good info! any sex differences?

I myself am sitting in front of the anvil of the lecturing desk and keep the hammer of my lectures swinging in the same embarrassing rhythm day in day out.
(Immanuel Kant)

It is a dull task, like being a university teacher.

Thank you for that, doc. Are there any physical signs that correlate with cognitive decline? I’m thinking of speed of reflexes, peripheral vision, grip strength, or whatever? Presumably one would need to know how to discount the effect of, say, arthritis. (If one should discount it.)

For example, the word “Ache” At what point does one conclude that the pronunciation is correct? In the Sarf uv Nglan its pronunciation would often sound like aye-k. But I find southerners sound their consonants more and more softly, so that a headache might become an ‘ed-aye. Would that do? Wouldn’t that be a subjective judgement?

It is rare to have a big effect from one gene. Few people carry it, and it is not good to have. Perhaps in future people will try to delete it. However, I would suggest caution, because it might conceivably be useful in other contexts

Are there any physical signs that correlate with cognitive decline?

Hm – all kinds of physical decline clearly correlate with cognitive decline I’d guess.

So – is this your question: Which signs of physical decline are less hurtful with respect to cognitive decline than others?

Another aspect of this decline phenomenon is – how much of their former thoughts are still relevant for intellectuals once they get really old?

This would make for a great case study if one looks at the Geothe of 1831, who finished Faust II right before he died, 82 years old – and the one of 1770 (21 years old – beginning to work on Faust I) – and the Goethe of 1808 who finished Faust I.

Or I think of philosopher Ernst Bloch, who had lost eyesight by the time he approached 90 – but kept – dictating – his last big book: Experimentum Mundi – a variation of his lifelong philosophical attempts.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth, somebody once said.

Time seems to speed up through life. I always associated that with a lower sampling rate, like a film maker speeds up the camera to record slow motion. I’d assumed the perceived length of a minute, say, was proportional to one’s age inverted. You can’t integrate this function to zero, but starting at a minute or day of age, half your perceived lifetime is over around 16.

But each sample of reality gets a lot more attention in an old person’s head than it does in a young person’s. There’s a lot more experience in the memory banks to compare the present situation to. Maybe the value of a deeper think is grater than another rapid sample or two.

Which signs of physical decline are less hurtful with respect to cognitive decline than others?

Yes, that’s a better phrasing, thank you. I assume that the fact I’ve shrunk by half an inch in height has effectively nothing to do with cognitive decline.

But now I am clumsy when once I was very well co-ordinated: I imagine that that does relate directly, in some way, to cognitive decline.

(As I said once before, becoming clumsy while retaining quick reflexes is a rather destructive combination.)

wonder if bright people lose skills more slowly, or if everyone loses processing speed quickly, or maybe the select group of bright people with poor processing speed lose that speed more quickly.

do bright folks lose skills at the same rate as dumb people?

i’d guess the higher g-loaded the skill, the more slowly bright people lose it.
& on low-g loaded skills (processing speed) maybe everyone loses it quickly. maybe not! i’ll go with whatever you tell me, Dr. T!

Thank you. The last quotation is odd because it chatters about “positively related” and then quotes negative correlation coefficients. Maybe the authors are a bit past it, eh?

That’s all very well but they said x & y were positively related when they aren’t. They should get that right even if low y is a jolly good thing.

Or they could use the reciprocal of any variable where small = good.

On an intuitive level, it appears obvious that better performing minds, save for breakdowns, will decline at a lower pace.

Speed declines more than understanding capacity, that’s intuitive and apparent as well.

Average people start going out of whack round age 60; brainy types, and more so intellectual types (who are not only intelligent, but inclined to apply their intelligence throughout life) are clear-minded, able to process new information and add some of it to their mind’s database, for life.

