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Hallowell and Ratey, who write about ADHD, suggested a new entity for the current world: VAST, the variable attention stimulus trait. It is like ADHD but it is

Hallowell and Ratey, who write about ADHD, suggested a new entity for the current world: VAST, the variable attention stimulus trait. It is like ADHD but it is culturally induced and not presumed to be due to an innate deficiency in executive function. "Beyond the sources of biologically based ADHD, there are a lot of people who act as if they have ADHD but on close inspection turn out not to have the diagnosable condition. These are the people who have ADHD-like symptoms caused by the conditions of modern life. Their “ADHD” is a response to the massive increase in stimuli that now bombard our brains and our world.... "Modern life has trained our brains to go faster and faster, to do more and more, to receive and transmit 24/7, and to require constant stimulation—be it from movies, TV, conversation, even news, as well as the minute-to-minute living of our lives. Most of us can go no more than a few seconds without looking for a screen." It is likely to me that different people have different breaking points, and so one person may recognize the introduction of the smartphone or debut of TikTok as the point where they lost the ability to focus, and another may date it to the rise of LLMs. Hallowell, E. M., & Ratey, J. J. (2021). ADHD 2.0: New science and essential strategies for thriving with distraction—from childhood through adulthood.

amelius 3mo ago
If somebody told me 25 years ago that in the future we all would have a TV on our office desk with 100 channels I would not have believed them. Yet ... the current situation is worse! Thinking of it in terms of mental disorders, I don't think that is going to help much.
- stronglikedan 3mo ago
  The current situation was foretold 20 years ago in the prescient documentary named Idiocracy.
  - afavour 3mo ago
    I’d argue Idiocracy is actually quite the opposite of what the OP was talking about. It has a mildly eugenics-y vibe where the world is bad because poor, stupid people have poor, stupid kids that outnumber the smart ones. OP is talking about something environmental that can affect anyone.
    - jahnu 3mo ago
      Honestly, as fun as the film is I’ve noticed people very rarely mention that disturbing premise.
      - afavour 3mo ago
        Yeah I don't hate the movie by any means I just think it isn't as deep as people often credit it as being. …and if you do credit it with incisive societal commentary you kind of have to engage with the weird implications of what it's saying rather than just come away feeling superior about not being one of the dumb underclass.
        collingreen 3mo ago
        The point of the commentary isn't cryofreezing or the eugenics/handwaved-backstory. Those are a few minute intro just creating the setting and don't make sense nor do they have anything to do with the rest of the plot. The fun in idiocy is the "isnt this dumb!" take on a bunch of society that is one big dumb step worse than current life but certainly recognizable. Everything turned into advertising. Costco expanding into everything. Brainless tv and the related celebrities (that people love for the gimmick but don't give a shit about as people). Health care that only supports a diagnosis by matching to a few kid-friendly tiles. Politics as professional wrestling, nepotism, incompetence, and overpromising. For a related laugh, go look at one of the online quizzes from 2016 about "which of these ten quotes are from a real presidential candidate and which are from president comacho". Idiocracy is a fun, silly satire that is nearly a cartoon, from a bunch of folks who made a bunch of successful social commentary cartoons. It very much isn't a eugenics story - if Mike judge were actually writing that as the intent I think it would be dark and with a vicious ruling class.
      - svachalek 3mo ago
        It would be interesting to remake it, replacing the premise that people are genetically stupid with just the idea that they're habitually stupid from generations of reliance on AI and social media.
  - mindslight 3mo ago
    Idiocracy is downright optimistic compared to our current society. Citizens have one single piece of identification, and it's not even electronic. Their location is only tracked when discrete scanners manage to see that identification. Medical care is provided promptly. Joe Bowers's court case wasn't decided by political meddling, and the two minute hates were only focused on him after he was found guilty. There are security holes in the implementation of the prison that allow intelligent individuals to escape the machine. The president has leadership, speaking ability, policy planning, honesty, work ethic, intelligence, humility, and outright patriotism. Starbucks seems like respectable open employment for adults rather than children being trafficked to some island in secret. Joe Bower's aptitude was eventually recognized and appreciated - the society wants to get better. Like all sci-fi, Idiocracy was largely a reflection of the society it was written in. A society that had values we've long since given up on.
    - Froztnova 3mo ago
      https://xkcd.com/603/ https://xkcd.com/603/
      - mindslight 3mo ago
        Sure, my last sentence was a bit of a broad brush. But anything more substantive that focuses on direct sources of rot usually attracts partisans who don't like the messages.
    - deepsun 3mo ago
      Their leader tried to solve a global problem, not calling it a hoax. When their plan didn't work, they really listened to experts, whatever they had, and changed approach. Too optimistic even for modern times I would say.
