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The fertility of the older mind

bbc.com

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Re: The fertility of the older mind

#31

Post by jdcarter »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #25
fnovd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that Americans live in a country where you can drive for hundreds of miles in any direction and still end up somewhere where English is spoken. We can hop around from state to state and opportunity to opportunity without having to take the time to learn a new language. The US is not Europe.

Yours is a typical American reaction that suggests that others learn foreign languages only because they might have to communicate after driving a short distance. In fact, Europeans have been able for centuries to communicate with neighbouring countries in their own language or rudimentarily known lingua francas without having to expend effort of picking up a new language. And yet, they still often decide to learn a…

Plenty of us do learn other languages purely out of curiosity. I've been studying Japanese for the last 9 months for that reason. However it's difficult to immerse myself in spoken Japanese because, where I live, I have to go out of my way to meet up with native speakers--that's the point the parent poster was making.

Re: The fertility of the older mind

#32

Post by Karrot_Kream »

sireat wrote: post #13

I think the article paints too rosy a picture for older minds. Yes you can learn things as you get older but the bar for your achievements gets lower and lower as you age. Let's take chess: There are no cases of a novice starting to learn at the age of 25 and becoming a grandmaster. You need to do some of that deliberate practice at an early age. I suspect the case is the same for math,programming, violin playing etc…

> Let's take chess: There are no cases of a novice starting to learn at the age of 25 and becoming a grandmaster. You need to do some of that deliberate practice at an early age. I suspect the case is the same for math,programming, violin playing etc.

Most perfect information games are _extremely_ memorization biased. A huge part of gaining the initial skill to compete at a decent level is memorizing thousands of positions, openings, and mistakes by other players. It's only after that that the real play begins.

So it's no surprise that older people who don't have the time to invest into this cannot reach the upper echelons. At 25, over a third of your intellectual life is already gone. The raw time you have to learn the basics and experiment at the upper levels is cut in a third.

Bill Joy himself only started programming in graduate school.

Re: The fertility of the older mind

#33

Post by yodsanklai »

One issue I'm having when learning new things (at 41) is memory. I don't feel less sharp than before, but I have a harder time to recall things that I studied a few months before. For instance, I regularly take coursera classes but one year later, I don't remember much. I'm trying to take more notes, hopefully it'll help.

Re: The fertility of the older mind

#34

Post by Karrot_Kream »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #25
fnovd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that Americans live in a country where you can drive for hundreds of miles in any direction and still end up somewhere where English is spoken. We can hop around from state to state and opportunity to opportunity without having to take the time to learn a new language. The US is not Europe.

Yours is a typical American reaction that suggests that others learn foreign languages only because they might have to communicate after driving a short distance. In fact, Europeans have been able for centuries to communicate with neighbouring countries in their own language or rudimentarily known lingua francas without having to expend effort of picking up a new language. And yet, they still often decide to learn a…

I'm guessing the OP is being downvoted, but I'm not sure why. OP is right.

Even in East Asia, plenty of people learn Japanese to watch anime, Chinese to enjoy Chinese classics, medieval stories, CPop, Korean for KPop, etc, etc. South Asia has a very rich intellectual tradition in dozens of languages, and a thriving (albeit scrappy) industry of film in local languages. Don't forget the time-honored trope of learning English through Hollywood movies.

America is unique in that it has created a culture that doesn't connect with the outside world at all. American sports are American, American TV shows are American, American movies come from Hollywood. It makes being multilingual in America a much rarer feat.

Re: The fertility of the older mind

#35

Post by joncampbelldev »

Cerium wrote: post #19
kevmo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a junior programmer at 30, it sure felt like I was on the older side. :) It's a separate subject, but there is a lot of age bias in the field.

I guess you have to be in the right place. I'm 28, and the most junior person on my team by at least 5 years in age and 8 in experience. It is great, since I have so many people to learn from.

I'm 28 and I wish I were the most junior on the dev team. Being a "lead" developer is fun, but I wish I had more people who I can actively learn from just by being around.

