4 ms·

I’m also in my early forties and got a driver’s license not very long ago. It seems to me that people who started driving as teenagers have a fundamentally dif

by pavlov 3y ago

I’m also in my early forties and got a driver’s license not very long ago. It seems to me that people who started driving as teenagers have a fundamentally different relationship to the activity. They presumably went through a phase where the license was a manifest symbol of adult freedom and they had fun experimenting with the car. With that fundamental mindset, you can probably enjoy just driving around. Whereas myself, I don’t find any pleasure in driving. It’s just a necessary chore to get somewhere out of reach by train. It requires a constant level of attention that I’m not used to, and I’m always too conscious of the potential of catastrophic consequences beyond my own control if anyone in traffic makes a mistake or happens to be feeling suicidal. There’s no joy at this age in wrangling these big machines.

hprotagonist 3y ago
I think there’s something true about this, yeah. Which is a bit of a shame; getting over the neuroplastic hump gets harder the older you get, even if it’s to your benefit.
- lanstin 3y ago
  i recentlty heard a neuroscientist who is also an opera singer asked this, and she said that outside of language acquisition, there really isn't any strong evidence that learning becomes harder. old people just forget how much time and energy people put into practise and learning when young. it helps to be in school when your job is basically to learn, and you dont have kids to tend to etc. i do notice the pull towards resting on ny existing skills as being less work than learning new skills (in software, in my 50s) but i can't be sure that hour for hour the rate is much lower. i do have less energy and more enjoyable leisure alternatives than 30 years ago.
  - hprotagonist 3y ago
    right; i wasn’t exactly suggesting that there’s a physical limitation here (modulo the indeed well documented synaptic pruning in puberty), more that in adulthood, it’s just not possible to sink all your time into learning something the way you can more or less effortlessly do when you’re 15.
    - lanstin 3y ago
      True but unfortunate.
dranudin 3y ago
The difference is practice. After driving for some years you get good at it and need much less effort. Then it becomes more enjoyable.
- pavlov 3y ago
  Maybe I just don’t need to drive enough to unlock that. On average I do a 4-hour roundtrip every month or so, and that’s all. It’s regular enough to make the drive feel boring, but doesn’t create the daily practice that is central to making progress in most activities. I don’t feel like forcing it either because public transport is so much more convenient in the city.
  - yurishimo 3y ago
    I think the other commenter is correct; you probably don’t have enough practice (which is fine). I’ve been driving since I was 15 (almost 30) and have driven hundreds of thousands of miles at this point. I’ve also ridden motorcycles about 30k miles. Driving is what i do when i get upset or stressed and need to clear my head. The worst part about it is the monetary cost. I moved to Europe and fuel is way more expensive here. I’m trying to get better at coping with long walks but sometimes i just need to drive!
  - thworp 3y ago
    It's a matter of practice for sure. I started noticing that driving started becoming second nature around 40k km driven. Now (>150k driven) it's about 90% subconscious.
- lanstin 3y ago
  not for every one. i am US born, driving forty years now, entire decades with long commutes during which my various skills improved a lot, but its just not that fun. i am not free to direct my attention as i wish, even for the outside scenes one can't let your eyes deeply take in the fog rolling over the mountain like you can on a bike or from a train seat, much less stop to pick up some oxious trash or take that half formed intuition into a good software idea or parenting plan. even light rail with a window seat and wifi is infinitely more enjoyable, for me. biking will have times like that, and you can't read while biking, but there are always big periods of safety and silence while biking, and you can stop and stretch and take a pic and and sip your water so much more easily than from a car. and you can't avoid the touch of the breeze on your cheek or the smells of the tree sap and the meals being prepared and the garbage. So alive.

by pavlov 3y ago

hprotagonist 3y ago

I think there’s something true about this, yeah. Which is a bit of a shame; getting over the neuroplastic hump gets harder the older you get, even if it’s to your benefit.

lanstin 3y ago
i recentlty heard a neuroscientist who is also an opera singer asked this, and she said that outside of language acquisition, there really isn't any strong evidence that learning becomes harder. old people just forget how much time and energy people put into practise and learning when young. it helps to be in school when your job is basically to learn, and you dont have kids to tend to etc. i do notice the pull towards resting on ny existing skills as being less work than learning new skills (in software, in my 50s) but i can't be sure that hour for hour the rate is much lower. i do have less energy and more enjoyable leisure alternatives than 30 years ago.
- hprotagonist 3y ago
  right; i wasn’t exactly suggesting that there’s a physical limitation here (modulo the indeed well documented synaptic pruning in puberty), more that in adulthood, it’s just not possible to sink all your time into learning something the way you can more or less effortlessly do when you’re 15.
  - lanstin 3y ago
    True but unfortunate.

dranudin 3y ago

The difference is practice. After driving for some years you get good at it and need much less effort. Then it becomes more enjoyable.

pavlov 3y ago
Maybe I just don’t need to drive enough to unlock that. On average I do a 4-hour roundtrip every month or so, and that’s all. It’s regular enough to make the drive feel boring, but doesn’t create the daily practice that is central to making progress in most activities. I don’t feel like forcing it either because public transport is so much more convenient in the city.
- yurishimo 3y ago
  I think the other commenter is correct; you probably don’t have enough practice (which is fine). I’ve been driving since I was 15 (almost 30) and have driven hundreds of thousands of miles at this point. I’ve also ridden motorcycles about 30k miles. Driving is what i do when i get upset or stressed and need to clear my head. The worst part about it is the monetary cost. I moved to Europe and fuel is way more expensive here. I’m trying to get better at coping with long walks but sometimes i just need to drive!
- thworp 3y ago
  It's a matter of practice for sure. I started noticing that driving started becoming second nature around 40k km driven. Now (>150k driven) it's about 90% subconscious.
lanstin 3y ago
not for every one. i am US born, driving forty years now, entire decades with long commutes during which my various skills improved a lot, but its just not that fun. i am not free to direct my attention as i wish, even for the outside scenes one can't let your eyes deeply take in the fog rolling over the mountain like you can on a bike or from a train seat, much less stop to pick up some oxious trash or take that half formed intuition into a good software idea or parenting plan. even light rail with a window seat and wifi is infinitely more enjoyable, for me. biking will have times like that, and you can't read while biking, but there are always big periods of safety and silence while biking, and you can stop and stretch and take a pic and and sip your water so much more easily than from a car. and you can't avoid the touch of the breeze on your cheek or the smells of the tree sap and the meals being prepared and the garbage. So alive.