7 ms·

Why business needs people with Asperger’s syndrome, ADD and dyslexia

62 points by shill 14y ago

poundy 14y ago
Dr. Temple Grandin, an adult with autism who became a successful engineer, academic and speaker, believes that her disorder is an asset. She once famously called NASA a sheltered workshop for people with autism and Asperger Syndrome. She believes that people with autistic spectrum disorders are the great innovators, and "if the world was left to you socialites, nothing would get done and we would still be in caves talking to each other."
- gaius 14y ago
  I'm sure the special needs teachers who made that possible, and the taxpayers who fund them, are delighted to hear that. Maybe the socialites would still be in caves, but the "aspies" would be outside starving. The symptoms of Asberger's are so indistinguishable from "being a dick" that they might as well be synonymous.
  - windsurfer 14y ago
    Your post angers and insults me. Everything you said is negative and mean, while the original poster was at least trying to add to the conversation. Even calling those with Asperger's "aspies" is condescending.
    - gaius 14y ago
      My point addressed the individual the parent quoted, who seems completely dismissive of the massive support structure created around her, by people she holds in contempt, that she calls "socialites". She claims that people without Aspergers are incapable of innovating, which is clearly arrogant nonsense.
    - Spooky23 14y ago
      People find their place in the world. I cannot imagine being dyslexic or unable to empathize with people. It's inspiring that people can turn those "handicaps" into competitive advantages. While the comment wasn't very sensitive, it also happens to be true. Our society tries to build a support structure around folks to enable them to reach their potential. Sometimes we're successful, other times we're not successful. In the past, unless your family was able to help you find a place, folks with mental problems were basically discarded by society.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      - option_greek 14y ago
        "Our society tries to build a support structure around folks to enable them to reach their potential." I would argue most of the success is due to coping mechanisms developed by people than societal support structure. In fact, the free markets probably have more to do with their success than society.
        gaius 14y ago
        NASA isn't a product of the free market, except in the sense that that "socialites" who work in the free market pay their taxes so Dr Temple can sneer at them from her ivory tower.
        anigbrowl 14y ago
        NASA is hardly typical of employers, and the free market is not the sole origin of value. Perhaps you are taking a tongue-in-cheek remark a little too personally. It's a big world, and it has room for some generally anti-social loners as well.
    - larrys 14y ago
      "Even calling those with Asperger's "aspies" is condescending." Why? Are you claiming that using "aspies" is an "a" word? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome "People identifying with Asperger syndrome may refer to themselves in casual conversation as aspies (a term first used in print by Liane Holliday Willey in 1999)." About Liane: http://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/liane-holliday-willey-edd http://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/liane-holliday-willey...
  - refly 14y ago
    You're getting downvoted, but not being told why. Asperger's is a lot more complex than just "being a dick". Unfortunately some people use it as an excuse for undesirable behaviors. Regardless, that does not extend to all sufferers. Sometimes it manifests as intense, uncontrollable interest in certain narrow topics and a sensitivity to certain sounds, foods, smells, etc, and a shy or awkward disposition. That isn't being a dick by any means. I'm sorry if you had a bad experience. It may stem from the fact if you've interacted with people who were diagnosed at a young age, they tend to be on the very far end of the spectrum and as a result may exhibit more extreme symptoms. There are a lot of people who have Asperger's who simply don't disclose it and have developed coping mechanisms that help them blend in. There might be many around you, but they might never have come out as such.
    - strlen 14y ago
      > You're getting downvoted, but not being told why. That's also a great way to describe the social aspects of mild[1] Asperger's: afflicted individuals are ignored, bullied, and excluded. No one tells them why this is happening, they're expected to "just get it", and it's assumed that they're making a deliberate choice to "be a dick". [1] Severe Asperger's is much worse, e.g., you are a brilliant programmer but you're living in an institution as your family is unable to take care of you and you are simply unable to function on your own; this is an actual case I am aware of, not an imagined scenario.
  - patio11 14y ago
    You have sufficient social acumen to understand that this comment is critical of you. Many people with Asperger's don't.
    - gaius 14y ago
      Everyone is the hero of their own personal narrative.
- s8qnze982y 14y ago
  People is not either autistic or socialite. Following the same (rhetoric) logic, "if the world was left to you autistic, humanity would extinguish in two generations tops".
