Scott analyzes a surprising age-related trend in responses to a parentheses riddle on the SSC survey, exploring possible explanations for why younger respondents were more likely to answer correctly. Longer summary

Scott Alexander discusses a parentheses riddle included in the SSC survey, which unexpectedly revealed a strong correlation between age and the likelihood of answering correctly. Younger respondents were more than twice as likely to choose the correct answer (B) compared to those in their 60s. Scott explores various hypotheses to explain this trend, including tech-savviness, cognitive decline, and survey-taking attitudes, but finds these explanations unsatisfactory. He speculates that age-related cognitive decline might affect parentheses-reading faculties specifically, independent of general intelligence. The post ends with an edit noting commenters' suggestion that younger people might have encountered the riddle before on social media. Shorter summary