
Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s - ghosh
http://m.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/02/big-breakthroughs-come-in-your-late-30s/283858/
======
lkrubner
A distinction I read somewhere, that I think is useful, is that people tend to
be either primarily conceptualist in their thinking, or they are empiricists
who learn from experience. Conceptualists have their big breakthroughs before
the age of 35, and empiricists have their big breakthroughs after 35.

In conceptual fields, such as math and physics, the big breakthroughs happen
young. Werner Heisenberg was 27 when he came up with the Uncertainty
Principle, and Einstein was 26 when he discovered relativity.

In fields where progress is primarily empirical, such as biology, the big
breakthroughs tend to happen later. Alexander Fleming was 42 when he
discovered penicillin and Jonas Salk was 40 when he invented the vaccine for
polio.

This distinction can be extended to artists. To write a great empirical novel,
one rich in observed life experience, one must live a long time, and therefore
Tolstoy was 41 when he wrote War and Peace. But to write a novel where one
demonstrates new techniques for grammar and structure and pacing (a novel
noteworthy for conceptual innovation) then one will be young, and therefore
Hemmingway was only 26 when he wrote The Sun Also Rises.

~~~
jballanc
Einstein, in particular, is an interesting case. He was 26 when he had his
annus mirabilis (1905) in which he published 5 ground-breaking papers in
physics, including the Special Theory of Relativity.

 _However_ it took another 11 _years_ until he was able to grasp enough of the
mathematics to finally formulate the General Theory of Relativity in 1916, at
age 37. Of course, if you're going to use statistics from Nobel Prize winners'
works, you have to keep in mind that Einstein won not for the General Theory
nor the Special Theory of relativity with which we usually associate him. He
won for his paper on the photoelectric effect, one of the other papers he
published in 1905...at age 26.

 _Edit_ : It's probably also worth pointing out that, someday in the future,
it's not inconceivable that we may eventually place the Einstein-Podolsky-
Rosen Paradox in the same league as Relativity. That paper was published in
1935, when Einstein was already 56 years old. If it is not currently
considered of the same merit as Relativity, that is only because we still
don't have a good handle on the full implications of that work. (And, yes, I
realize that ultimately EPR will likely prove to be wrong, but a great
scientist teaches as much by being wrong as by being right.)

~~~
elteto
Could you elaborate a little on why is (or might be in the future) the EPR
paradox as important as Relativity?

~~~
jballanc
I can give it a shot...

So Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen were sitting around (presumably) looking over
the mathematical foundations of Quantum Mechanics, when they noticed
something. In certain situations, you could end up with _one_ wave function
describing _two_ physically separated particles in a mutual superposition of
states. The consequence is that altering the state of one particle would
instantaneously cause the state of the other to become resolved. Effectively
they "discovered" quantum entanglement (which has since been verified as a
real phenomenon, not just a mathematical curiosity).

What really makes the EPR paradox important, though, is what it implies about
reality. Einstein, et al. realized that there were only two ways to explain
quantum entanglement. One possibility is that the entangled particles contain
extra information, inaccessible to normal observation, about their respective
states and which way the superposition will resolve. This is the so-called
"hidden variables" solution. The other possibility is that an action on one
particle is, in fact, instantaneously causing an effect on the other particle.
While this is not, strictly speaking, a violation of General Relativity as no
information is exchanged, Einstein found this possibility so unsettling that
he famously coined it "spooky action at a distance". The conclusion from the
EPR paper was that the "hidden variables" solution was more likely, implying
that Quantum Mechanics was an as-yet incomplete theory.

Fast-forward a couple of decades, and we're just beginning to appreciate that
"spooky action at a distance" is actually more likely to be the correct
explanation. As I mentioned before, what this implies about reality _itself_
is pretty mind blowing. To go even further, we've since learned that
entanglement can not only occur between particles separated in space, but also
between particles separated in time. Quite literally, the future and the past
may be linked by this "spooky action at a distance".

We still don't fully grasp what, exactly, this means. One possible implication
of this is that our existence as sentient beings may simultaneously be a
consequence and the cause of a universe that can give rise to sentient beings.
Needless to say, even though it's likely that Einstein was wrong about "hidden
variables", the course of investigation that the EPR paper set the physics
community down is at least as important as Relativity.

