[armchairhacker]

I think limited rights for old people are like limited rights for children: justified because there is cognitive decline, and every individual (except children who tragically die young) gets to live some life with full rights.

The biggest problem is that it’s depressing. A child gets to look forward to growing up and having full rights, an old person is already looking forward to declining and dying and the loss of rights reflects that. Another problem is that, just as some old people are scammed, taking away rights will have other old people abused by their “caretakers” (e.g. one relative hurting them and stealing from them even against other relatives, which already happens).

So I want to see it implemented but tied with our culture restoring respect for old people, giving them a sense of purpose, and looking out for those who aren’t our relatives. Specifically including reforming retirement homes, many which take advantage of their residents, and stronger safeguards against abusive relatives who (already are seizing and) abuse POA. I’d like to hear what old people themselves think, because maybe I don’t (empathetically) understand the consequences, but although maybe outside the Overton Window logically it seems reasonable.

[close04]

Children are legally differentiated from adults purely based on age, not some formal verification. You get extra rights and obligations at 18, that’s a very objective criterion.

Declaring someone mentally unfit is anything but objective and it’s very ripe for abuse.

[Terr_]

> Children are legally differentiated from adults purely based on age, not some formal verification.

Often but not always: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_of_minors

[armchairhacker]

I’m saying that old people should also be differentiated by age: once you reach some age (maybe 70 or 80, the same age for everyone) you lose certain rights. This is separate from the existing system.

[ninalanyon]

> limited rights for old people

How old did you have in mind?

> an old person is already looking forward to declining and dying

All of my colleagues who have died in old age (at least late seventies) did so in full command of their senses, one of them still contributing to international technical committees into their eighties.

Age is not a useful measure in this field.

[armchairhacker]

> How old did you have in mind?

Somewhere between 70 and 80

> All of my colleagues who have died in old age (at least late seventies) did so in full command of their senses, one of them still contributing to international technical committees into their eighties.

Likewise, there are 14-year-olds and 16-year-olds smarter and more mature than most adults. Loss of rights doesn't mean they can't contribute, have others deny opportunities or abuse them; people would still look out for them, they would have more protection than children in this regard. Mainly, it makes it easier and more common to control finances, prevent from driving, and prevent from rotting in front of the TV old people who have lost their senses.

[ninalanyon]

Perhaps I'm misreading you but giving up rights and losing rights are two different ideas.

I'm 70 by the way. If I want to plan for this I can set up a power of attorney.

[f1ay]

There's also the strain and discontent that comes with being the person who is taking away the rights and putting up guardrails for your loved ones. I opted not to do so for my mother shortly before she was scammed out of her life's savings, because I thought I could train her against scams.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Nothing to do with cognitive decline. From the article:

>> It is tempting, and wrong, to attribute the targeting of older adults to naivety. The brief that prompts this article identifies a more uncomfortable truth: the characteristics that make older people disproportionately vulnerable are not deficiencies of intelligence but features of a life well lived. They tend to hold higher average savings balances, the accumulated product of decades of work, which makes them efficient targets — a single successful call can yield far more than one aimed at a younger person. They were raised in, and still operate within, established patterns of trust-based communication, in which a phone call from a distressed relative is answered as a genuine emergency rather than interrogated as a potential attack. They are, through no fault of their own, relatively unfamiliar with the existence of AI voice synthesis, having spent most of their lives in a world where a voice on the line was definitionally a person on the line. And they are exposed, like every parent and grandparent, to the particular emotional architecture of the family-emergency scenario, in which the instinct to protect a child overrides every slower, more sceptical faculty.