Does that mean it is not true that it becomes harder to learn new things with age?
I’m 26 and I’ve been rushing gaining knowledge and experience very much so far for fear of just not being able to fit in much more once I reach certain age.
No I’m not virtue signaling, this is fucking stressful and I will be delighted to slow down a fuckton if that’s true.
From a completely unscientific but ‘experienced’ perspective I think the problem is that life just gets in the way as you get older, and you prioritize your own life rather than trying to learn.
Whether neuroplasticity means you can learn things later or not, the opportunity to learn things later just isn’t there without effort.
Having a job, kids, a mortgage and no social obligation to learn in a structured and organized way probably impacts you more than anything neurological.
and, like, people just straight up stop trying. they hear that it’s harder to learn as you age so they don’t even try, and that of course confirms to everyone around them that it’s true, and so everyone keeps giving up.
it drives me up the fucking wall and the spite i hold for this phenomenon is like 70% of why i have a healthy lifestyle. I fully intend to be doing acrobatics at 60 purely so i can make people feel bad for making moronic lifestyle choices like driving 2km to buy 5 liters of alcohol for the weekend
Yeah, get in what you want because in twenty years the greatest thing your brain will enjoy is not processing anything of consequence.
Could you learn cuneiform and gain a rich understanding of 18th Century Viennese intellectual culture, if you didn’t know anything about that before? Sure.
*burp* But then you’ll be like “ah, gotta bring in the trash cans and then I can sit.”
People who have tried to gain literacy later in life have had a lot more trouble learning to write than read. It seems that the fine motor skills to drive a pen are best learnt early
The idea that learning capacity naturally* diminishes with age seems to be a widely accepted myth (which may have roots in sociological and cultural biases), and the opposite may actually be true.
e: those biases and environmental stressors may also contribute to people becoming less able – or less prone – to try, though, and if you don’t use it, you might lose that plasticity. So keep learning.
Well the ‘myth’ you speak of is based on the fact that the opposite of what you describe is also true. Those who lose any interest in learning new things become progressively more rigid and stuck in their mindset and become less and less likely to learn or adapt as they age. I suspect there are more people leaning towards that than lifelong learners, but I may just be a pessimist.
I think the people who are lifelong learners don’t stand out to us as much, because they’re not pig-headed cunts. Thus the societal bias.
And perhaps I’m an optimist because all the elders in my family are the plastic sort (my 89 year old father still works as an aviation engineer and still builds his own computers, for instance).
Anyway, I was talking about potential, not statistics. e: and I mean it’s psycho-social, not biological.
This one little paragraph just explained my mom, myself, and the reason the relationship between us is so contentious.
She grows ever more closed-minded every year, while I attempt to learn a new skill every year. We never saw exactly eye-to-eye, but we’re now at a point where we might as well live in different universes. :(
This exactly describes me and any family member over 50. About Every single one is sucked into FOX brainrot. I can think of 1 relative out of 30 that actually has clear thoughts on societal issues.
With my own father and some others I know, I feel like the problem is less with being unable to learn new things than with being unable to unlearn things either which are no longer valid, or which were never valid but it should have become increasing obvious.
I started doing Capoeira and learning Portuguese with 40 years. I am fluent in Portuguese now after three years. My Capoeira skills are still pretty basic, but I progress and for the first time in my life I feel like I really have a grasp on any kind of sports.
I also changed from marketing to IT last year and I am getting really good at what I do.
It helps if you have a reference system for your new knowledge. I studied computer science which helps in my new job and I had French in school which helps with Portuguese.
So don’t worry. Keep learning, avoid stress and drugs and prioritize getting enough sleep. You’ll be fine!
My pragmatic understanding of this as someone who is a life scientist (but not a neuroscientist) is that neuroplasticity itself is sort of like a skill, and if you don’t use it, you lose it. That is to say that you needn’t rush to cram in new knowledge, but you should continue to indulge your hunger for knowledge. If you keep expanding your horizons and ways of thinking, you’ll maintain a high level of neuroplasticity as you age
Keep learning, and it’ll stay easier than if you didn’t. See if you can find changes for the structure of what you’re learning so you don’t get too ossified about that, either. Like, have a decade where you focus more on sciences, one more for arts, one more for languages, one more for understanding people who are very different from you… Maybe a decade is too big a chunk, but you get the idea.
