You are terrified because somewhere deep down, what you want is someone who will act on worldviews similar to your own, and age is a fairly substantial component of that.
Ultimately, perhaps there is a trend, but my observations simply do not match the premise of people monotonically accumulating wisdom as they age, and in fact there are certain types of gullibility that seem to increase with age, such as the willingness to disregard and disparage scientific or objective fact in favor of personal beliefs, and to prioritize social status over signals of expertise/intelligence when judging authority. And don't forget that 80%+ of successful scams are against older people.
I think there are almost definitely tradeoffs between cognitive flexibility versus cumulative lifetime experiences, and we shouldn't discount the former - just look at how utterly dysregulated tech industries are because of out-of-touch representatives who listen to elites over experts in the field.
Ultimately, perhaps there is a trend, but my observations simply do not match the premise of people monotonically accumulating wisdom as they age, and in fact there are certain types of gullibility that seem to increase with age, such as the willingness to disregard and disparage scientific or objective fact in favor of personal beliefs, and to prioritize social status over signals of expertise/intelligence when judging authority. And don't forget that 80%+ of successful scams are against older people.
I think there are almost definitely tradeoffs between cognitive flexibility versus cumulative lifetime experiences, and we shouldn't discount the former - just look at how utterly dysregulated tech industries are because of out-of-touch representatives who listen to elites over experts in the field.