Over the years, I have become convinced that much of the observed age-correlated cognitive decline in people younger than ~70 results from voluntary life choices, such as settling into fixed behavioural patterns (e.g. doing the same thing over and over for decades) and lack of exposure to new stimuli.
It's the case for some physical activities as well: almost all people's actual performance degrades way, way faster, than their potential peak performance.
I'm 40 and my oldest daughter is 10. We both are very engineering oriented. It is amazing seeing the difference between age. Some math problems are intuitive to me because I have 30 years of experience and neurological pathways that mean I don't even have to think about them, and she gets stuck on the same problems.
On the other hand, sometimes she will solve problems with a broken toy after I had given up on fixing it.
Intelligent and cognitive ability are not scalars, they are vector spaces. Some dimensions start dropping off in your 20s and some not until your 80s. I feel like my emotional intelligence could peak in my 50s or 60s.
I’m 37 and I feel the same. Learning a brand new subject is difficult for me, mostly because I just feel too tired to push myself to do it.
On the other hand, my brain feels like it has marinated in 37 years of general experience, such that I can take on projects of significant complexity and not think too hard about it.
I also think a part of this is having enough experience to notice the cyclical nature of things also. Yes, that brand new thing is cool, and in my 20s I mighta jumped to learn it. But now, I see it's just a re-imagination of something from 10 years ago, that I learned back then, so it doesn't excite me in the same way. I might look at it to understand the parts that are different/re-imagined, but often not going to deep dive into items that fit that description.
And yes, not everything is just repeated, but it was an aspect I hadn't seen anyone else talk about.
I'm 39, and a fairly decent pianist. I learned a bit of guitar when I was younger, but just recently started learning guitar/uke more seriously.
I'm keenly aware of the skills that I spent hours and hours practicing that are now second nature to me on keyboards (such as scales, chords, names of notes) that I need to learn for guitar. Intellectually I understand how things work on guitars, but in order to get decent, I need to start putting in the time to practice playing scales, learning the fretboard, and even just teaching my fingers how to move in certain ways.
And it's not any harder to do this stuff than when I was a kid - in fact, in some ways it's easier. But it takes time and dedication. I have to keep reminding myself that I am actually making a ton of progress. But the tiredness / busyness can make it difficult to put in the time.
When I was younger I'd tunnel vision on things and get insanely good really quickly. The price was that everything else in my life was totally neglected. But I could totally afford to spend 6 hours after school, and entire weekends, on whatever I was into.
I just picked up guitar last year as an adult. I'm consistently practicing, but man progress feels slow! It feels weird not being able to tunnel-vision on a hobby
That’s what hurts the most about aging, to me. The loss of obsession. Obsession is the sole reason I’ve ever been good at anything, and I’m scared that I’ve entered into a permanent stage of my life where I’ll no longer feel overcome by curiosity or passion.
That's actually not been a problem for me. I don't know whether I have a touch of ADHD or I'm a bit on the autism spectrum, but being able to seriously focus on things hasn't really been an issue for me. The real issue are distractions - including my wife who I love hanging out with. She's been traveling a lot, so I've had more time to spend hours practicing my guitar scales and fingerings, and watching a TON of youtube guitar videos.
Just never clicked with me when I was younger. My younger brother was super into guitar so that was kind of "his thing" and I had other interests. I spent a lot of time playing keys in my late 20s / early 30s, including being in 2 different bands, one which played several shows every weekend.
...but a piano or keyboard is not very portable, and not everything is a good fit for keys. I especially love the portability of the tenor uke.
I had a similar problem. Getting 8 hours of sleep every night, no exceptions, helped immensely.
It’s really hard. I even have a self-imposed rule that I always send my kids to sleep away camp in the summer. It’s necessary to escape the grind and take care of myself for a few weeks.
But if you look at medical research, it’s absolutely insane how sleep is related to everything.
I tried sleeping a solid 8 hours. Didn’t work. Weirdly enough, if I only get 4 hours of sleep, I’m wired for the entire day and I feel great. But it’s not sustainable.
I think if you're in this position (which I am at 41), you've mostly used your prime brain time well. Turning high-effort, high-value brain pathways and operations into basically no-ops is the point.
> mostly because I just feel too tired to push myself to do it
As a 34 year old this scares me the most. I don’t want real life to accumulate and accrue around me so I don’t have the energy for curiosity and intellectual pursuits. But the harder I fight, the more cruft there is to think about.
It's like the old parable in 7 Habits, "I don't have time to sharpen the ax, I'm too busy chopping". You have to get strategic about it, you can't just plow through like you did when life was simpler.
Cut things that aren't such a high priority out completely. Reconsider division of labor in your household. Outsource. Batch process. Block time out on your calendar to do things you want to do, on a repeated schedule so you don't have to find time again. Put them in the form of classes, if social pressure helps. Yeah it's a job but if it gets your life back, isn't it worth it?
I'm 42, I'm finishing my game development degree, doing my ham radio license, and I was never so sharp as now in my life. Maybe as younger hacker, I could learn harder, but i used to have much less focus and waste much more time than now. Now I know myself, I know how I learn and what I want to learn. What works for me: I study always from 7 until 8:30. To be able to do that. I wake up 5:30, do my sports and then start to study. I'm blessed to have a wife and kids that just support me to be "weird" and hungry for learning and knowledge. I dropped as well my workload to be able to spend as much time as I can learning.
I do it every day. Even if you are feeling not so up to do sports, grab your phone, tune your favorite podcast and walk at least 30 minutes, following it by a stretch session. Something like that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_xrDAtykMI would be enough.
