I agree with you. But I still find it an interesting theory, which I feel compelled to dig a little deeper into it.
But I’ve made an observation: people on HN seem to respond more to unscientific blog posts, than actual scientific journal articles etc…
So I’ve been occasionally sharing a mixture of both blog posts and more academic papers, and seeing what people are more likely to respond to.
I’m coming to the conclusion that people like easy to read, feel good stuff that takes minimal effort to comprehend versus actual science/academic stuff which may require a little bit more effort to read. This may be why there is such an issue with misinformation/disinformation - however my observations are not scientific either so I can’t say for sure anything about anything.
I really struggled in school, specifically the part where I had to sit close to 8 hours a day listening to someone else talk. I attended an all day seminar recently, and nothing really has changed. As a kid, the only thing I looked forward to in school were the sports classes where I got to run around and play football. But seriously, how/why do we expect high energy kids to be okay with our school system where it's basically just sitting all day? I'm pretty sure I would be a diagnosed with ADHD or whatever if I grew up today, or in a developed country.
What if what we call ADHD is just a normal state of being for a lot of people? I had really good grades too, but the normal class system just did not work for me.
Children are born with endless curiosity about the world and in too many cases our schools systematically squash it.
I’ve never understood why the default assumption when we see a kid struggling to pay attention in class is that there is something wrong with the kid, instead of the obvious: the class is boring.
It's clearly not the same thing though. A teenager who is unable to pay attention in Geography where it's an hour of fauna analysis is not the same thing as someone who is unable to walk. The first clearly has to do with a lack of interest. Just because it's ADA recognized doesn't suddenly make it universally accepted.
It's ADHD when it affects the individual's ability to achieve their goals, otherwise, yes, it is just a normal state of being.
However this classification schema is not necessarily well abided. And so diagnostics can become an expedient.
What we end up with is a rather confusing dreck that is more consistent with art than it is a science - rightly so. However, scientific justification seems to be increasingly necessitous in academia and is permeating more and more into the commons. The consequence of this is a whole field of people who may well be great artists posing as rigid empiricists and this retards both the development of the art while complicating the science by shear bulk, and jointly discrediting it.
The healthy thing to do, I think, is just pointing out that everyone is peculiar, strange, twisted, traumatized and that's simply the human condition. There really isn't a great deal of normal when we consider the multidimensional nature of a person, and existence in even a single tail in some distribution can drastically alter one's inclinations and abilities or cast them deeply into stigma.
In turn I think we would then necessarily have to accept the cold hard fact that a society fit for the human can't be engineered with mechanical expectations, which is a great deal of where these disorders stem from in the first place, the abstraction of man into a mechanical unit, for the sake of expedience.
> Imagine the advantage these traits would confer to hunter-gatherers: an alertness to the subtlest signs of danger, a focus that zeroes in on moving prey. In essence, ADHD could have been Mother Nature's wild card, a survival strategy for our roving ancestors.
As it happens, my daughter and myself are the "hyper aware" members of our family. Both of us seem to be subconsciously constantly scanning our environment all the time. In concrete terms, we are more likely to notice a friend walking on the other side of a street, or that a shop has a broken window on a dark night. Another thing we both have in common is the ability to focus for long periods on a single task, longer than the rest of the family - so we are both not ADHD. Quite the reverse.
But then none of the family has ADHD. The difference seems to be my daughter and I are the introverts. So while the others are busy interacting with each other, we are using our spare mental capacity to scan the world around us.
Dr. Russell Barkley, one of the leading researchers in ADHD, is particularly opposed to this type of pseudo-scientific rhetoric. I think this post should be removed.
Imagine being a part of a nomadic tribe from millennia ago, where every day is a new adventure, filled with unexpected twists and turns. This lifestyle fostered certain characteristics — hyper-awareness, quick reflexes, and impulsive actions
Alternatively, imagine daily walking about the same 500 acres or so for months on end, relearning where every animal and plant is within a boundary, and later in the year moving on to another range of a similar size that you last lived in a year ago (or two years ago).
Hunter gathers are deeply familar with their territory and its resources, they plan on what can be found where, what comes into season when, and they read the ground like a walmart shopper speed reads content on shelves.
