Aging as a concept is a real thing. Every human ages. Thats not the issue. The issues are that your "age assigned" is only a measure of how many times you have been around the sun and doesn't tell me anything about how you are aging. Relative terms such as "old" and "young" are completely constructed based on society and vary between cultures.

I understand that these constructions are based on correlation, but there are better variables to corelate with agine and as technology/scientific understanding of aging gets better, I am sure we will do away with "solar age", replace it with more personalized systems, and look back on the way we previously viewed age as barbaric.

The biggest problem is that the government and companies restrict what you can do with your life based on the number of times you have been around the sun. 14 times around the sun means you can give labour consent. 16 times around the sun means you can give sexual consent and operate a vehicle. 18 times around the sun means you are an adult. 21 times around means you can handle alcohol and 25 times around the sun means you are responsible enough to rent a car. 67 times around the sun means you have worked so much that you can now rest for the remainder of your life.

Why not base these rules and restrictions on the target characteristic and not the number of times you have been around the sun? What if a 23 year old is responsible enough to drive? What if a 22 year old isn't ready for alcohol? What if an 16 year old hasn't finished puberty?

Physical age- Theres puberty/menopause, and genetic aging and they happen at different age ranges for different individuals. With new tools like "teloyears", we may be able to base aging on the individual level pretty soon. We've always been able to tell when someone is through puberty and when they hit menopause but now we can get specific numbers on how people's DNA age differently based on telomere length.


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZXDIqxQsvjs/UrnBg6peSDI/AAAAAAAABNY/Sb4cBivIVVA/s1600/telomere+test.jpg
This says im 44 but have aged as much as the typical person with 42 laps around the sun. am i 44 or 42?

I envision a future where someone can challenge being "too old" or "too young" for a job with some sort of "physical exam"



Cognitive age- this is based on correlations like prefrontal cortex development and age

Quote :

"The rational part of a teen’s brain isn’t fully developed and won’t be until age 25 or so. In fact, recent research has found that adult and teen brains work differently. Adults think with the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s rational part. This is the part of the brain that responds to situations with good judgment and an awareness of long-term consequences. Teens process information with the amygdala. This is the emotional part."

Adolescence is real and adulthood is real but the idea that this transition happens at the age of 18, is completely fabricated. Scientifically speaking, a person is a cognitive teenager until the age of 25 so the rental car rule is the only one that actually follows the correlation.

Quote :

" investigators consider the age span 10–24 years as adolescence, which can be further divided into substages specific to physical, cognitive, and social–emotional development."

With all that said, there are always outliers and I can't find how strong these correlations are statistically, and would love to see a p value since there are certainly millions of outliers. I don't see a great leap of improvement in emotional stability between high school and college students. At the end of the day, there are several other environmental and heriditary factors so it comes down to the individual.

This restricts humans at every level. In 20 years, I see schools as a place where students are grouped based on ability instead of age. For example, makes zero sense to have a room full of kids in a math class because they are all 11 years old when a third can't do fractions, and another third are bored of algebra.

Some people can finish school and have an undergrad degree by the age of 18 instead of wasting time with people who have been around the sun the same amount of laps.


Theres gotta be a better way to determine someone's driving risk

What about people 34-49 who are known to have caused crashes?
What about people over 21 who are known to be irresponsible with alcohol?
What about people over the age of 25 who are known to be emotionally unstable?

Do we continue to give these people their full rights just because of their laps around the sun? Even if its a risk to the rest of society? Shouldn't a proven violent drunk lose their drinking license?

[Edited on November 18, 2017 at 3:24 PM. Reason : k]

11/18/2017 3:11:49 PM

Why ya gotta be 35 to be president? I've met 12 year olds more mature than the one we got now.

11/18/2017 4:38:29 PM

Sorry dude, none of us are going to agree that it's okay to fuck young teenagers as an adult

11/18/2017 7:54:24 PM

^But that is what NC law explicitly allows so I'm not sure what the purpose of your post is

if you read my post, it is suggesting that we come up with a better way to make the aged-based laws, not that we get rid of them

If you have a problem with the law, you should speak out against it.

11/18/2017 8:03:35 PM

You're the only one here into that kind of thing, sorry dude

11/18/2017 8:06:04 PM

You can disagree but don't try to speak for everyone else.

I know from other threads that there are many more people on this site who want the laws updated. Most people I have met in real life want the laws updated as well. For example, I've never met anyone who thinks the drinking age should be 21.

[Edited on November 18, 2017 at 8:35 PM. Reason : dtownral and treetwista are off-topic/trolling and will be ignored /thread derailed]

11/18/2017 8:14:11 PM

Why do you think high school girls would even be into you?

11/18/2017 8:18:22 PM

If the drinking age was lowered, maybe they would

11/18/2017 8:29:26 PM

Sounds like a logistical nightmare.