At 33 I’m feeling something similar. I wouldn’t say that new subjects are hard, necessarily, but they do take a type and quantity of mental energy that’s not always available, making for a sense of tiredness in these situations.
I could be wrong but I feel like this would improve a lot if I didn’t have to work a job for a while. The bulk of each day’s mental energy goes into writing code, which doesn’t leave much for other things.
Same age, same boat but I wonder about two independent factors: how my cumulative health decisions have depleted my energy reserves, and if being lower on the Dunning-Kruger curve had some distinct advantages earlier in life (i.e. I expect things to be harder now which adds an additional mental obstacle and fatigue). I also gave a shit about far less thus further freeing mental capital.
Then again, outside of sports, nothing in my youth was taxing (particularly not school). The only real mental investment I had to make was verbal sparing with friends, and video games.
It was easier to do math in my head but I had been doing it regularly for years (full stack web apps call for very little), and it was much easier to keep momentum on something like Tolstoy (could also be health related though).
What about you? Any specific things you think you could incontrovertibly do better in your youth that aren't likely confounded by other variables?
> how my cumulative health decisions have depleted my energy reserves
I wonder about this too. Goodness knows that sleeping for ~4 hours or pulling all-nighters, eating the cheapest things on the shelf, and not getting in much physical activity late in high school and through college weren't sound decisions and are likely to haunt me for the rest of my days.
> if being lower on the Dunning-Kruger curve had some distinct advantages earlier in life (i.e. I expect things to be harder now which adds an additional mental obstacle and fatigue)
This isn't that much of a problem for me. In fact when it turns out that things put up less resistance than expected it's kind of refreshing and helps pull me along. The trick is getting to that point in the first place.
> What about you? Any specific things you think you could incontrovertibly do better in your youth that aren't likely confounded by other variables?
Hard to answer, really. Maybe sitting down and getting lost in the process of doing something creative… it came extremely naturally to me in my teens and early 20s but there are so background processes associated with being a responsible somewhat functioning adult running in my head now that it's considerably more difficult. Probably fixed by removing the need for those background processes to run, but that's not exactly practical.
Are you referring to people often misapplying the concept, or its replicability issues (which I had admittedly come across before but don't hold in active memory)?
I'm confident I nailed the former (I thought I was better at things than I was in reality when I was younger, and am now more likely better than I think I am in those same domains today).
If you referring to the latter, it's tricky for me. It's like the famous two humped camel in programming aptitude. It seems to be useful in describing experiential observations but didn't (doesn't?) replicate. I've stopped using it at this point because I don't want to mislead people.
DK also has the appearance of explanatory power at a minimum, and utility in communicating the simple form of the concept. I don't like the replicability issue but wonder how bad the down side is if all I'm really saying is we aren't often humble enough about new things, and aren't confident enough about things we've dedicated time to?
Welp, that justification for promoting something potentially falsifiable surely isn't going to come back to bite me and expose my hypocrisy elsewhere...
That rings true for me as well. I think it's -because- there are areas that have had so much experience and focus and come so easily, that everything else feels hard by comparison. While I can identify with feeling too tired, I don't know if that's really different than when I was younger, it's just when I was younger I had nothing easier to fall back on to feel valuable.
There are concepts called crystallized intelligence (stuff you learned) and fluid intelligence ("working memory", ability to work with x number of data points). The latter is what drops with age.
The idea isn't that you aren't effective when you are old, just that you are slower.
Some studies showed a slower rate of decline in execs and people doing interesting/creative work, which implies that the "not doing anything new" is at least partially at fault.
There are three phases of learning: computational, associative, and automatic. When you are older you may be able to transition into the associative stage more quickly when you attempt to learn something.
I've always had a sneaking suspicion that the best folks I've worked with just ("just") had the breadth to immediately drop into an associative mode, and as I've gotten older and realized that I so very rarely actually encounter anything remotely new that I'm doing it now, too. Having grown into being on the other side of the table, recognizing that "yes I understand, yes this is the first time I've seen this, it's fine, go on" capability in myself is neat. (I try to be as delicate with it as my own mentors were.)
Yes agreed on peak emotional intelligence coming later (at least in my case).
I'm 51 and have never been happier nor more balanced in my life. I can't run as fast nor program as long into the night as I could a decade ago (or maybe I can but I know better now) but as far as my approach towards people and life in general I'm feel much advanced over my neurotic 900 mile an hour have to show everyone how smart I am younger years.
Of the "I wish I knew then what I know now" aspect, the emotional intelligence would be the one area I'd choose. The absolutely stupid and meaningless things that would set me off back then just make me embarrased/ashamed of that behavior now. I'm practically zen-like now compared to then, and I have a much better quality of life for it now. I would stew on things and not let things that bothered me go then, where now I actually laugh at things instead.
Yes, I observed that also. They are are faster physically and mentally (such as operating or discovering how things/software works) and a lot more logical (but not in depth). Simple recent example, doing trail making test (for fun) they were twice as fast while I was average.
This is why I wish system would allow for more young politicians and leaders, lower voting age of 16, and maximum voting age of average lifetime expectancy - 16.
My own political stances from back when I was 16 make me think that this may not be a great idea. I was logical, but also young and inexperienced, knew no other perspectives than my own and had yet to develop some more empathy. I was even completely unaware of some significant facts about myself, which also influenced my opinions. Also, I like to believe that I'm way less prone to manipulation and peer pressure now than I was back then. My mind may have been sharper, but that's not all that matters.