They move in a great circle from one location to another, settle in and get comfortable at each station, and move on before exhausting resources leaving plants and animals to replenish for when they return.
Hitting and dropping a feral cat, a rabbit, a wallaby, etc. running out from a burning line of low grass isn't an impulsive action, it's the result of knowing what will happen when setting a cool burn on a still day and being ready with a rock in hand having spent years of youth throwing rocks like a college athlete practices hoops.
I have a sneaking suspicion our London psychiatrist hasn't spent much time with hunter gatherers.
The thing about small scale societies is that there is very little solitary work. Not everybody needs an abundance of executive function. The body doubling technique that some ADHDers use is just everyday life in small scale societies.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 67.6 ms ] threadBut I’ve made an observation: people on HN seem to respond more to unscientific blog posts, than actual scientific journal articles etc…
So I’ve been occasionally sharing a mixture of both blog posts and more academic papers, and seeing what people are more likely to respond to.
I’m coming to the conclusion that people like easy to read, feel good stuff that takes minimal effort to comprehend versus actual science/academic stuff which may require a little bit more effort to read. This may be why there is such an issue with misinformation/disinformation - however my observations are not scientific either so I can’t say for sure anything about anything.
What if what we call ADHD is just a normal state of being for a lot of people? I had really good grades too, but the normal class system just did not work for me.
I’ve never understood why the default assumption when we see a kid struggling to pay attention in class is that there is something wrong with the kid, instead of the obvious: the class is boring.
However this classification schema is not necessarily well abided. And so diagnostics can become an expedient.
What we end up with is a rather confusing dreck that is more consistent with art than it is a science - rightly so. However, scientific justification seems to be increasingly necessitous in academia and is permeating more and more into the commons. The consequence of this is a whole field of people who may well be great artists posing as rigid empiricists and this retards both the development of the art while complicating the science by shear bulk, and jointly discrediting it.
The healthy thing to do, I think, is just pointing out that everyone is peculiar, strange, twisted, traumatized and that's simply the human condition. There really isn't a great deal of normal when we consider the multidimensional nature of a person, and existence in even a single tail in some distribution can drastically alter one's inclinations and abilities or cast them deeply into stigma.
In turn I think we would then necessarily have to accept the cold hard fact that a society fit for the human can't be engineered with mechanical expectations, which is a great deal of where these disorders stem from in the first place, the abstraction of man into a mechanical unit, for the sake of expedience.
Blah blah, rambling. Sorry.
> Imagine the advantage these traits would confer to hunter-gatherers: an alertness to the subtlest signs of danger, a focus that zeroes in on moving prey. In essence, ADHD could have been Mother Nature's wild card, a survival strategy for our roving ancestors.
As it happens, my daughter and myself are the "hyper aware" members of our family. Both of us seem to be subconsciously constantly scanning our environment all the time. In concrete terms, we are more likely to notice a friend walking on the other side of a street, or that a shop has a broken window on a dark night. Another thing we both have in common is the ability to focus for long periods on a single task, longer than the rest of the family - so we are both not ADHD. Quite the reverse.
But then none of the family has ADHD. The difference seems to be my daughter and I are the introverts. So while the others are busy interacting with each other, we are using our spare mental capacity to scan the world around us.
Practical focus on any task that needs doing? Or borderline obsessive, and only on tasks that really interest or motivate you?
Hunter gathers are deeply familar with their territory and its resources, they plan on what can be found where, what comes into season when, and they read the ground like a walmart shopper speed reads content on shelves.
They move in a great circle from one location to another, settle in and get comfortable at each station, and move on before exhausting resources leaving plants and animals to replenish for when they return.
Hitting and dropping a feral cat, a rabbit, a wallaby, etc. running out from a burning line of low grass isn't an impulsive action, it's the result of knowing what will happen when setting a cool burn on a still day and being ready with a rock in hand having spent years of youth throwing rocks like a college athlete practices hoops.
I have a sneaking suspicion our London psychiatrist hasn't spent much time with hunter gatherers.
Here's one, an ocean side dweller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gmCX7R-W4c
Here's another, someone born in riverbed in a desert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UKu3bCbFck