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The gap between how old you are and how old you think you are

theatlantic.com

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Re: The gap between how old you are and how old you think you are

#31

Post by ordu »

I think the article gives us a very shallow take on a problem. The first question should be "what is an age perception". The article even calls this perception a bizarre thing (and I agree), but then it throws the question out of the window.

Why people think it is a good idea to learn how to guess age? I think, it is because we need to guess age of others to fine tune our communication skills. If it is so, then probably we apply this very guessing abilities to ourselves and get the wrong answer. Which is not very surprising: we see ourselves differently, we see ourselves from the inside, so skills learned for measuring others do not do a great job.

So there are some traits, that can be measured based on our appearance and behavior, that are used to predict age, but they looks completely different from the inside. What are they?

Re: The gap between how old you are and how old you think you are

#32

Post by crdrost »

simonblack wrote: post #3

I've felt about 22 for decades. Probably until my mid forties, I felt I was only about 19. That leads quite often to the situation where you are looking in shock at some elderly, bald person in the mirror while thinking "Who's that old bastard?". Or the sudden realisation "My God! I'm only two and a bit years off 80!" As the article says, there's a difference between the age you feel you are 'in your head' and the ag…

Jukebox the Ghost in 2012,

    In my lungs I still feel young
    But my body won't play along
    I'm thinking this must not be where we
    Belong.
Alan Kay was talking somewhere, but I don't have the link, about how a lot of his success in his youth had to do with the research community around him, and I think he was asked a question about how that sort of thing changes as you grow older... He replied that the combination of growing older and not having that generous funding for whatever experiments they wanted to do and the dynamic research community, meant that he had to stop looking for validation at the "quality of my results" and instead had to feel pride at the "quality of my effort." Something I have kept in mind.

The other thing I will say is that I am getting to an age where a lot of people really get set in their ways, and I am noticing that I am not. Like on a recent project I was trying to get team buy-in to move from Java to Kotlin, and the people who were super excited about it were 5-10 years younger and the people who were like “but why” were my generation and carried the day. I told this struggle to my wife and she attributed it to neurodivergence, she thinks I might have a mild or high-functioning ADHD that essentially gives me perpetual mid-to-late 20s enthusiasm with sime mild drawbacks (difficulty “cleaning as I go” when cooking for example, not handling the taxes until April when it becomes urgent, that sort of thing).

Re: The gap between how old you are and how old you think you are

#33

Post by irrational »

After I turned 50 I mentioned to my Mom that I still felt like I was in my early 20s. She said she felt the exact same way, despite being in her 70s. That was the first time I realized that the discrepancy between how old you are and how old you think you are might be universal.

It also made me wonder if this might be why surveys show that in general men prefer women who are in their early 20s. Perhaps men are basing it off of how old they feel (so they are the same age as the women they are seeking) rather than how old they are. Of course, the same surveys show that in general women prefer men near their own actual age. Perhaps women base it off of how old they are rather than how old the think they are. I have no idea if the above has any basis in reality. It’s just a “I wonder…”

Re: The gap between how old you are and how old you think you are

#35

Post by xyzelement »

I think this is just the aftermath (and also, ongoing) of boomer culture. Before that generation, you generally had kids in your late 20s and grandkids in your 50s. If you were 80, you were a great grandparent. All these titles conveyed an age. By the time you were those ages, you acted that age.

Boomers I think invented the 40 is the new 30 and 70 is the new 50 nonsense, so of course they are confused about what age they are. It's easy to "feel 20" when you haven't taken on the appropriate responsibility.

I am an example of that. I am 41, only married 3 years, to a younger woman and we have a baby and a toddler. Just bought a house etc. Very easy to feel young with all that, but the reality is I am more like "late to the party" - this all should have happened 10-14 years ago. I'd feel "older" if my kid was going into highschool rather than pre-school right now.

Re: The gap between how old you are and how old you think you are

#36

Post by [deleted] »

ordu wrote: post #31

I think the article gives us a very shallow take on a problem. The first question should be "what is an age perception". The article even calls this perception a bizarre thing (and I agree), but then it throws the question out of the window. Why people think it is a good idea to learn how to guess age? I think, it is because we need to guess age of others to fine tune our communication skills. If it is so, then proba…

[deleted]

Re: The gap between how old you are and how old you think you are

#39

Post by zeroonetwothree »

irrational wrote: post #33

After I turned 50 I mentioned to my Mom that I still felt like I was in my early 20s. She said she felt the exact same way, despite being in her 70s. That was the first time I realized that the discrepancy between how old you are and how old you think you are might be universal. It also made me wonder if this might be why surveys show that in general men prefer women who are in their early 20s. Perhaps men are basing…

I would assume it’s more of a biology thing because women under 30 are more fertile. We evolved to prefer those markers that signify that age.

Of course not all men have this preference etc etc

Re: The gap between how old you are and how old you think you are

#40

Post by AnimalMuppet »

setheron wrote: post #4

Does anyone ever feel older in their head than their body after their 20s?

I was 55, and I felt maybe 30 or 40. Then I pulled a hamstring. I felt about 80 for the next few weeks, because walking was so much slower and more painful.

Yeah, I know, it's just an temporary thing, but while it lasted it really did shift my perception of my age.

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