When do you grow up? Is there a cut off age to childhood or are we constantly growing up?

Things mentioned in this podcast

• Commons’s Model of Hierarchical Complexity
• The Seven Ages of Man
• David Finkelhore

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Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast, produced by me, Fraser McGruer, for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision-making. I'm here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights, and this week we're discussing when do you become a grown-up?

Nick, when did you become a grown-up? Well, this is something I was thinking about recently in the context of having had a birthday. It wasn't a particularly significant one, but it was 42. And when you realise that that's halfway to 84, and you're only, you know, like, if you're 42, you're only 18 years away from 60.

42 is the answer, isn't it?

Yeah, according to Douglas Adams. Yeah, sorry, keep going. Yeah, so I was musing on the whole idea of, you know, how you change over your lifetime. And this question of when you become a grown-up, and then you recently spotted an article on the BBC, which was about, you know, basically saying scientists are less sure that there is an obvious cut-off. I'm not sure anyone ever really believed there was, but, you know, that actually your brains kind of continue to mature throughout your 20s and are not done and dusted by the time you're 18. And then at the same time, watching my kids grow up, you know, my son is, my oldest kid is 10, and he started, he's about to go to big school, he started walking to and from school by himself. So, you know, the first sign really of sort of him being out and about in the world by himself. And it's got me thinking, when do you, when do you become a, am I a grown-up? When do you become a grown-up?

Yeah, I'm not sure if you are completely grown-up, but... Neither am I, that's the problem. But I know what you're saying about this turning 42 and working out how long's left, because for example, I've always imagined, hopefully more or less correctly, that I will live to be 90 years old. That's what I've always imagined. And the reason why is my father, he died when he was 90. I've got lots of long-lived antecedents and, you know, that's my target, right? Right, good. But I am now 45. Good God, that's halfway.

I am halfway. Have you done half the things you intended to do? I probably have, actually.

That's good, I think if you're getting through the bucket list, you know, you're fine. You're on track. And then I'm about to turn 46, which comes after 45. Yeah, that's good. And that's in a few weeks' time. And that's made me realise, oh God, right, I'm just on the other side of that hill.

It's all downhill from now. It's all downhill.

According to that model. Yeah. Well, look, Peter, you're a young whippersnapper. He is, he's only 18.

I wish I was only 18. How old are you, Peter? I'm 37, 37, yeah.

37 is a significant age, I think. I have a theory about that. But let's hear Peter's take on it.

Yeah, so what's your sort of, I mean, what are your thoughts on what we've said so far about when you become a grown-up? We've not really had an answer yet, other than we're just kind of thinking about it.

Yeah, well, I don't know. I think whatever age you are, you sort of lament your previous years, don't you? Well, you may not lament them, but you think nostalgically about them. And even when I was in my early 30s, I was thinking, where did the 20s go? I was really kind of enjoying those. Or a feeling of, what happened today? I didn't quite do all the things I was intending to do. But yeah, so... I didn't do anything in my 20s. Nothing of any note at all. We joined the civil service, which was a big problem, I think. Yeah, anyway. So a lot of the research I was doing seemed to suggest that what constitutes an adult is various sort of statuses or ownership of various things. So having a job, having a house, which seem to be ideals that are relatively recent in human history. So they're kind of ideals that came around in the 40s, 50s and 60s. So the baby boomers and the silent generation have sort of imposed these values of what qualify you as an adult. Before that, it wasn't totally unlike it is now with lots of transient behaviour. People going back to live with their parents, people not being able to afford their own homes and things. And job security not being what it was more recently with pro-worker legislation and things, making job security quite good, quite in favour of the worker. So yeah, I think they're modern ideals, this idea of adulthood that we've pinned.

Well, yeah, and it's obviously something that people are concerned about because people are... I mean, I didn't really hear the term adulting until recently. Adulting? Adulting. It's what millennials say when they're trying to work out how they should behave as adults. Yeah, so I suck at adulting type thing. Wait, sorry, just what? Why are you... Well, no, I was going to say, let's try and... I'm trying to get some... I'm going to start becoming more precise now. Well, that in itself is a case of adulting. Go for it. Exactly. So I think we've got three things.

Whereas if I were to keep interrupting you all the time, that'd be the opposite. Yeah, that'd be kind of annoying.

