I think you're onto something, but I don't think it has to do with plasticity, but novelty.

Consider the brain as a giant recording device with very good compression based recognizing patterns from previous data. So the first time you eat an apple, it stores a lot of data because it's a new experience. The next time, it stores something more like "like the last apple, but a little more tart".

I think our perception of time (at the macro scale) is roughly a perception of how much new data our compression-oriented brain is storing. It's the sensation of accumulated novelty.

I think everyone intuitively understands this too. If you spend the next 3 months sitting in your boring office job that you've done 1000 days before, those 3 months may disappear entirely from your memory. Compared to taking the next 3 months and traveling to some strange land far away from home, and I bet those 3 months will stick out in your mind until your dying days.

Thats the same thing, no?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory)?w...

I’m convinced you’re right. Consider how long your first road trip to a place feels, versus the 10th time you’ve taken that route. When you’re processing all new data, it stretches out.

> Traumatic experiences are particularly memorable because the brain wants to make sure you learn your lesson.

Weird, I have always been told that when the brain is functioning "normaly" (outside of disorders/syndromes, such as PTSD) that it has a tendency to forget bad things, to help us get over traumatic experiences.

One benefit of this, is once you'd done something once, the other times kind of melt together.

Yeah, this is a the answer. Our brain only remembers novelty, our firsts years and even decades are plagued by it. But after you are already 5 or 10 years onto your "adult" life you basically do exactly the same each day. 80% of what we do in our daily life as adults is not memorable at all and get completely ignored by our long-term perception. In short, it feels like the time flies because you did only 2 or 3 memorable things in the whole year.

More trauma, longer life. Got it. \s

It may not matter in any objective sense, or even a subjective one.

But if you want your sense of time passing to slow down, increasing the rate of new experiences might be one way to get there.

I mean, you can’t take the relationships with you either.

Do whatever makes you happy.

Even 3 weeks feels long now