> It is likely related to the limited capacity of the human brain

I really doubt this. It is likely limited to, "why change when what I did got me here so far".

That and the belief that they'll die sooner than later anyway so why bother. Once you took away the idea that people will die and remain healthy in all ways - I think you'll see folks be much more open to adopting change at later stages in life. I see this with many people I know who are in their 60s. They're like, "Eh, it's too late. Gonna die sooner than later anyway." It's only the ones who think they're gonna live at least another 10 years (and realize how long that is) actually are open to changing.

Getting older definitely changes the calculus on what kinds of investments are worth while.

For example, if I'm 10 years old, and invest 10 years into learning the guitar, it will pay off for the next 50 years. For a 60 year old, investing all those hours into the guitar offers comparatively little payback, even if the 60 yo learns at the same rate as the 10 yo.

I think, it's more gradual. The older you are, the more effort it takes to learn new things. Most people eventually get frustrated and give up. A few that don't, show much better results compared to their peers. But I doubt they could outcompete an equally determined youngster.

One notable example would be moving to a country with a different language. School-age kids become native speakers in terms of years with little effort, while doing it in your 60s requires tremendous effort to get the most basic communication going.

> The older you are, the more effort it takes to learn new things.

My experience has been the opposite. Learning is also a skill, and at this point I am extremely accomplished at it.

> School-age kids become native speakers in terms of years with little effort

Often repeated, but doubtful. School-age children burn through incredible amounts of energy per body mass. There is almost nothing they do which is "little effort".

Probably originated because children (and adults) learn best through play, which is biologically how animals are designed to learn. But somehow "play" doesn't count as "effort"

School kids are forced to become bilingual. Every single interaction they have during the day must be in another language. The 60s year old something has most of the time limited interaction during the day with the other language. That's the main reason. A simple example, in my area we have multiple "international school" teaching only in english. I can tell you that most of the kids are far to be called bilingual in French. The other day I was in front of a group of them trying to see who would be able to order in French at the Starbuck. And this is not because they don't have French lessons, they have plenty. One of my friend is born and raised in Switzerland but only attended english schools and lived in an english speaking family, his level of French is far far from being bilingual.

> why change when what I did got me here so far

Not that much. Brain is a rolling learning machine. When you are young (less than 15), your brain can grab and store a lot of information and instinctively understand complex concepts without even thinking about it. Those information will become the foundation of the rest of your life. Of course you will learn new things, but those things can be learns easily depending on those foundations. When you reach the second part of your life, new things get harder to learn. You can learn few specific things if you spend time on it (often this learn is comparison-based, you compare with what you already know instead on instinctively understanding the core concept, this is a big difference between very young and adult peoples), but not the hundreds on new things coming around.

I think the humble behavior is to actually consider new things are hard to understand and you can't learn everything, so you have to choose the new things to learn wisely.

I would contend that human behavior is primarily driven by incentives

If people dont have to “act older” which includes relying on experiencs and having those experiences to begin with, they wont at the same distribution

We already see this in play generationally and cities where there are options

I'm indeed a strong believer that if we could live forever, the suicide rate would be high, very high.

There is only so much a human mind can get through. Think of all the bad things that can happen to someone in their lives, mental scaring is real. At some point, something is going to snap.

Only vein people would actually keep going forever. Most normal people would give in at some point having had enough.

That said, extending life to 200-300 years would be good. I just think that forever would make everyone bat shit crazy and murdering each other or having suicide parties.

> Think of all the bad things that can happen to someone in their lives, mental scaring is real. At some point, something is going to snap.

I think it would be the other way around - at some point you would kill yourself out of boredom.

As someone put it: when you are a child, you regularly live the worst day of your life. The first time you drop your ice-cream it is quite likely your worst day so far. The 30th time? Not so much.

By the time you lose your 5000th friend, you are probably not as shocked as the first time.

Good point, that's the other way to see it. But think of people that have been through war, rape and famine?

You are right a vast majority of people would become completely apathetic to anything happening around them, similar to how we feel about things happening on other continent sometimes.

I'll make a note you and I discuss this in 800 years and see who's right?

Our bodies regenerate every cell about every 7 years, so those memories would likely seem like other people’s problems at some point.

If we could eliminate death by senescence, accident and deliberate external violence, suicide is just about the only thing left and so on a long enough time scale would automatically be 100%.

