Assholishness and wisdom seem to be orthogonal to me. Most of us could probably name a dozen famous people off the tops of our heads who were both wise and unpleasant (most famously, Isaac Newton... arguably in the running for the smartest person who ever lived, but kind of a dick in his interpersonal relationships).

Old people have survived, which represents a first cut against doing foolish things, ranging from driving too fast to smoking to getting in bar fights. Barring cognitive decline, it makes perfect sense that older people should be, on average, more wise than younger ones. Plus some people do actually manage to learn a few things over the course of their lives. :-)

There's a great short story called "The Last Answer," by Isaac Asimov.[1] In it, a scientist dies and is preserved by a "god" to think for eternity. He is quickly horrified by this and declares that he won't do it.

Murray said, “Consider, then, that my thoughts may be useless to you. If I come up with nothing useful, will it not be worth your while to – disassemble me and take no further trouble with me?”

“As a reward? You want Nirvana as the prize of failure and you intend to assure me failure? There is no bargain there. You will not fail. With all eternity before you, you cannot avoid having at least one interesting thought, however you try against it.”

You might be an asshole. You might be a fool who has wrecked his life and screwed everything up. However, you've lived for many decades. I'm sure that you have something interesting, valuable, or insightful to share. It would be extremely difficult to imagine a life where that's not the case.

[1]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_AxwTK5W6b4aG9ZUVRVcnJMN2M...

Thank you for the link to that, it was a fantastic little story - really got my brain started today!