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Comment by Arcana_ | Hacker News Reader

Hardy's idea that math is a young man's game is wrong & discriminatory against those that lack opportunities to education early in their life. Or for whatever reason pursued math at a later age.

See people like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitang_Zhang that produced good math at a later stage.

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It’s an observation, not a prescription. Is it “discriminatory” to suggest that gymnastics is a young person’s game?

Yes

edit:

just to clarify, it would be an observation to say "Most Mathematicians produce their best work when they're young" or "Most gymnasts who make it to the olympics are young"

But to say that X is a young mans game is inherently discriminatory.

Isn't that a bit strict? It seems that "x is a young man's game" can be read either in an empirical ("historically, only young men do x") or normative ("only young men should do x") sense, the former of which might be slightly inaccurate because there are exceptions, but otherwise seems fine.

A view held by some seems to be that since even the empirical observation may "perpetuate" the situation, stating it is "problematic" in itself, but I don't suppose this is what you mean here.

I take it he was referring to having the time and energy when you're young, as opposed to becoming a professional and being swamped with obligations such as work and family. Holding the Sadleirian chair likely means constant social and academic obligations.

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