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Comment by antattack | Hacker News Reader

Yes, I observed that also. They are are faster physically and mentally (such as operating or discovering how things/software works) and a lot more logical (but not in depth). Simple recent example, doing trail making test (for fun) they were twice as fast while I was average.

http://apps.usd.edu/coglab/schieber/psyc423/pdf/IowaTrailMak...

This is why I wish system would allow for more young politicians and leaders, lower voting age of 16, and maximum voting age of average lifetime expectancy - 16.

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My own political stances from back when I was 16 make me think that this may not be a great idea. I was logical, but also young and inexperienced, knew no other perspectives than my own and had yet to develop some more empathy. I was even completely unaware of some significant facts about myself, which also influenced my opinions. Also, I like to believe that I'm way less prone to manipulation and peer pressure now than I was back then. My mind may have been sharper, but that's not all that matters.

If started at 16 young people would be much better voters at 18 than current 18 year old voters are and so on. There are examples of uninformed voters at all age groups (voting across party lines is one example). Young people should have a chance to participate in our democracy and should be able to vote, if not in general, at least in municipal elections.

I’m OK with this as long as we make 16 the age of adulthood. Otherwise it’s a bit hypocritical to say that a 16 year old is mature enough to vote but not mature enough to have a beer.

That is an interesting idea, but hard to implement in practice, to only allow mature enough people to vote. Being mature means different things to different people, but I suspect that even we we agreed on a definition we would find that a lot of adults would not qualify.

You could argue that an adult shouldn't be represented by someone they didn't have the ability to vote for or against. But in that case you would probably need to lower the voting age even more.

I think it makes sense for age of adulthood to be a graduated system for different perks at different ages.

If we ever make “K-16l” schooling free I suspect it will come about in tandem with increasing the perceived age of adulthood.

Meanwhile I do believe that 14-18 year olds should be provided far, far more agency than they currently are.

How so? How is being able to vote or not influencing people being informed or not? (which, by the way, is absolutely not what I was talking about in my previous comment)

Having voted before does not make you a better voter in the future. I don't think the fact that I had to wait with my first vote for almost full voting cycle longer because there were elections right before my 18th birthday that I couldn't take part in had influenced my political stances in any way.

"and maximum voting age of average lifetime expectancy - 16"

- And maximum age of US public officials (especially presidents) set to a similar limit.

Should 16 year olds also be required to serve on juries?

Jury is selected and approved by layers and judge. Judge and lawyers are in much better position to select someone competent than age, especially at low and high extremes. Just like there are few 18 yo juror's there would be likely very few 16 yo ones.

Speaking of age, there's an interesting research that found: "that conviction rates increase by about 1 percentage point for each year increase in the average age of the jury pool"

The role played by judges and lawyers in selecting jurors varies a lot by jurisdiction and type of proceeding.

If 16 year olds are allowed to vote, they will wind up on juries.

Assuming jurors are selected randomly from the electorate, with exclusions only in very unusual instances, would you support 16 year olds being part of juries?

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