Why do older individuals have greater control of their feelings? | Hacker News Reader

Why do older individuals have greater control of their feelings?

smithsonianmag.com

193 pointspseudolus273 comments

I'm 63 and for me the answer is simple: more self-awareness. I am aware of what thoughts my emotion is in response to. I am aware of how my emotions are cascading other emotions and triggering feelings based on memories of similar circumstances. I am aware of how my emotions are affecting the people around me and how their response is feeding back into my thoughts and feelings. Finally, with self-awareness comes the meta-cognition ability to debug and reprogram my thoughts and feelings. My emotions are often based on something that is not quite true, so stepping back and looking at truth based reality calms them. I developed this ability only recently. I honestly think I was sleepwalking through most of my life being driven to and fro by thoughts and feelings that were difficult to understand.

More reflection, sure. Experience. Humility.

But also less hormones. Young people are hormone-driven action-reaction machines.

I did a course of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and related therapies with young veterans and saw them benefit, although they probably couldn't tell you how it works.

Everyone is just a machine

Yes, we have become very efficient in doing things. What we are doing, we have become so efficient in doing that we don’t need any awareness to do it. It has become mechanical, automatic. We function like robots. We are not men yet; we are machines. That’s what George Gurdjieff used to say again and again, that man as he exists is a machine. He offended many people, because nobody likes to be called a machine. Machines like to be called gods; then they feel very happy, puffed up. Gurdjieff used to call people machines, and he was right. If you watch yourself you will know how mechanically you behave.

http://www.pomyc.org/blog-details/55

The exact quote by Gurdjieff is worth reading.

Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions" dealt with this theme in an extraordinary way. He created a character who was going mad because he felt he was living among robots. At last, his character finds an artist that had a "light" in him, a soul, and the character decides everything is ok. At this point Kurt Vonnegut inserts himself into the narrative (which struck me as extraordinary) and says that he decided not to kill himself because he wrote this story (his mother committed suicide.) This book also helped me become more self-aware.

A machine more commonly known as an "animal" :)

Everyone can be described as machine-like if you apply that particular lens. From a first-person perspective I am pure consciousness operating a meat suit. You may argue that reductive materialism allows you to reduce my claim to one about matter, but the onus is on you to prove materialism -- which I suspect you'll be hard-pressed to do in an HN comment.

I mean, if you accept that the laws of physics are deterministic, don't you sort of have to accept materialism?

I would think the onus would be on you to show a mechanism for the interaction between the physical and the "spiritual" (or whatever you want to call it). In other words, how does this pure consciousness affect things in a purely deterministic physical universe?

But I said specifically "hormone-driven action-reaction machines."

What do you picture in your mind when you think about your emotions? For others, I imagine an aura, colored based on the emotion I’m sensing that they’re feeling. It’s like a light emanating from their body. Inside of myself, I imagine churning liquids vying for dominance at any specific moment.

I think because emotions are so nebulous and not like gears or software programs, my visualization tracks well with how emotions work. For example, if I’m feeling especially elated, it’s like my body is filling with a deep gold that overwhelms any other emotion.

I don't visualize my emotions, although I respond emotionally to color

Agree, but you can only do that if you do the introspection work, like you did. I know some people in your age range who still react like a 20yo.

Yeah - there's some correlation with age just because you're forced to take in some inputs/experience just from existing.

I think there are exceptions though in both directions related to how much you try to directly get better at this kind of thing.

It's worth it I think - you're in your own head your entire life, might as well try to make it a nice place to be.

I'm about half your age and I don't know much about anything but, I think I'd agree based on my experience so far. I realized a while back that I'm some sort of chemical soup and I don't know where my thoughts or emotions even originate from. I don't seem to produce them voluntarily – they just bubble up out of the silence inside me. I have some moment of control, though it doesn't seem very effective a lot of the time. However I fail or succeed appears to be largely determined by abilities I don't have much control over in the first place. I mean, how the hell can I read? Why am I able to speak and understand language? My heart keeps beating, my cells repair themselves, I somehow remember to breathe. I understand math, programming, but none of the internal mechanisms which make that possible.

I've come to the conclusion that my emotions are something to observe a lot before allowing responses, to whatever degree I can accomplish that, because I don't truly understand where they came from or why later on, let alone in the moment. The truth I'm living is a very arbitrary and subjective one at all times.

Like you say, these feelings and reactions are often based on "facts" that aren't really true anyways. Reality is a very thin veil over something I can hardly comprehend the physics or magic of.

If I can manage to develop better temperance and courage to restrain my reactions and questions my thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, I think I'll be pretty content with that. The sense of sleepwalking through life is very apt. I've felt very alive, focused, and attuned to reality at many points in my life while being very much completely out of tune and dead to the rest of the world. I didn't know who I was, what was going on, anything. And I still don't.

Here's to trying to figure it out I guess!

Your ideas are very much in line with Stoicism (I can't control the world, but I can control my reaction to it), the teachings of Jesus Christ (Matthew 6:25-34 lilies of the field), Buddha (Discourse on the Forms of Thought), ancient Hindu wisdom (lookup "Vāsanā" for starts) and modern Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Some people like to focus on one, but I have learned from them all.

I am currently in the process of making a game that focuses on these ideas. It's a 2D fishing, farming, mining and philosophy game. I would like to give people the opportunity to practice a calm and peaceful state of mind by knowing that as people we can choose our thoughts and how we feel. Just as people can get stronger physically with physical exercise, I believe that people can become better at responding, by choosing how they think and feel, rather than reacting to what happens. There may be no tears or laughter in the land of Vulcan but we can certainly feel more joy by choosing how we think and feel.

ok but how many gold coins can I make by selling the trout?

Stoicism is actually what sent me down this path of thought. Something I read, and I wish I could recall, emphasized that the stuff of thought and reason is a fleeting, tenuous, unpredictable thing and prescribed a number of ways to compensate for that.

I was really struck by how true that is and how practical the advice was. Digging deeper into stoicism, I discovered that the dichotomy of control presents a world in which we have a laughably small amount of control over anything at all - including most of the components which make up our ‘selves’. What remains is all that we can ever utilize in order to be virtuous people. There’s not much there to work with, but in its isolation, it’s somehow immense and incredibly difficult to manage at the best of times.

Like you though I find value in several religions and philosophies. Some of the most valuable things I’ve learned have come from a few of them. I’ll have to look into the Hindu Vāsanā - thanks for that.

At age 20 or so, I read a quote in a book (on day trading, IIRC) that went something like: "Master your emotions, or they will master you."

After thinking about it, I realized that despite identifying as a logical-thinking individual, I was nevertheless at the mercy of the more primitive parts of my brain. Sometimes totally, but pretty much all executive functions were influenced by it to a large degree. That might be fine, but my limbic system tended to make poor decisions; ones that my more conscious brain would have to pay the price for later. It's also no match for the brains of people not in emotional mode, and would be taken advantage of by things like appeals to emotion in advertising, politics, and rhetoric. I decided my internal caveman was not my friend, and took steps to sideline his vote in decision-making.

> I decided my internal caveman was not my friend, and took steps to sideline his vote in decision-making.

Could you elaborate on what those steps were?

Probably the same as changing any behavior: First try to notice when you're doing the thing you don't want to be doing, then try to abort when you find yourself doing it. The time between "start" and "abort" will keep getting shorter, and eventually you'll not do it in the first place.

Sounds like the ACT Matrix

I settled on the triune brain model as a good-enough approximation for my needs in relation to this (whether it's factually accurate is another issue). I would then categorize my thoughts and subsequent actions based on that model (mainly limbic vs. neocortex). It's pretty easy to tell them apart with some high-level introspection. Then, I'd short-circuit any emotional thinking once I spotted myself engaging in it, and injecting rational thought into those times when the limbic system would normally be in control. I'd spent decades of life not doing this, so it took a long time for this to not feel weird, but eventually it became natural.

Once the big reactive emotions (e.g. anger) were dealt with, I turned attention to the more subtle influences. I think there's a middle ground of thoughts that are a more complex or a mix of emotional and rational (think things like national pride, identity, career progression). That's a harder job and a more involved topic. In fact, I can't say I've completely got that done, or even fully mastered the first part. The caveman is always there, of course, and perhaps the best you can hope for is restraining him.

This seems weird and bad. Emotion and "reason" aren't two ends of a spectrum. You likely aren't any more logical or less emotional now than you were before.

I believe you about better control over how you engage with your emotional responses but damn dude. If you were just getting too mad at stuff they got therapy for that you don't hafta roll your own psychic amputations these days.

> If you were just getting too mad at stuff they got therapy for that

CBT being the most popular kind. In CBT you detect negative emotional reasoning, categorise it, and refute it by coming up with a more rational response.

See the pattern?

This is such an important realization. And when you have it and then think back in your life to the failed relationships you've had (personal and professional) it's usually very staggering the degree to which your caveman sabotaged you.

