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Age and cognitive skills: Use it or lose it
- canjobear 2y agoCorrelation/causation. People whose faculties are still intact are more likely to do and enjoy activities requiring those faculties.
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoDoes that imply that it also is part of character traits? As in use empathy, become emphatic, stay in a non-emphatic environment, your brain degrades you to a sociopath?
- megadata 2y agoI've seen people age into the classic "grumpy old man" so there's something to it. But there's probably a lot more to it too I'd think.
- tunnuz 2y agoI always assumed that it was something to do with people getting increasingly frustrated with the struggle of keeping up with stuff.
- biofox 2y agoChronic pain probably plays a part too. I know I get grumpy and miserable when I'm unwell or in pain.
- ethbr1 2y agoI've attributed that to a decreased ability to deal with novel situations as we age. E.g. the world behaved differently than I was expecting. One thing it's definitely possible and important to intentionally keep exposing oneself to!
- sgc 2y agoI am definitely grumpy. What makes me grumpy is the fact that society keeps banging its head against a wall for no good reason. There is everything there for growth, and yet I see none. I get very tired of knowing well what the boring, selfish reaction of the person I encounter is going to be. I am sure I do the same thing - and don't change much compared to what is available to me to make changes. I do not lead by example at all the way I would like. Nonetheless, what makes me grumpy is lack of change, not the superficial appearance of change with which technology distracts us. Moral growth would be so refreshing to see, but I see none of it - despite virtue signalling as a veneer from all parts of society. Said more colloquially, a lot of older people just grow tired of all our bulls*t.
- Lanolderen 2y agoI think it has more to do with getting desensitized to things the more you're exposed to them. With age you get more and more exposure to everything emotional and lose the strong reactions. Add to that some frustration from not being able to keep up with things, health issues, no one "young" having time to hang out and your friends dying all the time and I'd be grumpy too. You were once a stallion taking care of everyone and now you worry about falling in the shower because you occasionally lose balance for whatever reason. And you know it'll hurt like a bitch, you'll break something and it won't heal for a year. It's quite humiliating.
- SimianSci 2y agoAs with most research around our scientific understanding of intelligence, I assume this only scratches the surface. There may be something to your comment.
- dijit 2y ago"You become the average of the 5 people you hang out with most" is a common phrase, there must be at least an ounce of truth to it.
- donatj 2y agoI hung out with a friend recently I had not seen in close to a decade. He was at one time my closest friend and seeing him was kind of uncomfortable and enlightening. I saw sooo much of how I used to talk and act still in him that it really had me wondering how much of that I'd gotten from him versus the reverse.
- senectus1 2y agopersonally yes. I absolutely have seen this in myself and moved to rectify it.
- misterpurple45 2y agoI think you mean empathetic, rather than emphatic.
- nialse 2y agoThere are trajectories of personality traits over the life span, I would hesitate to extrapolate them based on the trajectory of cognitive abilities though. One of the known life span emotional/personality trajectory is positivity bias, older people tend to be more positive. It is sometimes framed as negativity avoidance, that is older people tend to ignore negative things more often.
- canjobear 2y agoPersonality disorders like BPD tend to attenuate with age, so you would be more likely to become less sociopathic.
- dboreham 2y agoPerhaps correlating with "ingesting more and more valuable training data"? Which is pretty much what CBT/DBT is supplying imho.
- amichail 2y agoIs self-employment better able to cope with brain changes?
- aomix 2y agoFalling off the cognitive cliff after retirement is something I think a lot of people are familiar with in their own lives.
- donatj 2y agoI have seen it with my own parents and my wife's parents first hand. Frankly, I think the lack of social interaction is a big part of it. When they're working, they're regularly talking to people outside their comfort zone about potentially challenging questions. That gets largely shutdown once you retire. Both my parents were in a huge rush to retire early, and now they just sit at home and scroll Facebook. I don't see the appeal.
- spelunker 2y agoI (unfortunately) find myself doing this far too much after work, and am worried about what retirement might accidentally look like.
- lo_zamoyski 2y agoAnd from what I've heard on the grapevine, life expectancy drops among those who retire relative to those that don't. This makes sense: many people don't seem to know what to do with themselves if they're not "officially employed", so when they retire, they become aimless, and they sort of decay and disengage from living. This is characteristic of acedia.
