13 ms·

You’re an Adult. Your Brain, Not So Much

181 points by LiweiZ 10y ago

ihaveahadron 10y ago
Yea there needs to be an age I guess where someone is determined to be an adult, has anyone ever fucking thought about what it should be though, maybe it should be raised, maybe lowered, maybe determined by something other than just age. I don't know. Why can't you morons think about it though?
davidp 10y ago
He has proposed, for example, that the voting age be lowered to 16. “Sixteen-year-olds are just as good at logical reasoning as older people are,” Dr. Steinberg said. As if logical reasoning were sufficient. Your typical 16-year-old doesn't know a thing about history yet, or the real-world practical effects of political choices over time, or just how confounding crowd effects and herd instinct can be, or any of the other weird shit about human behavior and governance that defies the kind of logical reasoning that many 40-year-olds are capable of, let alone 16-year-olds. A 500 GHz CPU with no data to work with is just an impressive lump of silicon.
- kasparsklavins 10y ago
  By that logic, neither do 18-year-olds. You'd prefer the minimum voting age be raised to 60, so only people with "experience" can vote? I'd wager that at least 90% of voters do not do any research no matter their age and just vote for what the media or the people around them say. Also.. I don't vote.
  - bottled_poe 10y ago
    And why should they? Modern democracy is essentially voting between two polarised mixed bags of policies. Almost everyone's voice is misrepresented.
    - humanrebar 10y ago
      The infighting in the US political parties this year should have made it clear that there are certainly more than two bags of policies.
    - staticelf 10y ago
      I'm guessing you're thinking of America in which I would agree. In Sweden and other European countries though, we have a lot of more parties because our system is designed differently. In Sweden for example, we have 8 parties in Riksdagen (the place where the represented politicians vote for shit). How that works is pretty simple. Here is the short version: Instead of one party (like democrats or republicans) winning each state, we have 3 elections each election. 1 election for each municipality, one for each county and one nation wide. The percentage of each is seperate and decides how much deciding power (seats) you will get in each instance. Since Sweden is pretty much ruled by each municipality governed by the country laws (essentially made by Riksdagen) you can retain some power in a municipality or county even if you don't get that many seats in Riksdagen. This creates some interesting scenarios, since I can vote for a tax-lowering party in my municipality but vote on a completely different party in the nation wide election. For example, I may want to reduce Swedens immigration and can thus vote for such party to Riksdagen that maybe have more socially goals for the society. But in a sense, yes, as long as direct democracy isn't a thing your specific voice won't be heard.
  - hubert123 10y ago
    the voting age should be around 21 nowadays, that's probably closer to the average age people get a real job, move out of home and have to make some actual hard choices
    - kriro 10y ago
      I see it the other way around. I don't think "real world experience" should be a requirement to vote. I'd be in favor of anyone who passes a Turing test to get a vote. Since that's impractical I'll propose the age of 10 because that's a nice number. Additionally I'd like to give an additional proxy vote to parents for each child under 10. I'd be in favor of the additional proxy votes even if the actual voting age was never changed.
  - beachstartup 10y ago
    [in the US] i'd prefer the voting age be 21, the driving age be 18, and the drinking age be 16, or none at all. basically, we have it backwards. i also think there should be different classes of driving licenses with different speed limits, but now we're just indulging in crazytalk.
    - seanp2k2 10y ago
      Or like how England does motorcycle classes: the 16 y/o with rich parents can't drive the C63 AMG until later.
    - lorenzhs 10y ago
      Germany has a drinking age of 16 (for beer and wine, spirits are 18+), a driving age of 18 (there is assisted driving at 17, where you need to have a parent/relative in the passenger seat until you turn 18), and voting age of 18 for federal elections (state and local elections vary, some states allow 16-yr olds to vote). It was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1970. Different speed limits for different drivers could result in a "lower-class" driver being an obstruction for others. I don't think that would work out. That said, motorcycle licenses in the EU are separated into several classes with various maximum engine sizes (16+ for 11kW/15hp, 18+ for 35kW/47hp, and 20+ unlimited). They're separate tests.
      - beachstartup 10y ago
        > Different speed limits for different drivers could result in a "lower-class" driver being an obstruction for others. I don't think that would work out what i'm really saying is that you should be able to test for a higher speed limit in the US. slow drivers will be slow regardless of what the limit is, and unsafe. i've driven on the autobahn in the no speed limit sections (primarily around munich) and there were still slower, unsafe morons occupying lanes they shouldn't have been. maybe tourists. remember, in the US we have very low speed limits of ~100kph pretty much anywhere. i think it should be higher. people routinely drive 145kph here in southern california, enforcement of 100kph is arbitrary, which is not healtyh for respect for the law in general.
  - c22 10y ago
    Maybe we should let everyone vote but weigh the votes on a bell curve by age.
    - 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
      Isn't this already roughly the case due to turnout differences among the different age groups?
  - emilga 10y ago