Inclination to use one’s mind is of the essence as pertains cognitive decline. I know a bunch of 115-130 (yes, 130) IQ people who struggle (and give up) to learn basic operations with things like TV or climate control remote controls. I think ossified is a good describer for their neural equipment. To never use it makes it end up unusable.

thank you for your insightful thoughts – well said! to further the discussion, i’d bet in sex differences the answer is what it usually is: “men are more variable” so it would not be so simple as men decline sooner (tho on average i suspect we men decline sooner – “men are built for performance, women for endurance”:) especially since we die sooner! but the trajectories for men would probably be more variable (some decline way sooner, some hardly at all even in their 90s, except for speed). hoping the good Dr. Thompson chimes in with some data here:)

thank you, sir. alas, now i’m wondering about the converse: the developmental “incline” in children & young adults, & if there are sex differences there, as well! (& how much developmental trajectories can vary – how far from the slope they go, & if males are more variable in slope trajectories:) i won’t wonder anything else, i promise! thanks:)

The Digit Symbol test can be cheated. In this test, you are given a table of symbols associated with the nine digits 1~9. Given a digit, you have to write down the corresponding symbol. There are two conceivable ways to administer this test: (1) While being shown the digit-symbol table, digits are flashed on the screen one after another, and you have to write down the symbol associated with each digit, (2) While being shown the digit-symbol table, you are given an entire list of digits, and you have to fill in, in each empty box, the symbol associated with the digit above the box.

The particular testing method shown in this article is method (2). With this method, you can go through the successive digits, look up the corresponding symbol in the table, and fill in the box with the symbol associated with that digit. But it will be much fast if you look up the symbol for 1, then scan through the fill-in list looking for 1’s and fill in that symbol for all the 1’s in the list; then do the same thing for the digit 2, then the digit 3, …, then the digit 9.

With method (2), you will complete the task much faster by the latter technique than by the former technique. Is coming to this insight intended to be part of the test? That is, is choosing the right algorithm to complete the task quickly a part of what is being tested for? Do the people who came up with this test realize that?

‘In brief, brief tests identify real-life changes, with important consequences.’

In brief, it took me <120 seconds to read James Thompson's article and understand its meaning.

There are 'important consequences' for those who take more time to read his articles and understand its meaning

What type of 'important consequences'? Put on the x-axis reading time and on the y-axis will to purify the human race, and you will find a clear correlation. Of course correlation is not causation, but the correlation is there (just read the comments) and it does predict.

All of this has also important consequences if you are as author above a certain age, and James Thompson certainly does not look youngest.

But then, the 'deeper meaning' of these articles is of course to distract people to think about real issues, such as: perhaps we should help older people with ADL when they get above a certain age, or let them retire at an earlier age so that they can enjoy their remaining, increasingly fragile, lifes, independent on how they score on a test.

One of the big negatives here is the new manner of living brought on by technological advances. I think millennials will visibly begin to slow down (if that’s even possible in their case) in their 40s and early 50s because they’ve spent their entire lives sitting and doing nothing.

My hypothesis is that scores drop if subjects take the test while having sex.

Indeed those minus signs were, and remain, disconcerting. The idea that higher grip strength, unless in a very small sample, correlates negatively with visual memory or reaction time seems absurd. (Maybe elderly gorillas were included in the test sample).

I’m 65, and years ago was an on-again/off-again member of Mensa. I always knew I was the smartest person in the room (which probably means I needed to find a higher class of derelict).

Recently I started watching “Jeopardy” again to keep track of 𝑤𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑑 champ James Holzhauer, and discovered I’m shouting out fewer answers than I used to. In some cases I don’t know the answer, if I ever did; in some cases I know it but “it’s on the tip of my tongue”; and in almost all cases I’m slower than the buzzer-beaters on the show.

I’m still lucid (knock on wood), but time’s a bitch.

let them retire at an earlier age so that they can enjoy their remaining, increasingly fragile, lifes…

retirement is a fraud — a lower latitude version of the ice flow. as with marriage, anything that gets that much social hype is likely to be an ordeal. uselessness is fatal.

Is the coding to be done sequentially or can one eliminate all the 8s, for example, and move onto others to maximise familiarity with remaining uncoded elements and speed through the task?

Asking for a friend…

““men are built for performance, women for endurance”: especially since we die sooner!”