I think these three separate concepts, which are biological adulthood, which, you know, that's straightforward. Well, not straightforward, but I mean, one of the key milestones really is sexual maturity, is when you can have babies. And I would say, I think throughout nearly all of history, that has been considered to be, you know, the time when you have some sort of rite of passage and then, hey, presto, you're a man or a woman. And so that's the biological concept, which I think has held sway until very recently, until the last couple of hundred years. And then, of course, we have these new concepts like social adulthood, which is closely tied to legal adulthood. And obviously, in law, you can't just say, well, someone's an adult and legally responsible for things when they've gone through puberty, because it's quite hard to measure. Which is why we have these precise cutoffs, you know, when you're 18. Standardizes it as well, yeah. Exactly. Then there's no ambiguity about it. And then we've got, and I think social adulthood also encompasses some of the things that Peter's talking about, sort of, you know, kind of aspirational lifestyle or, you know, status markers of being an adult. And then there's psychological adulthood, which I think is the, for me, is the sort of interesting one, which is what is it that you can think or do or, you know, consider to be part of yourself when you become an adult? And that's the thing I think we don't notice because it's happening so gradually. But when we look back and think, oh, my God, what an idiot I was, we realize that we have, you know, matured in some way. And I guess there's a sort of very rapid period through which that happens during, you know, your teens, where, you know, I think it's reasonable to think that a 23-year-old is much more distinct from a 13-year-old than a 33-year-old. Right. So you could say that psychological development happens. And I think that's, you know, that's where the sort of neuroscience is on that. But yeah, I mean, I think, so there, yeah, we've got three, at least three overlapping concepts of adulthood, some of which give you precise answers, which are probably not very useful, and some of which give you useful answers, but which are hard to measure.

So, yeah, so just to sum up, this is, so the first is biological. Second is kind of social and the sort of when we accrue things like car keys and, you know, or being able to drive and have a house. I would throw legal in with there as well. Okay. And then the third one is kind of your kind of perception and how you see yourself. Yeah. All right. Well, look, what angle do we want to pursue here?

I think that it might be fun just to go talk about personal experience, actually. I think this might be one of those where we can try and think of our own. Okay.

And to whinge about millennials as well. Yeah.

Let's try and avoid that. I always feel defensive about millennials. Because at heart, you're still one. Yeah, exactly. We're actually Xenials. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, let's. Because we're Generation X. No, we're not.

We're a mini generation. I think I'm a Generation X.

He's Generation X.

You're Generation X, yeah. But Nick and I are Xenials. Xenials. Is it pronounced Xenials? Okay.

Okay, I'm confused already, which is probably quite a Generation X thing to say. Yeah. I know, just like, oh, what's going on? He doesn't understand this because it's all about memes and the internet. Yeah, no, I do. I don't understand memes. Let's address this from a personal point of view, then, of how and when we felt like adults. I think, so I'll go first, if I may. Yeah, go for it. I think there's some really obvious ones, like having kids. That was probably the major one when I sort of felt truly grown up. Because until then, you can kind of fake it, I think. But yeah, having kids. I remember getting my first job where I got paid a reasonable amount of money. Actually, any money, which was not a university. So I remember I got paid 300 quid and I bought a camera for 100 quid from that. What are the big ones? Buying a house. Buying a dog, which then I had to take back, actually, because I wasn't able to look after it.

You make it sound like the dog was really difficult. But no, you had this idea, and this is to do with your, you know, one of the things children have is this divergence between their idealized self and their real self. Well, your idealized self was that you were going to be a kind of really devoted dog owner. Your real self was that you're a lazy turd and you couldn't be bothered to take it for walks. And eventually, you decided to get rid of it. Chucked it in a bag, threw it in the river, didn't you? That's right. Yeah, yeah. It was a bloody big bag. I just want to say that Fraser didn't dispose of the dog that way. He just ran it over repeatedly. Yeah, it was much simpler. So, yeah, those are some of my ones. Yeah, I don't know. Nick? Peter? I don't know. Peter, you got some?

Well, I felt terribly grown up after university, leaving university. And when I look back on myself, I realized that I wasn't. I was pretty immature and little so and so. Yeah, I felt very grown up joining the army, thinking that would be a good thing to do, but left the army with a back problem. Back problems definitely is something you know you've grown up with. Well, yes. I felt very old at the same time. Very old because of the back problem, but also very immature because I had to really restart a career from scratch kind of in mid-twenties. So, yeah, I felt sort of slightly dispossessed at that time. Didn't know quite how to feel, but I've always felt kind of mature. I've always been. My friends have always said, oh, you're such an old man, et cetera, et cetera, because I've always generally been more sensible and more boring than they have.

