Can you really say that unless you switched fields multiple times? Of course you'll pick up on math and physics faster in high school than in college or postgrad, but that's because the problems get way, way harder as you progress. I've found that even in my late 30s I can still easily pick up new skills outside my field of expertise as long as I start with the basics that could also be picked up by a high-schooler. I started learning a new language last year and thanks to modern study apps, I actually find it easier today. Of course it will still take a long time to become an expert, but I'm not sure it would need more total hours than if I had started 20 years ago. It just gets more difficult to allocate the necessary hours for learning.
> even in my late 30s I can still easily pick up new skills outside my field of expertise as long as I start with the basics that could also be picked up by a high-schooler
Same age and same experience. I am learning my third language, after acquiring my second to a fluent level in my early 30's (by living in a country where it's spoken). But it's an entirely different character set, and has nearly zero cognates. I'm sure some skills transferred from my second language learning but I'm massively enjoying it and don't feel bogged down.
I think a lot of it is managing my mental energy, I look at it as a finite per-day resource replenished by sleep. If I have a mentally heavy workday, or overly emotional day, I know my language skills will be sub-par and don't try too hard. I also approach my learning in the morning, when I have an excess of this energy, because my job will do a good job of getting it close to zero, regardless of the starting point.
I think we don't give enough credence to the mental toll of an adult life and corporate job, and how much that takes from us, versus when we were young.
Totally agree. Adult life is just mentally taxing. I'm more curious and more eager to learn now in my 30s than I was in any of my schooling. The learning isn't hard but the energy regulation is.
I think it's so easy for people to discount "mental energy" since culturally we don't often acknowledge it as a finite resource the same way we do physical energy. Well maybe the problem is we view them as separate things in the first place.
When I was younger I just didn't have to worry about so much stuff.
This thread is a really good point. I am in my late 50ies now im really good with computer hardware because I started when I was 11. But I started wanting to become a SCI-FI writer at 35 and it has been an up hill battle to get good at for all the reason described in this thread.
Totally of the same persuasion as you, I'll say I did hear a very good counter point when Magnus Carlsen said in an interview at 30 he feels he can't compute lines as deep as he could previously, and his edge is now his experience. That was rather convincing.
Most of the folklore around "neuroplasticity" I've found pretty underwhelming. But yeah, if even he says it at that level of consistent practice, that seems like a good yardstick.
As I've experienced getting older I've found it's more about the lack of available time and focus.
I don't have the hours of time a young person does and I don't have the focus, there are a lot of other thoughts, emotions and responsibilities competing for my attention.
Would love someone who's aware of the literature to throw their hat in the ring though.
It's entirely possible, but as I've approached and now passed 30 my improved patience, self-discipline, and self-knowledge has allowed me to pick up skills and wrap my head around things I bounced off of several times as a high-schooler, and the technical foundation I've built up in that time has helped me build more connections and understand things in more depth/from more angles.
I'm sure I'll slow down eventually, but I've always found that thinking fast is vastly overrated. I've always had an easy time understanding things quickly, but it still takes me time to understand them well.
> Can you really say that unless you switched fields multiple times?
I have ;-) far too many times! Even going back and taking undergrad math coursework that my engineering curriculum didn't have like Discrete Math or Statistics got a lot harder than calculus / differential equations was when I was younger. I felt like I got less out of each hour, and also couldn't put in as many hours - not just because I have more responsibilities, but also because my brain just gets tired after fewer hours.
Have you tried creatine supplements? Especially if you're vegan or don't eat a lot of meat. Most people take it for muscle performance, but I found it insanely helpful for maintaining a sharp mind throughout a long day, especially with little sleep. That's also what the latest research starts to appreciate. I wouldn't be surprised to see recommended doses above 10g/day in elderly soon-ish since there are basically zero downsides even at much higher doses. In my early 30s I thought I lost my ability to pull all nighters because of increased tiredness, but now I feel like I can do even more than when I was 18. Most people greatly underestimate diet in general because they used to get away with anything when they were young.
Counterpoint: I've been taking creatine (10-15mg/day) for over 8 months and I can't say that I notice a difference at all.
That said, while I think that creatine's effects on cognitive performance are often overstated, creatine is scientifically proven to increase brain performance in some cases[1].
And fortunately, creatine is safe and very cheap[2], so maybe worth a try.
Did you have problems with tiredness and concentrating? Especially after only getting very little sleep for an extended time? Or did you already consume a lot of meat? There are many factors here that could potentially make it not worth your while. As with all supplements, a good diet and lots of rest can make them little more than expensive pee. But not everyone can have a perfect diet and lots of sleep all the time. Creatine is a supplement for a very particular lifestyle.
>> Especially after only getting very little sleep for an extended time?
>No
Then I'm not really surprised. I also see no real cognitive effects when everything is well anyways. But this one study is what I found to be the most accurate finding overall beyond enhancing muscle power:
I think it's just because hours spent learning by children often don't look like work to us. Like, when children are watching children's television or looking through those baby books with shapes and colors, they are studying. To them, that is learning. And I guarantee that in 1 hour of studying, I can learn every single color in Spanish, whereas a baby might need months of daily reading to finally understand it. But because we don't register it as studying, we would still say the baby learned language "effortlessly", while adults need to "study".
