Are older people capable of rational thought?

[TZK]

I once read something talking about what happens to a person's brain as they age. It was talking about how free radicals eventually damaged a certain portion of the person's brain (I think called the hyptholomus or some such) responsible for storing long term memories.

 

The study seemed to indicate that it was not known what the precise effects of this would be and that people with such damaged brains still appeared to be able to function in every day life.

 

We are all familiar with the saying "You can't teach an old dog new tricks", and that older people are often considered stubborn compared to younger people. It seems likely that there is some kind of connection.

 

What if it was simply the case that as people get older they become less able to learn complex new ideas and adapt to new ways of thinking? I mean to some degree it seems to be accepted that this is true, but the question is how severe is it really?

 

What if older people could only make minor inferences from things that they already knew, and when exposed to new ideas they were forced to straw man them into something that already made sense to them?

 

Imagine the irony of debating with an older person who became angry and frustrated when you persisted in trying to explain a new idea (perhaps one that is superior to their thinking, but that they failed to understand while their brain was still intact) only because he was physically in capable of understanding what you were trying to say... ie you were fighting a lost cause...

 

Imagine how impaired we would be as a race if our buisnesses and governments are being run by people physically incapable of adaptation?

[coberst]

I think that, generally speaking, people over the age of forty tend to lose they sense of curiosity unless that sense of curiosity has been cultivated. Curiosity and caring are necessary conditions for an alert mind and these characteristics tend to atrophy with age if they are left unused. Such atrophy need not happen if a person maintains an active intellectual life as they age. A word to the young and wise don't let this happen to you. Get an intellectual life after your school days are over, don't put your intellect away in the attic with your year book.

[Zythryn]

Yes

[freeztar]

I think that, generally speaking, people over the age of forty tend to lose they sense of curiosity unless that sense of curiosity has been cultivated. Curiosity and caring are necessary conditions for an alert mind and these characteristics tend to atrophy with age if they are left unused. Such atrophy need not happen if a person maintains an active intellectual life as they age. A word to the young and wise don't let this happen to you. Get an intellectual life after your school days are over, don't put your intellect away in the attic with your year book.

 

That's some good wisdom there.

 

The next time a friend calls me a dork when I bring up a discussion I read here at Hypo, I'll say, "No, I'm cultivating my curiousity". :D ;)

 

But seriously, great advice.

Use it or lose it. :)

[Queso]

amen

[TZK]

I think that, generally speaking, people over the age of forty tend to lose they sense of curiosity unless that sense of curiosity has been cultivated. Curiosity and caring are necessary conditions for an alert mind and these characteristics tend to atrophy with age if they are left unused. Such atrophy need not happen if a person maintains an active intellectual life as they age. A word to the young and wise don't let this happen to you. Get an intellectual life after your school days are over, don't put your intellect away in the attic with your year book.

 

I wondered about that myself. Sometimes biologists and psychologists will say that X is caused by some physical occurence, when really the physical occurence is caused by X or something in your life that caused X as well.

 

I wonder if the physical decay would not occur as you seem to be implying if you frequently gained new long term memories even at older ages. Have you come across anything in your studies that indicates this?

 

I can see that most people who age probably tend to use this portion of their brain less and less as they develop a niche and concentrate their mental energy on it... And are less likely to make belief set altering new discoveries...

 

Probably for the same reason life seems less and less emotional as you get older...

[InfiniteNow]

TZK, I advise you read more into neuroplasticity. It's not as if portions of the brain are lost or hit by alpha particles (free radicals). While that does happen, it does not generally result in the all out ability/memory loss you imply.

 

Basically, we're born with a central nervous system, itself composed of vast connections of neurons. Single neurons branch out and connect with multiple others. The more branches, the more associations. As we age, the substructure gets more and more defined, and new branches then attach to that.

 

Think of rain falling over decades on the same mountain. When the first rains fell, the little streams created went in all different ways. Then, as the rains continue, certain streams get deeper and wider, and eventually when it rains all water tends to flow into these main tributaries. It's not as if new tributaries cannot branch out, it's just that they tend to be more closely connected to the main.

 

Older people have deeper "streams" making up their nervous system. They have new experiences all of the time, and continue to make new associations, but they also have the machinery which explains a much greater percentage of all new experience than they had when younger.

 

They are less neural plastic, but absolutely capable.

 

 

Cheers. ;)

[coberst]

I wondered about that myself. Sometimes biologists and psychologists will say that X is caused by some physical occurence, when really the physical occurence is caused by X or something in your life that caused X as well.

 

I wonder if the physical decay would not occur as you seem to be implying if you frequently gained new long term memories even at older ages. Have you come across anything in your studies that indicates this?

 

I can see that most people who age probably tend to use this portion of their brain less and less as they develop a niche and concentrate their mental energy on it... And are less likely to make belief set altering new discoveries...

 

Probably for the same reason life seems less and less emotional as you get older...

 

I am a retired engineer who maintained the learning process continually throughout my life. If you are interested you can read my essay "September Scholar" at my web site index

[JamesBrown]

I once read something talking about what happens to a person's brain as they age.

