
Study: Old Age Begins at 27 - DanielBMarkham
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4995546/Old-age-begins-at-27-as-mental-powers-start-to-decline-scientists-find.html
======
DanielBMarkham
Lately we're finding good arguments for the idea that people start declining
in abilities earlier than we thought.

At the same time, there's a lot of work being done on life extension.

What happens if we extend life to, say, 150 and what we get is this long,
100-year decline into complete cognitive paralysis?

I'm 43 and I don't feel like I'm losing it. In fact, in some ways I feel more
cognitively adept than I was at 27. When I was 27 I was quicker on my feet,
but there wasn't a depth there. Now, at least to me, I feel that I have a lot
more weight to my decisions and actions. I dunno - tough subject. It could be,
like the pot discussion, that I simply _feel_ this way.

I _do_ know that if cognitive decline is going to be defined as starting in
the late 20s, we're going to start seeing a lot of middle-aged people getting
medicated for age-related cognitive issues in the near future.

~~~
russell
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
_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
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
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.

------
old-gregg
Maybe...

Let me share my personal experience: when I was 18-21 I struggled with
advanced math in college. Now, at 30, when I re-open those books just for fun,
everything makes so much sense and some aspects of it are even enjoyable.

I've failed to find a plausible explanation for myself. I haven't done much
math (calculus, probability, statistics) since graduation, yet the exact same
books are so much easier to read now.

I experienced a similar effect much earlier in my life: I struggled with
understanding recursive algorithms when I was 12, but when I came back to them
at 16 I laughed at myself - it suddenly seemed so trivial.

~~~
wheels
Also anecdotal, but...

As I started getting into heavy research on recommender systems for our
startup after being somewhat lax in my research reading for a few years I
stumbled into some papers that were really hard for me to push through. I kept
thinking, "I must be slipping, I know this stuff wasn't as hard for me in
college."

Then at some point I needed to look up a couple things in some of my textbooks
(I saved them all) and as soon as I picked them up I thought ... wait? That
was the hard stuff? This is all so ... trivial. Since the progression from
textbooks to academic papers had mostly come at some remove, I'd not noticed
that I was gradually reading much harder material, to the point that the stuff
that I found hard in computer science in college now seems all rather easy.

Now, I'm 28 at this point, but already I've noticed that I'm not as fast as I
once was, but I've got more momentum. When I throw myself at a problem it's
with the goal of crushing it rather than dancing around it. This seems to be
what's awesome about smart folks that are in middle to older ages. There's
like this blunt force of knowledge that can be thrown at hard problems. Great
systems programmers in their 50s are awesome to work with.

Note, also, that the article also mentions that knowledge based abilities
increase up until you're 60.

------
juanpablo
I don't buy it.

I suspect that it is more related to dull/stressful work environments than age
(at 22 you're either still in college or fresh out from it).

~~~
yters
Also, mental dexterity and knowledge are probably inversely proportional to
each other because once you learn more you draw on more to make decisions. So,
if we could rid our minds of our knowledge we might improve our thinking
speed.

Anyways, for people who feel down about their age, remember that nothing
anybody does will last forever. Our judgment of significance is significantly
colored by our finite sense of time. Just think of what seemed like a long
time to you at 3 vs at 30. Thus, it is ok to primarily aim at happiness in
this life instead of achievement, though aiming at achievement is also good if
it makes you happy.

~~~
TTDaVeTT
Regardless of thinking speed, the more you know, the better you think. You are
able to analyze a given situation or problem more effectively because you can
draw on past experience or knowledge and make a more informed decision. I
would happily take an 'experienced' brain over a young on that is faster (if
thats even true, which i dont really believe...).

------
tokenadult
This makes sense. Most Paleolithic members of the species Homo sapiens were
dead by age forty, so there hasn't been much selection pressure to favor human
beings preserving health or their faculties much past that age. I'm living on
borrowed time, being almost twice as old as the headlined age. On the other
hand, some people decline more or less rapidly, and from a better or worse
base, so fifty-year-olds can still outsmart twenty-seven-year-olds in specific
cases.

"However, the report published in the academic journal Neurobiology Of Ageing,
found that abilities based on accumulated knowledge, such as performance on
tests of vocabulary or general information, increased until at the age of 60."

Live life to the fullest while you can appreciate it.

------
wallflower
It's never too late to start _anything_ \- developing yourself is a function
of time and passion:

[http://www.unlikelysalsero.com/2007/08/magic-of-time-last-
on...](http://www.unlikelysalsero.com/2007/08/magic-of-time-last-one-
standing.html)

"The unexamined life is not worth living."

-Socrates, in Plato, Dialogues, Apology

No matter what age you are, I think this is important.

How often (daily? weekly?) do you think about your self image, attitudes,
actions, beliefs, relationships, and recurring thoughts?

I didn't want to get all Mike Litman on you but..

------
msie
Sigh, I wasted the best years of my life in a startup that didn't get me rich.
;)

~~~
mxcl
Sounds like there's a story there. Care to tell?

------
ricmorton
In case anyone is worried about their twenty-something cognitive performance,
bear in mind that the refutation of this study will probably not surface in
the media; [http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-
docum...](http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-
document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0020124&ct=1)

-An unconcerned twenty-something ;)

------
ars
If the peak is at 22, we are really short changing our children by setting the
age of majority at 18.

~~~
Eliezer
No frickin' kidding.