- paulluuk 2y agoThough is that causation or correlation? I can imagine that people with all kinds of illnesses would also retire sooner than people who are still in peak health.
- sgc 2y agoThat is why volunteering when you are in retirement is a win-win. Very few others have the time for what is an absolutely necessary part of society, and it is great to keep your mind and heart active while you recall your life and use its lessons to give back to others. Any sort of volunteering will lend itself to that. For example, Jimmy Carter built houses, and it seems to have done him wonders.
- Yxven 2y agoAre there any guidelines for what exactly this would entail? My short term memory is falling off a cliff. What do I need to do to prevent that from getting worse? Are there any other bases I need to cover that I don't know that I'm missing?
- Zambyte 2y agoRegarding memory, I have made a habit of assuming I have a faulty memory, and trying to write down anything I think I may want to remember in the future using a wiki style tool that supports back linking. The tool I use is Org Roam in Emacs, but there are lots of options. I have found that by doing this, I have offloaded a lot onto my computer, and made space in my mind to remember a lot of new things.
- rco8786 2y agoAnd when you’re not in front of a computer?
- jjbinx007 2y agoUse your phone
- dwayne_dibley 2y agoor note book which you later re-write into your knowledge base.
- layer8 2y agoOne option is using voice assistants to send a message to your todo inbox.
- safety1st 2y agoLots of approaches exist, mine is Obsidian + Syncthing and just jotting down notes on my phone that I go flesh out when I'm back at my PC.
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- bikamonki 2y agoWith 25 years of experience in software development, I’ve noticed that long coding sessions leave me feeling more fatigued than they used to. However, I’ve also become significantly more productive, as I spend far less time grappling with problems I’ve already solved. I’ve only just begun to explore AI-assisted coding, so that isn’t what’s driving my efficiency. Is it reasonable to assume that the natural decline in cognitive performance over time is offset by the gains in experience and expertise?
- lr4444lr 2y agoIf your time is spent in higher productivity work, wouldn't that - irrespective of age - leave you feeling more exhausted?
- 0x20cowboy 2y agoI am old and I can easily code / design all day. 10-16 hours if it’s something I am in to. It’s dealing with people / social issues that exhaust me.
- steve_adams_86 2y agoLikewise. I can easily work for 10 or 12 hours. It's fitting in things like friends and family, according to their schedules, that makes it difficult. I don't mean to say this in a resentful way at all; it's definitely a me problem, not them.
- j_bum 2y agoI’m not sure it makes sense to differentiate between energy spend while being “productive”, and energy spent whole trouble shooting and problem solving. After all, trouble shooting can be viewed as a productive thing. Interesting idea though.
- itishappy 2y agoProductivity doesn't correlate super closely with fatigue in my experience. The worse sessions are when I'm banging my head against something and getting nowhere. When I'm flowing, I can go for hours.
- lapcat 2y ago> skills decline at older ages only for those with below-average skill usage. White-collar and higher-educated workers with above-average usage show increasing skills even beyond their forties. > Individuals with above-average skill usage at work and home on average never face a skill decline (at least until the limit of our data at age 65).
- jimbokun 2y agoA lot of hiring managers need to read this.
- marstall 2y agoRight? ageism maybe should work in reverse!
- jdefr89 2y agoI get that but growing older does mean less energy at the very least.
- jimbokun 2y agoDoes "energy" here mean "willing to work many more hours for no extra pay"?
- jdefr89 2y agoFair point. I would say no. Even getting paid extra for extra work.. I would still be at an energy deficit because our tethering of energy to the amount of money we make is somewhat artificial.. There are limits on how much control we have of ourselves no matter how much money someone gives us. To make things extreme for the sake of clarity.. Whether I am paid a billion dollars a day or one dollar a day, I know I will need at least eight hours of sleep either way (to operate at full capacity)...
- lapcat 2y ago
- sunami-ai 2y agoOlder coders/technical folks tend to have more wisdom than raw compute (relative to younger coders who may have more raw compute than distilled wisdom.) Wisdom takes a more reliable and more efficient path than raw compute. Both raw compute and wisdom will be eventually replaced by AI, but "deep wisdom" is largely held in the body, in the way we react viscerally to things, which AI as it is envisioned today does not factor in at all. So we still have a refuge in the wisdom stored in our body memory.
