On Wednesday, 9 December 2015 at 07:49:58 UTC, Rory McGuire wrote:
On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 9:12 AM, Tony via Digitalmars-d-announce
< digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:
[snip]
One thing that comes to mind to refute the contention that
senescence
would be insignificant at the age of 50 is notable technical
achievement.
If we were to list the mathematical and scientific discoveries
of the past - like calculus and theory of relativity, etc. -
how many would have been done by someone at the age of 50 or
older? How many milestones in computing history were achieved
by someone 50 or older? How many were done by someone over 40?
And I think most of the aging process isn't even quality (what
would most impact notable discovery) - it's quantity (that is,
slower clock cycle). And companies probably have more concerns
about quantity of thought than quality.
Lol not sure where you getting all this, but the average 25
year old is a
dumb ass compared to the average 50 year old. However that
being said the
average 50 year old is a lot less likely to get excited about
their work
and to do something super creative / learning new things. These
things are
not based on their brain activity though, it has a lot more to
do with
social conditioning and disillusionment.
There are a lot less 50 year olds
that are motivated to something disruptive in their fields of
experience.
I'd be swayed if you could link to interviews with older
scientists, mathematicians or computer scientists who said their
work declined with age because they became disillusioned or they
ran into social conditioning issues.
The number of scarily intelligent people aged over 60 is most
likely a lot
higher than the number of 25 year olds that are so. Its just
the way our
brains work, your brain optimises its thought processes
continually, and
experience is where you get that.
Rather than the two of us expressing opposing opinions and you
loling, we should probably look at research on the matter.
Unfortunately, there is some disagreement with regard to
cognitive decline. Some see it as a gradual decline from early
adulthood and others seeing the decline postponed until later in
life.
This paper titled "The myth of cognitive decline"
https://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2013/papers/0230/paper0230.pdf
actually appears to acknowledge and accept that speed of
reasoning declines with age:
"Findings from a range of psychometric tests suggest that the
rates at which the mind processes information increase from
infancy to young adulthood, and decline steadily thereafter
(Salthouse, 2011). Increasing reaction times are a primary
marker for age related cognitive decline (Deary et al,
2010), and are even considered its cause (Salthouse, 1996), yet
they are puzzling."
but then attributes it to the brain having to deal with more
information rather than having a slower processing speed - a
bloated registry, if you will.
"However, age increases the rage of knowledge and skills
individuals possess, which increase the overall amount of
information processed in their cognitive systems. This extra
processing has a cost."
But an employer wouldn't care if an older worker was thinking
slower because of physical decline or because they had to sift
through more information.