~~~
cynicalkane
Not to be "that guy", but a lot of this is terribly incorrect:

* General relativity did not come from "grasping the mathematics" of special relativity. SR can be completely understood by an undergraduate and is an internally consistent description of mechanics and electromagnetic phenomena. Like Newtonian mechanics before it, it doesn't need anything more to be consistent.

* Local hidden variables are not "likely wrong", they are provably impossible. It is impossible to have hidden variables without breaking the principle of causality.

* Entanglement does not break the principle of causality. "Spooky action at a distance" is not an "effect" in a well-defined physical sense. It cannot be used to send information or cause things to happen.

* All of this could be--and was--understood without the EPR paper. Relativity was the most important thing since Newton. EPR was minor in comparison.

* I have no idea what connection you're trying to draw between sentient life and QM.

~~~
jostylr
Note _local_ hidden variables is impossible. The pilot wave theory is the
theory of "hidden variables" that led Bell to his theorem. Basically, EPR
shows that either nature is nonlocal or there were hidden variables. Bell
showed that hidden variables had to have something nonlocal about them. So
Einstein created relativity and helped to highlight how nature has an aspect
that seems incompatible with it (basically, there is a "now" which, however,
may be undetectable and is not our "now").

For those curious, the nonlocal hidden variables are the positions of the
particles. Very hidden. So hidden, they are the only thing we see in
experiments!

The particles are guided by the wave function. This resolves all the weird
paradoxes such as Schrodinger's cat. It provides a great way to understand and
investigate nonlocality, spin, identical particles, etc. in a very precise
theory that even has broadly applying existence and uniqueness of solution
theorems, unlike classical mechanics.

[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-
bohm/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/)

~~~
tomp
Hi! I'm a mathematician, I've always been curious about physics, but I've
never understood some of the concepts of QM, such as what is "observation" in
the Schrodinger's cat paradox, why QM means the universe is not deterministic,
why hidden variables cannot exist, ... mostly because every physicist that I
was able to talk to has been unable to properly explain these concepts. Do you
know any books/articles/sources about QM that could understand these concepts,
without going in unnecessary mathematical and physical details (i.e. using the
least physics and mathematics necessary to explain the paradoxes of QM)?

~~~
jostylr
Tough question. The reason you probably did not understand them is that there
are reasons are faulty.

The textbook QM says that when experiments happen, the continuous wave
function evolution stops and a new wave function is used in its place, chosen
randomly based on a prescription using probabilities coming from the original
wave function's decomposition in terms of an operator's (matrix) eigenvalues.
This is a postulate in their view and that's that.

It makes no sense since what is an observation? They don't explain. They just
know it. They use it when doing their experiments and it works well enough.
Attempting to formalize it leads to wrong conclusions.

Bohmian mechanics/pilot wave theory is a deterministic, hidden variable theory
that works. Within that context, you can understand the rise of operators as
observables and the entire collapse rule which turns out to be a convenient
approximation to reality in this theory; no actual collapse occurs. There is
just one wave function on configuration space (3n dimensional space, n being
the number of particles in the universe) evolving continuously via
Schrodinger's equation and the particles themselves being guided by the wave
function. It is the configuration space for the wave function where
nonlocality arises from. Understanding its role in relation to relativity is
the key question to understand.

The wave function evolves with lots of its branches being irrelevant which is
why we can effectively get rid of them, i.e., collapse the wave function.

As for resources, I recommend the stanford page I linked to above. There is
also [http://www.bohmian-mechanics.net](http://www.bohmian-mechanics.net)
which has a great deal of material including an introduction:
[http://www.bohmian-
mechanics.net/whatisbm_introduction.html](http://www.bohmian-
mechanics.net/whatisbm_introduction.html) and some faq videos
[http://www.bohmian-mechanics.net/videos_faq.html](http://www.bohmian-
mechanics.net/videos_faq.html)

I like Bell's book of his articles, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum
Mechanics. A wonderful read from a master.