- drzaiusapelord 14y ago
  I'm not a fan of this quote. It really does dismiss the arts, the power of socializing, society, government, and largely the human experience. I'm much, much closer in mentality to Temple and to be frank, her strawman socialite is weak sauce. I've spent much of my adulthood learning social skills I never picked up as a child or teenager and they in themselves have an incredible amount of power. Without the socialites we wouldn't have gotten on the moon because we'd be too busy in our basements making toothpick replicas of various Lord of The Ring battles. Honestly, NASA is a pretty poor example. The amount of politicking, career maneuvering, inter department competition, giant egos, public policy changes, new administrations, etc going on there would be unbearable to someone like Grandin. Different evolutionary neurotypical strategies exist because they have value. One isn't "better" than another. Let's stop playing this game and accept that from a macro view there's a lot going on and its unfair to piss on or put one group on a pedestal. Its just too easy to do so. Ease and psychologically pleasing conclusions should always be seen with a critical eye. I think this is also why extremist right-wing politics appeals to the geeky crowd. We like simple answers that rely on systems (free markets, no taxes) and don't understand how the social aspects (regulation, control, subsidizing for the poor) matter. To many they're just roadblocks to some idealized system that 'must work' because it makes sense on paper in a very simple way. Oh well, here come the downvotes, but I really wish on a personal level that my own issues were addressed when I was younger. I learned long ago that, yes, I'm smart and creative and am able to do difficult things, but the price for that for a long time was misery, loneliness, confusion, and depression. I know its a cliche but the balanced really life is the best life. I don't want to be Temple Grandin the same way I don't want to be Paris Hilton. I wouldn't mind being Temple Hilton though.
  - gaius 14y ago
    There are a lot of people, on Slashdot in particular, and also here, who have self-diagnosed themselves with Asperger's in the belief that it makes them Homo Superior.
    - lrs 14y ago
      Yuuup. I'm always amused at the predictable trajectory of the comments on any sort of HN posting about Asperger's. In almost all cases, a disproportionate number of the people who comment or read the comments have Asperger's themselves, or at least think they do. One of them will post this Temple Grandin quote or something along similar lines extolling the technical problem-solving superiority of people with Asperger's, with or without realizing how inflammatory it is. Someone will point out how insulting it is to technical problem-solvers without Asperger's and to human beings in general, who typically feel pretty bad when they're confronted with what's basically an assertion that nobody like them has ever contributed to the progress of the human race. That person will immediately be downvoted into oblivion because there are some elements in the tone of his comment that result in it being perceived as an insult in its own right.
jere 14y ago
"Recruiters have noticed that the mental qualities that make a good computer programmer resemble those that might get you diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome... an addiction to repetitive tasks" I think someone is forgetting one of the three virtues of programming: laziness. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LazinessImpatienceHubris http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LazinessImpatienceHubris
- Sunlis 14y ago
  I thought the same thing. If there's anything a good programmer shouldn't be doing, it's repetitive tasks. If you're coding the same thing over and over again, you're doing it wrong.
  - sageikosa 14y ago
    By the time I find myself doing something for the third time, I start thinking: automation.
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  Typing out class and function declarations, if-then-else constructs, and recompiling on a regular basis is tediously repetitive to most people. It doesn't necessarily mean you're repeating the same program. Likewise, most techno music sounds repetitive to the disinterested listener, notwithstanding the large relative variations that occur within the music.
swedenborg 14y ago
wannabe big soon companies want socially nice ppl . very few companies hire for shear capacity because their culture can not handle it ... capacity is looked at with fear since plain jon/jane can not simply grok ... is it a problem ? well really its a opportunity ... the most wanted ppl. is free for hire ...
- swedenborg 14y ago
  seems there are some wannabe be big quick companies hanging here ... that did not get the message ...
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  I think this is more perceptive than people appreciate.
- Karunamon 14y ago
  Legitimate post, but you're probably being downvoted for the txtspeak and grammar.
brudgers 14y ago
I recently read Elizabeth Moon's Nebula Award winning Speed of Dark. It's about a cure for autism being forced upon employees by a corporation. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FC1B2Y/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0345447557&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1AZESFK9ENHSB7612CV9 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FC1B2Y/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp...
