🔮 Our collective brain is ageing. What does it mean for our civilisation?
An older world can be good, but only if we make it so.
Hi,
I am on holiday so I asked EV member, Gianni Giacomelli, to challenge us with an unorthodox idea. He’s delivered. In today’s essay, Gianni gives a new take on demographic shifts by asking how might an ageing population affect our overall collective intelligence.
Gianni argues that the several co-occurring factors associated with an ageing population will dramatically impact the way we think, innovate and behave collectively. So, what reforms will we need?
I want to stress how important a question this is. So please do engage with Gianni and other members in the comments — and thank him by restacking this post on Substack.
Cheers,
Azeem
The world is heading into a future with many more older people. The impact on economies can be devastating1, precisely when we need resources to address large challenges such as climate change.
Is demography destiny, as some (quite a few) suggest? Are our demographics shifting from the “progress pyramids” to “domes of doom”? Are fertility policies (whose impact is debatable) the only way to address this problem?
I will examine the problem through a lens of collectively intelligent systems, and highlight potential challenges and solutions.
Our civilisation’s collective brain—one instance of what Thomas Malone termed a “supermind”—relies, in the words of sociobiologist Edward Wilson, on the interplay of three elements: palaeolithic brains with their inherent emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. I want us to look at how the collective brain could change in an ageing world given that…
Our individual brains age and consequently their capabilities and incentives change,
Many of our institutions’ evolution doesn’t keep pace and is misaligned with the majority of citizens and people (though possibly not the short-term expressed will of the majority of the voters or believers),
And our technological innovation (AI and others) has the potential to improve the efficient frontier and total factor productivity. This would bring economic prosperity, but their penetration and impact on established economic systems are still partially unpredictable.
By examining this interplay of challenges, capabilities, and incentives—both individual and collective—we can better understand how our ageing world might reshape our collective brain, and what to do about it.
Individual brains
As individuals age, their cognitive abilities change and in some areas degrade, especially with regard to the absorption and processing of new knowledge.
Granted, ageing today is cognitively different compared to the past, as people stay fit for longer. And yet, given the longer lifespan and the incidence of age-related conditions like dementia, we will see an unprecedented proportion of the total population with somewhat degraded cognitive abilities. Longer lifespans spent in retirement aren’t conducive to people consistently keeping their minds challenged and keeping cognitive decline at bay.
The conservative tide
Ageing societies tend to shift towards more conservative positions, especially during economic and social shocks. This rightward drift would be balanced in a typical democratic system if younger generations participated in public governance as actively as older cohorts. However, youth underrepresentation in politics amplifies the conservative shift. For instance, in the US, both politicians and voters skew older, influencing even presidential debates. Many older politicians’ core values were shaped during their formative years in the 1960s and 1970s. As a result, they sometimes focus on battles that originated in that era, potentially overlooking more current concerns. This fuels the quest for finding enemies and fighting wars that are no longer a priority, and are framed in ways that aren’t contemporary anymore (one can see geopolitics and identity politics through that lens, too). European politicians are getting slightly younger, but young voters are still underrepresented on the ballot, and their voice is heard less. Since younger people typically do not engage as actively in these processes, and their networks (which are often critical for nominations to important roles) are comparatively underdeveloped, there is a risk that governance becomes more conservative than the society as a whole.
Recent studies indicate that Millennials in the US and UK are not following the traditional pattern of becoming more conservative with age. However, due to the current demographic structure in developed economies, where older generations still outnumber younger ones, Millennials may not have sufficient influence to counteract the overall conservative shift in societal values for some time.
This effect is mediated by institutions - democratic or not.
As traditional liberal parties struggle to adapt to changing social narratives, some fringe political views may gain traction, partly amplified by social media echo chambers. This polarisation can increase societal tensions and conflict. And while some research indicates that older societies tend to wage war less because their ability to deploy troops is diminished, demographics could lead to perverse short-term dynamics in countries on the verge of ageing (Russia being one), and still leave the door open to autonomous-weapon warfare.
Impact on the markets
The markets, with their complex, decentralised, and dynamic decision-making processes for the allocation of resources, are another part of our collective brain. Organisational leadership has aged, for instance. Ageing societies also experience shifts in money, both private and public. As an example, housing is one the largest budget items in people’s lives, but real estate taxation, and zoning laws, protect current homeowners (who skew older), contributing to inequalities. There is also the potential for stock market behaviour to change over time as older generations, who own a significant amount of wealth, burn through their savings - though the net effect is not fully clear yet.
And naturally, money will be needed for the climate and energy transitions. According to the IMF, as noted by The Economist, “rich countries will spend 21% of GDP a year on old folk by 2050, up from 16% in 2015. A quarter of that will go on pensions. The rest will be required for health- and social care provisions”. Here, once more, the generational divide that drives policymaking is visible, and not just led by hard science and economics. The example below is from the US…
…and these from the UK.
