Do you feel dumber in your 20s? 30s? 40s?

[Anonymous No.10429878]

How has age impacted your smarts?
I'm curious specifically in regards to mathematicians and programmers.

[Anonymous No.10429897]

>>10429878
Your brain starts to slow from 25 onward, but it isn't really noticeable until your mid-30s or early-40s.

[Anonymous No.10429899]

I'm old af and I'd say age doesn't really factor into things (except that you're definitely dumb af when you're a teen). The correlation is with application. The more you use your brain in challenging way, the closer you get to reaching your full potential.

[Anonymous No.10429937]

>>10429878
Not really, it's moreso that you finally realize how lacking in knowledge you really are.

[Anonymous No.10430011]

>>10429878
It's harder to learn new things in your 40's.
Your body really starts to age, your eye sight starts to go. Your memory is no longer as reliable.

[Anonymous No.10430226]

>>10429878
smurt is shit money and economy makes u feel

[Anonymous No.10430298]

>>10429899
>The correlation is with application. The more you use your brain in challenging way, the closer you get to reaching your full potential.
>>10430011
>It's harder to learn new things in your 40's.
So which one is it?
Can I beat ageing with a mentally challenging job?

[Anonymous No.10430300]

>>10429878
The major thing that has changed (along with age) is that I have so much less free time. So it's hard to distinguish whether my progress slowed down due to cognitive changes or just because I dedicate less time to my area of interest (pure math).

For instance, it took me a whole year to get through a book on K-theory. I feel like I could have digested that over a couple of months if I still were at uni. Work, family, house chores, I am almost 30 and I have very little free time. I understand that few people would be able to comprehend K-theory at all, let alone over a year, but I was disappointed in my pacing. I used to flip through books like crazy.

[Anonymous No.10430328]

>>10429878

I am 37 and I have feeling that my mental abilities haven't declined, but are better with time. I kept learning for last 10 years (even more that before) , and now have at least same mental machinery, but much more knowledge on top of that. I have recently solved few projecteuler.net problems after few years hiatus and found out that my success rate is higher that was few years before and was able to reach top 100 for my first time recently and more than once.

[Anonymous No.10430344]

>>10429878
Technically >>10429897 is true, your fluid intelligence peaks around 25 or 26 if you're male and then very slowly declines, but realistically it's more like a very long plateau until your 40s followed by a slow decline.
What wasn't mentioned here is that your crystalline intelligence doesn't decline at all until your old age (unless your health changes this) so what you're going to notice is that your mind will reach its peak speed and raw power in your 20s, but later on you're probably going to become even better at what you're doing because your knowledge base will continue growing for a good couple of decades.
So you're probably going to see your intellectual peak in your 30s or even your 40s if you're in academia.
That's not factoring in kids and a family though.

As for me personally I found my abilities kept increasing through my 20s and I had a far greater intuition for understanding material from my mid 20s onward.

[Anonymous No.10430346]

>>10429878
IQ peaks at 25, skills around 30 (check out chess ELOs for example), but the drop is much slower than the rise, you will be on the same level as you were in your early 20's around your sixties. The biggest factor for me is the amount of free time. You get a lot less done research wise when you work 40 hour work weeks.

[Anonymous No.10430361]

I felt like I got smarter after 25 but it's just because I stopped caring about pussy

[Anonymous No.10430370]

>>10430361
This, having kids early made me realize that once you've had children it doesn't even matter anymore.

[Anonymous No.10430436]

>>10429878
Things start slowing down after 30 and nobody wants to admit it.

[Anonymous No.10430516]

>>10430011
Not if you live right.

[Anonymous No.10430525]

>>10430516
And that is?

[Anonymous No.10430545]

>>10430525
Minimize stress, maximize mitochondrial respiration rate, keep estrogen and serotonin low, minimize accumulation of intracellular PUFA, have interesting hobbies and plenty of leisure time.

[Anonymous No.10431729]

[Anonymous No.10431746]

>>10429878

As long as you keep your brain active I believe you can maintain whatever you have in there at the very least.

For example I've been playing counter-strike for 20 years and I'm in my prime at 36 years old.

[Anonymous No.10431756]

>>10430298
>>It's harder to learn new things in your 40's.
This is nonsense. It may be harder for many people to learn new things in their 40's but not because they are in their 40's, rather because of a number of other things (set patterns in life, narrow focus of occupation, etc) Most things people try to learn in their 40's are things like a new language, or instrument - and this is hard...but if they HAD to learn these things, sink or swim, live or die, NOT as a hobby or to help them in their work, they'd learn just fine.

>Can I beat ageing with a mentally challenging job?
No one can beat ageing. Do you mean mental deterioration? You can beat it by avoiding, or removing yourself from, patterns of thinking and behaviour.

[Anonymous No.10431918]

>>10429878
as a teenager, I fell for the weed meme. As a college student, I fell for the take a semester off meme. Now I'm a stupid fuck and get Cs and Bs in my upper div math classes.

