People are being booted out of their jobs at 50

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I want the companies I invest in to be cold-hearted slaves to the bottom line, not social welfare organizations.

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...and that's why people are getting kicked out of their jobs at 50, why there is little to no job security anymore, why benfits and training are minimal, and customer service is generally poor among most industries.

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There's a reason few can play professional sports much beyond age 30. There's a reason world chess champions come from the ranks of the under 40 crowd and that Nobel prizes are awarded primarily for the accomplishments of 20 and 30-year olds. Energy, both mental and physical, declines with age. The physiological and intellectual changes are well documented. Better health care can only slow the inevitable. A healthy 70-year old is not a just a 20-year old with wrinkles.

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You know, I thought I would point out that this just isn't usually the case in the equestrian world.The best and brightest riders are generally in their thirties when they really start to win lots of important events or world championships and make their nation's olympic team.Similarly, the sport horses themselves are usually at their best in their early to mid teens.Most of the truly great riders, particularly in dressage, have been extremely competative well into their forties and fifties. The sports that have the jumping are a bit more dangerous so you don't see many fifty year olds doing that, but even then, it's fairly usual to see people in their 40's winning.Believe me, professional riders are generally just as fit as anybody doing any other generalized sport.Oh, and horse sports are the only one in which women and men compete on a completely equal basis.

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It'll give you a better idea of the point I was actually making. When I was just out of school I wondered why most of the other engineers were under 40. Now I'm on the other side of fence and I can see that the older you get the more likely you are to fall by the wayside.

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Well, I think that at least part of this is ageism.Zhimbo, my very handy live-in research Psychologist, tells me that for tasks that do not require genious-level mental ability or peak physical skill and conditioning, older is better.Now, there is the economic issue of companies wanting to pay people less, but they may often be pushing out very valuable workers who really do a better job overall than their younger replacements. Older workers have interpersonal and leadership skills and experience that young workers have yet to develop.Many, many, many companies underestimate the detrimental long-term effect of high turnover on their service to customers, internal morale and willingness of their staff to care about the company, lack of cohesion and a sense of team/family among the staff, and new-worker training costs.ABE:Now that Zhimbo has woken up a bit more this morning, he tells me that in tests of basic cognitive abilities, older people do better than younger people on tests of knowledge (no surprise there).In tests of working memory, processing speed, and other basic, fundamental cognitive skills, there is no appreciable difference between younger and older people until the older group gets to around age 60. There is, however, enormous variation in individual abilities within each group.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 05-10-2005 08:34 AM

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I'm not going to research this, I don't have time now, but I don't think this is true. If the research says this is so then it's wrong.

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You don't know what the research says, and even if I can present you with lots high quality evidence that contradicts what your personal opinion, based upon anecdotal evidence, is, you plan to refuse to accept it.How very creationist of you, Percy. I am truly shocked.

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Wait till you're 50 yourself and see if you still believe this. Decline in memory begins by age 40 and probably earlier.

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I have noticed no decline in my memory, and I am 37.Now, I could be tested and find out that I do have a decline in memory. Since in this discussion you seem to value anecdotal, personal evidence much more than controlled studies, I get to say that you are wrong based upon my own impression that I have not experienced any memory decline.

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Most people become aware of this because they experience increased difficulty remembering names, and they note an increase in what is usually termed absentmindedness. The ability to learn new things is definitely less by age 40 than in your 20s, the cognitive ability to solve problems declines, and short term memory declines. It is common for people to make greater and greater use of lists and other types of reminders as they grow older. And this is all accompanied by a decrease in both physical and mental energy.

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...and all of these things tend to be very, very heavily biased by confirmation bias.I don't have time this morning to go through your whole list and present you with research that shows you where you are wrong, although I might not bother if you are just going to declare it all bogus.Are you interested in looking at any of the research, or not?

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The evidence for this is all around us. More of the most significant accomplishments in almost any field are performed by the young than by any of the other older age groups.

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Remember, I am not talking about genious-level cognitive abilities, nor performance requiring peak physical condition.I am talking about members of the general population that never make any big splash in any mental or physical arena.

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This would not be true if people in their 50s were really the equal of people in their 20s. Older people are not just the same as younger people except they like to spend more time at home in front of the TV.

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According to the research on basic cognitive abilities, there are no appreciable differences.I guess you are just going to ignore that evidence?

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I'll use myself for another example. As you might guess from this website, I like to program. When I was in my 20s I could program around the clock. When I was in my 30s I could program 14 hours a day. When I was in my 40s I could program 10 hours a day. Now in my 50s I can program about 8 hours a day. The limits are due to mental fatigue. Do you think it's leveled off? I don't.

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What about this scenario involves "basic cognitive abilities?"

