Aging: Learning, Forgetting, Mismatching

 Had to wait at the self-service checkout for the clerk to help another old man, who complained that he had so many cards--I guess he hadn't used the right number for his Safeway loyaltt account.  This ties in with something from the weekend. I can imagine a graphic--two dimensional, though it ought to many dimensions.  Stage one--birth: the baby icon is at one edge of a colored circle, the circle representing all the things about the world which the baby can learn and the color representing the status of the information--current, obsolete, new.  At stage one the whole circle is the same color, since with respect to the baby all the information is currrent.

Stage two--the baby icon has grown, representing the information which has been learned.  Meanwhile the circle has increased in size, with the increase representing new information while a little of the circle has changed color as information becomes obsolete.

Successive stages see a continuation of  these developments:  as time passes the amount of information which can be learned increases, the amount of information the person has learned increases, but as time goes by some of the learned information becomes obsolete.

Fast forward to my 80's: 

• my interest in learning new information and my ability to do so has declined, so the modern world is getting away from me (too many cards)
• the information I've learned is increasingly obsolete.  I know so many things which are of no use now. 
• bottomline--there's mismatch between me and the world, which is increasing.

What Was I Thinking?

 Damned if I know.  As I age, my short term memory is going. It could be upsetting--you have something in your mind, and a couple seconds later it's gone. So far it's not happened often enough to be really upsetting, so I'm using my time-tested super-power of denial to carry on. 

"Aging Software"?--Tufekci Is Wrong?

NYTimes columnist Tufekci had a piece  discussing Southwest Airlines problems in managing their airplanes and personnel.  I just looked it up online on Thursday evening, finding to my surprise the Times has a featire in their comment system called NYTimes replies where she responded to some of the comment.

She puts the blame on "aging software" used to schedule pilots and crew.  I'm not sure why I immediately objected to the term, but here's my thoughts:

"Aging", which I am, means to me a deterioration of abilities, your body goes, your mind goes, you go. But software, once written (and debugged) remains the same, essentially forever. It's a set of ideas, of data, of information, which may be lost or destroyed, but will always do what it was capable of doing at its origin. 

Tufekci also uses the metaphor of building a structure, but using shortcuts, skimping on the foundation, etc.  Saving money now but setting the stage for problems later.  That's also wrong.   She mentions "technical debt", which is an interesting concept, but seems to me to conflate problems. 

I'd suggest the Southwest problem is a problem of "aging", but not in the sense I outlined above--deterioriation.  Consider the mature individual, the completed building, the proven software--each fits its environment, fulfills its function. There's a match of thing and context. Obviously the match isn't perfect; it may be flawed, corners were cut on the building or the software, the individual ends in the wrong occupation, with the wrong spouse, etc.)  As time passes, the building and the individual will deteriorate, they'll require maintenance to stay functional. But not the software, except as bugs appear. 

So the term "aging" has two sides: change for the worse in the entity discussed and change in the environment in which the entity operates, impairing the match between entity and environment.

For Southwest I suspect their software dates to the airline's early days, when it was doing point-to-point flights, basically within California.  It's expanded vastly over the years, getting lots of plaudits from customers.  The consensus seems to be they failed to spend enough on upgrading their software.  News media doesn't die into details, so we don't know whether the software ran into capacity limits, whether the system was never changed to use new technology (like generating text messages to personnel), whether the fundamental data model was flawed in light of the new environment and the impact of very bad weather, or whether all of the these factors were at work.

At the end there's a mismatch of capacity and environment. For humans the capacity declines and the environment changes. For software the capacity stays the same while the environment changes. 

The Impatience of Youth (and Ideologues?)

