We ruin the talent, economic value, and freedom and opportunity of a very large portion of the population by dimissing the growth of anyone in late middle-age or later. 72 years old shouldn't be remarkable, but the norm.
What's wrong with retiring and living out your last years peacefully relaxing with your hobbies and family? There's absolutely no reason why people have to continually grow until they're in the ground.
You're applying an adage about companies to people, but companies need to fight against inflation, and people don't.
To me it feels like society virtually throws seniors away and I don't believe we treat them well at all.
Personally I think once you stop learning and growing it's the start of a 'faster' downward spiral. If you don't use it you lose it. I intend to keep active and continually growing as long as I have the desire, not because society says you're old, out of date and couldn't possibly contribute any more.
The need is to smash, or more gently explore and master, new frontiers for you.
(And to the extent you desire it, that's what really leads to new frontiers for society - personal passion and growth, leads to projects, leads to a revelation for everyone.)
> You're applying an adage about companies to people, but companies need to fight against inflation, and people don't.
It's interesting that multiple people read 'grow' as economic growth, when we know it means much more. (Also, companies don't grow to overcome inflation, but to provide ROI to their owners.)
in reality it's a lot less enticing than it sounds. Younger family tends to move on with their own life, and spouses and older relatives tend to die once you get old.
Working in older age gives you a wide social circle, stimulation and purpose that is desperately needed if you want to stay healthy and especially mentally fit. I've seen it so often that as soon as people retire they decline like crazy. Hobbies don't sustain anyone.
Even the mentality of "my last days" already sounds like you're clocking out. Every day might be your last day, even when you're not old.
This is far from universal, and I can personally name quite a few people who have absolutely avoiding rotting in old age through participation in local community - makerspaces, bridge clubs, Rotary and more.
The family moving away and leaving the older generation to rot is also far from the global norm. Even in Western countries, Asians, Islanders and Africans (among other groups) maintain strong familial bonds until the day they die.
But hobbies are still learning. But as soon as my mom stopped with hobbies and learning she started a steep mental decline. So "get busy living or get busy dying" does seem to apply.
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
I think there's a valid "why?" here. Obviously it comes down to some people being driven to knowledge purely for knowledge sake, and that's wonderful. That's what makes them happy.
I think for a lot of us though, knowledge is a more practical commodity. It's just one of a number of tools that allow us to build better.
Now that I'm older, I increasingly value the last category of continuous learning. It's one of the greatest privileges of being in a developed Society with access to information. It is one of the cheapest and most enjoyable forms of entertainment available to human beings, and something that it seems that people the frequently undervalue.
Normativity of growth also gives all sorts of inefficiencies, diseases and economic problems.
> Not only does the world change under your feet, you need that stimulation just to stay healthy.
I partially agree with this. You need to keep updating your model of the world not only because the world is changing under your feet, but also your priors are always guaranteed to suck due to inherent limitedness of human computation. That gives us the normativity of self-transendence, which is not the same thing as growth. It also includes shedding dead weight, deconstructing the not-so-useful, or mere re-organization of the existing. A mere appetite for acquiring stuff, even knowledge, does not make it.
The second problem is limiting the framing of the growth within the unit of an individual. Individuals' betterment doesn't sum to the same amount of betterment of the society, in fact it creates tons of waste. A wiser old person's transfer of their skills and perspectives (not propositions, or knowledge) to a younger person would not register with your notion of "personal growth" but nonetheless is a superior betterment at the group level, and thus has a much scalable adaptive value.
Also, that growth (in the sense I mean) is necessary for people to function. They deteriorate without it, like a tree without enough water and sun.
> A wiser old person's transfer of their skills and perspectives (not propositions, or knowledge) to a younger person would not register with your notion of "personal growth" but nonetheless is a superior betterment at the group level, and thus has a much scalable adaptive value.
I see the claim but don't see support for it, or why it's mutually exclusive with growth (in any sense).
I'd say the same for your premise. Your framework was "growth == better", I tried to demonstrate why that is not adequate, and in certain cases harmful.
> They deteriorate without it, like a tree without enough water and sun
And anyone with house plants know that too much of any is equally deadly as too little.
> why it's mutually exclusive with growth (in any sense).
