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Comment by iterance | Hacker News Reader

To provide a little grounding for the author's writing, most novelists don't publish until their 40s or later. Most young novelists who publish don't publish anything that sells until their 40s, too.

Which isn't to discount the author's point. Their writing is introspective. But our perceptions are not always right, and it screws with our self-perceptions, especially of what success means and looks like. We are drawn to exceptions and anchor our expectations for ourselves within their stories.

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I see your point, but the examples I notice across fields including writing, demonstrate a strong preference towards [relative] youth.

  - Neal Stephenson (My favorite fiction writer) published his first book in his early 30s
  - Hemingway published great works in his early 20s
  - Almost all of the most notable scientific breakthroughs in the 20th century were from individuals in their 20s. Schrodinger was the Old Man at 37!
  - Most famous musicans started releasing their first, and often best, albums in their early 20s-early 30s. When they tour into old age, they're mostly playing their hits of youth.

I think, perhaps, the trend is even more pronounced in scientists than writers. Skews early-20s.

You can find exceptions, but the exceptions are often not that old, and in the anecdotes I think of (Favorite authors, writers, musicians etc), it's hard not to notice the trend of youth. I want to find this trend to be untrue because it can be depressing, but can't. (This is at the core of the article)

Possibly you could look at Newton's example. Yes, his best scientific contributions happen when he was young, and they are what he is known for. But in his late 40's he gave that away. Perhaps as you say it got too hard.

Instead he took up a job at the mint. The job had some technical bits to it like designing coins that were harder to counterfeit, but is was mostly a managing people and society job. The coin clippers were literally debasing the currency to near worthlessness. Had they continued they would have been the internal cancer that took down the empire, as the state could no longer afford to pay for the ships and men needed to create and maintain it. Newton almost single handedly turned that around. It's not an exaggeration to say he saved the empire.

You say the older Newton could not do what the younger Newton did, and that's probably true. But it's also true the younger Newton could not have done what the older one did. He needed the experience and understanding of how men and society work that only decades of live could give him. So yes some abilities dim as you age. But other abilities grow stronger.

Fluid intelligence is higher when younger.

Crystallised intelligence increases with age.

Your comparative advantage changes.

I don't think it's reasonable to include (pop) musicians. Pop music fans, who decide what's a hit, skew young, and are influenced partly by how much the star prancing on stage attracts them as an imaginary sexual partner (or role model). Stardom involves a lot of intuition, charisma, and personality, all things a young person might have by accident. There's also a "voice of the [...] generation" trope that's more plausible if you are one of that generation. So yes, many albums are released by youthful stars and gain attention due to their youthful relevance, sex appeal, and physical fitness (non-rusty voices, nimble fingers, jumping about): and if coincidentally also good music, they're likely to overshadow later albums that are only good music but connect with less visceral urgency to their audience. With, as you say, many exceptions (Wilburys).

It is quite interesting to compare these ages to all the people you know.

There are probably roughly zero 20-somethings that are more interesting than the most boring 50-year old you know.

Is it maybe the case that 20-somethings have nothing to do so they futz around with science and writing and can do that. As they grow older they find better things to do?

It is difficult IMO to be a great writer until you are at least somewhere around mid life and have lived quite a bit of life and been in enough situations to pull inspiration from.

Young people are good at developing talents involving physical skills, but rarely do you find young writers who produce any great literature. And of those young people who happen to be amazing writers, their skill only improves as they get older and wiser, they don’t really hit a peak until they have mental decline in old age.

So if you hit 40 and you’re not good at anything in particular in life, you might still find there’s time to be a great writer, the journey has just begun!

I agree with this. One of the reasons I think writing on TV and in movies is so poor these days is because it's a lot of young people whose only experience of the world is their city bubble, and Twitter. They have only ever seen a narrow slice of life, and their writing reflects that. Very much unlike great authors of years gone by, who had gone out and lived a wide swath of life (including hardship and death) before they wrote their great works.

In the "old days", it was poor taste for the young to opine too much about things. You wouldn't publish your magnum opus until later in life.

The point is, of course, that age is a necessary, but insufficient condition for wisdom. I know of philosophers who claimed to only grasp their subject matter in their 50s.

The 21 year old founder/CEO is largely a myth too. Not that they don't exist, but they usually aren't very good at their job.

... but by being allowed to be bad at their job at 21, they are more likely to find success later.

This is not just true of CEOs. As a precocious chief sysadmin of a small local ISP at age 19, I was allowed to fully administer things no sane company would allow a 19 year-old to touch: sophisticated ADSL aggregation equipment, BGP-speaking border routers, mission-critical core routers, ATM equipment, and so much more.

Not everything I did with this power was smart. A lot of my understanding of what that stuff is was learned "improvisationally", and major local customers, including the county government, paid the price. But what I did do was very successfully parlay this experience into a big-kid job (and a mega pay rise) in the big city, which then begat more such jobs. I doubt I could have rocketed that high, that quickly, if the small-town ISP weren't willing to let ambitious but inexperienced people like me screw up, in exchange for paying them semi-student wages.

The purpose of a startup is not to supercharge the career of its founders.

It's not usually the purpose.

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