~~~
selimthegrim
If you'd read the book and worked through it you would understand why a hidden
variable theory is not experimentally justifiable.

~~~
jostylr
I have read it and I must have missed the part you refer to. He was a strong
proponent of pilot-wave theory though towards the end he also started to like
GRW which itself consists of two distinct ontological possibilities.

In as much as QM makes predictions, pilot wave theory makes the same
predictions. But pilot wave theory has the advantage of being an honest theory
that actually does make predictions. QM suffers from needing an external agent
to collapse the system, an agent that is never specified, particularly on the
universal level. Bell puts it very eloquently about whether one needed to wait
for the first form of life to do it or perhaps one with a PhD to collapse the
universe. He concludes it must be happening more or less all the time and that
the mechanism needs to be explained in the theory. We can either change
Schrodinger's equation as in GRW or we can add additional variables such as
positions of particles as in pilot wave theory. Or we need to accept that most
of reality is unlike our actual experience of a single reality such as in many
worlds.

------
onmydesk
As someone in my late 30s I think the main reason is this- Its time then to
stop fking around and just get it done. It dawns on you at this age where you
are in your life, how far you've got to go and it annoys you that thus far you
didn't get 'it' done yet.

You're not staring death in the face but you're close enough to feel its
influence. If not now when? That spurs you on, beyond any motivation you ever
had at any age before. The experience helps, the realisation that those before
you weren't any more special than you helps, but the ticking clock motivates
like nothing else.

Here's my own personal motivator that has meant the most at this age.. — 'Most
men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in
them.' \- Henry David Thoreau. That should scare the hell out of you, unless
you're not old enough yet.

~~~
_random_
There is always a back-up plan of having kids, focusing on raising them well
and hoping that maybe they will come up with something cool.

~~~
nostrademons
That's a really heavy load to put on your kids. They should be free to live
their lives as they want to live them and not shoulder the weight of mommy &
daddy's unfulfilled dreams.

~~~
dllthomas
Eh, that partly depends on how narrowly you define "something cool".

------
sobes
Seems to be corroborated in tech by some nice examples:

Jimmy Wales: founded Wikipedia at 35 and Wikia at 38; Marc Benioff: started
Salesforce at 35; Mark Pincus: started Zynga at 41; Reid Hoffman: founded
Linkedin at 36; Robert Noyce: started Intel at 41 with a 39 year old Gordon
Moore; Irwin Jacobs was 52 and Andrew Viterbi was 50 when they founded
Qualcomm; Pradeep Sindhu: founded Juniper Networks at 42; Tim Westergren:
started Pandora at 35; Robin Chase: founded Zipcar at 42; Michael Arrington:
started TechCrunch at 35; Om Malik: started GigaOm at 39; Reed Hastings:
started Netflix at 37; Craig Newmark: started craigslist at 42

... and the list goes on and on. check out this Quora post (source of the
above) for more interesting examples: [http://qr.ae/tG78W](http://qr.ae/tG78W)

------
jupiterjaz
I just finished Marvel Comics: the untold story by Sean Howe. One thing I was
really surprised to learn was that Stan Lee was in his 40's and had already
been a comicbook editor for 20 years before he co-created all the famous
Marvel heroes like Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and The Hulk.

~~~
oscargrouch
What about Bukowski, that was working in a post office, til 49 years old, when
he dropped out to start his first novel ?!

~~~
vinceguidry
He didn't 'drop out', he was incentivized to the tune of $100 a month for life
to quit.

~~~
cwaniak
And that was when $100 was an equivalent of 3 ounces of gold which is about
$4k today. Barrel of oil and S&P500 had roughly the same price in gold then as
they do today.

~~~
dredmorbius
By CPI deflator, $100 in 1969 is worth $634.76 today.

[http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/](http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/)

Not sure if that calls into question your statement, or suggests that the CPI
is drastically understating inflation.

~~~
cwaniak
By CPI deflator we never doubled our (US) monetary base since 2007.

~~~
dredmorbius
I'm not following you. What's your point?

~~~
cwaniak
What exactly you don't follow? You need me to define 'monetary base' to you?
You need me to explain to you how to use google/wiki?

------
cscheid
But look at the variance on those distributions. "Late 30s" is a poor
description. How about "half of the winners are between 28 and 45"? Not so
exciting then, I would guess.

Better yet: look at distribution of "age when paper was written", modeling the
generating process is scientist X at age Y writes a paper with Z=0 if no award
is won, Z=1 if award is won. Is it obvious that this distribution conditioned
on Z=1 is different from the unconditional one? Not to me.

------
phillmv
The corollary is Cheap, Easy To Exploit Labour Is Most Readily Available In
Your Twenties™.

(The VC lemma being, "Labour costs are a big majority of web startup input
costs")

~~~
Retric
That's assuming all labor is equivalent which seems ridiculous on the surface.
I mean start-ups are hardly shoveling snow.

