Should the young pay less tax than the old?

In evolutionary terms, it is obvious why we get more conservative with age. Two strong forces, acting in the same direction, lead us not to bet on rank outsiders when we’re nearing the last race of the day.

First, older people have more experience to draw on when making decisions: if you already know what you like, the need to experiment is much less. But that’s not all. The elderly also have far less time remaining to benefit from experimentation. If you happen on a new cuisine, band, social circle or holiday destination in your twenties, you have many decades to profit from the discovery. Someone in their sixties might have one or two.

In artificial intelligence this is known as the explore-exploit trade-off. Early in the game it pays to invest time in exploring and evaluating your options; later, as the time left for new findings shrinks, it makes sense to devote more energy to exploiting what you have already learned.