Learn this lesson young, and you will save yourself decades of squandered time.

Most people never appreciate the degree to which their emotions sabotage their lives.

If I ever got something beneficial out of meditation, it was that feelings and thoughts come and go and do not have to necessarily be listened to. I didn't realise this until I was in my early 20s, and looking back, there were so many regretful moments as a result of just doing whatever feelings and thoughts dictated I should do in any given moment.

Being able to view your thoughts and feelings in an abstract, manageable way is incredibly important.

Yep meditation is great at helping you laugh at the absurdity of your thoughts and the realization they're totally fleeting along with the emotions they bring. Now, I can just think to myself that emotion will be gone in a few hours/days/etc. and I don't need to obsess about it, just let it be. It's absolutely true too.

The phrase, “This too, shall pass,” can be bittersweet at times, but also comforting. Although some feelings can be so intense that it is difficult to think thoughts that move me back to baseline, the clock keeps ticking and new experiences inevitably flood in. One thing I think about a lot is that we generally can’t “remember” what pain feels like, which helps sometimes.

Whole heartedly agree with this post. I didn't start meditating until my mid-20s and am just grateful to have discovered the practice at all.

Instead of swimming in your thoughts/emotions all day, meditation teaches you how temporary and fleeting they are. This helps you detach from them and not take your own thoughts so personally (if that makes sense). It's like you have a 50,000 foot view above your thoughts as they come and go.

Imo there's a strong tendency for people working in tech/business or with high ambition in general to suppress their emotions as they affect the decision making. However, I'd rather make suboptimal decisions if that means a richer life, deeper connections and a stronger sense of wonder. Trying to be as logical, rational as possible makes life dull and mechanical. In the end as Kierkegaard said, "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.".

Some might say that the true sense of beauty and wonder cones from doing how similar those two opposite ends of the spectrum actually can be

Who might say that and what would we have to do for them to commit to it?

Are you saying it? Because I don't think it's true at all! But I want to wait until someone actually say it before I get into that.

Thanks for the invitation but I'm not looking to argue about it. Peace!

Yes this is one of the great advantages of the "some might say" move, love that shit.

Even if you approach life logically, and see it as a problem, the question remains: what does the solution look like? Money in the bank, active sex life, dozens of adoring grand children, popularity, achievement, status, a long life?

These ideas enter our rational faculties from below.

They are the caveman's goals, and the rational layer of our being is just a means to that end.

There's a difference between suppression and realizing you have a choice on whether to follow that emotion. Obviously, suppression is bad but so is allowing yourself to get completely wrapped up in it. You can let that emotion just float there in the "background" and continue on.

Kierkegaard's idea of "repetition" actually speaks very directly to the topic of this larger discussion. Many ways to interpret his writings here, and I am no trained philosopher, but he seems to write about how repetition is not truly possible - that encountering a once-new thing for a subsequent time is tainted by recollection - dulling the experience essentially. I think he also suggests that cultivating a certain mindset can re-novelize life but I am thinking not many achieve that.

I debated where to attach a comment and decided that here would be as valid as elsewhere in the nearby tree. But, some of my response is more broad than to your comment...

I think that the ancestor and related messages imply various false dichotomies of logical+rational versus rich+emotional, problem solving versus experiencing, or a more ambiguous "spectrum". Likewise, you somewhat conflate several: novel versus familiar, pure versus tainted, bright or rich versus dull. These are not clear basis vectors of some abstract space but more confusing and muddled aspects of some perceptual space with an unknown number of dimensions shaped by the first person witness.

In the spirit of the broader topic, I think part of aging and becoming a master of your emotions is to recognize the imprecision and false allure of these metaphors. Ignorance is not bliss; it can be bliss or fear. Novelty is not wonder; it can be wonder or horror. And of course, ignorance or novelty can be boring or desensitizing too! Your state and perspective can drastically change the subjective experience, as can any number of external factors omitted from such trite labels.

The notion of not being able to repeat something is also embedded in how I've seen people, without intending any direct reference to the Thomas Wolfe novel, often use the adage "you can never go home again". I would say most people seem to mean that the observer/traveler has changed and cannot experience home the same way, though of course the place/inhabitants and relationships also change. The whole "home" experience is fleeting or even illusory. Conversely, someone can find "home" wherever they go, if they can establish sufficient conditions. I think Wolfe was aware of all of these factors.

Ironically, emotion as a biological system seems to be all about repetition and heuristics for prompting behaviors given the "same" conditions. And it's not just emotion. So much of perception and cognition is based in an illusion of permanence and identity for abstract concepts. Concepts that don't necessarily exist in the actual chaotic environment within which we are living.

Yes. An easy observation to make when the highly rational and logical person in the room gets angry. Particularly when they're angered by others non-rationality. As if being angry is a rational response or a useful one.

I think we read the same book. Probably "Trading in the Zone" or one of those. I never ended up day trading much, but I sure as hell got that message loud and clear.

"Mastering your emotions" if you mean, controlling your emotions, is not balanced or healthy. Mastering your emotions means listening to them as a critical feedback to your environment and then rationally controlling your response.

Rational thought is complimentary to emotional thought. Rational thought is slow, reflexive, and highly focused. Emotional thought is affective; it is your mind telling you how something is affecting you.

E.g. Anger tells you some boundary has been violated. It's the rational part that allows you to analyze that feeling and respond appropriately (telling someone to back off or getting a snack because your blood sugars are low)

Anger usually tells me that my expectations are too high, or that my patience is wearing thin, and that I should improve it.

This practice of self-reflection after anger over the decades has turned into a life where I am very rarely angry, and life is incredibly enjoyable.

You're making assumptions about what "mastering your emotions" mean.

Imagine a river. Controlling the river in the way you suggest is like throwing obstacles in the river trying to dam it.

But instead, imagine trying to redirect the river instead. You don't fight the flow, you just move it.

My entirely unscientific theory is that like other cells, we're born with a limited number of fucks in our body.

When we're young, we (instinctively, subconsciously) feel like our fucks reserves are plentiful, so we give a fuck about a lot of stuff.

As we get older, our reservoir of fucks gets progressively depleted. The fucks are rarer, so we give a fuck less and less often. I've recently turned 40 and I can definitely feel this in myself; just like recovery from workouts takes a little longer than when I was 20, I don't give a fuck about things so easily.

By the time you're officially old, you're almost out of fucks, so it's not like you don't give a fuck because you don't want to, but because it's more difficult physically (harvesting of the last fucks takes more energy, because biology).

Brb, submitting to Nature.

I think what you're describing is more down to desensitisation through exposure to stressful environments.

When you're younger smaller problems seem larger because you've not been desensitised to larger problems. As you progress through life you generally experience greater stress and thus the smaller problems feel smaller. You could look at it like desensitisation to capsicum, salt, violence or pornography.

That's preposterous! I'm sticking to my "fucks are finite and biologically limited" theory. I'll use the TED talk to promote my upcoming self-help book around this mind-blowing new theory.

Surprisingly relevant to my post from last year, actually titled "Fucks are finite": https://halgir.com/fucks-are-finite/

Reminded me of this song "I've No More F**s To Give!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqbk9cDX0l0

this definition of "fucks" appears to be the time derivative of the "fucks" mentioned earlier.

Be careful, Malcolm Gladwell may steal your comment for a book and then blame you when science debunks it.

Explanation for those out of the loop?

Gladwell tends to pick up on interesting and plausible sounding assertions that are often poorly backed up by actual research and weave compellingly written narrative yarns out of them.

Some people on here have an obsessive hatred for Malcolm Gladwell.

More realistically a TEDx talk.

Disillusionment is real. Before you have achieved success you think that it is really important to succeed. Once you have succeeded, or see other people succeed, you realize that some of the happiest people are not "successful".

This is a great example of why defining of one's goals is important. To be one of the "happiest people" would be a worthy goal, but the young don't think of the game of life like that.

Babies in particular cry so much because whatever discomfort they’re experiencing is literally the worst thing that’s ever happened to them.

The thing with babies is that evolution comes in play here, and they often cry for no (internal) reason whatsoever... More crying = more parent attention = better rate of survival. I wonder when does this effect cut off.

There’s nothing funnier than seeing your toddler harmlessly fall, he thinks no one saw it, he goes on about his day, then a few seconds later makes eye contact with you and only then starts crying.

Or: Toddler falls and, while lying on floor, carefully searches for an audience before deciding whether to let loose with a howl.

Conversely, they must be in an almost constant state of wonder. When was the last time you or I saw a new color for the first time? Their threshold for amazement and "this is literally the best thing I've seen in my entire life" is also much lower!

I’m 44 and still in amazement of our reality.

Babies cry because they can't speak or walk or open food bottles or take off their diapers.

