X-Message-Number: 14753 Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2000 07:36:16 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: about aging and new ideas Hi again! Another issue recently raised on Cryonet: will we suffer from being intellectually old, and thus unable to absorb any new ideas? Years ago there was an interesting article in the JOURNAL OF GERONTOLOGY (I will find it if requested; I even wrote about in cryonics material then) which actually looked at the ages of those who accepted Darwin's theory when it came out versus those who did not. The article found that age played no role in acceptance. It's reasonable to ask how this could be... and the answer is simple. Those who did NOT accept Darwin's theories, whether young or old, quickly became obscure and forgotten. Those that DID accept sometimes became famous later. There is also a second comment to which we won't really know the answer until later. An old thinker will have a simple problem with any new idea which might contradict his/her own thoughts: old thinkers are NOW close to death, and may not want to think about ideas which contradict their own, which once made them famous. Put simply, the influence of previous thinking comes not because you are old and have lots of years behind you, but because you have very few years in front of you. Note that if we start living much longer, then our future life expands and some of us might more easily accept new ideas ... just as if we were young again. Best wishes and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14753