And gross dude.

11/19/2017 11:14:34 AM

Why do you put so much effort into this?

Aren't you a coach or teacher or something?

11/19/2017 2:08:26 PM

I envision future IDs being more than a driver's license and listing fitness based on publicly provided physical. mental, emotional and cognitive health screening will all be better in the future.
-fit to drive
-fit to drink
-fit to consent
-fit to carry

I realize we live in an "anti-science" society and that most people will reject anything other than the status quo as "stupid" without even thinking about it but its really just because they are refusing to use imagination or critical thought. I'd estimate that 80% of the US population has a fixed mindset and I think its why we are politically stagnant when it comes to problems that are easily solved in other places.

Of the 20% remaining, you probably have 10% who actively undermine the possibility of discussion because they are currently benefiting by exploiting holes in the broken system(ie gun companies vs gun control). These people don't want that 80% to wake up and learn about what is actually happening (ie energy companies vs climate change)

Quote :

"Why do you put so much effort into this? Aren't you a coach or teacher or something?"

I like hypotheticals, thought experiments, and discussions based on critical thought and reasoning in general. Its part of why I'm a teacher but its also why I do this for fun. I post these sorts of threads on the off chance that some other intellectual type will see it, and respond thoughtfully and critically. (thats how messageboards work, if its not for you, you don't have to post)

Without people like me imagining the implementation of technology in the future, the world would stay the same. If you think back to the way things were done 200,500, or 1000 years ago, you'd be appalled, but if you are also appalled by the concept of change, then its really just a lack of imagination and critical thought on your part.

Its not even about whether or not the ideas or dumb or not either. It very well could be dumb but without open-minded critique explaining why dumb ideas are dumb, the ideas don't improve and the discussion stagnates.

[Edited on November 19, 2017 at 3:31 PM. Reason : some people aren't adult enough to deal with things they don't like on the internet]

11/19/2017 3:28:12 PM

Society needs to figure out what the fuck makes an adult an adult. Once they solve that they can fix the rest of it. I don't see how you can be drafted to serve in the military but not purchase alcohol. I don't see how you can be charged as an adult with 1st degree murder when you're 15 but at the same time can be charged with a sex crime for sexting your boyfriend or girlfriend or be regarded as someone who can't make an adult decision regarding sex. I also don't understand why you can charge someone with a sex crime and force them to register as a sex offender for streaking at a football game or for urinating on a building that won't let you in to use the bathroom because you aren't a patron.

These laws were intended to prevent children from being preyed upon by predators. There are a lot of nonsense spin-offs that completely undermine that goal.

11/19/2017 3:28:31 PM

While I agree with your overall idea, which can simply be paraphrased as "age is an overly simple criteria that should not be confused with maturity, intelligence, or wisdom", I'm not sure your application works well.

Quote :

"What about people 34-49 who are known to have caused crashes? What about people over 21 who are known to be irresponsible with alcohol? What about people over the age of 25 who are known to be emotionally unstable?"

There are structures in place that punish these actions. So...

Quote :

"Do we continue to give these people their full rights just because of their laps around the sun?"

No, we don't. I recognize your argument that people who show frequent abusive behaviors with alcohol should maybe lose their access, however, that's part of the prison and the parole process for people that have real legal issues involving alcohol that have gone that far.

The more car crashes or traffic violations you're responsible for the more the state restricts your license, AND the more it costs to insure your vehicles.

Quote :

"I envision future IDs being more than a driver's license and listing fitness based on publicly provided physical. mental, emotional and cognitive health screening will all be better in the future. -fit to drive -fit to drink -fit to consent -fit to carry"

Be very careful with these things, because they can quickly turn into other licenses such as "fit to vote", or "fit to obtain a mortgage" which can greatly disenfranchise folks who can't pass your screening.

11/19/2017 5:57:35 PM

Please leave this alone. This all started in chit chat bc Earl wanted to defend Roy Moore-style relationships with 14 year olds.

11/19/2017 6:47:27 PM

^Thats not true and if it is indeed what you took, then you probably haven't been around the sun enough to discuss this topic. Decriminalization is not necessarily condoning. Romeo and juliet laws are a common sense example. I don't think people should be locked up for drugs either. That doesn't mean I want people to do heroin.

Quote :

"Society needs to figure out what the fuck makes an adult an adult."

Exactly but these discussions have to happen for society to figure out what it wants and Americans in general are TERRIFIED of discussing complex issues like race or sex and thats why they stay mostly untouched.

Quote :

"Be very careful with these things, because they can quickly turn into other licenses such as "fit to vote", or "fit to obtain a mortgage" which can greatly disenfranchise folks who can't pass your screening."

I get the slippery slope argument but in the us we already disenfranchise felons from voting or people with bad credit from getting a mortgage. Why can't we treat these other things the way we treat cars?

