Humans peak in midlife: A combined cognitive and personality trait perspective
sciencedirect.com68 points by Brajeshwar 3 hours ago
68 points by Brajeshwar 3 hours ago
> Fluid intelligence, which peaks near age 20 and declines materially across adulthood [...] while fluid intelligence may decline with age, other dimensions improve (e.g., crystallized intelligence, emotional intelligence)
As someone well past "peak" fluid intelligence at this point, I always hate reading research like this. "Crystallized intelligence" and "emotional intelligence" are the consolation prizes no one really wants.
I'd rather we instead perform research to identify how one might reverse the decline of fluid intelligence...
> "Crystallized intelligence" and "emotional intelligence" are the consolation prizes no one really wants.
Strongly disagree.
Crystallized intelligence lets me see analogies and relations between disparate domains, abstract patterns that repeat everywhere, broadening my vision from a blinkered must-finish-this-task to a broader what-the-hell-is-this-world-I'm-in. I'm old enough to realise life is finite. Nothing satisfies like understanding.
Emotional intelligence lets me actually behave more like what I know a sane person should behave like. It lets me see I don't have to act on every passing whim and fancy, which are more like external noise than something of an essential expression from my inner self (which is a culturally-instigated fantasy). It lets me see how I'm connected to everyone else and everything in the world. Why I shouldn't stuff my own pockets at everyone else's expense. Why making other people unhappy ultimately makes myself unhappy. It wouldn't have been that hard to spot if I hadn't been caught up in fluid intelligence feats of strength.
These are the real rewards of middle age, not anyone's consolation prizes.
That said, I respect your right to disagree. But I feel this particular way.
What they call "fluid intelligence" is just intelligence and the rest are skills/aptitudes. "Crystallized intelligence" is more plainly: efficacy/productivity and it's common knowledge that people are most productive during the middle of their lives. When they have the best balance of knowledge accumulated and raw intelligence.
In humans, intelligence manifests as memory, spatial and verbal reasoning, pattern recognition, etc. What is so interesting about IQ and g (the general factor) is that all of these abilities trend together. A score in one area is a good prediction of the score in another area. There is no reason why that must be the case a priori, and LLMs are a great example of an intelligent system which is much better at recalling information than it is at reasoning.
Human aging doesn't seem to affect all of these abilities uniformly. e.g. Everyone seems to complain about memory the most (and that matches my experience), but I've been pleasantly surprised how well neuroplasticity and pattern recognition have held.
LLMs in my opinion is pattern recognition of text sequences at an almost infinite scale. My understanding is that "world models" is an attempt to replace the text sequences with more realistic approximations of the world. But they still plan to use pattern recognition.
In the meantime, humans would still need to do the reasoning.
> are the consolation prizes no one really wants.
If you can't figure out how to use accumulated knowledge and advanced people skills by your late 30s, then maybe you weren't so rational or adaptable to new situations in the first place. Things may not click for me like they did when I was 25, but I usually see right away when I have relevant knowledge to solve a problem or when I know someone who can help.
Isn't fluid intelligence learning? and crystallized intelligence stuff you already know?
YMMV, but I was too horny to actually make use of my superior fluid intelligence in my 20s, so I’m content with the tradeoff here.
I guess it depends on your definition of "fluid" intelligence, though I was bad with both of them in my 20s.
Those of us that grew up stupid have the advantage here - our coping mechanisms never stop working! Everyone else has to relearn how to make it work.
"Fluid intelligence" is not very valuable when it comes to long-term decision making.
The paper actually argues we peak in our 50s.
”Across both model weightings, humans appear to reach their peak in cognitive–personality functioning between the ages of 55 and 60.”
Emotional intelligence is what allows you to actually raise kids. Having it at midlife is a benefit, not a downside.
Really? What did you achieve in those times of high fluid low emotional intelligence?
I played a whole lot of video games myself. It’s nice to look back at would i could have achieved with my current perspective but that’s kind of the point of this.
Don't knock crystallized intelligence.
In my 20s, I could learn a programming language in a weekend by reading a book. I could write code fast. I could figure out bugs. I felt so fast and so smart.
In my 40s and 50s, I looked back at that guy with some amusement. Sure, I didn't type as fast. But I spent a lot less time debugging because I wrote it right the first time, because I could just see what the right thing do to was. Net result was that I produced working code in less time. 48 might have been my peak year.
agreed, I may learn slower as I age... but I spend a lot less time making stupid mistakes as I do it
> Yet, human achievement in domains such as career success tends to peak much later, typically between the ages of 55 and 60. This discrepancy may reflect the fact that, while fluid intelligence may decline with age, other dimensions improve (e.g., crystallized intelligence, emotional intelligence).
Isn't it about accumulated human capital (aka social networks) and experience more than anything else?
Reading the abstract it would seem a good reason for positions in government like the President to be restricted to ages 40-65.
that's before you even look at medically-related and late age cognitive decline, but unfortunately there are massive socio-economic effects that work against this
Fluid intelligence is the confidence you feel at trivia night in the third round
The best is yet to come!