> As someone well past "peak" fluid intelligence at this point, I always hate reading research like this. "Crystallized intelligence" and "emotional intelligence" are the consolation prizes no one really wants.

At the end, I agree with you, but for a different reason. My fluid intelligence is still doing well, but my newly acquired “crystallized” and “emotional” intelligence are just good to let me understand why people want to write existential horror stories. Hell, I now realize that some of the dark stuff I didn’t want to touch with a long pole three years ago are in fact escapism to a rosier parallel universe. I liked myself better when I was sixteen years old and I couldn’t understand that boy one year older than me who said he despised our prisons of flesh. May you be doing well Y.P., and if you happen to stumble upon this paragraph, know it took me 25 years to see what you saw so clearly.