If started at 16 young people would be much better voters at 18 than current 18 year old voters are and so on. There are examples of uninformed voters at all age groups (voting across party lines is one example). Young people should have a chance to participate in our democracy and should be able to vote, if not in general, at least in municipal elections.
How so? How is being able to vote or not influencing people being informed or not? (which, by the way, is absolutely not what I was talking about in my previous comment)
Having voted before does not make you a better voter in the future. I don't think the fact that I had to wait with my first vote for almost full voting cycle longer because there were elections right before my 18th birthday that I couldn't take part in had influenced my political stances in any way.
I’m OK with this as long as we make 16 the age of adulthood. Otherwise it’s a bit hypocritical to say that a 16 year old is mature enough to vote but not mature enough to have a beer.
That is an interesting idea, but hard to implement in practice, to only allow mature enough people to vote. Being mature means different things to different people, but I suspect that even we we agreed on a definition we would find that a lot of adults would not qualify.
You could argue that an adult shouldn't be represented by someone they didn't have the ability to vote for or against. But in that case you would probably need to lower the voting age even more.
Jury is selected and approved by layers and judge. Judge and lawyers are in much better position to select someone competent than age, especially at low and high extremes. Just like there are few 18 yo juror's there would be likely very few 16 yo ones.
Speaking of age, there's an interesting research that found: "that conviction rates increase by about 1 percentage point for each year increase in the average age of the jury pool"
The role played by judges and lawyers in selecting jurors varies a lot by jurisdiction and type of proceeding.
If 16 year olds are allowed to vote, they will wind up on juries.
Assuming jurors are selected randomly from the electorate, with exclusions only in very unusual instances, would you support 16 year olds being part of juries?
This is crystallized vs fluid intelligence in IQ terms. Your fluid intelligence (short term memory/spatial vizualiation/problem solving) starts going down around 25 and you crystallized intelligence (long term memory) starts going down around 60: https://oxfordre.com/economics/doc/10.1093/acrefore/97801906...
This kinda sounds like there's a marginal cost thing going on: you've made some kinds of problems much cheaper to solve, via experience. The things that those mental models don't apply to are then harder in comparison, even if they aren't actually harder in absolute terms than they would have been earlier on.
This. Corporate work in particular tends to make people stupid. The 98% who don't climb the ladder end up associating what they are (or used to be) good at with subordination and failure, while the other 2% have optimized themsleves to appeal to stupid people and end up just like the set of people (executive blockheads) they're trying to join.
People who protect their intelligence and creativity, damn the consequences, tend to keep them for a long time. People who buy in to the corporate system turn into morons. The problem is that they don't notice it happening, and that, as one gets older, it gets harder to recover.
The person probably meant they didn't really get to coast and just do the same thing over and over again. Many kinds of mundane-looking corporate work are often hard work.
You think getting certificates is improving your mind?
My experience in corporate work is exactly as the comment you replied to. Endless drone work doing much the same things day after day. I did it for 3 years, learned basically nothing beyond what I came in the job with, then went out on my own. In the time since I have learned so much more than what I did in that corporate job, there is just no comparison. Also, I strongly suspect they literally try to keep you stuck in one spot and too dumb to move out of it on purpose; you are less likely to leave or ask for a raise. They want predictable drones in corporate work, and yes, getting certificates is one way you make drones feel like they are doing something.
I've worked for startups and for very large companies. I've also consulted for both, and dealt with executives and decision-makers in both spaces. And, respectfully, three whole years at one job is a drop in the bucket in terms of experiential breadth and making sweeping claims to the universe of corporate work from it is unwise. "Drones" "drones" "drones" is just look-down-your-nose silliness and while I am not a cheerleader for tech certs generally, I have a few in my background, and there's significant value both personally in the effort to better oneself and in the practical, learn-what-to-learn you can derive from them. (AWS certifications, for example, are pretty significant in terms of what-you-have-to-know when you get past Associate.) Even aside from that, there are tons of medium and large companies actively and consistently working to provide opportunities because internal transfers are (usually) cheaper and no less likely to succeed at new and more complex roles than hiring externally. Heck, even in places where that isn't necessarily a company focus, I've seen reading groups, SIGs, etc. form just because people want to learn new stuff. Tale as old as time.
One job, three years. Perhaps you had a bad job. But try this one on, too: perhaps you lacked the wisdom to recognize opportunities where they appeared, and you're better at it now.
If you don't want to do endless drone work (who would?!?) then why would you stay at that job?
I've never stayed at an unfulfilling job - how pointless. I've made a point to network outside my immediate group - and most importantly be nice as well as helpful to others. It really makes a difference; people notice. All of my jobs, including my current one, came to me based on my reputation. There was no luck involved, just honesty and steady work. I won't even say hard work because it was always work I enjoyed.
That’s not completely false, but it’s misunderstanding aging.
Lack of energy is one of the signs of aging. Staying up to 3 AM to party and going to work the next day is one end, but the other is trying to convince yourself to do more than sit in a chair all day. It’s not that people get lazy it’s that everyone slows down and learning new things or doing anything difficult just takes more out of you every single year.
Age related decline is biological and not everyone has identical DNA. The need for reading glasses varies quite a bit and is probably a good yardstick. Some people get their first reading glasses at 40 other’s 60, that’s a huge range.
As such just because some people are running marathons at 90 doesn’t mean most people could do that, it’s self selecting for people with minimal declines. The other half of this is injury/disease/height etc can make a huge difference.
I think the comment you are replying to specifically meant age related far-sightedness when speaking about glasses. Plenty of people need them for issues which have nothing to do with age.
