quote: Mathematicians and poets, they burn out in their mid-twenties anyway.
states Volescu in "Shadow of the Giant".
quote: People reach their peak ability as military commanders much earlier than we thought. Most of them in their late teens. The same age when poets do their most passionate and revolutionary work. And mathematicians. They peak, and then it falls off. They coast on what they learned back when they were still young enough to learn.
That's Graff in "First Meetings".
I myself certainly did feel sharper when I was younger...
What do you think about it?
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
As one grows older one picks up more experience and information. Much of that information is erroneous. In computer terms, GIGO--Garbage In, Garbage Out. The older you are the more bad information you are working with, and its deeper ingrained into your thought processes, so its harder to break out of those thoughts and think in new ways, which is what geniuses do.
So there is a thought that only the young think up new ways.
Also, once you think of your new thought, whether its a mathematical concept or a new strategy, you will spend a large amount of your time defending it, and will be disinclined to look at anything that will weaken it--hence limiting your creative ability.
So yes, you can make an argument that in some disciplines, many geniuses peak early.
Posted by PanaceaSanans (Member # 13395) on :
This is a valuable thought, Darth. My youngest brother recently asked me whether I shared his assessment that our mother "is not as intelligent as we are". While the question didn't startle me as much as I'd have liked it to, the reply was still a hard one to phrase. I wish I had read your answer before that, so I might have answered him better. As it is, I told him she isn't less intelligent, just more placid, and that he should have met her when I was a kid, because she seemed much sharper then, or even when she herself was his age. Now she just doesn't care about an awful lot of things. She has engaged in most arguments one time to often, and the paths of her thoughts are too well trodden for her to explore with an open mind.
She is not old, not even fifty-five. And I fear that what now frightens me so will turn to indifference, and I will become just as she is. Already I feel like I'm slackening in my intellectual pursuits. My hunger for knowledge is not the same it was. A tiredness has already begun to gnaw on my ambition, and apathy is so terrifyingly tempting at times...