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I don't need to convince you the research you're describing is wrong. As the Rolling Stones said, time is on my side. Whether it's next year or a decade or two from now, the effects of aging, both physical and mental, will eventually accumulate to the point where they become apparent to you.

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Well sure, eventually they will. Two decades from now I'll be almost 60.But that's not what we're talking about, is it?Unless I am mistaken, you are claiming that people at 40 are significantly impaired at basic cognitive abilities compared to 20 year olds. Things like short term memory, problem solving (didn't you say you were great at problem solving, though?), the ability to learn new things, etc.The consensus of the scientific Cognitive Psychology community is that your assesment just isn't accurate.The differences between groups are very small compared to variation within groups.

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Keep in mind that this thread is about age discrimination. My position is that there is a valid justification for age discrimination, that in general people's ability to perform, both mentally and physically, declines gradually with age.

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...but not at the age you are claiming.There is very little difference between 40 year olds and 25 year olds on basic cognitive tasks. A statistically significant difference, yes, but a very small one.Let me repeat; there is enormous variation within groups compared to between groups.Here's a nice graph: Here's what Zhimbo has to say on the matter:

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If research into cognition versus age doesn't indicate this decline then either something is wrong with the research, or the decline in mental ability is due to some mental aspect that the research isn't measuring.

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You are absolutely correct that the research could not taking something into account.But couln't it be the case that your anecdotal, personal impressions of yourself and the people around you are maybe not 100% accurate and are probably pretty strongly influenced by confirmation bias, since I doubt you are rigorously following any sort of experimental protocol in your recording of the "subjects" in your "observations"?I mean, what are you basing your claims on other than anecdotal evidence? There are all sorts of reasons why people in the 40-50 age group would begin to do poorly at work. For example, people who have smoked, eaten poorly and been sedentary their whole lives start to get chronic health problems, men often get divorced at this time in their lives and also tend to get depressed and isolated after divorce, etc.All of these things have nothing to do with chronological age-related metal decline but may be correlated with that particular age group's work performance.

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Perhaps it helps to more clearly characterize this decline in mental ability. It isn't related to a loss of mental skills. For example, I'm as good at math as I ever was. And I'm better at problem solving now in my areas of expertise because I can now draw upon years of experience.

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OK.

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But my ability to learn new things has declined. Young people are much more adept at moving into newly opened technical areas than older people.

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But, why do you think you know this, really?Is it just your general impression combined with your personal report, or is there some more reliable, more carefully gathered data to support your gut feeling?I mean, how is this any different from someone saying, "Oh, Christian marriages are much more successful and less prone to divorce than any other kind.", and then when we show them research and statistics that shows that Christians actually have the same or higher divorce rate than other groups, they just say, "The research is wrong."?

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One area where this effect is clearly seen at a young age is language learning. The ability to learn new languages declines dramatically and early with age. I'm sure the research confirms this, and it is declines in this and related kinds of mental ability that I'm talking about.

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Yes, the research clearly indicates that after adolescence, it becomes much more difficult to learn new languages.The problem you have with this claim is that language aquisition is pretty much unique WRT cognitive function.We don't learn anything else the same cognitive way that we learn language. It's also not that learning languages is just "harder" past adolescence; the way a person's brain learns language past adolescence is fundamentally different.There are no other abilities that are cognitively similar to language aquisition, so your reference to other abilities is not valid.

"Important" in what regard?

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Do my actual capabilities matter as much as what those capabilities are perceived as being by the hiring authority?

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Well, sure. If you can actually do the job just as well or better than as someone 10 or 20 years younger than you, but the hiring authority erroniously believes that all people your age are in significant mental decline, that's not good.Of course, remember that there are lots of other factors, such as physical and mental health, etc., which could significantly affect someone's hireability/work performance and are associated with someone's age group but are unrelated to age-related mental decline.This is also true WRT the descision to get rid of an employee due to their getting older.

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Does legality actually play much if any of a role?

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I think that discrimination based upon false information is always something best avoided if at all possible.Just as it is illegal to refuse to hire or fire women because "they all get PMS", it should be illegal to fire or not hire older workers because "they all are significantly behind younger workers in basic cognitive abilities."

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The challenge for the researchers is to find ways to objectively measure what we already know to be true.

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That's it.The world is going to end.Percy is a Creationist.

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That is cold in ways I do not even wish to contemplate.But that is the way of things.Loopholes do exist and are exploited despite their moral bankruptcy.A few of these men died within a couple of years from hitting the booze,some struggled on ,some trained for new work but to a man the idea of loyalty and trust was gone and that is a great tragedy.

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But hey, Percy said that he wants the companies he invests in to be slaves to the bottom line, so this is how people get treated when all that you care about is money and not people.