Age-related decline is happening at much younger ages these days. There is a growing belief that the way we prescribe and use glasses is leading to atrophy in young people that previosly was only seen in the old. Lenses get firmer eith age, but atrophied muscles from inactivity mean even soft/young lenses are unable to focus properly.
Last I checked, they'd finally narrowed down the main cause of near-sightedness (not far-sightedness, though) to insufficient very bright light (sunlight) exposure during certain formative years (I wanna say like 3-6?). Seems to play a role in getting the lens to stop changing at the correct time.
Seemed like they were pretty certain it was that, specifically, and not the list of other things people've blamed it on over the years.
No-one's responded to this by totally re-thinking how we do early childhood education (there's little sun in the Winter, schools have been cutting back recess time and getting much more timid about sending kids out in non-perfect weather, so I'd bet that's when most of the harm is being done) so maybe that turned out to be BS? Or maybe we just don't care about preventing a very high percentage of near-sightedness cases.
China is. It started with their air force pilots. They, like many air forces, have had to drop their 20-20 vision requirements for pilots as the VAST majority of well-educated potential pilots now wear glasses. In china/japan it can be upwards of 90% of young men, that a huge loss of potential recruits. (fyi, most air forces now require only that new pilots have vision "correctable" to 20-20 via glasses.)
>> China’s top education authority has asked all schools to give students more sports-related assignments and less text-based work during summer and winter breaks this year to curb climbing myopia rates among minors.
>> The Ministry of Education announced the new rule as part of its Bright Action project, a five-year plan to better protect students’ eyesight by increasing outdoor activities and minimizing screen time, which have been blamed for deteriorating vision among children and adolescents.
You mention recess time. I live in Helsinki and the school system here aggressively gets kids outside for regular playtime in any weather. There should be data here for further investigations of root causes.
In my part of the US, nicer private schools and daycares tend to act that way, but cheaper ones or public schools schedule less of that time to begin with and are quick to replace that with indoor activities if there's a light drizzle or it's a little cold outside. Perhaps counterintuitively, public schools seem much quicker to bow to the preferences of one or two nutty parents ("little Johnny was COLD at recess! You can't go outside when it's 35°F, that's unsafe!") than private schools do.
Also, public schools have responded to No Child Left Behind legislation, in part, by drastically cutting recess time, including in very early grades—which, AFAIK given the state of the art in learning research, might actually be counter-productive, but a key sentiment driving all US behavior is that one must always be able to say that one has "done something", even if that something was worse than doing nothing, and that it's preferable to so something that an uneducated person would think looks like it should help based on gut feeling, over what experts say would help.
I've read conflicting accounts around this. Some link "time outdoors" to exposure to "natural" light, which 99% of the time is brighter light. But others link time outdoors to a wider variety of focal distances. Someone walking in the woods is constantly refocusing from close to far, whereas someone sitting indoors is probably just staring at a fixed distance (computers/books etc). So the answer may be brighter indoor lighting (brighter computer screens) or maybe we need to continuously change our focal distances, something far more complicated to implement indoors.
> Age related decline is biological and not everyone has identical DNA
Agreed—my friend Chaz Ferrari is 70 and has no gray hairs. And swims miles every day.
It's also easier to overlook one's aging when one is not competing with youth. I'm 58, and I pair-program at my company, and the intellectual elasticity of the twenty-year-olds continues to astound me: they can read through code & digest it much more quickly than I can, my years of experience notwithstanding.
> Lack of energy is one of the signs of aging
True! I remember when I was 49 and had to resign from the rugby team. "This is my last season," I told the coach. "I'm tired all the time from practice and games, and I can't do it anymore. It's too much." I was forced to acknowledge that at 49 I could no longer do what I could at 48. But that doesn't mean that life is over: I play old boy's rugby, and it's a blast.
"he need for reading glasses varies quite a bit and is probably a good yardstick. Some people get their first reading glasses at 40 other’s 60, that’s a huge range." I'd like to meet someone at 60 who hasn't aged. They might not need reading glasses but pretty sure they will otherwise be old, with gray or balding hair, bad knees, etc.
My point was everyone ages, but young 60 and old 40 can look a lot alike.
Balding isn’t universal, a friend of mine is 70 and looks 50 with a full head of hair that not full grey, it’s kind of freaky. He’s still working construction and carrying heavy loads etc. Meanwhile I started going grey at 20.
At least hair loss and going grey is genetic. I am sure being overweight etc plays a major role, but I wouldn’t rule out a genetic component to most signs of aging.
I'm 39 and I think during the last few months I have starting to notice first (very light) symptoms of presbyopia (difficulty to focus on very small print from up close while wearing my myopia glasses, that goes away without glasses). So I hope for my own sake it's not such a good yardstick!
Fortunately I'm rather optimistic, as I think I have a relatively good energy level for people my age. In fact, I can still party until 3 AM and go to work the next day (although not for several consecutive days, like when I was 20...).
You're right at the typical age to get bifocal glasses. For nearsighted/farsighted it's the shape of a person's eye as they grow. For close up text it's the flexibility of the eye that is the problem.
I managed to get to age 53 before needing bifocal glasses but I really should have had bifocals around age 47. Books were OK at age 46 but getting hard to read at 47. My phone screen was the final straw when I had to hold it with my arm nearly completely stretched.
Once you get them you realize it's not the "light is too dim", it's not "they make text too damn small these days!", or the font style, it's your eyes. With bifocal glasses (or just reading glasses) it's amazing to see small text again.
A great many people get glasses at 6, not 60, and thier vision is in decline before highschool. It is a widespread and very modern problem. In a couple decades the concept of reading glasses might be gone. Everyone may be in glasses 24/7 starting long before age-related decline.
