Older = Dumber?

[ozleicester]

Ive seen a discussion regarding age and failing abilities in driving, and i wonder if this needs to be discussed from a  wider perspective?

 

As we age, do we become less intelligent?

 

Now ive heard (and even said on occasion im sure) that the young folk think they know it all, but they dont have the experience. But is experience just a cover for falling intellect?

 

I know my eyes are not as effective as they were, hence glasses, i know my ears are less effective - hence the continual "what?" in my conversations, I know my knees are fvcked hence the attempt to walk up or down stairs without looking like in idiot. so if i acknowledge all of those (and more) parts of me are failing and less effective than they were, surely i must accept it about my brain?

 

Is my opinion as reliable as it was when i was 20..or 30?

 

We live in a time unlike any before, a time where people live well into the 70s and beyond, and not only does our mental capacity degenerate, we also become (so the theory goes) more conservative and fearful. which means, we live in a time when a huge number of stupid scared old people are making decisions that may affect them for only a few years. But may set society as a whole, back by many years.

 

So... like not being able to vote until 18 because you arent completely capable... should a limit be introduced for the over 50's?... 60's?... 70's?

 

 

 

*anyone who doesnt agree with my thoughts is clearly a young whippersnapper without the necessary experience to make a valid and salient point!

[Steven]

Sadly intellectual capacity does diminish with age. I am reduced to having an IQ of 135 at the moment. 

[lianne81]

I think there should be more testing for older people. 

 

some 70 , 80 year old's are great drivers, while others should not be behind the wheel. Any concerns the doctors have should be passed onto the appropriate people to deal with. and to be fair that should be anyone of any age that is on strong medication or have health issues. 

 

I am on morphine and know when i have taken it my actions are slower , so personally i would not learn to drive. 

[Alf Bentley]

Ive seen a discussion regarding age and failing abilities in driving, and i wonder if this needs to be discussed from a  wider perspective?

 

As we age, do we become less intelligent?

 

Now ive heard (and even said on occasion im sure) that the young folk think they know it all, but they dont have the experience. But is experience just a cover for falling intellect?

 

I know my eyes are not as effective as they were, hence glasses, i know my ears are less effective - hence the continual "what?" in my conversations, I know my knees are fvcked hence the attempt to walk up or down stairs without looking like in idiot. so if i acknowledge all of those (and more) parts of me are failing and less effective than they were, surely i must accept it about my brain?

 

Is my opinion as reliable as it was when i was 20..or 30?

 

We live in a time unlike any before, a time where people live well into the 70s and beyond, and not only does our mental capacity degenerate, we also become (so the theory goes) more conservative and fearful. which means, we live in a time when a huge number of stupid scared old people are making decisions that may affect them for only a few years. But may set society as a whole, back by many years.

 

So... like not being able to vote until 18 because you arent completely capable... should a limit be introduced for the over 50's?... 60's?... 70's?

 

 

 

*anyone who doesnt agree with my thoughts is clearly a young whippersnapper without the necessary experience to make a valid and salient point!

 

 

Your proposed age limit on voting would certainly have an impact.

At the 2015 UK election, Con-Lab voting by age was as follows:

- 65+:    47% Con 23% Lab

- 55-64: 37% Con 31% Lab

- 45-54: 36% Con 33% Lab

- 35-44: 35% Con 35% Lab

- 25-34: 33% Con 36% Lab

- 18-24: 27% Con 43% Lab

(Without the over-65s, Ed Miliband would probably be in No. 10, particularly as 78% of them voted, compared to 43% of those agee 18-24)

 https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3575/How-Britain-voted-in-2015.aspx?view=wide

 

So, that's definite evidence of the greater intelligence of youth - and justification for your ban on the elderly voting (particularly Thracian). 

 

Being serious, I'd actually prefer us to go back to having older PMs. Can anyone seriously argue that the youthful Blair and Cameron have shown better judgement than the elderly Attlee and Churchill?

Get all the young, flexible minds and powerful memories and energies of the young to do all the research and new thinking....and then get the wise old heads to exercise final judgment on decisions.

 

Because that's the difference between the young and the old, isn't it?

 

The young have the powerful memory and mental flexibility to learn new information, new processes and new ways of thinking about things....but generally lack the extensive store of knowledge and experience to see things in wider perspective. So, they have more new ideas but their judgment can be more erratic.

Older people struggle to store new information or to learn new ways of thinking....but can have a wisdom learned from decades of accumulated (if often dated) information and from perceiving how once "new" processes and ways of thinking worked.