  - tezza 3mo ago
    I would add that Brazil (1985) foretold this 41 years ago. The civil servants are addicted to their personal TV and only pause watching it compulsively when the boss comes around. As soon as the boss is out of sight they resume their fixation. From memory it is a loop of a cowboy galloping on a horse.
- stevenwoo 3mo ago
  We are “Amusing Ourselves to Death”.
  - Barbing 3mo ago
    In the introduction to Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman said that the contemporary world was better reflected by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, whose public was oppressed by their addiction to amusement, rather than by Orwell's work, where they were oppressed by state violence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death Thanks for the reminder to read this.
    - OccamsMirror 3mo ago
      ¿Por qué no los dos?
      - Barbing 3mo ago
        Removed that line just before commenting :)
  - amelius 3mo ago
    It's incidentally one of the explanations for the Fermi paradox. "Alien species may isolate themselves in virtual worlds" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Hypothetical_explanations_for_the_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Hypothetical_exp...
- BigTTYGothGF 3mo ago
  I would have believed them, my tv at home had more than 100 channels at the time, and I think we all knew back then that usable video streaming was coming sooner or later.
- projektfu 3mo ago
  Yes, VAST is specifically not ADHD, although a disorder is really defined by how it affects you. For example, some people worry too much, other people have generalized anxiety disorder, and the effect it has on your life is what separates normal from disordered. "The person finds it difficult to control the worry.... The anxiety, worry, or physical symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning." DSM-IV/V Some of the strategies used to help people with ADHD are used to help with VAST-related loss of focus and procrastination, but medication is probably not recommended for those diagnosed as not having ADHD but likely having VAST.
  - bluefirebrand 3mo ago
    It's funny, I googled VAST and the AI search insisting that it's the same as ADHD, it's just a reframing of it It sounds similar but almost coming at it from the opposite angle. ADHD is when your brain's baseline is not producing or using dopamine properly. VAST almost sounds like a sort of burnout, where your brain is overwhelmed and cannot process stuff anymore. The symptoms are the same, the effects are the same, but the cause is different. ADHD root cause is internal lack of stimulation, VAST root cause is external overwhelming stimulation. That's how I understand things anyways
rubyfan 3mo ago
The VAST thing speaks to me. I am capable of deep focus work but often am subject to constant interruption and multiple concurrent urgent demands. During a work week I get a lot done but often feel pulled in a lot of directions like I imagine ADHD might feel like. During the weekends when I am not occupied with a task I often fall asleep. This happens on the first day or two of vacation also. After a few days my brain acclimates to the pace.
- SoftTalker 3mo ago
  > During a work week I get a lot done but often feel pulled in a lot of directions This is normal for any "knowledge" employee or professional, or basically any job that is not strictly defined as doing one or a small number of fixed tasks such as on an assembly line.
- thewebguyd 3mo ago
  > like I imagine ADHD might feel like. Definitely feels like that, with the exception of task initiation. I am capable of deep focus work, but I can't control when (or where). I can block out time on my calendar all I want, if my brain says "Nope, we're not doing work today" then I'm not doing work, interruptions or not. It becomes a real disability in the workplace when everything is defined by more or less rigid schedules and your mode of operating is not a schedule but "whenever my brain says so." Some days that might be 7am, other days its 1am, and sometimes it's an entire week or two of not being able to get jack done and then staying up all night and getting 15 business hours worth of work done at once because you physically can't pull yourself away. I always tell people, its not a deficit of attention, I have plenty of that. Its an inability to direct where and what that attention is on.
  - Forgeties79 3mo ago
    I always joke that what I am interested in doing and when it is accomplished (if ever) comes down to when the Holy Spirit deigns to work through me lol I’ve got a few dozen quarter finished projects still waiting in line…
  - bluefirebrand 3mo ago
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
mordae 3mo ago
Please also note that ADHD-like symptoms can present from sleep Apnea/UARS-induced sleep deprivation and the probability of having Apnea/UARS rises with age. Smoothly for men and a with a sudden jump after menopause for women. So if you feel like you are getting more ADHD-like issues, do consider a sleep study. Early tells are easy: you often feel like shit in the morning.
- Der_Einzige 3mo ago
  One of the many reasons why we should air drop GLP-1 over the entire country, like condoms in Bangladesh!
  - MrDrMcCoy 3mo ago
    Please, no. GLP1s leave you worse off than when you started if you stop taking them. Weight is also not necessarily the factor that leads to sleep apnea; I got diagnosed while having a healthy weight in my 30s.
    - Levitz 3mo ago