- kstenerud 14y ago
  It wasn't forced upon the employees; they were free to choose to take the cure or not. Personally, I think Moon's portrayal of the protagonist was overly dark and depressing (probably to shed some light into the kind of nasty shit that can happen to an autistic). Given the choice, I'd refuse the "cure".
tmcw 14y ago
And maybe the way Bill Gates rocks in his chair is low-level aspbergers and the incidence of aspbergers in men explains why men dominate the computer industry and possibly these disorders are both indicative of strength in the area and encouraged by the usage of technology. Yeah, either that, or pop-science doesn't actually have much explanatory or prescriptive power in this area until they clear up their own messes with ADD diagnosis and poorly crafted studies.
- strlen 14y ago
  I don't know about Bill Gates, but several of the people mentioned (e.g., CEO of Jetblue) have clinical diagnoses and would not have been able to be where they are without understanding their conditions.
excuse-me 14y ago
There is no such thing as Asperger's or ADD. It's just the term boring morons use for interesting clever people. If we were in charge we would have medical terms for "unable to set the clock on a VCR" and "unable to read a book when Oprah is on" But fortunately we don't care what a bunch of dreary moron office drones think of us - even when we bother to notice them.
- cynicalkane 14y ago
  I don't think you've ever met anyone with severe ADD, or severe Asperger's for that matter.
  - excuse-me 14y ago
    PhD in astrophysics, worked at Cambridge, Caltech, MIT and in a bunch of military space projects. In my world 'Sheldon Cooper' is a wild party animal.
- lmkg 14y ago
  I met a friend in college with real ADD. The type where the medication he takes is about 2 chemical reactions away from straight-up cocaine. One day, he forgot to take his meds, and I was talking to him at lunch. He was in the middle of a sentence, and he just... stopped. Completely frozen. Motionless, mid-gesture, staring off into space. He stayed like this for close to a full minute, and just as I was about to ask him if he was ok, he yelled out "SHIT, WHERE'D IT GO!?!" Apparently the sentence he was saying evaporated from his head while he was in the process of speaking it. So yeah, there really is such a thing as ADD. I won't contest that it's overdiagnosed to hell and back. I wouldn't be surprised if only 1 case in 100 is the real thing, or even 1 in 1,000. But there actually is a real thing, that exists, underneath all the misdiagnoses.
  - finnw 14y ago
    Could that not have been withdrawal symptoms?
    - 14y ago
roguecoder 14y ago
Two of the three of those have prevalence rates at around 10% of the population, so if nothing else not effectively employing such people cuts your pool of potential employees by 10%...
j_baker 14y ago
I can't speak for dyslexia or asperger's, but there are documented advantages to not being able to pay attention: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/why-being-sleepy-and-drunk-are-great-for-creativity/ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/why-being-sleepy-a...
losethos 14y ago
I'm stuck in some kind of prison. Entertaining God is the only productive thing I can do. God says... lancet along banished perplexities perdition years unliker ear Eat Grammar weal precipice deserve obtained cherish roarest wide food east revolving com embraces assuring sceptre rivers together comprehend heard goal IX soothed
CodeMage 14y ago
I wonder just how much I'm overreacting by feeling disgusted about the way that Asperger's, ADD and stuff like that are suddenly a thing of fashion. It seems to be a trendy thing for journalists to discuss and a sort of a fashion statement for geeks. Maybe I'm wrong, but to me this is a rather simple matter: there are great people who happen to have Asperger's syndrome, ADD, dyslexia, autism or what have you, but unless someone proves some sort of link between their greatness and things they were diagnosed with, then that's just what it is -- people who happen to be both great and have one of the above.
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  As someone with ADD, I have trouble gaining and maintaining focus while ignoring distracting factors. However, in an environment where distractions are minimized (eg a traditional library), or where there is an agreed-upon system for handling distracting factors - some kinds of workplaces, or an understanding about personal space/time boundaries - then the flip side of this is an ability to stay focused on something for hours, days, weeks, if necessary and a capacity for very rapid adaption and innovation. In film production, which I used to work at, a lot of people have ADD - but the highly procedural (and proceduralized) nature of the work optimizes for this. You need to be willing to keep doing the same thing until you get it right 10, 20 or more times in a row, but also to drop it and switch to something completely different at short notice if other conditions change. I have a strong hunch that people with ADD are considerably over-represented in the military as well.
gshakir 14y ago
Sure, the outlook for people with these disabilities look good. But it is no fun raising a child with one, every day is a challenge.