    > You'd prefer the minimum voting age be raised to 60, so only people with "experience" can vote? This sounds quite interesting, actually. I wonder what the consequences would be if e.g. only grandparents have the right to vote.
    - pizza 10y ago
      Adding a delay to the votes of the current young voters experiencing the latest form of reality by 60-16=44 years. It could make quite some difference w.r.t. the time gradient of policy..
    - axitanull 10y ago
      What if they only vote in their best interest, putting burden on their young?
      - endisukaj 10y ago
        This has already happened, to some degree. With baby boomers putting the burden on their grandchildren.
  - circlefavshape 10y ago
    I'd wager the second half of your wager is wrong. Very few people do any policy research, but they don't just do what they're told - instead they vote for the candidate they identify with most closely. In a representative democracy this is probably the most sensible strategy, as you're choosing the person who will do what you would do in any given situation
- darpa_escapee 10y ago
  Yet, they pay tax and laws still apply to them. There are people in every age bracket who don't know a thing about history nor much of what you've listed.
- otalp 10y ago
  >Your typical 16-year-old doesn't know a thing about history yet, or the real-world practical effects of political choices over time, or just how confounding crowd effects and herd instinct can be, or any of the other weird shit about human behavior and governance To be fair neither do the majority of adult voters. Politics is not quantum physics. There are plenty of intelligent 16 year olds out there who can understand the subtleties of political rhetoric and what's at stake. Again, it's not like 16 year olds are compelled to vote. But for teens who are politically active and passionate about changing the world- I feel they need to have as much right to vote as some conspiracy-theory believing, infowar reading 60 year old. After all, the effects of climate change are going to hit the youngest people the hardest and the baby boomers the least.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- nly 10y ago
  > Your typical 16-year-old doesn't know a thing about history yet Your average 40 year old doesn't know shit about history or politics either. They just feel like 20-25 years of adult life makes their opinions hard-earned and valid, even if they're just long-held beliefs. When I was 16, and dinner table debate with my adult family members got heated, it always ended with the ad hominem "you'll understand when you're older and have worked for 25 years like me". Now I have (ish), and I still largely hold the same opinions. There's just not enough in that 20-25 year period that makes your average joe a special insightful snowflake. It's just like every fucking parent who believes having a child, and muddling through parenthood, somehow makes their beliefs on internet censorship more rational.
  - circlefavshape 10y ago
    > It's just like every fucking parent who believes having a child, and muddling through parenthood, somehow makes their beliefs on internet censorship more rational. There's nothing special about parenthood in this regard - most people need some justification for their positions, personal experience is weak evidence, but it's better than no evidence at all
- js8 10y ago
  > As if logical reasoning were sufficient. I agree. There is also empathy, which is entirely orthogonal to logical reasoning. And there is evidence that 16-year-olds often don't have the same level of empathy as 25-year-olds.
georgewfraser 10y ago
These studies are THE WORST. Your brain "changes" from 20 to 30. Does this change make it better? Is it even meaningful? No evidence is presented. Instead, we go on a detour into fMRI pseudoscience, which should properly be regarded as an extension of phrenology. I would argue that the unsaid assumption of this article, that 30 year olds have superior judgement to 20 year olds, is debatable. Most people over 30 are risk-averse in the extreme, and will for example remain in a lousy career for their lives rather than take the risk of switching to a new track or moving to a new city.
- ludston 10y ago
  I can see why the title of the article might trigger anxiety, but why do the studies upset you? Is the data invalid? Is it wrong to gather data that may not be useful?
  - stdbrouw 10y ago
    There are well-known problems with fMRI studies and particulary with how they are interpreted, see e.g. http://www.edvul.com/pdf/VulHarrisWinkielmanPashler-PPS-2009.pdf http://www.edvul.com/pdf/VulHarrisWinkielmanPashler-PPS-2009... (PDF) for a good critique. It's an intrinsically low-resolution tool as well, "there seems to be a lot of blood flow in vaguely this area of the brain", that is sold as if it were high tech and the only/best way to learn about human cognition.
    - thaw13579 10y ago
      I think it's important to point out that papers like that usually are pointing out statistical pitfalls (and often provide solutions), but they don't really cast doubt on fMRI as a tool for measuring brain function.
      - chongli 10y ago
        I became a total cynic toward the entire field of fMRI studies the day I found out that they found a dead salmon [0] could tell what emotions humans were depicting in photos. [0] http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf
hliyan 10y ago
All the strong political opinions I had as a twenty year old came from books. Now, as a 37 year old, most of it comes from personal experience. Needless to say, the two sets of opinions are very, very different. I wouldn't know about imposing an age on voting, but people should vote their own opinions, not ones borrowed from books. The youngest version of myself that I would now trust with any sort of policy making is my 32 year old self...
- SerLava 10y ago
  I would like to argue that voting rights are more about accountability than policy. Who cares who the "best" leader is - free society requires leaders who owe it to citizens.
