A lot (probably the majority) of ancient philosophers seem to have died at extremely advanced ages. While many of their birthdates are not known, records and depictions do depict them at advanced ages.

(related to earlier points of discussion, though not to later points): 
 
Yes, smarter countries have higher rates of suicide. But that doesnt mean that smarter people are more likely to kill themselves AS A GENERAL RULE (although the "rule" may exist in 21st century society). The intelligence-suicide connection may exist, but I suspect it exists for another reason. There is a strong perceived connection between intelligence and "success". Suicide is associated with lack of success, but ESPECIALLY when such lack of success is attributed to the behavioral/psychological issues. My suspicion is that intelligent-AND-"unsuccessful" people have (relatively) extremely high rates of suicide, primarly because a large PORTION of themselves are especially likely to target their failures to behavioral/psychological issues. This tends to result in abnormally high amounts of self-loathing (and/or) society-loathing feelings. Self-loathing (and/or) society-loathing feelings are (I suspect) HIGHLY associated with suicide. Dumber people are more likely to pinpoint their lack-of-success to non-psychological/behavioral issues, since there's a perceived NON-PSYCHOLOGICAL/BEHAVIORAL connection (or law) between intelligence and success. Such lack of success, as such, does NOT trigger such degrees of self-loathing or society-loathing feelings. 
 
== 
 
In any case, Native Americans have the highest rates of suicide, followed by Asians, then Whites, then Hispanics, then Blacks (if I can recall correctly). This is probably interesting since blacks tend to be the least "successful" group. But at least blacks probably have stronger inter-personal connections than Native Americans and (a large percent) of Asians. *Extreme* sociological phenomena, like suicide, must be analyzed in terms of extremes rather than averages (this is also true for genius/technological success and most mental illnesses). Not all phenomena fit a Gaussian distribution, and in phenomena NOT fitting a Gaussian distribution, end-point phenomena depend on MORE than merely mean and standard deviation. Asians may (ON AVERAGE) have stronger interpersonal connections than people of other groups, but I have reason to suspect that there is a significant percent of Asians (higher than the percent of other groups) that have especially weak interpersonal connections. This, in turn, may lead to especially high rates of suicide.

http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2008/05/99_genetic_individual_differen.php 
 
is probably (partially) it. Executive control and one's degree of ADD-ness matter a lot for these things.

Ugh, I made a mistake, put Arizona into the first category.  
 
Actually though, other than Illinois, there don't seem to be many states with centers of population cooler than the average state temperature (that being said, the United States is generally relatively cool). This is different for the rest of the world though, especially the tropics, where the capitals often tend to be in the cooler regions of the hotter countries (e.g. Nairobi, Mexico City, Quito, Bogota, La Paz). In Europe, the northern capitals tend to be warmer than the rest of their respective countries, but the temperature variation within European countries doesn't seem to be as high as that within countries in, say, Asia

Extremely extremely interesting and thought-provocative research. But the data isn't perfect. A LOT of times, the center of population of the state is *drastically* different in climate from the rest of the state. (this probably won't change the overall correlation, but it may change some data figures). Some examples: 
 
States with centers of population much warmer than average state:  
 
Colorado: Denver (avg. temp 50), Colorado Springs (avg temp 48), Grand Junction and Pueblo (avg temp 53), compare with average state temperature of 45 
Idaho: Boise (avg. temp 51) is very warm compared to rest of Idaho 
Washington: Seattle (avg. temp 53) 
Oregon: Portland 
New York: New York City is in extreme southeast of state, the northern parts are much cooler 
Pennsylvania: Philadelphia is in extreme southeast and much warmer than the rest of the state 
Maine: Portland, ME is in extreme southeast 
Wyoming: Cheyenne and Casper are generally warmer than the western half of the state 
Nevada: Las Vegas is exceptionally hot relative to an otherwise cool state 
California 
Wisconsin, Minnesota, and most of the other northern states probably fit as well but I don't have data on those 
 
States with Centers of population much cooler than average state: 
 
Illinois: Chicago much cooler than rest of state. 
Arizona: Phoenix + Tucson are v. hot relative to other areas of the state 
 
So this could weaken the correlation, perhaps, since the centers of population of northern states tend to be in the warmer regions of them. Mountain states are also cooler than other states, and the centers of population of mountain states tend to be in the relatively warm lowlands of them.

LoL - this survey is funny. 
 
Does anyone have an explanation for the large number of males? Males tend to be less religious and more likely to take risks (perhaps this also tends to make them more anti-authoritative and libertarian). Also - females care more about fairness than males do (as we see in the recent article "is there anything good about men") and genetics is anything but fair.

This is very interesting - I wonder if it could also have interpretations with respect to discrepancy between ethnic groups with respect to insulin resistance and diabetes (which are both related to the speed that starch is digested).

"John Emerson 
 
I hesitate to say anything because I'm not clear about the actual issues, but it seems that geniuses jumping from one discipline to another sometimes revolutionize the second discipline, and sometimes just look stupid. This can be true even when they jump from a harder discipline to a softer one. 
 
I think that the movement of physicists and mathematicians into social science has had very mixed immediate results, though the long-term net result will certainly be positive since the negative results will wash out. (A second factor is that many guys jumped only after they found that they couldn't make it in the tougher science.)" 
 
Hm, that is interesting. Do you know of any books that document anything about this trend?  
 
And is a lot of this research related to complex adaptive systems, the research we see at the Santa Fe Institute?

I'm getting to the age where I'm starting to accumulate enough knowledge such that it becomes very difficult to track down the information using merely "key words" in my brain. So I'm starting to make a list of key words on my personal forum (and on my Gmail account) - and through that I link up important terms to original sources that I've encountered. It's a sort of cognitive tool.  
 
I liked your sentence "individual errors in recall don't result in the collapse of the whole structure of knowledge." It seems that conceptual subjects are the sort of subjects where individual errors in recall do result in the collapse of the whole structure of knowledge. 
 
On a side note - I'm finding e-books increasingly useful for my needs. I even download books that I already have off BitTorrent - since it's a lot easier to keep those books where-ever I go.