Quote :

"There are structures in place that punish these actions. So..."

Theres nothing in place to keep an alcoholic from buying alcohol. Sure, they can be institutionalized for it, but as soon as they are out, the cashier goes back to checking their birth date on their id and says "yes, this person has done enough laps around the sun to handle alcohol." Seems completely illogical to me.

11/20/2017 2:35:37 AM

So you don't want to diddle kids you just want to be allowed to diddle kids

11/20/2017 7:49:55 AM

It's pretty clear that a sliding scale for "legal age" would just be abused by people that can afford high powered lawyers. Our legal system already defers too much to white-collar criminals, why would you want to let them get away with pedophilia too?

11/20/2017 8:18:47 AM

The trolls (dtownral and pinkandblack) are only here to derail the discussion. Its been successful because I'm not going to just let them make stuff up about me but its off topic and i guess thats how good trolling works. Not only do they not want to be part of the discussion, they don't want the discussion to be had by anyone.

Quote :

"It's pretty clear that a sliding scale for "legal age" would just be abused by people that can afford high powered lawyers. Our legal system already defers too much to white-collar criminals, why would you want to let them get away with paedophilia too?"

This thread is not about a sliding scale for age or sex and theres so many more important age-related issues but this is about a more precise way of measuring age. Any metric that would be used would be akin to cutting a tree open and counting its rings. If you look at something like telomere length, or a government medical examination, lawyers can't debate age and the only theoretical future loophole for the rich would be to literally reverse the aging process to become young again. Every rich kid already has an ID that says they are 22 so the advantages for the rich occur regardless of the system and is a separate issue.

Having a more precise measure of age would actually decrease legal paedophilia because the law would never accidentally grant children the legal ability to give consent. Some countries have an exclusive age of consent set high to exclude all children and some countries have an inclusive age of consent set low to include all adults. Societies in Europe, for example, don't have low ages of consent because they approve of pedophilia, they just don't have a reasonable way to outlaw all of it. A "real age" system
would allow laws to make all cases of paedophilia illegal.

11/20/2017 9:50:39 AM

age is fine

11/20/2017 10:04:57 AM

[Edited on November 20, 2017 at 10:13 AM. Reason : ddd]

11/20/2017 10:13:07 AM

You've taken your argument about age and drawn the conclusion that "there should be multiple endorsements [earned through testing] on someone's ID so we can verify they qualify to do important or dangerous things."

I just don't think that's a solid conclusion.

[Edited on November 20, 2017 at 5:37 PM. Reason : and]

11/20/2017 5:36:28 PM

I modestly propose we set up a government agent to give each 13 year old a "test fuck" to see if they are ready for sexual activity.

11/20/2017 6:26:39 PM

It’s about nuance guys. You wouldn’t understand.

11/20/2017 9:23:45 PM

Quote :

"I just don't think that's a solid conclusion."

Its not a conclusion. Its more of a hypothetical answer to the question "What could the implementation of a more precise measurement of age look like?" I don't necessarily think its a "good" way to implement something like this and would be open to hearing other ideas.

My conclusion was that we should use a better (more direct) method for measuring age and age-related rights/privileges/laws/rules/etc.

Its NOT that we should throw out age but that we should measure the root causes of age-issues. "Five whys technique" is a great way to find the root causes of human problems.

11/20/2017 10:41:56 PM

Yall niggas postin in an Earl thread

11/21/2017 8:00:54 AM

Quote :

"more precise measurement of age"

I don't think that's what you mean...

A more precise measurement of age would mean we measure it in seconds rather than years in order to remove statistical variability (EG: a person says their 30, when they really don't turn 30 for another 3 days, or they turned 30 three days ago... but that's easier than saying "I'm 30 years and 3 days"). A more precise age measurement of age doesn't do anything besides measure trips around the sun more precisely. Would you like folks who drive a lot to have to account for relativity in their age? Those would be more precise than our current system.

Quote :

"that we should use a better (more direct) method for measuring age and age-related rights/privileges/laws/rules/etc."

again, I don't think that's what you mean. How could we measure age more directly? in the US we're raised knowing what our birthday is, and measure our age from that date, typically in years. We're not converting our birthday into some star-date, giving some folks a meaningful advantage over others in the measurement of how long it's been since they've been born. Would you rather we measure age in half-lives of some Uranium isotope instead of years? Maybe that would be a more direct way to measure age, but I'm not sure it'd be better.

What I think you mean is that we should use factors OTHER THAN PHYSICAL AGE (defined as time elapsed since birth) to determine when people are ready for age-related rights/privileges/laws/etc...
That's probably a good idea in theory, but it gets messy in execution... like people have said here.

11/22/2017 4:24:13 PM

lets make everything and anything subjective and relative. why have any objective standards at all. lets all just base everything on how we feel about it.