I am of the belief that when there is no conflict people will invent it. I think outrage culture sweeping the US right now is part of that.

The people who are most susceptible to this are in fact disproportionately young and inexperienced. Virtually nobody I know from meatspace behaves the way virtually everybody on Twitter seems to behave, for example.

Thomas Benjamin Wild Esq. puts it eloquently:

https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=Vqbk9cDX0l0

Reminds me of the theory I read somewhere - we all have so many words in us and when we use them up, we die. Think it might have been Vonnegut but can't find the source at the moment.

Also stated "those who don't know speak, those who do know don't speak"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-waMtGtxAdg

No doubt there's some of that.

Perspective is another other thing.

Once you start to see how the world works, and how complicated things are, you're a lot less likely to fire off about some specific issue.

Radicalism is the posture of those who want to externalize all the side effects of their utopianism, and when you're older it gets harder to not see second-order effects for what they are.

Radicalism can also be a reaction to systems that claim to be perfect but unsurprisingly fail, on the other hand.

Yes of course, but those systems I think most people don't believe are perfect.

Weirdly, it may take a kind of 'irrational populism' to nudge the needle a few points to just get 'basic change' which is a real paradox.

That doesn't matter, most people don't bump into the imperfections, but some inevitably do, and you can't fault those for getting angry, especially if there was a possibility for another option if the "perfect" system didn't stand in the way.

That, combined with the wisdom one gains from having spent many fucks on the wrong things. When you examine the fucks you gave 10 or 20 years ago, you realize how clueless you were.

Careful, your radical theory could spawn a new cottage industry of snake oils! Fuck restorative juice blends and creams, fuck focusing crystals, a Gwyneth Paltrow book on giving clean fucks so as to not overly deplete your limited reserve of fuck giving.

> Fuck restorative juice blends and creams

Hey, I already get half a dozen emails about these in my spam folder every day.

I don't know, under the right conditions I could give no fucks too: like financial independence. I'm sure being financially independent helps.

This is hilarious and yet right on the money in some way.

As you get older, you start to see that everything is the same and goes through cycles. The important stuff of my childhood (ex: having clothes that were sewhar fashionable), becomes irrelevant. Who cares if I'm wearing the same style of sandals for over 20 years now? You start to focus on what's more important to you. F** are reserved for important matters like arguing on HN about the superiority of Linux :).

When you see a child have a meltdown over not having their favorite bath towel available, you start to see how widening your scope means less care for minor problems. I have no time to worry about those things as I have bigger problems (working on marriage, work due dates, educating my kid...etc). It makes one wonder how chill an immortal being would be after milennia.

The last thing you wrote is something I indirectly think about quite a lot. Imagine a place (call it heaven if you want) where time and death don’t exist. What could you possibly care about?

Caring doesn't need to be negative only. IMHO You can care about love even if you're immortal, and you care about losing it even though you went through it all bazillion times already, as each person is unique and the feelings you lose are still lost and the loss is still painful.

Babylon 5 had a neat episode (spoilers) where the first living being (in his corporeal form) has a conversation with one of the human commanders and says something about love being a remarkable gift/illusion for mortals that they should treasure.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0OI4kah6Rp4

This is addressed really interestingly in The Good Place. It starts off looking like a very by-the-book sitcom though, so you do need to wait it out a bit.

It’s a philosophy class masquerading as a sitcom. I liked the show a lot. And props to them for ending the show when it needed to. They could have dragged it out but didn’t.

Glad to hear it ended. Death isn't always bad.

> They could have dragged it out but didn’t.

I've watched the show and loved it, and I've heard this compliment before, but only just now have I realized how meta this compliment is.

In the novel Permutation City by Greg Egan, people deal with this by editing their memory every once in a while so that every experience feels fresh. One guy even edits his personality so he becomes obsessed with something for a random amount of time and then abruptly loses interest.

Recommend you experience 17776 [0][1] if you haven't, it explores this theme in a pretty hilarious way.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17776 [1] https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football

I've deliberately cultivated this.

As I often as I remember I adopt the perspective of someone who's 14,000 years old.

I don't know why I haven't died, and at this point I don't expect to at anytime in the future.

But I don't know I won't - so I'm still careful, and grateful.

But I don't let things bother me, because I've seen it before. And all my plans are long-term, because centuries to me are the same as quarters for you.

It seems crazy, but it's really changed how I think. I got the idea after watching the incredible movie, "The Man From Earth"

"You think that thing you're worried about is going to matter in the long term? THINK, Mark, THINK!"

My crass response to people being finicky or indecisive about dinner plans is, “You do realize that whatever we pick is just going to be shit out by tomorrow right?”

Most of it's breathed out (unless it's fibre-heavy).

This is fun. You often people say “death gives life meaning” which is absurd, as if the meat and potatoes of day-to—day obligations, chores, hobbies and friendships are influenced in any way by the fact that the chain of experiences will eventually end. I don’t imagine that I’m 14ky old, but I do make decisions as if I might never die, and if I do, I try to keep in mind the implications for my as-yet-nonexistent grandchildren.

You are practicing eastern philosophy :)

The Man From Earth is wonderful. The best ultra-low budget movie IMO.

No way, you guys really like this movie? It's a good idea, terribly executed. The worst acting I have seen in a long time, gaping plot holes that makes you shake your head in disbelief. I was very disappointed.

Agreed the movie was great.

> Imagine a place (call it heaven if you want) where time and death don’t exist. What could you possibly care about? Mathematics!

plushpuffin (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27132468) mentions Greg Egan's Permutation city, and this sort of question is one of his main themes. In Diaspora, Egan explores many other possible answers; my favourite of the possible answers there, and I suspect also his, is that eventually one would occupy oneself with mathematics in such a place.

Mr Egan would be a little biased with that answer :)

Apologies for incorrectly including "Mathematics!" in the quote; it was meant to be the first line of my answer, but I only noticed my formatting error after the edit window had closed. The post should have read:

> Imagine a place (call it heaven if you want) where time and death don’t exist. What could you possibly care about?

Mathematics!

plushpuffin (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27132468) mentions Greg Egan's Permutation City, and this sort of question is one of his main themes. In Diaspora, Egan explores many other possible answers; my favourite of the possible answers there, and I suspect also his, is that eventually one would occupy oneself with mathematics in such a place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU0PYcCsL6o

I read somewhere that because people don't live that long, we don't have a collective memory of previous disasters or pandemics (anyone who was alive today during the 1918 pandemic wouldn't really remember it), so human history simply happens in cycles or waves. The underlying conflict is the same, but a new set of humans deal with it with the technological tools of the day.

Simply put, if the human lifespan were longer, we might give less fucks about natural disasters because we've seen them before.

> I read somewhere that because people don't live that long, we don't have a collective memory of previous disasters or pandemics (anyone who was alive today during the 1918 pandemic wouldn't really remember it)

I’m splitting hairs, but aren’t these two separate problems?

If I lived 1,000 years, I’m not sure I’d be able to remember things that happened 200 years ago super well. I can’t remember things that happened 20 years ago very well.

The assumption that I'm going under (I assume others as well) is that if we can halt aging, we might be able to do something with memory as well.

Although I kinda personally believe (more on hope than any technology being available) that we can move to a non biological medium with nearly infinite storage, speed of light processing speed, effective immortality...etc. The only needs would be entertainment and energy.

Of course, we have zero idea if that is even possible.

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel) There was an article about Dune on DLF (sorry it‘s in German) that makes exactly this point https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/denken-ueber-tausend-generati...

> What could you possibly care about?

Competition/drama with other immortals? Competition with past selves? Assuming no memory wipes.

Context switches could be annoying, given the ability to tangent across infinite time or space.

> F* are reserved for important matters like arguing on HN about the superiority of Linux :)

I thought you said you were tired of chasing fashions. ;p

> F* are reserved for important matters like arguing on HN about the superiority of Linux :).

Linux has already taken over the world. Your advocacy energy is wasted on it.

Direct it toward promoting Rust instead :)

Bahaha :)

I discovered a similar thought the first time in the amazing science fiction novel Schismatrix by Bruce Sterling:

"Lindsay glanced at one wall and was paralyzed at the sight of his own clan's founder, Malcolm Lindsay. As a child, the dead pioneer's face, leering in ancestral wisdom from the tops of dressers and bookshelves, had filled him with dread. Now he realized with a painful leap of insight how young the man had been. Dead at seventy. The whole habitat had been slammed up in frantic haste by people scarcely more than children. He began laughing hysterically.

'It's a joke!' he shouted. The laughter was melting his head, breaking up a logjam of thought in little stabbing pangs.

[...]

'It's a joke,' Lindsay said. His tongue was loose now and the words gushed free. 'This is unbelievable. These poor fools had no idea. How could they? They were dead before they had a chance to see! What's five years to us, what's ten, a hundred—' "

Less about the energy to give fucks and more about having better things to give fucks about. Personally at least, I used to give a fuck about every damn thing - from the slightest perceived insult to the way rice is cooked. These days I have better/bigger things to give a fuck about. I brush off even real insults and eat two day old rice just fine.

