Thoughts on aging\'s effect on learning and intelligence
 

This is from a thread in STTF. I thought maybe I would bring it out here to see if we can get some interesting discussion going.

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A big selling point for me switching would be if I actually think a stubborn old slow learner like can learn to beat 3/6 or 5/10 in any reasonable timeframe.



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This is very interesting to me. I've been playing 6 max for just over a year and the transition/learning for me has been at times painfully slow - and I'm older than the avg. poster. I've often wondered if that was a factor, but have no way to measure it other than to know that for me learning has taken or is taking longer than say FD or Manchild. Microbet has made the transition much quicker and he is older, but also less emotional about his game and probably smarter than I am.

Last month was sort of a revelation for me. I learned TO APPLY some basic concepts that should have been evident to me from the beginning regarding aggression, hud integration and a few other things that I knew, but like I said, wasn't applying to my game. I think its frustrating to my coach to the point where he has pretty much given up on me (not his fault [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]), which in turn is very frustrating to me because with a few more tweaks to my game I think I'm about there. "There" being a solid player up to 200nl maybe 400nl, not quite as good as FD but almost - at least in my mind.

Finally my goal a year ago was to work my way up to 3-6 or 5-10. Now its just to be solid at 1-2, and I've never been one to settle for second best etc. Meh, ranting.

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Sounds like you and I have similar tendencies to analyze things and the nature behind them.

For one thing it's pretty much a given that you learn faster when you're younger. My friend's daughter is 14. I've been part of her life for 7 years or so and just marvel at how sponge-like their brains are. You tell her something once and pretty much know it's going to be stuck in there for life. It's a scary power to have actually. Also anything sports related, you tell her once to try something a different way, and she instantly picks it up. No bad habits that take months or years to break.

Also pretty much all of the great mathematical, etc. geniuses will do their best work by their late 20s. But that doesn't mean people can't be really smart, it just means probably not world-class, bleeding-edge smart. Like a great sprinter who can still be really fast, just not winning the olympics fast.

So when you get in your 30s and 40s you lose maybe a little bit of raw intellect, and a lot of your willingness/ability to learn new concepts. I've worked with older guys who were COBOL programmers or something that just couldn't get all the messy crap of web programming. They just wanted someone to define their environment for them and tell them where to write the code and what it should do. Web programming just has way more to it than that. Then again I have a feeling those guys may not have been very good COBOL programmers either.

But the good news is I think the latter can be fought back against. I hate learning a new language (like the COBOL dude). It's like it hurts or something. Whereas when I was younger I might have thought it was fun. But once I force myself to learn it, I get it just about as well as I ever would have, if not as quick. Then cleverly applying what I've learned is fun. Just the raw blue-sky learning is painful. I think those two things must happen in different parts of your brain.

I used to work with a guy in his 40s, maybe early 50s, who by all rights could be a genius. He was definitely one of the best in the world at what he did (statistical consulting). One big thing I noticed about him is that he never showed the slightest hesitation to learn something new. He got frustrated with our computer support guy when he was having problems with his machine, and basically taught himself everything he needed to know to fix the problem himself in a few hours. It's almost like he was missing that getting-old "crustification" gene, and maybe that was more his secret to being a "genius" than anything else. I've always wondered.

So anyway to sum up, my theory is that if you were smart enough to learn to beat 25/50 when you were 18, you're probably still smart enough at 40. But you have to fight really really hard against stubbornness. Of course all the extra emotional baggage you've accumulated in 22 years, and all the other skills and innate qualities that make up a great poker player also come into play. I'm just trying to isolate on the intelligence/learning variable.

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Also pretty much all of the great mathematical, etc. geniuses will do their best work by their late 20s. But that doesn't mean people can't be really smart, it just means probably not world-class, bleeding-edge smart. Like a great sprinter who can still be really fast, just not winning the olympics fast.

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This simply isn't true anymore. There are obviously some exceptions like Terence Tao or Ben Green but mathematics is much less of a young man's game than it used to be (partly because there is a lot more that you need to know to do mathematics nowadays, as opposed to 100 years ago when a bright 20 year old could probably pick up all the material necessary to be on the cutting edge of his chosen field).

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I feel as smart as ever and like I learn things just as quickly as ever. I also run a mile faster than I could when I was 17.

There are a few factors in why old people are perceived to be dumber and why they sometimes actually are.

Most people let their brains (and bodies) atrophy.

