The experimental fact that older adults are happier than young adults, along with the observations that they focus more attention on positive things, despite the obvious fact that aging is uncomfortable, seems to suggest a weird model of happiness/well-being.
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What if people are more interested in "darker", more troubling topics when they are confident they have the strength and resources to deal with them, while they become more "conservative" about guarding their positive outlook when they're in a position of true scarcity?
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Also related: construal level, something
@robinhanson talks a lot about. "Far mode" seems to go with the "young person style" of caring more about learning, novelty, and starting new long-term projects; "near mode" with the "old person style" about living more "in the moment."1 reply 0 retweets 6 likesShow this thread -
If you have all the time in the world, starting new, open-ended, exploratory things, which may have large vague spots on the map, is appealing, because you can firm up the details later. You have the time to do it all.
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If you have limited time (and limited capacities), you want to limit your attention to things you can actually get done, which means more modest, more concrete, more immediately enjoyable, more "near mode."
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Achieving long-term goals is of course a matter of building a long-term, far-mode aspiration out of near-mode, concrete building blocks. If this is connected to age, maybe it's important to have more collaborations between older and younger adults.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @vgr and
I found that older people tend to be way more longtermist than young ones. It may sound trite, but people become rarely adults before they have children.
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Something like that, but subtly different, I think. People begin to *think beyond their lifetime* when they have children. I find myself thinking things like “ok, the rest of my life is for Simon now, and future other kids, not primarily for me.”
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @Plinz and
“I may never get to see the Promised Land, but I can set my children up to get there” is parent thinking.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @Plinz and
This is “long term” in a sense, but in a different way than a teenager is long term. Teenagers have an *incredible* capacity to put themselves through acute risk and challenge, just out of ambition or kindness, with little guarantee of payoff. That gets harder with age.
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Teen!Sarah was way more anxious and depressed than I am now, and had abysmal social skills, but she also had way more physical and mental stamina, and more inclination to do hard things just “for the challenge” or “because someone asked for my help.”
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @Plinz and
Teenagers *famously* are the very best at acts of reckless ambition or heroism. Think Joan of Arc, or Sophie Scholl. Or Juliet, for that matter. That’s the 13-year-old girl mindset: total dedication, heedless of risk to oneself. It’s a shame adults don’t appreciate it enough.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @Plinz and
(For me at that age it was running and math, neither of which I had natural talent for, but I made a heroic effort to git gud, and it worked.)
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