      >Please, no. GLP1s leave you worse off than when you started if you stop taking them. This doesn't seem factual, or at the very least, not that simple? https://www.epicresearch.org/articles/two-years-after-stopping-glp-1s-most-patients-sustain-at-least-some-weight-loss/ https://www.epicresearch.org/articles/two-years-after-stoppi...
      - 0x20cowboy 3mo ago
        Not the OP, but there was a lot of talk that glp1 had a negative effect on bone density and in older people it was especially problematic. There is evidence that is not the case though https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8878541/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8878541/
        Izkata 3mo ago
Aurornis 3mo ago
> there are a lot of people who act as if they have ADHD but on close inspection turn out not to have the diagnosable condition This is an interesting way to try to put a label on someone’s behavioral conditioning. One of the common, and growing, problems with Internet discussions of ADHD is that they’ve expanded so much that most young people growing up in a connected world can identity with some influencer’s description of ADHD. Working with young, tech-interested students is worrying right now because across every group you will find most of them saying some variation of believing that they have ADHD. Their basis is usually a combination of Reddit posts and something from a streamer or content creator they follow. Yet most of them don’t have anything resembling focus or executive function problems. I think those with ADHD diagnoses from youth just don’t talk about it much. It’s the people who discovered it on social media who are bringing it up the most in this context. The basis for their belief that they have ADHD is more about feeling that self-discipline is easy and enjoyable for “normies” and the fact that they have to put in some effort to study and keep their room clean instead of watching YouTube and playing video games is indicative of a condition. The old way of trying to draw a line between people who are neurodivergent and neurotypical doesn’t really work on those who came up reading those terms on the internet. For various reasons, the majority of them have come to view themselves as neurodivergent in some way, even when they clearly don’t meet any intended definition of that word. In the teenage years it has almost become an extension of the youthful belief that nobody understands you because you’re different and you see the world uniquely. Along come all of the TikTok creators to explain that these feelings are abnormal and come with all these labels you should apply to yourself. Now they believe that they are neurodivergent and start collecting self-diagnoses. Having a different set of labels could be an interesting way to try to change this dynamic. Instead of one label that’s supposed to represent the entire spectrum from people who cannot function in normal life to the guy who is getting As in all of his classes but feels like studying isn’t as easy as it should be, it might be time to offer some labels for the lighter end of the spectrum so we can get back to using the heavy medical diagnoses to mean something significant. There’s an entire other conversation about how the dilution of diagnoses like ADHD is causing harm to those with serious ADHD because the term doesn’t mean as much any more. Extra labels for mimic conditions or behavioral/personality variants could be a good way to relieve some of that pressure.
- 3mo ago
fierycatnet 3mo ago
That could be me, I don't think I have ADHD but I might have some tendencies that were developed after I moved to the US in my teens. The culture was different, fast moving, and very hectic. My 20s were hell because I couldn't figure it all out. Not much changed since then.
alexjplant 3mo ago
This was a central plot point of the film adaptation of "Johnny Mnemonic". From Wikipedia: > In 2021, society is driven by a virtual Internet, which has created a degenerative effect called "nerve attenuation syndrome" or NAS. Even more hilariously given the purveyors of the distractions we're discussing in this thread: > Megacorporations control much of the world, intensifying the class hostility already created by NAS. Bread and circuses, etc. I believe that given our cultural trajectory one's ability to lint their cognitive intake (that is keep TikTok/Insta/YouTube/podcast garbage viewership to a minimum) will be a large predictor of success. The next generation of doctors and Nobel Prize winners probably won't be watching boobies videos and Minecraft play-throughs.
- fransje26 3mo ago
  > The next generation of doctors and Nobel Prize winners probably won't be watching boobies videos and Minecraft play-throughs. Or they will be, and we will have an even bigger problem..
WindyTree 3mo ago
I was formally diagnosed with ADHD and it continued into adulthood. The only way to suppress it is a diet of raw veggies fruits and meats, combined with like 3 hours of exercise a day and time in nature with silence which my evolutionary ancestors presumably did to survive. The way to make it worse is the combination of sugars, processed foods and flashing stimulus. Point is I think MOST mental illness is the modern world. If you dumped people with severe depression into their ancestors supposedly worse lives 6,0000 years ago, hunting with tribe and sleeping under starry sky, they’d be fine.
- makyavelist 3mo ago
  Agreed
- projektfu 3mo ago
  I don't disagree, especially with depression, anxiety and ADHD. But many people with more fulminant mental disorders in tribal societies would have been lucky to become shamans, more likely they would be outcast or killed.
- lukas099 3mo ago
  Sounds made up.
m463 3mo ago
...as I sit here reading the experienced/insightful/funny posts on hacker news instead of working on more pressing matters.

