> my rate of thinking has decreased over time
from my neuro 2xx or 3xx courses, this is how it works: crudely, the young brain works faster because it takes into account less information, fewer contingencies, while the older brain does the opposite.
Perhaps we also say that some conclusions are bad and bring negative value. It is likely that hasty decisions fall into this camp more frequently than more careful considerations. Just one bad technology decision made flippantly can inflict critical damage.
It is way easier to sink a ship than it is to build a new one. "Slow" thinking is the fastest way when you zoom out to the strategic map.
https://www.nature.com/news/2007/071203/full/news.2007.317.h...
Analogize to basketball. Athleticism when younger, saavy when older.
My two cents: beware of burn out.
Eat lots of healthy fats and your brain will sing. If you eat a bunch of carbs and little fat, you'll likely experience brain fog.
BTW nostromo, I did write "healthy food" in my other comment ;-)
Oh for me it's just the opposite:
Caffeine makes me jumpier, but I'm not at all sure it improves my cognitive performance. Do you have any evidence caffeine has positive impact on cognitive performance?
I'm pretty sure eating healthy improves the clarity of my thinking. When I was young, I'd eaten a bar of chocolate for lunch a couple of times when short of time during a go tournament. This has invariably been a terrible idea and worsened my performance.
Edit: Found it. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797614567339
Posted originally in this comment by checkyoursudo: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25356216
Both of those can also be quite valuable in different circumstances and completely useless in others. Just a matter of finding the right environment that can make the best use of your thought process at your given stage of experience.
It's possible that my somewhat slower rate of thinking is partly or mostly offset by more effective thinking, based on decades of experience, but I'm definitely not sure that's the case.
My professional experience is an advantage, but it's also a disadvantage at times. 20-25 years ago, I knew quite a bit about how virtual memory performed on the same program running under HPUX 9 and AIX 4. Woot? (Yes I understand that such 'ancient' knowledge and experience probably produces mental pathways that helpfully apply to more modern considerations. Probably.) (Spoiler: virtual memory performance on HPUX 9 and 10 (at least) was abysmal.)
To the main point of the article: it's complicated, but, agreeing with various sibling comments, I'm pretty certain that the right kinds of pressure/stress, in the right conditions, at the right times, etc etc, will effectively speed up the rate of thought. That agrees with my experience.
Normal disclaimer applies: human brains are radically and often absurdly different, and one person's experience will, on average, shed very little if any light on another person's experiences.