  - EGreg 10y ago
    And I would argue that voting for representatives is far inferior to polling. It's susceptible to gerrymandering, poor turnout and much more. But if you're going to vote for representatives and Presidents, at least use the Approval vote. The system used in every state except Maine suffers from spoiler effects, and devolves into a self perpetuating two party system that polarizes the population into two camps that hate each other for things that no one person can really change by voting, and deride third parties as a "waste of a vote". Sound familiar? That's why I don't want to participate in this voting system.
    - chongli 10y ago
      Polling is far more opaque and highly susceptible to corruption. Any pollster worth his or her salt can get exactly the outcome desired by tweaking the protocol and consumers of the poll results are none the wiser. I'd almost go so far as to say that polls are garbage and shouldn't even exist, let alone replace voting, but that may be going too far.
      - EGreg 10y ago
        If polls are garbage then voting is even more garbage. At least polling can use statistical sampling to esimate the true result. For the expense of elections and polling and paying for all the campaigns and media and hoopla you could have incredible amount of polling, from many organizations, and figure out what people actualy want. As it is, no matter how many people want eg certain gun control regulations, or not to go to war with a country, it will never happen due to special interests. It is far harder to fool all the people all the time than to buy off and control some of the people all the time.
tim-- 10y ago
This is a little off-topic, but has anyone noticed that double clicking on text on the NYTimes' website just causes the text to enlarge? I am a click and drag reader, and the last few articles where I have tried to double click text has annoyed me greatly.
apsec112 10y ago
This is an interesting case study in how science interacts with sociology. Biologically, "fluid" intelligence (raw, general-purpose brain power) has an average peak in the late 20s: http://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/125555/frym-2014-00001-HTML/image_m/figure-2.jpg http://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/125555/frym-2014-0... So, for example, an average 10-year-old will have the same fluid intelligence as an average 80-year-old. (Not the same knowledge, of course, but the NYT is talking pure brain mechanics here.) However, in our society, children have low social status, and the elderly have high status. Hence, in a 10-year-old (or, per this article, even a 22-year-old just a few years from their lifetime peak), lower average intelligence is a sign of being "immature", "undeveloped", or "not an adult" (= a person competent to make their own life decisions). Meanwhile, no one would ever dream of (say) revoking the voting rights of anyone over 80, because their "brains don't work anymore". It's acceptable to take power away from the low status, but never the high status, so the scientific data is "interpreted" through that lens.
- csallen 10y ago
  Humans are greatly affected by something called loss aversion[1], where we naturally see losing X as a much more extreme turn of events than gaining X. In this particular example, revoking the rights of the elderly (who've been able to vote for decades and decades) will seem much harsher than delaying the rights of the young. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion
austincheney 10y ago
Imagine if we followed the numbers, the empirical evidence, like insurance companies do. In this case the legal age would be raised from 18 to 25. This wouldn't make any real difference to politics because young people don't vote. It would be huge to consumer spending. Consider the following: * Age to get a credit card, file a DBA, open a bank account, or get an apartment. * Age to purchase tobacco and pornography (yes yes, I suspect most people get their porn for free online regardless of age now). * FBI already refuses to hire field agents below the age of 24. * You could not be tried as an adult in criminal court until age 25. The number of adult violent offenders in prison might decrease as much as 70%. * You cannot get married until the age of adulthood. I suspect states would compromise on this one and allow permissible parental consent as young people will still continue to have children. --- My personal opinions are that people would be much better prepared for life, there would be fewer lost souls to the criminal justice system, and the consumer debt industry would be largely eliminated from all but proverty classes (like the payday loan vultures).
- tutanchamun 10y ago
  > This wouldn't make any real difference to politics because young people don't vote What can young people change in the midterm future anyway? The population is becoming more and more a inverted pyramid where the old people are the majority and the young people are the minority. A voting system which adjusts the voting power based on the age would be interesting. If old people are a minoity the get more voting power until they are equal and vice versa. I believe with something like that the brexit vote would not have happened.
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    35% over 50. Is that an inverted pyramid? Seems like a regular pyramid. I think voting demographics indeed has to be explained by "young people don't vote".
- philh 10y ago
  And a lot of 18-25 year olds would be prohibited from living independently. This would be terrible, for example, for people in abusive households. And it would merely suck horribly for anyone who simply chafes at not being treated like a person.
mattbgates 10y ago
Write an article a few years ago... we're all just children pretending to be adults. http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/children-pretending-adults/ http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/children-pretendi...