 Within an hour I read Frank Bruni's newsleterr (subscribe here) commenting on criticism of scientists re: covid:

What an inevitability. Science doesn’t usually figure everything out all at once; it’s a steadily growing body of knowledge, and its application, especially in the face of new circumstances, can amount to an educated guess, imperfect but invaluable. In the case of Covid, there was no awful screw-up. There was, instead, astonishing speed: These vaccines, powerfully effective, were developed and distributed in record time.

 and a Kevin Drum tweet responding to a Ryan Cooper tweet along the same lines:

Because scientists have the odd notion that they should look for rigorous evidence. The public doesn't give a shit about that. https://t.co/ALAdQfNxwm

— Kevin Drum (@kdrum) December 2, 2021

I agree with both--there's a lot of impatience these days. After a long life (hopefully to be much longer) I've grown more tolerant of people (except the people who post erroneous things on the Internet) 

Getting Old: What I've Lost

As I age, there are things I have lost/am losing.  Some are big and obvious; I won't mention those.  Less obvious is this: loss of finger function, manual dexterity. Specifically the ability easily to pick up small things or, something I notice every morning, to separate the pages of the newspaper.

One thing I haven't lost is a tendency to hypochondria, but I'll use will power and ignore the possibility that this indicates an underlying problem as described here and just assume it's age. 

Iowa Farmers Are Old--So It's Always Been

 A quote from  Chris Jones, an Iowa environmental engineer (doing a demographic analysis of Iowa farmers,

Of these white folks, 80% are male and the average age is almost as old as I am: 58.9 years

He's fighting Iowa CAFO's polluting water, with facts and complaints. A good cause, but I picked out this factoid to comment on. 

I remember in Infoshare Sherman County, Kansas was one of the trial counties for providing on-line access for farmers to some of the data USDA agencies had for them.  Mike Sherman, then the CED, had some data on the average age of his farmers--somewhere in the 50's IIRC. A problem then, a small part of the problem, was the older farmers generally weren't into computers, so what we were trying to do had no appeal.  

But to my title--I suspect if we had data going back to the Revolution on the age distribution of farmers we'd find they were consistently older than most working Americans.  Why? Because since the Revolution the proportion of US workers engaged in agriculture has been declining, sometimes fast, sometimes slowly. That means some farm children left the farm for the city, while their parents stayed on the farm, thereby skewing the age distribution. 

Aggravations of Aging

 Some gripes, now I'm officially a geezer. (I wrote "old geezer" at first, but then discovered "old" redundant.)

• Losing the ability to grasp small or tricky objects, like some sealed plastic bags where there's about 1/8" which you can grab. Or prescription pills which fall on the floor and have to be picked up.
• Losing muscle memory at the keyboard.  In the good old days I could rest my hands on the laptop keyboard, or in front of the desktop keyboard, and my fingers would find the home row and the home keys--I could start typing and have it make sense on the screen, or if not making sense, at least form English words.  These days I'm not able to do that.
• Loss of hearing.  I do wear hearing aids in the evening.  I've this odd mixture of disability--can hear some sounds with my left ear and others with my right.  Hearing has slowly declined over the years, slowly, for which I'm grateful.  My uncle was quite deaf when he was still in his 60's, but I'm far from that bad.

Losing My Memory?

There shouldn't be a question mark on this--I know I'm losing capabilities.  I'm old, getting older, getting worse in most ways, perhaps all ways.  This interesting blog post shows I'm not alone.

What I find most problematic these days is my operating on "autopilot" as my wife and I call it; occasions when my habits are in control, habits established in youth when I was capable of multi-tasking, habits which lead to disasters when I can no longer multi-task. Unfortunately there's no switch I can touch to go from multi-task mode to "concentrate, you damn fool" mode.

The Most Depressing News Story of the Day

An intern at the NYTimes wrote yesterday about her experiences before returning to college:

Among the depressing items was this:

"Sometimes people referenced events from 10 years ago and laughed a little because I call that fifth grade."

Aging, Savings and "Crashed"

Reading "Crashed" raises questions about interest rates and the amount of capital in the world.

