Comments
By throwaway713 2026-02-0915:1118 reply > Fluid intelligence, which peaks near age 20 and declines materially across adulthood [...] while fluid intelligence may decline with age, other dimensions improve (e.g., crystallized intelligence, emotional intelligence)
As someone well past "peak" fluid intelligence at this point, I always hate reading research like this. "Crystallized intelligence" and "emotional intelligence" are the consolation prizes no one really wants.
I'd rather we instead perform research to identify how one might reverse the decline of fluid intelligence...
By kranner 2026-02-0915:24 > "Crystallized intelligence" and "emotional intelligence" are the consolation prizes no one really wants.
Strongly disagree.
Crystallized intelligence lets me see analogies and relations between disparate domains, abstract patterns that repeat everywhere, broadening my vision from a blinkered must-finish-this-task to a broader what-the-hell-is-this-world-I'm-in. I'm old enough to realise life is finite. Nothing satisfies like understanding.
Emotional intelligence lets me actually behave more like what I know a sane person should behave like. It lets me see I don't have to act on every passing whim and fancy, which are more like external noise than something of an essential expression from my inner self (which is a culturally-instigated fantasy). It lets me see how I'm connected to everyone else and everything in the world. Why I shouldn't stuff my own pockets at everyone else's expense. Why making other people unhappy ultimately makes myself unhappy. It wouldn't have been that hard to spot if I hadn't been caught up in fluid intelligence feats of strength.
These are the real rewards of middle age, not anyone's consolation prizes.
That said, I respect your right to disagree. But I feel this particular way.
> are the consolation prizes no one really wants.
If you can't figure out how to use accumulated knowledge and advanced people skills by your late 30s, then maybe you weren't so rational or adaptable to new situations in the first place. Things may not click for me like they did when I was 25, but I usually see right away when I have relevant knowledge to solve a problem or when I know someone who can help.
By drivebyhooting 2026-02-0919:591 reply That was harsh. So in addition to declining fluid intelligence there is no consolation prize in store for op or myself?
YMMV, but I was too horny to actually make use of my superior fluid intelligence in my 20s, so I’m content with the tradeoff here.
By SketchySeaBeast 2026-02-0916:162 reply I guess it depends on your definition of "fluid" intelligence, though I was bad with both of them in my 20s.
By komali2 2026-02-0916:54 Those of us that grew up stupid have the advantage here - our coping mechanisms never stop working! Everyone else has to relearn how to make it work.
By stego-tech 2026-02-0918:04 Both of you take your well-deserved upvotes and scram.
By Blackthorn 2026-02-1016:45 Damn, we've got people out here playing out Krapp's Last Tape in the comments section.
By AnimalMuppet 2026-02-0915:392 reply Don't knock crystallized intelligence.
In my 20s, I could learn a programming language in a weekend by reading a book. I could write code fast. I could figure out bugs. I felt so fast and so smart.
In my 40s and 50s, I looked back at that guy with some amusement. Sure, I didn't type as fast. But I spent a lot less time debugging because I wrote it right the first time, because I could just see what the right thing do to was. Net result was that I produced working code in less time. 48 might have been my peak year.
By FooBarWidget 2026-02-137:41 Are you sure you really learn slower in your 40s due to biological decline? I have the feeling my lower speed is mostly due to circumstances: too many life responsibilities and too little focus time.
By micromacrofoot 2026-02-0916:13 agreed, I may learn slower as I age... but I spend a lot less time making stupid mistakes as I do it
By keiferski 2026-02-0918:36 Crystallized intelligence sounds like “wisdom” to me, and emotional intelligence sounds like “charisma + tact + empathy.” Those are all things a person should definitely want, probably even more than raw intelligence itself.
By jampekka 2026-02-0917:02 Crystallized intelligence makes you good at solving problems, emotional intelligence makes you good at life, fluid intelligence makes you good at solving puzzles.
I'd gladly trade in some of the fluid intelligence I have left for more emotional intelligence.
By somenameforme 2026-02-0918:01 Or you could just join me and be in denial of it.
I'm only half joking. I think it's notable that chess players tend to peak in their mid to late thirties. But that's only looking at world class players who have reached something relatively close to their genetic potential for the understanding we have today. It's entirely possible for 'regular' humans to continue seeing major improvement well past 40. I know that some players have achieved the GM title in their 50s and 60s. These were already strong players beforehand, but maintaining the level of play to get those norms and ratings is a very significant task for anybody.
It's entirely possible that these observations are 100% consistent with the reported observations and analyses, but if so then those analyses don't really matter in the way that we intuitively think they'd matter.
By rawgabbit 2026-02-0915:55 The paper actually argues we peak in our 50s.
”Across both model weightings, humans appear to reach their peak in cognitive–personality functioning between the ages of 55 and 60.”
An individual can improve their fluid intelligence (“variance”) through a variety of means well into adulthood. Yes, more research is needed (and I’m sure a lot of research is being done), but I can guarantee you can already do this reliably right now.
By ivandenysov 2026-02-0922:011 reply Which approaches do you think work well?
By glerk 2026-02-101:12 I’m not a medical professional. I know nothing about your biopharmacological profile and I don’t know what I am talking about in general.
Micro-dose (sub-threshold) 5-MEO-DMT for a couple of days then solidify during re-integration with something that increases BDNF like intranasal Semax. Can mix and match substances, but I found principle that works well is similar to training a muscle (break and rebuild)
The most important is to stay grounded, always keep learning and engaging in mentally challenging tasks, don’t completely isolate socially, and watch hard biological limits like nutrition and sleep. Otherwise you might go psychotic.
By ajuc 2026-02-0918:20 > "Crystallized intelligence" and "emotional intelligence" are the consolation prizes no one really wants.