Young founders get more free publicity seems far more realistic to me.

~~~
coldtea
> _That 's assuming all labor is equivalent which seems ridiculous on the
> surface. I mean start-ups are hardly shoveling snow._

They hardly do anything impressive computer-science or programming wise
either.

Programming like something Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr et co, including a lot of
the early scaling challenges, is not that much removed from "shovelling snow".

------
kev009
Correlation != causation

To me, a lot of these folks are artificially limited by slow and encumbered
education methodologies. The data seems to confirm that, as a physicist can
more easily begin independent work, while the others need to wait until they
have accreditation/equipment/funding/etc.

I think this delay of productivity would be especially avoidable in high
school and undergrad programs.

If you could begin advanced fields in your early 20s, instead of your 30s, I
speculate the distribution would shift left quite a bit.

------
ja30278
I am in my middle thirties now, and I feel that I'm probably the best I've
ever been. Part of this, I think, is that true understanding comes from the
ability to contextualize ideas into some larger framework of knowledge. I find
myself revisiting things that I've learned earlier in life, but am now able to
see them in a more meaningful way because of the experience and knowledge that
I've gained in the interim.

In some ways, the idea that knowledge in combinatorial is perfectly obvious,
but it can be really encouraging to realize that the things you learn today
are making you more capable of learning and internalizing new things later.

------
danso
I'd like to see this data evaluated across different time frames. Maybe
prodigy was more pronounced at a young age in the past century because people,
well, became full adults and died at earlier ages? Now that in today's Western
democracies, we've essentially delayed adulthood to at least the mid-20s,
marriage until the 30s, and retirement into the 70s...this time delay, plus
the fact that the discoveries we make now are more specialized and require
more domain knowledge...it seems that the average age for breakthroughs will
continue to rise.

~~~
judk
Dying between 15 and 40 was almost never statistic-perturbingly common in
human societies that were stable enough to support anyone doing creative work
that survived to be noticed later.

Most variation in average lifespan is explained by infant mortality and life
estension of the elderly.

~~~
sitkack
Flaw Of The Averages.

------
dredmorbius
Actually, Khazan is losing the plot. The whole point of the research she's
referencing through 3 levels of indirection ( _the Atlantic_ , _NBC News_ ,
_Nature News_ , and _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ ) _is
that key breakthroughs in Phyiscs are occurring at ever increasing age with
time._

Granted, the research looks only at Nobel Prize winners in physics, but the
general reason stated: that there's more information to learn and assimilate,
suggests a general principle of increasing complexity and decreasing returns
to innovation, which is a key point raised by Joseph Tainter ( _The Collapse
of Complex Societies_ ).

See Weinberg & Jones: "Age dynamics in scientific creativity"
[http://www.pnas.org/content/108/47/18910](http://www.pnas.org/content/108/47/18910)

Also highlighted in an earlier Nature News item on W&J is the increasing
reliance of breakthroughs on expensive equipment, not always accessible to the
most junior researchers, an observation also consistent with increasing
complexity and diminishing returns with time:

 _Other experts in scientific creativity welcomed the study but note other
reasons why the age of laureates might have increased, such as improvements in
health or the fact that, in many fields, research now requires expensive
equipment. "21- and 22-year-olds simply don't get access to this kind of
equipment," says Paula Stephan at Georgia State University in Atlanta, who
provided some data for the Nobel study. She adds that it isn't always possible
to pinpoint "one magic date" when scientists made their discoveries._

[http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111107/full/news.2011.632.ht...](http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111107/full/news.2011.632.html)

------
callmeed
As a twenty-eighteen year old, this article made my Sunday.