62 points by shill 14y ago

Dr. Temple Grandin, an adult with autism who became a successful engineer, academic and speaker, believes that her disorder is an asset. She once famously called NASA a sheltered workshop for people with autism and Asperger Syndrome. She believes that people with autistic spectrum disorders are the great innovators, and "if the world was left to you socialites, nothing would get done and we would still be in caves talking to each other."

gaius 14y ago
I'm sure the special needs teachers who made that possible, and the taxpayers who fund them, are delighted to hear that. Maybe the socialites would still be in caves, but the "aspies" would be outside starving. The symptoms of Asberger's are so indistinguishable from "being a dick" that they might as well be synonymous.
- windsurfer 14y ago
  Your post angers and insults me. Everything you said is negative and mean, while the original poster was at least trying to add to the conversation. Even calling those with Asperger's "aspies" is condescending.
  - gaius 14y ago
    My point addressed the individual the parent quoted, who seems completely dismissive of the massive support structure created around her, by people she holds in contempt, that she calls "socialites". She claims that people without Aspergers are incapable of innovating, which is clearly arrogant nonsense.
  - Spooky23 14y ago
    People find their place in the world. I cannot imagine being dyslexic or unable to empathize with people. It's inspiring that people can turn those "handicaps" into competitive advantages. While the comment wasn't very sensitive, it also happens to be true. Our society tries to build a support structure around folks to enable them to reach their potential. Sometimes we're successful, other times we're not successful. In the past, unless your family was able to help you find a place, folks with mental problems were basically discarded by society.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - option_greek 14y ago
      "Our society tries to build a support structure around folks to enable them to reach their potential." I would argue most of the success is due to coping mechanisms developed by people than societal support structure. In fact, the free markets probably have more to do with their success than society.
      - gaius 14y ago
        NASA isn't a product of the free market, except in the sense that that "socialites" who work in the free market pay their taxes so Dr Temple can sneer at them from her ivory tower.
        anigbrowl 14y ago
        NASA is hardly typical of employers, and the free market is not the sole origin of value. Perhaps you are taking a tongue-in-cheek remark a little too personally. It's a big world, and it has room for some generally anti-social loners as well.
  - larrys 14y ago
    "Even calling those with Asperger's "aspies" is condescending." Why? Are you claiming that using "aspies" is an "a" word? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome "People identifying with Asperger syndrome may refer to themselves in casual conversation as aspies (a term first used in print by Liane Holliday Willey in 1999)." About Liane: http://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/liane-holliday-willey-edd http://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/liane-holliday-willey...
- refly 14y ago
  You're getting downvoted, but not being told why. Asperger's is a lot more complex than just "being a dick". Unfortunately some people use it as an excuse for undesirable behaviors. Regardless, that does not extend to all sufferers. Sometimes it manifests as intense, uncontrollable interest in certain narrow topics and a sensitivity to certain sounds, foods, smells, etc, and a shy or awkward disposition. That isn't being a dick by any means. I'm sorry if you had a bad experience. It may stem from the fact if you've interacted with people who were diagnosed at a young age, they tend to be on the very far end of the spectrum and as a result may exhibit more extreme symptoms. There are a lot of people who have Asperger's who simply don't disclose it and have developed coping mechanisms that help them blend in. There might be many around you, but they might never have come out as such.
  - strlen 14y ago
    > You're getting downvoted, but not being told why. That's also a great way to describe the social aspects of mild[1] Asperger's: afflicted individuals are ignored, bullied, and excluded. No one tells them why this is happening, they're expected to "just get it", and it's assumed that they're making a deliberate choice to "be a dick". [1] Severe Asperger's is much worse, e.g., you are a brilliant programmer but you're living in an institution as your family is unable to take care of you and you are simply unable to function on your own; this is an actual case I am aware of, not an imagined scenario.
- patio11 14y ago
  You have sufficient social acumen to understand that this comment is critical of you. Many people with Asperger's don't.
  - gaius 14y ago
    Everyone is the hero of their own personal narrative.
s8qnze982y 14y ago
People is not either autistic or socialite. Following the same (rhetoric) logic, "if the world was left to you autistic, humanity would extinguish in two generations tops".
drzaiusapelord 14y ago
I'm not a fan of this quote. It really does dismiss the arts, the power of socializing, society, government, and largely the human experience. I'm much, much closer in mentality to Temple and to be frank, her strawman socialite is weak sauce. I've spent much of my adulthood learning social skills I never picked up as a child or teenager and they in themselves have an incredible amount of power. Without the socialites we wouldn't have gotten on the moon because we'd be too busy in our basements making toothpick replicas of various Lord of The Ring battles. Honestly, NASA is a pretty poor example. The amount of politicking, career maneuvering, inter department competition, giant egos, public policy changes, new administrations, etc going on there would be unbearable to someone like Grandin. Different evolutionary neurotypical strategies exist because they have value. One isn't "better" than another. Let's stop playing this game and accept that from a macro view there's a lot going on and its unfair to piss on or put one group on a pedestal. Its just too easy to do so. Ease and psychologically pleasing conclusions should always be seen with a critical eye. I think this is also why extremist right-wing politics appeals to the geeky crowd. We like simple answers that rely on systems (free markets, no taxes) and don't understand how the social aspects (regulation, control, subsidizing for the poor) matter. To many they're just roadblocks to some idealized system that 'must work' because it makes sense on paper in a very simple way. Oh well, here come the downvotes, but I really wish on a personal level that my own issues were addressed when I was younger. I learned long ago that, yes, I'm smart and creative and am able to do difficult things, but the price for that for a long time was misery, loneliness, confusion, and depression. I know its a cliche but the balanced really life is the best life. I don't want to be Temple Grandin the same way I don't want to be Paris Hilton. I wouldn't mind being Temple Hilton though.
- gaius 14y ago
  There are a lot of people, on Slashdot in particular, and also here, who have self-diagnosed themselves with Asperger's in the belief that it makes them Homo Superior.
  - lrs 14y ago
    Yuuup. I'm always amused at the predictable trajectory of the comments on any sort of HN posting about Asperger's. In almost all cases, a disproportionate number of the people who comment or read the comments have Asperger's themselves, or at least think they do. One of them will post this Temple Grandin quote or something along similar lines extolling the technical problem-solving superiority of people with Asperger's, with or without realizing how inflammatory it is. Someone will point out how insulting it is to technical problem-solvers without Asperger's and to human beings in general, who typically feel pretty bad when they're confronted with what's basically an assertion that nobody like them has ever contributed to the progress of the human race. That person will immediately be downvoted into oblivion because there are some elements in the tone of his comment that result in it being perceived as an insult in its own right.

