I am 61 and due to a nature of my job (creating products for clients and my own company) do nothing but constantly learn and invent things. I see no signs of slowing down and my clients seem to be happy with my solutions.

I am however lazy for example to learn some things that are valued by many people but what I consider useless. But I was like that as long as I can remember myself.

I am much the same, I can't muster the energy to learn things I think to be useless. Life is too short to learn/do useless things! I think you prioritise healthily :)

Aren't some presidents around 80 sometimes :-)

My anecdotal evidence is the opposite of this. At 53 I'm constantly learning new technologies and trying to get my younger colleagues to adopt them, but they refuse.

I assume (without proof) that this is because of their limited experience. They don't realize yet that there are many different solutions to any problem. They believe the first solution that comes to you is the one to stubbornly adhere to, because they are young and over-confident in their new abilities.

You have fundamental skills and you have room to play around with them. As in, you have been walking tight ropes (for the sake of example) for decades and its boring, so you try some jumps and runs on it. For them, barely staying on is an issue, so any additional variables is too much cognitive load.

An array wasn't always just "some ordered collection with fixed sequential memory". It was a very specific C# implementation written out as var fooArr = new barType[]. It was confusing that in Python its fooArr = []. "Why is it different? What does it all mean? The syntax is hard to remember. What if this adds errors? I just want my code to work."

You're saying actually the opposite of confidence (hesitancy) is something that might look like complacency to one person but it's actually just being conservative, making sure you stay on that rope. Good point. Thanks!

Refusal to learn doesnt suggest inability so to do. Once you have seen dozens of fads come and go you may well decide to focus on core skills rather than learn something that you know will be useless in a couple years. With age comes perspecive. With perspective comes the ability to think in longer terms. Choosing to ignore something doesnt mean you wouldnt be able to master it if you wanted to.

Well, these computers and email and messaging apps and web browsers -- they use the same ones for years, without really ever "getting it".

It's not as if they're saving time, when they need to knock on my apartment door, and ask what's happened with their computer (the browser window was 1cm to the right of the edge of the screen so some buttons seemed to be"gone").

it's instead that ... When using the apps, they don't automatically effortlessly learn how these apps work. Whist kids do

(I have in mind my 60-70-80 years old parents and neighbors)

My wife has ended up as the de facto tech trainer for a group of senior individuals she's met through a hobby of hers. While most of them are pretty technically illiterate, it's interesting nevertheless to see the differences. They'll all come to her with a goal they want to achieve on their computer, which she'll help walk them through. Some of them just want her to do it for them. Others want to be walked through exactly what they need, over and over, until they can do exactly this one task themselves (but any deviation later, due to a difference in need, software update, etc, will have them reaching back out to my wife). And a few, a very few, will ask questions along the way, seeking to abstract out the broader patterns and affordances so that they can figure out a whole swathe of similar problems on their own.

I assume there may still be others who never ask my wife (or anyone) for help, who learn on their own, but it's interesting to see the differences for those who do seek out help. I hope I'm in one of the latter group(s) when I get into my 60s+.

That's prioritization of cognitive load, everyone does it young as old. I've always subconciously made fun of people who can not do what my group can do, but now at +40 I have for many years seen that as a group bonding mechanisim you just have to keep in check. My point is what you think is important is not obvious for other people. What is basic is not simple to teach.

Figuring out a new UI is kind of a puzzle, but not a very good one. Figuring out a bill or form that has been sent to you -- not sure about 40+ (they should really do their own bills, that is weird for a 40-something year old), but when I think of my grandmother who is more like 80, this seems like a pretty reasonable thing to ask your kids about, given the absurd number of scams that target older folks.

I am 100% willing to believe that continuing to learn new things is good for brain health. But it seems to me that these examples are more like outsourcing the handling of annoyances, rather than avoiding the kind of new learning that would otherwise keep their brain healthy.

People seem to be prone to settling on a set of beliefs because they give them predefined answers and relieves them of some cognitive load.

Yes, it seems as if to some people, thinking, is really unpleasant

Interesting how much pushback you got on this. My experience is similar, I know many people who refuse to put effort learning the slightest new things, usually with excuses that they "already think too much" or are "prioritizing" or "outsourcing". But whatever those other priorities are, they don't look like learning to me. It's like exercise, if you haven't run in a few years then it's incredibly exhausting, no matter what your age is. I think most people are too quick to blame on age, what is often just lack of exercise.

(Although, note that physically pushing too hard is just as dangerous as not enough, the shorter lifespan in the past was partly due to an over-rigorous use of the body. I wonder if there's a mental equivalent, although I haven't seen any real evidence of it.)