May I suggest that perhaps one of the limitations that experience may teach you to overcome in the future is a tendency to get too emotionally invested in the opinions of random strangers?
I’m 67.
Been there, done that and got the T-shirt.
Learned a lot, forgot some of it, still learning and will continue to do so until I shuffle off.
I expect my last words will be “Well I never knew that”
Might I in turn suggest you don’t read into something that which isn’t there. I don’t consider what’s said here, in this thread at least, a reason to get emotional. The unfortunate downside to reducing to writing my words is that the nuance of how I’d actually say them doesn’t shine through; thus, what wouldn’t sound quite so abrasive in speech looks that way when read.
As I said, I have my own set of limitations to work through. That I don’t write much of what I say with some artificially flowery language to give people warm and fuzzies might well fall into that category. When there’s a choice between writing directly (and yes, I know it’s sometimes acerbic or sardonic), or giving people a warm fuzzy, I choose direct. I do realize this can come off as my being a prick to some people. To others, they appreciate the wit and bluntness of it. I cannot make everyone happy, so if I’m going to be disliked it might as well be for a more or less reduction of my thoughts than for trying be someone I’m not.
I have also noted in my life that I haven’t found a way to inform someone their arguments are fatally flawed where they’re going to walk away feeling great about it. I suppose I could be Socratic, but that seems needlessly pedantic.
Also take note of the “argumentation” style directed towards me: it’s internally inconsistent and logically flawed. For people to claim some kind of greater wisdom as a necessary product of their age, I would expect a better attempt at making an argument than that employed in advertising. While it might make sense to appeal some fallacious logic to move a product, it doesn’t do in discussions of actual import.
From Word Web Pro
Noun: fundamentals `fúndu’mentulz
- Principles from which other truths can be derived
“first you must learn the fundamentals”
ashman165 said
I infer from that statement, that you believe that you will know more, and that you will be applying, those FUNDAMENTALS in different and new ways. Is that not what is meant by “experience”?
But I infer from the rest of your wordy, pompous and cleverly crafted post/s, that you think you are the only person that has ever done that or ever will.
I’d hazard a guess and say that the professors that taught you were probably older than you; and their professors were older than them. Yet you are implying that no one from an older age group can teach anything to anyone younger.
BTW:
Adjective: arrogant (arugunt)
- Having or showing feelings of unwarranted importance outof overbearing pride
“an arrogant official”; “arrogant claims”
Are you saying you’re not that?
You must be a lot of fun at a party.
I suggest to you, that humility and people skills might be a couple of areas that you could look at trying to improve with experience.
Yes, one is free to take that view provided one reads out of my posts what I have specifically put into them.
Bullshit. I’ve maintained exclusively that age is completely irrelevant to wisdom. You are the one maintaining that older people have it greater supply than younger people. I reject your hypothesis.
Some older people do, some do not. Some younger people do, some do not. It’s curious that while I’ve never been older than any of my teachers, I’m frequently younger than or roughly equal to some of my students.
The application of learned knowledge to new situations isn’t experience; it’s intellect. Having done the same problem before, on the other hand, is experience.
A new problem may or may not require the exact same technique as a problem I’ve previously done. But that is of no moment because even if I haven’t seen a problem like this hypothetical one we’re talking about, I’m sufficiently well-versed and educated in my field that I can reason it out. Only because it’s an intellectual exercise. Of course, in your view, I’ll only have the ability to do that once I’ve reached a certain age and gained some level of experience in tandem with it.
I see little reason why you so adamantly refuse to accept that some younger people are smarter than some older people.
Or is it your assertion that only advanced age enables wisdom?
And where have I shown an unwarranted importance? Just because you cite the definition doesn’t mean you used it correctly. You assert that I’m arrogant, in response I asserted that you should look it up because you were using it incorrectly. My other alternative was to say that you were being deceitful by knowingly hurling an invective at me. I generally don’t ascribe to malice that which can be explained by ignorance.
I think you’d have a really hard time arguing that someone with several PhDs isn’t entitled to walk around and act like they’re educated, only because there’s at least anecdotal evidence that they are. I have no delusion about my importance in life; curiously enough, I haven’t asserted that I have any great importance in the world. I have, on the other hand, suggested that the mere presence of age doesn’t imply a wealth of experience or wisdom. Or what, you’ve never met a stupid old person? You’ve never met an older person who is doing the same things now as they did in the past and not understanding why they get the same results?
