
You’re an Adult. Your Brain, Not So Much - LiweiZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/science/youre-an-adult-your-brain-not-so-much.html?_r=0
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hliyan
All the strong political opinions I had as a twenty year old came from books.
Now, as a 37 year old, most of it comes from personal experience. Needless to
say, the two sets of opinions are very, very different. I wouldn't know about
imposing an age on voting, but people should vote their own opinions, not ones
borrowed from books. The youngest version of myself that I would now trust
with any sort of policy making is my 32 year old self...

~~~
chimprich
I am also 37. My political opinions as a twenty year old weren't wildly
different. I have become more pragmatic as I've realised just how hard it is
to get anything complex done and how many cognitive biases people have but I'm
also worried that I might be losing something in not feeling that idealism.

I distrust people voting according to their opinions rather than "ones
borrowed from books". In many cases younger voters vote "better" (at least
according to my views). The Brexit vote, or US presidential election, for
example, where older voters appeared to win the vote whilst trusting to their
emotional experiences rather than the evidence. They certainly seemed less
well informed for the most part.

~~~
tajen
> In many cases younger voters vote "better"

So in your opinion, there was a "right" choice to make, and a wrong choice?
Why let people vote, then? The fact that a group I'll name "L." thinks they're
plain right and the others are plain wrong worries me at the highest point.

> trusting the evidence

Can't you just absorb that older people voted rationally, based on evidence
and distinct life choices that aren't necessarily stupid? In another world
where their vote would match your vision of "right", you'd praise the elderly
for having more 70 more years of experience, saluting their knowledge, etc. In
the present situation, the "L." group presents older people as too senile to
make "the right choice". You belong to this L. group.

One point which tips the votes is the "L." group is so dictatorial about their
vision of right, and that makes a huge group tip for the alternative, the
Trump/Brexit vote. The L group generally uses the "right-vs-wrong" attitude,
like you just did, but also weighs the supposedly "correct" vote with plenty
of dubious things: If you vote Remain in the brexit, you also vote for a huge
increase in London's size which is against countryside's interest – Maybe
people don't want that? Maybe a huge London also increases inequalities? If
you vote Democrats you also vote for plenty of leftish/liberal laws which
aren't right at all (including bribes and murders at the highest level of the
government, including plain war and suffering of kids in the Middle-East using
blind drones and pure horror, including the militarization of US police).
Neither the Democrats nor the Remain planned to do things that convinced most
of the population.

Definitely, there wasn't a right and wrong choice in Brexit and Trump. There's
just a democratic choice, and people like you, at the end of the year, who
still are in denial that their opponent might have a rational reasoning. Which
is exactly the lack of listening that is killing our democracies. The ball is
on your side.

~~~
chimprich
> So in your opinion, there was a "right" choice to make, and a wrong choice?
> Why let people vote, then?

Of course in my opinion there was a right and a wrong choice. If I didn't
think that, I wouldn't have an opinion, would I? The "better" was in quotes
because I appreciate that it is subjective. I can't say with absolute
certainty that one option is better than another because I don't have perfect
information.

We prefer democracy because in general it leads to far better outcomes in
general than the alternatives that have been tried. That doesn't mean I don't
think we often vote badly in individual votes.

> Can't you just absorb that older people voted rationally, based on evidence
> and distinct life choices that aren't necessarily stupid?

No, I cannot. No one votes entirely rationally, and I certainly include
myself. People tend to vote according to their emotions, and because of a
range of cognitive biases. A case in point:

> One point which tips the votes is the "L." group is so dictatorial about
> their vision of right, and that makes a huge group tip for the alternative,
> the Trump/Brexit vote.

Casting a vote because you are annoyed at your political opponents being
confident about their views makes no sense logically. This is an emotional
reaction rather than a sober assessment of what is best for yourself, your
country and the world. Surely the questions of jobs, climate change,
scientific research, health and so on are vastly more important than punishing
a certain group's mindset?

I feel that the Trump/Brexit campaigns won because they were far better at
manipulating these kind of reactions than because they presented better
arguments. I think any objective assessment of the respective campaigns would
conclude they or their supporters spread more misinformation. That doesn't
mean they were with certainty the wrong choice, just that I don't like how we
got there.

> Which is exactly the lack of listening that is killing our democracies.

I have the opposite opinion. The increasing emphasis on making decisions by
emotion as in "our opponents aren't listening to us enough" is doing more harm
to democracy. Less reliance on personal experience and more reliance on
logical argument and facts please.

