• CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    What’s with the ageism? I want Democratic representatives of any age, as long as they have the right policies and they are of sound mind. People over the age of 65 will be just fine with me, thanks.

    • formulaBonk@lemm.ee
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      13 minutes ago

      Sure but age limits are in place in a million different institutions. If it’s not ageism that you can’t run for office when you’re 16 then it’s not ageism when you have an age limit for representatives. My point is representatives should represent the general population and should be able to at least understand the issues of the current age. Meanwhile the aging congress struggles with basic internet understanding so we don’t have regulations that should have been standard since the fucking 90s. It’s 2025 a person who can’t comprehend internet basics like email encryption has 0 chance of making an informed choice on crypto currency or government backdoors and their implications.

    • krashmo@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      You gotta draw the line somewhere. Retirement age seems like as good a place as any.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        Why do you have to draw the line somewhere?

        I feel like a broken record here, but the huge uptick in ageism I see in relation to politics seems like it’s not going to, ahem, age well given the amount of things I keep seeing about slowing down/reversing aging…

        I mean, yeah, it sounds kind of silly until it doesn’t. I remember reading about/thinking about things like AI (even if it’s not AGI - things like LLMs are here and disrupting the shit out of things). Same with self-driving cars. And yeah, neither of these things are perfect, but they are having an effect on society - people I know mostly got very smug and dismissive about these notions just 20 years ago. They are rather quiet about them now. I think the same thing is true about aging. Even if the breakthroughs are extremely mild and stay that way for decades, maybe even forever, suppose average healthspan is increased even 5 years. That will make (upper) age limits look very myopic and dated.

        • krashmo@lemmy.world
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          11 hours ago

          It’s not about how long you live so much as getting stuck in your ways. Old people don’t learn new things and adapt the way young people do. Humans solidify the way they do things in their 20s, make some fine tuning in their 30s/40s, and then pretty much stick to those habits for the rest of their life. With the way technology is progressing we can’t have stagnant people leading an evolving society.

          There are exceptions to every rule but that doesn’t mean statistics aren’t valuable information to base decisions on. Do you want people stuck in the past making laws about the future?

        • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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          11 hours ago

          So you’d be fine with a child holding the role? After all why draw a line. Age relates to capability on both ends.

          • formulaBonk@lemm.ee
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            11 minutes ago

            I hate that’d you’re downvoted and no response because this is the right take. We have age limits already but old people don’t want those to apply to them because … no reason they just want to continue holding power