181 points by LiweiZ 10y ago

Yea there needs to be an age I guess where someone is determined to be an adult, has anyone ever fucking thought about what it should be though, maybe it should be raised, maybe lowered, maybe determined by something other than just age. I don't know. Why can't you morons think about it though?

davidp 10y ago

He has proposed, for example, that the voting age be lowered to 16. “Sixteen-year-olds are just as good at logical reasoning as older people are,” Dr. Steinberg said. As if logical reasoning were sufficient. Your typical 16-year-old doesn't know a thing about history yet, or the real-world practical effects of political choices over time, or just how confounding crowd effects and herd instinct can be, or any of the other weird shit about human behavior and governance that defies the kind of logical reasoning that many 40-year-olds are capable of, let alone 16-year-olds. A 500 GHz CPU with no data to work with is just an impressive lump of silicon.

kasparsklavins 10y ago
By that logic, neither do 18-year-olds. You'd prefer the minimum voting age be raised to 60, so only people with "experience" can vote? I'd wager that at least 90% of voters do not do any research no matter their age and just vote for what the media or the people around them say. Also.. I don't vote.
- bottled_poe 10y ago
  And why should they? Modern democracy is essentially voting between two polarised mixed bags of policies. Almost everyone's voice is misrepresented.
  - humanrebar 10y ago
    The infighting in the US political parties this year should have made it clear that there are certainly more than two bags of policies.
  - staticelf 10y ago
    I'm guessing you're thinking of America in which I would agree. In Sweden and other European countries though, we have a lot of more parties because our system is designed differently. In Sweden for example, we have 8 parties in Riksdagen (the place where the represented politicians vote for shit). How that works is pretty simple. Here is the short version: Instead of one party (like democrats or republicans) winning each state, we have 3 elections each election. 1 election for each municipality, one for each county and one nation wide. The percentage of each is seperate and decides how much deciding power (seats) you will get in each instance. Since Sweden is pretty much ruled by each municipality governed by the country laws (essentially made by Riksdagen) you can retain some power in a municipality or county even if you don't get that many seats in Riksdagen. This creates some interesting scenarios, since I can vote for a tax-lowering party in my municipality but vote on a completely different party in the nation wide election. For example, I may want to reduce Swedens immigration and can thus vote for such party to Riksdagen that maybe have more socially goals for the society. But in a sense, yes, as long as direct democracy isn't a thing your specific voice won't be heard.
- hubert123 10y ago
  the voting age should be around 21 nowadays, that's probably closer to the average age people get a real job, move out of home and have to make some actual hard choices
  - kriro 10y ago
    I see it the other way around. I don't think "real world experience" should be a requirement to vote. I'd be in favor of anyone who passes a Turing test to get a vote. Since that's impractical I'll propose the age of 10 because that's a nice number. Additionally I'd like to give an additional proxy vote to parents for each child under 10. I'd be in favor of the additional proxy votes even if the actual voting age was never changed.
- beachstartup 10y ago
  [in the US] i'd prefer the voting age be 21, the driving age be 18, and the drinking age be 16, or none at all. basically, we have it backwards. i also think there should be different classes of driving licenses with different speed limits, but now we're just indulging in crazytalk.
  - seanp2k2 10y ago
    Or like how England does motorcycle classes: the 16 y/o with rich parents can't drive the C63 AMG until later.
  - lorenzhs 10y ago
    Germany has a drinking age of 16 (for beer and wine, spirits are 18+), a driving age of 18 (there is assisted driving at 17, where you need to have a parent/relative in the passenger seat until you turn 18), and voting age of 18 for federal elections (state and local elections vary, some states allow 16-yr olds to vote). It was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1970. Different speed limits for different drivers could result in a "lower-class" driver being an obstruction for others. I don't think that would work out. That said, motorcycle licenses in the EU are separated into several classes with various maximum engine sizes (16+ for 11kW/15hp, 18+ for 35kW/47hp, and 20+ unlimited). They're separate tests.