Re: The fertility of the older mind

#36

Post by delinka »

sjg007 wrote: post #11
gopalv wrote: post #3

> Or perhaps children are simply less inhibited and aren’t so scared about making mistakes. Struck a chord there - because I had come to the same conclusion of sorts, about my ability to practice activities in public. Riding a bicycle is a fairly hard thing to learn and very easy to practice (from my experience), but learning to do that when everyone around is falling off them was much less of a struggle than trying…

Some kids are less inhibited and scared but some aren't and they need active help to get through the anxiety. I think there is a genetic component at play because how else is that learned behavior.

As a parent, you can inhibit your children as toddlers by telling them "no!" all the time. Then, when it comes time to learn or be social, they now have inhibitions to overcome.

That's not to say there's no genetic component (my son, $deity bless him, has this anxiety/fear of lots of things - we're honestly not sure if we're unaware of some environmental cause, or if he's fighting genetics...)

Re: The fertility of the older mind

#37

Post by newforice »

sireat wrote: post #13

I think the article paints too rosy a picture for older minds. Yes you can learn things as you get older but the bar for your achievements gets lower and lower as you age. Let's take chess: There are no cases of a novice starting to learn at the age of 25 and becoming a grandmaster. You need to do some of that deliberate practice at an early age. I suspect the case is the same for math,programming, violin playing etc…

> Yes you can learn things as you get older but the bar for your achievements gets lower and lower as you age.

Here's to hoping you aren't in a hiring position.

Re: The fertility of the older mind

#38

Post by hathawsh »

As a child I was obsessively aware of other people's opinions of me, so I was afraid to make mistakes. Today, I am much better at putting myself in the learning mindset because I have learned a basic truth: learning is essentially the same as temporarily making a fool of myself, but in a safe place. That's how we all learned to walk, talk, and read, after all. If we can learn such complex skills as those then we can surely pick up a lot more skills, with effort.

I wish I had understood that as a child. I tried to learn to dance and act, but I mostly failed because I didn't really put myself out there. I did learn to sing thanks to choirs. I got into computers partly because all my mistakes were completely private.

There's no reason I can't continue to learn new skills. I just need to shed my ego and try things without reservation.

Re: The fertility of the older mind

#39

Post by oh_sigh »

fnovd wrote: post #20
expertentipp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot resist from a sarcastic comment. I find it cute when Americans claim they are "learning a foreign language". Currently I live in a 5th country. Each of them had completely different language, only two were from the same language family. I had no knowledge of English until I had been ~18.

Keep in mind that Americans live in a country where you can drive for hundreds of miles in any direction and still end up somewhere where English is spoken. We can hop around from state to state and opportunity to opportunity without having to take the time to learn a new language. The US is not Europe.

Also, english being pretty much the defacto world language doesn't help matters. If you only speak Dutch, you can only talk to 23M people. If you only speak English you can only talk to....2B people?

Re: The fertility of the older mind

#40

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

jdcarter wrote: post #31
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yours is a typical American reaction that suggests that others learn foreign languages only because they might have to communicate after driving a short distance. In fact, Europeans have been able for centuries to communicate with neighbouring countries in their own language or rudimentarily known lingua francas without having to expend effort of picking up a new language. And yet, they still often decide to learn a…

Plenty of us do learn other languages purely out of curiosity. I've been studying Japanese for the last 9 months for that reason. However it's difficult to immerse myself in spoken Japanese because, where I live, I have to go out of my way to meet up with native speakers--that's the point the parent poster was making.

> Where I live, I have to go out of my way to meet up with native speakers--that's the point the parent poster was making.

The point would still be wrong. Plenty of people learn a foreign language without the ability to have much contact with native speakers. Eastern Europeans have been keen on picking up Latin American Spanish, but it’s mostly watching telenovelas or falling in love with music from there, not actually going to Latin America. People learn all kinds of foreign languages from all the way across Europe, with the only actual interaction with native speakers being maybe a holiday once a year or less. A lot of language learning plays out through exposure to media, and with the internet, Americans have no less access to media than Europeans (or, as another person here notes, East Asians).

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