I appreciate the estimation of my social skills. You might consider yours in response because it simply won’t do to walk around decrying twenty-somethings as being less able to look at a situation and solve it than you only because you’re older. That is hubris.
I sense hostility.
Along with decades of experience comes a unique sense of existential calm, rationality, and tolerance of sniveling bratdom such as that issuing from people of newer generations, who can be lumped together with labels while actually having relatively little in common.
Thank you for your question. Return to the mountaintop for more wisdom anytime.
If you are doing the wrong thing, you will just get the wrong results more quickly and accurately.
I’m not that old (36) but what I’ve seen in coworkers 10 years younger than me is that their unbridaled enthusiasm combined with their lack of experience or perspective often leads to mistakes. One of my previous employers tended to over-promote people so you ended up with this organization full of 26 year old middle managers. Many of these people had no other work experience outside of our company. They had no experience leading people and consequently the culture was similar to that of a fraternity house.
In contrast, my next job was with an big old Fortune 500 company where people worked for like 30 years. This was a classic do the same 1 year of work 30x. All these people knew how to do was mindlessly follow the rules of their beurocracy.
ashman165
I should have been “wise” enough not to throw the snarky bits into my posts. Sorry :smack:
That is NOT what I was saying at all. There is no doubt in my mind that you are far smarter and more educated & possibly wiser than me (My qualifications = zero).
That is why I said in my first post-
By that I meant-
Do YOU think that YOU have learnt anything by “experience” up to now?
And do YOU expect to learn anything else by “experience” in the next 20 years or so?
I am not (and I don’t think any of the oldies in this thread are) suggesting that every oldie can impart great knowledge & wisdom on every youngie, on every subject.
**But all things being equal (or similar)- **
For example: If there are two people with similar intelligence, education level, opportunities, drive and they both kept up with their required technologies etc, and they are working in the same industry.
Is it not probable that the one with the one with the most experience on the job has picked up a few “tricks of the trade” and maybe is a bit more shrewd at office politics and the like.
All things NOT being equal -
Example in Life Experience: An older mother of 5 children. She is not overly intelligent, was pretty poor but worked hard to get her kids through university.
One of her daughters is now a successful lawyer and expecting her first baby.
Is it not probable that her mother just might have a few tips to pass on to her?
Or, as I like to explain it, an expert is someone who has made every possible mistake in a give field at least once.
Except the Boomers did it in a pot-fueled haze, the Gen X kids did it while watching Duran Duran’s incomprehensible video for “Rio”, and the kids today do it via message boards. The times and medium may change, the message is the same.
Stranger
Anyone else out there having the least difficulty accepting that someone would actually contend that the word penetralia - a word they saw fit to italicize - “isn’t all that unusual”? :dubious:
(peeks from between her fingers) Ooooh, goody, the hijack seems done. Now we can all go back to cross-generational bashing. 
Adults!
Kids!
Adults!
Kids! You had your fun and we had our fill.
You’re only here cause mom forgot her pills.
Kids! Bunch of scandalizing, vandalizing punks,
Channel hopping, Ritalin popping monkeys!
Kids! I can nag and nag till my hair turns blue.
Kids! You bum my smokes and don’t say thank you.
Why can’t you be like we are? Oh what a bunch of brats!
We oughtta drown you just like cats.
Adults! You you run our lives like you’re Kernel Klink.
Adults! You strut around like your farts don’t stink.
Adults! You’re a bunch of drooling, snoring, boring 3 martini lunchers!
…
Actually, I found it quite unusual, and used obliquely, if not outright misused. And some other difficulties, but I’m avoiding the pissing match.
I was just thinking, along the lines of the previous poster who commented on what they did before age 20 compared to after.
Prior to age 20 I attended school. Had 2 years of college under my belt, probably just moved out of the dorms into my first apartment. Lived my entire life in Illinois. Travelled with my family pretty widely in the US, and a couple of trips to Canada and Mexico. Some part-time work, but little money to worry about. Had rejected my parents’ religion (and all religion) when in grade school.
