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This is dismissive of gained wisdom over time, and probably the most unapologetic generalization about a group I’ve read recently. My guess is having lots of o

This is dismissive of gained wisdom over time, and probably the most unapologetic generalization about a group I’ve read recently. My guess is having lots of older voters would make it so people stop falling for the same scams over and over, and are less prone to hysteria. If that were the case, governance should improve dramatically.

csa 5y ago
> My guess is having lots of older voters would make it so people stop falling for the same scams over and over, and are less prone to hysteria. A major part of Fox News’ business model is built around creating FUD amongst senior citizens. They seem to be very successful at it.
- junon 5y ago
  I don't think age has anything to do with it, and Fox News has plenty of younger viewers as well. I think education, ideology, and sensationalism have more (everything?) to do with it.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
    According to POS: https://pos.org/whos-watching-a-look-at-the-demographics-of-cable-news-channel-watchers/ https://pos.org/whos-watching-a-look-at-the-demographics-of-... The only big difference between Fox and other networks is that they have way less college educated viewers as a percentage of total viewers. Not sure how good of a source that is, though. There's several (not great) sources online I can see that say the average FOX News viewer is >65. I also see that the average CNN & MSNBC viewer is >59. But according to that POS survey, only 20% of viewers are >65 - which must mean a significant portion of their viewers are REALLY old like 80+ (or the surveys are just bad). 538 gives POS an A- for polls: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/public-opinion-strategies/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/public... - which is pretty good. So who knows?
    - junon 5y ago
      This is a correlation at best. An interesting one, but no more interesting than "ice cream sales and shark attacks follow the same curve". There's probably no real way of knowing exactly why Fox News has the viewers it does. We can only guess.
dwaltrip 5y ago
Have you heard the phrase “science advances one death at a time”? Older people — not all of them, there are many exceptions, but as a group — are more rigid in their thinking and less open to new ideas. Some of this is due to acquired wisdom, but it is also due to decreased ability to imagine the world any other way.
- at_a_remove 5y ago
  New ideas aren't always great ideas. And to counteract it, a sufficiently long-lived humanity might actually have to deal with the consequences of their own actions. Right now, there's quite a lot of folks who are of the mindset that they'll die in ten to twenty years, so why should they care? It's a generational pass-the-buck.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- cgriswald 5y ago
  My own personal experience of aging is that the opposite is true. Young me thought in very black-and-white terms and knew everything. I now live in the grey and although I find it more difficult to deal with new ideas (partly because of age, partly because of the grey), I’m a lot more open to those ideas and willing to give them serious and fair consideration. YMMV, but a blanket statement that old people generally are stuck in their ways doesn’t match with my personal experience and when I think of the old people I know, to the extent that it’s true it’s true for a minority. The referent as it relates to science probably has to do more with corruption, incentives, and careers being built on certain ideas and having pre-existing knowledge rather than anything specifically age-related. In any case, whatever longevity treatment is applied may actually reverse or reduce whatever part of your claims have some physiological truth. It could mean more wisdom and less curmudgeonry.
- rantwasp 5y ago
  here is an idea: age weighted voting. starting at voting age, give every X years interval Y% votes. if there is a lot of old people their vote matters less. if there is a whole lot more younger people their vote matters less. i’m sure this would work great. also sure i’m the first person to have thought about this. /s
villasv 5y ago
> would make it so people stop falling for the same scams over and over As evidenced by... the ever present red-scare in the US? It has been decades and people still going on with this bullshit. It’s very easy to observe how older generations have a hard time getting rid of their zeitgeist. This doesn’t mean they suck, because there are things that lose impact over time and older generations are the to say: listen, it was way worse then it seems, I was still a child when that atomic bomb fell and the repercussions were immense. So I think they are valuable voters, but because they’re scam-resistant. On the contrary, they’re historically charged and can help us remember relevant stuff, but their emotionally bagged opinions are almost immutable and a vulnerability.
necheffa 5y ago
Your argument is fundamentally wrong in that it assumes age is a good approximation of wisdom. Just because someone is N years old does not necessarily mean they have N years of experience from which to derive wisdom. They could very well have done nothing but meet the most basal needs to sustain life for N years, having nothing to contribute to a greater dialogue.

