Not to hijack this thread . . .
When a child ages, he gets bigger, stronger and smarter. When a 19-year-old turns 20, he is potentially learning in college or advancing his career. Even the average 30-year old is better off in certain ways.
Now consider an 80-year-old. He may have new aches and pains, needs meds and surgeries, and perhaps his memory is fading. Even worse for a 90-year-old.
So at what age, on average, does the aging process no longer benefit a person?
They bury you.
When they can no longer contribute. Even then, they can help teach compassion.
WAG: It’s has to be somewhere in the late 20’s. If memory serves correctly, hunter/gatherers rarely saw 40yo.
ETA: Never mind, I thought we were talking about physical attributes.
Define “aging”. People start to physically decay in their 20s, but for a long time learning makes up for it; a 40 year old has a brain with fewer surviving neurons but a lot more data to make decisions with than an 18 year old.
Aging is no longer beneficial when the bodily wear and tear is more harmful than the benefits of more experience, which probably occurs at the age by which most athletes retire, around age 35-45, which I guess is why they call it “being on the wrong side of 40”.
Physically, it stops being beneficial around 25.
Mentally, maybe 50s?
I’m 60, and I don’t know if I’ve gotten to that point yet.
Also 60, definitely not as able as I was in my 30s, but also definitely not ready for a dirt nap. I may not have the physical stamina of my youth, but my life experiences make me better at knowing what matters, what doesn’t, what I can deal with, and what I need help with, and ego permits me to now ask for help.
Plus I get senior discounts when I eat out! How is that not a benefit?!?
Seriously, tho, when the body becomes a prison and the mind turns to jello, there’s no way to get better with age.
It’s more external than internal. You benefit more from the perception of you, than who you are. When you appear to others to be “too old” to meet the criteria by which you are judged, then aging no longer benefits you.
I started getting senior discounts when I looked older than the counter-girl’s mother, which was often about 38. Just ask.
Yes, but does learning count as part of “the aging process”?
I suppose some of the things that come with aging, such as lowered sex drive or lowered impulsiveness, could be seen as mixed blessings.
That is what I kept thinking whenever I saw that thread. As with wine, it varies.
I’m older, so I’ll give it a shot.
Sometime in your 40’s, your body starts to wear out. Your eyes lose their ability to focus on close things. Injuries are easier to get and harder to heal. It gets harder to lose weight, even if you stay active. Women begin menopause, men get enlarged prostate glands.
I’m not talking about the effects of smoking or sedentary lifestyles or obesity, just the normal aging process. Maybe people who have been in really good shape all their lives can slow it down, but for the rest of us, it starts in the 40’s.
I would say if we could swtich the clock off in the late 20’s and still continue to learn it might be optimal. It seems that emotional maturity is related to our levels of certain hormones. I don’t know at what age this would occur but I would guess around 30.
Physically, somewhere between 15-25 years old.
Mental architecture, between 25-35 years old.
Software (wisdom, empathy, ‘common-sense’ ) varies greatly due to user experience and factory settings.
Social experience varies greatly depending on cultural background. If you are a rabbi in Israel or a beloved Japanese Oba-chan (grandmother), you’re perhaps better off than a typical ignored retirement-home-resident in the US, even if you might be chronologically older.
The question is difficult to answer in that humans have an exaggerated tendency compared to most other animals to continually learn things which they can use to their benefit to offset the effects of a deteriorating body. I’d say learning is related to aging and should count as part of it. Babies learn different things at different rates than teenagers who learn differntly than seniors.
The aging process and certain knowledge of a person’s limited productive time can provide strong motivation for individuals to put out a great deal of effort to achieve results in a short time frame that a person with all the time in the world probably wouldn’t. I could imagine an immortal with a physical body perpetually 25 years old as not having particularly strong motivation to find a cure for age-related disease or try to gain political power while they still have youthful stamina and drive or to become extremely fit in order to compete with younger up-and-comers in the future.
A person who can no longer move a heavy object with a bear hug and brute force is pressured by a weakening body to find a more efficient way of applying force, say by using smarter (but geekier looking) lifting techniques or tools. Sure you can learn that when you’re 20, but most people aren’t motivated to until they are no longer able to naturally leap tall buildings in a single bound.
It goes the same way for social skills and interactions, the improvment and refining of which are likely to be of much greater benefit to a person than speed, flexibility, and strength. Few leaders, CEOs, or bankers are physically competitive with the 20-30 year-olds they hold power over or make money from. The aging person knows the potential of those younger, and devellops a feel for the gradual diminishment of their physical abilities and can use that insight to their advantage; I’d say that’s a benefit. And it doesn’t just apply to elite over-achievers… a common working class “jerk” who fends for himself, alienates family, and gets in regular bar fights over dumb shit will often mellow out with age (and diminished ability to keep up a hard life) and learn how to keep his mouth shut, work with others, and devellop a healthier relationship with family who he knows he’ll come to rely on when he gets really old. If the body never got soft and slow, a lot of people would continue anti-social behavior forever. Becoming weaker and develloping better social skills to compensate benefits people and those around them.
So it depends on the mental state of the person in question. An open-minded inquisitive person can benefit greatly from a continuing aging process, in terms of being forced to learn and implement smarter and more efficient procedures, adopting a healthier lifestyle when it becomes aparant that their body is deteriorating, gaining insite into the mental impacts of other old farts, and simply in terms of feeling more pressure to learn things and influence people before their ability deteriorates too far.
Conversly, a person can mentally shut down and learn nothing new beyond age 15… so the potential benefits of surviving well past your physical prime will vary for different people so there really is no definable age at which “aging” no longer benefits you.
For me, it was around 35. Even with a regular exercise routine, I could feel myself slipping. Couldn’t lift as much, couldn’t run as fast. And mentally, I don’t think I’ve gained much since then. I’ve got a lot more $$ now than I did at 35, so I guess there’s that…
ETA: Oh, and senior discounts at the movies!! Let’s not forget that!!
Bill James has actual statistical evidence that, on average, baseball players peak at 27. Sprinters peak early, while distance runners might improve till nearly 40. Strength increases longer and decreases more slowly than agility and reflexes. So to some extent, it depends. After 40, it is downhill all the way. It is well known that mathematicians do their best work before 40. I certainly did. In fact the very best thing I did, the only truly novel thing, was about I turned 30.