Most people who need glasses at a young age are nearsighted. That is, their eyes can focus on near objects, but they need glasses to clearly see objects far away.
Vision decline in old age is frequently associated with farsightedness. Old people have more difficulty focusing on close objects, so they get reading glasses.
I've been nearsighted for most of my life. I've always worn glasses to drive a car, but glasses didn't impede my near vision until after I turned 40. Today I wear progressive bifocals when I drive so I can see the road, but also read the speedometer or the navigation app on my phone. Before I turned 40 regular glasses didn't prevent me from seeing the dashboard clearly.
As i predicted, your use of glasses in all circumstances has usurped the concept of reading glasses. Since you are using modern bi/trifocals you probably will just keep using those rather than have dedicated reading glasses that you switch to for close-in reading.
Even ignoring your omission of contact lenses, that doesn’t follow.
I have been wearing glasses since I was young and it has very little to do with how I feel about reading glasses. Bifocals are awful if you saccade regularly instead of moving your head, add that to astigmatism correction and it’s like you’re viewing the world through the portals of a bathysphere.
I will likely always be able to just take my glasses off and read. But when I wear contacts, reading glasses are my preferred option.
I refused to get reading glasses when I started having trouble reading small labels some years ago. I blamed the problem on computers and that might have something to do with it but probably mostly age.
It's not even a book. More like a pamphlet and could fit the whole thing in a <li> almost. But it worked in my case at least. A few weeks of doing the exercises and I could read find print labels again!
The Bates Method has been “debunked” and is even considered dangerous [0]. In your case I would suspect that it isn’t the eyes that have improved, but your brain got trained to apply better “error correction” when reading small print. At least that’s an effect that I observed on myself after my eyesight worsened: At some point my brain learned to compensate by improved pattern recognition, but sometimes it messes up, a bit like an ML model, and “sees” details that aren’t actually there.
I don't know if this is the Bates method exactly but it worked very well in my case. It didn't take long either. Maybe 10-15 sessions and I was back reading small print on labels. And could clearly make out each character and thus do not believe it's some sort of mental compensation or pattern recognition.
Certainly I do not believe rolling your eyes or blinking or the other exercises in the book could in any way be dangerous. Some are sort of weird and I don't know how effective "palming" is for example.
But it makes sense to me you can exercise your eyes like other parts of the body (or brain for that matter). I don't see how it could be otherwise.
"Dangerous" sounds like it might be Big Optical (is there such a thing?) disinformation. I kid. Maybe.
It worked. Was not pattern recognition or anything like that, I could actually see clearer and with less effort. No idea who "debunks" this kind of stuff or if there have been trials or what those might be worth nor do I particularly care.
Just relating my experience in hopes someone else gets the same benefit.
Not everything he said was dangerous, but Bates advocated sungazing which can cause serious damage the peoples eyes including cataracts, macular degeneration, pterygia, and sunburn of the cornea.
Palming as described can be safe, but if you applying pressure to the eyes it increase the risk of glaucoma.
I don't know the history or theory behind this and so don't know if this book is the Bates method proper but Bates advocated looking at the sun with open eyes?
The "decline after 60" conclusion of the article rings true to me. I switched intellectual focus and mastered entirely new fields regularly throughout the 40 years between when I left college at age 20, and my early 60s. That switching and new learning kept me fresh, and my ability to do productive intellectual work - the mental speed measured in the Nature article - held up very well. But it began to noticeably decline in my early 60s. This was not due to life choices, as you suggest - I had an active interest and incentives, and put effort into, maintaining my abilities, and probably had more time and opportunity than ever. Rather, it just became noticeably harder to learn, and to use learning to solve problems or do creative work.
A data point of one proves nothing, of course. But my experience at the very least provides no counterexample to the article's hypothesis.
As for the physical - sure, you can maintain a greater peak performance than what most people do, as you age. But regardless of the effort, it's pretty much going to go down hill - strength, reaction time, coordination - after you're 30. You can slow it down, maybe dramatically if you're on the tail of the curve and put enough effort in (c.f. Tom Brady), but you can't stop it. And the effort required per "retained ability" just goes up.
They are not talking about cognitive decline, they are talking about speed of processing. I am mid 60s, engineering for the last 38 years, and the depth of work is not a problem, but I definitely don't make the same snap judgements that I made even just ten years ago. It also pertains to physical reaction time. Meaning, after 60 you best leave a little more gap between you and the car ahead.
You may doubt this now, but you will see how life changes for you after age 50, and again how life changes for you after age 60.
It is all fine, it really is, but you will find yourself saying "that didn't used to hurt", and you will also find yourself shoving people away from your mouse because they want to click on something that you haven't decided to click on yet.
It's just nature. Yes, some people abuse their bodies and their minds, but even the most careful are going to see changes. Just life, just how it goes.
Our conception of a job as doing repetitive, boring, pointless work, is very much not the nature of actual work.
I feel there is a huge underclass in society who do dead end jobs and feel terrible inside. But that's not the nature of work itself.
My experience is that there is plenty of high paying, high status, highly stimulating work. But there's competition for those jobs, then employers deliberately discriminate against those who don't have experience in those lines of work.
I read or heard somewhere (maybe some Schwarzenegger speech?), that only 25% of the people are happy with their jobs. If the rest of the people drags themselves through the workday ... I guess you get used to the frustration at some point and have to completely separate/compartmentalize that from private life, otherwise you get into a life crisis or something. As a society we definitely owe it to ourselves to find better jobs for people and create less frustrating work environments. As to how to achieve that though, I do not have the answer.