...

Imagine how impaired we would be as a race if our buisnesses and governments are being run by people physically incapable of adaptation?

The question is - What do you consider old?

I remember at one time anyone over 30 was, by defination, old. Now I have raised that number to about 85.

I know this isn't a political board but I think that is what we have going on now (incapable of adaptation)...

[Qfwfq]

Are today's young people capable of rational thinking? I've had experience of great efforts in getting something across to young people who are on their job and can't understand a simple solution to a problem when I point it out, and keep saying it can't be done and trying to get off with somethong different and then, when my repeated words finally begin to sink in, sometimes it's more like they've suddenly had the brilliant idea and have to convince me, the dolt that was refusing to understand them, explaining me exactly what I had been saying all along. :lol: :hihi:

 

What if it was simply the case that as people get older they become less able to learn complex new ideas and adapt to new ways of thinking?

"But Granny I'm not saying those ain't a cool pair of jeans I mean you just gotta see I can't show up at a Bon Jovi concert in like that ya know it's just obvious an' it wouldn't go with the right kinda lipstick and piercing and tatoos and anyway how could they see I've got the right underware on could ya even imagine anyone doin' it?"

 

"You mean you'd pass for a square?"

 

"For a whaaaaaaat? What the heck's it gotta do with squaaaaares an' stuff? How can ya not understand would you have shown up at a Bon Jovi like that when you were a girl?"

 

I know this isn't a political board but I think that is what we have going on now (incapable of adaptation)...

:cheer:

 

Is it 'cause I'm just an old fogey that I can't quite see the nexus?

[DougF]

Well this is a good question one I think depends on the individual (old person) that we are talking about, I myself (50) try to learn something new every day, if I can do that then it's a good day, (one reason I'm here at Hypography) :cheer: But I know that some of us (old fogies) don't want change (never had a use for a PC and ain't going to start now) for what ever reason seem to be set in there ways, IMO you need to use them brain mussels or they will grow week, don't just sit on the porch and let life pass you by. :hihi:

[TZK]

Well I think an important distinction to made about what I was saying might be the case is that I do not mean that such a person would not be able to be able to perform perhaps even complex jobs and tasks they might have performed in the past.

 

There might be certain percentages of things that they could do that might seem like new difficulties and yet actually just be extensions of ideas they have alread learned.

 

Whereas ideas that were drastically different than ones they had already understood would be rejected.

 

So they could still be high level mathematicians, or CEO's or whatever else. But if a new trend in mathematics came that caused everyone to question a fundamental assumption of mathematics and resulted in a totally new way of approaching a problem, an older mathematician might find themselves unable to build all the steps of the approach in their mind and therefore be more likely to just declare by fiat that the approach was invalid.

 

I remember having a discussion with a philosophy of mind professor that had published a synopsis' of others ideas book about the inverted spectrum paradox.

 

He did not seem to understand the paradox and claimed that certain (edit: ) colors which could be measured were associated with certain feelings and thus the paradox was disproven.

 

Of course the paradox would claim that the associations were reversed as well IE because you always saw water as red (and because statistically water is cool), red would be a cool color to you.

 

There were ideas like this that I went to endless lengths to explain in a paper in the most straightforward and easy to understand fashion I could think of, and yet the result was still a poor grade and incorrect comments about how ideas like inverted spectrum paradox were wrong.

 

At one point I would have just looked at it like I didn't explain it well enough, but for all I know it was a lost cause because he just doesn't have the brain power and therefore the ability to effectively teach and grade papers for this class.

[paigetheoracle]

Are today's young people capable of rational thinking? I've had experience of great efforts in getting something across to young people who are on their job and can't understand a simple solution to a problem when I point it out, and keep saying it can't be done and trying to get off with somethong different and then, when my repeated words finally begin to sink in, sometimes it's more like they've suddenly had the brilliant idea and have to convince me, the dolt that was refusing to understand them, explaining me exactly what I had been saying all along. :lol: ;)

 

"

 

Is it 'cause I'm just an old fogey that I can't quite see the nexus?

 

I agree and was just about to post the same thing when I saw your quote. The thing is that insight is personal, sadly. By that I mean you as an oldie (me too, 55 going on 92) will have seen what a youngster is now seeing by standing on the same rock as you did, 50 years ago but the opening of the third 'I' is such that we are not aware of history of the place but our own enlightenment - hence the old getting really, really pissed off by 'another' youngster claiming insight to something they saw at the start of the universe, already!

[paigetheoracle]

Another point - new research shows that the belief that neurons die off after a certain age is erroneous (Neurogenesis). Personally I could have told them that for the simple and very logical reason that we couldn't learn anything new, if we didn't make the mental connections necessary.

 

Last point - I think the problem is one of attitude. I believe that aging is just becoming world weary. In our youth we want everything in buckets because we are starved of experience, rather than old and jaded. Depression is I believe really the key to memory loss. We don't learn because we don't open up and put the effort in. Giving up effort is what keeps us ignorant or makes us ignorant. Positive emotion keeps us in love with life and learning - negative emotion is cutting loose the ties (neural connections) that ensure we see and build new pathways through life (knowledge is putting or bringing two and two together - ignorance is refusing to 'see' and laziness, 'make' the link).

