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Comment by nineteen999 | Hacker News Reader

Would have thought the article would have included a discussion of "life experience" as a factor in intelligent decision making, but no, apparently not.

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Experience is what gets you ahead in life. Smarts help, but experience outweighs intelligence in the most important life decisions.

Ask yourself, do you want a smart 25 year old running the White House? Or an experienced 50 year old?

At this point anyone younger than 60 would have my blessing :)

25? No. 35? Definitely. Somewhere around 60 should be the maximum age to run.

How old are you? Usually this introduces a lot of bias in what your idea of a reasonable age is :)

A lot closer to 50 than 25.

Age limits don't make much sense. People who want them usually choose based on average mental capabilities for that age. But we don't vote for "the average American" (no matter how much they campaign on that image). We vote for specific candidates based on their speeches, previous work, and ability to manage. If we want to exclude people from running because of fears of dementia, we should demand cognitive tests, not stereotyping rules.

That's completely absurd, there are tons of rule already about who is allowed to run as well as term limits which by that logic should be eliminated as well.

Maybe somewhere around 60 is a good cut-off point, but 35 is still too young to have gathered necessary life experience to make you suitable.

Retirement age minus 4 would be reasonable compromise for me. So you would not be allowed to run if you would hit retirement age during term.

> Retirement age minus 4 would be reasonable compromise for me. So you would not be allowed to run if you would hit retirement age during term.

I don't want to give them even more excuse to raise the retirement age.

20-30 year olds might disagree with you. It is perhaps unlikely their specific interests are well served by a much older person.

"The country as a whole" is a very abstract concept.

For sure. It's not a co-incidence that I keep raising the age I think you're old enough to know enough, the older _I_ get ;)

I'm aware of the ridiculousness of this, but what can I do? You don't know what you don't know, and the alternative is to say you only know enough at the end of your life :)

I am now a good bit past this age, but I think 33 is a good enough age for almost anything, assuming that we are talking about the exceptional individuals who could get nominated at this age in the first place.

I have seen some studies floating around that the most successful age to start a business is 45, so maybe that's closer to ideal, but in any case you will never convince me that the best age is in your late 70s.

It is not just what you know, but also how well your age group is represented.

This is something I hadn't considered, and bears thinking about. In about 50 years, we're going to be top heavy by a long way. Most people on the planet will be over 60, with a small population of people working to support them.

Politicians will be pandering to this old (majority) demographic, whilst the needs of the young who are actually running society can be unheard. I'll be one of the (very) old ones if I'm still around, and I'm not looking forward to this development.

I've never seen an IQ test where life experience mattered.

Other than the decision on whether to be interested in IQ tests - which I suspect does diminish along with accumulated "life experience"...

I've never seen a situation where an IQ test mattered at all.

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