~~~
noname123
As a 27 year old, I can't help but wonder how much of the article was written
to be aimed at the older millennial/Reddit crowd's insecurity of aging. But I
welcome the prognosis and look forward to my days as a 37 year old still
pwning young noobs in Dota2/League/CoD/2K.

~~~
shubb
My thought is that if the achievements of a 40 year old took 20 years to
accumulate, then they must have been working at something for 20 years.

That sort of achievement is one that is earned, rather than coming from luck.
Which means it is the sort of success one can emulate, but only if we have the
personality and determination to put the work in.

The 22 year old that got bought out by yahoo for 1bn probably did nothing
other start-up founders didn't. There is little that can be learned from him,
except to throw the dice more often.

The 44 year old who slowly built a property portfolio by living cheap and
seizing opportunities (cheap mortgages, cheap properties) that come around
only every decade or so, simply by playing the game so long... I could copy
his example, but then I wouldn't be able to buy nice things with that money,
or use it as startup runway. I'd have to make sure I was always in a stable
(boring?) job to support the credit rating needed for several mortgages.

So the difference between the two kinds of success is important, and we can
learn from the second. But if what we learn is that you can spend your life
buying success, is that cost too much?

------
kevinalexbrown
Most of these people were working extraordinarily hard up to that point,
though. Not necessarily hard at one thing. But hard.

------
sireat
It goes without saying those achieving breakthroughs have been building up to
that moment basically all their adult (and most likely teenage) life.

As a soon to be 40 year old jack of many trades but master of none, I am still
looking for someone achieving anything meaningful starting from scratch later
in life.

What I mean by this is someone achieving a mastery of some skill, when one has
not done deliberate practice previously.

I suspect the answer is that unless you have been building your inner pattern
recognition for basics of your field of expertise since late teens/early
twenties, you are unlikely to get very far starting at the later age.

For example Einstein already had fluid mastery of calculus at 15 (just like
Feynman), which was a nice building block for later work. I am not even going
to start on Von Neumann.

------
bhicks005
Is it possible that studying Nobel Laureates skews these numbers? It would be
extremely difficult to receive a Nobel for an achievement late in life because
of the usual lag time between the achievement and the award and the fact that
Nobel prizes are not awarded posthumously.

~~~
6cxs2hd6
It's possible. Furthermore, the article talks about _noted_ achievements --
the case where someone's work is _recognized_ as particularly good.

Your best or most-creative work isn't necessarily the most-recognized.

Being better-recognized probably also correlates with having built a network
of connections, understanding institutional politics, having built up social
capital (favors to call in), and so on. And it wouldn't be shocking if that
tends to skew stronger among older, more experienced people.

------
thewarrior
Here's an interesting exception : The poet Rimbaud wrote all of his poetry
before the age of 20 and is considered to be one of the greatest poets of all
time.

~~~
scarmig
Keats similarly wrote all of his extant poetry between 19 and 25. (He died at
25.)

~~~
to3m
"Last December 13th, there appeared in the newspapers the juiciest, spiciest,
raciest obituary it has ever been my pleasure to read.

"It was that of a lady named Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel, who had, in her
lifetime, managed to acquire as lovers practically all of the top creative men
in central Europe. And, among these lovers, who were listed in the obituary,
by the way, which is what made it so interesting, there were three whom she
went so far as to marry: One of the leading composers of the day, Gustav
Mahler, composer of "Das Lied von der Erde" and other light classics, one of
the leading architects, Walter Gropius, of the "Bauhaus" school of design, and
one of the leading writers, Franz Werfel, author of the "Song of Bernadette"
and other masterpieces.

"It's people like that who make you realize how little you've accomplished. It
is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been
dead for two years."

(Tom Lehrer)

------
vidarh
I co-founded my first startup at 19, and several more before I was 25. I've
done a couple since. I'm now nearly 39. Not had the big payoff, but I'll try
again sometime.

To me, it feels like the biggest thing is the combination of willingness to
take risks coupled with outlook on life and experience.

At 19 I had no business experience, no experience at the business I went into
(4 of us started an ISP), had never set up a router or a Linux server. We all
had to learn everything from scratch. I ran board meetings, did phone sales,
configured Cisco routers, took support calls from users using Trumpet Winsock
- a program I'd never seen on anything but screenshot - using Windows 3.x, an
OS I'd never spent more than 10 minutes consecutively with. I negotiated with
suppliers, and creditors at times. I negotiated contracts with partners. And
so on.

Five years later, I knew just how unprepared we had been. Had I known what I
did then about how tough it was at 19, I would likely not have started the
company (but had I known what it led to in terms of contacts and opportunities
- I still would have; did not get an exit, but it still paid off). Had I had
the knowledge and experience I have _now_ on the other hand, with the
willingness to take a risk and life situation I had then, I'd have jumped
right into it.

What has changed apart from having had 20 years to learn is partly that I make
far more money and have far greater outgoings, and a family. I can't take the
same risks, and my potential loss if a company can't pay a good salary is far
greater.