There are a lot of important things old people have done in math and science too. Part of the reason breakthroughs are associated with young people is partly because it is more remarkable when someone does something very young (or very old) and it is remembered. It's also partly because when someone with a new remarkable brain gets his first chance to do something remarkable it's going to be when he or she is young and a lot of breakthroughs have to do with a having a new perspective.

Being a super genius at something also has a lot to do with a moderately long (meaning a few years - not like decades) and extremely intense study of something. For a lot of reasons this is just something younger males are much more likely to do than other groups. It probably goes back to our evolutionary history and it's all scheming to get laid, which I guess makes PUA the perfect science.

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There are a lot of important things old people have done in math and science too. Part of the reason breakthroughs are associated with young people is partly because it is more remarkable when someone does something very young (or very old) and it is remembered. It's also partly because when someone with a new remarkable brain gets his first chance to do something remarkable it's going to be when he or she is young and a lot of breakthroughs have to do with a having a new perspective.

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I think it has less to do with this, and more to do with the nature of what a breakthrough is. Successful older scientists are going to have much more formalized training thinking about things in the old ways, and that's a lot harder to break out of. The real revolutions are almost always youngsters. Plenty of good science gets done by people in their middle to late career, obviously, just not the kind of epochal theoretical breakthroughs that people are typically thinking of in this context.

I think brain atrophy is a pretty big effect. I've sort of gotten out of the habit of doing calculations and haven't gone to a class in a couple of years, and it's definitely showing. I'm trying to get myself back into a regimen of spending a couple hours a day working through new stuff to get back into mental shape.

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Ok, that mathematics thing is something I read a while back. Let me ask you something though, since I know nothing about the state of modern mathematics. When I think of genius I don't just picture someone who solved a tough proof or made some kind of advancement that happens every few years. I mean someone who revolutionized some area of mathematics or science. Einstein, Newton, Descartes, Copernicus (helio-centric theory is believed to have been born in his 20s), Tesla, probably the guy who invented the wheel. All these guys had their big eureka moment in their 20s. Then many of them went on to postulate all kinds of wrong theories as they got older.

Are there any examples of people having the genesis of some idea that revolutionized their field while in their late 30s or beyond?

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I feel as smart as ever and like I learn things just as quickly as ever. I also run a mile faster than I could when I was 17.


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But can you run a 100 yard dash as fast?


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Being a super genius at something also has a lot to do with a moderately long (meaning a few years - not like decades) and extremely intense study of something. For a lot of reasons this is just something younger males are much more likely to do than other groups.

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This makes a lot of sense. Supposedly in chess the best players aren't the smartest, but the ones who can concentrate the best. Maybe genius comes down to concentration stamina more than anything else.

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So basically our brain can still be coerced into developing throughout our lives based on usage patterns. This would seem to support the "possible, but hard" hypothesis to massive new learning past the 30s. And maybe just that extra effort needed is enough to keep one from coming up with a world-class genius moment.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity

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fascinating! I was just going to post of my own theory involving the brain's neuro pathways being the cause of increased/ decreased learning abilities.

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So what can I do to keep my brain from atrophy?

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So basically our brain can still be coerced into developing throughout our lives based on usage patterns. This would seem to support the "possible, but hard" hypothesis to massive new learning past the 30s. And maybe just that extra effort needed is enough to keep one from coming up with a world-class genius moment.

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I think this could be accomplished by researching the electrical activity within the various lobes of the brain.

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So what can I do to keep my brain from atrophy?

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There have been some positive studies on reading and I think crossword puzzles and decreasing the risks and/or effects of alzheimer's.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity

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I worked for Scientific Learning, which was started by Bill Jenkins, Michael Merzenich and a few other people not listed there (Paula Talaal, Bret Peterson, ..?)

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From the wiki article, I thought this was pretty fascinating:

"One such experiment involved a group of eight Buddist monk adepts and ten volunteers who had been trained in meditation for one week in Davidson's lab. All the people tested were told to meditate on compassion and love. Two of the controls, and all of the monks, experienced an increase in the number of gamma waves in their brain during meditation. As soon as they stopped meditating, the volunteers' gamma wave production returned to normal, while the monks, who had meditated on compassion for more than 10,000 hours in order to attain the rank of adept, did not experience a decrease to normal in the gamma wave production after they stopped meditating. The synchronized gamma wave area of the monks' brains during meditation on love and compassion was found to be larger than that corresponding activation of the volunteers' brains."