- jghn 2y agoAs an older developer who lately has been pairing with early career developers, I've been noticing lately how often wisdom comes into play. It feels like close to a daily occurrence where I suggest something is the cause, then later I'm asked how I knew that was the right thing to investigate, and the only response I have is that it's almost always the culprit.
- ferguess_k 2y agoMaybe it's time for me (40+) to go back to college. I want to pick up Mathematics and Physics up to the point of General Relativity. Since it's "use it or lose it", I better start reading now. But I don't really have any time. There are so many things to do, to learn. Younger people who happen to stumble upon this reply, please please prioritize financial freedom if you don't have a clear objective in mind -- and from my observation many people don't have a clear objective when they are in their 20s! If you can retire around 35-40, you have ample time to pursuit any project you want for the rest of the life.
- miamiwebdesign 2y agoIf you have the discipline, you can create a lesson plan with an LLM without spending an arm and a leg.
- 331c8c71 2y agoYou would still very likely need human input and help. LLMs will hallunicate badly on problems just a bit more difficult than the very standard ones (first-hand experience with math).
- ferguess_k 2y agoThanks. I definitely will teach myself some of the pre-requisites before registering in University. I need to prove to myself that I can sit down, take some course, complete the coursework + assignments + exams on MIT courseware, before committing anything that costs $$.
- sn9 2y agoMath Academy is really all you need. 30 minutes per day is enough, though more time will mean faster progress.
- cultofmetatron 2y agoI was running into the same issue. I wanted to get into deeeplearning but my math skills had atrophied. go check out mathacademy.com. its no where near the level of time investment that going back to college is and you will learn a lot!
- marstall 2y agoThis makes so much sense. I've been programming every day since I was in my twenties and there are definitely some concepts that seem much easier for me to get my head around now (I'm in my 50's) than earlier. Right now I'm reading through a college textbook on the biology of learning and memory with ease and good retention. Never got this deep into any subject in my school years.
- cheema33 2y ago> I've been programming every day since I was in my twenties and there are definitely some concepts that seem much easier for me to get my head around now (I'm in my 50's) than earlier. Same same. I figured this is because I have less energy, but a little more wisdom. I have much broader understanding of related concepts. So, things click a lot faster.
- bloopernova 2y agoMy mother in law did many mind puzzles every day. She still got Alzheimer's and died a couple of years later. She had multiple incidents that she hid because she was too scared to find out, and too stubborn to lose her ability to drive. She could have had some treatment if she'd approached a doctor earlier. Alzheimer's is utterly evil. Robbing people of their unique spark, killing the person before the body dies. Sorry for the rant
- jorts 2y agoSorry to hear that. My FIL was just diagnosed with dementia and it’s heartbreaking to watch it progress.
- RajT88 2y agoMy neighbor passed away from dementia recently. We first moved in maybe a year after his diagnosis and had to watch it progress. Horrible. Now a friend of mine who is the best programmer I know has an early onset diagnosis. I have noticed him starting to pick fights regularly with people on LinkedIn over programming topics. It's a really, really hard thing to watch someone go through.
- thinkingtoilet 2y agoI hope we have the compassion as a society to get to the point where I can say, "If I am unable to recognize my children, please kill me." At that point I would have died regardless of the condition of my body.
- nradov 2y agoI hope we have the compassion as individuals not to ask others to kill us. That's a heavy weight to put on someone else. It's not abstract "society" conducting the euthanasia: individual healthcare providers would have to decide that you met the criteria and then administer the drugs.
- armada651 2y ago
- Dowwie 2y agoThis study needs to capture the affects of sleep deficiency. I'm in my mid-forties and don't sleep enough anymore (6-7 hours at best).
- kanbankaren 2y agoWhat matters is quantity of deep sleep and REM sleep. REM sleep seems to be related to archiving of events( memory formation ) while lack of deep sleep affects the brain itself. Pickup a smartwatch and track the sleep stages with Apple watch being the most accurate.
- risyachka 2y agoThats why I don't do vibe coding and try not to use LLMs to generate code. Because it literally speeds up your cognitive decline as your brain shuts off and offloads all the heavy lifting.