Im in a hurry to learn and do everything possible before either the world collapses, I get some sickness, die randomly, or have to take care of a loved sick one for the rest of my life. Im right in a window of freedom now. Makes it very hard to ever relax lest I “waste” my few remaining years.
I have to learn new things all the time for my job, and I find as long as I never run out of caffeine, it’s not really a problem. I’m approaching 40, so take that as you will.
I’ve read a decent amount of his stuff. If I had to guess from the information here, he’s dismissive because the correlation is weak. Just because you technically can draw a line of best fit doesn’t mean it’s a good fit.
Look how many dots all over are nowhere near that line.
I’ve seen (and experienced in my fifties) that age does affect the working of your mind. I’d compare it to sleep deprivation. You know, when you’re young and reckless and haven’t slept well for a week, maybe pulling all-nighters for fun? It affects your concentration, your reflexes, and your general memory.
Age is like a mild sleep deprivation that gets a little bit worse each decade. It takes effort to stay lucid.
I agree with you, but I wonder how much of this is that most of us are worked to our last nerve until we’re at least 65, so many of us don’t have the luxury to maintain our brain plasticity? Once we’re 70ish, if we didn’t have that opportunity when we were living hand-to-mouth, our brains are kind of set by that point.
We all have the potential, but not the opportunity until it’s kind of too late? And then add that our society feeds us the equivalent of brain junk food for much of that time, rather than fostering continuing education…
Neural plasticity isn’t exactly the same as learning but, yeah, there seems to be a thing around 27 where neural plasticity seems to plateau a bit.
But I’m wondering if that’s more the effect than the cause. Perhaps it’s because a lot of people, up until they’re around 25-30, have a very quickly changing life. Schools are changing, jobs are changing, people are changing. But when you start to get into late twenties, early 30’s, most people already have a routine of some sort. And it would seem logical to me that it could mean lowered neural plasticity.
And perhaps it could come just as well if you started having as much variance and stimulation as earlier in your life. Perhaps not as much.
But yeah I don’t think there’s any sort of biological limit that you just can’t learn things anymore. Never too old.
I find that I get smarter as I get older, as stupid stuff that held me back gets discarded. You do have less energy I hear, but even there I think a fit 50 year old would be more energetic than a lazy 25 year old? Obviously having kids is a huge energy drain, but that’s not technically aging, just correlation rather than causation.
So anyway even if this graphic were true, it would be irrelevant as the major factor seems to me to be a willingness to learn, only after which raw ability would come into play.
In your case the adage that now is the time to learn is true, but not for any of the reasons mentioned above. Once you shift your perspective that the time for hard work is over and the time for personal play is at hand - to watch more TV, play games, hang out with friends, etc. - then it’s incredibly hard (most people phrase that as “impossible”) to ever go back to that college mindset of “it’s study time, let’s go!!!”. That’s not even just human nature, but rather the raw physics of inertia coupled with adaptation that lowers energy requirements that were evolutionarily built into our brains and bodies.
Discipline is a mindset that is mostly independent of age, except it trends towards older as those who have seen how it works first-hand now realize its value (coupled with individual survival of those who have more rather than less of it, i.e. the most reckless die the earliest in life), plus also younger as people listen and thus benefit from the accumulated wisdom of others.
What has discipline got to do with it? I feel it’s pretty independent or may even get in the way of learning. If you force (discipline) yourself to learn something, it will feel much harder than if you do it out of joy. But maybe I didn’t fully understand what you were saying.
I am glad that you checked then:-). I meant discipline as in a set of practices that you intentionally set up for yourself, not necessarily something like physically flogging yourself for choosing to take a nap rather than study something interesting but you were just too tired to do it in that moment. I agree you are totally correct that it should ideally be our of love rather than sense of duty. ❤️
Going beyond one’s limits is a way to cause damage - possibly even to the very desire to remain curious - so should be limited to only high-value scenarios e.g. to make an external deadline that offers an accomplishment that you decided that you wanted. So even there, “discipline” (force) can be useful, so long as “discipline” (intentional practices) keeps the former within acceptable levels.
Does that mean it is not true that it becomes harder to learn new things with age?
I’m 26 and I’ve been rushing gaining knowledge and experience very much so far for fear of just not being able to fit in much more once I reach certain age.
No I’m not virtue signaling, this is fucking stressful and I will be delighted to slow down a fuckton if that’s true.
