5 ms·

See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:ADHD_Prevalence.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:ADHD_Prevalen... So what do you think the

See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:ADHD_Prevalence.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:ADHD_Prevalen... So what do you think the prevalence rate should be? How is it even a disorder if it affects 15%?

Nursie 14y ago
That was kinda what I was thinking. If it's already at 5-15%, and severely under-diagnosed, maybe ADHD is just part of the human condition. That's not to say that treating it then won't be beneficial, but it would be a different angle to look at it from - improving baseline humans through medication, rather than fixing some sort of defect.
- noonespecial 14y ago
  Clearly some people suffer more from it than others. The question is, is it more like being short, which no one seems to think requires intervention, or like being nearsighted, which everyone does.
derefr 14y ago
(This is a response both to you, and to the sibling comment:) I would say that the best comparison is nearsightedness. I imagine humans used to have, on average, pretty excellent distance-vision (we can't know for sure--eyes don't leave fossils--but "seeing clearly" seems to be something with a lot of selective pressure, as far as survival goes.) But now that that selective pressure is taken away [have you ever thought "they're not attractive, because they need glasses"?] nearsightedness runs rampant, and just keeps getting worse as nearsighted people cross their genes together. But does it matter? Of course not! The people affected just wear glasses or contacts. And then they're normal. You wouldn't call a person wearing glasses an "enhanced baseline human." They're obviously the result of something going wrong, somewhere. The glasses are a crutch. But still, we don't add moral judgement to "having bad vision"; it's not something to be pitied. We don't run donation drives to get poor people glasses. But on the other hand, living your whole life being unaware that you're nearsighted, and unaware that if you just put on a pair of specs, you could read signs twenty feet away like a regular human being--that's a terrible fate.
- andrewflnr 14y ago
  We don't run donation drives to get poor people glasses. Actually, my church has participated in just such a donation drive. The main difficulty, I think, is that it's hard to get people the correct strength of corrective lenses out of a random bag of glasses. Just FYI, your main points are good.
- Nursie 14y ago
  Two things - I didn't make a moral judgement on improving baseline humans, I just said it was a different lens to look through as compared to saying someone has a condition. If ADHD is that prevalent (5-15% and severely underdiagnosed) then having ADHD is actually being a regular human being ! What is baseline or normal is highly subjective. There are enough near-sighted humans in the world to say that sight problems are pretty much just part of the human condition, for pretty much everyone at some point in life. Whether you consider a pair of glasses to be a defect fix or an enhancement is up to you. I place no moral value on either option. Is this why you (or someone) voted me down? Because you assumed an implied criticism in my looking at ADHD remedies as an enhancement? You'll find me the last person to argue that enhancing humans is a bad thing. I wanna live forever and have robot parts :)
  - derefr 14y ago
    > I didn't make a moral judgement on improving baseline humans I meant more, when someone has cancer, that's bad and you pity them. Cancer is an Evil that we should Fight. Whereas we don't tend to think this about nearsightedness. It is, like you say, "part of being human." It's just a screwed-up part of being human that we universally reject and patch over without thinking too much about it. Like having worms[1]. The reason I wouldn't compare it to having robot parts, is that I don't want people to associate it with having robot parts. Because some people don't think we need robot parts. Imagine if glasses didn't exist, and we had just invented them--with everyone already being as nearsighted as they are. There are some people who would insist--in the mode of thinking of glasses as an "enhancement"--that people should just "learn to cope" with their nearsightedness, and "use their willpower" (that is, squint). It seems pretty clear to me that there is a distinction between "things people deserve to have to make them functional" (like glasses) and "things people could use to make them even better" (like, say, a Google Glass headset.) I want to be clear that ADD/ADHD medication should be thought of as the former, not the latter. (And I didn't vote you down, if you're curious.) 1: http://www.radiolab.org/2009/sep/07/sculptors-of-monumental-narrative/ http://www.radiolab.org/2009/sep/07/sculptors-of-monumental-...

Nursie 14y ago

That was kinda what I was thinking. If it's already at 5-15%, and severely under-diagnosed, maybe ADHD is just part of the human condition. That's not to say that treating it then won't be beneficial, but it would be a different angle to look at it from - improving baseline humans through medication, rather than fixing some sort of defect.

noonespecial 14y ago
Clearly some people suffer more from it than others. The question is, is it more like being short, which no one seems to think requires intervention, or like being nearsighted, which everyone does.

derefr 14y ago

(This is a response both to you, and to the sibling comment:) I would say that the best comparison is nearsightedness. I imagine humans used to have, on average, pretty excellent distance-vision (we can't know for sure--eyes don't leave fossils--but "seeing clearly" seems to be something with a lot of selective pressure, as far as survival goes.) But now that that selective pressure is taken away [have you ever thought "they're not attractive, because they need glasses"?] nearsightedness runs rampant, and just keeps getting worse as nearsighted people cross their genes together. But does it matter? Of course not! The people affected just wear glasses or contacts. And then they're normal. You wouldn't call a person wearing glasses an "enhanced baseline human." They're obviously the result of something going wrong, somewhere. The glasses are a crutch. But still, we don't add moral judgement to "having bad vision"; it's not something to be pitied. We don't run donation drives to get poor people glasses. But on the other hand, living your whole life being unaware that you're nearsighted, and unaware that if you just put on a pair of specs, you could read signs twenty feet away like a regular human being--that's a terrible fate.

andrewflnr 14y ago
We don't run donation drives to get poor people glasses. Actually, my church has participated in just such a donation drive. The main difficulty, I think, is that it's hard to get people the correct strength of corrective lenses out of a random bag of glasses. Just FYI, your main points are good.
Nursie 14y ago
Two things - I didn't make a moral judgement on improving baseline humans, I just said it was a different lens to look through as compared to saying someone has a condition. If ADHD is that prevalent (5-15% and severely underdiagnosed) then having ADHD is actually being a regular human being ! What is baseline or normal is highly subjective. There are enough near-sighted humans in the world to say that sight problems are pretty much just part of the human condition, for pretty much everyone at some point in life. Whether you consider a pair of glasses to be a defect fix or an enhancement is up to you. I place no moral value on either option. Is this why you (or someone) voted me down? Because you assumed an implied criticism in my looking at ADHD remedies as an enhancement? You'll find me the last person to argue that enhancing humans is a bad thing. I wanna live forever and have robot parts :)
- derefr 14y ago
  > I didn't make a moral judgement on improving baseline humans I meant more, when someone has cancer, that's bad and you pity them. Cancer is an Evil that we should Fight. Whereas we don't tend to think this about nearsightedness. It is, like you say, "part of being human." It's just a screwed-up part of being human that we universally reject and patch over without thinking too much about it. Like having worms[1]. The reason I wouldn't compare it to having robot parts, is that I don't want people to associate it with having robot parts. Because some people don't think we need robot parts. Imagine if glasses didn't exist, and we had just invented them--with everyone already being as nearsighted as they are. There are some people who would insist--in the mode of thinking of glasses as an "enhancement"--that people should just "learn to cope" with their nearsightedness, and "use their willpower" (that is, squint). It seems pretty clear to me that there is a distinction between "things people deserve to have to make them functional" (like glasses) and "things people could use to make them even better" (like, say, a Google Glass headset.) I want to be clear that ADD/ADHD medication should be thought of as the former, not the latter. (And I didn't vote you down, if you're curious.) 1: http://www.radiolab.org/2009/sep/07/sculptors-of-monumental-narrative/ http://www.radiolab.org/2009/sep/07/sculptors-of-monumental-...