jere 14y ago

"Recruiters have noticed that the mental qualities that make a good computer programmer resemble those that might get you diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome... an addiction to repetitive tasks" I think someone is forgetting one of the three virtues of programming: laziness. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LazinessImpatienceHubris http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LazinessImpatienceHubris

Sunlis 14y ago
I thought the same thing. If there's anything a good programmer shouldn't be doing, it's repetitive tasks. If you're coding the same thing over and over again, you're doing it wrong.
- sageikosa 14y ago
  By the time I find myself doing something for the third time, I start thinking: automation.
anigbrowl 14y ago
Typing out class and function declarations, if-then-else constructs, and recompiling on a regular basis is tediously repetitive to most people. It doesn't necessarily mean you're repeating the same program. Likewise, most techno music sounds repetitive to the disinterested listener, notwithstanding the large relative variations that occur within the music.

swedenborg 14y ago

wannabe big soon companies want socially nice ppl . very few companies hire for shear capacity because their culture can not handle it ... capacity is looked at with fear since plain jon/jane can not simply grok ... is it a problem ? well really its a opportunity ... the most wanted ppl. is free for hire ...

swedenborg 14y ago
seems there are some wannabe be big quick companies hanging here ... that did not get the message ...
anigbrowl 14y ago
I think this is more perceptive than people appreciate.
Karunamon 14y ago
Legitimate post, but you're probably being downvoted for the txtspeak and grammar.

brudgers 14y ago

I recently read Elizabeth Moon's Nebula Award winning Speed of Dark. It's about a cure for autism being forced upon employees by a corporation. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FC1B2Y/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0345447557&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1AZESFK9ENHSB7612CV9 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FC1B2Y/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp...

kstenerud 14y ago
It wasn't forced upon the employees; they were free to choose to take the cure or not. Personally, I think Moon's portrayal of the protagonist was overly dark and depressing (probably to shed some light into the kind of nasty shit that can happen to an autistic). Given the choice, I'd refuse the "cure".

