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Comment by bertzzie | Hacker News Reader

> Few jobs are now so arduous that 70 year olds cannot perform well.

I think it's mostly physical jobs that 70 year olds cannot perform well. And that kind of job can be automated by robots anyway. For job like programming or CEO, I kind of think that 70 year olds can do better than say 20 year olds.

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Mental acuity is very much a physical quality. Yes, there are 70 year olds who can think and mentally adapt exceptionally well, just as there are 70 year olds who can do one arm push-ups and live till 100. But it doesn't mean that 70 year old are just like 30 year olds, but with more experience.

Most of the studies that showed rapid mental decline in old age have been debunked. A 70 year old with no actual problems (e.g., Alzheimer's) is very likely to function perfectly fine mentally.

A 2002 study (published in the Alzheimer's and Dementia Journal) found that ~91% of people 70 and older were capable of normal mental function.

Seriously? How many 70 year old people do you know? Let say you need to urgently take your child to a doctor and can choose between a 30 yo and a 70 yo. What would you do?

Parent cited an experiment that found 70 year-olds to have mental functioning on par with young people. Would you like to argue against the study's conclusion in a meaningful way? Or are you just pointing out that regardless of what is true, humans tend to act in a biased and ineffective manner?

That's a straw man right there. Why would it matter? In terms of the decision making, the one with more knowledge is better. In terms of driving, it depends on if the 70 year old still has the PHYSICAL ability and acuity to drive a car, which is exactly what we weren't talking about.

I'd say the 70 yo doctor is less likely to prescribe new 'fad meds' that cost more and perform worse than the classical drugs

Also, experience

If you look at a site/product like Lumosity.com, you can compare your results to other age groups. If you accept that the tests on Lumosity do test particular brain functions/areas then its clear to see that from the millions of user that take part, the performance average does decline with age. It's actually quite dramatic to see that a 40 year old that scores in the 90% in a test category, fits in at 50% among the 20 year olds.

You can't really get any meaningful results from a self selected sample.

Since there is no other evidence that a 40 year old in the 90th percentile for mental performance is equal to a 20 year old in the 50th percentile, it seems more than likely that the data is skewed.

Perhaps Lumosity.com attracts above average young people and below average older people (given those results, some variation on that theme is the likely explanation).

For what it's worth, top chess players decline in skill with age, so it matters for at least one mental activity.

An otherwise almost imperceptible decline in mental function could have have a huge impact on ranking among top chess players simply because at the top levels the margins between players are so small.

If chess Grandmasters dropped in mental acuity as fast as those Luminosity results suggested, a 60 year old Grandmaster could be beaten by any young novice.

Also worth mentioning is that competitive chess is favors very quick thinking and action in a way that most careers don't.

>>For job like programming or CEO, I kind of think that 70 year olds can do better than say 20 year olds.

Maybe in 50 years, but currently I'd say a 20-30 years old is the prime programmer age. Young people tend to learn new tech quicker, and be faster/more efficient at typing and using computers.

Are you so sure about that? I'm 53, and I believe I'm a far more effective programmer than I was in my 20's.

A 53 year old who has been programming for 30+ years is likely to be a good programmer because they managed to keep programming for all those years. How many of the less-talented people you started out with are still programming?

But I do agree that it without hard evidence, it's unfair to assume older programmers are slower or less capable. I have personally worked with some exceptional older programmers.

...typing and using computers? So you're comparing 20-30 year old programmers with 40 year old people who aren't even comfortable with computers? Yeah, I'd say apples are way better than oranges.

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