What’s surprising is the degree to which men’s average lifespan is dragged down by the relative incidence of early deaths.
Evolutionarily, it makes sense that the dumb, not the good, die young, make it to 99 and you’re good.

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

Why do the aged need help with the Anti Defamation League?
I thought they were equal opportunity bigots.

‘…Inclination to use one’s mind is of the essence as pertains cognitive decline. I know a bunch of 115-130 (yes, 130) IQ people who struggle (and give up) to learn basic operations with things like TV or climate control remote controls. I think ossified is a good describer for their neural equipment. To never use it makes it end up unusable.’

There’s also sheer impatience. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, and if whatever can’t make itself clear, sod it. I think the crisis for me came with Windows 8.

I thought about the decline with age, and its never really made sense to me – I’ve known quite a few old people who remained razor sharp into old age.

I suspect the decline is really a decline in motivation to try hard and use ones mind – peak motivation is probably up till mid 30s, when you’re really competing with the world. You stop caring as much as you succeed and get established.

Motivation, simple willingness to exert effort, is probably the key to understanding differences in IQ on so many levels – its also the one thing IQ promoters don’t want to talk about

“You can’t do statistics without probability. We don’t need theoretical exams for a real world function by probability-challenged psychologists.” Taleb

wwebd said: Those equations, while helpful for people who do not rely on prayer and angelic inspiration to live a good life in their old years, only work at an accurate level for people who are typically narcissistic, and hence amenable to being tested by hoi polloi testers.

For example, a parent or a grandparent who is waiting from 10 to 11 for a child or a grandchild to come home from one of their first “independent” dates – a date that was supposed to be over at 10 – is going to live several hours in that one simple hour.

One of the great problems of today’s society is the celebrity status of old people. Look at all they have accomplished, we say, as if they had done things that the next generation will not do.

Hunter gatherers and medieval folk did not have that problem to the extent we have it, although of course they had similar problems.

IN THE MIDST of the respect they had for old people, from simple metaphysical principles, there was also the over-arching context of that respect: it is one thing to be admired for long-gone accomplishments, it is another thing to be admired for who one still is: Where, they might say, where is the great accomplishment of this year? The years gone by are like the locust and the palmer beetle and mean nothing to us now, compared to the work of today, the needs of today, the joys of today!

hmm, this does not seem to be good news for the IQ deniers. Apparently, a measure of intelligence can be obtained by simply looking at pupil dilation. Those with higher memory abilities had about a 1 mm larger pupil size than those with average working ability. Futher, 1 mm differences in pupil size can be noticed detected without fancy equipment. Basically, people’s pupil size provide IQ information.
I have found an app that can give more exact pupil readouts.

I wonder how much cognitive decline is caused by failing to use the brain so intensively after retirement? Does “use it or lose it” apply to the brain as well as the body?

Perhaps the retired ladies who sign up for Italian classes or OU degrees (until they hiked the fees to protect the brick-and-mortar universities) are pretty sensible.

Exactly.

Cognitive decline in old age is really just loss of motivation, as ones competitive fire period is past.

Old men who continue to compete remain as sharp as ever.

And young men who aren’t motivated to compete also have lower IQs.

It has nothing to do with innate ability. A substantial component of IQ is just motivation.

“Old men who continue to compete remain as sharp as ever.”

Not so – I could code for 11 or 12 hours in my 40s (with breaks), but I can’t keep that level of sustained concentration at 60.

That’s a question of energy not mental acuity.

Plus, at 60 I very much doubt you are still the young firebrand out to prove himself – as your motivation drops, do does your performance.

I bet a 60 year old man with a starving family can code for 12 hours no problem.

Most American men can’t do hard labour for 8 hours at age 60 – but I’ve seen 60 year old immigrants do that cheerfully, with a smile, day after day.

A huge part of performance is simply motivation – and what “feels” impossible becomes entirely possible in the right circumstances.

Put on the x-axis reading time and on the y-axis will to purify the human race, and you will find a clear correlation. Of course correlation is not causation, but the correlation is there (just read the comments) and it does predict.

Qft

In a word: no.