I'm sure it's been observed before, but the world is getting older.  Japan and the US are examples, but China's another one.  I'll be foolish and apply my own experience to the rest of the world.  The older I get the more I save, partly because it's more important to have security for the future and partly because my desires are less.  Or in other words, I'm more set in my ways.

Extrapolate that pattern world wide and maybe we have more savings, more capital than investment opportunities and thus lower interest rates. 

Driverless Cars: Setting the Bar Too High

Technology Review has a discussion of three factors impeding the adoption of driverless cars:

• safety--cars being safer than human drivers (who don't drink or text)
• useful--cars that aren't slow because too cautious, perhaps requiring regulatory changes.
• affordable.

To me it seems they're setting the bar too high.  Going back to the Innovator's Dilemma new technologies evolve by finding a niche from which they can expand gradually, making use of the learning curve to reduce costs so existing technology can be undersold and to become useful in new ways.  I think that applies here, as I've said before:

• a geezer like me isn't as safe a driver as the average person, even though we know enough not to drink or text.
• a geezer like me is already a cautious driver, so making a driverless car that abides by the speed limits is not disrupting the norm (for us).
• a geezer like me values driveability higher, highly enough to pay a premium to preserve the ability

Too Confusing for Seniors?

I saw this picture on twitter.  My immediate reaction was the title.  I've had a little problem with confusion in my leased Prius.  Two things--it's the change between a conventional Corolla to a hybrid Prius and the proliferation of controls.  In a way it reminds me of software applications--for example, the proliferation of options in things like Microsoft Word.

"It's" the Deterioration of Age

Among the nits I'm bothered by is the misuse of "it's" as possessive.  "It's" of course is a contraction of "it is" and should never be used otherwise.

All through my life I've adhered to this rule with little problem. 

But now...

Now it seems that my brain and my rules are on different pages.  I routinely type "it's" when it fits as a possessive.  Apparently the age-related impairment my recent MRI found involves undermining that aspect of my typing memory which knew the difference.

The good news is that part of my brain which proofs what I've done--I think it's a general capability not limited to reviewing my writing--still seems capable.  So I type "it's position is..." and then go back and delete the apostrophe.

When Are Farmers No Longer Farmers

From a Congressional Research Service report on 2018 Farm Income Outlook comes  a table which I can't incorporate.

You can access it here.  What struck me first, from the CRS report, was the rapid increase in farm household income from off farm sources, to the point that off-farm accounted for easily 3 or 4 times as much income as farm sources.

Then, as I tried to find a way to get the image into this post, and failed, I found this ERS spreadsheet.  We all remember the difference between "mean" and "median", right.  According to the table the median farmer had no income from farming in the years 2013-2018. 

That's weird, but this helps to explain it (from a Rural Development Perspectives article)

Almost 90 percent of elderly operators' average household income came from off-farm sources, with nearly half of their off-farm income coming from "other off-farm income," which includes Social Security. Another 19 percent of their off-farm income came from interest and dividends, reflecting savings and investments by these households during earlier years. Unlike elderly operators, operators under age 65 received most of their off-farm income from wages, salaries, or self-employment.

 That was my mother after my father died--for a number of years she continued the poultry operation, but SS income was really the basis of her livelihood.  But we don't think of these situations when discussing "farmers".

New Terms: Adult Orphans and Family Tree Completists

Learned two new terms today from reading Post and Times:

"Adult orphans".  This refers to those of us, including me and my wife, who are getting old with no children, no parents, and essentially no support network.  Applying a label makes the problem seem more concrete.  Personally, on the one hand I'm tempted to say: "you made your bed, now lie in it." On the other hand, which I almost always have available, it's a real problem for us, and we need to figure out how to deal with it, most likely by moving to an assisted living complex which includes nursing care.  BTW, googling the term results in 45,000  hits, so it's not that new.