From a completely unscientific but ‘experienced’ perspective I think the problem is that life just gets in the way as you get older, and you prioritize your own life rather than trying to learn.
Whether neuroplasticity means you can learn things later or not, the opportunity to learn things later just isn’t there without effort.
Having a job, kids, a mortgage and no social obligation to learn in a structured and organized way probably impacts you more than anything neurological.
I’d imagine it also has something to do with becoming less practiced at learning things.
It would be interesting to test this on career paths that basically require continuous learning.
Like I would be a perfect test subject because I plan to stay in the IT engineering space my whole career.
and, like, people just straight up stop trying. they hear that it’s harder to learn as you age so they don’t even try, and that of course confirms to everyone around them that it’s true, and so everyone keeps giving up.
it drives me up the fucking wall and the spite i hold for this phenomenon is like 70% of why i have a healthy lifestyle. I fully intend to be doing acrobatics at 60 purely so i can make people feel bad for making moronic lifestyle choices like driving 2km to buy 5 liters of alcohol for the weekend
Yeah, get in what you want because in twenty years the greatest thing your brain will enjoy is not processing anything of consequence.
Could you learn cuneiform and gain a rich understanding of 18th Century Viennese intellectual culture, if you didn’t know anything about that before? Sure.
*burp* But then you’ll be like “ah, gotta bring in the trash cans and then I can sit.”
People who have tried to gain literacy later in life have had a lot more trouble learning to write than read. It seems that the fine motor skills to drive a pen are best learnt early
As long as you continue to learn new things, then no, it doesn’t become harder with age. In fact, studies show that people who are lifelong learners can actually increase their ability to learn as they age. Learning, for example, a foreign language in later years has been shown to be just as attainable as in childhood, and might even give some protection against dementia. Your brain can actually become more plastic as you age if you continuously push it to do so.
The idea that learning capacity naturally* diminishes with age seems to be a widely accepted myth (which may have roots in sociological and cultural biases), and the opposite may actually be true.
e: those biases and environmental stressors may also contribute to people becoming less able – or less prone – to try, though, and if you don’t use it, you might lose that plasticity. So keep learning.
Well the ‘myth’ you speak of is based on the fact that the opposite of what you describe is also true. Those who lose any interest in learning new things become progressively more rigid and stuck in their mindset and become less and less likely to learn or adapt as they age. I suspect there are more people leaning towards that than lifelong learners, but I may just be a pessimist.
I think the people who are lifelong learners don’t stand out to us as much, because they’re not pig-headed cunts. Thus the societal bias.
And perhaps I’m an optimist because all the elders in my family are the plastic sort (my 89 year old father still works as an aviation engineer and still builds his own computers, for instance).
Anyway, I was talking about potential, not statistics. e: and I mean it’s psycho-social, not biological.
Stupidity and ignorance makes people confident.
This one little paragraph just explained my mom, myself, and the reason the relationship between us is so contentious.
She grows ever more closed-minded every year, while I attempt to learn a new skill every year. We never saw exactly eye-to-eye, but we’re now at a point where we might as well live in different universes. :(
This exactly describes me and any family member over 50. About Every single one is sucked into FOX brainrot. I can think of 1 relative out of 30 that actually has clear thoughts on societal issues.
With my own father and some others I know, I feel like the problem is less with being unable to learn new things than with being unable to unlearn things either which are no longer valid, or which were never valid but it should have become increasing obvious.
Well, your comment is a better variant of mine, i should have checked. :o) Thanks!
I started doing Capoeira and learning Portuguese with 40 years. I am fluent in Portuguese now after three years. My Capoeira skills are still pretty basic, but I progress and for the first time in my life I feel like I really have a grasp on any kind of sports.
I also changed from marketing to IT last year and I am getting really good at what I do.
It helps if you have a reference system for your new knowledge. I studied computer science which helps in my new job and I had French in school which helps with Portuguese.
So don’t worry. Keep learning, avoid stress and drugs and prioritize getting enough sleep. You’ll be fine!
My pragmatic understanding of this as someone who is a life scientist (but not a neuroscientist) is that neuroplasticity itself is sort of like a skill, and if you don’t use it, you lose it. That is to say that you needn’t rush to cram in new knowledge, but you should continue to indulge your hunger for knowledge. If you keep expanding your horizons and ways of thinking, you’ll maintain a high level of neuroplasticity as you age
Keep learning, and it’ll stay easier than if you didn’t. See if you can find changes for the structure of what you’re learning so you don’t get too ossified about that, either. Like, have a decade where you focus more on sciences, one more for arts, one more for languages, one more for understanding people who are very different from you… Maybe a decade is too big a chunk, but you get the idea.
