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Comment by Encosia | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely. I'm in my 30s and haven't noticed any decrease in my ability to continue learning. It's definitely a challenge to discard your old mental models if/when they start to become hindrances, but far from impossible.

My Mom (nearly 60) went back to school last year to learn occupational therapy, and has been doing great. It's not rocket surgery by any stretch, but it's exactly the kind of retraining that's relevant to the article's assertion.

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I had a guy in his late 70s in my accelerated Calculus II class this summer at a community college (power series, curve arc length, determining convergence/divergence, etc.) -- with a class full of students from second-tier schools. He was one of the few students to ace every test and exam.

It's possible it might be more about willingness than ability, I have come across older people that probably would have been capable of similar things given the will but have essentially thrown in the towel, happy where they are and aren't willing to put in the effort.

I have 30 years of experience in software development, with a computer science degree from the University of Illinois. I applied for a position at SEOmoz a few months ago. No phone screen interview. The CEO's comments seem to imply a very selective criteria was used to hire, and that it took them months. We don't know what criteria was used by SEOmoz to hire those candidates. I found his comments regarding older people slower to learn new stuff "enlightening".

Heh. Yeah, I guess if you a priori assume that anyone over 29 isn't going to be hired, you're necessarily going to have a much longer search for a new hire...

It's definitely a challenge to discard your old mental models if/when they start to become hindrances, but far from impossible.

I think this is actually the most important skill one develops by constantly reading up and playing with new technologies and languages. Just as mathematics is as much about learning to reason about things as it is about the particular theorems you prove, learning about technologies and languages and ideas is constant exercise for your brain to absorb new models and reconcile them with ones it has already internalized. Discarding old ones isn't a big deal, because you've been doing that almost continuously anyway. But, like everything else in this discussion, it requires a certain amount of willpower and ability not to take one's own comfortable position for granted.

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