11/22/2017 4:37:52 PM

^^We started off measuring age with birthday because the calendar was all we had. We didn't have brain scans, genetics, or even a basic understanding of human development. We have all of those things now. They are objective and can be used to measure the specific things we are targetting.

Aging is an actual thing and isn't just "time elapsed". Time plays a role in aging and there is strong correlaition (which is where the confusion comes from) but there are many other factors that cause people to age at different rates (speed up and slow down aging). One example is how A typical 50 year old in Nigeria may be considered "old" while in Japan a 50 year old is not really "old" even though they have both been alive for the same time . The life expectancy in Nigeria is 53 and the life expectancy in Japan is 84.

People age with time but the rate varies for each individual.

Again, I'll repost this telomere age example

Quote :

"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZXDIqxQsvjs/UrnBg6peSDI/AAAAAAAABNY/Sb4cBivIVVA/s1600/telomere+test.jpg This says im 44 but have aged as much as the typical person with 42 laps around the sun. am i 44 or 42?"

This is just one scientific metric for aging.

Quote :

"What I think you mean is that we should use factors OTHER THAN PHYSICAL AGE (defined as time elapsed since birth) to determine when people are ready for age-related rights/privileges/laws/etc... "

I mean that time elapsed since birth is NOT physical aging because some people age faster and some age slower.

Quote :

"That's probably a good idea in theory, but it gets messy in execution... like people have said here."

The premise was that some time in the future, when we have a better understanding of how aging happens, there will be better technology for measuring age directly, and that technology will proliferate and become widely available.

The telomere example is the only current one I completely understand. Telomere length is believed to be a major part of why we age and if someone's telomeres are longer, they haven't aged as much and if they are shorter they have aged more. This can be measured by a quick DNA test.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLDJntLXN5k


Lets say you have a rule like drinking at the age of 21 and you justify that rule by saying 21 year olds typically have the prefrontal cortex/cognitive development required to deal with the effects.

Hypothetically, if someone has the brain scan of a "typical 21 year old", they should be able to do the things that require that level of cognitive development. Also, if they have gone around the sun 22 years, but still only have the brain development of a 19 year old, then you wouldn't allow them.

Quote :

"The rational part of a teen’s brain isn’t fully developed and won’t be until age 25 or so. In fact, recent research has found that adult and teen brains work differently. Adults think with the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s rational part. This is the part of the brain that responds to situations with good judgment and an awareness of long-term consequences. Teens process information with the amygdala. This is the emotional part."

https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=1&ContentID=3051
So who is more rational? A 21 year old that uses their amygdala or a 17 year old that uses their prefrontal cortex?



[Edited on November 22, 2017 at 5:42 PM. Reason : Are you going to agree with recent science or a time-related correlation that is thousands of years ]

[Edited on November 22, 2017 at 5:43 PM. Reason : 1]

11/22/2017 5:24:08 PM

It doesnt matter if we drive on the left or right side of the road, what matters is that everyone does it.

It dont matter what the metric is, in theory, what matters is everyone adheres to the standard

11/22/2017 6:58:20 PM

Y'all dumb as fuck

11/22/2017 7:00:37 PM

OK.. you've said

Quote :

"Aging is an actual thing"

like that was profound... twice. And now you've posted an advertisement as a reputable source for your info.

So... I guess you win

11/22/2017 9:18:45 PM

Well you made it clear that you didn't understand the concept of biological age not being the same as "time elapsed since birth".

That advertisement was designed to introduce people to the concept in a simple way so I thought it might make the initial concept (that age is something that can hypothetically be measured precisely) more accessible. It doesn't mean I think that is necessarily part of the solution, but it should at least, be an example of the type of thing I imagine.

but yes....even though it doesn't matter in a hypothetical discussion, it is a VERY reputable source
https://www.teloyears.com/home/about-us.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC115301/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2647324/

This is just a hypothetical discussion about the future and not something someone can "win" or lose. No matter what we say in this thread, people will continue to age at different rates. You haven't really answered any of my hypothetical questions.

11/22/2017 9:48:56 PM

isnt it just easier for everyone....ie society....to base age on the number of trips around the sun, ya know, cause its kinda like an average of general maturity rates

as opposed to spending the time and money to do a detailed individual scientific, biological analysis of everyone's "true" age.

[Edited on November 22, 2017 at 10:11 PM. Reason : .]

11/22/2017 10:07:16 PM

today it is...

but I imagine a future of universal preventative healthcare which would make all this type of data readily available anyway. I don't know how far into the future that would be

11/22/2017 10:16:47 PM

Everybody ITT is getting Earl'd hard AF...except Earl ofc.

11/23/2017 12:19:19 AM

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10842426
http://www.jeffreyarnett.com/articles/ARNETT_Emerging_Adulthood_theory.pdf

Good read

11/26/2017 5:39:15 PM