I agree that you're definitely got that maturity about you. You're quite sensible. I imagine you've always been quite sensible.

Yeah, who wants to be sensible and solid? I'd rather be wild and fun.

Well, the alternative is you unfortunately end up with me and have a life like mine, which is not.

Well, it's interesting this because when I left university and joined the Ministry of Defence, I really did not feel grown up at all. And a lot of my fellow fast streamers who were my age, but a lot of them were a little bit older, but not that much, you know, really acted like they got their shit together. You know, they were really they were sort of confidently talking to permanent undersecretaries. And I remember going to this, you know, sort of social event where a minister was there and I was studiously avoiding him. I thought, what do I why do I why is a minister going to be interested in talking to me, you know? And so I really thought, you know, everyone else seems to know what they're doing. And then I think you notice these the stages of imposter syndrome, as they happened to me over the course of, I'd say, about 15 years is you start out by thinking, God, everyone else knows what they're doing and I don't. Then you get to this stage where you think, shit, nobody knows what they're doing. And then you finally get to a stage where you think, well, nobody else knows what they're doing, but I do know what I'm doing. And I and I think that it was actually when Peter said 37, I felt like 37 is a significant age. That's when I left the MOD and set up Aleph Insights. And and I feel like then I had reached this sort of stage of feeling like I was pretty on top of things. Now, I know that I'm going to look back in another 10 years and think, well, I didn't know a damn thing about nothing. But but, yeah, I think, you know, that that to me. So perhaps I was a late developer when it came to sort of that confidence, because I didn't I didn't feel like I had any right to be in the MOD doing economic analysis at all. And then I think one of the things was you think, well, someone is going to cover for me, right? Someone is look at my boss. He's going to check that I'm not fucking this all up. And and then you, you know, one day you get promoted and you have a team and suddenly you're that guy. And I and I think having kids is a similar thing. Right. So you when you're a kid, you never have to do anything really for yourself and you know that someone's looking after you. And then I think when you've got kids, the buck stops with you. And at that point, you know, I think that's a big moment where you think, actually, I'm not going to get no one's coming to help me here. I need to sort this out. Family crisis. It's my job to sort it out. And I think eventually you get used to that. And that that really I'd say that's the moment where you really are a grown up when you think, right, first port of call here is me. Yeah, I'm not going to expect anyone else to help me out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although I tend to ask my wife. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's that's there you go.

She's a very sensible woman. I fully trust her opinion.

Yeah, no, definitely. Absolutely. This is I was thinking about this the other day. And I got some conflicting ideas about this. This is to do with ego as well, I think. And I've got a theory that the ego shrinks as we as we mature. So you'll have to be more specific about ego. So just one's perception of oneself and how important you are in the world. That's probably what I mean. Oh, like, like the sort of evolution of cosmology from an earth centric to a heliocentric. Right. Yeah, that's a nice one. I like that. So when you sort of and when you see kids and and toddlers in particular, it's just and if you see a load of toddlers playing together, it's just a raging mass of egos, essentially, all bouncing off each other as part of the maturation process, then that ego shrinks. And so kids, as they grow older, become more reasonably understand that other people have feelings. And I think one of the things you were talking about is this imposter syndrome. And we're talking a kind of nervous. It's really a it's really a worry about yourself and how you might be perceived, I think. And actually, if you as you mature, part of this realizing that other people might feel like that as well is is you start to realize actually you're not that important and that other people don't care as much about what about you as you think or or does that kind of make sense? I mean, the only sorry, there's one other thing, which is one of the things you said is that kind of journey where you start to that you I think quite nicely, nicely described, we start to eventually go actually, I do know some stuff. But I think this is where always trying new stuff is quite important, because otherwise one becomes in danger of becoming, you know, the boorish middle aged man at the bar telling everyone the way the world is. You're relatively important in the little village you've chosen. Right? Yeah, one knows you, but the absolute nobody in the in the wider world. Yeah, yeah. And so I think I personally, I think this constant act of almost regeneration or trying new stuff is important, because I think it's always important to be in situations where you don't know what's going on.

I think there's a lot of psychological evidence that that's true as well, that is healthy and good for your brain. You know, if you're constantly putting yourself in challenging positions. Yeah, yeah.

A friend of mine just very briefly I was talking to I haven't spoken to him in years. He lives in China. He's been there about 10 years now. And he's, we're of a similar sort of age. And he read some book that said it was a great theory, a great idea. If you need to start taking psychedelic drugs, when you're when you're middle aged, precisely for this reason, because you know, you're no longer challenged by things. Yeah, exactly. Stirring the old mental pot. Yeah. And you can afford them. And they're not that expensive. Right, who's next? I was rambling on there for a bit. Nick, you were gonna say something?