Er, I hope it’s not at room temp otherwise you might get food poisoning.

You may have to reduce the amount of Fs you give.

While I usually keep my rice warm instead, I take it you’ll be here all week.

I’ve seen a lot of people age and slowly lose the ability to control their emotions as well, so Im not exactly sure what’s the ratio of bettering or worsening of emotion control.

But generally I agree with the idea that that wisdom collects with time and experiences lived and so emotional expense is better controlled along with aging.

From my experince, at a smillar age (41), I reserve my fucks for more important events so your take on fucks fits me quite well, I generally give a lot less of them.

This totally depends on the type of people around you and the kinds of knocks you have taken and survived in life.

It can go the other way.

I'm not sure it's a discrete limited number of fucks, just the novelty wears off - after so many heartbreaks, surprises good and bad - you know you've seen something similar before and they slowly loose their power.

I think you may have just defined fucks.

I agree with your assessment. I believe it is an application of Spoon theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory

I don't know if I'm getting older or the years of beer drinking have caught up on me.

But emotions don't feel as raw/immediate as they used to feel when I was younger.

The thing about getting older is that you come with terms with the fact that you have limited control over life. You have only control on yourself, and this not absolute because you may get a decease that's pretty random, although your lifestyle heavily affects your well being. Outside of yourself everything else is kinda out of your influence. It's good to keep tabs on what's going on with the world in an attempt to better prepare for hardship, but the more you let go the happier you become.

Another way to put it is that as you get older you start prioritizing things better that are of value to you as your time in existence is being depleted. Less time means more focus, which results in less fucks.

I love your theory. Resonates with me.

> My entirely unscientific theory is that like other cells, we're born with a limited number of fucks in our body.

lol. Well, there you have it.

Perhaps the outrage component advertises breeding potential in young humans, kind of like thick hair.

In the end, it's all bene caca et irrima medicos.

Lol, that's both a hilarious and great model for sure.

But I wonder, it seems to me doomers lost their fuck faster. Is it because they have fewer initial fucks? Or is it because they lose fuck overtime even if they don't a fuck about something? Or every time everybody else gives a fuck a doomer gives two?

I would like to think of it as a Bias term. The older I become the larger the Bias and the fewer fucks I give. I wish I could have performed some transfer learning to my younger self, his life would have been much easier.

As an aside I feel this is a wonderful anthem for life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqbk9cDX0l0

I respectfully disagree. As a reluctant member of the "older individuals" I too find myself giving a boatload less fucks than I used to, but the main reasons are (in no particular order):

1. I have got my crippling Generalized Anxiety Disorder under control

2. I have realized that I used to give way too many fucks about shit that didn't matter at all, and it was not worth it and actually detrimental

Mind you, those 2 are highly correlated and of interdependent causation.

What got me here:

Therapy didn't help.

Manson's book "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck" helped quite a bit, but was not "the thing".

Articles on "Don't be a victim...." "Don't play the victim...." and similar helped.

What helped immensely is to start blogging daily, and more often than daily, about the events in my life, my thinking, my reactions starting from the points of view that:

A) I am accountable for what happens to me

B) I am 100% wrong when something unpleasant happens to me

And that, in the course of a few month, changed my life in tangible manners.

While I am not a snowflake, I am a special case: I started low, very low; and - IMHO - I have come a long way in the Depression/Anxiety/Being_a_loser scale.

I do believe that to some degree something similar happens to most everyone who doesn't start for the same ultra-low point as me, with time we learn that when young we were wrong to give too many fucks about too many things.

But guess what? Giving way too many fucks about too many things is good for:

Business: Facebook, iPhone & Co

Politicians: from left to right

Religions: all of them (except for The Dude)

And that's why the messagings that we are bombarded with aim at reinforcing giving too many fucks about too many things (aka Anxiety) and the messagings aimed at kids/teenagers aim to create and instill Anxiety.

Mic drop.

Do you have any tips for getting Generalized Anxiety Disorder under control? At least point in the right direction?

acceptance

Mainly this:

> What helped immensely is to start blogging daily, and more often than daily, about the events in my life, my thinking, my reactions starting from the points of view that:

> A) I am accountable for what happens to me

> B) I am 100% wrong when something unpleasant happens to me

> And that, in the course of a few month, changed my life in tangible manners.

And also:

I am reading about Rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) specifically:

How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything-yes, Anything!

How to Keep People from Pushing Your Buttons

A guide to rational Living

Very interesting! Can you elaborate on "B) I am 100% wrong when something unpleasant happens to me"? Not sure what you mean by this exactly.

Something unpleasant happens: I do the analysis from the starting point that I am 100% wrong. Of course as I go along, most often, I realize that - while partially responsible - I am not 100% wrong, but there is some wrongdoing on my part, if not just in the way I reacted/responded, and/or the depth/breadth of my reaction/responses.

For instance, when Anxiety flares up due to some trigger, I might ruminate and have insomnia.

Ever ask why? Well... it's about giving way too many fucks. Shit happened. So? Who's responsible for ruminating and losing sleep? Me, myself and I. 100% my bad. Of course I am not responsible for the event, but I am responsible for letting it make me ruminating / insomniac.

And seeking an external solution like meds, or therapy, or a therapist or whatnot it's just a copout. And if taken to an extreme it might develop into victim mentality and hence a self fulfilling prophecy.

This works for me. I am not blaming any victims out there, at times I have mentioned this personal attitude of mine only to be accused of "blaming victims the world over". NOPE. This is about me.

I am no martyr either, but I see out there, and I was guilty myself, to use as a starting point the stance that I was either right or immune to any finger-pointing. Starting from "I am 100% wrong" is just a different stance, a different starting point. Needs not to be the end of it, the process of reasoning is the journey the leads to bettering oneself.

I was going to say "Over time one just doesn't care anymore" but you did it way better. Thank you for that.

When I was younger thing seemed so black and white. The older I get the more I see that everything is shades of gray. Everything is more nuanced. I say "it depends" a lot more than I would have when I was younger.

Plus, I've been around long enough to realize that what seems really important and earth shattering right now will probably not even make it into the footnotes of history. Very little is worth getting worked up over.

Plus, I have so many more responsibilities taking my attention combined with not having the energy of youth that I simply don't have the ability to care about anything above the very most important things.

One of the interesting results from psychology is that emotions are a complicated feedback loop from stimulus, around through the body, back to the feeling, but critically involving bodily response, not just states of the brain. I've personally experienced "feeling anxious" simply because my heart was beating too quickly for purely physiological reasons. (I've had some heart troubles.) Once I addressed those reasons, the anxiety faded with it. This is a handwave in the direction of this research and ideas, not an explanation of it; consult the web if you're interested in more.

I propose something that neither the article nor anyone else is in the comments so far, which is that we age, our bodies simply get less physical about the emotions. It makes it easier to be more level if your body is literally being more level, and the aforementioned feedback loop is literally weaker. Everything else gets weaker in old age, why not the physiological strength of emotions, too?

I think it's simple: Perspective, and emotional fatigue.

The first time <insert good thing> happens to you, you might be overwhelmed with excitement and joy. The 85th time, not so much. Hopefully you still appreciate it, but for the same dramatic response, the reward center needs more. Anything that happens to you 85 times isn't special enough to be life-changing, by definition.

The first time <insert bad thing> happens to you, you might be crushed. By the 5th time it happens to you, or you've seen it happen to others, you are just kind of immune. You know bad things happen, and you either decide to move forward or you do not.

Interestingly though: seeing someone else experience the now-banal-to-you positive thing can be it's own reward. Watching a child's first taste of ice cream is somehow magical. Or a puppy's first experience of snow.

And we try to have patience for the corresponding first-negative experiences too. A child who does not get exactly what they wanted for dinner, or who must go home from the park earlier than he or she might like...

(Examples above intentionally light-weight. There are real bad things that happen to people, but the level of emotional energy elicited by the trivialities can be enormous!)

If this were the whole story, it would mean that a man who had been in a coma his whole life up to 60 would have the same emotional control as a little kid. For example, he would cry at losing a board game. That's very hard to believe.

I'm pretty sure the difference between old people and young people is mostly just energy. Old people can't feel intense emotions for the same reason they can't run a marathon. They just get fatigued too easily.

That's an interesting idea. I wonder if there is any data on that sort of thing.

Anecdotally, though much less dramatically: When my Mom switched from glasses to contact lenses (and received an improved prescription), her sense of happiness and wonder at being able to see the details of tree leaves, etc, is something that I still remember a few decades later.

Personally I just don't give a shit. I still get upset the same way as I did decades ago, but it's just not worth my time and energy to get all up in arms about most things that are upsetting to me.

