Einstein once said "A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the
age of thirty will never do so."
Einstein published four groundbreaking papers in 1905 when he was 26 and we describe him
as a genius - someone with exceptional intellectual ability.
So is there a point where we hit our intellectual peak? When we will be the smartest we’ll
ever be in our lives?
Defining human intelligence is complex - I’ve mentioned previously that it includes your
capacity for reasoning, planning, problem-solving, abstract thought, self-awareness, communication,
creativity and learning. To name a few.
One theory is that intelligence can be broken down into two types: crystallized and fluid
intelligence.
Fluid intelligence is the capacity to think logically and solve problems, independent
of acquired knowledge. Like how quickly you can solve this puzzle. Crystallized intelligence
is the ability to use the knowledge you’ve built up from what you’ve learnt. Like knowing
the elements of the periodic table or names of the spells in Harry Potter.
Placing a peak age on our cognitive skills is tricky, and depends on how we measure intelligence.
If we can measure it accurately at all.
Tests of fluid intelligence show it peaks in young adulthood and slowly, gradually declines.
Crystallized intelligence remains much more stable and has been shown to decline as late
as our 70s. Is there a magical point where they meet?
In a 35-year-long study tests of general mental abilities showed that on average, your abilities
increase until your late 30s or early 40s. Mental abilities are stable until your mid
50s or early 60s. From your late 60s, thing start to decline.
The proportion of physicists who did their prize-winning work by age 30 peaked in 1923
at 31%. By the year 2000, this dropped to 0%. And prize winning work by age 40 occured
in only 19% of cases by the year 2000.
There’s no clear or easy way to tell when we’re at our brightest. And there are lots
of different opinions. So I asked you, to see if we could all piece together our thoughts.
In fields like math and physics, people tend to be the most creative and make the largest
impacts when they're very young, like early twenties. But I'm not sure that having revolutionary,
creative ideas is necessarily the same thing as being the smartest.
Like at your physical peak is also kind of when your brain is at it's peak.
I feel like you're the smartest you'll ever be, as judged by IQ tests, around the age
of 25.
Let's throw a number out there, I'll say 65. There we go. It's like old enough to remember
all the things that I've learned over the course of my life but just on the edge of
when I'll probably start forgetting them.
Well I mean smartness is a complicated thing, but a lot of it has to do with experience,
right? And if you're constantly living a life where you're having new experiences, which
I think by definition you are people always have to be, then you are always smarter in
the current moment than you previously were.
I think I know a lot more now, and not just facts, but how things work, how the world
works.
Because you can be very, very smart at any age.
And MindSponge wrote that maybe peak intelligence is dependent on the person
Williem van de Beek wrote that while famous scientists published their biggest discoveries
in their 20s, he feels smarter now in his 30s. Jack Freeman and Erik wrote that our
peak would be around 30, Just Having Fun wrote that the peak is in the late 40s, where people
have a wealth of experience and are still in good health.
And yadda, yadda yadda.
If you haven’t already, let me know your thoughts in the comments and subscribe to
BrainCraft, for a new brainy video every week.