    - beachstartup 10y ago
      > Different speed limits for different drivers could result in a "lower-class" driver being an obstruction for others. I don't think that would work out what i'm really saying is that you should be able to test for a higher speed limit in the US. slow drivers will be slow regardless of what the limit is, and unsafe. i've driven on the autobahn in the no speed limit sections (primarily around munich) and there were still slower, unsafe morons occupying lanes they shouldn't have been. maybe tourists. remember, in the US we have very low speed limits of ~100kph pretty much anywhere. i think it should be higher. people routinely drive 145kph here in southern california, enforcement of 100kph is arbitrary, which is not healtyh for respect for the law in general.
- c22 10y ago
  Maybe we should let everyone vote but weigh the votes on a bell curve by age.
  - 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
    Isn't this already roughly the case due to turnout differences among the different age groups?
- emilga 10y ago
  > You'd prefer the minimum voting age be raised to 60, so only people with "experience" can vote? This sounds quite interesting, actually. I wonder what the consequences would be if e.g. only grandparents have the right to vote.
  - pizza 10y ago
    Adding a delay to the votes of the current young voters experiencing the latest form of reality by 60-16=44 years. It could make quite some difference w.r.t. the time gradient of policy..
  - axitanull 10y ago
    What if they only vote in their best interest, putting burden on their young?
    - endisukaj 10y ago
      This has already happened, to some degree. With baby boomers putting the burden on their grandchildren.
- circlefavshape 10y ago
  I'd wager the second half of your wager is wrong. Very few people do any policy research, but they don't just do what they're told - instead they vote for the candidate they identify with most closely. In a representative democracy this is probably the most sensible strategy, as you're choosing the person who will do what you would do in any given situation
darpa_escapee 10y ago
Yet, they pay tax and laws still apply to them. There are people in every age bracket who don't know a thing about history nor much of what you've listed.
otalp 10y ago
>Your typical 16-year-old doesn't know a thing about history yet, or the real-world practical effects of political choices over time, or just how confounding crowd effects and herd instinct can be, or any of the other weird shit about human behavior and governance To be fair neither do the majority of adult voters. Politics is not quantum physics. There are plenty of intelligent 16 year olds out there who can understand the subtleties of political rhetoric and what's at stake. Again, it's not like 16 year olds are compelled to vote. But for teens who are politically active and passionate about changing the world- I feel they need to have as much right to vote as some conspiracy-theory believing, infowar reading 60 year old. After all, the effects of climate change are going to hit the youngest people the hardest and the baby boomers the least.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
nly 10y ago
> Your typical 16-year-old doesn't know a thing about history yet Your average 40 year old doesn't know shit about history or politics either. They just feel like 20-25 years of adult life makes their opinions hard-earned and valid, even if they're just long-held beliefs. When I was 16, and dinner table debate with my adult family members got heated, it always ended with the ad hominem "you'll understand when you're older and have worked for 25 years like me". Now I have (ish), and I still largely hold the same opinions. There's just not enough in that 20-25 year period that makes your average joe a special insightful snowflake. It's just like every fucking parent who believes having a child, and muddling through parenthood, somehow makes their beliefs on internet censorship more rational.
- circlefavshape 10y ago
  > It's just like every fucking parent who believes having a child, and muddling through parenthood, somehow makes their beliefs on internet censorship more rational. There's nothing special about parenthood in this regard - most people need some justification for their positions, personal experience is weak evidence, but it's better than no evidence at all
js8 10y ago
> As if logical reasoning were sufficient. I agree. There is also empathy, which is entirely orthogonal to logical reasoning. And there is evidence that 16-year-olds often don't have the same level of empathy as 25-year-olds.

