Comment by msluyter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by msluyter | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Saying this as a rather old person myself...

I have a theory that, wrt knowledge, the relative advantage of age has been at least partially eroded by rapid technological advancement. In traditional/tribal societies, prior to the 20th century, wisdom actually accumulated with age, because the pace of change was slower. Wisdom & knowledge could be passed on from generation to generation.

Now, wisdom and knowledge become obsolete quickly. Many things you knew 20 years ago are outdated. The ICE engine you learned how to fix as a kid is now computer controlled, or has been replaced by batteries. Your optimistic/open/friendly mindset now makes you easy pickings for online scammers. Hell, even your family's secret cherished muffin recipe is spurned by your grandchildren because it has gluten or they're vegan or keto or whatever.

All this is just a take, but when I look at voting patterns in particular, I find myself pessimistic that the elderly are wiser than average.

Knowledge changes. I don't think wisdom necessarily changes. Maybe this is a philosophical discussion, but I think that is once of the key differences of knowledge and wisdom. However, I do think it is false that people necessarily accumulate wisdom with age. I know wise and unwise people of all ages, including people who think they're wise only because they're old.

when I look at voting patterns in particular, I find myself pessimistic that the elderly are wiser than average

Don't stop there, look at the US elected representatives! Washington is, from a lot of angles, a gerontocracy, and I don't think anyone would consider it "wise". The world has passed a lot of these folks by and even aside from that, their stubbornness to not step aside has in cases meant that they predictably die in office, so their seats go unfilled for a while, leaving people unrepresented...

I'm not sure that's accurate. If I think of the crazies in Washington they're almost all (relatively) young.

The median age of the House is 57.5 years old and the Senate is 64.7[0]

Its really not great. There's very few representatives that have any life experiences of someone in the 30s or 40s. I'd argue that makes them out of touch on a host of very real, very pressing issues.

The other thing to think about is the age of those with the levers of power. Its one thing to be elected as a House member or to the Senate, its a whole other thing to sit on key powerful committees, be the leader of the party in the respective chamber etc. and the most powerful folks in congress trend into the 60s+

[0]: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/16/age-and-g...

> Washington is, from a lot of angles, a gerontocracy.

This goes deeper than one might suspect at first glance. The word "senate" comes from sennex, or old man, the same root word as "senile"

I disagree on the advantages of wisdom as these days I’m thinking the opposite:

1) Lack of wisdom leads to reinvention of the wheel. How many programming languages are there only now doing things the same way as 30 years ago? What is novel versus an unnecessary re-invention?

I started studying Tcl code from back in the late ‘90’s and honestly was surprised. Hell, many people don’t even know what macports is even though homebrew isn’t much but an attempt to reinvent macports with a “cool” spin.

2) Societal language and general problem solving skills are deteriorating. Language, and mathematics evolve ever so slowly, and yet emphasis on their importance is reduced in favor of the whims of technological advancement.

I would rather hire someone with the slow-developing, traditional skills, than the new-age fads.

In addition, with the advances in AI the only people worth hiring will be the ones with traditional education—and the wise, classically trained among our elders will be evermore important.

> How many programming languages are there only now doing things the same way as 30 years ago?

Similar thing in abstract, but differently in practice and it does matter a lot.

Yet what we’re seeing on the web with Typescript components turning to a pretty version of MFC minus the right/middle-click capability. The “single-page app” becoming a defacto standard mode of development.

Looking at the Fluent design React components just makes me wonder: this is progress from the desktop metaphor designed in the 90’s? What are we trying to achieve?

Then, I take a step back and realize that the 20-something’s from today don’t generally know what that is because they are cloud native.

Isn’t it weird how “old people” are so much like other people? The insecurities, hopes and so on? It’s like stereotypes just don’t work or something.

Be careful extrapolating too much from the emotional maturity of one generation where an unfortunately large majority was lead poisoned as children.

Elder and middle millennials are just about equally as poisoned, and we're all full of microplastics

For the future of the USA this is fortunately not very accurate, and microplastics are not associated with increased incidence of dark triad personality traits, as far as I know.

I think this is true from a pure knowledge perspective but definitely not from a wisdom perspective.