You don’t have to aim for a high paying job. It’s not a goal in itself. Plenty of people are happy doing jobs which don’t pay that well but interest them.
My whole career I had the attitude that the job was more important than the money. I have budgeted and planned so I could retire well even though I have not made a lot of money. The problem is that I did not foresee that a divorce would end up halving my retirement. I think we would all do well to destroy the idea that enjoying work is more important than making money. We have a limited amount of time and effort that we can invest so we need to maximize our earnings.
I think that’s not an issue with jobs not paying enough but an issue where society doesn’t have a suitable safety net for when life does it’s unpredictable thing. A divorce sucks, but it shouldn’t destroy your ability to retire well. There should be government programs to ensure the elders of the community are set.
I think that there is not enough wealth around to support all elders communities at reasonable levels. The demography is a bitch all around and there is too many people young and old that believe that they deserve american middle class level of life. Where they will find all required modern slaves to make it happen?
We have plenty of wealth. The argument we don’t is something I don’t actually believe and would like to request evidence for. Everyone does in fact deserve a decent quality of life, with basic things like healthcare and housing made available to them and we don’t need slavery to do this.
If everybody would somehow limit their greed - then yes, You are right, there is plenty of wealth - for example from the pure math point of view the hunger problem should not exist (we have too much food at this moment).
But this is not math problem to solve - this is people problem.
We collectively do not care enough to solve it. Most of us are lazy and there is too many greedy people between those who can provide and those in need.
When I look around my family and friends I do not see anyone who knows how to limit their greed - I believe that almost all of them, if given a chance, would use money and power to bring their status up, increase their consumption, and only then would share like 10% of it with the ones in real need. And when I look around those who know how to restrict themselves (some church community participants) I only see people that know how to talk and are mostly impotent - they do not know how to build systems that could bring wealth to those who need it.
sure, you wouldnt blame yourself getting married to a partner that takes half of your earnings but yeah destroy the idea of doing an interesting job for half money - you could have stayed single with a happy ending or two once a month ;)
I was a research scientist in my other life. And while overall the job was challenging and very interesting 90% of it was still boring and mentally repetitive things. Granted being board behind one's desk and board while working 9 to 5 on a conveyor are two completely different scales of boring. I was once cutting trees and shrubs using nothing but axe for 3 month as my summer job.
I dunno if I agree with this. I feel like I've got a nice combination of the three.
I make median wages for "lead full stack developer" role at a company with no central office (I live in the middle of nowhere.) I also have a fairly good amount of autonomy and authority, and do work that borders on "fun" more often than not.
Maybe you could say that I have no "status" compared to some pedigreed, Fortune 500 C-suite type but that doesn't really interest me so much. I come from a working class Appalachian family so I have a pretty low bar of "status" which really just means "professional respect" to me.
I decided a while ago that I'm going to live my life as if this were true despite not having scientific evidence to support it. When people retire they're in danger of rapid decline if they stop living a rich and active life, exactly as you said. You need physical, mental, and social stimulation. My grandmother is in her 90s and doing really well considering her age, and I can see that she walks, read books, and meets friends all the time. I pursue physical and mental stimulation constantly; running, yoga, lifting weights, practice music, learn new languages, programming, reading books, etc. (I admit I have a bad habit of neglecting social needs.) If I am lucky enough to "retire young" from software I plan on pursuing a new career in some passion field. I've chosen to believe that slowing down is my choice and right now I plan to choose not to.
I know all of this is anecdotal, you can go ahead and preface every sentence I wrote with "I think/In my opinion..." but in this case n really does equal 1, I only have 1 life to live. Even if there is absolutely no correlation between my observations and reality, with this strategy I'm only at risk of a life well lived.
I understand that social contact is a part of healthy aging. If you are feeling alone, make time for people! Though it sounds like you are enjoying yourself thoroughly.
I agree, and I think you also see the same with physical health. Our metabolism doesn't actually decline until we're in middle age (nor do you need to ramp up your calories during pregnancy) [1]. The only reason people get fatter over time is because they just keep overeating, and probably get more sedentary over time to boot. Knowing this has really motivated me to build a lifestyle that demands consistent and significant effort that I can sustain throughout my entire life: challenging and diverse mental stimulation, diverse and frequent but low-impact exercise, and lastly, a satisfying and nutritious diet that doesn't cause me to gain weight. It's amazing to learn how strong and durable our bodies are, and inspirational to see how much potential we actually have.
This is the problem with cohort studies. If you just picked 100 people at random and followed them from age 40 to age 60, on average they'd all get physically weaker. But this is an observation, not an unavoidable trend; if you took any one of them and put them on an effective weightlifting and diet program (and they followed it), they could at least double their strength assuming they previously never lifted weights.
>An average 30 year old who is not doing sports will not lose muscle mass by itself.
>An average 50 year old will lose 1% per year or so.
Sure, but the average is what it is because most people barely exercise, especially when they're older. If everyone lived a much more active life with more strenuous exercise, the average would look completely different.
Actually, if you put them all on an effective weightlifting and diet program, they'd still decline. More slowly to be sure, but no amount of exercise and diet will eliminate the effects of age. Same is true of mental exercise. Animals, and mammals in particular, lack the cellular and metabolic level repair mechanisms that would make it possible for us to keep running at peak ability indefinitely. We have no organ level repair mechanisms at all, outside of, arguably, our livers. Time is coming for you.
