25 isn’t a hard line. The reality is that our brains continue to change forever. But, to use a metaphor, around our mid 20s is when it’s done “cooking”, but just like you might let meat “rest” on the counter for a bit after it’s done cooking, your brain keeps changing, just not to the same degree. Maybe some day if brain scanning technology gets better, and we have a real healthcare system, people could get scans to see when their brain seems to have reached full maturity, especially if they’ve committed a crime. Of course “full maturity” will always be sort of an arbitrary choice because as I said, our brains are never truly finished.
25 isn’t a hard line. The reality is that our brains continue to change forever. But, to use a metaphor, around our mid 20s is when it’s done “cooking”, but just like you might let meat “rest” on the counter for a bit after it’s done cooking, your brain keeps changing, just not to the same degree. Maybe some day if brain scanning technology gets better, and we have a real healthcare system, people could get scans to see when their brain seems to have reached full maturity, especially if they’ve committed a crime. Of course “full maturity” will always be sort of an arbitrary choice because as I said, our brains are never truly finished.