If increased understanding is facilitated by coming across the same idea(s) in contrasting contexts then the old have an advantage over the young in simply having come across more contexts. Another advantage is gaining time for these contexts through needing less sleep. I found myself up earlier than reasonable today and decided to catch up with a burgeoning archive of radio recordings. By an amazing coincidence, one of these was a Night Waves special from the Free Thinking Festival on the increasing gap between the generations. The introductory statistics gave pause for thought:

• half of Britons questioned by Barnardos held the view that our young people are “feral and dangerous creatures.” I had come across this recently thanks to Derek Robertson (via John Connell)

• 1/3 of young rarely people spend time with adult relations but 90% of those who do report that they enjoy it

This prompted a leap of the mind to something I read yesterday on Neurons Firing. The post in question contained the following sentence:

“Kosik also pointed out some very salient features to keep in mind. Perhaps the most protective factor against Alzheimer’s is having friends, social networks, and being connected.”

In conjunction with the above points, the solution for all ages seems obvious – the implementation, less so.