On most things I either know nothing I will do or say will make a positive impact, or I know the issue will take care of itself or someone else is taking care of it, just not right at this very moment. So why bother. I have better things to do with my life. Like lie down on my couch and binge watch Golden Girls.

I make an exception on things endangering the well being of my wife and kids.

Older and wiser? Or older and lazier?

...or does lazier == wiser?

Golden Girls?

Independent of any biological or hormonal causes, I can think of several reasons why older folks might be more even keeled merely by virtue of where they are in their life span:

1. The more experiences you have, the less likely any new experience is to be an extreme outlier. A toddler has the best and worst day of their life once a month or so. A twenty-something every couple of years. By your sixties, there's a good chance that most of the extreme emotional outliers are all in your past.

So when you're going through something that would overwhelm a younger person, it's likely you can correctly say, "Eh, I've been through worse." And that realization, and the memory of what it was like after it is itself an emotional buffer. It's hard to feel like your world is falling apart when you clearly remember yourself putting it back together once before.

2. The stakes for your decisions are lower. When you're a teen, it feels like every decision can radically alter the course of your life. Maybe that after school sport becomes your scholarship ticket to an expensive college. Your major determines your career. Deciding whether to go to that party could mean meeting the love of your life of not. The butterfly effect iterated future ahead of scales the magnitude of every single thing you do. But when you're older, there is simply less time for that scaling to occur. No decision a seventy-year-old makes will change the course of their life radically for the next sixty years because, well, they don't have sixty years. Most bets are thus relatively safer.

3. Your existence is more secure. By the time you reach middle age, you likely (though not definitely) have accumulated skills, experience, a social network, job contacts, a career, and wealth. You live in a pretty well-feathered nest, able to withstand most bouts of bad weather.

It's perspective. Young people have little perspective, by definition. They can't predict how things will play out, or what the consequences of various actions will be on an emotional level.

You can try to gain perspective by doing things like reading realistic novels or realism-based historical studies (as opposed to the morality tales so in vogue today). I think this type of vicarious emotional absorption is the best that young people can do if they are actively trying to improve their perspective. But then you are at the mercy of how accurately the author or historian is portraying life -- older people can detect "false notes" more easily, and I see many false notes when I watch media or listen to music, some so egregiously false as to classify those works as deception. Then you can get into a situation where your emotional depth is getting worse with time because you are learning things vicariously that aren't accurately describing how life works.

But most people will eventually come to have enough authentic emotional experiences as to be able to gain some depth, e.g. perspective, even if they have consumed a lot of false vicarious experiences. In fact, those authentic experience might be incredibly jarring. I've heard that Ruskin had lots of sexual issues in his life because he was trained to work with sculptures of naked women with no pubic hair or realistic features, and was shocked when he saw an actual (non-idealized) nude woman. He may never have managed to purge himself of the false notes he absorbed as a young art student.

When a brand new CS student who has never written a program, or has only written a handful of exercises, are thrown into a large codebase, you expect them to make poor decisions. That's why their work is supervised. Not because they lack intelligence, but because they lack perspective. They are not thinking of how X will be maintained over time, or the consequences of creating some dependencies, etc. Over time, they acquire that perspective and make better decisions, at which point they need less supervision and can eventually supervise others.

So it is with everything that requires the exercise of judgement, whether writing code or handling your emotions or finances, or relationships. It takes time to acquire sufficient perspective to exercise good judgement. This is why historically nations had committees of elders who could block laws deemed reckless, and why traditionally young people were not allowed to vote and only gradually were entrusted with privileges that required the exercise of judgement such as signing contracts.

Is it even true? There is a common stereotype of "older individuals", at least in the US, as cranky and irritable. Stereotypes aren't truth, but I think we've all encountered at least some examples of this.

I'm not actually sure that contradicts the article, which takes a somewhat specific view of "control". But I've just spent four years dealing with a very prominent older individual who seemed to have absolutely zero control over his feelings, and also seemed to bring out a very large cohort of similar individuals.

It's a statistical observation.

And the President/salesman/actor/demagogue is not a representative sample of psychological behavior.

Not are his "cohort" largely his own age.

I think there might be an inflection point where someone transitions from "personal sovereignty" through a gradual decline of choices and capabilities. Sort of a movement to more dependence on others. Could be a bumpy ride for a bit.

Hormones go down and we get more experienced with all the crap life throws at everybody. Older folks tend to know themselves much better and also what they want in life, what actually matters and what is shallow bullsh*t.

Enough reasons to be chill just about everything

Yeah, I'm surprised that the article seems to just ignore the role of hormones. There's certainly a decline in testosterone as men age [1]:

> Total testosterone levels fall at an average of 1.6% per year whilst free and bioavailable levels fall by 2%–3% per year ... [t]wenty percent of men aged over 60 have total testosterone levels below the normal range and the figure rises to 50% in those aged over 80.

I know there's been a lot of pushback on the idea that testosterone is just a masculine hormone, but the link between testosterone and aggression [2] seems pretty well-accepted. So it seems reasonable that declining testosterone might make you more even-keeled.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2544367/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone#Aggression_and_cr...

Or it could just be that in societies, where aggression is rewarded with social status, testosterone will increase aggression because it increases the thrive for social status:

> The relationship between testosterone and aggression may also function indirectly, as it has been proposed that testosterone does not amplify tendencies towards aggression but rather amplifies whatever tendencies will allow an individual to maintain social status when challenged. In most animals, aggression is the means of maintaining social status. However, humans have multiple ways of obtaining social status. This could explain why some studies find a link between testosterone and pro-social behaviour if pro-social behaviour is rewarded with social status. Thus the link between testosterone and aggression and violence is due to these being rewarded with social status.

They are but they are not by default. I've seen old people that cant control their emotions.

1.Experience : Every situation is new when you are young therefore much more stressful/emotional.

2.Hormones : obvious but an 80yo is not getting the same surge of adrenaline for things as a 20yo.

3.Control : Old people general have money, options, connections, safety nets. Much easier to stay unemotional when something cant affect you.

There didn't need a PHD for that....

I experienced my worst emotionally stressfull events at age of 39 and 55. The latter was harder, and the trauma is not really healed after three years. Everything that you can say shortly about feelings and age is going to be badly oversimplified.

The older you get, the more you've experienced and the less any individual moment represents of your accumulated life.

When you are a child of like 5, a year represents 20% of your entire life. When you don't get that toy. That is literally the worst thing that's happened in your life up to that point. You have absolutely no frame of reference. You don't even have the capability to imagine and compare hypotheticals. You are unaware they even exist.

As you get older, you get more experience, you become capable of hypothetical thinking and comparing events to things you haven't directly experienced. And, any given year is less of your total lifespan.

That's what we call maturity, that ability to reference our own experience. That's why children who have experienced great trauma seem more mature. Because they've been given experiences we don't expect even adults to handle alone. Like kids in cancer wards. They're mostly chill because not getting a lollipop after chemo is kind of insignificant to, you know, having cancer.

It's also a perspective we lose as we get older. We don't remember what it's like to not have that life experience. Not really. I can remember being really disappointed at not getting that really sweet Lego space set when I was 9 or 10, but I can't really feel it again. I look back on that kid as almost someone else. Even though I feel as much myself now as I did then.

Practice, lots of practice. Also, natural selection has a way of deprioritizing people who are emotionally unstable.

What was that bit from The Breakfast Club? "When you grow up, your heart dies."

I believe several factors are in play.

First, instinctual self-regulation of cycles. It seems that babies need to figure out how to sleep on a regular basis, but eventually they "settle down." Similarly, I suspect that the outbursts of childhood self-regulate, without reflection.

I also consider conscious self-reflection. In the American remake of La Femme Nikita, one character adopts another's line, "I never did mind the little things" as a response to provocation. Mine has been "Well, this is hardly the worst thing that has happened to me."

Which leads into the third factor -- the more we experience, the greater breadth of experience we have and so we have greater highs and lower lows against which to compare our current experiences.

Fourth, declining energy levels. We get tired as we grow older. It becomes easier to deprioritize simply because we must spend our limited reserves on other things.

All of this sounds reasonable, but I do wonder, in the pallor of middle age, about the idea that your heart dies. Just a little.

The biggest change I noticed was having a kid. It’s like there’s been a process running in my head since birth called “affects me?” A few months after kiddo, there’s a new process, “affects kid?” The new process seems to have taken a third to a half of the resources the first was using. Much of what bothered me doesn’t affect the kid so I don’t care nearly as much.

Because when you’re young, your feelings control you. So you end up doing and saying things that don’t actually serve your own interests, or those of people around you. Also because when you’re young you don’t yet know that certain displays of, or acting out of, impulsive emotions, isn’t acceptable in our society.