georgewfraser 10y ago

These studies are THE WORST. Your brain "changes" from 20 to 30. Does this change make it better? Is it even meaningful? No evidence is presented. Instead, we go on a detour into fMRI pseudoscience, which should properly be regarded as an extension of phrenology. I would argue that the unsaid assumption of this article, that 30 year olds have superior judgement to 20 year olds, is debatable. Most people over 30 are risk-averse in the extreme, and will for example remain in a lousy career for their lives rather than take the risk of switching to a new track or moving to a new city.

ludston 10y ago
I can see why the title of the article might trigger anxiety, but why do the studies upset you? Is the data invalid? Is it wrong to gather data that may not be useful?
- stdbrouw 10y ago
  There are well-known problems with fMRI studies and particulary with how they are interpreted, see e.g. http://www.edvul.com/pdf/VulHarrisWinkielmanPashler-PPS-2009.pdf http://www.edvul.com/pdf/VulHarrisWinkielmanPashler-PPS-2009... (PDF) for a good critique. It's an intrinsically low-resolution tool as well, "there seems to be a lot of blood flow in vaguely this area of the brain", that is sold as if it were high tech and the only/best way to learn about human cognition.
  - thaw13579 10y ago
    I think it's important to point out that papers like that usually are pointing out statistical pitfalls (and often provide solutions), but they don't really cast doubt on fMRI as a tool for measuring brain function.
    - chongli 10y ago
      I became a total cynic toward the entire field of fMRI studies the day I found out that they found a dead salmon [0] could tell what emotions humans were depicting in photos. [0] http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf

hliyan 10y ago

All the strong political opinions I had as a twenty year old came from books. Now, as a 37 year old, most of it comes from personal experience. Needless to say, the two sets of opinions are very, very different. I wouldn't know about imposing an age on voting, but people should vote their own opinions, not ones borrowed from books. The youngest version of myself that I would now trust with any sort of policy making is my 32 year old self...

