You're An Adult, But Your Brain Might Not Be, Researchers Say (cnn.com)

"The human brain reaches its adult volume by age 10, but the neurons that make it up continue to change for years after that," reports the New York Times, citing a new paper by neuroscience researchers that questions when "adulthood" really begins. An anonymous reader writes: One of the paper's authors -- an associate psychology professor at Harvard -- tells CNN that "There is no agreed-on benchmark that, when reached, would allow a neuroscientist to say 'Aha! This brain is fully developed'. However, it is safe to say that by almost any metric, the brain is continuing to develop actively well past the age of 18..."

"Some children, researchers have found, have neural networks that look as if they belong to an adult..." adds the Times, noting that adolescents also "do about as well as adults on cognition tests, for instance. But if they're feeling strong emotions, those scores can plummet. The problem seems to be that teenagers have not yet developed a strong brain system that keeps emotions under control."
And this cuts both ways, according to a psychologist at Temple University who wants the voting age lowered to 16. ("Sixteen-year-olds are just as good at logical reasoning as older people are," he tells the Times) But he also believes judges should consider the lack of emotional control when sentencing defendants -- even if they're in their early 20s. "Most crime situations that young people are involved in are emotionally arousing situations -- they're scared, or they're angry, intoxicated or whatever."

Comments

If you want to know when adulthood really starts

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

ask the car insurance companies: above a certain age - way above 18 usually - their rates suddenly drop dramatically. The insurance companies don't make that age up: it comes from their accidents statistics.

It's pretty clear certain age groups get more into accidents than others: it's because they're not really mature enough to be good drivers, even after years of driving experience. Nothing reveals immaturity in a person more than their way of behaving on the road.

I'm saying this as a general rule of course: clearly there are good young drivers and incompetent old timers. But for the population in general, the insurance statistics don't lie.

What an idiotic professor

[cfalcon]

"Sixteen-year-olds are just as good at logical reasoning as older people are,"

Voting has nothing to do with logical reasoning. First, IQ and reasoning are not EXPLICITLY required. We let retards vote. Some states let people of an "unsound mind" vote. We count the votes of people with deeply below average IQ and learning disabilities the exact same as those who have received great academic achievements.

Second, IQ and reasoning are only barely involved in politics at all. Emotions are the biggest motivators. When a politician wants to convince you, he doesn't just lay his case out and connect points, he makes you feel proud of him, happy with the way things will be with his help, scared of the other guy, scared what the other guy represents, etc. Elections are entirely emotions.

If a professor is trying to allow 16 year olds to vote- people who are, by law, required to spend every day in a government institution- he probably has some other reasoning behind that.

So I googled it real fast.

Lawrence Steinburg is the professor in question. Here he is discussing the younger of the two Boston Bombers, a 19 year old:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/op...

Here's his quote from that article:

"If neurobiological immaturity makes adolescents inherently less responsible for their crimes, and if science now demonstrates that the brain is still maturing well into the early 20s, should we rethink where we draw the boundary between adolescence and adulthood under the law? The Boston Marathon bombing trial is important not only because the crime was so horrific, but because it forces us to ask hard questions about how best to judge the behavior of those who are legal adults, but in many respects neurobiological adolescents."

In this article, he is overall arguing for less culpability for a multiple murderer, based on his presumed lack of neural development. So according to this professor, a 16 year old should be able to vote, but a 19 year old should be held to a lower standard for his crimes. If you spend years arguing for the lack of developmental progression, why then suddenly pop up and claim that a 16 year old should be able to vote? The claim stands in contrast to his other positions. A reasonable argument from his positions and data seems to be raising the voting age to 25. But then we would run into issues where you would have soldiers (in some cases, theoretically draftees, as we had a draft the last time this sort of conversation happened) unable to vote on politicians who may or may not be sending them to their doom.

A 16 year old without a home is a problem for the state. A 16 year old without resources is a problem for the state. A 16 year old does not have a guaranteed right to work in all places, and may have many restrictions and benefits placed upon them by the state. A 16 year old is not liable for their crimes in the same way an 18 year old is, the details of which vary from place to place. Voting has much more to do with this than any form of cognition. If cognition were the test, then we'd literally give cognition tests. If emotional maturity were the test, then we'd give those tests. Instead, we vest citizens with the responsibility of voting at the same time we vest them with a wide array of other responsibilities and civic duties. If he were arguing for lowering the age of adulthood, I could see his point- but instead he has a set of oddly specific and contradictory statements, based on a fundamentally unsound assumption about what makes a citizen. It is responsibilities, not intellect. Half of people are stupider than average, after all, and they get the same voice politically.

Plus it just doesn't seem smart to let students be told how to vote by their high school teachers. Way too much peer pressure, you could probably get extremely high compliance rates, especially given that schools would inevitably force their students to vote there in person when possible.

Re:FICA

[Opportunist]

Same here. My education is state funded and still I managed to get a degree from one of the best universities around. I could not have afforded a US college to the tune of a few 100 grand.

Today, I get roughly 50% of my paycheck. Rest goes into tax and other government related stuff. Not having any kids sure doesn't help to get any of that money back any time soon, but that's how the deal works. Someone paid for my education, and now I pay for someone else's. Maybe for the son of the person who paid for my degree. OK, not directly, but they paid tax back then (and now probably get a pension from taxes), I pay tax now, and someone will be able to learn a thing or two because of that, get a good job and pay my pension with his taxes.

That's the deal we enter here. I guess I could get a much worse deal. Like, say, having a crippling student loan on my back that I won't pay off in my lifetime.