- semireg 2y agoThis is sweet news. I'm over 40. I enrolled at my local university in January and I'm studying (literally right now) for my linear algebra midterm [0] which is in 45 minutes! I'm on HN to calm my nerves. I graduated high school in the early 2000s and graduated college with major in computer science and a minor in math. My goal is 5-8 more classes for a second degree in math (major). Wish me luck! [0] Study guide: https://course1.winona.edu/bperatt/M311S25/Tests/Test%202/test2sg.pdf https://course1.winona.edu/bperatt/M311S25/Tests/Test%202/te... Course: https://course1.winona.edu/bperatt/M311S25/Administrative/M311S25.html https://course1.winona.edu/bperatt/M311S25/Administrative/M3...
- saganus 2y agoOff-topic but this is a pretty interesting study guide format. Maybe it's standard in lots of places, but I've mostly seen study guides where they just list a ton of topics and that's it.
- semireg 2y agoIt’s been twenty years so my opinion is skewed and my memory is quite faded, however, I’ve got opinions on the guide and class in general. The main thing is there are no surprises or tricks. The exams are straightforward and EXHAUSTIVE. I do all the assigned homework twice. Once when we cover the material and again before the exam. Let’s hope that strategy pays off again.
- saganus 2y agoI'm pretty sure it will. Sounds like you are putting some real effort so I don't see why you won't do just fine. Good luck!
- gmays 2y agoGood luck! You should check out Math Academy, it's more effective/efficient/cheaper but also a good supplement since it's accredited. I recently turned 40 myself and I'm working through their Foundations courses (made to help adults catch up) before tackling the Machine Learning and other uni courses.
- stevetron 2y agoI'm skeptical. I was in my 40's before I graduated from a college. Before that, I did some serious electronics with a background from my local community college, have worked production lines, taught myself assembly language when I was engineering my first microprocessor-based design at work, then when I couldn't get re-employed years later, a lot of potential employers simply not believing my resume content because my 'formal education' was lacking, so I went back to school, got my BS in 1999, and my MS in 2006, then continued working on personal projects and learnign new coding languages on my own since now nobody wanted to take a chance on hiring an 'old' man. Their loss.
- cheema33 2y ago> I couldn't get re-employed years later, a lot of potential employers simply not believing my resume content because my 'formal education' was lacking.. I am 53 years old. I don't have a college degree. I have never been unemployed and have had good software development jobs all my adult life, including now. It is possible and likely that your lack of a degree was not the issue.
- jt2190 2y ago> Two main results emerge. First, average skills increase strongly into the forties before decreasing slightly in literacy and more strongly in numeracy. Second, skills decline at older ages only for those with below-average skill usage. White-collar and higher-educated workers with above-average usage show increasing skills even beyond their forties. Women have larger skill losses at older age, particularly in numeracy. [emphasis mine] So, it seems like workers with above-average usage of literacy and numeracy continue to increase their ability, while those in fields that don’t emphasize those would need some kind of mental “exercise”. (I also note that some commenters here are rushing to add more cognitive work to their daily routine through additional studies, but I wonder if they’d be better off focusing on commonly neglected areas like physical activity.)
- optymizer 2y agoFor those who don't feel like taking math courses in a formal setting, making games from scratch is a fun way to learn and apply linear algebra and calculus. I never really needed determinants in my life until I tried moving a spaceship towards another object. Trying to render realistic computer graphics gets you into some deep topics like FFTs and the physics of light and materials, with some scary-looking math, but I can feel my mind sharpening with each turn of the page in the book.
- cxie 2y agoI think there's a valid concern about cognitive fatigue. It could be mentally exhausting to constantly "exercise" our brains just to maintain cognitive abilities as we age! Maybe AI could be our mental gym buddy here - not replacing our thinking but offering just the right level of mental challenge to keep us sharp without burning us out. Picture an AI that knows when to push your intellectual boundaries and when to back off based on your energy levels. And Neuralink-style brain interfaces? They could be like cognitive training wheels - gently supporting neural pathways while letting us do the actual pedaling. Instead of "downloading knowledge" (which sounds exhausting in its own way), they might subtly enhance natural learning processes or help maintain neural connections that would otherwise weaken with age. The goal shouldn't be turning our golden years into endless mental marathons, but rather finding that sweet spot where cognitive maintenance feels engaging and enjoyable rather than like another chore on the to-do list!