Only just the thing about ego. I think that's interesting, because when I think some of the key markers on my journey to adulthood have involved other people's perception of me. And I remember going to a meeting in Washington, DC, when I was about 23, I was quite junior. And I met, I met a guy in the Defense Intelligence Agency, who was a, he was a was kind of an intern. And he was calling me, sir. Now, that's fairly standard for Americans. But he was it was a guy like maybe a year younger than me calling me, sir, because I, you know, sort of more or less outranked him. And I thought, well, you know what, I quite like that. It could be awkward, but I, you know, I don't mind it. And then and then you get to the point where you go into shops, and they treat you like a normal person and not like someone who's about to shoplift. And now I found that I, I am slightly turning into one of those people who expects good service. And, and so even though I think my, in the sense that I rationally understand that, you know, I'm, I'm only one of, you know, 6 billion people. At the same time, I've now got a load of kind of standards floating about, which, you know, if I'm disappointed, I feel affronted. Whereas in the past, I'd have gone, oh, I shouldn't really complain. Now I, you know, I've turned into the kind of person who thinks, well, why is this? I've been waiting three minutes for this person to take my order. This place is useless. Yeah, and they haven't called me sir yet. Yeah, exactly. So I, so I think something's happened, which isn't straightforwardly, my ego is diminished in a way it's kind of, it's got more firm around the edges. Like I know, I know where it is and what it expects.

It's got more moral based.

Yeah, yeah. I think it, I think it's got, it's, yeah, it's got a bit more confident, but maybe in its diminished, in its diminished state, you know, it's got more confident about wanting, wanting what it wants, you know.

There's one other thing you were mentioning about, you know, when you work out how long you've got, and I sometimes get frustrated in my career that I feel I've not achieved that I want to, then I think, well, hold on. At the rate sort of things are going with pensions and so on, I'm going to be working for another 25, 30 years. And I've been working for about, about the same amount of time. So I've still got plenty of time and I don't need to sort of worry that I've not achieved stuff yet.

Well, let's put it this way. If your life was a weekend, you'd, it would still be midnight on a Saturday night. I mean, you've got the whole of Sunday to do stuff.

That's really depressing, actually, because let's say, let's say that my life is a Friday, Saturday, because I don't like a Saturday, Sunday. Friday night then. Friday night.

You're probably still up drinking whiskey.

Just on the way to the club. Yeah, now I feel okay. Now, if the rest of my life was a Sunday. Death is Sunday. Yeah, that's no good.

No, I was going to say, I just I mean, in terms of sort of identifying other things that I feel, you know, are associated with me being a grown up, not unconnected with that, actually, which are one of one of and about like, have you achieved the things you want to achieve? Is that I guess the things that I considered to be things I wanted to achieve have gone down and down and down and down over life. And I'm much happier. So, you know, when you're a kid and you want to be an astronaut, well, imagine if you still wanted to be an astronaut, you'd spend your entire life disappointed. But actually, your aspirations go, you know, end up being well, actually, what I want is a Friday night in like that's that is the extent of it. I want to play a board game, have a pint of beer, maybe watch a film. That is the perfect Friday for me. And, you know, that's all I want in life, really. And I think I think there is something about, you know, actually, when your aspirations become realistic, I don't feel like I've compromised. Like, I'm really genuinely happy doing those kinds of things. And I'm not happy, you know, doing things that I suppose I ought to be doing. I don't want a yacht. You know, I quite want a yacht still. That's the I'm not fussed about yachts. I've got everything I need.

Peter? I know we don't want to bash millennials, but let's do it. Well, I think it's an interesting phenomenon, this sort of this juvephobia, which is a term coined by David Finkelhorn. He was an American sociologist. How every generation kind of slightly distrusts or is concerned and disappointed with the next generation. And it's the previous or the next? Sorry, the next generation. The next generation coming along. Coming along after them. So it's born out in every historical epoch. Any historical records mention it. So Aristotle, famously in the fourth century BC, had a disdain for young people saying that the mistakes they make are because they think they know everything. And the ancient Egyptians also thought that young people were rude and selfish.

