Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s

Note local hidden variables is impossible. The pilot wave theory is the theory of "hidden variables" that led Bell to his theorem. Basically, EPR shows that either nature is nonlocal or there were hidden variables. Bell showed that hidden variables had to have something nonlocal about them. So Einstein created relativity and helped to highlight how nature has an aspect that seems incompatible with it (basically, there is a "now" which, however, may be undetectable and is not our "now").

For those curious, the nonlocal hidden variables are the positions of the particles. Very hidden. So hidden, they are the only thing we see in experiments!

The particles are guided by the wave function. This resolves all the weird paradoxes such as Schrodinger's cat. It provides a great way to understand and investigate nonlocality, spin, identical particles, etc. in a very precise theory that even has broadly applying existence and uniqueness of solution theorems, unlike classical mechanics.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/

Actually, Khazan is losing the plot. The whole point of the research she's referencing through 3 levels of indirection (the Atlantic, NBC News, Nature News, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) is that key breakthroughs in Phyiscs are occurring at ever increasing age with time.

Granted, the research looks only at Nobel Prize winners in physics, but the general reason stated: that there's more information to learn and assimilate, suggests a general principle of increasing complexity and decreasing returns to innovation, which is a key point raised by Joseph Tainter (The Collapse of Complex Societies).

See Weinberg & Jones: "Age dynamics in scientific creativity" http://www.pnas.org/content/108/47/18910

Also highlighted in an earlier Nature News item on W&J is the increasing reliance of breakthroughs on expensive equipment, not always accessible to the most junior researchers, an observation also consistent with increasing complexity and diminishing returns with time:

Other experts in scientific creativity welcomed the study but note other reasons why the age of laureates might have increased, such as improvements in health or the fact that, in many fields, research now requires expensive equipment. "21- and 22-year-olds simply don't get access to this kind of equipment," says Paula Stephan at Georgia State University in Atlanta, who provided some data for the Nobel study. She adds that it isn't always possible to pinpoint "one magic date" when scientists made their discoveries.

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111107/full/news.2011.632.ht...

Most countries with socialized healthcare systems that I am aware of actually has a longer life expectancy than the USA. This is true for Canada, Germany, Norway, etc.

I do not know if life expectancy is a measure for quality of health care, but it is at least an indicator of how good the general health is.

On a personal note I would say that my experience with the US health care system has left a lot to be desired, and I experienced the care as better in my native Norway. That said, my girlfriend is a doctor and her health plan seems a lot better so my experience can be anecdotal.

I think you have a larger problem though.

A theory is (as Heisenberg explained in his book "Physics and Philosophy") an interpretation of data based upon unscientific, non-falsifiable, a priori assumptions on the part of the theorist. You can't really disprove something as nebulous as "hidden variables." That's not a falsifiable statement. What you can do is disprove some theory based on hidden variables. Such evidence does not apply to the possibility of other theories of hidden variables that are yet unformulated.

Why do you think you even have a 'prime'? The concept of a "prime" period in your life is entirely relative to the context of any given situation in your life at a specific point in time.

Shift your thinking to the present, don't pine over the past or worry about the future. At any given moment, you are capable of being the best you can be for the situation you are in. These are the variables you can control - so control them. And frankly, the older you get, the more capable of handling the present you become due to experience.

"Somehow I still need to find a passion and change" Why? What are you doing that you need to change? What do you mean by "passion" and why do you need to find it? What are you doing that is preventing you from finding your "passion"?

I'm not asking these questions for my benefit - ask them of yourself. And most importantly, follow through on the answers. There is absolutely no reason to be depressed about being in your 40's - you have double the experience and way more resources now then you did when you were 20.

Put it another way, you have another 20 years until you are in your sixties, and that's when you will REALLY be out of energy.