Of course, age doesn't always bring wisdom, so Thracian would still be banned from voting - or driving, given his apparent vulnerability to on-line road rage.... 

 

Let youth do the work and the new thinking, and let the wise old heads use that new thinking to take the final decisions (I'm thinking you and me here, Oz). 

[Renart]

I think that my opinion on this might change over time. 

[Renart]

I was having dinner last year with some of my fiance's cousins in Ireland (she is Irish). We were talking about an elderly friend of the family who was going to be 100 in a few months. I said that I wasn't sure that I wanted to live to be 100. The cousin replied without hesitation that 'nobody wants to live to be 100, except for the man who is 99.' - has to be read in an Irish accent. So true.

[yorkie1999]

The sex definitely gets a lot worse once you get over 50. I found this out three times last night and twice this morning. 

[LanguedocFox]

I'm not sure driving ability is related to intelligence. I've got an IQ that is allegedly well above average, but I've always been a pretty poor driver, ever since I passed my test at the age of 20. I'm not particularly dangerous, and although I have picked up a few speeding fines over the years, I've never been convicted of anything remotely serious, and never had a ban. However, I get bored with driving, so I don't concentrate on the process as much as I should, and have a tendency to let my mind wander on to more interesting subjects.

 

On the other hand, one's brain power does definitely diminish with age. I'm 70 now, and I've seen it happen with a lot of my contemporaries. I think mine is still in reasonably good shape because I still work as a freelance writer, which helps. However, I do find some things difficult to get my head round, and I know that 25 or 30 years ago, I could have picked it up much more easily.

[Guest]

 

 

some 70 , 80 year old's are great drivers, while others should not be behind the wheel. 

 

Agreed. But then again a lot of under 25's (and every other age range too) shouldn't be behind the wheel of a car.

[filbertstreet]

old men should be given jobs where they use old man strength to open jars for weak people, everyone's happy

 

or maybe they should stop making jars, nothing good comes in a jar any more

[Guest]

Sure there is a reduction in memory related skills, learning speed, probably active solution speed but not intelligence or necessarily the use of that intelligence.The experience gains tend to outweigh many of the losses and the ability to put situations into an understandable perspective are positives that greatly promote the older person's decision making over the younger person.

 

In general I'd prefer older people making decisions over younger people in many but not all circumstances. Of course teamwork between young and old, male and female and other differing populations is the best solution but overall experience wins out for me. In physical tasks however youth far exceeds experience.

 

There's a lot of truth to the maxim if only I knew what I know now when I was young enough to benefit from it.

[yorkie1999]

A brain is the same as a hard drive, a young brain is only partially full so it can retrieve data quicker but cannot access as much data.

[MPH]

I don't think its so much of a low IQ that will effect an old persons driving ability .. but more to do with their eyesight diminishing, reactions being a little slower and stuff like that

[Voll Blau]

Anyone who ever uses the term "kid" as a slur on Foxestalk is clearly evidence of this theory.

[Captain...]

It really depends what you are asking here. Intelligence is not something that can be tangibly measured, neither is experience. Older =  Dumber isn't true because Dumbness or Smarts, is a combination of many factors and has many outcomes.

 

One of those factors is experience, if you need someone to drive you somewhere, it is better to have someone older with lots of experience driving, than a child genius who has never sat behind a wheel before.

 

The optimum is somewhere in between, your brain and in some respect your intelligence is like a muscle, in that if you don't use it, it atrophies and dies, and this is specific to certain functions too, like learning. If you have done the same job for years and years  it is  much harder  to learn a new job or skill than if you have had lots of different jobs and had to retrain and relearn a number of times.

 

I think it is dangerous to start limiting peoples  capabilities based on intelligence, like voting, if you have lost  your mental faculties then you probably shouldn't vote, but if you are a bit dumb then it is not for others to say.  Likewise driving, it shouldn't be intelligence or age but a test of response times  and ability that should prohibit you from being allowed to drive.

[Steven]

I think it is dangerous to start limiting peoples  capabilities based on intelligence, like voting .......

 

Quite. Anyone earning less than £100,000 p.a. before tax should be barred from voting. The Georgians/Victorians knew a thing or two. 

[bovril]

Your proposed age limit on voting would certainly have an impact.

At the 2015 UK election, Con-Lab voting by age was as follows:

- 65+:    47% Con 23% Lab

- 55-64: 37% Con 31% Lab

- 45-54: 36% Con 33% Lab

- 35-44: 35% Con 35% Lab

- 25-34: 33% Con 36% Lab

- 18-24: 27% Con 43% Lab

(Without the over-65s, Ed Miliband would probably be in No. 10, particularly as 78% of them voted, compared to 43% of those agee 18-24)

 https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3575/How-Britain-voted-in-2015.aspx?view=wide

 

So, that's definite evidence of the greater intelligence of youth - and justification for your ban on the elderly voting (particularly Thracian). 