Simple opportunity cost. An elderly doing a cultural transfer of skills, perspectives and knowledge to their grandkids, neighborhood, junior professionals etc vs. doing their own personal growth things. Don't get me wrong, in this case maybe getting a master's in AI and combining all that with their existing competencies and then doing a culture transfer could be the optimal choice here, but the time and energy cost of the activities pursued has to occupy disparate spaces either way.
So no, personal growth at all costs is not the most optimal thing at all times.
I turn 71 next month, and I am grateful that the congressman's age is mentioned in the headline. I think it's awesome!
As someone who also works in "AI" (the scare quotes are deliberate, as the specific work I do is more about keeping our code easy to maintain and well tested and reliable, and dealing with the outside systems we work with), I am glad that I am not the only "older" person working in the field.
I'm not saying this to disagree with you, but to agree. It should be the norm that people the age of Congressman Beyer and myself can contribute, just like anyone else.
Having neither of my parents even make it to 72, I’m pessimistic. I hope I will be lucky that my health allows me to keep learning and doing cool stuff at that age (and that I’m actually alive), but the sad reality is that health and genetics can be against us, and being in a healthy thriving state at 72 is more an exception than the norm.
If I make it for a few more years than that and I feel like studying, then why not? I mean, I probably won't want to, but if that guy want to study then good on him!
Is that the definition of a mid-life crisis?
I'll see you in a decade and a half, I guess. :)
On the bright side however, life expectancy is growing worldwide. In Spain, where I live, average expectancy before Covid peaked at 84 years old. In the US it was 79. The difference is irrelevant to my point (I have no clue what the cause is); the fact is in both cases the stat has grwon explosively in the last 50 years [1] [2]
Likewise there is dramatic progress being made against cancer [3] and other deadly diseases.
Down to everyday life, I am constantly amazed by what some 70 year olds look like nowadays.
I don't lead a perfect lifestyle, but the idea of being able to get a degree on a complex topic like AI in the 70's definitely inspires me to at least try and tilt the odds in my favor to get to that age in good standing. The amount of information and inexpensive tools at our disposal today is staggering.
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?location...
[2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?location...
[3] https://ourworldindata.org/cancer#is-the-world-making-progre...
We like these type of stories because it reinforces all our denial about old age and death.
We worry about cancer and disease but the real problem is plain old falling. Fall, hurt your leg and then a spiral starts that you don't come back from.
I'm a little frustrated with how many people seem to treat learning like an activity exclusive to schools. Self-guided learning is extremely valuable.
Attending a formal educational institution, on the other hand, has proven very effective at getting people to knuckle down and study calculus (or whatever their “blocker” discipline is) so that they can move on to studying what they’re really interested in.
I hate to be "pedantic guy", but FWIW there are absolutely 72 year old competitive athletes. They may not be competitive against folks 20+ years younger than themselves, but many people continue to compete in "masters" divisions of various competitive sports until pretty much the day they keel over. Heck, there are folks who are 70+ competing in ultra-marathons.
that's kind of my point. Of course they can compete against other 72 year olds.
80 year olds with a desire can still contribute. It doesn't have to be in competition with 20 years.
I agree with the first statement, but more of a function of accumulated metabolic and cognitive dysfunction than merely age.
I don't think the second statement necessarily follows. Time spent fully engrossed in a subject, where the learner is able to put away their ego and learn as a child would, is what is conducive to good learning. That can happen at any age, but in practice, seldom does due to the demanding structure of adult life.
That's what I'm talking about, but don't blame some external force for that outcome. It's a choice; it's about priorities. If you give yourself time for a little growth, I think you'll net much greater productivity overall - including emotional presence for your family.
My claim, which admittedly is hard to substantiate, is that growth (a general term) will offset aging to a much greater degree than people imagine. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if psychological and physiological aging of the brain is mostly due to lack of growth.
> To keep the muscle analogy, you won’t compete as an athlete at 72 no matter how fit you remain.
I think the muscle analogy can be a useful one, but that it misleads here: Muscles start deteriorating at age 20 or 25; our brains do not on balance (they do in some ways, and improve in others). Peak mental performance is, IIRC, in our 40s and 50s.
And for the neuroplasticity and are the dopaminergic system differences, how much is cause and how much is effect? Our actions affect our brains and the rest of our bodies, and vice versa. If I chose to lift heavy weights every day, after ten years you wouldn't say, 'they do that because they have extra muscle'.