~~~
irishcoffee
I believe what the parent if your comment was trying to say was something
similar to this, albeit poorly:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLG9g7BcjKs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLG9g7BcjKs)

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austincheney
Imagine if we followed the numbers, the empirical evidence, like insurance
companies do. In this case the legal age would be raised from 18 to 25. This
wouldn't make any real difference to politics because young people don't vote.
It would be huge to consumer spending. Consider the following:

* Age to get a credit card, file a DBA, open a bank account, or get an apartment.

* Age to purchase tobacco and pornography (yes yes, I suspect most people get their porn for free online regardless of age now).

* FBI already refuses to hire field agents below the age of 24.

* You could not be tried as an adult in criminal court until age 25. The number of adult violent offenders in prison might decrease as much as 70%.

* You cannot get married until the age of adulthood. I suspect states would compromise on this one and allow permissible parental consent as young people will still continue to have children.

\---

My personal opinions are that people would be much better prepared for life,
there would be fewer lost souls to the criminal justice system, and the
consumer debt industry would be largely eliminated from all but proverty
classes (like the payday loan vultures).

~~~
Qiasfah
Changing the legal age in this manner would have had serious negative effects
on my life. Frankly this idea horrifies me.

Let me explain:

-A job I had in highschool enabled me to buy my own car and pay for insurance at 17 (added as a driver to my parents plan of course).

-I got my first credit card at 18 when I went to college, I have never carried a balance on it month to month (I'm now 26)

-The last time I lived with my parents was the summer after my freshmen year in college

-I graduated with an engineering degree at the age of 21

-I've had a steady fulfilling engineering job for 4.5 years since graduation

-I met my current wife freshmen year of college and we got married a year after graduation

-In 2014 I bought a house based purely of my personal credit history and employment status

-I have voted in every presidential election despite not being actively involved in politics

I'm sure I fall well outside the typical statistics for someone of my age, and
I've been very lucky so far. Lots of my coworkers are in a similar situation
as me, but there's also lots of people in the opposite situation.

Do you see why this horrifies me? Do you think these ideas would be positive
for the young adults that have found success in life?

(Edited for line break formatting)

~~~
davesque
Shouldn't things like this be based on data and evidence instead of personal
anecdotes?

~~~
slavik81
Nothing he said contradicts the data. What he showed was what you miss when
you treat a distribution as if it were a single data point.

A younger person is more likely to be irresponsible than an older person, but
that is just an average. There are many young people who are responsible, and
to disregard the impact of such a policy would have on them would be
disregarding important data.

More to the point, data doesn't make decisions. It gives you the ability to
make positive statements, i.e. how the world is or what the result of some
policy would be. Normative statements, i.e. how the world should be or what
should the goal of our policy be, depend on your personal subjective values.
Like, how much you value freedom vs prosperity vs safety, etc.

~~~
davesque
I feel like only the most naive statistician would make any assumptions based
solely on averages so it's kind of meaningless to point that out. The comment
just seemed reactionary to me and was mostly anecdotal.

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georgewfraser
These studies are THE WORST. Your brain "changes" from 20 to 30. Does this
change make it _better_? Is it even meaningful? No evidence is presented.
Instead, we go on a detour into fMRI pseudoscience, which should properly be
regarded as an extension of phrenology.

I would argue that the unsaid assumption of this article, that 30 year olds
have superior judgement to 20 year olds, is debatable. Most people over 30 are
risk-averse in the extreme, and will for example remain in a lousy career for
their lives rather than take the risk of switching to a new track or moving to
a new city.

~~~
terryf
Well, I'm 38 now and can say with confidence, that during most of my 20s I was
a naive idiot that could not see the forest for the trees. So, in my case,
yes, I do have superior judgement in my 30s.

~~~
braymundo
My experience has been the same. I'm 33 and sometimes it seems that I was not
even fully _conscious_ in my 20s as I am now. Hopefully this trend will
continue and someday I'll look back and think I was a naive idiot at 33. :P

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
That's the philosophy I try to live by. I always assume that in 5-10 years
I'll assume that current me will seem like an idiot.

