I don’t think this applies to all 80 year olds though. Some of the smartest, most open-minded people I’ve met have been 70+ year old university professors. These are the kind of people who retired, and then came back to teach because they were bored. It’s definitely possible for humans to retain their critical thinking well into that late stage of life, but I’ll grant you that most who make it to that age don’t seem to manage it.
I can only hope that if and when I reach that many decades on this planet, I’ll still have the kind of clarity of mind to not get stuck on ‘autopilot’…
Sure, Roger Penrose is a decade older, and he’s probably the most intelligent living person
But a professor working out a few more tweaks to their life’s work is not the peak of their career. And the mental abilities for that is not reacting to a million shitty things at once as the president of America.
It’s kind of high stressed.
The standards are just that much lower for elderly teachers too, and if they’re actually intelligent then they’d freely admit that their age is a negative.
That’s just biology, there’s no way around it. No one peaks at 70 years old…
I don’t think this applies to all 80 year olds though. Some of the smartest, most open-minded people I’ve met have been 70+ year old university professors. These are the kind of people who retired, and then came back to teach because they were bored. It’s definitely possible for humans to retain their critical thinking well into that late stage of life, but I’ll grant you that most who make it to that age don’t seem to manage it.
I can only hope that if and when I reach that many decades on this planet, I’ll still have the kind of clarity of mind to not get stuck on ‘autopilot’…
Sure, Roger Penrose is a decade older, and he’s probably the most intelligent living person
But a professor working out a few more tweaks to their life’s work is not the peak of their career. And the mental abilities for that is not reacting to a million shitty things at once as the president of America.
It’s kind of high stressed.
The standards are just that much lower for elderly teachers too, and if they’re actually intelligent then they’d freely admit that their age is a negative.
That’s just biology, there’s no way around it. No one peaks at 70 years old…