Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What major works of literature were written after age of 85? 75? 65?

statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 106 posts

Re: What major works of literature were written after age of 85? 75? 65?

#51

Post by zulux »

somenameforme wrote: post #10
mellosouls wrote: post #2

I think this is pretty common across different creative forms albeit with different age ranges but constrained at the higher end. So the greatest physics, maths, poetry and pop music are done by people in their 20s. Literature (esp novels) seems to occupy an older range, perhaps 30s to 50s. Perhaps classical music and philosophy also? I don't know about the visual arts. I interpret it as the former requiring the crea…

I think a lot is driven by environmental rather than genetic factors. For instance the article mentions that both The Road, and No Country for Old Men were written when Cormack was in his 70s. But very few people in their 70s are even trying to write, let alone get published. I think there's something similar in chess where players tend to peak around their mid to late 30s. But a major issue there is that that's also…

Sort of confirm: I'm older, and my mind is fine, I just don't care as much anymore. I'm comfortably numb as the song goes.

Re: What major works of literature were written after age of 85? 75? 65?

#52

Post by ijk »

dyauspitr wrote: post #41
wodenokoto wrote: post #29

> asked LLMs to compile list of 10-20 writers considered canon in each decade since 1800, then identify all their notable works and years of publication. After some iterations with coding agents I got over 2,000 works by 200 authors. Wait, so the source data is just LLM hallucinations? It makes sense to use an LLM to build the data collection, but not to build your source data.

LLMs cite. So hope they did their due diligence.

It feels a lot like storing your data as an essay in a Word doc instead of a spreadsheet. It can work and all of the math is probably correct, but it's very much the wrong tool when the structured data was right there to be used instead.

Re: What major works of literature were written after age of 85? 75? 65?

#55

Post by [deleted] »

tantalor wrote: post #25
FelipeCortez wrote: post #22

This is actually a good fit for a Wikidata SPARQL query you can run here https://query.wikidata.org/ : SELECT ?work ?workLabel ?author ?authorLabel ?publicationDate ?ageAtPublication WHERE { ?author wdt:P569 ?birth . ?author wdt:P570 ?death . ?author wdt:P800 ?work . ?work wdt:P50 ?author ; wdt:P31 wd:Q47461344 ; wdt:P577 ?publicationDate . FILTER(?publicationDate 60) SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase…

Can you filter by "major works only"?

[deleted]

Re: What major works of literature were written after age of 85? 75? 65?

#57

Post by bethekidyouwant »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #50
bethekidyouwant wrote: post #48

I feel like Cormac McCarthy famously took 20 years to write his novels so does it really count if you finished it when you were 72?

It counts more! His novels are mind-blowing. Blood Meridian is unsurpassed IMO

No counts less? he didn’t write the work when he was 72. If started it when he was 52…

Re: What major works of literature were written after age of 85? 75? 65?

#58

Post by abetusk »

mellosouls wrote: post #43
abetusk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a gross cultural misconception. Most scientists do their best work in their 30s and 40s. See [0]. My take on this is that it takes about a decade before experience, knowledge and wisdom can be used to see a bigger picture to make a breakthrough. [0] https://priceonomics.com/at-what-age-does-genius-strike/

A useful link but note: a) the curve indicates 30s not 40s b) there is no breakdown into theoretical vs experimental research, or scientific field; theory I would expect to be over-represented at the younger end especially as the science discipline becomes "harder". Overall I would say it lends credence to the idea physics is a young person's game at the very highest levels.

a) the inflection point is in the high 30s. Further $\int_{40}^{50} f(x) dx > \int_{20}^{30} f(x) dx$.

b) true there is no breakdown but I would expect the exact opposite as fields get harder. More context requires more training and familiarity, which I would expect to increase age.

My point is that I think there's a bias in the field towards the youth narrative but the majority of discovery, even in physics, happens at a later age.

Re: What major works of literature were written after age of 85? 75? 65?

#59

Post by dyauspitr »

ijk wrote: post #52
dyauspitr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs cite. So hope they did their due diligence.

It feels a lot like storing your data as an essay in a Word doc instead of a spreadsheet. It can work and all of the math is probably correct, but it's very much the wrong tool when the structured data was right there to be used instead.

The structure data is scattered all over the place. This does the very important thing of aggregating them, and bringing them together. If you had to manually do that it could take weeks.

Re: What major works of literature were written after age of 85? 75? 65?

#60

Post by antisthenes »

sunrunner wrote: post #15
bee_rider wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the bright side, most of us were never candidates for inventing relativity, really. I wonder if our mediocrity remains stable, of if we lose a proportional amount of capability as the luminaries did.

I'll have you know my mediocrity is directly proportional to my age.

I've reverted to the mean more times than I can count!
Post reply on HN