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apsec112
This is an interesting case study in how science interacts with sociology.
Biologically, "fluid" intelligence (raw, general-purpose brain power) has an
average peak in the late 20s:

[http://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/125555/frym-2014-0...](http://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/125555/frym-2014-00001-HTML/image_m/figure-2.jpg)

So, for example, an average 10-year-old will have the same fluid intelligence
as an average 80-year-old. (Not the same knowledge, of course, but the NYT is
talking pure brain mechanics here.) However, in our society, children have low
social status, and the elderly have high status. Hence, in a 10-year-old (or,
per this article, even a 22-year-old just a few years from their lifetime
peak), lower average intelligence is a sign of being "immature",
"undeveloped", or "not an adult" (= a person competent to make their own life
decisions). Meanwhile, no one would ever dream of (say) revoking the voting
rights of anyone over 80, because their "brains don't work anymore". It's
acceptable to take power away from the low status, but never the high status,
so the scientific data is "interpreted" through that lens.

~~~
csallen
Humans are greatly affected by something called loss aversion[1], where we
naturally see losing X as a much more extreme turn of events than gaining X.
In this particular example, revoking the rights of the elderly (who've been
able to vote for decades and decades) will seem much harsher than delaying the
rights of the young.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion)

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davidp
_He has proposed, for example, that the voting age be lowered to 16. “Sixteen-
year-olds are just as good at logical reasoning as older people are,” Dr.
Steinberg said._

As if logical reasoning were sufficient.

Your typical 16-year-old doesn't know a thing about history yet, or the real-
world practical effects of political choices over time, or just how
confounding crowd effects and herd instinct can be, or any of the other weird
shit about human behavior and governance that defies the kind of logical
reasoning that many 40-year-olds are capable of, let alone 16-year-olds.

A 500 GHz CPU with no data to work with is just an impressive lump of silicon.

~~~
kasparsklavins
By that logic, neither do 18-year-olds. You'd prefer the minimum voting age be
raised to 60, so only people with "experience" can vote?

I'd wager that at least 90% of voters do not do any research no matter their
age and just vote for what the media or the people around them say.

Also.. I don't vote.

~~~
beachstartup
[in the US] i'd prefer the voting age be 21, the driving age be 18, and the
drinking age be 16, or none at all. basically, we have it backwards.

i also think there should be different classes of driving licenses with
different speed limits, but now we're just indulging in crazytalk.

~~~
lorenzhs
Germany has a drinking age of 16 (for beer and wine, spirits are 18+), a
driving age of 18 (there is assisted driving at 17, where you need to have a
parent/relative in the passenger seat until you turn 18), and voting age of 18
for federal elections (state and local elections vary, some states allow 16-yr
olds to vote). It was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1970.

Different speed limits for different drivers could result in a "lower-class"
driver being an obstruction for others. I don't think that would work out.
That said, motorcycle licenses in the EU are separated into several classes
with various maximum engine sizes (16+ for 11kW/15hp, 18+ for 35kW/47hp, and
20+ unlimited). They're separate tests.

~~~
beachstartup
> _Different speed limits for different drivers could result in a "lower-
> class" driver being an obstruction for others. I don't think that would work
> out_

what i'm really saying is that you should be able to test for a higher speed
limit in the US. slow drivers will be slow regardless of what the limit is,
and unsafe. i've driven on the autobahn in the no speed limit sections
(primarily around munich) and there were still slower, unsafe morons occupying
lanes they shouldn't have been. maybe tourists.

remember, in the US we have very low speed limits of ~100kph pretty much
anywhere. i think it should be higher. people routinely drive 145kph here in
southern california, enforcement of 100kph is arbitrary, which is not healtyh
for respect for the law in general.

~~~
lorenzhs
Well wouldn't better driver's ed solve most of those issues? A tiered license
system seems like an overly complex solution.

I've driven in both Germany and the US (DC area, while on holiday), and found
US driving a lot more relaxed. There are some odd rules here and there, but in
general it was less unpleasant. Driving on the Autobahn can be quite stressful
when you have a few people who want to drive really fast. Those kinds of speed
differences reduce road capacity significantly. I'm not saying these people
are necessarily unqualified to drive at such speeds, they may be the best
drivers in the world, but everyone would reach their destination sooner if
those folks were to stick to 130-140km/h.

That said, the posted speed limits in the US are definitely on the low side.
The same roads would have a higher speed limit in Germany.

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tim--
This is a little off-topic, but has anyone noticed that double clicking on
text on the NYTimes' website just causes the text to enlarge?

I am a click and drag reader, and the last few articles where I have tried to
double click text has annoyed me greatly.

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mattbgates
Write an article a few years ago... we're all just children pretending to be
adults. [http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/children-
pretendi...](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/children-pretending-
adults/)