The perspective of European and Asian countries is less polarised, but the trend is the same, especially when it comes to the impetus for action.
Innovation risk
Finally, and crucially, ageing societies can see a change in how they innovate. Starting with (ageing) academic leadership - crucial for inventions - where incentives are stacked in favour of academics going deeper and for more years into their narrow field rather than looking across disciplines. The charts below illustrate for instance how papers referenced by older academics are on average older and their research is less likely to disrupt the state of science and more likely to criticise emerging work.
This, combined with the burden of knowledge and specialisation, can slow down disruptive innovation and breakthroughs. The chart below shows the effect of age on the novelty of academic research over the life of researchers, and over time.
Two famous quotes encapsulate the potential problem. Arthur C. Clarke quipped that “[w]hen a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong”. Max Planck famously lamented that science often shifts paradigms only when old academics die.2
Innovation is not just invention though. An older population might mean slower uptake of new ways of doing important things. Landmass use for instance will be crucial in our climate transition, but in Europe, the region where environmental policies are politically least controversial, the average farmer’s age is about 60 (and only 10% are below 40). More money for the older people might mean less money for the young, their education, and the support they need to credibly enter the workforce and change work practices, with a potential impact on the speed of adoption of innovation. In another example, energy and transportation senior executives in incumbent Western companies might feel that, if they delay things just enough, they might be able to juice the previous investments in older technology (fossil fuel generation or ICE, for instance) and retire without needing to push through hard changes that could jeopardise their financial profits in the short term. The possible onslaught brought about by Chinese EV companies, whose economies of scale and Wright curves have driven cost reduction can now only be fought with import tariffs, shows the risk of misreading the time it takes to realize the benefits of innovation. In general, the average age and time-to-retirement of senior executives might skew decision-making in companies, especially publicly listed ones, although the effect may not be linear and some older leadership teams might indeed focus on leaving a lasting legacy.
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Trying new things also requires a certain amount of risk-taking. Judging from the data in the chart below, and despite all caveats required in such analyses, there is reason to believe that ageing, wealthier societies see progress as more of a half-empty glass than they did in the past.
Clearly, we cannot allow a small minority of people, who have the requisite tech capabilities and skew much younger, to work alone on significant technological innovations with the potential to create significant risk to everyone. There’s more than a grain of truth in the claim that Silicon Valley’s youthful (immature?) ethics is an insufficient moral compass in these times. But the option of stifling the right type of innovation is not viable either. An older population might lose touch with the younger minority able to drive innovation fast, which would be a dangerous mistake.
Bridging the gap
Here are several ideas to address the impact of an ageing society on our collective intelligence. There are surely many more, and doing them justice would require much more depth than what we can discuss here.
From a resources standpoint, we will need to do things like
(a) Do more with fewer workers, and/or fewer workers in “their prime”, which means better productivity for workers in all age brackets; this can be achieved by augmenting people’s abilities, slashing non-value-added work, and attacking inefficient ways of working (think: bureaucracy paper-based work),
(b) Get more people into the workforce, and give them a solid chance. Think, people out of work, including senior and female participation incentives and corresponding jobs design; fixing the skill mismatch by providing better signals to young people as they train through universities, and do a better job at targeted, continuous education; fixing location mismatch by improving immigration flows, and increasing remote work across all sectors.
AI can certainly support these. While most of the limelight is taken by exciting technological progress, a large part of the battle is being fought on the front of organisational design, including processes and people’s skills.
Consider the following. The promise of AI is an explosion of new business and operating models that were impossible before, including all sorts of productive augmentation to scarce workers (think of the lack of skilled tradespeople) or workers whose physical and mental conditions may need support. But today’s institutions, their processes, and our culture - and even our technology - aren’t necessarily set up to leverage people beyond a certain age.
The current volatile and fast-evolving conditions make many older people feel exposed, and give them even more incentives to barricade themselves while they can - and who wouldn’t. Just look at South Korea, one of the fastest-ageing countries yet, lacking a public pension scheme for many, and where 40% of elderly are under the poverty line? And gig work isn’t likely to solve the problem by itself, especially in its current form.
We must make the future of work more elderly-friendly, just not at the expense of younger people. For instance, AI-supported coaching of people to better collaborate across ages (and cultures), or smarter job design, recruitment and training, will go a long way. Retirement should also be reinvented, for instance with useful jobs helping keep individuals economically independent, socially connected and mentally fit.3 Older people have many social skills that can prove invaluable to individuals in need - children and adults - and their communities. Keeping them mentally and socially engaged improves their mental abilities, and keeps them fitter overall, which also helps keep the related healthcare costs down. AI, done well as part of human-centred processes, can help here - augmenting the older professionals’ individual intelligence, and their ability to work in groups with others.
