Sigh, I wasted the best years of my life in a startup that didn't get me rich. ;)
Sounds like there's a story there. Care to tell?
Study: Old Age Begins at 27
41–50 of 76 posts
Re: Study: Old Age Begins at 27
#42Try one of those mind training games for a couple of months and you'll see how lame this kind of study is.
You sum up most of the stupid attitudes in this thread. The scientists in this study most likely are better at this field than you. Probably The Times misinterpreted the results. Still your denial is hilarious. Just because you're smart, doesn't make you right. That goes for all of you.
Re: Study: Old Age Begins at 27
#43Lately we're finding good arguments for the idea that people start declining in abilities earlier than we thought. At the same time, there's a lot of work being done on life extension. What happens if we extend life to, say, 150 and what we get is this long, 100-year decline into complete cognitive paralysis? I'm 43 and I don't feel like I'm losing it. In fact, in some ways I feel more cognitively adept than I was at…
What happens if we extend life to, say, 150 and what we get is this long, 100-year decline into complete cognitive paralysis?
We go "That's interesting, I wonder which processes are involved and how we can keep their desirable effects while removing or reversing the decline?"
I'm late 20s and I do feel like I'm losing it. I feel overloaded by the infohose of 'news' I skim read every day yet mostly forget completely very quickly, lacking any rigorous understanding of significant subject(s), and facing paralysis of choice of all the things that might be worth spending 10 years studying.
More weight to my decisions? I think it's more inertia and more deeply worn ruts and grooves and more deeply implanted patterns of automatically triggered response that are 'me'.
Re: Study: Old Age Begins at 27
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
After 40 your reflexes are slower and you are less likely to have your world shattering idea. For some people, creativity increases with age. But still, quick thinking and high energy levels are useful. I think it's crucial that we compress schooling as much as possible so people can do something important while they still can.
I find it frustrating that most people spend a quarter of their life just going to school and you essentially can't do anything that useful until you are at least 25 or so
I find it much more frustrating that the common concept is that once you finish your formal schooling, you're done learning.
As much as listening to lectures for 20 years can be tedious, schools are a compression (time) and expansion (breadth) of the discoveries we would make on our own, and are therefore simply a way to get people up to speed with the current world. The real learning starts after school is out.
Re: Study: Old Age Begins at 27
#45I'm 23. I'm going to reference this research when we pitch our company to raise money. Fund the young guys.
Re: Study: Old Age Begins at 27
#46Lately we're finding good arguments for the idea that people start declining in abilities earlier than we thought. At the same time, there's a lot of work being done on life extension. What happens if we extend life to, say, 150 and what we get is this long, 100-year decline into complete cognitive paralysis? I'm 43 and I don't feel like I'm losing it. In fact, in some ways I feel more cognitively adept than I was at…
What happens if we extend life to, say, 150 and what we get is this long, 100-year decline into complete cognitive paralysis? We go "That's interesting, I wonder which processes are involved and how we can keep their desirable effects while removing or reversing the decline?" I'm late 20s and I do feel like I'm losing it. I feel overloaded by the infohose of 'news' I skim read every day yet mostly forget completely v…
I'm 18, and occasionally I feel like I've lost something I had before. But that's a common feeling, I'm sure: I'll always want to be wiser and simultaneously younger. I doubt that has anything at all to do with my actual age or level of knowledge.
The feeling of losing things may very well stem from the inertia that builds up in life, along with your own growing awareness of your abilities. When I was 5 I thought I was a superhero: I was powerful and could crush anything. When I was 16, I didn't think that, but I thought that I was a powerful, fascinating individual around whom the world revolved. Now I've begun working out and taking care of myself, and I'm probably stronger now than I've ever been, but I don't have the same blind, false confidence I had before.
Is that losing it? I'll suspect that a year from now if I continue to work out with any level of dedication, I'll be stronger than I've ever been - not just in my mind, but in reality. Similarly, every year I become more aware of my limitations, but simultaneously those limitations lessen and disappear. I'm brighter now than I've ever been, and it's my intent never to enter a life scenario where I'm not allowed to continue to grow.
Inertia is the larger problem: both with body and mind and personality, the longer you don't use something the more it fades away. By your late 20s, you've left school, you've entered a more stable type of living, and there's every chance that you're in a duller, more monotonous setting - and worse, you're faced with the prospect of things never abruptly changing. That's deadly, and I'd suspect it contributes a lot to this attitude of people burning out.
(I come from a slightly unique perspective - the world of writing, where if you publish a book before you're 35 you're considered precocious. In all of literature, the greatest changes have come from people older than 30. I think it's because literature, unlike other forms of music, is forced to be subtle in order to work: it requires command of only a few skills, and there's no pressure to hurry with writing, and so as a result the field is full of people who can dedicate a decade to a single piece. The works that are remembered are the ones so rich with experience that they stand above even this field of work. Unlike, say, music, where not knowing anything means you have an advantage in your ability to create new works, literature very often requires at least an understanding of what's been done before, because without it the chances of your making something worth people's time is virtually nil.)
Re: Study: Old Age Begins at 27
#47Lately we're finding good arguments for the idea that people start declining in abilities earlier than we thought. At the same time, there's a lot of work being done on life extension. What happens if we extend life to, say, 150 and what we get is this long, 100-year decline into complete cognitive paralysis? I'm 43 and I don't feel like I'm losing it. In fact, in some ways I feel more cognitively adept than I was at…
"What happens if we extend life to, say, 150 and what we get is this long, 100-year decline into complete cognitive paralysis?"
Struldbrugs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struldbrug
Re: Study: Old Age Begins at 27
#48If true, and I don't know enough about this area to comment, but if so, it seems for optimum gene selection, people should procreate (or at least freeze their genetic material in a lab for future use) prior to this age. I have often thought that perhaps the rise in mental disorders in children such as autism could be related to people waiting until later in life to have children, at which point, their DNA has already…
I think that, from the kid's point of view, it's better to be born to parents in their 30's. The genetic risk is small, but more than offset by the maturity and improved economic circumstances of the parents. It's not until the late 30's or 40's that genetic decline starts to be a serious risk.
The fact remains if IQ is tapering off in the late 20's, the a child born to the parents in their 30's may not have as high an IQ as the parents. Personally my parents were in their mid-20's when I crawled out of the evolutionary slime, and in a sense I agree with you on the maturity and economic front - both factors were issues - and I think there has been growth there since, and my younger siblings had it better as far as maturity went, but honestly I wouldn't have it any other way, at least I know I got the best evolutionary shot I could get, lol! :-)
Re: Study: Old Age Begins at 27
#49[deleted]
Re: Study: Old Age Begins at 27
#50Try one of those mind training games for a couple of months and you'll see how lame this kind of study is.
You sum up most of the stupid attitudes in this thread. The scientists in this study most likely are better at this field than you. Probably The Times misinterpreted the results. Still your denial is hilarious. Just because you're smart, doesn't make you right. That goes for all of you.
I'm not a neuroscientist. But I'm an avid reader of neuroscience blogs (not the shiny ones, the ones by and for scientists) and papers. The Torygraph isn't exactly qualitity media but I doubt they misinterpreted the paper that bad.
The problem with current research is it's requiring too much previous knowledge to grasp even the abstract. And it's getting more granular and harder to sell with mainstream headlines. I actually prefer it this way.
There is a large amount of neuroscience research from the last decade that didn't make it to mainstream media. Specially things that could offend people or cults.
Mainstream media is obsolete because of this. A small blog post with proper explanations as popups or links to references (even Wikipedia) delivers more efficiently.