Do you get more retarded as you get older?

Do you get more retarded as you get older?

I know most of here are in our twenties, and we've never known a time when we had less mental acuity than we have now, so we believe we will be just as capable of learning new things as we get older. But I keep hearing from older people that they "just can't remember things as well they used to" or they "just can't pick up on things as well as they used to." It's a pretty scary thought that I won't always be as smart as I am now. The idea that there is a time limit, and that I must learn as much as I possibly can before my brain goes to mush - before I become practically incapable of learning new complex ideas.

Eh, it doesn't seem too bad. My dad is over 60 and he has trouble remembering things, but he's clearly still smart and can still learn. There's a big difference between mild senility like most experience and Alzheimer's.

I would guess it comes with age.
Say as a species we provide the best offspring naturally in our late teens to late 20s. As children we retarded because we're still learning life skills until we mature in our late teens onwards having those said skills to survive and find mates. We reproduce and our biological purpose is now fullfilled.
We get older and because we;re no longer needed to ensure the human race goes on, nature doesn't bother itself about how we end up dying. Our purpose is spent so no longer need the cognitive ability needed to survive against predators and rivals to breed. We get sluggish in them and hence because retarded again.
That simple. The species gets what it needs out of the individual and then abandons them to go senile and croak.

but a better question is why we have to die anyway if we exclude overpopulation issues?
If I'm not mistaken we only break down and age badly because our cells lose their ability to replicate or mend themselves over time with age. So if science provided a way to ensure those cells always replicated perfectly each time, would we never die of old age?

An even better question is why do we have to age at all? Surely an organism that doesn't self destruct after a certain amount of time has passed has a HUGE advantage in passing on its genes. Yet organisms with biological immortality are either nonexistant or very very rare.

bup

Bump, i'm interested as well

But i think it all depends on your family history, since people like Paul Erdos still did Math until his death and he took amphetamines as well so

Sadly we will never be sure if we will get dumber or smarter though, but at least we should reduce our retardness with eating healthy and doing excercise

I probably answered that in my first. I'll say it again: Once we pass the peak age for producing offspring our purpose is over and our body starts breaking down to make way for the next generation to proliferate

That makes no sense.

What part of that doesn't make sense? We are useless after we have passed the age in which we can reproduce.

No I think the issue is they have to go through more work to recall. They're slower because they already have so many pathways established in their memory. It's not about getting retarded it's just having to look through a library rather than shelf of information.

IIRC neuroplasticity is something that can be continuously trained. Obviously you won't get that magical learning ability of adolescence/early 20s, but as long as you keep learning new things your brain doesn't degrade quickly.

My friend who did a lot of ecstasy has worse memory problems than my dad who is 64.

Read again

If organisms never aged and died they couldn't evolve. I agree with the theme of thread, mental abilities probably peak about the same time as physical, mid 20's these days maybe. Then grow gradually more retarded with every passing day and if you live long enough will once again become as retarded as an infant fresh out of the womb, but not as cute.

>If organisms never aged and died they couldn't evolve.
Wrong.

life is dynamic user, room must be made for the young bloods

if a species does not have the capacity to stir its genetic potential every few years, it does not evolve. If the same individuals are reproducing over and over again, the species loses flexibility and cannot adapt, therefore cannot evolve.

There are people right now studying and working on a way for humans to become biologically immortal.

Really gets you thinking about how some people want to say fuck it to life.

Why has there recently been a build in organizations and foundations studying the effect of ageing and working on biological immortality like SENS and Google's Calico + others?

Wrong?

Just why the fuck do you even post on this board?? Natural selection is like the most major driving force behind evolution

How does a species not aging mean "the same individuals would be reproducing over and over again"? Their offspring would also reproduce, and the more genetically fit they were, the more offspring they would have. Such a species wouldn't lose flexibility compared to a species that aged, since the fact that they didn't age would only provide additional population growth.
Also, people would still die of unnatural causes.

Purpose is a social construct :P