[InfiniteNow]

Well I think an important distinction to made about what I was saying might be the case is that I do not mean that such a person would not be able to be able to perform perhaps even complex jobs and tasks they might have performed in the past.

Huh?

 

 

TZK,

 

You seem to have your mind made up that older people's minds are more rigid and less plastic, and you then use your argument to support this position and extrapolate how this might have other effects. However, you are missing some key bits of data regarding individual differences, what pieces of the mind are more effective with age, and what pieces might deteriorate. These things themselves are influenced by diet, activity, health, genetics, etc. Please bear this in mind. I again urge you to read further into neural plasticiity to get a more solid footing on the topic.

 

 

Cheers. ;)

[TZK]

Honestly I have read all I need to on the subject to discuss these issues. It is well known that brains deterioate over time and that certain areas are more prone to it than others. The effects of this are not well known since scientists are not able to correlate physical effects with real life differences in behavior and abilites. This is what I am talking about. Have you ever seen a brain scan of someone who is in their 90s? It looks like swiss cheese... with giant gaping holes and lesions everywhere.... Which the analyst will refer to as normal before pointing out whatever it is the brain scan was for.

 

And yet the person is still the person they always were. It brings one to question what difference do the physical changes really make if any?

 

And to be honest there isn't a way to easily tell the difference regarding what I am saying, because everyone is stubborn to some degree. What made me think about it though is various discussions I have had with certain people over time that made it seem as though the person was physically incapabale of considering my point of view. This makes me wonder if it is ever possible that someone you are arguing with is physically incapable of considering your point of view.

 

Are today's young people capable of rational thinking? I've had experience of great efforts in getting something across to young people who are on their job and can't understand a simple solution to a problem when I point it out, and keep saying it can't be done and trying to get off with somethong different and then, when my repeated words finally begin to sink in, sometimes it's more like they've suddenly had the brilliant idea and have to convince me, the dolt that was refusing to understand them, explaining me exactly what I had been saying all along. :) ;)

 

I don't know about that one, I think you would need both perspectives to see what really happened.

 

See the way I came to this question is, I have this model of disagreement between human beings where basically one person says X is true, but the other person says "if x was true, then y would be false, then z would be true... and d would be false but I know d isn't false because of f..."

 

But the person trying to argue that x is true, who is a human being of limited scope, has not investigated the connection between x, y, z, d, and f and instead knows other things and is pretty sure through experience that x is true. Therefore their explanations as to why x is true are irrelevant because that could always be explained by something else if the listener disproves x through his chain. (As you know it is much easier to disprove somethign than prove something)

 

The person can try to show you their chain of reasoning so you can help them identify any errors in reasoning (the other thing the guy was pointing to that you thought didn't matter), or they can just sort it out themselves which seems to be what happened in your case. Of course they are not always going to resolve it such that they believe X is true, and sometimes even if they do their might be a difference in the attributes of X based on their reasoning... Yeah X is true but only as long as R holds... or whatever else.

 

But in some cases I will argue with someone in person and basically what happens is this:

 

Me: Some logical argument

 

Them: If the glove don't fit you must aquit. (Red Herring)

 

Me: Logical argument

 

Them: If the whole world marches a certain way and you march differently

then are you saying they are out of step and you are in step (Bandwagon)

 

Me: Logical argument

 

Them: A lot of smart people have thought about what I am saying and determined it to be true (Appeal to Authority, Ad hominem)

 

Me: Ok. So why do you believe X to be true? You said W Y and Z earlier but I disagreed and explained why, but you just restated them and wouldn't listen to my point of view. So lets try a different approach. Do you agree with A? Agree with B? Do you agree that if B then C? Do you agree with if C then D? And finally do you agree that if D then not X?

 

Them: I would love to continue this conversation, but my balls itch.

 

From what I know about human behavior, this causes me to wonder if what is happening isn't:

 

Person considers my argument > Person sees a connection that I am implying > Person loses train of thought or ability to percieve all new proposals at once> Perhaps repeat once or twice > Person becomes self consious about their inability to percieve what I am saying > Person resorts to diversionary tactics

 

And possibly > Person reasons that they figured it out before or trust whoever else told them X before and that I am probably wrong so they shouldn't acknowledge counter points on single issues only to have X proven to that person later on by someone or something else. Which is of course fallacious because if they don't know the defense of X now against this person's argument, it is possible that no defense of X exists.

 

It is a subtle difference between this and the average person, but with the average person you can get counter points to or difficulties with your arguments out of them every so often. With some people there just doesn't seem to be any counterpoints... In my experience this happens when the subject is beyond a young person who has been convinced of X through social pressure, but it also seems to happen when dealing with an older person who is knowledgable of the subject but not of this knew line of thinking you have presented.

[Qfwfq]

I don't know about that one, I think you would need both perspectives to see what really happened.

And who tells you I don't have both!?

 

What really happened is simple, I was able to see what they meant but it took a sledgehammer to get in what I was trying to tell them.