Who would have thought? One of the major North American managers of the environmental SRK Consulting group (https://www.srk.com/en/) cancelled his subscription with Grundvilk within 30 minutes of my posting this piece on Substack. Probably older than 50 years of age.
Without arguing about the first graph on cognitive decline, I do think that it would be useful to plot the US life expectancy on the graphic showing the congressional age distribution. Improved health and longer life have, without doubt, changed the natural selection profile. Idiocracy, combined with age-related loss of cognitive function, may doom our legislative process.
With regard to the withdrawal of public lands from multipurpose use, this is just another example of the congitive dissonance represented by the same people calling on one hand for the green energy revolution and on the other blocking all attempts to find and develop the resources required to achieve that goal.
Hard to argue about the first graph for the time period when those data were collected, I think. Might try to plead poor validity of testing instruments to do that, I guess. Reportedly, the curves were substantially worse for people without college educations. Working memory differences were, as I recall, equivalent to about a 10 year difference in age between those who went to college and those who didn't. Of course, don't know whether the education itself made the observed differences, and/or economic variables led to worsened working memories in old age in those who didn't continue their schooling.
Yes, it would be interesting to plot life expectancy against congressional age distribution -- maybe the elderly elderly we have now as chronic legislators were pretty much already out of the picture back before the early 1900s. I'll digitize life expectancy and median Congressional ages to see what shows up when I'm looking for another excuse to avoid working on 2023 tax returns.
"Cognitive dissonance"? Where's that actual cognition you are referring to? These confused people are, I have come to believe, nothing but random thought and feeling generators.
Who would have thought? One of the major North American managers of the environmental SRK Consulting group (https://www.srk.com/en/) cancelled his subscription with Grundvilk within 30 minutes of my posting this piece on Substack. Probably older than 50 years of age.
Without arguing about the first graph on cognitive decline, I do think that it would be useful to plot the US life expectancy on the graphic showing the congressional age distribution. Improved health and longer life have, without doubt, changed the natural selection profile. Idiocracy, combined with age-related loss of cognitive function, may doom our legislative process.
With regard to the withdrawal of public lands from multipurpose use, this is just another example of the congitive dissonance represented by the same people calling on one hand for the green energy revolution and on the other blocking all attempts to find and develop the resources required to achieve that goal.
Hard to argue about the first graph for the time period when those data were collected, I think. Might try to plead poor validity of testing instruments to do that, I guess. Reportedly, the curves were substantially worse for people without college educations. Working memory differences were, as I recall, equivalent to about a 10 year difference in age between those who went to college and those who didn't. Of course, don't know whether the education itself made the observed differences, and/or economic variables led to worsened working memories in old age in those who didn't continue their schooling.
Yes, it would be interesting to plot life expectancy against congressional age distribution -- maybe the elderly elderly we have now as chronic legislators were pretty much already out of the picture back before the early 1900s. I'll digitize life expectancy and median Congressional ages to see what shows up when I'm looking for another excuse to avoid working on 2023 tax returns.
"Cognitive dissonance"? Where's that actual cognition you are referring to? These confused people are, I have come to believe, nothing but random thought and feeling generators.