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Comment by chroma | Hacker News Reader

If (as I think the case is) YC doesn't discriminate on age at all, one might still expect a lower acceptance rate for higher ages. Allow me to explain why.

As much as we hate to admit it, our brains (like the rest of our organs) start to decline in our 20's.[1] We're not quite as quick as we used to be. We can't work as hard. We take a little longer to learn new things. In almost every discipline, crystallized knowledge more than offsets this loss of fluid intelligence. Eventually though, age catches up with us. Combine that with YC's very high bar (accepting the top 3% of applicants), and even a slight dulling due to aging would cause a discrepancy.

1. http://lesswrong.com/lw/4gi/age_fluid_intelligence_and_intel...

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> even a slight dulling due to aging would cause a discrepancy

Only if you completely discount the value of experience.

Not at all. I addressed that:

> In almost every discipline, crystallized knowledge more than offsets this loss of fluid intelligence. Eventually though, age catches up with us.

At some point, gains from knowledge can't make up for decline in cognitive ability. For some disciplines, it usually happens sooner (mathematics). For others, it's typically later (biology). For startups, I bet it depends heavily on what the company is doing. But at some point, age makes one less likely to be in the top few percent.

Also, while experience is valuable, the value of experience is probably sub-linear. When learning a new skill, most important knowledge is acquired early on. After that, returns diminish.

Some of this discussion might have to be revised if the startup is active in a health or scientific field. For example, people entering the Chemistry field with a PhD tend to be 30+, particularly if they post-doc. I would imagine if fully-trained (i.e., post resident) MD's are required, you might see people approaching 35+. So, while they're on the wrong end of the power curve, they're what you have to deal with.

Fortunately, for the startup incubators, there are few scientific endeavors that lead to a useful exit strategy. Unless, of course, you're trying to start a biotech or pharma startup. And at that point, you're 1-2 orders of magnitude more expensive as physical plant and even regulatory approval start to enter the picture. Medical endeavors are probably information based (deal with privacy and patient access issues, hence MD's) which is easier to handle. If they're medical devices, you'll face approval processes, I think, similar to pharma. Possibly faster in that there aren't so many steps in the clinical trial process - devices tend not to have a tox problem, for example.

Uh, (citation needed)? As far as I'm aware, the scientific community is pretty convinced that the adult brain has a large degree of neuroplasticity [1] and can retain a significant amount as we age [2]. It's also been shown what we refer to as "fluid intelligence" can actually be trained and optimized for [3]. I would argue that until real, systemic cognitive decline begins occurring (let's say ~65), any differences in an individual's ability to learn new things and retain facts based on age can probably be more strongly attributed to their internal biases from their pre-acquired knowledge than an inability to learn.

Maybe in some part I'm arguing semantics ("either way, what appears to be a decline still occurs"), but to say that cognitive decline happens sooner when related to aptitude for maths as opposed to aptitude for biology is a little silly without a citation. Would love to read these articles if you have resources.

It's probably a mistake to write off an older adult's ability to learn. I would lean to heavily favour Elon's anecdote [4], "I do kinda feel like my head is full! My context switching penalty is high and my process isolation is not what it used to be. Frankly, though, I think most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying." --- more knowledge means you have the ability to be more discerning which can be more computationally expensive (and take longer), but it doesn't necessarily offset ability to learn. In fact, you could probably make a convincing argument that with proper pattern recognition you can learn the right things more quickly.

1. Plasticity in the human cerebral cortex: lessons from the normal brain and from stroke. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15070490

2. Plasticity of the human brain ‐ “We never use the same brain twice” https://www.mpg.de/38899/hm09_PlasticityHumanBrain_basetext....

3. Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2383929/

4. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk...

If you want something more substantial than the diagram in my earlier comment, I recommend When does age-related cognitive decline begin?.[1] The figures on pages 11 and 12 are depressing, but the study seems pretty sound.

Many of the replies to my comments are misconstruing me. I'm not saying that older people are useless, or that they can't learn, or that they should be discriminated against. I'm simply saying that if you select the very best and blind yourself to age, your sample is likely to skew younger. This is due to the effects of aging, including the aging brain. Nobody contests this when it comes to sports, including mental ones such as chess. Why should it not also be true for startups?

1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2683339/pdf/nihm...

That's blatant ageism (and a very common misconception, too).

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