I'm _also_ more risk averse simply because my experience makes me far more
likely to spot fatal problems with many potential startups I might have jumped
at in my youth. But of course there's also the risk that I'll overlook things
because of changes in perspective or because I misjudge the risks, or because
I would have gotten lucky if I'd taken the risk.

Another major change is simply life outlook. While I was never the totally
reckless type, and never all that obsessed with money, today the money just
isn't particularly important. I want enough to ensure security, and it'd be
nice to have enough to just work on my own projects, but I don't particularly
care if I get rich. That changes my assessment of any startups drastically -
I'm no longer prepared to jump at an opportunity to get rich if it's not
something I'm sufficiently excited by. I don't feel I'm in a hurry to prove
anything. I have what I need, and then some. I'm far more secure in myself in
every way than I was at 19. I'm not going to pretend like I wouldn't love to
get that multi-million exit, but it's not something that matters to me _now_
(I'm sure it'd matter to me if it happened, though).

Instead, what I _do_ think about, are ideas that fascinates me. And some of
those ideas have been germinating for 20 years. Maybe none of them, nor any
new ideas will ever _click_. If so, no big deal. But if something "clicks" I
am vastly better prepared, and I believe I'd be far more likely to succeed.

~~~
moens
I created 4 reasonably successful companies in my life, and about 12 that fell
flat. The first success was in high school. But the first million+ was at age
34. At first I thought the article was a little too academic, but... honestly
it fits my life pattern. So... there you have it.

~~~
bananamansion
12 fell flat? what made you keep going?

~~~
vidarh
Consider that the vast majority (something like 9/10) of companies fail within
2-3 years. If you're not willing to deal with failures, chances are you'll
stop trying long before you get to 12. If you deal with the odds, you keep
going as long as you get something out of it

Also, even companies that "fall flat" may be worth it. For my part, a large
part of my current salary is down to my experience and contacts from my
various startups. And each one of them have been fun for the most part.

------
nraynaud
\- Mom, it's not that I'm a slacker, it's just that I'm only 34!

------
jv22222
What I took away from the OP was... the curve keeps going after 35. Phew.

------
ekm2
For immigrants from relatively underdeveloped nations,add another 10 years.

------
netcan
We ned to to make some serious progress on extending youth!

------
olsonea
The timing of this submission is impeccable. My 36th birthday was yesterday.
Thanks for the inspiration!

------
loceng
It's mostly just related to having had enough time to work on a problem.

------
facepalm
Or not - I'm over 40 without any big breakthroughs.

------
arikrak
A 25-year old brain may have more raw "horsepower" than a 45-year-old brain,
which would make a big difference in math and physics, but wouldn't matter as
much in e.g. poetry.

~~~
taurath
It doesn't have more horsepower, a 25 year old brain has a lot more gaps in
its knowledge that is skipped over, whereas the 45 year old brain has more to
connect and consider.

------
flibertgibit
There may be hope for me yet according to this, but at the moment, I really
have no fucking clue what to do.

My early thirties were filled with great ideas for startups. My early fourties
are filled with depression that I'm past my prime, don't have the energy, risk
tolerance, or money to do a startup, and don't have money to go back to
school, so it really doesn't matter what my passion is. Somehow I still need
to find a passion and change, though, because my death is impending. Maybe my
fifties will be the realization that I am who I am and I'm fine just being bad
at everything.

~~~
sobes
Just because you find a passion, doesn't mean you have to spend money on it.
There are an insane amount of free learning resources online (in tech/dev,
which I'm assuming what your pro background is). Similarly, I'm seeing an
increasing number of bootstrapped startups (they just don't make as much noise
as the funded ones).

My twenties were about realizing and coming to terms with the fact that there
are people who are smarter, more clever, and more knowledgeable than me. My
thirties are about figuring out how to work with these people as much as
possible. I do feel that I'm late to the game on this. If I got over my ego
earlier and/or had a more collaborative mindset I'd be in a better spot.

Keep looking for that passion. But don't do it alone. Once you find it, it'll
be with a group of people "better" than you to help you figure out what to do
with it. :)

------
dhfjgkrgjg
Who would have thought? That in your late thirties, you have gained
experience, knowledge, contacts, maybe even a degree of financial support, all
of which lend towards the formation of breakthrough ideas. Now, where is my
prize?