- stego-tech 2y agoEchoing the sentiments of others here, this is why I firmly believe that public college should be free, for all, for life. Formal education just works better for some of us than video tutorials or self-paced learning, and ensuring everyone is able to learn new things and practice their skills in a consequence-free environment benefits society as a whole. Think about the tech nerds (me) who never learned how to cook, and are in their thirties. Or lawyers and Doctors who are sick and tired of feeling like they don’t understand how computers work, and want to learn. Or an accountant who loves maths, and wants to get into the scientific side of the field. Or the homemaker who wants to re-enter the workforce now that their kids are grown, and wants to pick up carpentry and welding to become a tradesperson. If cognitive decline comes from failing to practice it regularly, then the cheapest solution is free education for life to encourage as many people as possible to keep learning new skills and remain cognitively engaged.
- jdefr89 2y agoI am 100% with you. I am great engineering wise.. Have no clue how to eat and live healthy!
- stego-tech 2y agoYou're not alone! Nobody knows everything, and what's important or necessary to our thriving changes constantly throughout our lives. Learning to cook wasn't high on that list when tech salaries were great, delivery was cheap, and housing wasn't (completely) unaffordable; now that I'm nearing my 40s and have to stretch even a six-figure salary further than before, suddenly learning to cook is a necessity. Good people are always changing in some way. Making public education free encourages lifelong learning and builds a more adaptable human for times of crises. It's good survival strategy, that also just happens to create a more fulfilled human being.
- morning-coffee 2y ago> I firmly believe that public college should be free, for all, for life I just don't understand these statements that "this or that should be free". Do you plan to enslave the people who would provide this education? Do you not subscribe to the saying "You get what you pay for?". Public education through High School (in the US) has been free for many generations. Ever wonder what would happen if you make the next 4 years "free"? (Hint, you're not going to pop-out of those 4 years with any skills that are differentiated enough from everyone else who took-up the "free" education and not be right back in the same position you are now.) If you don't have the motivation to prevent your own cognitive decline by taking advantage of a plethora of already free (high quality) education (e.g. https://ocw.mit.edu https://ocw.mit.edu), then taxing the rest of us so you can be spoon-fed all the free "formal education" you want for life isn't the answer either.
- cwiz 2y agoWhat about using adderall to get an edge in cognitive skills?
- m0llusk 2y agoAnd yet ranks of successful founders are dominated by people in their mid forties. Perhaps there is something more involved with social function than pure cognitive skill?
- nbzso 2y agoFor this type of research the data sample is too small.
- misterbishop 2y agoIt's time for our geriatric political class to be retired.
- soneca 2y agoThe abstract has these two statements: > ”Cross-sectional age-skill profiles suggest that cognitive skills start declining by age 30 if not earlier.” and > ”Two main results emerge. First, average skills increase strongly into the forties before decreasing slightly in literacy and more strongly in numeracy” Does this mean that this study contradicts the popular common understanding that cognitive skills decline after 30? Or am I missing something? For me, personally, if feels a more impactful finding than the “use it or lose it” one
- Revisional_Sin 2y agoYes, the study contradicts the existing understanding.
- zackmorris 2y agoI'd like to see a study on how the acute stress of living in survival mode for a lifetime affects the brain by using it too much for the wrong tasks. The last 25 years have been particularly painful for people like me who favor academia and pure research over profit-driven innovation that tends to reinvent the wheel. When I look around at the sheer computing power available to us, I'm saddened that people with wealth, power and influence tend to point to their own success as reason to perpetuate the status quo. When we could have had basic resources like energy, water, some staple foods and shelter provided for free (or nearly free) through automation. So that we could focus on getting real work done in the sciences for example, instead of just making rent. I've been living like someone from movies like In Time and The Pursuit of Happyness for so many decades without a win that my subconscious no longer believes that the future will be better. I have to overcome tremendous spidey sense warning signs from my gut in order to begin working each day. The starting friction is intense. To the point where I'm not sure how much longer I can continue doing this to myself, and I'm "only" in my mid-40s. After a lifetime of negative reinforcement, I'm not sure that I can adopt new innovations like AI into my workflows. It's a hollow feeling to have so much experience in solving any problem, when problem solving itself will soon be solved/marginalized to the point that nobody wants to pay for it because AI can do it. I feel rather strongly that within 3 years, mass-layoffs will start sweeping the world with no help coming from our elected officials or private industry. Nobody will be safe from being rendered obsolete, not even you the reader. So I have my faculties, I have potential, but I've never felt dumber or more ineffectual than I do right now.
