Our physiological processes become increasingly simple as we age | Hacker News Reader

Our physiological processes become increasingly simple as we age

nautil.us

93 pointsdnetesn32 comments

I'm in my late twenties and increasingly worry about things like this. I sometimes wonder if my best "thinking days" are already behind me. Business sense and practicality (i.e. "wisdom") still seem to be increasing with time, yet I can't shake the feeling that understanding highly complex or novel topics is going to become vastly more difficult over the next few decades. For instance, if I wanted to learn homotopy type theory, would this have been easier five years ago, or will it be easier five years from now? It's well known that the number of neural synapses in the human brain decreases by almost an order of magnitude over a lifetime. I can accept that my body will degrade physically, but psychologically, I have a hard time stomaching the idea that my mental faculties are likely to erode as well. Hopefully exercise and eating well are enough to at least delay this as long as possible.

What does it matter? Do your best and that's all you can do, worrying about it isn't actionable.

What we can do is exercise, which is the best medicine ever.

The other best medicine ever is getting enough sleep.

Then the other last thing we can do is contribute money toward anti-aging research.

Otherwise, all we can do is wait as our body deteriorate.

After sleep and exercise, there are other medicines like eating the right food (at the right time of day) and meditation (again to be experimented with) which I've found help a lot.

I think it can help to at least plan your life. You may not need your best thinking days to start a family or work an average job, but if you want to invent something or research something new, it's probably best to do it in your youth.

A typical Gen Z life plan:

6:00pm Create lifelong masterplan for history changing invention

6:01pm Screw it, let’s play Fortnite

I'm in my early forties, and I've been having the same worries you list the whole time.

And the answer (for me, so far) is....it's complicated.

I definitely think I have a harder time processing new ideas. OTOH, I have a lot more context to connect them to, so I feel like I end up with a better understanding when I DO get them. I also have a wider perspective to decide WHAT I want to spend my precious time learning. When I do learn something, I'm less likely to think it's the answer to everything, while I'm still able to get excited and enjoy how much easier this makes many of my tasks.

And it's really hard for me to say how much is REALLY having a harder time grasping new ideas, and how much is a mix of (1) that additional context, which makes it harder/longer before I feel the sense that I truly "get" it (2) the overwhelming sense of how many things I DON'T know that makes it feel like "I'm not learning like I used to".

Docker has been on my list to learn for ~4 years, even though I've used it indirectly for most of that time, for example, but it's not that I haven't been learning new concepts in that time - I've just not been able to find free time where Docker has been on the top of my list. Kubernetes shows up on HN, and I've not done more than googled the general idea. Are these omissions because I don't have the capability to learn as well, or because I've got a very full schedule and mental web of connections to fit them into? No way to be sure - I don't know of any way to quantify them.

I try to make sure that I end each week being able to say I learned something new, and while those bits are often small, they are also often significant in my day-to-day.

Also, don't discount the impacts of physical decay on the psychological. Being unable to sit comfortably for long stretches, the wear and tear of a million tiny aches - they may as much to blame for psychological limitations from age as any direct neurological degradation.

  Docker has been on my list to learn for ~4 years

Docker doesn't do anything shell scripts and zip files couldn't accomplish.

The only thing Docker does is distinguish a class of human oriented activities, such that everyone is talking about the same goals, and explaining ideas about the same conceptual objects, at the same time, across all platforms (Windows, Linux, Apple, BSD, AWS, VMware, Vbox), disciplines and job roles.

The DBA, the front-end JS developer, the sysadmin, the API developer, the SRE, the product team, the project managers, the tier one support and CRM call center, all of them are talking about the thing that standardizes virtual servers.

It's not that docker is particularly useful or special, but more to the point, different people are talking about doing the same thing the same way, and hopefully in 50 lines or less, because pressing the power button on a working computer, and plugging in the network cable needs to be made that simple, so that people can stop tripping over themselves about that least important of pizza topping conversations.

