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>Not on the topic of SS marriage

But we shouldn't dismiss this. On the topics of racism, same sex marriage, sexism... really any injustice of the past out there, the old tend to want to hold on what was in the past regardless if it was good or bad.

To think that the old have a better grasp on things ignores all the times they do not.

>There is a very big reason that the slogans around "Wisdom comes with age" and "Young know it alls" have existed for so long. They've been observably accurate.

It works 100% of the time when it works. The old have wisdom only if you consider the cases they were wise. If you look at issues like racism or homophobia, the young are the wise ones. Society advanced one funeral at a time because the we lose their 'wisdom'.

If the young want change just for the sake of change, then the old want stability just for the sake of stability.

I like to think of it as a filter. The truly worthwhile things will continue to be fought for and will eventually get through. If nothing else, the struggle should provide people with opportunities to see how they can make a difference outside of legislation.

When a problem is caused by legislation, it could also serve as a warning to the problems that come from trying to solve problems that way.

But that struggle being lengthened also means the continued systematic oppression of certain groups for decades, perhaps even generations longer. I'm unsure if that's really acceptable to say "eventually worthwhile things will get through" when groups of people right now are dealing with systemic social issues.

If a homosexual person is fired for being homosexual (legal in many states), is it really acceptable to approach that with "well if its truly worthwhile to fight for, sexuality will eventually become a protected class"?

I'd generally look at issues like that from an entirely different perspective (personally). If it's possible for legislation to oppress people, it seems like the goal should be to make that less feasible. What consequences come to businesses in general by classifying certain groups of people as protected classes while others aren't? Does it discourage businesses from hiring those groups in the first place simply from a risk management perspective?

Experience will definitely show that as you approach a certain age, you'll have a harder time finding a job and a big part of that is the risk a business takes on if they have to fire you for underperforming.

Understanding that there are always consequences to legislation, no matter how noble the intentions, will lead to looking at solutions from different angles.

The legislative solution is "Make THEM do this!" while the non-legislative solution is "Campaign to help people be more understanding, tolerant and welcoming to homosexuals." The latter improves society as a whole while they former may help in the short term but create risk-management tendencies among businesses along with resentment from non-protected classes.

I'd say that it is for the good that the young are allowed to change things, but only after they are not very young anymore.

The problem is that we are both biologically making that enabling age older and older, and at the same time we are making the world more and more dynamic. And I'll risk a guess that this is a problem that will get solved, whether we come out with a good solution to it, or we only have bad ones.

> If you look at issues like racism or homophobia, the young are the wise ones.

Maybe I'm getting older myself (30's), but the way that racism, homophobia, etc. is being handled by the young is troubling at best, facist at worst.

A large majority of millenials support restrictions on freedom of speech when it's considered hateful. What ever happened to 'sticks and stones...'?

Honestly, on this issue, I see millenials about as bat-shit crazy as the other extremes - everyone's favorite uncle or old neighbor from the deep South, stuck in the 1960's.

>Maybe I'm getting older myself (30's), but the way that racism, homophobia, etc. is being handled by the young is troubling at best, facist at worst.

What I see is the way that free speech is being handled when it involves something offensive. But this is not something unique among young individuals; all that is changed is the topics. Which generation was around when obscenity was allowed as an exception to the First Amendment?

Is this true? From my personal vantage point, young folks in the west don't seem to want change at all. They tend to support establishment politics. Even pop culture is full of artists promoting the establishment.

For example, consider John Stewart - he's somehow made a shtick of mocking the establishment while somehow calling for them to have more power and deligitimizing anyone who is outside the mainstream.

Insofar as young people want "change", it seems merely to be going back to mythical glorious past era when a single person could support a family, have "health care" and engage in real estate speculation via the proceeds of unskilled manual labor. They believe this "change" will happen mainly by funneling more money into existing programs and bringing back a few policies from the recent past.

(Admittedly, the tech world is an exception to this. And my vantage point might be skewed due to spending my US life in NY.)

What change do you believe the young want today?

I'm 23. Here's a few things I'd like to see progress on:

  Affordable education and access to high quality teachers.
  Bringing our healthcare cost/efficacy profile into line with other advanced economies.
  Repairing and rebuilding crumbling public infrastructure.
  Environmental reform, especially wrt carbon emissions & how we treat the oceans.
  Revisiting social security to ensure its long-term viability.
  Reducing the government's ability to invade privacy.
  Ending the "war on drugs" and regulating/taxing it like the alcohol or tobacco industry.

I'm happy to pay more taxes on my relatively small income if they go towards reforms in these areas. As ex-fed president Kocherlakota notes [1], exceedingly low interest rates and cheap labor are creating a great environment for gov investment. Unfortunately, fiscal policy is stuck in a quagmire due to deep-seated ideological divisions in Washington D.C.

[1] https://sites.google.com/site/kocherlakota009/home/policy/th...

> Unfortunately, fiscal policy is stuck in a quagmire due to deep-seated ideological divisions in Washington D.C.

I'm hoping Donald Trump helps to solve this (or rather, helps the GOP implode.). The Republican party has been an ideological mess for the better part of a decade, and that anti-intellectualism is coming back around to bite them in the ass. When men of substance spend all their time tearing each other down, why is it a surprise that a clown is the only one able to rise above the fray?

