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I think one of the most interesting papers I read this year was Hartshorne & Germine, 2015, "When does cognitive functioning peak? The asynchronous rise and fal

I think one of the most interesting papers I read this year was Hartshorne & Germine, 2015, "When does cognitive functioning peak? The asynchronous rise and fall of different cognitive abilities across the life span": https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614567339 https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614567339 There are lots of good bits, such as: 'On the practical side, not only is there no age at which humans are performing at peak on all cognitive tasks, there may not be an age at which humans perform at peak on most cognitive tasks. Studies that compare the young or elderly to “normal adults” must carefully select the “normal” population.' (italics in original) This seems to me to comport with the research suggesting that most or all of the variance in IQ across the life span can be accounted for by controlling for mental processing speed; i.e., you are generally faster when you are younger, but you are not more correct when you are younger.

sillysaurusx 6y ago
Apologies for pasting all of this, but the excerpt has always stuck with me. It seem correct. Are there alternative explanations other than mental processing speed and so on? (For example, later in life, you're less likely to be in a position to do the same sort of work. But that seems to have been tested by e.g. the institute of advanced study.) As far as I can tell, this section might be one of those facts that people try not to think about too much. I don't worry about it, but I end up thinking about it a lot. There was recently some headline news about an older mathematician that made a significant breakthrough. Other than that one outlier, have there been many important contributions made by people after the age of, say, 45? -- "I had better say something here about this question of age, since it is particularly important for mathematicians. No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game. To take a simple illustration at a comparatively humble level, the average age of election to the Royal Society is lowest in mathematics. We can naturally find much more striking illustrations. We may consider, for example, the career of a man who was certainly one of the world's three greatest mathematicians. Newton gave up mathematics at fifty, and had lost his enthusiasm long before; he had recognized no doubt by the time that he was forty that his great creative days were over. His greatest ideas of all, fluxions and the law of gravitation, came to him about 1666, when he was twenty-four—'in those days I was in the prime of my age for invention, and minded mathematics and philosophy more than at any time since'. He made big discoveries until he was nearly forty (the 'elliptic orbit' at thirty-seven), but after that he did little but polish and perfect. Galois died at twenty-one, Abel at twenty-seven, Ramanujan at thirty-three, Riemann at forty. There have been men who have done great work a good deal later; Gauss's great memoir on differential geometry was published when he was fifty (though he had had the fundamental ideas ten years before). I do not know an instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty. If a man of mature age loses interest in and abandons mathematics, the loss is not likely to be very serious either for mathematics or for himself. On the other hand the gain is no more likely to be substantial; the later records of mathematicians who have left mathematics are not particularly encouraging. Newton made a quite competent Master of the Mint (when he was not quarrelling with anybody). Painlevé was a not very successful Premier of France. Laplace's political career was highly discreditable, but he is hardly a fair instance, since he was dishonest rather than incompetent, and never really 'gave up' mathematics. It is very hard to find an instance of a first-rate mathematician who has abandoned mathematics and attained first-rate distinction in any other field.1 There may have been young men who would have been first-rate mathematicians if they had stuck to mathematics, but I have never heard of a really plausible example. And all this is fully borne out by my own very limited experience. Every young mathematician of real talent whom I have known has been faithful to mathematics, and not from lack of ambition but from abundance of it; they have all recognized that there, if anywhere, lay the road to a life of any distinction. 1 Pascal seems the best."
- checkyoursudo 6y ago
  First, a note: math is one of the specific areas where humans generally peak really quite young. Math (quantitative reasoning/logic) is not the only area of psychometric intelligence testing (e.g., IQ) and not even a majority of it. So, it may be that it really is a bit harder for older mathematicians to make breakthroughs? I don't know. At any rate, citing mathematics as an indicator is probably not ideal, because math ability does indeed generally peak early. However, as of 2011[1] the mean age of physics Nobel winners at the time of their achievements across the entire period of the award was 37.2 and since 1985 the mean age was 50.3. According to the same paper, by the year 2000, Nobel-level achievement in physics before age 40 was only 19% of cases. It also appears that awards in chemistry and medicine are similarly increasing in mean age. Is this dispositive? Certainly not. Maybe the Nobel committee prefers to award old scientists because of some unknown bias? However, it does indicate that high achievement is both possible and normal in middle age and beyond. [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/108/47/18910.full https://www.pnas.org/content/108/47/18910.full
  - sillysaurusx 6y ago
    This is a phenomenal answer to something I've wondered about for so long. Thank you for presenting data!
  - Naracion 6y ago
    Specifically responding to the increasing average age of Nobel prize winners: this is in part due to the increasing complexity of problems to solve. With our current ways of solving problems, the new problems become harder and harder. The existing human knowledge is also becoming harder and harder to understand, requiring somebody working in a field to spend much longer studying and catching up to the state of the art before being able to make a significant contribution to the field. This is one of the reasons that I'm personally so excited about (and working on) the potential of spatially immersive media like VR to understand complex concepts. Taking a step back, tools like a graph plot enabled humans to understand complex concepts like differentials and projectile motion at a much younger age. Could a breakthrough with new ways of understanding human knowledge effectively do the same with knowledge that is today considered complex (eg, quantum mechanics)? If such a breakthrough happens, could we bring the average age of significant contribution in subjects like physics back down? I don't know, but I hope so. :) Edit. I also remember reading thoughts by either Michael Nielsen on the increasing age of Nobel-worthy contributions in physics, but I can't find it in my current sleep deprived state. I shall tomorrow if somebody else hasn't pointed to that article by then.