So it's like it's been around forever. Yeah. And the Canterbury Tales. There's the distinction, isn't there, between the knight and the squire. And all the squire wants to do is listen to music and dance and chat up girls. And the knight is sort of world weary and, you know, burdened with responsibility. I think there is a distinction. It's possibly another podcast. But thinking that young people are stupid. I agree. That's universal. Having a concern for an entire generation and sort of saying, oh, these guys, I think that might be relatively new. Like saying they're qualitatively different. I mean, I think everyone says, oh, young people are stupid. But I was young once. I can see where they're coming from. But to be able to sort of say, I feel like it probably started in the 60s, 50s or 60s, that people would look at the new generation and say, these guys are aliens. They're not like us at all. They're doing weird stuff that is harmful.

I think the generational thing is more recent. Something I spotted was an explanation that it was formed around the time of compulsory education, state-funded compulsory education. Intriguing theory. Because when you take children, children still exist, small children. But when they were able to work, they started working and were amongst the adults. So there was much more diffuse cultural identity between the two groups of people. As soon as you take a generation of people out of the workplace and put them in institutions in which they are separate from adults, they can then form and create their own subculture.

Great theory. Is that your theory? No, it's not mine. It's a good theory anyway.

I'll dig it out for the show notes. I think that makes a lot of sense. In schools, you have your own language and you have your own vocabulary to describe things, which is part of the disdain you get from adults. You come up with your own specific words for things and adults can't understand you. Or indeed, Fortnite dances. Or Fortnite dances.

Dabbing. What the hell is that all about? Flossing.

Look, we need to wrap up just before we do, just very, very quickly. We've talked about adulthood. I want to talk about old adulthood. Just really briefly. Imagine yourself an 80-year-old man. Yeah. Okay. Tell us who you are, where you are and what you're doing. So paint a picture for us.

My ideal existence is perfectly encapsulated in the film Munich. Have you seen that one? The thing about the Black September terrorist attacks. There's a guy who's kind of an international fixer guy. He has a big house in France and it's full of kind of a mixture of sort of his family all eating really nice food all the time and drinking great wine and sort of super important but hidden people, spies and diplomats and those kinds of things. And he's just at the center of this kind of web of soft influence. But without being, you know, I think that's my dream is to be important in some way, but still be able to sit there and make, you know, lamb stew and stuff, not have a job or anything. Just being able to, you know, be important living in a nice big house, wooden floorboards, grand piano. You know, that'll do. That'll do me. Sounds like you've thought about this. It's not much to ask, is it? Yeah. International power broker.

A huge mansion in the South of France. Okay. Peter?

I am sort of embracing being a child again in the sense that my vision of an adult is probably based upon my parents who were both full time workers, stuck at a desk all day, traveling to work in the mornings, coming home in the late evenings. And yeah, to me, that's what an adult is. Quite a grey existence. Think salaryman. I don't want that. I'm embracing this sort of millennial mode of work where I work from home when I feel like it. And so, yeah, for me, I want to be that perpetual child of suiting myself quite a lot. Okay. And to still be like that in your 80s?

Yes. To still be like that. Okay. Okay. For me, I've got sort of two. I don't know which I'd like to be. One of them is just living in a little village by the sea and being a wizened old boat builder. And, you know, my grandkids come and see me. They love coming to see their granddaddy Fraser. Beard. Beard, yeah. And, you know, I'll sit down and I'll teach them how to carve wood and things like that. And I tell them wonderful stories. Do you know how to carve wood? I don't know. I don't know the first thing about carving wood. I've got 30 odd years to do it.

The noise of seagulls in the background. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. That's one side of it. Fresh fish for lunch. Yeah, I don't like fish. But, yeah, something like that. I expected a floor. But then the alternative, which I don't know, maybe the two can go together a bit, is if you've seen the film Little Miss Sunshine and you've got the granddad who's a heroin addict. Right. And he's still a bit wild.

Kind of souped up, whacked out, you know, totally all the flesh sucked out of you and it's just a bag of small bones.

And he still just goes for it and he's really fun and he loves his granddaughter and he has some great advice for his grandson, which I won't say what it is. It's a bit rude. And, yeah, unfortunately he dies halfway through the film, actually. But anyway, one of those two. So maybe I can combine those somehow. But, yeah, still a bit fun inside, hopefully. OK. Well, that's our discourse.

I did find one really good thing on Reddit. Yeah, OK. Which was, you know, how do you know you're an adult? Someone said it's when you identify more with Squidward than Spongebob. That's pretty good.

What's Squidward?

Oh, for goodness sake.

And on that note, I think we'll wrap up.

Spongebob's manager. Oh, really?

Yeah. OK. OK. All right, we'll wrap up there. Thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. Until next time, goodbye.