> Your brain has slowed down by a factor of at least 2

This is only if you let it. The human brain has something called neuroplasticity. If you exercise your brain, regularly and with variety, you can slow/prevent a degradation of neuroplasticity. Some example activities include doing coding in new programming language, learning a new spoken language, doing sudoku and other puzzles, doing painting if you are right brain dominant (or logic puzzles if left brain dominant).

The OP's statement also is one of the key reasons touted for ageism within our industry, and ageism is a major problem. The benefit of vast experience drastically outweighs the minor (or no) degradation in neuroplasticity if they've kept their brain active.

Not a neuroscientist or anything, but I've always made it a point to keep learning. Initially I did it purely for economic reasons, since knowing a lot of random programming languages and frameworks and math can make you fairly valuable employee, which equates to larger paychecks and therefore a happier Tombert.

But as I kept learning, I saw that a certain set of people decided that they were just done learning new stuff the second they were done with college, and resisted any change that wasn't taught to them by their professors. This affected young and old people at roughly the same rate (at least from what I observed), but it's more apparent for the older people just because they've been half-assing the learning for longer (and because what they learned in college is probably more out of date).

This is also why I make it a point to attend conferences where I am the "dumbest guy in the room" like ICFP. These things are a bit intimidating (I do not like feeling dumb), but work as exceptional ways of highlighting gaps in my knowledge, and giving me a "path to google later".

I had a great boss (a shoutout to Greg and Terry at MCCI), once tell me 'Be the dumbest guy in the room, but also the hardest working guy in the room'. I've tried to live my life in part by that mantra. It doesn't mean be an idiot - it means surround yourself with people smarter in one way or another than you are and learn from them to fast-track your growth.

I don't disagree with that at all. Sometimes it's fun to feel smart, but generally speaking I'd rather feel stupid and have gaps in my knowledge ironed out by people who understand a subject better than I do.

To be clear, this isn't about IQ or number-of-wrinkles-in-brain or anything like that. If I were to talk to a carpenter about carpentry or Taco Bell worker about food preparation I would feel stupid since I know basically nothing about either of those subjects.

You might be using left/right brain to refer to people who typically do one thing to them do something “opposite”, ie artsy people do science (these aren’t opposite but people treat them as such).

Just be careful as there’s no such thing as left/right brained people. It’s an old idea.

And so do I. But for the time beingn, I must admit that there's definitely something wrong. By doing that master, I'm actually fighting a lot against that state of mind; a lot harder than those who don't at least :-)

The positive side is that I'm in the second year and things have improved. I suffer less from stress and many maths are now "restored" in my mind. So it gets better. But the price is high :-)

I guess that by the end of the thesis, which is less about emorizing an dmuch more about understanding, I'll feel much better and self confidence will be boosted...

I agree, and tend to see it more as a defense mechanism. The main thing young people tend to have more of is time.

There's also a use/abuse aspect. My older body creaks not necessarily because it's old, but because I have used (maybe abused - I started Jiu-Jitsu at 40) it physically for 40+ years. I suspect the mind is similar. If it's been abused through stress and/or drugs or let go out of shape by watching TV all day, then yes it's less sharp. But age isn't the driving factor in that case.

It has more or less been at least conceptually proven[0].But I think many people confuse a well-organized mind: which can function well[i.e take better shortcuts] at an old age (and thus give you the impression that the mind is still very fast) with neuroplasticity.This is not necessarily the case, and not necessarily even better, think something like overfitting.Then again without defining speed and time(which are hard to do not understanding the mechanisms of consciousness,if possible at all) the discussions are kind of up in the air.I wonder how much the emotions play a role here, because anecdotally being emotionally engaged can 'slow' time down for a person. [0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c...