I thought then and still think I was pretty much on the ball for a 20-year-old, tho in many ways I was quite the fuck-up. Loads of potential which I studiously avoided living up to.
From 20 to 40 I got married, went to law school, had 3 kids and sent them through school, had a couple of jobs getting and not getting a few promotions, my wife quit full-time work, bought, refinanced and sold a couple of houses and more than a couple of cars, entered into all manner of contracts related to those houses, had both my parents die, got a couple of pups and subsequently buried a couple of old dogs, made some decisions about investments, insurance, savings, etc., . . .
I remain quite the fuck-up, living far below my potential. So much for the leopard changing his stripes, no? 
I will readily acknowledge that there are 20-yos who had greater experiences than I at age 20, or who had greater mental capacity than I. But I would bet dollars to donuts that the percentage of 20-yos whose experience stacks up to my 40-yo self is pretty darned small.
So much that I read lately comments on the amazing plasticity of the human brain. It sorta surprises me that someone would seriously question whether the type of experiences most folk commonly experience in young adulthood would not significantly alter their mental functioning - either through simply increasing the amount of data stored in the brain, or by restructuring the manner in which the organ processes what data it is exposed to.
Even if one believes the basic capacity/function of the brain does not increase/change after age 20, it impresses me that experiences are the fodder that enhances one’s ability to make better decisions. And I repeat my opinion that it would be a rare 20-yo who had anywhere near the number and breadth of significant experiences of the average 40-yo.
You and me both, baby.
As an old Gen Xer, I think I see the good and the bad about Boomers - yeah, they do have a lot of experience and life learning, but boy, are some of them fossilized in their ways and thinking (especially about music). Also, one thing about Boomers that pisses me off is that a lot of them started life on third base and think they hit a triple.
At 46, my physical decline isn’t all that declined, but I’ll never pass for 20 again and that’s okay. I feel sexier and more beautiful than ever I did at 20 or even 30. I do enjoy this heartily. The choices I have, the resources available to me, my own confidence and the love of my friends and family make me happy in ways I never was when I was younger. I’ve loved and I’ve hurt and I’ve learned and I lost. I’ve made awful mistakes and been forgiven and held dying babies and delivered joy hundreds of times for every devastation I had to report.
Knowing is better than not knowing.
Time does not heal all wounds.
What doesn’t kill us may not make us stronger. It may just scar us, so choose your battles.
When the pain overcomes the fear, you’ll act.
and lots more that makes no sense to anyone but me because I learned it, not you.
This definitely. I am not middle-aged, but what I know makes life easier than my incredibly insecure 20s. It isn’t genius level stuff or anything, just a little bit better on a lot of topics.
Hey, thanks for confirming what I said.
As I predicted, you completely miss any semblance of the point. A person possessed of wisdom, when informed that they might be unknowledgable – or wrong – reacts with “Hmm, maybe this person knows something I don’t”. A person lacking that wisdom reacts with “Please cite . . . That’s an outright lie . . . you’ll have to do much better . . .”
Again, not that I think you have any hope of getting this: I am not saying that you lack wisdom. I’m saying that your own reactions, your indignation, your demands for cites, your cries of “that’s an outright lie” demonstrate that you lack wisdom.
This is roughly why I’ve resolved to simply be amused at the poster in question and his notational degrees.
I tried to not do this, but I failed; I have to respond to this.
This little paragraph of yours is so indicative of youthful foolishness (i.e. lack of wisdom). You nitpick the specifics of what the other person said, right down to using those specifics as a point of personal attack, while blatantly missing the actual point the person was trying to make.
Ok, so don’t save it to any computer. print it out on a piece of sturdy paper, using an impact printer with old-style ink to ensure that the paper and the printing will easily last twenty years.
Now that I’ve addressed your silly nit-pick, is there any possibility you might actually grasp the point being made?
The point is that you just don’t get it now, but perhaps in twenty or thirty years, you will.
Why would anyone younger not want to believe that age will give them experience in meaningful ways? Does anyone really want to believe that they are the best person that they will ever be today? That life has offered up all the secrets it will offer already and that there will be nothing more to discover?
I’m 42. I hope I’m a better person at 52. I hope the next ten years disclose something about life or about me I didn’t know.