>Actually, if you put them all on an effective weightlifting and diet program, they'd still decline
The point is the baseline will increase. Someone who strength trains seriously could easily be at least twice as strong at age 40 as somebody without any training. Even if they unavoidably lose 50% of their strength over the next 20 years, that just means at age 60 they'll have the same strength level as a 40 year old who never strength trained (and twice the strength of a 60 year old who never trained, assuming it decays linearly).
> Animals, and mammals in particular, lack the cellular and metabolic level repair mechanisms that would make it possible for us to keep running at peak ability indefinitely.
Given some of the research on anti-aging, it's not clear that this is the case.
Another way to say this is that, well past 60, life choices outweigh senescence.
I also like to remember that at no time are we really using what capacity we have to the fullest. An activity like chess for instance requires 100% focus over the course of the game to really do well - that kind of workout has got to good for brain health, but it's extremely rare in modern life. Compare with everyday survival say 10,000 years ago, which might have required 100% focus for much of the day.
I think it’s far more likely that certain physical ailments show up and a decreased desire for physical activity and novel experiences. Undiagnosed CFS/ME being an obvious case. I also think a lot of drug taking is self medicating for things like serotonin and dopamine dysregulation. People are trying to fill a hole, but there is a hole there.
>It's the case for some physical activities as well: almost all people's actual performance degrades way, way faster, than their potential peak performance.
It's pretty telling that these days people remain competitive up to their mid 30s even in pure athletics. For anyone under 60 who's not an elite athlete, age-related decline is probably noise compared to the difference that an hour or two of extra training per week would make. (That's not to deny that injuries etc. become more of a problem as you get older.)
I think this is skewed by a few highly visible players in the NFL. Tom Brady may be performing at a high level as a quarterback, but he definitely isn't as athletic as a 23 year old coming out of the draft. His performance is due to his understanding of the game, not some visits by Ponce De Leon.
The average age in the NBA and NFL is 26 years old. Sure there are outliers, but again, much of the success of these outliers isn't due to pure athleticism, but to understanding the game.
For every Brady, or Manning, there's a running back who lost a step and is no longer effective.
I was talking more about regular people. Any normal person is likely to be so far away from their peak athletic performance that even with age-related decline, it is probably possible for them to continue to increase their level of fitness into their 60s. Of course, it is hard work to do this. The point is just that as a regular person who’s lucky enough to maintain good health, you don’t have to accept your fitness declining precipitously with age.
I have no idea what the NFL is by the way :) So I doubt that my comment was influenced by it.
I think there's been a lot of advancement in nutrition, recovery and medicine to get to this stage. Unfortunately mental performance boosting seems taboo (eg. Modafinil) almost like steroids.
I’ve not seen anyone taboo mental stimulant drugs, the closest I’ve seen to that is (1) people don’t like things associated with treating mental illnesses and (2) that it’s hard to tell the difference between real medicine and quackery.
Outside those two categories, caffeine is one of the most used mental stimulants in the world, and sold in forms emphasising this use.
I can say that about a very large number of substances with no mental stimulation effect — There’s a reason pharmacology is a degree all by itself, but that’s still not “$category is taboo”.
I don't get your argument ? What would be the benefit of giving such drugs in comparison to risks and how does that relate to modafinil ?
Walk in to your doctors office and ask getting modafinil prescribed for improved work performance. What's the argument against it ? The ones I've heard are about them being there to treat conditions, etc. and giving stuff like this to boost performance of healthy individuals is very much a taboo.
A quick search for modafinil contraindications tells me it should not be taken with alcohol and it makes certain kinds of birth control less effective.
I’m not even remotely qualified to so much as read and understand medical jargon, but even I can recognise that several items on this ([0]) long list of stuff that interferes with (or is interfered by) mondafil includes both food and stuff you can get without prescription from the new-age-hippie section of a supermarket. Given the dumb things my hippie mum gave me as a teenager (and my dad without telling him [1]), all I can say is that this seems to me to be unwise to make trivially available.
Perhaps I’m wrong. After all, the fact a random person like me can’t read and interpret the warnings like a professional would is as much a limit on how seriously to take my concern as it is a reason to be concerned.
[1] at the very least Bach flower “remedies”, which would probably be harmless except for all the alcohol. She thought she was doing all of us a favour.
> Unfortunately mental performance boosting seems taboo (eg. Modafinil) almost like steroids.
Well both have effects only as long as you keep taking them. If i recall correctly there's a whole lot of mind altering substances that are illegal because of that...
But it's not like you have reduced mental capacity once you stop taking it (after you get some sleep) or I haven't seen any evidence of it. It's also not addictive. And available as a cheap generic drug. So what would be the problem ?
Did this happen to you ? Because frankly that hasn't been my experience at all. I've probably went through 40 pills in 5 years and it was always a great way to get through crunch time, prep for big days, wave off bad sleep days, etc. But I never felt the need to use it day-to-day - it would probably mess with my sleep and I would likely develop a tolerance.
For me - there is no effect other than not feeling tired and being able to focus really well. It's not even feeling rested because physical aspects of fatigue still kick in (eg. back pain from sitting long, eye strain, etc.)
Caffeine is probably worse because I get hard withdrawals symptoms after I get off (light migraines first couple of days and generally tired) - I don't really notice anything different after taking modafinil and getting proper rest.
I think most adult lives require a sclerotic mindset to develop. You have to be the same, potentially stupid, cog whether you like it or not. I personally tried to stretch my brain but time is lacking or the context is too chaotic (even at the human/political level, it's hard to find people to discuss) to really enjoy deep stimulation.
The 'hubris of 20 something' is mostly just ignorance.
When you have the experience to have witnesses all sorts of outcomes, you think of things in different ways.