Old people have -through their experience- gained a tacit wisdom that can be very helpful when considering life choices.

The craziest and stupidest things I hear regularly are from older people. There are broad swathes of old people that, not having been raised to be skeptical about media consumption on the internet, are entirely credulous about all manner of insane dis/mis-information.

That said, it's also something I'm seeing with younger people as well.

The oldest are the easiest to swindle. This isn’t new.

Also, current media has the veneer and polish of old media which makes it difficult for the unsavvy.

Yeah, maybe it’s more hope than reality

Old people are also just a lot more numerous, relative to young people, than in previous eras of history.

Every time I scroll through r/wallstreetbets or r/cryptocurrency I realize that I understand something about risk and patience that many young people do not. I am not disrespecting individual investors and I don't hate btc (tbh I don't invest in it either).

It's obvious that a lot of people feel like they have to find a way to get rich in the next three years or they will be poor forever. I am sure my generation was often the same. But people who have been through good times and bad times understand risk and patience.

people today cannot imagine what it would have been like to have each generation do, experience and believe exactly the same thing. for thousands of years. even just a few hundred years ago, new ideas were basically a waste of time because everything had already been tried. history would swallow you up.

I find many “elders” I know think climate change is a hoax, solar power is dumb , transsexuals are evil, immigration is silly etc, basically they hold extreme views and it effects my ability to trust their word or opinion.

I’m not sure if technology is to blame, I think social media is probably part of their corruption, Fox News too, but yeah, the lack of interest in their opinions is mostly self inflicted and I feel they choose to believe in nonsense because it’s fun to hate things.

What technology has done is give me access to lots of knowledge and wisdom and now I don’t have to put up with all the cruft to get what I need.

Some elders in my life are more balanced and I enjoy seeking their opinion and wisdom and leaning on their experience for all sorts of things.

One exception for me is that in Japan, even opinions are considered to be potentially offensive so elderly people are careful with their words. I’ve very really interacted with an older Japanese person who just spits rhetoric and conspiracy theories. Japanese even are careful to make a statement like “this is the best chocolate I’ve tasted”, It’s much more common to say “I think this is wonderful”.

PS: Also, don’t forget that especially elder women help with children a lot.

> ...but when I look at voting patterns in particular, I find myself pessimistic that the elderly are wiser than average.

Wisdom like 'It's harder to build something than it is to tear it down' and 'Change carries its own risk.'

The irony is that older people overwhelming voted for Trump on the basis of returning things to the way they were... and then Trump staffed his administration with young ideologues who are determined to upset the traditional order.

Midterms will be curious.

People group together uncorrelated concerns way too much in politics. I guess it's necessary side effect of the "us vs. them" mind virus.

> The irony is that older people overwhelming voted for Trump on the basis of returning things to the way they were... and then Trump staffed his administration with young ideologues who are determined to upset the traditional order.

There isn't any irony there. People heard promises of some X and Y and Z returning to the way things were, they voted accordingly, and then their candidate proceeded to go against them on A, B and C. This is only surprising if you believe there's a strong ideological correlation between all these things (there isn't), and that parties and their leaders act according to their purported ideologies (they don't).

It's not {X,Y,Z} vs {A,B,C}.

It's {X,Y,Z} vs {X,Y,C}.

That portions of the investment community threw in behind Trump and are now shocked (shocked!) that he has bigger priorities than keeping the market pumped is absolutely ironic.

Counterpoint: The only people who voted for Harris more than Biden were old white people (especially old white women).

The biggest shift towards right wing authoritarianism from a demographic perspective is among the young (specifically young brown/black men in America). This is happening globally at a rapid and unprecedented pace.

Get ready for a conservative, violent, radicalized youth. A Clockwork Orange but with 4chan like characteristics.

I'm not pessimistic about Boomers anymore. They're becoming teddybears as they age.

> radicalized youth

Two of my teenage sons play sports and at times it feels like all content consumption roads eventually lead to “manfluencers”[0]. If they’re watching content on lifting techniques, sports discussions, or gaming—not uncommon topics for teenagers—the recommendations are riddled with rabbit holes into the so called manosphere.

[0] https://www.psypost.org/rejected-and-radicalized-study-links...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com