amelius 3mo ago

If somebody told me 25 years ago that in the future we all would have a TV on our office desk with 100 channels I would not have believed them. Yet ... the current situation is worse! Thinking of it in terms of mental disorders, I don't think that is going to help much.

stronglikedan 3mo ago
The current situation was foretold 20 years ago in the prescient documentary named Idiocracy.
- afavour 3mo ago
  I’d argue Idiocracy is actually quite the opposite of what the OP was talking about. It has a mildly eugenics-y vibe where the world is bad because poor, stupid people have poor, stupid kids that outnumber the smart ones. OP is talking about something environmental that can affect anyone.
  - jahnu 3mo ago
    Honestly, as fun as the film is I’ve noticed people very rarely mention that disturbing premise.
    - afavour 3mo ago
      Yeah I don't hate the movie by any means I just think it isn't as deep as people often credit it as being. …and if you do credit it with incisive societal commentary you kind of have to engage with the weird implications of what it's saying rather than just come away feeling superior about not being one of the dumb underclass.
      - collingreen 3mo ago
        The point of the commentary isn't cryofreezing or the eugenics/handwaved-backstory. Those are a few minute intro just creating the setting and don't make sense nor do they have anything to do with the rest of the plot. The fun in idiocy is the "isnt this dumb!" take on a bunch of society that is one big dumb step worse than current life but certainly recognizable. Everything turned into advertising. Costco expanding into everything. Brainless tv and the related celebrities (that people love for the gimmick but don't give a shit about as people). Health care that only supports a diagnosis by matching to a few kid-friendly tiles. Politics as professional wrestling, nepotism, incompetence, and overpromising. For a related laugh, go look at one of the online quizzes from 2016 about "which of these ten quotes are from a real presidential candidate and which are from president comacho". Idiocracy is a fun, silly satire that is nearly a cartoon, from a bunch of folks who made a bunch of successful social commentary cartoons. It very much isn't a eugenics story - if Mike judge were actually writing that as the intent I think it would be dark and with a vicious ruling class.
    - svachalek 3mo ago
      It would be interesting to remake it, replacing the premise that people are genetically stupid with just the idea that they're habitually stupid from generations of reliance on AI and social media.
- mindslight 3mo ago
  Idiocracy is downright optimistic compared to our current society. Citizens have one single piece of identification, and it's not even electronic. Their location is only tracked when discrete scanners manage to see that identification. Medical care is provided promptly. Joe Bowers's court case wasn't decided by political meddling, and the two minute hates were only focused on him after he was found guilty. There are security holes in the implementation of the prison that allow intelligent individuals to escape the machine. The president has leadership, speaking ability, policy planning, honesty, work ethic, intelligence, humility, and outright patriotism. Starbucks seems like respectable open employment for adults rather than children being trafficked to some island in secret. Joe Bower's aptitude was eventually recognized and appreciated - the society wants to get better. Like all sci-fi, Idiocracy was largely a reflection of the society it was written in. A society that had values we've long since given up on.
  - Froztnova 3mo ago
    https://xkcd.com/603/ https://xkcd.com/603/
    - mindslight 3mo ago
      Sure, my last sentence was a bit of a broad brush. But anything more substantive that focuses on direct sources of rot usually attracts partisans who don't like the messages.
  - deepsun 3mo ago
    Their leader tried to solve a global problem, not calling it a hoax. When their plan didn't work, they really listened to experts, whatever they had, and changed approach. Too optimistic even for modern times I would say.
- tezza 3mo ago
  I would add that Brazil (1985) foretold this 41 years ago. The civil servants are addicted to their personal TV and only pause watching it compulsively when the boss comes around. As soon as the boss is out of sight they resume their fixation. From memory it is a loop of a cowboy galloping on a horse.
stevenwoo 3mo ago
We are “Amusing Ourselves to Death”.
- Barbing 3mo ago
  In the introduction to Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman said that the contemporary world was better reflected by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, whose public was oppressed by their addiction to amusement, rather than by Orwell's work, where they were oppressed by state violence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death Thanks for the reminder to read this.
  - OccamsMirror 3mo ago
    ¿Por qué no los dos?
    - Barbing 3mo ago
      Removed that line just before commenting :)
- amelius 3mo ago
  It's incidentally one of the explanations for the Fermi paradox. "Alien species may isolate themselves in virtual worlds" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Hypothetical_explanations_for_the_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Hypothetical_exp...
BigTTYGothGF 3mo ago
I would have believed them, my tv at home had more than 100 channels at the time, and I think we all knew back then that usable video streaming was coming sooner or later.
projektfu 3mo ago
Yes, VAST is specifically not ADHD, although a disorder is really defined by how it affects you. For example, some people worry too much, other people have generalized anxiety disorder, and the effect it has on your life is what separates normal from disordered. "The person finds it difficult to control the worry.... The anxiety, worry, or physical symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning." DSM-IV/V Some of the strategies used to help people with ADHD are used to help with VAST-related loss of focus and procrastination, but medication is probably not recommended for those diagnosed as not having ADHD but likely having VAST.
- bluefirebrand 3mo ago
  It's funny, I googled VAST and the AI search insisting that it's the same as ADHD, it's just a reframing of it It sounds similar but almost coming at it from the opposite angle. ADHD is when your brain's baseline is not producing or using dopamine properly. VAST almost sounds like a sort of burnout, where your brain is overwhelmed and cannot process stuff anymore. The symptoms are the same, the effects are the same, but the cause is different. ADHD root cause is internal lack of stimulation, VAST root cause is external overwhelming stimulation. That's how I understand things anyways

