6 ms·

Wisdom is what it's called. After 40 your reflexes are slower and you are less likely to have your world shattering idea. OTOH you are probably a better judge

by russell 18y ago

Wisdom is what it's called. After 40 your reflexes are slower and you are less likely to have your world shattering idea. OTOH you are probably a better judge of probabilities of success/failure, people's capabilities, and allocation of resources. Lot's of people are significant contributors into their 70's. I dont think living to 150 means being 80 for 80 years. Probably middle age get stretched forever and the decline is about as fast and as long as it is now.

amichail 18y ago
After 40 your reflexes are slower and you are less likely to have your world shattering idea. For some people, creativity increases with age. But still, quick thinking and high energy levels are useful. I think it's crucial that we compress schooling as much as possible so people can do something important while they still can.
- aceofspades19 18y ago
  I find it frustrating that most people spend a quarter of their life just going to school and you essentially can't do anything that useful until you are at least 25 or so
  - harpastum 18y ago
    I find it much more frustrating that the common concept is that once you finish your formal schooling, you're done learning. As much as listening to lectures for 20 years can be tedious, schools are a compression (time) and expansion (breadth) of the discoveries we would make on our own, and are therefore simply a way to get people up to speed with the current world. The real learning starts after school is out.
- furbearntrout 18y ago
  i think creativity increases as you have more experiences (plural) to draw inspiration from.
  - electromagnetic 18y ago
    As a writer I'd agree with your statement. I've also read a lot about young writers and there are very few specifically for this reason, not necessarily for a lack of creativity but for the inability to produce something believable. How can a 15 year old write believably about relationships, or going to a bar or club, or any of these things. Experience can easily be transposed from one place to another; aka, you don't have to get kicked in the gut to know it's going to hurt a lot, just like you don't need to win the PGA tour to write how great it would feel to win it. However, if you've never won anything or felt any sense of achievement, it has to be exceptionally hard to write convincingly about someone winning. I think this is why most writers begin appearing in their 20's (I believe it depends on region, I've seen more early-20's writers from the UK, where you graduate high-school at 16, than from the US, where you graduate high-school at 18) when they've had many formative experiences and they start experiencing the real world. When they start to see hardship and all the rest that comes with adulthood.
    - unalone 18y ago
      That's also why prosists tend to be older than poets. Poetry doesn't require the deep relationships between subject and style that prose (especially longer prose) does. I remember trying to write about romance at the tender age of 13. Writing kisses without ever having had a kiss leads to hilariously bad results. For that reason, I don't write about sex right now: I'd not like to see myself made a fool of again.
      - electromagnetic 18y ago
        Well I'm trying to avoid sex as a matter of style, my main character is 17 so I think it would be tasteless anyway. I mean if the Twilight series can have such a rabid fan following, I don't believe there's a need for a sex scene unless there's an actual point to it. I'd also say 95% of books and movies get sex completely wrong anyway because it's added in out of irrelevance. It's like the author had to add an extra 5,000 words to meet their contract and added in a random sex scene. I mean there's an actual award for worst sex scene, which kind of helps make my point. I think very few books would actually be worse off without a sex scene.

by russell 18y ago

amichail 18y ago

After 40 your reflexes are slower and you are less likely to have your world shattering idea. For some people, creativity increases with age. But still, quick thinking and high energy levels are useful. I think it's crucial that we compress schooling as much as possible so people can do something important while they still can.

aceofspades19 18y ago
I find it frustrating that most people spend a quarter of their life just going to school and you essentially can't do anything that useful until you are at least 25 or so
- harpastum 18y ago
  I find it much more frustrating that the common concept is that once you finish your formal schooling, you're done learning. As much as listening to lectures for 20 years can be tedious, schools are a compression (time) and expansion (breadth) of the discoveries we would make on our own, and are therefore simply a way to get people up to speed with the current world. The real learning starts after school is out.
furbearntrout 18y ago
i think creativity increases as you have more experiences (plural) to draw inspiration from.
- electromagnetic 18y ago
  As a writer I'd agree with your statement. I've also read a lot about young writers and there are very few specifically for this reason, not necessarily for a lack of creativity but for the inability to produce something believable. How can a 15 year old write believably about relationships, or going to a bar or club, or any of these things. Experience can easily be transposed from one place to another; aka, you don't have to get kicked in the gut to know it's going to hurt a lot, just like you don't need to win the PGA tour to write how great it would feel to win it. However, if you've never won anything or felt any sense of achievement, it has to be exceptionally hard to write convincingly about someone winning. I think this is why most writers begin appearing in their 20's (I believe it depends on region, I've seen more early-20's writers from the UK, where you graduate high-school at 16, than from the US, where you graduate high-school at 18) when they've had many formative experiences and they start experiencing the real world. When they start to see hardship and all the rest that comes with adulthood.
  - unalone 18y ago
    That's also why prosists tend to be older than poets. Poetry doesn't require the deep relationships between subject and style that prose (especially longer prose) does. I remember trying to write about romance at the tender age of 13. Writing kisses without ever having had a kiss leads to hilariously bad results. For that reason, I don't write about sex right now: I'd not like to see myself made a fool of again.
    - electromagnetic 18y ago
      Well I'm trying to avoid sex as a matter of style, my main character is 17 so I think it would be tasteless anyway. I mean if the Twilight series can have such a rabid fan following, I don't believe there's a need for a sex scene unless there's an actual point to it. I'd also say 95% of books and movies get sex completely wrong anyway because it's added in out of irrelevance. It's like the author had to add an extra 5,000 words to meet their contract and added in a random sex scene. I mean there's an actual award for worst sex scene, which kind of helps make my point. I think very few books would actually be worse off without a sex scene.