I find myself far more 'unsure' of things because of 'all the angles' - and 'trying to thin of the unseen one's.
It's like C++:
You start by writing code. And think it's good, but it's not.
Then idiomatic code, because you realize the mess of your earlier code.
And then start to see 'all the things that could go wrong' in the horror of the code you wrote before.
Then you spend the rest of your career worrying about every few lines of code, about all the things that could go wrong, with obvious diminishing marginal returns on that.
So if you're 20 and making a dating app, it doesn't mater that much, you can thrash and burn through code.
For many things, that doesn't work and many of those projects do not fit the pattern of 'high growth VC' so they have to get done another way, hopefully at companies with surplus budget and a bit of vision and people willing to still do stuff instead of collecting a paycheque.
I know many people who are 40+ and simply refuse to learn new things. When they need to read a bill, fill out a form or figure out a basic UI, they refuse to even try and give it to their children or grandchidren.
I assume (without proof) that the brain loses elasticity when you stop using it for decades.
I am 61 and due to a nature of my job (creating products for clients and my own company) do nothing but constantly learn and invent things. I see no signs of slowing down and my clients seem to be happy with my solutions.
I am however lazy for example to learn some things that are valued by many people but what I consider useless. But I was like that as long as I can remember myself.
I am much the same, I can't muster the energy to learn things I think to be useless. Life is too short to learn/do useless things! I think you prioritise healthily :)
My anecdotal evidence is the opposite of this. At 53 I'm constantly learning new technologies and trying to get my younger colleagues to adopt them, but they refuse.
I assume (without proof) that this is because of their limited experience. They don't realize yet that there are many different solutions to any problem. They believe the first solution that comes to you is the one to stubbornly adhere to, because they are young and over-confident in their new abilities.
You have fundamental skills and you have room to play around with them. As in, you have been walking tight ropes (for the sake of example) for decades and its boring, so you try some jumps and runs on it. For them, barely staying on is an issue, so any additional variables is too much cognitive load.
An array wasn't always just "some ordered collection with fixed sequential memory". It was a very specific C# implementation written out as var fooArr = new barType[]. It was confusing that in Python its fooArr = []. "Why is it different? What does it all mean? The syntax is hard to remember. What if this adds errors? I just want my code to work."
You're saying actually the opposite of confidence (hesitancy) is something that might look like complacency to one person but it's actually just being conservative, making sure you stay on that rope. Good point. Thanks!
Refusal to learn doesnt suggest inability so to do. Once you have seen dozens of fads come and go you may well decide to focus on core skills rather than learn something that you know will be useless in a couple years. With age comes perspecive. With perspective comes the ability to think in longer terms. Choosing to ignore something doesnt mean you wouldnt be able to master it if you wanted to.
Well, these computers and email and messaging apps and web browsers -- they use the same ones for years, without really ever "getting it".
It's not as if they're saving time, when they need to knock on my apartment door, and ask what's happened with their computer (the browser window was 1cm to the right of the edge of the screen so some buttons seemed to be"gone").
it's instead that ... When using the apps, they don't automatically effortlessly learn how these apps work. Whist kids do
(I have in mind my 60-70-80 years old parents and neighbors)
My wife has ended up as the de facto tech trainer for a group of senior individuals she's met through a hobby of hers. While most of them are pretty technically illiterate, it's interesting nevertheless to see the differences. They'll all come to her with a goal they want to achieve on their computer, which she'll help walk them through. Some of them just want her to do it for them. Others want to be walked through exactly what they need, over and over, until they can do exactly this one task themselves (but any deviation later, due to a difference in need, software update, etc, will have them reaching back out to my wife). And a few, a very few, will ask questions along the way, seeking to abstract out the broader patterns and affordances so that they can figure out a whole swathe of similar problems on their own.
I assume there may still be others who never ask my wife (or anyone) for help, who learn on their own, but it's interesting to see the differences for those who do seek out help. I hope I'm in one of the latter group(s) when I get into my 60s+.
That's prioritization of cognitive load, everyone does it young as old. I've always subconciously made fun of people who can not do what my group can do, but now at +40 I have for many years seen that as a group bonding mechanisim you just have to keep in check. My point is what you think is important is not obvious for other people. What is basic is not simple to teach.
Figuring out a new UI is kind of a puzzle, but not a very good one. Figuring out a bill or form that has been sent to you -- not sure about 40+ (they should really do their own bills, that is weird for a 40-something year old), but when I think of my grandmother who is more like 80, this seems like a pretty reasonable thing to ask your kids about, given the absurd number of scams that target older folks.
I am 100% willing to believe that continuing to learn new things is good for brain health. But it seems to me that these examples are more like outsourcing the handling of annoyances, rather than avoiding the kind of new learning that would otherwise keep their brain healthy.
Interesting how much pushback you got on this. My experience is similar, I know many people who refuse to put effort learning the slightest new things, usually with excuses that they "already think too much" or are "prioritizing" or "outsourcing". But whatever those other priorities are, they don't look like learning to me. It's like exercise, if you haven't run in a few years then it's incredibly exhausting, no matter what your age is. I think most people are too quick to blame on age, what is often just lack of exercise.
(Although, note that physically pushing too hard is just as dangerous as not enough, the shorter lifespan in the past was partly due to an over-rigorous use of the body. I wonder if there's a mental equivalent, although I haven't seen any real evidence of it.)
correlation is not causation, and you've merely observed a correlation there. its way more likely that the people with declining mental acuity just couldn't learn anymore, making it a self fulfilling prophecy.
It's the case for some physical activities as well: almost all people's actual performance degrades way, way faster, than their potential peak performance.