------
danbmil99
Who cares if your clock slows down say 20% by 50? Think how easy it is to
optimize any program by 20%. It's irrelevant. Much more important is what
software you're running. Like other posters here, I struggled with things in
my 'prime' that I now find much easier. That phenomenon doesn't seem to get
talked about much. There seems to be this truism that intellectually
challenging work peaks before 30. How many great novels or plays were written
by anyone in their 20's? Yet important math and music is often done young. Go
figure.

~~~
unalone
I dunno about novels or plays, but Orson Welles was 25 when he made Citizen
Kane.

I think it all matters on how accessible the medium is to young people. Modern
music is VERY accessible, because there are so few limitations that you can
really do whatever you want and while it may not be good, you've got a better
chance of its being so since the concepts behind music are comparatively
simple.

If we were talking about the world of composition, on the other hand, things
would be much different. I doubt that we'd see many young brilliant composers,
unless they were Mozarts (i.e. helped along heavily by parents).

------
radu_floricica
> Twenty-seven has long had negative connotations, as it is the age at which
> many popular musicians died, including Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Brian
> Jones, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain.

Twenty seven is an interesting age. This much I knew for years before reaching
it, and turned out to be true. I don't really know why, but it sortof makes
sense. It's when you go from being a young man to a real adult. Strangely
though, for me it was not filled with responsabilities, on the contrary.

~~~
jaxn
I died when I was 27.

~~~
utx00
you still haven't noticed?

~~~
utx00
you guys are so sensitive.

------
aneesh
"Researchers have found that peoples' mental abilities peak at 22 before
beginning to deteriorate just five years later."

The 5-year gap doesn't make sense. If you're at your _peak_ at age 22,
wouldn't you, by definition, begin to decline immediately after? :-)

I suppose you could level off for 5 years, but then it's misleading to call 22
a "peak".

------
weiser
Ok, so certain mental abilities deteriorate. Maybe, some other mental
abilities improve.

The problem with this research is that it is trying look at brain from a
certain view point, ignoring all other view points. A more holistic approach
would provide a better understanding of how mental abilities change over time.

------
Rexxar
It's may be a problem of training. A lot of people stop learning new things
when then leave university so their brain could become less efficient.

Correlation don't imply causality. There is not enough facts to convince me.

------
nraynaud
ok, my next startup will be selling suicide gears for 29+ people ...

------
alecco
Try one of those mind training games for a couple of months and you'll see how
lame this kind of study is.

~~~
mxcl
You sum up most of the stupid attitudes in this thread. The scientists in this
study most likely are better at this field than you. Probably The Times
misinterpreted the results. Still your denial is hilarious. Just because
you're smart, doesn't make you right. That goes for all of you.

~~~
alecco
I'm not a neuroscientist. But I'm an avid reader of neuroscience blogs (not
the shiny ones, the ones by and for scientists) and papers. The Torygraph
isn't exactly qualitity media but I doubt they misinterpreted the paper that
bad.

The problem with current research is it's requiring too much previous
knowledge to grasp even the abstract. And it's getting more granular and
harder to sell with mainstream headlines. I actually prefer it this way.

There is a large amount of neuroscience research from the last decade that
didn't make it to mainstream media. Specially things that could offend people
or _cults_.

Mainstream media is obsolete because of this. A small blog post with proper
explanations as popups or links to references (even Wikipedia) delivers more
efficiently.

------
juliend2
I only hope that my age will not keep me from learning new things. The most
important thing when learning is to keep a good attitude. I believe that the
brain can be trained to get smarter at all ages.

------
jaymstr
I'm 23. I'm going to reference this research when we pitch our company to
raise money. Fund the young guys.

~~~
brlewis
That's a good idea. And if you're still pitching when you get older, you can
reference this other study about the brain peaking at 39:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=345785>

------
morbidkk
May be Its fault of education systems and corporate jobs..I don't buy it for
sure

------
neilo
Carp, no wunder Im dum nwo

------
Allocator2008
If true, and I don't know enough about this area to comment, but if so, it
seems for optimum gene selection, people should procreate (or at least freeze
their genetic material in a lab for future use) prior to this age.

I have often thought that perhaps the rise in mental disorders in children
such as autism could be related to people waiting until later in life to have
children, at which point, their DNA has already begun to break down. Studies
showing that the oldest child in a family tends to also have a higher IQ is
consistent with this. The younger you are when you reproduce, the more fit
your genes are, and therefore the smarter, healthier, etc. your children are
likely to be. Economic pressures now make people wait until later to reproduce
than they did a generation or two ago, but this could be counteracted by
saving genetic material in a lab when one is young, then later, when one is
economically ready to reproduce, one can make use of the stored material to do
so. It is unlikely in the near future that people will all of a sudden want to
go back to having kids right out of high school, so, for optimum gene
selection, they should at least save off their genetic material (sperm, eggs)
for future use. Otherwise, going forward, the average intelligence of the
populace is likely to decline.

~~~
russell
I think that, from the kid's point of view, it's better to be born to parents
in their 30's. The genetic risk is small, but more than offset by the maturity
and improved economic circumstances of the parents. It's not until the late
30's or 40's that genetic decline starts to be a serious risk.

~~~
Allocator2008
The fact remains if IQ is tapering off in the late 20's, the a child born to
the parents in their 30's may not have as high an IQ as the parents.
Personally my parents were in their mid-20's when I crawled out of the
evolutionary slime, and in a sense I agree with you on the maturity and
economic front - both factors were issues - and I think there has been growth
there since, and my younger siblings had it better as far as maturity went,
but honestly I wouldn't have it any other way, at least I know I got the best
evolutionary shot I could get, lol! :-)

------
keltecp11
I refuse to believe this.

------
rafa8a
Damn, I only have 4 years left.

------
pekka
So true, It is a known fact among the chess players that the ability to
calculate ahead peaks at the age of 27.

~~~
dgordon
No it isn't. Everything I've heard suggests that chess players tend to peak
around their mid-30s, and then you have Viktor Korchnoi, who won the Soviet
junior championship at 16, was playing for the world championship at 50, and
was rated 85th in the world at 75. His 78th birthday is coming up next week.