- navbaker 2y agoI think (from personal experience) talking with a good mental health professional would really help with your current state of mind and the pressure you’re feeling.
- pdimitar 2y agoReally? And how exactly? "Just man up", maybe? Sorry for the snark but I don't think they can just magically make you feel better. An example or two could change my mind.
- nottorp 2y agoSame as for muscles / physical skills, after all...
- runjake 2y agoI wonder how much of the "age-related" decline is due to the brain functioning on autopilot. After over 5 decades, I have experienced most of the issues I'm going to experience in life. More often than not, I'm addressing issues with mental playbooks based on past experience. As I get older (now in my 50s), I find myself reflecting on how many aspects of my life and decisions are operating on autopilot. I figure it's worse now with social media where people are constantly bombarded with dopamine hits, while boredom and idle thoughts have largely become things of the past. Perhaps counterintuitively, I am trying to break this pattern and consciously engage with my experiences by asking a few basic questions, such as: - What am I seeing here? - What's going on? - What am I missing? - How can I approach this differently to achieve the same or better outcomes? Additionally, I am making a concerted effort to notice more new details during routine tasks, like commuting or shopping. I can't count how many times I've discovered something new and interesting on my work commutes. Actually, I can: it's every time. Edit: Also spending more time with long-form content over short-form, be it reading or watching videos. It forces me to consider a topic for a much longer period. Short form knowledge is a trap, unless you have some system that hits you with high rates of repetition (eg Anki).
- sowbug 2y agoYou might also be able to avoid the subjective acceleration of time that happens to many of us as we age.
- runjake 2y agoThis is another thing I've been exploring, but I haven't had a whole lot of luck in actually slowing down time. The "fix" seems to be: - Add more activities to your day, every day. - Try to break up routines. Eg. you may run every day, but you don't have to take the same route. - Be actually present during those activities. Engage in conscious thought about those activities. - Take photos, videos, recordings to recall those activities and jog the brain.
- sowbug 2y agoI bet you can even accomplish some of this retroactively with the right group of friends. The question "What did you do this weekend?" can be answered in so many levels of detail.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoI'm 63, and still learn new stuff, every day. I write code, pretty much every single day, and also, solve problems, every single day (7 days a week). I think solving problems is important. Not just rote coding, but being presented with a bug, or a need to achieve an outcome, without knowing the solution, up front, is what I like. Basically, every single day, I'm presented with a dilemma, which, if not solved, will scrap the entire project that I'm working on. I solve every one (but sometimes, by realizing it's a red herring, and trying alternate approaches).
- worldisme 2y ago[flagged]
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- didip 2y agoIt has never been easier to pickup a subject and start learning on Youtube or similar streaming platforms. Just Do It, folks! You can do it! At nights and weekends, I have been learning home improvements, home automations, piano, Korean, and LLM toolings. All from streaming platforms.
- lbrito 2y agoI'd like to see how much of the decline is correlated not with age but with Parent Brain. The mental energy occupied by and spent with parenting is palpable, not to mention long-term continued stress, physical, mental and emotional exhaustion. I wouldn't be surprised if having kids (which is of course correlated with age) is much more of a factor than age itself. I for one feel dumber than pre-kids.
- linwangg 2y ago[dead]
- jader201 2y agoAs someone who plays a lot of board games — particularly heavier board games — and hopes to do even more of that in retirement, I’m wondering if/how that is helping/will help fight cognitive decline. I can imagine at the very least it won’t hurt, and intuitively it makes sense. But I’m not sure studies have been done specifically to understand how board gaming — or the problems being solved with board gaming - helps with cognitive skills. Curious if others that are closer to this field have thoughts.
- netbioserror 2y agoI love me some board games, but I prefer depth and decision space to complexity -- and the industry is dominated by stupendously complex beasts full of unnecessary mechanics that slow things down or extend setup without adding too much. A perfect example is TI4's expansion Prophecy of Kings, nearly all of which I despise for bloating a beautiful base game. I'm also always flabbergasted by how starved and railroaded I feel in games like Dune Imperium or Cole Wehlre's collection. Despite a wealth of mechanics, my choices are few and far between. Complexity has its place, especially for engine builders like Terraforming Mars where complex interactions are the point. Many designers seem to be throwing in the kitchen sink arbitrarily. We're in a "bigger is better" paradigm.