I don't think living forever would make everyone bat shit crazy. You will still live your life day by day, year by year and decade by decade. Your daily life won't be that different and humans usually don't contemplate and derive meaning from their own mortality that much.

I think it would make humans happier. Happiness and life satisfaction increases with age. Add better health to that and I don't see how this could be that bad.

Currently mortality per year for 20-25 year olds is around 1 in 2'650 for men and 1 in 4'000 for women. I would expect that the risk of death is lower for someone with the health of a 20-25 year old and the experience of a 100 year old.

I'm not sure this would happen, but I can imagine that the focus on accident and suicide prevention would be higher, so Ten of Thousands of years of average life expectancy don't seem unreasonable.

This is the topic of The Makropulos Affair by Karel Čapek and the related opera by Leoš Janáček:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Makropulos_Affair

>That said, extending life to 200-300 years would be good. I just think that forever would make everyone bat shit crazy and murdering each other or having suicide parties.

The invitations for those would be sick: "A party to die for."

RSVP by the year 2600.

I don't think that vein people could go on forever, quite on the contrary. I think those that keep a young spirit i.e. keep curious and engaged could endure longest.

but I think we as a species are not designed to go on forever and I doubt any sentient being would be or rather the perspective would be so different it would be difficult for us to grasp.

In fiction this is a recurring topic- just see the Elb or Eldar in "Lord of the Rings"...

the die and fade from the world as they have seen everything and do not continue to have children (how many children can you see dying before going insane?)

No, I don't think so. Human behavior is influenced by the supposedly finite lifespan a lot. I'm in my late 20s now. Many of the people around me are, as I would say, "in a hurry to live their lives". They now plan decades ahead, they set deadlines for getting married, having kids and such, they stop traveling, they willingly sacrifice themselves, and explain it all like "it'll be too late if not now". They act their age. This pressure from impending death of old age is absolutely real and it shapes the society in extremely significant ways.

That said, I hope to live forever and refuse to "act my age".

> refuse to "act my age".

If you plan on having biological kids, that is not so easy. The risk of a pregnancy complications past 30yo rises a lot. Planing the life around a timeframe where you get both financial stability and the youthful body to carry a child is extremely important, specially for woman.

> If you plan on having biological kids

I do not, having a child is kind of a worst nightmare for me. And I'm male.

Oh and by the way. Many, many people consider kids a form of immortality. The "someone to leave in this world after I'm gone". The whole idea of "leaving something behind after yourself" is so crazy to me, and spending your best years (again, pay attention to how much aging influences everything including language) on raising a child to leave behind is just... So, yes, decisions whether to have kids at all are also not insubstantially driven by the impending death.

The idea of worrying about individual consciousness and memories is so crazy to me. What matters is preserving our genes and culture. I have children so I am effectively immortal.

So, exactly the opposite from me. Genes especially don't matter at all in an age when we have technologies like CRISPR to perform arbitrary edits on them. Different cultures come and go all the time throughout humanity's history. My own consciousness and personality though? As far as I'm concerned, to me, that's literally the most valuable thing in this universe.

CRISPR applications are very limited so far. It's not a magic technology, and it certainly isn't useful for extending average lifespans.

It isn't useful for life extension for sure, but it does make any individual genome much less sacred.

And then we have technologies to synthesize arbitrary sequences of DNA. They can't create anything as long as an entire chromosome worth of DNA, but there's no reason why they won't be able to sometime in the future.

Sample size of 1: my gramps is 105 and yes he follows many of the same routines you mention but he shows curiosity in the web work I do and asks better questions than my boomer parents and aunts.

So I think it may be more outlook and aptitude than purely age.

My gramps didn't get that far. Passed away when he was 92. However. He'd always bug me (not that I was actually bugged) with questions about how computers and the internet work.

The guy also built a radio receiver as a teenager purely from getting a grasp on the underlying physics from school physics books. According to him the hardest part was actually getting his hands on a suitable oscillator. Eventually he got into a little bit of trouble with that, as he was 'receiving radio broadcasts without a license'.

So, yeah, a legend and an inspiration. I miss him.

Make it a sample size of 2 then.

I discovered I could make a radio receiver by simply attaching a long wire to the phono input on the record player.

I discovered that the cable to a boom mic seemed to be picking up a radio station mid-production when I used to do AudioVisual stuff when I was in school.

Muted it so fast I almost broke the slider.

Easily explained through hormones

We can always improve our brains