Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

Having lived through a few generations now and having seen every younger one called out by old"er" folk usually based on anecdote rather than data, I'm beginning to see cohort arguments as intellectual amuse-bouches--puffs of indefensible statements that everyone likes...

This is definitely the headline, but coming from one of those younger gens myself, *my anecdotal experience* is a lot more optimism for my generation coming from elders than the youth! I think "crotchety old folks disappointed with the kids" may itself be the big cultural myth.

There's a lot of anecdotal evidence for the crotchety old folk idea :)

Which is the prevailing cultural meme: that lazy millennials eat too much avocado toast, or that clueless elders think lazy millennials eat too much avocado toast?

Depends if you're asking the lazy millennials or the clueless elders

Does it?

I was being half glib. But you're right - you could assess different generations' beliefs about each other cross-sectionally, without doing a multi-decade panel study. As long as you're disciplined about not trying to use it to judge who's right or wrong...

We know from the best data that Sanjay cited that 1) there are no real, big shifts in each generation, that 2) older and younger folk are different, and that 3) older folk have faulty memories. Given those 3 I'd put $ on the codgers continuing to make $ by disparaging the kids