The assumption here is changing course is a bad thing? And what defines changing course? Also how do you know what your 40 or 60 year old brain will think when

The assumption here is changing course is a bad thing? And what defines changing course? Also how do you know what your 40 or 60 year old brain will think when you are 20? If our brains thought the same things and had the same world view this would be evolutionarily a disadvantage. Just brain chemistry changes alone could account for a lot of decisions. At a crude level it makes more sense to be sex and love obsessed in 20s when the chance of having a good sperm, eggs and pregnancy is much higher. Elder members of the group help genetic survival by providing wisdom, knowledge of a different kind than younger people (I don't believe "older people know better") but the blends of knowledge are great for survival. The assumption that we are purely rational agents making informed choices is clearly false in general, and I think the opposite is true, in general. And this doesn't even tough on the extra information you would have processed over 20 years or even the freakingly high speed of change of the world around us. Would you choose to learn about Machine Learning / Neural Nets in 2000? Or coding in 1980? Well you could if it is a passion, but it didn't look as promising as now right? So data changes.