive Memory of Now remembered. The smaller the Area, the faster Interactive Memory of Now is perceived to pass.
At tn-1 years, looking back to the Objective year t1, we find the Area of the Interactive Memory of Now in that interval, within:
tn-1
∫ y dt =
t1
This is a general number and subject to minor differences and aberrations with each different person.
Cummulative Interactive Memory of Now begins to become imperceptible from about 50 objective years to 90 objective years, because it is sufficiently small. This idea is consistent with the findings by Wittman and Lehnhoff, as stated above, that everybody, regardless of age, thought that "Time" was passing quickly and this pattern peaked at age 50, however, and remained steady until the mid-90s
The theory of Interactive Memory of Now under consideration is consistent with the empirical study. Dr. Friedman's statement that “As we get older, each year is a smaller proportion of our lives,” and that “each year feels shorter relative to all the time we've lived and thus seems to be going by faster.”
Graphs of ∫(y) dt Showing Decrease in Interactive Memory of Now (y = 1/t) as your t increases ("t" shown on this graph as "x").
Cindy Lustig, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, found that the perception of time is influenced by memory and how much you’ve experienced. For an 8-year-old, a week is a big portion of their life. For an 80-year-old, a week is a much smaller portion of their life, which contributes to the feeling that it went by quickly.
Copyright © 2025 David William Jedell
email: d.w.jedell@gmail.com