So even someone in their 70s might start an MS and then have a decade or more to make use of it. That's not what's happening here, but it could be.
Really puts all those times I thought it was too late for this or that in perspective.
Following that, he started a Masters of Aeronautical Engineering. Until my mum suggested he spends more time with her at home.
Now he does gym circuit training with a group half his age, at 6am three mornings a week.
Hope I have that energy when I am his age...
But regardless I'm very curious how the internet generation will be later in life. I hope I have less anxiety and pressure!
We are emotional creatures: Emotion, much more than anything else, is our experience of the world, and it is a major input in our perception, decisions, and actions.
Many people reject their emotions or are ignorant of them. And life experiences often cause a lot of emotional injury, to the point where older people reach their limits (I suspect you have a good sense of that at your age) and shut down.
The effect of that shut down - well see the first paragraph; that all deteriorates significantly. It cripples experience and ability, including good judgment, and it causes people to avoid new experiences - the experiences might be traumatic, and the skill of learning and exploring atrophes. Also, shutting down doesn't actually do away with the emotions; they come out and people become angry and cruel.
Instead, we need to learn to be resiliant, to build our emotinonal capacity, and to experience life and use our well-honed emotional insincts as hard-earned wisdom. That includes exploring and learning new things.
It might be fair to say, as a sibling comment does, that one needs younger politicians so they can better represent one's constituents.
But to dismiss them just because they're old amounts to shutting off an economically productive segment of the population. More importantly, by discriminating against individuals because of their class membership rather than because of their abilities amounts to prejudice, no?
It’s also factual that wealth greatly impacts education, but we wouldn’t want to suggest poor people are unfit for office due to this disadvantage right?
My parents are into their 70s and I have yet to detect even the slightest mental degradation.
Humans memorize the information relative to them. If politicians memorize racism they’ll make racist policy.
I don’t want people who think in 100 year old social terms alone deciding my fate.
Society that never retires old ideas, demands speech stay on specific rails is hardly free. That type of governance is the basis of a police state.
Discriminating against someone on the basis of age is anti-social behavior.
? Does my comment read otherwise?
So for example in my area, given that as much as 40% of the population is hispanic / latino, I'd really like to see more people from that demographic get elected. Likewise, about 50% of the population is female, therefore I want to see more women elected. I even want to see fewer lawyers and more laborers, teachers, etc in elected positions. I'm not convinced that politician should be a career and it definitely should not be the sole domain of old, white, rich lawyers the way that it has been historically. And, regardless of who is elected, I want them to be mentally adept and aim to be educated and informed rather than complacent.
And let’s not mistake, one’s mental faculties are lesser as you age. It’s biological. It is remarkable in that aspect as well. Let’s not pretend like one retains a youthful brain, in terms of processing power, throughout one’s entire life. At 72, he is at the life expectancy for men in the U.S. Implying it’s just beyond late middle age is a little strange.
In summary, I think getting a master’s at that age is sort of pointless aside from a certain ceremonial and logistical challenge. It’d be more efficient to take specific classes from good professors. Taking classes from poor professors was a waste of time in my 20s. I can’t imagine doing it in my 70s.
My father is in his mid 70s and has been boarded in pathology and emergency medicine for most of his adult life. Recently he decided to get boarded in genetic medicine and start a new medical career.
I don't think it's too late for anything, within reason, but I also don't think it's a massive problem in society that the congressman's late age is mentioned.
I play poker with some 90 year old's, and they are damn sharp. Some people get dimmer with age, many continue to shine.
Getting a degree is a more traditional route, which older people tend to pursue. But he might be doing it for show partly since he is a politician.
https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news...
I'm getting older too, and I understand the change comment. But I do sense a decrease in "oomph", so to speak, particularly when it comes to recollection of things I used to recall instantly.
Maybe this better belongs in another comment, but in a way, it's nice the age is included in the article as maybe it could inspire others of similar age to do similar things. I have been trying to get my mom to take some online classes.
> Getting a degree is a more traditional route, which older people tend to pursue. But he might be doing it for show partly since he is a politician.
That might be part of it. Saying "I got a degree" has more impact I suppose to politicians than "I took some classes".
My overall opinion is more of: getting the master's degree is just not worth it over taking classes unless he has a need for the degree, and I have the same opinion for myself and others at a much younger age.