Comment by Diederich | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Diederich | Hacker News Reader

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To add to the other excellent comments here: I've been getting paid to think for most of 30 years now, and I'm absolutely certain that my rate of thinking has decreased over time. Related: the number of different things I can keep in my head at a time has also declined.

It's possible that my somewhat slower rate of thinking is partly or mostly offset by more effective thinking, based on decades of experience, but I'm definitely not sure that's the case.

My professional experience is an advantage, but it's also a disadvantage at times. 20-25 years ago, I knew quite a bit about how virtual memory performed on the same program running under HPUX 9 and AIX 4. Woot? (Yes I understand that such 'ancient' knowledge and experience probably produces mental pathways that helpfully apply to more modern considerations. Probably.) (Spoiler: virtual memory performance on HPUX 9 and 10 (at least) was abysmal.)

To the main point of the article: it's complicated, but, agreeing with various sibling comments, I'm pretty certain that the right kinds of pressure/stress, in the right conditions, at the right times, etc etc, will effectively speed up the rate of thought. That agrees with my experience.

Normal disclaimer applies: human brains are radically and often absurdly different, and one person's experience will, on average, shed very little if any light on another person's experiences.

I don't have the citations off hand, but

> my rate of thinking has decreased over time

from my neuro 2xx or 3xx courses, this is how it works: crudely, the young brain works faster because it takes into account less information, fewer contingencies, while the older brain does the opposite.

Does that really mean that the rate of thinking is slower though? I would say it just means that the rate of conclusions from all of the thinking might be slower.

Rate of conclusions per unit time sounds like something interesting. Say it takes you 3x longer to arrive at a conclusion than a peer. But, each of those conclusions is 10x more valuable to the product/organization/individual.

Perhaps we also say that some conclusions are bad and bring negative value. It is likely that hasty decisions fall into this camp more frequently than more careful considerations. Just one bad technology decision made flippantly can inflict critical damage.

It is way easier to sink a ship than it is to build a new one. "Slow" thinking is the fastest way when you zoom out to the strategic map.

Reminds me of an experiment where chimps outperform humans in speed with simple mental tasks.

https://www.nature.com/news/2007/071203/full/news.2007.317.h...

Fluid intelligence when younger, crystalized intelligence when older.

Analogize to basketball. Athleticism when younger, saavy when older.

For some time I believed that my rate of thinking had decreased. But that changed for the better. Exercise, healthy food and sleeping schedule, friendly job environment and it turned back to my thirties perfomance, even higher.

My two cents: beware of burn out.

Also take into account your eating habits.

Eat lots of healthy fats and your brain will sing. If you eat a bunch of carbs and little fat, you'll likely experience brain fog.

Yup, this is important stuff. In my case, my diet has been steadily improving, on average, throughout my adult life. My wife and I are now doing roughly 20/4 intermittent fasting most days of the week, and that food is quite healthy.

When making claims like this, please link a reliable source, because I have a hard time believing diet has a statistically significant impact on cognitive performance - excluding caffeine or other stimulants of course.

I have the most reliable source. For me, that would be me. You don't need some double blind study. If what you're trying to achieve is mental acuity, it's self-evident, really. Just test different kinds of food and you will notice.

BTW nostromo, I did write "healthy food" in my other comment ;-)

> I have a hard time believing diet has a statistically significant impact on cognitive performance - excluding caffeine or other stimulants of course

Oh for me it's just the opposite:

Caffeine makes me jumpier, but I'm not at all sure it improves my cognitive performance. Do you have any evidence caffeine has positive impact on cognitive performance?

I'm pretty sure eating healthy improves the clarity of my thinking. When I was young, I'd eaten a bar of chocolate for lunch a couple of times when short of time during a go tournament. This has invariably been a terrible idea and worsened my performance.

I can't find it now, but someone else on Hacker News a while ago posted a study that backed you up. Age above ~20 made people worse at basically every type of cognition test except for general knowledge.

Edit: Found it. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797614567339

Posted originally in this comment by checkyoursudo: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25356216

Semi related: There was some study about chess ability of best players that showed up lately. Apparently 35 y.o. is when best players max out their skill. Then it's flat for a while and starts going down in 40s/50s.

Implying that's the optimal balance between thinking ability and time to learn I suppose.

It seems to me what you're saying is that your ability to think like a sprint has degraded but that your ability to think like a marathon has improved. Both of those are measures of speed and can be boiled down to a rate, even though they have very different characteristics.

Both of those can also be quite valuable in different circumstances and completely useless in others. Just a matter of finding the right environment that can make the best use of your thought process at your given stage of experience.

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