- hot_pockets 2y agoCan you recommend some of your favorites that are on the opposite end of the scale (high depth, low complexity)?
- standardUser 2y agoRecreational travel is the only thing that routinely works for me in terms of slowing down time and fully engaging my brain. It's something I can incorporate into my life multiple times per year and it guarantees a massive amount of new stimulation (assuming travel to new and interesting places). Even the most rudimentary trip to Europe will have you grappling all day long with a different language and culture and environment in ways that are completely taken for granted in our day to day lives. There's lots of things that can make an even bigger impact, like moving to a new place or starting a new career or school, or a new relationship. But those are things that sometimes only happen a handful of times in our entire lives. Everything else I find eventually becomes routine, no matter how stimulatingly it can be at the start. Not that we shouldn't try! Some stimulation is a whole lot better than none, and I have a terrible feeling that many people get little-to-no stimulation for weeks and months at a time (beyond a new TV show or podcast or political drama).
- mertleee 2y agoIdk, at 29, 30 and 31 I became significantly smarter - it just had to do with things I was intensely interested in. Things that could hold my focus just no longer matter. Fortunately I'm interested in engaging things that are hard.
- curtisszmania 2y ago[dead]
- mmooss 2y agoIf you are older, I think the trick is to watch (or remember!) what younger people do and follow (or revert to) that behavior, as much as you can. Comparing cognitive abilities between older and younger people fails to control for the inputs - behavior, experience, etc. Try the same inputs (using some big generalities): * Exploration: Younger people love to explore, even just for exploration sake, and are also compelled to try things - and they also fail. Exploration is their mode, because so much of the world is new to them, because doing something new and innovative is socially admired, and especially because so many major changes happen - leave home, serious romantic relationships, first job, etc. A lot of that happens, ready or not. * Learning: Similarly, younger people are compelled to learn lots of very challenging things, whether they want to or not; they are compelled to use cognitive skills that they are uncomfortable with. Their job is to learn, daily, for 12-16+ years. Remember school? Remember your early years at work when had little choice of what you did? Remember struggling with all those things? * Playing: Young people love to play and are socially admired for playing better and more creatively. What, you're past all that? Nobody is going to make you study things you're not interested in? Don't want to make any big changes? Dignity too big to play? Ego too big to explore and to fail? When you're older, you can say no and 99.99% (I think that's about accurate) take advantage of that and refuse to do or even talk about things they aren't already comfortable with. Does all this sound too hard? Then don't complain about losing those skills. I think a big part of the problem is the same that affects CEOs - there is nobody to hold them to account.
- hassleblad23 2y agoThis is a reason public college should be free.
- botswana99 2y agoSo, this explains the average aging Trump voter's cognitive impairment? Well, at least it's not leaded gasoline or reality TV.
- WalterBright 2y agoMy uncle went back to university when he was 70 to get a degree in vulcanology.
- Qem 2y agoDid he succeed?
- sadcodemonkey 2y agoFor myself, while the learning curve is "longer" as I've gotten older, it also shoots sharply upwards as the time spent on the skill acquisition increases. Age has a magnification effect at the tail end. I'm in my late 40s and I do pick up new technical skills a bit slower than younger folks. But because I have a lot of experience, I'm able to more quickly grasp various contextual aspects of those skills: how/why they are useful, how they compare to previous skills that tried to solve the same problem, the hidden costs and implications, etc. These matter a lot in the practical, everyday application of skills. I find that younger people have a really hard time with those contextual aspects, or they don't think it's that important... until they discover they do.
- andrei_says_ 2y agoI’d like to remind everyone that learning to play music, learning dancing or sports requiring complex coordination also count. Oh, and a question at the back of my mind: wouldn’t using AI to avoid minimize all of us spending time in the struggling-to-figure-something zone lead to earlier decline on a massive scale?
- smm11 2y agoI'm starting to lose it, I believe, thanks to AI. Like many I preferred the "internet" before it was this. The War Games-like setups, mystical and empowering, and the wonder of the future, how information would free us, things we could never imagine. All to wind up with people staring at Instagram while driving and running into me and my dog, and the world/companies like Apple and Samsung shoving AI elements down our throats. So I plan my retirement, and it involves unplugging from all this. Then what? Live in a small cabin in the remote woods? Not sure that would go well.
- kirso 2y agoLove it, maybe it is time to seriously pick up programming!