rubyfan 3mo ago

The VAST thing speaks to me. I am capable of deep focus work but often am subject to constant interruption and multiple concurrent urgent demands. During a work week I get a lot done but often feel pulled in a lot of directions like I imagine ADHD might feel like. During the weekends when I am not occupied with a task I often fall asleep. This happens on the first day or two of vacation also. After a few days my brain acclimates to the pace.

SoftTalker 3mo ago
> During a work week I get a lot done but often feel pulled in a lot of directions This is normal for any "knowledge" employee or professional, or basically any job that is not strictly defined as doing one or a small number of fixed tasks such as on an assembly line.
thewebguyd 3mo ago
> like I imagine ADHD might feel like. Definitely feels like that, with the exception of task initiation. I am capable of deep focus work, but I can't control when (or where). I can block out time on my calendar all I want, if my brain says "Nope, we're not doing work today" then I'm not doing work, interruptions or not. It becomes a real disability in the workplace when everything is defined by more or less rigid schedules and your mode of operating is not a schedule but "whenever my brain says so." Some days that might be 7am, other days its 1am, and sometimes it's an entire week or two of not being able to get jack done and then staying up all night and getting 15 business hours worth of work done at once because you physically can't pull yourself away. I always tell people, its not a deficit of attention, I have plenty of that. Its an inability to direct where and what that attention is on.
- Forgeties79 3mo ago
  I always joke that what I am interested in doing and when it is accomplished (if ever) comes down to when the Holy Spirit deigns to work through me lol I’ve got a few dozen quarter finished projects still waiting in line…
- bluefirebrand 3mo ago

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

mordae 3mo ago

Please also note that ADHD-like symptoms can present from sleep Apnea/UARS-induced sleep deprivation and the probability of having Apnea/UARS rises with age. Smoothly for men and a with a sudden jump after menopause for women. So if you feel like you are getting more ADHD-like issues, do consider a sleep study. Early tells are easy: you often feel like shit in the morning.