So over time, to stop fucking your own life up, your progressively learn to say less, to hold your tongue, to decide later, to consider things from the perspective of others, to reserve and hold back. To give things time and think before acting or talking. To give people the benefit of the doubt. You earn that things are likely to change so there’s less reason to respond in an extreme manner to right now.

You learn that you’re not as important as you think you were when you were younger.

Natural selection. At a young age, some people know how to control their feelings, others don't. The ones who can't then die from road rage or similar, leaving only the ones with at least a modicum of self control in the older age groups.

Basically, it's survivor bias, but literally.

How many people do you think die from road rage (or similar) annually? How do you account for all the people who couldn’t handle their emotions when young and now can when older?

All the older people who go on tantrums at retail and food service workers throw a monkey into this theory.

Nah, natural selection sometimes works slowly, and it's not infallible, it's all about probabilities. Old people who are angry throws a wrench in the original statement, not this explanation of it.

Alternatively, your brain is way more 'energetic' when you are younger. You feel things more strongly, can be over whelmed with all the competing signals and are inexperienced.

Maturity does reduce the sensitivity and improve the focus (e.g. pruning of the neocortex). But I also think experience helps too e.g. Knowing your body is feeling anger you are experienced enough to walk away or not send that email. 'Not giving a fuck' is also a strategy to avoid harmful repetition of negative memories.

It's just from feeling more right? When I was 9 the best pizza I'd ever had came from a Walmart food court. Now that I'm closer to 30 I'm had a lot more pizza that was far better and far worse than that pizza. If I were to eat that same pizza again it probably wouldnt taste better than any pizza I've ever had.

My experience is informed by past experience. Just like my emotional reaction is informed by past emotional experiences.

I think you're onto something here in certain ways, but the expanding relative emotional scale idea doesn't explain why the young tend to be the thrill-seekers and the old tend to enjoy more of the "simple pleasures" of life.

If the Wal-Mart pizza were the main factor, it seems to me we'd expect to see the reverse: the young would be more content with the simple, but as they got bored over time, they'd seek greater and greater thrills as they aged.

That said, I do think you're right when it comes to a sense of sadness. A middle-schooler is devastated when another student says his shoes are out of style. Someone in their 50s is generally devastated by more substantive things like the death of a child.

Oh interesting. I think the same is true for thrill seeking but there is an added element which is perspective. When I was young I feared little and did stupid things, sometimes to disastrous results. Now I know I could do those stupid things if I'd like but I'm also more aware of the potential results.

Young people know some of the things they are doing are stupid but until you feel it yourself its hard to really know it right?

There is also an element of realizing that certain highs are not actually satisfying in the long term. When I was younger I thought X would make me happy. Now I realize that X is very unlikely to actually improve my overall happiness. Some people never realize this or they stumble into taking drugs which is in some ways does cause them to seek greater thrills/highs but they typically don't make it very long in that lifestyle.

I think it is survivorship bias, those who couldn't control their feelings were more likely self-destruct through a variety of direct and indirect mechanisms.

As an emotional philosopher, I've found that the emotions of guilt and pride don't stop developing until you're in your 60s.

EDIT: No, really, I do philosophy, it focuses on emotion. I don't deserve downvotes for something I've worked for years on[1].

[1]: http://eristicstest.com/

Hey that was fun. I first read your page, and based on descriptions, tried to predict my result. Took test, result was close - same category(row), but other side.(column). Neato.

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it. And yep the category (order) is the big one. But six results didn't really capture it all.

We're too tired to get upset about things.

My personal observation is that emotional control and resilience comes from experience. It comes from being exposed to lots of different emotional triggers.

The times when I’ve been the most emotionally strong have been after my most socially diverse periods

Perhaps the effect is somewhat cumulative

One of my theories is that older people are just as impulsive as younger people, it's just that they have better impulses owing to a superior understanding of the world and other individuals (gained through experience).

They enjoyed and suffered more, so they are not reacting on smaller emotion hits.

I'm 32. Control over my feelings has always been important to me as a way to survive an abusive household when growing up.

I've noticed it has become easier for the following reasons:

* I've been through worse.

* Time flies faster when you're older.

* Having experience means I have an explanation for most of the things I experience around me.

* I can assign words and concepts to what I feel, making it easier to understand what I experience inside of me.

* I've seen people die. I accept death as a possible outcome and rationalize it for what it is: part of life. Like a dreamless sleep, like before I was born, which wasn't so bad.

Data. Older people have more data or results of data processing stored.

How big a role does survivorship bias play? It seemed like in the case of chimpanzees the article sort of implies that the effect "nice and more self-controlled chimpanzees live longer", mattered too?

I wonder what portion of "older people being more emotionally balanced" can be explained by more emotionally balanced people surviving longer in Western society? Sounds like something somebody will have tried to quantify at least in terms of the order of magnitude?

I’m not sure how I interpret this. I am much more apt to show my feelings as I get older. As a kid I would bottle every emotion and attempt stoicism so I didn’t look uncool or embarrassed or sad. These days I will be much more likely to show emotion unless doing so would be some sort of unprofessional or faux pas. To me that feels like the opposite of control of feelings.

Older individuals have less strong feelings, their bodies and minds are less primed for survival and mating, they're in the grandparent stage evolutionarily. Younger people feel things more acutely, they are more sensitive but also the worst thing that's happened to them is almost certainly coming, multiple times, and the same for the best thing.

I would expect survivor bias. The author isn't saying "greater control of feelings", they're saying "higher emotional well being and more satisfying social contacts". Old people with low emotional well being probably die off sooner. Old people with poor social relationships are probably harder to find and talk to to study.

Isn't the answer simply experience? The more one experience an emotion, the more one know on how the emotions works, unfolds and how to handle it. Similar, with age and experience we have more understanding on how situations arise which trigger specific emotions, which also means we have more time to prepare, manage and probably even avoid them.

The stoics got it right several thousand years ago, now we're just waiting on the rest of humanity to catch up.

This contacts something I think about.

When we do science in a rigorous, non-anthropocentric, fashion, we find that the universe is a clockwork mechanism, life is a thermodynamically favorable process, and that there doesn't appear to be any objective meaning.

Which leads to a person asking, "Knowing this, what do I do [with myself, perhaps]?"

And I think that there are four philosophies that begin with that premise: stoicism, epicureanism, absurdism, and nihilism. And people go on and on about which one is the 'right' one, and I just think they're tools in our toolbox, suitable for different situations.

A slave from the mines of Laurium would find in stoicism very useful tools for enduring hardships in life. Epicureanism is full of tools for how to comport yourself when you have a lot of control over your surroundings.

Nihilism and absurdism contain reasons to keep getting out of bed. There isn't any objective meaning or god? Well, good news, that means that anything you decide is important is as important as if god himself said so. Still upset that there isn't any objective meaning? More good news, friend. You can keep searching for meaning even though it isn't objectively there, because the search for meaning is a rewarding human experience. And you can decide that a thing is meaningful, and that has weight because you're god.

To say that stoics 'got it right', I think, is a bit incomplete; it implicitly buys into an idea that a single philosophy or way of being is 'the right one', where instead they can each be well suited to different situations.

We've seen the sun set after a warm day, and we've seen it rise again after a cold night. You live through this enough times and you learn to see beyond the horizon. Eventually you can see yourself in the distance, walking forward and away from you, towards your past

Also, we are deaf and didn't hear the guy who tried to pick a fight with us

I'm 61.

I question whether it's greater control of my feelings, as against, more recognition that feelings come and go and don't require that we act on them.

The study and practice of non-dualism and other ancient Indian regions has been helpful to me. I'm generally at ease in the world.

I would not label this control - more like they gain experience in recognizing their own feelings, and for that split second after they register and become aware of their feelings, they choose an appropriate response. I remember Obama being heckled at a speech by someone - you could clearly see his irritation by his pause, a second or two of deliberate delay/processing what he felt, and then just gave a somewhat calm response to the person in an effort to defuse the tension in the room.

Trump notoriously sucked at emotional regulation, and he's what you'd consider 'an older individual'. He too would give measured responses, it's just that they were more direct/less diplomatic than say Obama's.

I used to be more knee-jerky in my responses, say 20+ years ago in my 20's, but after a lot of screw ups in life w/relationships (close/intimate ones in particular), a failed marriage, 2 kids and a lot of therapy, both group and individual, I've made progress in being aware of my feelings and responding in a more measured way, so outwardly that appears as if I have "greater control".

The reality is I'm still a mess - I'm just responsible for my mess before I vomit it outward on someone else.

LinkedIn Learning actually has this great one hour or so video I just watched that covers this nicely, I think it's called "Emotional Intelligence"... Some say it predicts how you will fare career wise far more than being just technically adept/skilled.

It's a process of "finding oneself" and figuring out where we fit best. Mastering responses to our emotions is a life long process and we tend to end up "automagically" drawn to similar people, cultures, companies, relationships....

