<n>Reading this article, <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/18/this-is-your-brain-aging.html" source="Newsweek" author="Sharon Begley">This Is Your Brain. Aging.</a>, reminded me of some notes I scribbled down and never posted, because I was actually doing something else at the time.</n> <hr> Does our capacity for learning grow or shrink as we age? Some things seem easier to grasp with distance: E.g. in school certain concepts just needed to be learned, but didn't necessarily fit in with anything else---with age, these concepts are more evidently revolutionary. The light is a wave/particle experiment, for example. In college, it seemed to be just something else to learn. Now, it is clear just how important proving that light is a particle was. Age in this case seems to help understanding. Is that perhaps what the wise call wisdom? Or is does context (or degree of inebriation or alteration, no matter the substance) perhaps have something to do with it? Or is it just the brain fooling itself? It's all subjective, isn't it? How can you really tell whether you're actually objectively smarter or wiser than you once were---and do you really want to find out? What if you're actually learning less, but happier with it than before and thinking you're smarter than you actually are? Does that matter? Does even asking these questions make me more philosophical and superior to my younger self, to whom these questions would never have occurred? If there is a decline instead of improvement, is there any way to avoid it? Can someone even hope to notice such a decline in themselves? That is, if the decline is engendered not by a drastic disease but by age. Is there any way to remain vigilant enough to get better every day? To be not just subjectively, but also objectively better? To become that which would be envied by a younger self?