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Comment by jrmg | Hacker News Reader

One of the things I find most annoying about modern American political (and popular) discourse is the meme that if you're old, you must be senile. This is regularly assumed about the elder figures in both parties - and both our current and former president.

"They're old, they're probably senile" is not a feeling borne of the actual statistics. By far, most old people are not senile!

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The current president is accused of being senile not simply because he is old, but because of several public incidents of suspicious memory issues, like clearly forgetting the name of the Australian prime minister he was holding a (remote) press conference with, or forgetting the name of Barack Obama in a pre-election speech.

Trump was sometimes accused of being senile because of his rambling sentences and bizarre speech pattern involving frequent repetitions.

This is not to say that any of this is introvertible proof that they are in fact senile, but the point is that there is evidence that can be interpreted this way, it's not simply ageism. As a further note of this, Bernie Sanders has not commonly been seen as senile, even though he is of a similar age - since none of his speech patterns suggest these types of memory issues.

Honestly, more than anyone's particular gaffes or speech patterns -- public figures that have been in the public eye for decades are on tape from when they were younger. With both the current and former president, it's almost shocking to hear how differently they used to speak.

Didn't Trump always speak like that? I.e. like cutting sentences to fold out into something else, "speaking in reverse" by backstepping to something prior and dropping negations.

His way of speaking made it really easy to make him look stupid in text quotes. But I didn't reflect on it sounding wierd (I am non native speaker).

Not so much, consider https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAgJAxkALyc .

His first sentence there is "modern trump", but listen to every other. He's more-or-less speaking like a person.

Any consideration of Biden's mental state should also factor in the fact that he has always been gaffe-prone (speaking without a filter) and has suffered from a stammer/stutter. This is one reason why dementia testing includes a written portion instead of simply relying on speech evidence. These types of speech impediments can often lead to moments of halting speech that unavoidably lead to the impression that the speaker is mentally deficient. There is also the excess and aged skin that he has around his eyes and the squinting appearance this leads to. Added together, it's tempting to form a narrative that he must be senile. However, senility rarely takes a vacation, and I've seen enough press conferences and speeches where Biden is forceful, direct and focused to leave little doubt that he's not senile. He simply looks like a 79 year old man who is accepting and feeling the weight of the office, and during the particularly difficult contemporary conditions of pandemic and national division. The weight of the office has in modern times had a tendency to make ordinarily intelligent people look mentally weak, e.g., G. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, although Obama suffered this to a lesser degree, I'd say.

As an aside on speech impediments, when I was in my late teens I worked retail with another teen who so profoundly stuttered that he could barely get any words out. I knew that he went to my high school but hardly saw him because he was in the special education program. If you took the time to let him get his words out, you could see that he was at least of average intelligence, however, I can imagine the type of education he got from high school was much different than the average student. Had he been properly treated by a speech pathologist in elementary school, perhaps he could have led a different life. He could only work as a trash collector, roving between all the dept store register trash bins. That was 30 years ago and there are times when I wonder what happened to him.

Yes, my point was only that there are more reasons than their age that some have started claiming Biden or Trump are senile. These people are probably wrong, but they are not simply equating old with senile.

When you find time to block out a four-year gap in your calendar, I'd suggest that you try to find a non-stop high-stress job with global implications, and then record yourself continuously on video any time you step outside your house.

I'd wager that when you review the footage, you'll find a few examples of forgetting names in there. Circumstances can change the nature of the thought processes - and good leaders recognize that in each other's actions and don't sweat it.

That doesn't mean it's easy for other people to understand, but I think it's worth being careful about criticizing environments that we don't live in ourselves (and that applies in both directions between global leaders and their populations).

Again, I wasn't trying to claim that Biden or Trump are senile. I was just claiming that the common argument is not only based on their age, it is based on their age + particular speech patterns/events.

This is not to say that those facts prove anything, as you rightly say they can be cherry picked or signs of many other things than senility.

Thank you, that makes sense. And my mistake, my post was a bit overly provocative (although in a sense it wasn't entirely directed at you; it's a broader frustration at criticism of small details while ignoring larger patterns).

Doesn't this article mean the opposite though when you have so many leaders over 60?

Why would we not want more people in their 50s making decisions vs 70s if we know the brain is slowing down in 60s?

Maybe the better question was whether people make better decisions after 60. Speed is a poor measure for competence, as the OP stated outright.

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