Also they've done studies on London cabbies brains, who have to spend years memorizing all of London's streets before they're allowed to work. They found certain areas were more developed than control subjects, and others actually less. So it looks like all the memorization can actually push out other stuff.

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So what can I do to keep my brain from atrophy?

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I'm to take a guess, and honestly I've never thought of this before, that learning poker or new forms of poker can probably help. Also having a career that challenges you to keep learning. Barring those, any other intellectual hobby can probably help.

But I don't know if crossword puzzles count. While they require thought, I don't know they really stimulate any kind of learning.

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My 2c as a 44 year old ...

Most of my work colleagues in the past have had the opinion that I was some form of genius (not a brag, wait for it!). I have always had the ability to make complex things simple, and just sort of assumed that others could do it too. Memorably for me was one meeting with some fairly high powered investment bankers to discuss an asset backed security issue which I was proposing. Meeting chaired by a guy worth over £200 million, and he'd brought a top team to attack my proposal. One was a former professor of maths at Oxford University, and he promptly set out the mathematical logic for why my proposal was unworkable. I have a degree in Classics and English, but I dabble in maths,so I immediately retorted that he was wrong and had made several mistakes which I then proceeded to point out. His reply ... "Jesus, that's elegant."

Now,the truth is that I'm definitely not a genius, and I don't even think I'm that intelligent, but I read more than pretty much anyone I've ever met (average 500+ pages a day), I have a good memory for what I read, and *crunch* I think about it a lot. In short, I am an obsessive personality, and when I get interested in something I really kick the arse out of it until I truly understand it. And I move on to other subjects of obsession. I think in this way, I develop both breadth and depth of knowledge and understanding which feeds through to an ability to solve problems which looks like high intelligence, but isn't really. It's obsession, hard work,and a natural ability to absorb and retain information.

I think all elements are necessary for maintaining learning ability as you get older; breadth - opera to poker to motorcycle maintenance; depth - the obsessive desire to be able to understand the real professionals (sidebar, I also got a top 5 law firm to rewrite a legal opinion after I pointed out specific areas of the law they'd missed - obv I'm not a lawyer, but I'd obsessed enough about one tiny aspect of the law to know more about it that the best guys in one of the best law firms in the world); and relentlessness, this process needs to continue, not stop and start. I believe the brain continues to develop if you give it breadth, depth and relentless new things to learn. And thus you retain your learning capacity - er no, improve your learning capacity, at least up to my age.

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one thing I really like to do is take lessons. my wife is 29, and has picked up an amazing amount of spanish in 6 months by taking lessons once a week and speaking spanish with fluent friends.

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Ok, that mathematics thing is something I read a while back. Let me ask you something though, since I know nothing about the state of modern mathematics. When I think of genius I don't just picture someone who solved a tough proof or made some kind of advancement that happens every few years. I mean someone who revolutionized some area of mathematics or science. Einstein, Newton, Descartes, Copernicus (helio-centric theory is believed to have been born in his 20s), Tesla, probably the guy who invented the wheel. All these guys had their big eureka moment in their 20s. Then many of them went on to postulate all kinds of wrong theories as they got older.

Are there any examples of people having the genesis of some idea that revolutionized their field while in their late 30s or beyond?

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I would suspect that most (if not all) people who have gotten the Nobel Prize in any experimental science over the past 40 years performed their initial work between the ages of 30-40.

Being intelligent is only one step into solving difficult problems. It's a start, but not necessary, either. What's more important is being able to connect between your varied experiences and what you have read/learned over the years to think about something in a new way. Maybe this is what intelligence is, but I think it's more like being CLEVER. No matter how smart you are, if you don't have experience, you can't draw from them. Also, going through the process of doing ANYTHING improves how you will approach another problem in the future. Great experimentalists have figured out how to plan, build, and flat-out do science - the ones that win the Nobel these days are the ones that figure out how to apply varied experiences to solve/invetigate established problems in a new way. These guys are almost never the pure whiz kids, BTW, contray to what many think.

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JA, I agree with everything you're saying. What I'm interested in is remarkable genius. My point was that just like no one will ever set a world record the 100m dash at age 40, no one will ever come up with the special theory of relativity out of the blue, or helio-centric theory, or AC current, or the theory of gravity - at 40. Maybe this is wrong, but history seems to bear it out.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task

Wason designed this when he was 42.

Maybe it is not as big a deal as special theory of relativity, but I think it's pretty big!