We've needed to hit the reset button on the Republican party since the mid-90s. We're finally getting a chance now that the GOP's corporate backers have so obviously lost control, so hopefully we'll be able to get back to normal within a decade or so.

Only the last two items on your list (protecting privacy, ending the war on drug users) remotely qualify as change. Everything else qualifies as "funneling more money into existing programs".

Consider the most establishment presidential candidate in the race right now. Would Hillary Clinton even use different words to describe her policy proposals?

I could imagine policy details that might count as change, but you don't seem to be advocating those. E.g., if you wanted to provide affordable education by replacing teachers with Khan Academy, or cut infrastructure costs down to everywhere-else-in-the-world levels [1] by breaking the back of public employee unions or other such reforms. Are you advocating big change like this?

[1] Delhi Metro Phase 2, 77 miles of track and 85 stations cost Delhi $2.9B and 3 years. Hudson Yards, 1 mile of track and 1 station, cost NYC $2.5B and 9 years.

From my vantage point in the US, it does seem like a significant number of young people do want change. I'm basing this on the contrast between Bernie Sanders supporters, largely young people, and Hillary Clinton supporters, who have a lot less young people than Bernie supporters. As for what change young people want today, I'd say it's what Bernie is campaigning for, which does include health care but also free college for all, among other things that primarily concern young people.

As I said, they believe this "change" will happen mainly by funneling more money into existing programs...

How do? Single payer is not a existing program today.

> Single payer is not a existing program today.

Sanders explicitly says that his "single payer" plan is "Medicare for all". Medicare is an existing program. It hasn't been a single-payer system for quite a long time, though; it has been -- longer than the ACA has been around -- a lot like a federalized, rather than state-based, version of the ACA with subsidized private plans but with a public default option.

Medicare for all is more of a sound bite.

A proper single payer system would not have Medicare broken down into part A,B etc. It would be end to end covering diagnosis, treatment, drugs etc.

Good points, but I would contend that "Older people have a lot more experience in observing human nature" is not necessarily always true. Or at least it may not be the reason for their conservativism.

It may also vary by location and culture, so I can only speak to my own experience with the place where I came from, where the elder population have acted as custodians for utterly retrograde policies and actively resist any attempt to move forward.

I'd question the wisdom of any generation who (broadly) thought the Magdalene Asylums were a good thing.

>Good points, but I would contend that "Older people have a lot more experience in observing human nature" is not necessarily always true.

While for particular older people it might not hold (e.g. some guy might be stuck in his house/bubble for all his life and have less life experience than a guy half his age) in general this is obviously true.

> "Older people have a lot more experience in observing human nature" is not necessarily always true. Or at least it may not be the reason for their conservativism.

Older people have a lot more experience observing politics and government, and as such have seen the consequences of historical campaign promises and highly-touted government agendas. If these consequences are negative and they have been given reason to believe that the government and its politicians are either liars or just not competent to deliver, that may explain their conservatism.

nice theory, but if you look at reality, biggest crooks in many places are kept in place by old folks voting for them again and again, just because they figured out and "tick their box", whatever insignificant thing it might be. random out of too many - Berlusconi anybody?

This is all true, but it goes both ways - older people tend to be more set in their ways, more obstinate and opposed to change for the sake of opposing it. On the whole, humans are feckless, short-sighted, narrow-minded creatures. We look to protect our own interests first and foremost above and beyond others, and for many people this only gets worse with age, when there is something to protect and guard against losing. I continue to be more underwhelmed by the older generation as I grow older.

I agree with the sentiment. Experience of elders has much more added value in stable, non-evolving society. What we see these days is opposite - rapid changes of all aspects fo our life. Many elders are simply lost in so many topics, and then tend to cling first familiar sign, however bad it is from overall perspective. This is dangerous since populist politicians easily use this and base their activities around these clear and easy targets. I think we all can see this happening all over the place

I'll take some proof with that. In the meantime, here in Denmark, as of 2014, only 9% of voters for the main populist, anti-immigration, anti-muslim party (and currently second biggest party) were under 30, with 43% over 60. If that's what wisdom looks like, it's scary.

Older people also don't want change simply because they're more stuck in their ways, and because they're afraid of change, afraid that it may risk whatever they have managed to build up during their life.

Science progresses one funeral at a time, that sort of thing.

I read a study that I am now searching for that showed MRI scans of people trying to change their mind about a subject. It consumed huge amounts of energy. People's brains are built to build an accurate, complete view of the survival landscape and forgo any wasted energy beyond that. Tolerence can be socialized in at a young age but changing your mind consumes huge amounts of resources better spent perpetuating survival. People obtain the same life milestones now, only on a protracted timeline. My thesis is that progress will be slower than before, for exactly as long as old/tired humans stick around.

this would explain quite a big amount of arguments between people too

In terms of survival resources, it is way harder to change your mind than it is to fiercly dig in on an issue. No contest.

I would LOVE a citation to read on that study you mention (or anything matching the description if no one knows the exact study)

Enough so I might actually pay for access to a journal in order to get it.