"Anything other than your speculation to back up your belief in individuals neural plasticity having anything to do with the social advances you mention?"
You seem deeply confused. If those changes happened entirely because old people changed their minds, then individual neuroplasticity has a tremendous amount to do with the changes mentioned. On the flip side, in a world with no neuroplasticity at all, we would only see change when people are born with different views.
"Young people have not had a great record of voting. So those changes you are attributing to neural plasticity are likely brought about by those old frozen minds you mention, and less so the young plyable ones if you ask me."
"Young people" and "old people" are not static sets. Imagine a world where young people change their mind frequently until 25, when they stop changing their mind and start voting. You would never see the mind of any individual over-25-year-old change, but the distribution of views in the over-25 population would still change as people enter and leave that population. If social change requires support of some proportion of that population, stopping people from leaving it will slow social change.
I have no strong opinion about just how much our world resembles that one, but your reasoning does not support your claim here. There is some evidence that neuroplasticity tends to decline as people age.
You seem deeply confused. If those changes happened entirely because old people changed their minds, then individual neuroplasticity has a tremendous amount to do with the changes mentioned. On the flip side, in a world with no neuroplasticity at all, we would only see change when people are born with different views.
"Young people have not had a great record of voting. So those changes you are attributing to neural plasticity are likely brought about by those old frozen minds you mention, and less so the young plyable ones if you ask me."
"Young people" and "old people" are not static sets. Imagine a world where young people change their mind frequently until 25, when they stop changing their mind and start voting. You would never see the mind of any individual over-25-year-old change, but the distribution of views in the over-25 population would still change as people enter and leave that population. If social change requires support of some proportion of that population, stopping people from leaving it will slow social change.
I have no strong opinion about just how much our world resembles that one, but your reasoning does not support your claim here. There is some evidence that neuroplasticity tends to decline as people age.