5 ms·
> late twenties Wait, is this considered old now? I recognize that you're fighting the good fight against ageism and giving up. But by painting Bacon as an exc
by skrebbel 5y ago
> late twenties
Wait, is this considered old now? I recognize that you're fighting the good fight against ageism and giving up. But by painting Bacon as an exceptional case, you're also helping reinforce the myth that of you're not wildly successful by 35, you've missed the boat.
I have a hard time believing that Bacon's case is such an outlier. I never collected the data but i know of plenty artists and entrepreneurs who started in their thirties, forties and older.
- keiferski 5y agoI was mostly joking, but I do feel like it’s common for 27-35 year olds to feel like they’ve “missed their chance.”
- prepend 5y agoJust wait until you encounter the 37-45 year olds.
- suifbwish 5y agoHow old was Einstein when he published his theory on special relativity? The idea that age is a limiter on significant achievement is moronic.
- jfengel 5y agoUh... 26. And he was 36 when he published general relativity. Which was his last really big achievement. Of course he still continued to produce a ton of work, many individual pieces of which would be considered a capstone achievement for many ordinary physicists. But a lot of his effort was spent on a unified field theory that never really came together. And a lot was spent on trying to prove that quantum mechanics was incomplete -- which turned out to have some useful discoveries that largely affirm that QM is complete (at least within its domain). In other words, he kinda was a model of somebody who did his best work before his mid-30s, and spent the rest of his career merely being very, very smart.
- solveit 5y agoI don't know about artists, but I do know that the median successful entrepreneur is a middle-aged veteran of their industry who set up a company that nobody outside the field will ever know about.