Speak for yourself. I'd happily retroactively trade a dozen IQ points back in my 20s for emotional intelligence. I'd be much happier.
By hbosch 2026-02-0916:27 "Fluid intelligence" is not very valuable when it comes to long-term decision making.
What they call "fluid intelligence" is just intelligence and the rest are skills/aptitudes. "Crystallized intelligence" is more plainly: efficacy/productivity and it's common knowledge that people are most productive during the middle of their lives. When they have the best balance of knowledge accumulated and raw intelligence.
In humans, intelligence manifests as memory, spatial and verbal reasoning, pattern recognition, etc. What is so interesting about IQ and g (the general factor) is that all of these abilities trend together. A score in one area is a good prediction of the score in another area. There is no reason why that must be the case a priori, and LLMs are a great example of an intelligent system which is much better at recalling information than it is at reasoning.
Human aging doesn't seem to affect all of these abilities uniformly. e.g. Everyone seems to complain about memory the most (and that matches my experience), but I've been pleasantly surprised how well neuroplasticity and pattern recognition have held.
LLMs in my opinion is pattern recognition of text sequences at an almost infinite scale. My understanding is that "world models" is an attempt to replace the text sequences with more realistic approximations of the world. But they still plan to use pattern recognition.
In the meantime, humans would still need to do the reasoning.
By nextaccountic 2026-02-102:55 We do pattern recognition at an unconscious level all the time. When we perform a task using "system 2" of our mind we are rational and conscious, but when we perform a task using system 1 we do it automatically, intuitively and witu no effort. System 1 often relies on unconscious patterns matching
For example, a chess grandmaster can instinctively tell a good move when seeing a board during a real game. But if they see a random chess board that was not part of a real game, they regress to almost novice level at this task, because there are no patterns to recognize
(patterns such as tactics like pins and skews, or common mating patterns like backrank mate, or common pawn structures and corresponding pawn breaks, things like that - all those patterns can get recognized unconsciously)
By tomrod 2026-02-0917:41 Then perhaps the peak identification is wrong -- surely they haven't tested solid comparison groups for such claims, like individuals that didn't receive education later in life.
By AnotherGoodName 2026-02-0915:59 Really? What did you achieve in those times of high fluid low emotional intelligence?
I played a whole lot of video games myself. It’s nice to look back at would i could have achieved with my current perspective but that’s kind of the point of this.
By dyauspitr 2026-02-0923:07 Emotional intelligence is pretty useless (not really, especially since it’s important for career progression) but crystallized intelligence seems pretty solid.
By dsign 2026-02-0918:17 > As someone well past "peak" fluid intelligence at this point, I always hate reading research like this. "Crystallized intelligence" and "emotional intelligence" are the consolation prizes no one really wants.
At the end, I agree with you, but for a different reason. My fluid intelligence is still doing well, but my newly acquired “crystallized” and “emotional” intelligence are just good to let me understand why people want to write existential horror stories. Hell, I now realize that some of the dark stuff I didn’t want to touch with a long pole three years ago are in fact escapism to a rosier parallel universe. I liked myself better when I was sixteen years old and I couldn’t understand that boy one year older than me who said he despised our prisons of flesh. May you be doing well Y.P., and if you happen to stumble upon this paragraph, know it took me 25 years to see what you saw so clearly.
By dlisboa 2026-02-0916:23 Emotional intelligence is what allows you to actually raise kids. Having it at midlife is a benefit, not a downside.
By plastic-enjoyer 2026-02-0923:07 Do you believe anything would be different for you if your fluid intelligence would have not declined?
By UK-Al05 2026-02-0916:54 Isn't fluid intelligence learning? and crystallized intelligence stuff you already know?
> Yet, human achievement in domains such as career success tends to peak much later, typically between the ages of 55 and 60. This discrepancy may reflect the fact that, while fluid intelligence may decline with age, other dimensions improve (e.g., crystallized intelligence, emotional intelligence).
Isn't it about accumulated human capital (aka social networks) and experience more than anything else?
By arctic-true 2026-02-0918:132 reply Yes, and that’s also why “career success” here really only means “modern era white collar career success”. In other times and other fields it can look very different.
By seizethecheese 2026-02-0919:352 reply This definitely is not true, outside of physical domains.
I chose a random domain (philosophers writing their seminal work) and found that most wrote them in their 40s. Kant wrote the critique of pure reason at 57 years old!
By fatherwavelet 2026-02-1012:35 Hobbes was 63 when he wrote Leviathan.
This is a pointless discussion though without talking about testosterone and dopamine levels. Doesn't really matter what your IQ is at 60, if your testosterone and dopamine system is that of the average old man you are not going to have the desire to write Leviathan or Critique of Pure Reason.
By umeshunni 2026-02-0918:54 Yes - I suspect this doesn't apply to blue collar or fields like art and sports.
By hbosch 2026-02-0916:27 Experience hardens crystallized intelligence.
Reading the abstract it would seem a good reason for positions in government like the President to be restricted to ages 40-65.
By skeeter2020 2026-02-0916:441 reply that's before you even look at medically-related and late age cognitive decline, but unfortunately there are massive socio-economic effects that work against this
More than socio-economic, the chief factor that advances US political candidates is, simply, fame. These days fame is achieved by somehow becoming an outlier: loud extremism, incessant self promotion, and spending truly insane amounts of money. Intelligence of any kind is irrelevant.
By add-sub-mul-div 2026-02-102:45 Yeah. The right hasn't been able to repeat Trump, other candidates following his playbook have usually failed. And I think it's because they don't have his three-plus decades of lowest common denominator fame and enough money to buy himself out of repeated business failure and corruption. It's a perfect storm.
By tonyedgecombe 2026-02-0918:421 reply Voting as well.
By AndroTux 2026-02-0919:21 Hell naw