I’m 40 and it’s less that I can’t learn new ideas and it’s more that I have fairly settled ideas about how the world works and it’s hard for me to fully integrate new concepts without relearning a lot of other things at the same time.

I can learn new things as well as I could before, it just takes a bit of effort to clear space for it, as it were.

That you used the word "relearn" responding to a comment that mentions docker kinda hits it exactly for me: it's hard to get excited about a new way to do the same old thing, whereas when younger you don't yet have enough understanding/experience for it to have reached "same old thing" status.

I also wonder if there's a subtle psychological effect here: You, in particular, sound like you know a whole lot about at least a few things. But, that means when you tackle something new, the "know a lot about it" bar is set really high.

You're already an expert at X, so you know how hard it is to become an expect at something, and when you start learning Y, it's clear how hard you have to work in order to get close to the same magnitude as your knowledge of X. As a result, it feels like it "takes longer" to learn stuff. But maybe it's just more stuff?

I think I heard this argument first made by Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame).

>I've just not been able to find free time where Docker has been on the top of my list.

Wasting your time on futile sentences like this tells me that you have more free time than you can handle.

> Wasting your time on futile sentences like this tells me that you have more free time than you can handle.

I have no idea what you mean by this, but thanks for adding to the amount of joy in the universe.

Not being able to find free time, top of my list, if you enjoy to live in contradictions, so be it.

> if I wanted to learn homotopy type theory, would this have been easier five years ago, or will it be easier five years from now?

My experience (I'm late 60s) suggests you may find it harder later, but you'll have a higher return because your newly-won expertise will connect with a richer experience base. You'll see connections you might have missed earlier.

And I doubt you'll notice much difference in five years. More like 15 - 20, I think.

Different people will have different comments on this post I think.

I think I am just as sharp as I ever was. I am in my early 50s. I do not however think I am as fast as I used to be. I can feel that. My understanding and abilities are solid as ever but I can see younger guys grokking things faster than me.

I also require way more sleep than I used to need.

The good thing though is that I have seen a LOT of things in my career in computers/programming/devops/engineering/math. So new things are just variations on things I have already seen over the years.

>sometimes wonder if my best "thinking days" are already behind me.

Maybe if your best thinking days are behind you have best living days in front of you :)

With ago also comes different perspectives. Yes, learning is important, but your scope of vision, so to speak, may be broader and more nuanced. You may not quite value the ability to learn some hyper-specific niche thing quite as much.

Nearing forty and feel (and am told) I'm doing the best work of my career. I think the same of my boss who's in his fiftys. One of the keys has been developing deep expertise in complex subject(s) I like and keeping up with the cutting edge. Also finding a career that lets you do this.

Does it really matter? If you really want to learn something just go for it, for me the problem does not lie in the difficulty but to remain persistent as with age you start to question the point of your chosen interests too.

I am in my mid thirties and would say I definitely do not think I am as sharp now as I was as a teenager.

That said, I am overall much happier now.

For me, mental agility has proven less important to me than a number of things. Example: I have been hit by motorists a few times (I am a cyclist.) and my left knee has really taken a beating as a result. Keeping it in good shape so that I can continue to run and bike is much more important to me than, for example, being able to quickly memorize or learn something. As I see it, mere speed at assimilating information is a luxury whereas physical mobility is a necessity for having a life worth living.

Conversely, certain things have gotten better with age: my financial wellbeing and emotional maturity both come to mind.

Although I try not to worry about the inevitable and live in the now, I am personally more concerned about the point in my life where my body will entirely preclude certain activities.

I think fasting is a process helping me against the aging peril. I'm not convinced if it will help me live longer (if nothing else goes wrong) but I can say my focus is increased and compared if I ate 2-3 meals per day. I'm skeptical if fasting triggers cells into the claimed "garbage collect" process or if my focus is just a hunter gather sense of I'm in danger from low calories kicking in. I assume endurance exercise is the best for the mind. I doubt non-physical games directed at improving thinking really help at all. The only supplement I've had benefit with is fish oil.

