This reads like: "What we thought was a slowing down of mental processes was probably actually just thoughtfulness and the avoidance of jumping to conclusions early."
This reminds me of how people believe (i only have anecdotal evidence, but LOTS of it) that reacting faster in conversations means you're more intelligent, when in fact the opposite must be true.
The brain can super easily pattern match in conversations and will, in absolutely most cases , spit something out that fits to the patterns of the words spoken (as evidenced by speaking with people who react quickly, regardless of how stupid the reaction is), but that doesn't make intelligent.
It makes thoughtless.
Even worse than those are the ones who seem incapable of reflecting on their thoughts, insisting that they are correct, actually refusing to put a second or deeper thought on it.
This also provides some arguments against synchronous (video, audio) meetings.
Although it's possible for a group to have a sensible, thoughtful conversation within a synchronous environment, a lot of that requires a calm and slow temperament on the part of (all of!) the participants.
That isn't, in my experience, the reality in most software companies -- people talk quickly and interject. That has the effect of pushing out more thoughtful responses.
Well, if you're the kind of person who thinks a lot in private -- then, in conversation, you can respond quickly and deeply: because your thinking has already been done.
And for answers of the same depth and calibre, producing them faster is also indicative of more intelligence.
This makes me wonder if ideologues may have certain faster brain patterns or areas with faster activity, compared to those who are say more thoughtful, have further developed critical thinking, are open minded/more open minded?
Lovely study. The authors are wisely cautious in their interpretation—in fact, three paragraphs in discussion sre devoted to caveats, such as lack of longitudinal data. Are effects due to secular changes or individual changes? Probably the latter, but given possible impact of rampant video gaming on quick decision making abilities, this is not a firm inference. Secular/epoch effects are very real—IQ scores included.
What amazes me is the very wide range of variation in performance. Look at those large error bars throughout figure 2. Age or secular trends do not account for much of the variance in performance. Other variable do!
The surest way to get your brain to slow down prematurely is to consume alcohol. One of my 'older' passengers (60-70 years old) pointed out to me that a lot of his 'old people' neighbors had drinking problems.
Alcohol is inflammatory. Saw my Canadian friend yesterday - she told me about her former drinking problem, and that she'd been told vodka was the least problematic of all the alcohols. I guess beer/etc have lots of estrogenic properties? Men in Britain have a tendency to gynecomastia?
We wonder how much beer my grandfather drank while he was working on his cabin... My brother and I remember beer cans were all over the place.
My mother's recently basically stopped her wine consumption, because she wonders how much of her health problems are related to the handful of glasses she used to have every week. She doesn't miss it.
Not going to say anything about the drunks I know who are still alive.
I went to a lecture at university where the lecturer stated that she was researching gynecomastia related to the presence of estrogen in drinking water - that results from wide use of the birth control pill. By the time you drink water in London, it has already been through 12 cycles of use (if memory serves correct).
One of the things I find most annoying about modern American political (and popular) discourse is the meme that if you're old, you must be senile. This is regularly assumed about the elder figures in both parties - and both our current and former president.
"They're old, they're probably senile" is not a feeling borne of the actual statistics. By far, most old people are not senile!
The current president is accused of being senile not simply because he is old, but because of several public incidents of suspicious memory issues, like clearly forgetting the name of the Australian prime minister he was holding a (remote) press conference with, or forgetting the name of Barack Obama in a pre-election speech.
Trump was sometimes accused of being senile because of his rambling sentences and bizarre speech pattern involving frequent repetitions.
This is not to say that any of this is introvertible proof that they are in fact senile, but the point is that there is evidence that can be interpreted this way, it's not simply ageism. As a further note of this, Bernie Sanders has not commonly been seen as senile, even though he is of a similar age - since none of his speech patterns suggest these types of memory issues.
In many mathematical circles, and certainly in a lot of popular books about mathematicians, there's this persistent idea that you are at your mathematical peak in your 20's (or earlier) because that's the peak of your brain power, and that once you hit 30 it's all cognitive downhill. I've always been suspicious of this (as a mathematician nearing 40, for personal reason) -- and reading this makes me wonder if the decline in productivity (if it even exists) is because of other factors entirely, such as people start families and now have other responsibilities, maturity dictates spending your time and resources elsewhere, etc...