I'd argue I learn much faster now. I did study math and physics but I've found that those tools have accelerated a lot of learning and have a lot of compounding effects. Maybe mileage may vary but I suspect a strong base allows one to learn even faster.
Though only in last few years did I realize I was a fast learner. I thought I was slow because I'd say I didn't understand unless I had a deep understanding. But found that where I would not feel comfortable claiming understanding was a different threshold than others.
Where I've found math and physics helpful is in depth and abstraction. The science builds a good framework to dive deep into understanding and tease out the critical components. Science is a search algorithm in some sense. The math helps abstract, or generalize. To see the patterns and extend and use in ways beyond what was taught. That's where the real compounding happens and where I personally start to feel I understand things. But it requires the depth. But that's my framework and I'm sure there's a million good ones and a million better ones
Math and physics certainly allow you to learn fast in technical fields and that is my experience as well, but the other comment was more about completely unrelated fields like humanities where previous experience may not translate at all. For example an english speaker with a PhD in Physics will still have to start more or less from zero when learning japanese.
Strangely I've found there's still a lot of translative skills. But I think it is more to do with the approach than the base knowledge.
Physics definitely helps me learn things like a sport or driving a new vehicle. Forces me to think more about things like where force is being applied, positioning, paths, and many other things. I'll focus on the small things that compound and I think this makes the start a little slower but that makes things accelerate as my base isn't shaky as I'm moving forward.
But this also helps when I've doing things like learn a language. It's why I wrote the last paragraph like I did. The science side gives you the habit of breaking things down into their atomic units. The framework of build, attack/critique/deconstruct, rebuild. When I was younger I couldn't do this. If I were trying to do something like learn Chinese I'd first focus on just memorizing rather than focus on the radicals.
The iterative style of building up is such a useful framework. Naturally when forming a hypothesis you try to build something stable. But the most important thing to then do is attack it as hard as you can. This is a step most people don't take, but it's probably the most important one for finding truth. It damages and even sometimes completely destroys your construction. But when you rebuild it is better, it is stronger. The framework taught me the importance of doing the boring stuff like revisiting what I've already learned.
And that's also why I'm saying there's a million paths and I doubt my background that I'm leveraging is particularly advantageous. The base knowledge is helpful in the first example but nonexistent in the second. The utility still exists though because of the metaphysics/metamathematics. The framework of how to approach problems, to dive into details, to find what are the important parts, to navigate through mental spaces filled with many unknown unknowns. Maybe my neuroplasticity isn't as high as when I was a teen, but I sure didn't have the (mental) tools I have today and boy what a difference it makes.
I've definitely found that I could inhale information faster and memorize much faster as a teenager. I think I was even faster in college.
In my mid-30s, I'm definitely slower to pick up new things than in my college days, but I have much more mental discipline and patience, a broader base of knowledge to draw from, and maybe the biggest differentiator: a much more developed sense of priority and focus in order to get more benefit out of less time.
> I've definitely found that I could inhale information faster and memorize much faster as a teenager.
One of possible explanations is a passion. What really helps to memorize are emotions. If something triggers emotions or somehow connected to them, then you have much more probability of remembering it. I felt strong about mathematics as a teenager, any math result I found was a happy event. Or rather not any result, I felt nothing about trigonometry formulas and I struggled to remember them, I invented techniques to reconstruct them. Mostly those techniques had nothing to do with math. But the point is: I remember what I like and don't remember boring things. It is emotions at work.
> a much more developed sense of priority and focus in order to get more benefit out of less time.
Which is an evidence confirming my hypothesis: you are not as interested in knowledge you acquire as you are interested in results. You are juggling priorities and subject your learning process to some higher goals. No more learning driven by emotions, now rationality is the king, no place for emotions.
It doesn't mean that my hypothesis is true, I just mention it for a completeness: we don't really know what is the reason behind learning difficulties growing with age. AFAIK even neuroplasticity itself can be at least partially caused by emotions.
> I've found that even in my late 30s I can still easily pick up new skills outside my field of expertise as long as I start with the basics that could also be picked up by a high-schooler.
this was rather famously the technique of Jonas Salk to learn and master things, switch fields every so often, giving you a wide base of disciplines to apply to new fields.
its 60-70% time and energy from lifestyle, financial security (subconscious anxiety),
someone like peter steinger can sit at home experimenting for hours and learn+create vastly more at the age of 48 than the average 30 year old
But, if you compare outright performance, the brain like any other part of the body is at its biological peak function in the late teens. Rachmaninov wrote most of his work as a teenager. mozart wrote first at age 8. zuckerberg create fb in undergrad. the youthful organism is full of vitality and ease
Try something completely different from your field of expertise. For a typical nerd, this might be motor skills like in gymnastics. My experience is this takes a very long time to learn.