I can name off the bat a lot of possible reasons For example, older people have more money and less debt. Medicare and Social Security. Less responsibilities. Less to gain and less to lose.

Personally speaking the answer has been mostly "practice".

I realize things would suck less if I didn't let my emotions control me on topic X, so I work on that. It's simple, but it sure isn't easy.

Because I’m lucky. When I was younger I wasn’t, nothing ever really went well for me.

But after close to 30 years of gainful employment, and stability in marriage and work ( This is the good luck) I’m calmer.

Because having control of your feelings is a skill and can be obtained through "suffering" for example, and older individuals have more experiences in life.

Usually, life experiences along with learning impact how one control their feelings. The more one lives, the more one experiences, the more one learns.

> Why do older individuals have greater/better .... ?

Practice

45. Because you have experience to tell you what happens when you don't, lol. I have a foot ache. Hmm, stop applying footgun to foot.

It's not older individuals, it's more experiences ones. An experience's impact is significantly dependent on its novelty.

To expand on this, when you're a kid, things that affect you emotionally can seem to have disproportionate impact on your life. When you're older and more experienced, you've been through many crisis situations, and you've seen that things usually work out OK. You know better how to deal with various situations, and you have a much more realistic predictions of how things will eventually unfold.

You probably also know, from experience, that even if you have an initial emotional reaction to something, that doesn't mean you should trust those emotions and roll with them. Getting angry rarely fixes anything, feeling sad is normal but it doesn't mean your life is going to shit, and getting excited about something is good, but you know it might not be worth getting excited too quickly.

I have a 1 month-old baby at home right now. God, talk about not having control of one's feelings.

Degradation of tissue in the amygdala

I think its simple, we don't have as much to lose as we get older so we relax.

And we've "been around the block" (i.e. cycles of life, relationships, career, health, ...) a few times. We've become a bit more familiar with the patterns, and familiarity reduces fear and anxiety.

Trauma and desensitization would be my unscientific guess.

Ray Dalio, "Another one of those"

Because they are dying from old age?

Wisdom through experience.

Practice?

Because those who can't control their feelings don't tend to live as long, due to poor health and less meaningful social life, all resulted from bad temper?

Half of this website has no social life. Anyone dead yet? Show of hands?

Only inside

Lack of social ties, interaction, spouse all are statistically significant factors of shorter avg lifespans.

Who produced these studies? The imperial college of london?

Those are correlation studies. Such studies cannot tell would you live longer if you were to force yourself to improve your social interactions.

Being married at least has a tangible causal link: support in health-related emergencies.

IT is well past that point. Now it's a job like any other, not something done by people who would otherwise be shut-in NEETs.

>When older people say, “This is the best time of your life, enjoy it while you can,” that’s a form of abuse.

I guess that these days anything can be called "abuse".

I realise that a lot of people have anxiety issues, but to call it abuse is just stupid. They are genuinely people looking back on their life experience and giving advice.

I wouldn't call this abuse either but there is a huge huge gulf between "that was the best time of my life" and "this is the best time of your life.

It's at best just extremely rude to tell someone about their own life and how they should feel about it.

> It's at best just extremely rude to tell someone about their own life and how they should feel about it.

I have to disagree. My grandparents often have great perspectives on life situations that they readily share when relevant to the people around them. No one sees it as rude, and if they do, it’s usually because the advice hits a little too close to home. Like “when I went through my divorce…”

Sharing insight and/or experience != telling someone how to feel about something.

The truly insightful manage to prompt you to think without explicitly telling you to do so.

(And are sometimes wrong. People can in fact be living in a truly dismal present, whatever their age.)

Yes, I am not disputing that. I am talking about the difference between giving someone advice about a situation they're in, and telling them how to feel about it.

"When I was your age, I didn't appreciate certain things so I'm pointing them out to you" is really different from "this is the best time of your life" which is a statement an external observer is just not equipped to make about someone else's life.

Those two things mean the same thing in casual conversation. I'm plenty picky about rhetoric when it comes to serious debate, but I would align your view more with trying to bully people over some sense of unfairness.

> but there is a huge huge gulf between "that was the best time of my life" and "this is the best time of your life.

Not really. It's notional advice, offered in a spirit of kindness. You don't have to like it, but labeling it 'extremely rude at best' is absolutely infantile.

It is neither advice nor kindness. Typically it is dismissal and refusal to take issues of the younger person seriously.

Using euphemism or calling it something better then it is is exactly as infantile as exaggerating. And if is lie too.

It's better to make the most of being young and then continue to make the most of your life, than to not make the most of your life at a young age, then regret it when you're older

Calling everything toxic or abusive seems to have replaced a range of expressive terms and phrases, like "that's an asshole thing to say" or "what the fuck is wrong with you."

Basically, abuse these days is being told something you didn't like or agree with.

Worse than that. In some circles it's not enthusiastically agreeing or expressing any kind of reservation as well.

Are you kidding me?! Unsolicited advice can be mildly annoying!!!! I may have to just nod my head in approval just to move the conversation along, even though I might not agree!! HORIFFIC ABUSE.

The author just appears to use complete hyperbole to get a reaction from his students and readers. Not to be taken seriously.

It shows contempt. It might not be abuse itself, but it's definitely something abusers say. If he's confusing those things he probably deserves your compassion, not your indignation.

I can understand how that sentence from someone not close to you, and without any further explanation can be distressing. What I imagine telling my kids is "This is the best time of your life, you can enjoy it because the things that society has you worried about right now, like getting good grades, being socially liked, collecting achievements, are not going to matter that much anymore once you are an adult and have gained experience and, more importantly, self-confidence in your abilities."

I wish I could say that to my younger self

Try having kids. Your hard-earned wisdom runs like water off a duck's back. But, keep giving it. At least you can say "told ya so"

Meanwhile I wish I could tell my younger self "don't worry, this is actually the worst part of your life and all the people telling you things will never get better are just wrong".

Maybe I understood the context improperly, but I thought "abuse" was used in the sense of "improper use of something".

In this case, it would be the improper use of your life experience giving advice that causes more harm than good.

Maybe "misuse" would have been better suiting here.

Nowadays, any simple comment can be interpreted on any extreme and everything in between.

Anecdotally, in my experience, this shift is really visible for 3-4 years now. I don't know what changed in these recent years or what caused that shift to become so drastic (again, in my experience). Internet gave a stage to these interpretation even though they were there previously in low volume.

But even on the internet, this wasn't the case until 5-6 years ago, at least not to this level (or so I think).

My pet theory that fits the timeline pretty well is that when Tumblr died and they migrated to Twitter, what was incubated and contained on Tumblr dramatically changed the demographics of twitter and became more mainstream. Most of the last few years of change have been commonplace on tumblr up to that point, but we just kind of laughed and pointed out how ridiculous it was. Now it’s the mainstream

It might be. Personally I never had a Tumblr account, never even visited their website. It was just a name I'd heard. Tumblr was so far out of my life that I didn't even notice that Tumblr died.

There's a feedback loop between:

a) systems like Twitter giving people dopamine bumps and internet points for strong emotional responses to the most extreme interpretation of anything anyone says and

b) peoples training their brains to have strong emotional responses to the most extreme interpretation of anything anyone says

Yes, but I don't remember all this being so extreme even until 4-5 years ago on Twitter.

From my experience, something changed around 2017 and now Twitter is a war zone.

The start of the Trump era. Trump made the left blind for the extremists on their side. Because criticizing them would mean siding with Trump. Not true of course but that’s what you get when people start to think in absolutes. “You’re either with us or part of the problem.“

I think a lot of the public space toxicity that we now witness is an extreme reaction to Trump. An autoimmune disease of sorts, but in a social context instead of biological one.

"Abuse" now means "offensiveness". Literally.

Watering down the language a bit, I can see how a reasonable person would be mildly offended if another person told them: "you're living your life improperly".

Which is, ultimately, the received message. Yes you can't get a job in your field and your relationship is trashed, but your 20s are objectively the height of many metrics in your life. So are your 30s. (Unspoken: "I wish I still had the things you do, which you do not see/value. I also want all the things I have accumulated in the time since I was your age.")

So having some other person, typically older and who fancies themselves wiser, who knows not-nearly-enough about your life, opine that you should "enjoy" your current state...can be offensive in many cases!

And of course, as the star of our own autobiographies, we tend to inflate the importance of whatever drama-du-jour we're going through, and fail to take a longer view of things. This is generally the intended message of the speaker, but we often don't hear it that way, and anyway we don't want to be told.

Some messages can only be heard when they are explicitly sought.

Oh no, that's too mild. Things that rise to the level of "offensive" are "violence," not merely "abuse."

Tongue somewhat in cheek, of course, but I do have a friend whose claim to the "Me too" movement was that an older gentleman had called her "young lady" once.

> "Abuse" now means "offensiveness". Literally.