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Ok, that mathematics thing is something I read a while back. Let me ask you something though, since I know nothing about the state of modern mathematics. When I think of genius I don't just picture someone who solved a tough proof or made some kind of advancement that happens every few years.

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Some 'tough proofs' are hundreds of years in the making or more. For example, Fermat's Last Theorem, the Green-Tao theorem on the infinitude of primes in given arithmetic progressions, Poincare's conjecture (this is just under 100 years). An answer to the Riemann hypothesis (age: about 175 years) would be more profound than all of the above combined.

By the way, Wiles was over 40 when FLT was settled, Green and Tao were about 28 and 30 when they established the Green-Tao theorem, and Perelman was just under 40 when he solved Poincare.

This doesn't answer your question of course. Here are some major 'revolutions' in math in the last 100 years or so.

Grothendieck lays the foundation for modern algebraic geometry - about 30 at the time.
Ito constructs the Ito integral (stochastic integration) - under 30 at the time
Kolmogorov builds probability theory in a rigorous way - about 30 years old at the time
Lebesgue defines the Lebesgue integral - under 30 at the time

It would certainly seem to appear that a lot of the great breakthroughs in math in the last 100 years or so were done by very young, brilliant individuals.

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So when you get in your 30s and 40s you lose maybe a little bit of raw intellect, and a lot of your willingness/ability to learn new concepts.

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The above may be true, but my experience is somewhat contrary. I've gotten three college degrees - at 21, 31 and 41 - with the last one coming from the best school of the bunch, and done better each time. Not just better grades (which aren't really comparable), but I feel that I've learned more, and learned more easily, with each succesive return to school. I suspect that a better ability to focus has more than offset any declining raw mental horsepower (well, gerbil power . . . ).

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So what can I do to keep my brain from atrophy?

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I'm to take a guess, and honestly I've never thought of this before, that learning poker or new forms of poker can probably help. Also having a career that challenges you to keep learning. Barring those, any other intellectual hobby can probably help.

But I don't know if crossword puzzles count. While they require thought, I don't know they really stimulate any kind of learning.

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I'm not a neurologist LDO, but I don't think that learning new things is even that important in re: to brain not atrophying. I think the important thing is just to keep your mind working. Doing crosswords, random math in your head (i.e. just adding numbers you see as you drive along or whatever), sudokus, whatever. I think anything you have to actually devote some real thought/logic to will keep your brain from going to mush.

I think another big key is just being curious about things in general, and thinking about why things are the way they are. Some of the students I have just make me sad because they don't question anything. They just want answers. I honestly think if I went through a whole school year and just taught completely random equations that made no sense, that 90% of my kids would just take it to be the truth and not even verify that what I was teaching them had any basis in truth.

I know personally I don't really learn a TON of new stuff all the time, but I definitely try to keep my brain working as often as I can.

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So what can I do to keep my brain from atrophy?

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I'm not a neurologist LDO, but I don't think that learning new things is even that important in re: to brain not atrophying. I think the important thing is just to keep your mind working. Doing crosswords, random math in your head (i.e. just adding numbers you see as you drive along or whatever), sudokus, whatever. I think anything you have to actually devote some real thought/logic to will keep your brain from going to mush.


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I am surprised by the lack of neurologists on this forum. I have taken enough courses to comment. Your statement is mostly accurate. Crossword puzzles count too, and in fact I believe have specifically been studied wrt Alzheimer's. To solve the clue you need to grab a memory and form a new association for it.

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I think another big key is just being curious about things in general, and thinking about why things are the way they are. Some of the students I have just make me sad because they don't question anything. They just want answers. I honestly think if I went through a whole school year and just taught completely random equations that made no sense, that 90% of my kids would just take it to be the truth and not even verify that what I was teaching them had any basis in truth.


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But learning this way has its place too if you don't want to reinvent the wheel. In fact, I think the reason kids learn faster is because they DON'T view their instructor with a critical eye. My dad, with his Master's degree in math, can't learn poker, because every friggin time I tell him a poker concept, if I tell him that it came from a book, he starts saying that there are a lot of bad books out there, and then he starts working the probabilities for himself in his head. I'm lucky if I can get through one concept, and I'm lucky if he even remembers what it was when we get done working through the probabilities.

As for where that leaves creative insight, I always find that my most creative insights come from misunderstanding things. The most surefire way to have an insight, though, is to combine two different fields. There's almost a formula to it.