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Comment by waterhouse | Hacker News Reader

I suspect that, if a scientist in his fifties knew that his cognitive function would remain at the same level up to at least age 150, he would be a lot more willing to spend years rethinking things and familiarizing himself with new and better conceptual approaches. Something similar could probably be said about programmers that seem attached to old and allegedly inferior tools.

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Not sure that's how biases work.

Biases are about the interplay of pressures to perform and reform where the comfort of the known is more persuasive than the enticement of the new.

There needs to be the luxury of time and the space to fail, two things we don't have.

The technology of longevity won't fix this problem of culture, sure. But it would make such a fix a lot more meaningful

>> There needs to be the luxury of time and the space to fail, two things we don't have.

But once we have those, won't they be considered not luxurious, instead, standard?

And won't the argument still be that we lack the luxury we need?

I think we should improve the handover instead of pretending there will be no handover.

Basically what you're describing is the tradeoff between exploration and exploitation. Depending on situation in life and age people tend to lean towards one or another.

In more concrete terms, I'm quite persuaded by what I read and see about emacs, but 20 years of vim keeps bringing me back.

I mean seriously, emacs lisp looks so much more sane than vimscript, I've been telling myself to switch for 10 years now...

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