[Anonymous No.10431927]

>>10429878
I get dumber every day.

[Anonymous No.10431957]

Im 23, i am already feeling dumber but there is scientific proof that depression harms your memory.

[Anonymous No.10431966]

I'm 30 and I feel smarter, but that's mostly just because of study habits and a lot more knowledge amassed. Plus I have a lot of free time. Can't say I've noticed any diminished abstract thinking ability, though. Maybe only slightly, but that might just be because I care less about certain things.

[Anonymous No.10431971]

>>10431966
Also the fact that it's harder to learn new things in your 40's doesn't really bother me as I'll have learned what I essentially need by then. After 40 studying is all just hobby anyway.

[Anonymous No.10432078]

I did fine in college as a math/CS major, but I didn't go to a competitive school. Then I became a NEET and got schizophrenia which is associated with low IQ, poor executive function, short term memory deficits and attentional problems. I can hardly muster up the attention to read a book and my comprehension and retention are poor. I tried dual n back and I average about 50% on level 2. I don't even want to know what my IQ score would be. 27 btw.

[Anonymous No.10432137]

>>10430545
I feel like Ray Peat misses the mark in some ways But to put it another way, each approach has it's benefits and drawbacks and your goals have an effect on what is the right approach for you.

[Anonymous No.10432151]

>>10429878
It feels like riding in a headwind in some ways.
Mathematical ability probably peaked around 13.
Programming ability still improving

[Anonymous No.10432154]

>>10432078
stop being weak, stop reacting to your schizophrenic imagination masturbation and you'll be fine

[Anonymous No.10433308]

>>10432078
>I tried dual n back and I average about 50% on level 2.
Brainlet.
I'm trying level 5 now.
Not great but I'm improving.

[Anonymous No.10433326]

>>10432078
im really really afraid this is going to be me

[Anonymous No.10433564]

>>10429878
Smart people always feel dumb and dumb people always feel smart

[Anonymous No.10433620]

>>10433564
I guess you feel smart.

[Anonymous No.10433758]

If you live a healthy life, aren't fat, have a good cardiovascular system and are free of any health problems, physical and mental, you can be just as sharp until you late 40s or late 50s.

me however:

>mild concussion
>sick for a long time on and off
>bad depression
>tooth cavities
>somewhat overweight, was malnourished for a while
>weird problem with vision while the ophthalmologist said I'm ok

And I feel like a retard, despite being only 25. My mind just doesn't work like it used to when I was 22, before all that shit started.

Maybe if I get /fit/ and un-depressed I'll be back to normal. Or at least I hope so.

[Anonymous No.10433808]

>>10433758
iktf. I started having some sort of brain fog during college and it never went away. I tried different diets, I tried all types of shit, but in the end I'm still exhausted and slow. Even had a brain MRI that came clean, but MRIs don't show minor damage or slightly restricted blood flow.

[Anonymous No.10433868]

>>10433308
cringe

[Anonymous No.10433945]

I'm in my mid 30s and I feel smarter than ever. When I was in my late teens to early 20s it took me about 5 years to have a firm grip on the English language. Sure I could understand and speak English but my comprehension was not perfect. Now I speak English at a native level which took me about 1-2 hours a day for 5 years to truly master.

When I was in my early 30s I picked up Japanese and it only took me 2 years to master the language despite me being older and the language having 3 separate scripts to master. I now speak fluent Japanese and can read and write fluently as well. It could very well be that language learning itself is a skill that got better but I had similar success with mathematics which while being in the top 10% of my university in my 20s I still had some struggles with from time to time. Now I just pump out the math necessary for whatever hypothetical situation I come up with.

What I think actually happens though is that people in their 20s stop being intellectually engaged after graduation. But if you keep stimulating yourself by picking up new intellectual skills and perpetually learning new languages etc you will keep improving. I have personally noticed how language learning has made me better at noticing trends in mathematics as well so there IS some correlation between the two. I speak 8 languages now 3 of which I learned before reaching the age of 25 and the following 5 being learned before 35. I feel like I spend significantly less effort on acquiring fluency level comprehension with new languages now than in my early 20s.

[Anonymous No.10433966]

>>10433808
>>10433758
*hands you a packet of sugar and a box of aspirin*

Let me guess, low carb? Keto? Perhaps some kind of extreme restricted diet like carnivore/vegan/paleo? Calorie restriction? Fasting? Acute increase in exercise volume?

[Anonymous No.10434103]

>>10433945
>I have personally noticed how language learning has made me better at noticing trends in mathematics as well so there IS some correlation between the two.
This is very interesting, can you elaborate a bit?
>I speak 8 languages now 3 of which I learned before reaching the age of 25 and the following 5 being learned before 35.
What are those languages?

[Anonymous No.10434166]

>>10433966
Unfortunately not.

Some times I'm so reinvigorated after a meal, but other times I get lethargic. I think I should try keto and exercise or something.