 

Being serious, I'd actually prefer us to go back to having older PMs. Can anyone seriously argue that the youthful Blair and Cameron have shown better judgement than the elderly Attlee and Churchill?

Get all the young, flexible minds and powerful memories and energies of the young to do all the research and new thinking....and then get the wise old heads to exercise final judgment on decisions.

 

Because that's the difference between the young and the old, isn't it?

 

The young have the powerful memory and mental flexibility to learn new information, new processes and new ways of thinking about things....but generally lack the extensive store of knowledge and experience to see things in wider perspective. So, they have more new ideas but their judgment can be more erratic.

Older people struggle to store new information or to learn new ways of thinking....but can have a wisdom learned from decades of accumulated (if often dated) information and from perceiving how once "new" processes and ways of thinking worked.

Of course, age doesn't always bring wisdom, so Thracian would still be banned from voting - or driving, given his apparent vulnerability to on-line road rage.... 

 

Let youth do the work and the new thinking, and let the wise old heads use that new thinking to take the final decisions (I'm thinking you and me here, Oz). 

 

I think this proves that the more sexually frustrated you become, the more likely you are to vote Conservative.

[Steven]

I think this proves that the more sexually frustrated you become, the more likely you are to vote Conservative.

 

Does that include wanking? 

[Trav Le Bleu]

Sadly intellectual capacity does diminish with age. I am reduced to having an IQ of 135 at the moment. 

You're IQ is graded according to your age, so you would need to acquire less correct answers in a Mensa test to get an IQ of 135 if you were 50 than if you were 40 (I think around early 40s is when they peak their grading, after that you don't need to score as high.)

I have to say from experience that, in my late 40s, whilst I know more than I've ever done in the past, if only simply from experiencing more, my recall is much slower, so I whereas I might be able to tell you who starred in a film instantly years ago or who sang a certain song (and for the record, most of the time, assuming I know the film/song, I still can) I might have to rack my brain really hard for a few minutes.

[MooseBreath]

I think this proves that the more sexually frustrated you become, the more likely you are to vote Conservative.

It's the other way round really though isn't it. I'd bet the average 18-24year old is a lot more sexually frustrated than a 70 year old who probably can't even see their camouflaged penis among wrinkly skin anymore, never mind muster up the desire to use it.

No, it seems that virgins vote for Labour, and the further away from virginity one gets the more likely one is to vote conservative.

[Guest]

It's the other way round really though isn't it. I'd bet the average 18-24year old is a lot more sexually frustrated than a 70 year old who probably can't even see their camouflaged penis among wrinkly skin anymore, never mind muster up the desire to use it.

No, it seems that virgins vote for Labour, and the further away from virginity one gets the more likely one is to vote conservative.

 

Do you vote UKIP or Green then?

[Guest MattP]

Absolutely not, older the wiser, firm believer in that.

 

Surely the reason Labour get so many votes among the young is because they aren't be able to remember the last time they had power?

[davieG]

As Homer said.

 

"How is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home winemaking course, and I forgot how to drive?"

[Nalis]

It's the other way round really though isn't it. I'd bet the average 18-24year old is a lot more sexually frustrated than a 70 year old who probably can't even see their camouflaged penis among wrinkly skin anymore, never mind muster up the desire to use it.

No, it seems that virgins vote for Labour, and the further away from virginity one gets the more likely one is to vote conservative.

Pig heads dont count mate.

[LanguedocFox]

You're IQ is graded according to your age, so you would need to acquire less correct answers in a Mensa test to get an IQ of 135 if you were 50 than if you were 40 (I think around early 40s is when they peak their grading, after that you don't need to score as high.)

I have to say from experience that, in my late 40s, whilst I know more than I've ever done in the past, if only simply from experiencing more, my recall is much slower, so I whereas I might be able to tell you who starred in a film instantly years ago or who sang a certain song (and for the record, most of the time, assuming I know the film/song, I still can) I might have to rack my brain really hard for a few minutes.

 

That hits the nail on the head. As I said before, I am 70. A couple of years ago, I was sorting through a big box of photographs that my mother had collected, and I came across one taken on a school trip to the Peak District in (I think) 1958 or 59. There were maybe 20 of my classmates and two teachers, and I could recall the names of both teachers and all bar two of the kids. Yet I have to take a detailed list with me if I go shopping - even for three things!