sillysaurusx 6y ago

Apologies for pasting all of this, but the excerpt has always stuck with me. It seem correct. Are there alternative explanations other than mental processing speed and so on? (For example, later in life, you're less likely to be in a position to do the same sort of work. But that seems to have been tested by e.g. the institute of advanced study.) As far as I can tell, this section might be one of those facts that people try not to think about too much. I don't worry about it, but I end up thinking about it a lot. There was recently some headline news about an older mathematician that made a significant breakthrough. Other than that one outlier, have there been many important contributions made by people after the age of, say, 45? -- "I had better say something here about this question of age, since it is particularly important for mathematicians. No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game. To take a simple illustration at a comparatively humble level, the average age of election to the Royal Society is lowest in mathematics. We can naturally find much more striking illustrations. We may consider, for example, the career of a man who was certainly one of the world's three greatest mathematicians. Newton gave up mathematics at fifty, and had lost his enthusiasm long before; he had recognized no doubt by the time that he was forty that his great creative days were over. His greatest ideas of all, fluxions and the law of gravitation, came to him about 1666, when he was twenty-four—'in those days I was in the prime of my age for invention, and minded mathematics and philosophy more than at any time since'. He made big discoveries until he was nearly forty (the 'elliptic orbit' at thirty-seven), but after that he did little but polish and perfect. Galois died at twenty-one, Abel at twenty-seven, Ramanujan at thirty-three, Riemann at forty. There have been men who have done great work a good deal later; Gauss's great memoir on differential geometry was published when he was fifty (though he had had the fundamental ideas ten years before). I do not know an instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty. If a man of mature age loses interest in and abandons mathematics, the loss is not likely to be very serious either for mathematics or for himself. On the other hand the gain is no more likely to be substantial; the later records of mathematicians who have left mathematics are not particularly encouraging. Newton made a quite competent Master of the Mint (when he was not quarrelling with anybody). Painlevé was a not very successful Premier of France. Laplace's political career was highly discreditable, but he is hardly a fair instance, since he was dishonest rather than incompetent, and never really 'gave up' mathematics. It is very hard to find an instance of a first-rate mathematician who has abandoned mathematics and attained first-rate distinction in any other field.1 There may have been young men who would have been first-rate mathematicians if they had stuck to mathematics, but I have never heard of a really plausible example. And all this is fully borne out by my own very limited experience. Every young mathematician of real talent whom I have known has been faithful to mathematics, and not from lack of ambition but from abundance of it; they have all recognized that there, if anywhere, lay the road to a life of any distinction. 1 Pascal seems the best."

checkyoursudo 6y ago
First, a note: math is one of the specific areas where humans generally peak really quite young. Math (quantitative reasoning/logic) is not the only area of psychometric intelligence testing (e.g., IQ) and not even a majority of it. So, it may be that it really is a bit harder for older mathematicians to make breakthroughs? I don't know. At any rate, citing mathematics as an indicator is probably not ideal, because math ability does indeed generally peak early. However, as of 2011[1] the mean age of physics Nobel winners at the time of their achievements across the entire period of the award was 37.2 and since 1985 the mean age was 50.3. According to the same paper, by the year 2000, Nobel-level achievement in physics before age 40 was only 19% of cases. It also appears that awards in chemistry and medicine are similarly increasing in mean age. Is this dispositive? Certainly not. Maybe the Nobel committee prefers to award old scientists because of some unknown bias? However, it does indicate that high achievement is both possible and normal in middle age and beyond. [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/108/47/18910.full https://www.pnas.org/content/108/47/18910.full
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
  This is a phenomenal answer to something I've wondered about for so long. Thank you for presenting data!
- Naracion 6y ago
  Specifically responding to the increasing average age of Nobel prize winners: this is in part due to the increasing complexity of problems to solve. With our current ways of solving problems, the new problems become harder and harder. The existing human knowledge is also becoming harder and harder to understand, requiring somebody working in a field to spend much longer studying and catching up to the state of the art before being able to make a significant contribution to the field. This is one of the reasons that I'm personally so excited about (and working on) the potential of spatially immersive media like VR to understand complex concepts. Taking a step back, tools like a graph plot enabled humans to understand complex concepts like differentials and projectile motion at a much younger age. Could a breakthrough with new ways of understanding human knowledge effectively do the same with knowledge that is today considered complex (eg, quantum mechanics)? If such a breakthrough happens, could we bring the average age of significant contribution in subjects like physics back down? I don't know, but I hope so. :) Edit. I also remember reading thoughts by either Michael Nielsen on the increasing age of Nobel-worthy contributions in physics, but I can't find it in my current sleep deprived state. I shall tomorrow if somebody else hasn't pointed to that article by then.