October 31, 2025
Here’s something that might surprise you.
At what age, generally, does intelligence peak?
Answer: 60.
When we talk about intelligence peaking around age 60, we’re really talking about a specific kind of smarts that often gets overlooked in a youth-obsessed culture.
People joke about “senior moments” or worry about mental decline as they age. But here’s the thing…while certain cognitive abilities do slow down with age, others actually get better. And some of the most important ones hit their stride around the sixth decade of life.
Let’s talk about what psychologists call “crystallized intelligence.” Unlike fluid intelligence – which is all about processing speed, problem-solving with new information, and thinking on your feet – crystallized intelligence is the wisdom you’ve accumulated over decades. It’s your vocabulary, your knowledge base, your ability to see patterns because you’ve seen similar situations play out before. And this type of intelligence doesn’t just hold steady as you age; it genuinely improves.
A 60-year-old? They’ve got decades of experience to draw from. They’ve seen trends come and go, witnessed how problems played out in the past, and developed an intuition that only comes from living through countless situations. They can connect dots that younger people don’t even know exist yet.
There’s also something called “pragmatic intelligence” or wisdom, and this is where people in their 50s and 60s really shine. It’s the ability to make sound judgments, understand complex social dynamics, navigate ambiguous situations, and see multiple perspectives simultaneously. You can’t speed-run your way to this kind of intelligence – it requires decades of human experience, mistakes, relationships, and reflection.
Research backs this up too. Studies show that people’s ability to make financial decisions, manage interpersonal conflicts, and exercise emotional regulation often peaks in late middle age and early older adulthood. A 60-year-old brain might be slower at memorizing random lists, but it’s exceptional at understanding context, making nuanced decisions, and synthesizing vast amounts of information into useful insights.
There’s also the confidence factor. By 60, most people have stopped trying to impress everyone and have a clearer sense of what truly matters. This mental clarity allows for sharper thinking in many ways. You’re not clouded by the anxieties and insecurities that often plague younger people. You know what you know, you’re comfortable admitting what you don’t know, and you can focus your cognitive resources on what’s actually important.
Of course, this doesn’t mean every 60-year-old is wiser than every 25-year-old. Individual differences matter enormously, and staying intellectually engaged throughout life makes a huge difference. But as a general principle, the idea that intelligence simply declines with age is wrong. Different types of intelligence follow different trajectories, and some of the most valuable forms of human intelligence are just hitting their peak when many people are thinking about retirement.
I relate this to trading in markets versus other activities. For example, I have trouble sometimes remembering names (you know I’m not unique). I can meet a person and in 10 or 15 minutes, the name has slipped, and I have to ask again. But I can look at a four-legged option position and pretty much tell instantly how much risk lies in it. I don’t need a computer for that. It is my “crystallized intelligence” at work.
But this is also an example of long versus short term memory.
Short-term and long-term memory are two fundamentally different systems for how your brain stores information, and they work in pretty distinct ways.
Short-term memory (also called working memory) is like your brain’s scratch pad. It’s where you temporarily hold information you’re actively using right now. When someone tells you a name and you repeat it to yourself until you can write it down, that’s short-term memory in action. It has a very limited capacity – most people can only hold about seven items at once, and the information fades quickly, usually within 20-30 seconds unless you actively rehearse it.
Think of short-term memory as your mental desktop where you’re working on things in the moment. It’s what lets you follow a conversation, do mental math, or remember what you were about to say. But it’s temporary storage. Once you move on to something else, that information typically vanishes unless it gets transferred to long-term memory.
Long-term memory, on the other hand, is like your brain’s filing cabinet or hard drive. It has essentially unlimited capacity and can store information for years or even your entire lifetime. This is where your childhood memories live, along with facts you learned in school, skills like riding a bike, and what you had for dinner last week.
But it is a little more complicated: Long-term memory comes in different flavors too. There’s explicit memory (things you consciously remember, like facts and events) and implicit memory (things you remember without thinking about it, like how to tie your shoes or ride a bike).
The key difference is really about duration and capacity. Short-term memory is limited and fleeting. It’s your “right now” memory. Long-term memory is vast and enduring, your permanent storage system.
We live in perhaps the first age of man wherein it is more than likely that your mind will fail before your body. As in my piece today about scanning arteries, we spend a lot of time on our physical well-being (well, not everyone but you get it) as opposed to our mental state. If you search for things like “taking care of the brain” you’re advised to do crossword puzzles. OK, that’s helpful, but limited.
And then you get a lot of dubious advice to buy this or that supplement to protect your brain. It can be pretty bad…everyone knows there is currently no cure for Alzheimer’s and yet supplements pretend they can roll it back. Maybe they do, maybe it’s the placebo effect…you imagine you’re getting better.
It could also be a variation of Pascal’s wager. Pascal was an atheist but decided to believe in God because it was a win-win. If there was no God, then no harm done. And if there was a God, at least some small case to plead at the Pearly Gates. So maybe the supplement doesn’t do any good, but other than the money (which tends to be fairly modest) you’re just putting down the Pascal chip on it, just in case it does.
All of this may not matter all that much because help is on the way and dementia in all its terrible manifestations is as hot a research area today as any…hundreds of millions of potential customers, remember. So, you get a steady drip drip drip of advances and good news:
UCSF scientists discovered that a combination of two cancer drugs (letrozole and irinotecan) reduced brain degeneration and restored memory in mouse models of Alzheimer’s. USCF
An experimental drug called GL-II-73 has received FDA clearance for human clinical trials starting in 2025, with early studies showing it can reverse memory deficits in mice by targeting brain function rather than just amyloid buildup. Science Daily
There are over 120 drugs for Alzheimer’s currently in clinical trials, and researchers have discovered that blocking an immune molecule called STING prevents cognitive decline in lab mice. World Economic Forum
If this is a subject that concerns you, either in yourself, or a spouse or a parent, it doesn’t hurt to search for news on the subject from time to time. It will be a positive, hope-giving experience as science moves to a cure that seems to feel ‘inevitable’ as opposed to ‘maybe.’
That is not ‘if’ but ‘when.’
Thoughts, questions, or reflections? I’d love to hear them. You can reach me anytime at anthony@workingprofit.com