There was a graph passed around when I was doing undergrad physics showing a weighted average of age at most impactful publication by field, with the results as I recall them now roughly in line with what one might expect: physicists peaked in their mid-ish 20's, mathematicians in their mid-late 20's / early 30's, and the for the other listed fields age steadily increases in proportion with the value of synthesis and experience versus a huge working memory and a razor sharp mind.
I was unable to find that graph looking now, if anyone recalls it with more detail I'd love to see it again.
I understand your concern but based on my understanding of the political system (United States) it wouldn't be a huge issue in at least most of the cases. I believe that much of the work a politician does ends up getting divided between employees/interns/etc, an older politician may just have to offload more of their workload on unimportant matters and focus on important ones (which I suspect they already all do). What do you think?
Aside from my own family study (Aerospace Dad in 90s had me late in life), I read a study published last quarter called AAPL which is run by execs who are qualified for AARP membership.
[+] [-] MrYellowP|4 years ago|reply
This reads like: "What we thought was a slowing down of mental processes was probably actually just thoughtfulness and the avoidance of jumping to conclusions early."
This reminds me of how people believe (i only have anecdotal evidence, but LOTS of it) that reacting faster in conversations means you're more intelligent, when in fact the opposite must be true.
The brain can super easily pattern match in conversations and will, in absolutely most cases , spit something out that fits to the patterns of the words spoken (as evidenced by speaking with people who react quickly, regardless of how stupid the reaction is), but that doesn't make intelligent.
It makes thoughtless.
Even worse than those are the ones who seem incapable of reflecting on their thoughts, insisting that they are correct, actually refusing to put a second or deeper thought on it.
Those are mindless automatons.
[+] [-] jka|4 years ago|reply
Although it's possible for a group to have a sensible, thoughtful conversation within a synchronous environment, a lot of that requires a calm and slow temperament on the part of (all of!) the participants.
That isn't, in my experience, the reality in most software companies -- people talk quickly and interject. That has the effect of pushing out more thoughtful responses.
[+] [-] mjburgess|4 years ago|reply
And for answers of the same depth and calibre, producing them faster is also indicative of more intelligence.
[+] [-] giantg2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loceng|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rullelito|4 years ago|reply
It MUST?
[+] [-] lvl100|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robwwilliams|4 years ago|reply
What amazes me is the very wide range of variation in performance. Look at those large error bars throughout figure 2. Age or secular trends do not account for much of the variance in performance. Other variable do!
Paper is open access.
[+] [-] taxicabjesus|4 years ago|reply
Alcohol is inflammatory. Saw my Canadian friend yesterday - she told me about her former drinking problem, and that she'd been told vodka was the least problematic of all the alcohols. I guess beer/etc have lots of estrogenic properties? Men in Britain have a tendency to gynecomastia?
We wonder how much beer my grandfather drank while he was working on his cabin... My brother and I remember beer cans were all over the place.
My mother's recently basically stopped her wine consumption, because she wonders how much of her health problems are related to the handful of glasses she used to have every week. She doesn't miss it.
Not going to say anything about the drunks I know who are still alive.
[+] [-] Biologist123|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rightbyte|4 years ago|reply
Isn't a few glasses of wine even mildly correlated with better health?
[+] [-] jrmg|4 years ago|reply
"They're old, they're probably senile" is not a feeling borne of the actual statistics. By far, most old people are not senile!
[+] [-] tsimionescu|4 years ago|reply
Trump was sometimes accused of being senile because of his rambling sentences and bizarre speech pattern involving frequent repetitions.
This is not to say that any of this is introvertible proof that they are in fact senile, but the point is that there is evidence that can be interpreted this way, it's not simply ageism. As a further note of this, Bernie Sanders has not commonly been seen as senile, even though he is of a similar age - since none of his speech patterns suggest these types of memory issues.
[+] [-] Ataraxiaist|4 years ago|reply
Why would we not want more people in their 50s making decisions vs 70s if we know the brain is slowing down in 60s?
[+] [-] rindalir|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] katmannthree|4 years ago|reply
I was unable to find that graph looking now, if anyone recalls it with more detail I'd love to see it again.
[+] [-] nnoitra|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dade_|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giantg2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pastacacioepepe|4 years ago|reply
Also it's not wise to entrust your future in the hands of someone who's not going to live the consequences of their decisions.
[+] [-] TheFreim|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dodgerdan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vaxman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avalys|4 years ago|reply