"Family tree completists" is unique to the Times article on the ability of a site called "GEDmatch" to help identify suspects in a crime from their DNA by analyzing DNA matches from a database of relationships created by genealogical enthusiasts.  For a while I was one of these--deriving great pleasure from adding another set of (remote) cousins to my genealogy.  I still maintain an ancestry.com account, with a number of trees which someday I may return to

Changing Standards: 10K for Bar Mitzvah

Carolyn Hax does an advice column in the Post, which I read.  (What can I say, I used to read Ann Landers and Dear Abby.)

She answered a letter from someone worrying about the cost of a bar mitzvah.  They'd budgeted $10,000 for it, but the husband's parents wanted to go higher--$40K IIRC.  The in-laws threatened to boycott if they didn't get their way.  Husband told his parents that was their choice.

Hax applauded the answer.

As a (former) country boy I was stunned.  Who is willing to pay $10K for what I understand to be an elaborate birthday party/baptism celebration?  Better to invest the money for college.

Then, I'm a geezer.

Those Stuck-in-the-Past Old Fogeys

Like me, many elderly don't like change.  But it varies, and we can surprise you if it's to our benefit:

"Elderly participants were most excited about the idea of autonomous vehicles, but only 36 percent of young adults were comfortable with the idea of riding in one. "

From the Rural Blog, discussing research into attitudes to self-driving cars.

The Enemies of the Old

Thin pages of magazines and particularly newspapers which cling together, so you go from page 3 to page 7.

Shoelaces which have to be knotted.

Collar buttons which no longer seem to fit through buttonholes.

Eyeglasses with tiny screws which come out.

Attractive nuisances when driving, distracting one.

Keillor and I

Garrison Keillor and I are of an age; he's a year and a half younger.  He's got a column here
which touches on the panic old geezers feel when they lose track of something--it's a sure sign of approaching dimentia.  (I just had an MRI because of such concerns--results negative (there's an old Yogi Berra joke with that punchline). Actually it showed only age-related changes--didn't have the guts to ask my doctor exactly what that means.  I'm pretty sure it means I won't be joining the super-centenarians featured in a recent piece (maybe the Times science section) where researchers were collecting and analzying genomes to see if there is a magic bullet to account for living to 110.  Given the apparent health of the people mentioned, I wouldn't mind living that long, although the fear is that you outlive your mind. We'll see.

He also mentions the old crank phone of his youth, as a counterpoint to his new iPhone. He says you had the operator connect you--not ours.  We had a local line of 6 or 7 households, each with their own code: one long, two shorts (rings), and so forth.  Except for me it was difficult to crank it properly--trying for a long could result in two shorts, as the crank made its rotation I'd lose speed and break the ring.  Such were the challenges and thrills of youth, long since vanished except in the memories of geezers.

Read the Damn Manual, All 700+ Pages

As a bureaucrat who started his career editing ASCS manuals, I'm a bit more friendly to the idea of reading manuals than the average bear.  The things we use in our lives often come with manuals, manuals I don't routinely read.  Yes, when the clothes dryer goes out or doing something new with the microwave I may consult the manual, but I don't sit down to read them cover to cover.

The same rule applies for cars.  The manual's in the glove compartment, and I'll check it for problems.  But today I'm changing my rules.

The background: as I age my driving ability is declining.  I'm more easily distracted, more easily confused when driving in unfamiliar territory,  and less quick to react.  I miss pedestrians and approaching cars at intersections.  And the future looks worse, not better.  Like most people I'd hate to give up my control and freedom by abandoning the car and switching to public transportation, even the options in Reston are very good.

With safety options multiplying rapidly as we get closer to the self-driving car, what seems to make sense to me is switching to a short-term leased car.  That way I can get the advantage of the new features and still have the flexibility to upgrade to a newer car in a couple years, assuming I'm still competent as a driver when that day arrives.

So, I'm looking at a Prius with all the safety options.  But it's a big leap from 2006 to 2017, so I'm looking at the manual.  Indeed, for the first time I'm reading the Prius manual from the beginning.

But, the damn thing is 700 pages.  (As a measure of the changes, I think the manual for my current car is about 200 pages.)  700 pages.