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Here's my contrarian perspective, I'm 49. I'm only going to give a small part of my thoughts, there's more, but let's keep a narrow focus for the forum format.

Here's my contrarian perspective, I'm 49. I'm only going to give a small part of my thoughts, there's more, but let's keep a narrow focus for the forum format. I'm less and less willing to submerge myself deep into fields far removed from daily life. I can still do it, and actually easier than ever before. I just don't want to. I feel it's not because I'm dumber, quite he opposite. It's because I understand and see sooooo much more than twenty years ago. I just don't see the point as much. I had a much more narrow view in my youth, and that allowed me to concentrate on narrow and deep subjects for long periods of time. I don't want to go into the reasons because that would really explode the text volume and mix subjective and objective things that would in turn require quite some effort in untangling. I also care quite a bit less about "progress" because I lost a lot of idealism. In that sense, understanding more of the world might be counterproductive for productivity... I think I can claim I'm a lot more capable with my brain than two decades ago. I tested it by taking numerous edX and Coursera courses, quite a few of the very challenging, and I was invited to become a C[ommunity]TA several times in courses way outside my own field, including math stuff that I had difficulties with in the past. My job is not standard stuff either.

21723 5y ago
One thing I've noticed with age is the reduced interest in competing. When you're young, you want to know how you measure up to your peers, what your percentile ranking is, et cetera. When you're older, you realize that very few things actually worth doing fit into a competitive frame, because if something can be objectively evaluated, then it's probably already been done a million times. I don't think chess players peak at 35 because they're losing their touch. I think they develop other interests; the ones who aren't going to be professionals realize it and downshift, and the truly elite ones achieve what they set out to do and move on to things they see as more interesting. This is probably why the corporate thugs are so ageist. They know it's easy to pit people in their 20s against each other. Once people are older and have more perspective, it's hard to make them compete over scraps.
- karmakurtisaani 5y ago
  I kind of disagree on the chess player point. I think many older players would gladly keep competing on the highest level, but just can't keep up. It's not really far fetched that younger people think faster, have more stamina and can keep focus better in those several hour long matches in world class tournaments. However, with older age comes ability to select where to focus better and put things in perspective. The skills gained with aging don't really help with chess, which reduces most of the time to raw calculation and focus.

21723 5y ago

One thing I've noticed with age is the reduced interest in competing. When you're young, you want to know how you measure up to your peers, what your percentile ranking is, et cetera. When you're older, you realize that very few things actually worth doing fit into a competitive frame, because if something can be objectively evaluated, then it's probably already been done a million times. I don't think chess players peak at 35 because they're losing their touch. I think they develop other interests; the ones who aren't going to be professionals realize it and downshift, and the truly elite ones achieve what they set out to do and move on to things they see as more interesting. This is probably why the corporate thugs are so ageist. They know it's easy to pit people in their 20s against each other. Once people are older and have more perspective, it's hard to make them compete over scraps.

karmakurtisaani 5y ago
I kind of disagree on the chess player point. I think many older players would gladly keep competing on the highest level, but just can't keep up. It's not really far fetched that younger people think faster, have more stamina and can keep focus better in those several hour long matches in world class tournaments. However, with older age comes ability to select where to focus better and put things in perspective. The skills gained with aging don't really help with chess, which reduces most of the time to raw calculation and focus.