Im in a hurry to learn and do everything possible before either the world collapses, I get some sickness, die randomly, or have to take care of a loved sick one for the rest of my life. Im right in a window of freedom now. Makes it very hard to ever relax lest I “waste” my few remaining years.
I have to learn new things all the time for my job, and I find as long as I never run out of caffeine, it’s not really a problem. I’m approaching 40, so take that as you will.
I’ve read a decent amount of his stuff. If I had to guess from the information here, he’s dismissive because the correlation is weak. Just because you technically can draw a line of best fit doesn’t mean it’s a good fit.
Look how many dots all over are nowhere near that line.
I’ve seen (and experienced in my fifties) that age does affect the working of your mind. I’d compare it to sleep deprivation. You know, when you’re young and reckless and haven’t slept well for a week, maybe pulling all-nighters for fun? It affects your concentration, your reflexes, and your general memory.
Age is like a mild sleep deprivation that gets a little bit worse each decade. It takes effort to stay lucid.
I agree with you, but I wonder how much of this is that most of us are worked to our last nerve until we’re at least 65, so many of us don’t have the luxury to maintain our brain plasticity? Once we’re 70ish, if we didn’t have that opportunity when we were living hand-to-mouth, our brains are kind of set by that point.
We all have the potential, but not the opportunity until it’s kind of too late? And then add that our society feeds us the equivalent of brain junk food for much of that time, rather than fostering continuing education…
We may never know. Functionally, capitalism describes what is “normal”, even if outside of that it could have been different.
Neural plasticity isn’t exactly the same as learning but, yeah, there seems to be a thing around 27 where neural plasticity seems to plateau a bit.
But I’m wondering if that’s more the effect than the cause. Perhaps it’s because a lot of people, up until they’re around 25-30, have a very quickly changing life. Schools are changing, jobs are changing, people are changing. But when you start to get into late twenties, early 30’s, most people already have a routine of some sort. And it would seem logical to me that it could mean lowered neural plasticity.
And perhaps it could come just as well if you started having as much variance and stimulation as earlier in your life. Perhaps not as much.
But yeah I don’t think there’s any sort of biological limit that you just can’t learn things anymore. Never too old.
I find that I get smarter as I get older, as stupid stuff that held me back gets discarded. You do have less energy I hear, but even there I think a fit 50 year old would be more energetic than a lazy 25 year old? Obviously having kids is a huge energy drain, but that’s not technically aging, just correlation rather than causation.
So anyway even if this graphic were true, it would be irrelevant as the major factor seems to me to be a willingness to learn, only after which raw ability would come into play.
In your case the adage that now is the time to learn is true, but not for any of the reasons mentioned above. Once you shift your perspective that the time for hard work is over and the time for personal play is at hand - to watch more TV, play games, hang out with friends, etc. - then it’s incredibly hard (most people phrase that as “impossible”) to ever go back to that college mindset of “it’s study time, let’s go!!!”. That’s not even just human nature, but rather the raw physics of inertia coupled with adaptation that lowers energy requirements that were evolutionarily built into our brains and bodies.
Discipline is a mindset that is mostly independent of age, except it trends towards older as those who have seen how it works first-hand now realize its value (coupled with individual survival of those who have more rather than less of it, i.e. the most reckless die the earliest in life), plus also younger as people listen and thus benefit from the accumulated wisdom of others.
What has discipline got to do with it? I feel it’s pretty independent or may even get in the way of learning. If you force (discipline) yourself to learn something, it will feel much harder than if you do it out of joy. But maybe I didn’t fully understand what you were saying.
I am glad that you checked then:-). I meant discipline as in a set of practices that you intentionally set up for yourself, not necessarily something like physically flogging yourself for choosing to take a nap rather than study something interesting but you were just too tired to do it in that moment. I agree you are totally correct that it should ideally be our of love rather than sense of duty. ❤️
Going beyond one’s limits is a way to cause damage - possibly even to the very desire to remain curious - so should be limited to only high-value scenarios e.g. to make an external deadline that offers an accomplishment that you decided that you wanted. So even there, “discipline” (force) can be useful, so long as “discipline” (intentional practices) keeps the former within acceptable levels.