It seems this watering down of language was systemic and intentful. I'd love to know what generations, geographies, and cultures are afflicted most by this.

I don't think the intention was to water down the words' meaning. The intention was to get attention on just how terrible a certain thing was/is in the short run (This idea is abuse/violence!). The long term effects of this is future claims of abuse get ignored in the discourse because the words have been so watered down as to lose their meaning.

The problem is that it seldomly was abuse or violence. These are misplaced or exaggerated words for effect, which is what creates the long term effect. If they're exaggerated, that makes me think this was intentful. If they're misplaced then we've failed in educating a whole group of people on a very fundamental level in a multitude of areas from language to emotional management.

"misplaced or exaggerated for effect" appears to be a natural thing. It's not a new thing, but it definitely seems to be accumulative.

Friends say bands are "awesome", long meetings are "excruciating", guys in mock turtlenecks say products are "magical" or "revolutionary". Boys cry "wolf". What does it all mean?

What words do we choose when the correct words are no longer meaningful? What is the value of a word that describes a situation that almost never happens?

> Friends say bands are "awesome", long meetings are "excruciating", guys in mock turtlenecks say products are "magical" or "revolutionary". Boys cry "wolf". What does it all mean?

Do these exaggerations, or use of flowery language, carry any real world consequences? The words "abuse" and "violence" (and other vernacular that people are using around problems they face) carry consequences under the law, reputational damage, etc... I suspect the people who replace, "So and so said something that offended me" with "So and so said something that was abusive to me" know they're participating in deceptive language that carries real consequences.

I lean in the direction that these folks believe the ends justify the means but I've yet to hear anyone speak in earnest about why they do this. Usually when they explain themselves it involves a lot of imagery and mental gymnastics as well as a wide array of unprovable assumptions you must accept in order to understand their point but always conveniently skips over their language choice.

In fact, there's entire rhetoric designed to avoid this subject called "tone policing" whereby someone is allowed to make outrageous claims because they feel some way about something. It's then on the rest of us to sort out their emotional baggage from the hard facts and produce something from it.

Generally, I've noticed humans will use flowery language when bullshitting, speaking abstractly, or trying to sell something. When we talk about problems we tend to try to be more concise, as being concise lets us address the problem more directly while using flowery language is both deceptive and distracting.

Actually I often wonder if people think about the extremity of their words.

Absurd exaggeration is the norm. That's fine in the form of metaphor (though I still dislike "murder" and "rape" to describe the vagaries of competitive sports and business!) but it's something else when the words can have legal/moral/professional ramifications.

Power gained by the previously-disempowered is rarely handled responsibly. But the powerless should be empowered. I don't know how to get from A to B without collateral damage.

That's a fair point and one I'm willing to accept, but this has been going on for at least half a decade if not longer. I guess at some point, the sort of meta-conversation you and I are having will have to be had.

Much much longer than half a decade, I would say.

And ultimately, there will be no reasoned conversation or balanced future. It will just happen, in fits and starts, and we will land in a new semi-stable state of imperfection. Until the next time.

This is just like that article yesterday that called Discord UI colors "harmful". People today love demonizing anything they don't like so that they can lambast it without having to give a well-founded reason why they feel how they do. Nowadays people change language to suit their agenda, thinking that if enough people believe hard enough then changing language can change reality.

The issue that I have seen with this phrase being used is that it is often used in response to a younger person complaining about their current life or aspects of their life. The implication of the phrase is then "well your life sucks, but it's only going to get worse".

For a real life example, I knew someone who was going through some pretty serious depression in high school. Responding to which their counselor said something along the lines of "you shouldn't be sad, this is the best time of your life". Which was pretty devastating thing to say to someone.

> For a real life example, I knew someone who was going through some pretty serious depression in high school. Responding to which their counselor said something along the lines of "you shouldn't be sad, this is the best time of your life". Which was pretty devastating thing to say to someone.

And, for a lot of people, it's just not true. Maybe I'm really fortunate, but I can't remember a better time in my past life. I think for a lot of people, things generally get better as you age. You definitely get more autonomy, compared to when you were a child and teenager. Financially, you get established in your career, you save a little money, maybe you can even afford a home. Socially, you have better, closer friends as you get older. You can worry less and less about what other people think of you as you get older. I guess this is a little privilege showing, but generally I think my mental wellbeing is much better now than when I was a child or teenager.

High School was the absolute worst point in my life, and that's true for a lot of people I know. You lack autonomy, you're bored, you have no money, you're in a prison-like institution getting bullied for most of your weekday. You're under a lot of pressure and have to worry about grades and behaving the way adults want you to behave. It sucked! Who are these insane people where high school was the best time of their life?

As somebody went through multiple evictions as a teen, I agree 100%.

If you don't come from a stable household your teenage years are going to be absolutely horrible. You're going to know enough to understand that the adults around you should do things like pay bills, but they just don't want to. They'd rather buy new cars and get them repoed.

I make an absurd amount of money now, and I'm grateful every time I pay my rent. Honest to God, if I could change one thing about the educational system I get rid of the idea that your parents are responsible to pay for your college.

If you're coming from a bad household this simply isn't going to work, but you'd be the most likely to benefit from a scholarship or financial aid. What ends up happening is this gets locked behind your parents doing basic things like filling out forms, but they're just incapable of doing it.

I can't put in words how devastating dropping out of college due to this stupid system was. Through the magic of programming I was able to still establish a great career, but when you come from a broken home you're just going to take hit after hit after hit.

I often need to distance myself from what I guess normal people struggle with. I'll see something stupid on Reddit like a man in his late 20s complaining that his parents want him to get a job, and I have to stop myself from screaming at my computer.

I agree with others that "abuse" is a bit over the top, but I had people tell me that a few times, when I was in high school (never before or since).

I don't know WTF was wrong with the rest of those people's lives, but, as someone approaching 40, ages ~12-18 were the worst part of my life and it's not even a close call. Everything before and after was much better. Working mediocre low-paying jobs was much better. College was like a vacation. Adult life is way better. Being a younger kid was way better. And I had a really normal HS experience, stable home life, et c., so it's not like I was being badly bullied or my parents were going through a divorce or something. Those years are just awful (school's about 70% of the problem with it, I'd say, and the other 30% is hormones)

When the odd suicidal ideation popped into my head, or if I was just way down in the dumps (both are pretty common for teenagers) the (absofuckinglutely wrong!) suggestion that things would only get worse was... not helpful.

Reality is that most learn to cope with life a lot better as they grow older.

My life objectively sucks more now. I have way less free time, and am under harsher constraints. But I am saddled with way less depression and anxiety. I am enjoying life more than ever. I don't go to sleep crying or ruminating every night anymore.

People saying "well your life sucks but it's only going to get worse" are inadvertently being mean and unhelpful. I can imagine probably offing myself, had I heard that advice at the wrong moment growing up.

It didn't get worse. It got better, even though the circumstances got worse, because my ability to handle them got much better.

Weird. I've never heard an adult tell a high schooler that it's the best time in their life. Usually people tell them it doesn't really matter (which also doesn't really help).

I went through that whole thing in high school. High school was miserable. College was better but exhausting. Being an adult is way more fun.

Great point. I think it can definitely feel abusive to be told how to feel. It makes it feel like there is something wrong with you for feeling differently, or adds anxiety to change your feelings.

So much anxiety in my life is about thinking Im wasting years, not just comparing my life experience to someone else's but comparing it to everyone else's. I wonder if this is an american saying, notably from "It wad the summer of 69"

Imagine all the people who will only have twitter and FB to look back to.

The rest of that paragraph:

"I think what’s really important for emotional well-being is to know that your future is secure, to achieve the luxury of not worrying about your future. When you’re younger, there’s a lot to worry about. I sometimes tell my undergrads: When older people say, “This is the best time of your life, enjoy it while you can,” that’s a form of abuse. A lot of younger people have high rates of distress."

Still sounds hyperbolic. "Form of abuse," is pretty ridiculous. It's like saying, "you are assaulting me with your words."

A better phrase from a person who wants to be taken seriously would be, "that can be naive," or "that's ignoring other people's burdens," "that's not always accurate," etc. "Form of abuse," is just over the top in my opinion.

He's certainly not doing anybody any favors hinting that they are the victim of something (abuse) when they are clearly not in his context.

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

Please don't single out gratuitous provocations in an article and then copy them into the thread to complain about them. It doesn't lead to interesting discussion. Best to just leave the provocation in its native habit and find something interesting (e.g. deeper or more surprising) to talk about. If you don't find anything like that, there are plenty of other articles to read.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Maybe older people just feel... less? My feelings get less and less intense as I grow older.

  OH NO
  Anyway

Do they really? show them something foreign or a new technology and ask them how they feel, you will see how in control of their emotions they really are.

Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. This is a noticeable step in the direction we're trying to avoid here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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