Der_Einzige 3mo ago
One of the many reasons why we should air drop GLP-1 over the entire country, like condoms in Bangladesh!
- MrDrMcCoy 3mo ago
  Please, no. GLP1s leave you worse off than when you started if you stop taking them. Weight is also not necessarily the factor that leads to sleep apnea; I got diagnosed while having a healthy weight in my 30s.
  - Levitz 3mo ago
    >Please, no. GLP1s leave you worse off than when you started if you stop taking them. This doesn't seem factual, or at the very least, not that simple? https://www.epicresearch.org/articles/two-years-after-stopping-glp-1s-most-patients-sustain-at-least-some-weight-loss/ https://www.epicresearch.org/articles/two-years-after-stoppi...
    - 0x20cowboy 3mo ago
      Not the OP, but there was a lot of talk that glp1 had a negative effect on bone density and in older people it was especially problematic. There is evidence that is not the case though https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8878541/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8878541/
      - Izkata 3mo ago

Aurornis 3mo ago

> there are a lot of people who act as if they have ADHD but on close inspection turn out not to have the diagnosable condition This is an interesting way to try to put a label on someone’s behavioral conditioning. One of the common, and growing, problems with Internet discussions of ADHD is that they’ve expanded so much that most young people growing up in a connected world can identity with some influencer’s description of ADHD. Working with young, tech-interested students is worrying right now because across every group you will find most of them saying some variation of believing that they have ADHD. Their basis is usually a combination of Reddit posts and something from a streamer or content creator they follow. Yet most of them don’t have anything resembling focus or executive function problems. I think those with ADHD diagnoses from youth just don’t talk about it much. It’s the people who discovered it on social media who are bringing it up the most in this context. The basis for their belief that they have ADHD is more about feeling that self-discipline is easy and enjoyable for “normies” and the fact that they have to put in some effort to study and keep their room clean instead of watching YouTube and playing video games is indicative of a condition. The old way of trying to draw a line between people who are neurodivergent and neurotypical doesn’t really work on those who came up reading those terms on the internet. For various reasons, the majority of them have come to view themselves as neurodivergent in some way, even when they clearly don’t meet any intended definition of that word. In the teenage years it has almost become an extension of the youthful belief that nobody understands you because you’re different and you see the world uniquely. Along come all of the TikTok creators to explain that these feelings are abnormal and come with all these labels you should apply to yourself. Now they believe that they are neurodivergent and start collecting self-diagnoses. Having a different set of labels could be an interesting way to try to change this dynamic. Instead of one label that’s supposed to represent the entire spectrum from people who cannot function in normal life to the guy who is getting As in all of his classes but feels like studying isn’t as easy as it should be, it might be time to offer some labels for the lighter end of the spectrum so we can get back to using the heavy medical diagnoses to mean something significant. There’s an entire other conversation about how the dilution of diagnoses like ADHD is causing harm to those with serious ADHD because the term doesn’t mean as much any more. Extra labels for mimic conditions or behavioral/personality variants could be a good way to relieve some of that pressure.

3mo ago

fierycatnet 3mo ago

That could be me, I don't think I have ADHD but I might have some tendencies that were developed after I moved to the US in my teens. The culture was different, fast moving, and very hectic. My 20s were hell because I couldn't figure it all out. Not much changed since then.

alexjplant 3mo ago

This was a central plot point of the film adaptation of "Johnny Mnemonic". From Wikipedia: > In 2021, society is driven by a virtual Internet, which has created a degenerative effect called "nerve attenuation syndrome" or NAS. Even more hilariously given the purveyors of the distractions we're discussing in this thread: > Megacorporations control much of the world, intensifying the class hostility already created by NAS. Bread and circuses, etc. I believe that given our cultural trajectory one's ability to lint their cognitive intake (that is keep TikTok/Insta/YouTube/podcast garbage viewership to a minimum) will be a large predictor of success. The next generation of doctors and Nobel Prize winners probably won't be watching boobies videos and Minecraft play-throughs.

fransje26 3mo ago
> The next generation of doctors and Nobel Prize winners probably won't be watching boobies videos and Minecraft play-throughs. Or they will be, and we will have an even bigger problem..

WindyTree 3mo ago

I was formally diagnosed with ADHD and it continued into adulthood. The only way to suppress it is a diet of raw veggies fruits and meats, combined with like 3 hours of exercise a day and time in nature with silence which my evolutionary ancestors presumably did to survive. The way to make it worse is the combination of sugars, processed foods and flashing stimulus. Point is I think MOST mental illness is the modern world. If you dumped people with severe depression into their ancestors supposedly worse lives 6,0000 years ago, hunting with tribe and sleeping under starry sky, they’d be fine.

makyavelist 3mo ago
Agreed
projektfu 3mo ago
I don't disagree, especially with depression, anxiety and ADHD. But many people with more fulminant mental disorders in tribal societies would have been lucky to become shamans, more likely they would be outcast or killed.
lukas099 3mo ago
Sounds made up.

m463 3mo ago

...as I sit here reading the experienced/insightful/funny posts on hacker news instead of working on more pressing matters.