csa 5y ago

> My guess is having lots of older voters would make it so people stop falling for the same scams over and over, and are less prone to hysteria. A major part of Fox News’ business model is built around creating FUD amongst senior citizens. They seem to be very successful at it.

junon 5y ago
I don't think age has anything to do with it, and Fox News has plenty of younger viewers as well. I think education, ideology, and sensationalism have more (everything?) to do with it.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  According to POS: https://pos.org/whos-watching-a-look-at-the-demographics-of-cable-news-channel-watchers/ https://pos.org/whos-watching-a-look-at-the-demographics-of-... The only big difference between Fox and other networks is that they have way less college educated viewers as a percentage of total viewers. Not sure how good of a source that is, though. There's several (not great) sources online I can see that say the average FOX News viewer is >65. I also see that the average CNN & MSNBC viewer is >59. But according to that POS survey, only 20% of viewers are >65 - which must mean a significant portion of their viewers are REALLY old like 80+ (or the surveys are just bad). 538 gives POS an A- for polls: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/public-opinion-strategies/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/public... - which is pretty good. So who knows?
  - junon 5y ago
    This is a correlation at best. An interesting one, but no more interesting than "ice cream sales and shark attacks follow the same curve". There's probably no real way of knowing exactly why Fox News has the viewers it does. We can only guess.

dwaltrip 5y ago

Have you heard the phrase “science advances one death at a time”? Older people — not all of them, there are many exceptions, but as a group — are more rigid in their thinking and less open to new ideas. Some of this is due to acquired wisdom, but it is also due to decreased ability to imagine the world any other way.

at_a_remove 5y ago
New ideas aren't always great ideas. And to counteract it, a sufficiently long-lived humanity might actually have to deal with the consequences of their own actions. Right now, there's quite a lot of folks who are of the mindset that they'll die in ten to twenty years, so why should they care? It's a generational pass-the-buck.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cgriswald 5y ago
My own personal experience of aging is that the opposite is true. Young me thought in very black-and-white terms and knew everything. I now live in the grey and although I find it more difficult to deal with new ideas (partly because of age, partly because of the grey), I’m a lot more open to those ideas and willing to give them serious and fair consideration. YMMV, but a blanket statement that old people generally are stuck in their ways doesn’t match with my personal experience and when I think of the old people I know, to the extent that it’s true it’s true for a minority. The referent as it relates to science probably has to do more with corruption, incentives, and careers being built on certain ideas and having pre-existing knowledge rather than anything specifically age-related. In any case, whatever longevity treatment is applied may actually reverse or reduce whatever part of your claims have some physiological truth. It could mean more wisdom and less curmudgeonry.
rantwasp 5y ago
here is an idea: age weighted voting. starting at voting age, give every X years interval Y% votes. if there is a lot of old people their vote matters less. if there is a whole lot more younger people their vote matters less. i’m sure this would work great. also sure i’m the first person to have thought about this. /s

villasv 5y ago

> would make it so people stop falling for the same scams over and over As evidenced by... the ever present red-scare in the US? It has been decades and people still going on with this bullshit. It’s very easy to observe how older generations have a hard time getting rid of their zeitgeist. This doesn’t mean they suck, because there are things that lose impact over time and older generations are the to say: listen, it was way worse then it seems, I was still a child when that atomic bomb fell and the repercussions were immense. So I think they are valuable voters, but because they’re scam-resistant. On the contrary, they’re historically charged and can help us remember relevant stuff, but their emotionally bagged opinions are almost immutable and a vulnerability.

necheffa 5y ago

Your argument is fundamentally wrong in that it assumes age is a good approximation of wisdom. Just because someone is N years old does not necessarily mean they have N years of experience from which to derive wisdom. They could very well have done nothing but meet the most basal needs to sustain life for N years, having nothing to contribute to a greater dialogue.