Moving forward with work on the D language and foundation

[Tony via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Wednesday, 9 December 2015 at 07:49:58 UTC, Rory McGuire wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 9:12 AM, Tony via Digitalmars-d-announce 
> < digitalmars-d-announce at puremagic.com> wrote:
>
>> [snip]
>> One thing that comes to mind to refute the contention that 
>> senescence
>> would be insignificant at the age of 50 is notable technical 
>> achievement.
>>
>> If we were to list the mathematical and scientific discoveries 
>> of the past - like calculus and theory of relativity, etc. - 
>> how many would have been done by someone at the age of 50 or 
>> older? How many milestones in computing history were achieved 
>> by someone 50 or older? How many were done by someone over 40? 
>> And I think most of the aging process isn't even quality (what 
>> would most impact notable discovery) - it's quantity (that is, 
>> slower clock cycle). And companies probably have more concerns 
>> about quantity of thought than quality.
>>
>>
>  Lol not sure where you getting all this, but the average 25 
> year old is a
> dumb ass compared to the average 50 year old. However that 
> being said the
> average 50 year old is a lot less likely to get excited about 
> their work
> and to do something super creative / learning new things. These 
> things are
> not based on their brain activity though, it has a lot more to 
> do with
> social conditioning and disillusionment.
> There are a lot less 50 year olds
> that are motivated to something disruptive in their fields of 
> experience.

I'd be swayed if you could link to interviews with older 
scientists, mathematicians or computer scientists who said their 
work declined with age because they became disillusioned or they 
ran into social conditioning issues.


> The number of scarily intelligent people aged over 60 is most 
> likely a lot
> higher than the number of 25 year olds that are so. Its just 
> the way our
> brains work, your brain optimises its thought processes 
> continually, and
> experience is where you get that.

Rather than the two of us expressing opposing opinions and you 
loling, we should probably look at research on the matter. 
Unfortunately, there is some disagreement with regard to 
cognitive decline. Some see it as a gradual decline from early 
adulthood and others seeing the decline postponed until later in 
life.

This paper titled "The myth of cognitive decline"

https://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2013/papers/0230/paper0230.pdf

actually appears to acknowledge and accept that speed of 
reasoning declines with age:

"Findings from a range of psychometric tests suggest that the 
rates at which the mind  processes information increase from 
infancy to young adulthood, and decline steadily thereafter  
(Salthouse, 2011). Increasing reaction times are a primary  
marker  for  age related  cognitive decline  (Deary et al,  
2010), and are even considered its  cause  (Salthouse, 1996), yet 
they are puzzling."

but then attributes it to the brain having to deal with more 
information rather than having a slower processing speed - a 
bloated registry, if you will.

"However, age increases the rage of knowledge and skills 
individuals possess, which increase the overall amount of 
information processed in their cognitive systems. This extra 
processing has a cost."

But an employer wouldn't care if an older worker was thinking 
slower because of physical decline or because they had to sift 
through more information.