~~~
poolpool
Its common sense that universal health care and higher taxes for everyone is a
great idea. Depending on who you ask its also common sense that universal
health care is a ridiculous concept and no one wants to pay for other people's
hospital visits.

~~~
basicallydan
I do! We've been doing it in the UK for decades, very few people complain
about it.

~~~
10feet
If you really lived in the UK you would now that lots of people complain about
everything, all the time. Especially the NHS.

Now, that doesn't change the point that universal health care exists in most
countries, and they are better of for it.

~~~
basicallydan
Actually, strictly speaking I do live in France at the moment, so your bizarre
implication is actually true - but I did just move here 7 days ago.

Anyway, yes people _do_ complain about the NHS in general, for all sorts of
reasons, but I'd wager that most people don't complain about the fact that we
_have_ the NHS, and realise that it's actually really great compared to the
situations in countries which don't have universal healthcare. Just a
clarification, really.

~~~
cwaniak
I'm a Polish guy with US passport who spent many, many years in the USA and my
feeling is as follows: In the US people complain about one single thing
regarding the healthcare - cost. In Poland they'll complain about long waiting
lists, not enough doctors, not sufficient care, basically everything is worse
than in the US - except the cost.

I for one don't think that the major objective of healthcare system is not to
bankrupt people. Its main objective is to safe life. I wish more people would
be worried about saving lives more than money.

~~~
asabjorn
Most countries with socialized healthcare systems that I am aware of actually
has a longer life expectancy than the USA. This is true for Canada, Germany,
Norway, etc.

I do not know if life expectancy is a measure for quality of health care, but
it is at least an indicator of how good the general health is.

On a personal note I would say that my experience with the US health care
system has left a lot to be desired, and I experienced the care as better in
my native Norway. That said, my girlfriend is a doctor and her health plan
seems a lot better so my experience can be anecdotal.

~~~
cwaniak
> Most countries with socialized healthcare systems that I am aware of
> actually has a longer life expectancy than the USA. This is true for Canada,
> Germany, Norway, etc.I do not know if life expectancy is a measure for
> quality of health care, but it is at least an indicator of how good the
> general health is.

I agree. Actually Poland which is 2nd world country really, has better life
expectancy that USA! However, this doesn't mean that Polish healthcare system
is superior to American. This means that if all you do whole life is eating,
stressing out at work, having no friends with family 2 time zones away, and
zero exercise - even the best healthcare system in the world won't help you.
So while I agree that people live longer in most civilized places than in the
US, I still claim that the US healthcare system as long as money isn't a major
concern for you - it is just the best system in the world, period. But even
they can't help you if you have been on McDonald's diet foe the past 20 years
and the most exercise you do is 10 meters from home to car.

> On a personal note I would say that my experience with the US health care
> system has left a lot to be desired, and I experienced the care as better in
> my native Norway. That said, my girlfriend is a doctor and her health plan
> seems a lot better so my experience can be anecdotal.

Not sure how good they would be about it in Norway, but in the US they
diagnosed me with Ehlers Danlos type 2 in a matter of weeks while in Poland
literally dozens of doctors I visited didn't know what's going on. In my
particular case, where the condition in from 1 in 3,000 to 1 in 50,000 the
major incentive to find out what's wrong with me for the doctors was really
fear for me suing them. Again, money in this system really works both ways. I
said my insurance company, you test me genetically for ehlers danlos or I sue
your ass. They paid $6k for testing and I was tested positive. From
perspective now I think that in Poland some doctors at least knew or suspected
my condition but had no incentive to do anything. And money or loosing it is a
great incentive.

~~~
asabjorn
Yes, I agree that the USA is the best healthcare system for people with money
and/or great insurance.

I do not know which insurance is great and how many people has access to this.
I do however know that when I tried to read my plan, the legalese was so dense
that it such as well have been written i Japanese.

My University of California at Davis group insurance plan costs $500 per
quarter, and that rate is given for a pool of generally healthy young
students. Do you know what a startup person has to pay for a great health care
plan? Is a obamacare plan good?

~~~
cwaniak
Obamacare has many plans in it to choose from. I don't save on "these things"
and get as expensive as I can.

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notastartup
I wish that I could have a breakthrough this year, at the age of 27 my life's
mission was to make it before turning 30 and times running out and I'm super
anxious that I have not had much success.

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kimonos
Great post! I agree with this!