On the (unsustainable) cost side, think of the future of healthcare whose cost is disproportionally allocated to older generations, where artificial intelligence can tackle not just the problem of treating illnesses, but also managing wellness, which is a much less well-monetised space and attracts a minority of the investment compared to clinical health treatments. Or think of the revolution in providing personal tutors to learners of any age, combating Baumol’s disease reflected in the constant increase of the cost of education. This, for instance, would help not just students but anyone who needs to be redeployed and learn new skills (as AI takes over parts of jobs, or as the climate transition shifts economic activity) or even a new culture (supporting, for instance, scaled-up immigration).
In general, it seems clear that the revolution in generation and access to knowledge can help solve many problems, assuming the right incentives are in place for individuals and institutions - which brings us to the last point.
From a governance standpoint, we will need to (c) redesign our collective governance systems to give younger people more of a voice. A digital evolution of the governance structures could yield new means of voting and civil engagement, as pioneered in Taiwan. Governance needs to reflect the changing demographics, with a 16-year-old with 80 years to live able to vote on environmental policies, for example (some EU countries allow that already) - considering that octogenarians with few years of life left are allowed to. More futuristically, it is not impossible to think about younger generations having more sway in future-endangering policies (remaining-lifespan weightage?), or being better represented by AI agents who help their networks organize more effectively, and systematically but democratically pressurize authorities.
There are many more general interventions that we could design at a systemic level, that we don’t have space to discuss here (but are discussed in depth here).
An older world can be good, but only if we make it so
We don’t have the option not to try. Our ageing society breeds conservatism - writ large. But conservatism clashes with a world that has already integrated (and priced) future expectations into its present systems—be they the stock market, pensions, or general welfare. We’re essentially borrowing from the future, banking on growth and improvements in efficiency, even if those innovations are yet to be realised. However, the current demographic trends undermine these assumptions, and as a result, we cannot allow demographics to stifle our focus and drive for progress. While “steady state” may serve well to some as a political slogan, it is economically unsustainable, and consequently socially untenable. When financial shortfalls and lack of opportunities arise, they breed conflict, leading to significant, perhaps catastrophic, disruptions.
Fertility incentives are unlikely to give us the demographics that we want. And we can’t pretend that our ways of working, governing, and innovating are “just fine” in the presence of such a large demographic shift. Conversely, managing a shrinking population well could be a lever for reducing humans’ footprint on the planet without compromising our welfare.
While this may not make for easy conversation at the kitchen table - or in parliament - the upside is huge. And the longer-term downside, if we don’t deal with it with all the tools we have, is very unpalatable.
As so often occurs, Gianni has given us a clear view of a complex situation, and I generally agree with just about everything, in spite of being a 78-year-old who is toward the left of the political spectrum. The biggest challenge, in many ways, will be to tap the helpful parts of the "wisdom of age" while assuring that the young and others wanting to be inventive and entrepreneurial are not impeded. Us old folks, for example, might have been more useful to recent efforts to diversify higher education and might have helped avoid the actions that prompted a huge pushback from a young right wing. I also suspect that while most older scholar's writings ignore the present for the past, every now and then we manage to find guidance from the past that can help the present. Gianni's presentation certainly allows for that, if it is read carefully. The interesting question is whether it will be easier to train us old folks to be more helpful to the energetic young or whether it will more likely to be successful if we train intelligent systems to present relevant wisdom of the past to younger inventors while filtering out the self-centered bullshit that us old farts sometimes feel impelled to include.
Deep and broad essay, raising crucial questions, both bravely and sensitively; thank you!
I wonder how the subjective experience of ever-nearer mortality might affect our collective psychology, and hence our collective behavior, on the margin...
On the one hand, take people with terminal diagnoses... after they make peace with their condition, they often scramble to find ultimate meaning and clarity; they "settle their affairs" often decisively and bravely; they take risks, learn new things, power through discomfort, "make a difference", all in the little time they have left... in so many ways, they are more alive, more productive, and more entrepreneurial when their anticipated future is suddenly and brutally compressed... (Kurosawa's "Ikiru" is magnificent exploration in film of this phenomenon).
At a population level, external shocks like wars and pandemics probably work in a similar way: these existential crises unleash great creativity and fearsome productivity, and can permanently change institutions and collective expectations...
In theory, older people - especially those with savings, few obligations, and their health largely intact - should be unfettered risk takers and adventurers. The oldest among us have the least to lose, and a short and shrinking period to lose it.
But this isn't how most older folk actually age, is it? Rather, older folks become ever more insular and staid, quieter and sadder, consume rather than produce, and avoid pain and seek comfort, let alone embrace change and risk...
So how do we get older folk to act more like those facing a terminal diagnosis or other existential crisis? I think your whole argument is flipped if more older folk ended their lives with a bang and not a whimper... So why is Tennyson's Ulysses just a feelgood poem, and not a social norm?