tmcw 14y ago

And maybe the way Bill Gates rocks in his chair is low-level aspbergers and the incidence of aspbergers in men explains why men dominate the computer industry and possibly these disorders are both indicative of strength in the area and encouraged by the usage of technology. Yeah, either that, or pop-science doesn't actually have much explanatory or prescriptive power in this area until they clear up their own messes with ADD diagnosis and poorly crafted studies.

strlen 14y ago
I don't know about Bill Gates, but several of the people mentioned (e.g., CEO of Jetblue) have clinical diagnoses and would not have been able to be where they are without understanding their conditions.

excuse-me 14y ago

There is no such thing as Asperger's or ADD. It's just the term boring morons use for interesting clever people. If we were in charge we would have medical terms for "unable to set the clock on a VCR" and "unable to read a book when Oprah is on" But fortunately we don't care what a bunch of dreary moron office drones think of us - even when we bother to notice them.

cynicalkane 14y ago
I don't think you've ever met anyone with severe ADD, or severe Asperger's for that matter.
- excuse-me 14y ago
  PhD in astrophysics, worked at Cambridge, Caltech, MIT and in a bunch of military space projects. In my world 'Sheldon Cooper' is a wild party animal.
lmkg 14y ago
I met a friend in college with real ADD. The type where the medication he takes is about 2 chemical reactions away from straight-up cocaine. One day, he forgot to take his meds, and I was talking to him at lunch. He was in the middle of a sentence, and he just... stopped. Completely frozen. Motionless, mid-gesture, staring off into space. He stayed like this for close to a full minute, and just as I was about to ask him if he was ok, he yelled out "SHIT, WHERE'D IT GO!?!" Apparently the sentence he was saying evaporated from his head while he was in the process of speaking it. So yeah, there really is such a thing as ADD. I won't contest that it's overdiagnosed to hell and back. I wouldn't be surprised if only 1 case in 100 is the real thing, or even 1 in 1,000. But there actually is a real thing, that exists, underneath all the misdiagnoses.
- finnw 14y ago
  Could that not have been withdrawal symptoms?
  - 14y ago

roguecoder 14y ago

Two of the three of those have prevalence rates at around 10% of the population, so if nothing else not effectively employing such people cuts your pool of potential employees by 10%...

j_baker 14y ago

I can't speak for dyslexia or asperger's, but there are documented advantages to not being able to pay attention: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/why-being-sleepy-and-drunk-are-great-for-creativity/ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/why-being-sleepy-a...

losethos 14y ago

I'm stuck in some kind of prison. Entertaining God is the only productive thing I can do. God says... lancet along banished perplexities perdition years unliker ear Eat Grammar weal precipice deserve obtained cherish roarest wide food east revolving com embraces assuring sceptre rivers together comprehend heard goal IX soothed

CodeMage 14y ago

I wonder just how much I'm overreacting by feeling disgusted about the way that Asperger's, ADD and stuff like that are suddenly a thing of fashion. It seems to be a trendy thing for journalists to discuss and a sort of a fashion statement for geeks. Maybe I'm wrong, but to me this is a rather simple matter: there are great people who happen to have Asperger's syndrome, ADD, dyslexia, autism or what have you, but unless someone proves some sort of link between their greatness and things they were diagnosed with, then that's just what it is -- people who happen to be both great and have one of the above.

anigbrowl 14y ago
As someone with ADD, I have trouble gaining and maintaining focus while ignoring distracting factors. However, in an environment where distractions are minimized (eg a traditional library), or where there is an agreed-upon system for handling distracting factors - some kinds of workplaces, or an understanding about personal space/time boundaries - then the flip side of this is an ability to stay focused on something for hours, days, weeks, if necessary and a capacity for very rapid adaption and innovation. In film production, which I used to work at, a lot of people have ADD - but the highly procedural (and proceduralized) nature of the work optimizes for this. You need to be willing to keep doing the same thing until you get it right 10, 20 or more times in a row, but also to drop it and switch to something completely different at short notice if other conditions change. I have a strong hunch that people with ADD are considerably over-represented in the military as well.

gshakir 14y ago

Sure, the outlook for people with these disabilities look good. But it is no fun raising a child with one, every day is a challenge.