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Comment by the_lonely_road | Hacker News Reader

Science seems to be pointed hard towards 25 being the age of majority rather than 18. We are unlikely to see the age move in our lifetimes due to the military needing its recruits but it probably should. Do you really think the average 14-15 year old should be considered in the same maturity bracket as the average 35 or 45 year old? I was incapable of making good decisions at that age. The things I thought were cool, the way I thought things worked, the rational for the actions I took, all of it was cringe inducing now as an adult when I think back on it. When I think back on my 30's, I wish I had more information but overall see no fault in the way that I made my decisions.

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Fluid intelligence is already in decline by 25. If between the credentialist impulse and the infantilizing impulse we push career starts inexorably towards 30 the human race is going to miss out on a lot of contributions that we need to help solve our many problems across many fields of endeavor.

I could not come up with a better argument for reducing the age of majority to 13 or 14 if I tried. Infantilising adults like this is dehumanising.

I mostly agree with the maturity argument and because of that all the attempts to push more decision making (like voting) on younger people seem strange to me. But the most curious topic for me at the moment is why we are lowering our expectations for 18-25 years old. We used to see them as young but fully capable adults (granted that is a shift from 14-16 years from 100-1000 years ago). I understand the educational part of the argument as well but some of the trends seems very strange to me. For example: as far as I understand there is no strong expectation that ppl after high school know what they want to do and it’s normal to take 1-2 years break between school and college. Is it a new thing? I don’t really know. But I can’t find comparable breaks in history or other (less wealthy) societies. Health insurance cut off dates are 21 (25?) years old. University system seems more and more similar to a nice place to spend time (better dorms before better classes) than to the place to efficiently receive your education.

Playing devil's advocate: If we are considering maturity as a pre-requisite to vote, perhaps we should test for that? Some 15 years olds are very mature, and some 30+ years olds are not.

Also, maybe it is wrong to disenfranchise immature people. They are people, too.

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