How do people know if their focus increases as opposed to a placebo intervention?

I think you show that the intervention you're interested in performs not just above a passive control, but above an active control that may itself plausibly have an impact. So rather than a control that does nothing, you have a control group that does some other intervention. Of course there's still pitfalls, but my understanding is that trials showing positive effects vs. "active control" groups are often considered stronger evidence.

Have you ever been so hungry that you cannot concentrate on something difficult? Once you master fasting, you don't get to that point anymore.

Does it increase focus overall? I have no idea.

I'm dieting at the moment (mainly trimming down after Christmas, and making some room for a winter bulk routine).

Quite a few times, I've been so hungry that it interfered with my thinking. I had to eat something to get my focus back. Currently sub-10% body fat and a pretty seasoned dieter, so I think I have a fairly good feeling for what's real "hunger" and what's just "craving food".

In 2 weeks I'll switch to a weekly 36 hour fast, but I have no idea how I'm going to deal with the hunger pangs affecting concentration. Maybe, as you say, it is something you can train yourself out of.

You feel hunger just in the initial 3 days. I was on a distilled water fast for over a week, hunger disappeared completely.

When you feel that way, it's because your blood sugar is low - your body i quite literally out of fuel. Once you adapt to not constantly providing an easy source of carbohydrates, it will activate other metabolic pathways. That's when you can go for an extended period without food.

If you want a softer landing, I recommend the 16+8 fasting for a week before diving into multi day fasting. You eat at the latest at 20 (8pm), and not until 12 (12am) the next day. It will take some adapting, but it's better than the headache inducing "withdrawals" you'll feel jumping headfirst into 36h fasting.

Fasting and zero-carb diet have done wonders for me.

By "garbage collect" I assume you mean autophagy. Just ran across this yesterday from the Salk Institute, which looks promising for autophagy [1].

Now, the hypothesis is that fasting is one of the ways we can induce autophagy. The problem is, we have no way to measure autophagy in humans at the moment. That means we can't prove that fasting=autophagy=cancer stopper. It also means we don't know what an effective dose of fasting is (24 hours, 3 days, 5 days, etc.)

Regardless, it seems you are on the right track.

"The Karlseder lab studying the relationship of telomeres to cancer discovered that the cellular recycling process called autophagy—generally thought of as a survival mechanism—actually promotes the death of cells, thereby preventing cancer initiation."

[1] https://www.salk.edu/news-release/in-surprising-reversal-sci...

I'm almost 60. I trained as a s/w engineer / coder in the 1980s and then transitioned in the 90s into a customer-facing consultancy role with good domain knowledge. Here are some specific observations on cognitive / corporate skills and how mine have varied, YMMV

I definitely have more work 'wisdom' and can often spot problems that are not obvious to younger colleagues and even offer workable solutions, albeit not usually in the low level technologies.

I have massively improved self-confidence that sometimes gets me through situations where my own knowledge / competencies are lacking.

I can still learn, e.g. picking up C# and Visual Studio as a hobbyist to implement a Lisp interpreter [0] (I started six weeks ago and am on step 8 of 9 now, working on it in the evenings and rainy weekends). However, I think that it takes me longer to learn than it would have done once. I am definitely slower at navigating user interfaces, especially jumping immediately to a specific but not often used menu item. Younger me would have gone straight there.

Improved search tools / repositories of online information make up for poorer memory of language syntax and APIs. I don't now have access to the code I first wrote to check it's complexity.

Looking at documents I wrote several years ago, I don't think my vocabulary and writing skills have declined significantly.

I have to continually remind myself not to be too dogmatic, especially where my knowledge is potentially out of date, or where I realise that my improved self confidence is masking the fact that I am actually wrong.

[0] https://github.com/kanaka/mal/blob/master/process/guide.md

Much of the advice in the article boils down to keep doing new things, and exposing yourself to new experiences- physical, mental. Significant to me is how little the comments here speak about the note on social groups. It emphasizes a diverse, robust social group. Do I know that many people not in tech? How would I do that?

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