SerLava 10y ago
I would like to argue that voting rights are more about accountability than policy. Who cares who the "best" leader is - free society requires leaders who owe it to citizens.
- EGreg 10y ago
  And I would argue that voting for representatives is far inferior to polling. It's susceptible to gerrymandering, poor turnout and much more. But if you're going to vote for representatives and Presidents, at least use the Approval vote. The system used in every state except Maine suffers from spoiler effects, and devolves into a self perpetuating two party system that polarizes the population into two camps that hate each other for things that no one person can really change by voting, and deride third parties as a "waste of a vote". Sound familiar? That's why I don't want to participate in this voting system.
  - chongli 10y ago
    Polling is far more opaque and highly susceptible to corruption. Any pollster worth his or her salt can get exactly the outcome desired by tweaking the protocol and consumers of the poll results are none the wiser. I'd almost go so far as to say that polls are garbage and shouldn't even exist, let alone replace voting, but that may be going too far.
    - EGreg 10y ago
      If polls are garbage then voting is even more garbage. At least polling can use statistical sampling to esimate the true result. For the expense of elections and polling and paying for all the campaigns and media and hoopla you could have incredible amount of polling, from many organizations, and figure out what people actualy want. As it is, no matter how many people want eg certain gun control regulations, or not to go to war with a country, it will never happen due to special interests. It is far harder to fool all the people all the time than to buy off and control some of the people all the time.

tim-- 10y ago

This is a little off-topic, but has anyone noticed that double clicking on text on the NYTimes' website just causes the text to enlarge? I am a click and drag reader, and the last few articles where I have tried to double click text has annoyed me greatly.

apsec112 10y ago

This is an interesting case study in how science interacts with sociology. Biologically, "fluid" intelligence (raw, general-purpose brain power) has an average peak in the late 20s: http://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/125555/frym-2014-00001-HTML/image_m/figure-2.jpg http://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/125555/frym-2014-0... So, for example, an average 10-year-old will have the same fluid intelligence as an average 80-year-old. (Not the same knowledge, of course, but the NYT is talking pure brain mechanics here.) However, in our society, children have low social status, and the elderly have high status. Hence, in a 10-year-old (or, per this article, even a 22-year-old just a few years from their lifetime peak), lower average intelligence is a sign of being "immature", "undeveloped", or "not an adult" (= a person competent to make their own life decisions). Meanwhile, no one would ever dream of (say) revoking the voting rights of anyone over 80, because their "brains don't work anymore". It's acceptable to take power away from the low status, but never the high status, so the scientific data is "interpreted" through that lens.

csallen 10y ago
Humans are greatly affected by something called loss aversion[1], where we naturally see losing X as a much more extreme turn of events than gaining X. In this particular example, revoking the rights of the elderly (who've been able to vote for decades and decades) will seem much harsher than delaying the rights of the young. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion

austincheney 10y ago

Imagine if we followed the numbers, the empirical evidence, like insurance companies do. In this case the legal age would be raised from 18 to 25. This wouldn't make any real difference to politics because young people don't vote. It would be huge to consumer spending. Consider the following: * Age to get a credit card, file a DBA, open a bank account, or get an apartment. * Age to purchase tobacco and pornography (yes yes, I suspect most people get their porn for free online regardless of age now). * FBI already refuses to hire field agents below the age of 24. * You could not be tried as an adult in criminal court until age 25. The number of adult violent offenders in prison might decrease as much as 70%. * You cannot get married until the age of adulthood. I suspect states would compromise on this one and allow permissible parental consent as young people will still continue to have children. --- My personal opinions are that people would be much better prepared for life, there would be fewer lost souls to the criminal justice system, and the consumer debt industry would be largely eliminated from all but proverty classes (like the payday loan vultures).

tutanchamun 10y ago
> This wouldn't make any real difference to politics because young people don't vote What can young people change in the midterm future anyway? The population is becoming more and more a inverted pyramid where the old people are the majority and the young people are the minority. A voting system which adjusts the voting power based on the age would be interesting. If old people are a minoity the get more voting power until they are equal and vice versa. I believe with something like that the brexit vote would not have happened.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  35% over 50. Is that an inverted pyramid? Seems like a regular pyramid. I think voting demographics indeed has to be explained by "young people don't vote".
philh 10y ago
And a lot of 18-25 year olds would be prohibited from living independently. This would be terrible, for example, for people in abusive households. And it would merely suck horribly for anyone who simply chafes at not being treated like a person.

mattbgates 10y ago

Write an article a few years ago... we're all just children pretending to be adults. http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/children-pretending-adults/ http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/children-pretendi...