Stats for nerds
2recommend
5mentions
3people
2016–2025years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I do educate myself. I read many different viewpoints, including for example parents whose own kids were diagnosed with ADHD and did more research. As one example: https://www.amazon.com/ADHD-Hunter-Farmers-Thom-Hartmann/dp/...
First of all, I appreciate your sharing of personal anecdotal experience (I mean that sincerely), and I am open to more infomation. But you should be also willing to educate yourself on what your country and system are doing. What I am about to share with you below — if you click the links, will probably shock you and make you question whether the issue is really your personal medical issue. At the very least, you have probably never seen it before.
First of all, no one is saying that it’s “all in your head” or you can snap yourself out of it. Any more than diabetes is in people’s heads. What I’ve been saying is that you are downstream of a fixable problem, that most of society doesn’t realize — or even have the desire to fix - with its current priorities.
I certainly understand how you feel you have a genetic disorder or clinical disease that can only be “managed” by medical intervention.
It’s not your fault. You are an individual who has been told by your country’s system that things are the way they are, because it is always easier to externalize the cost to the individual and make them believe a story than to fix the problems of industry. Here is just a sample list that goes well beyond ADHD or obesity, and into factory farms, plastic pollution, and more… it is always the same pattern:
https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362
When there is a huge disparity between the USA and other countries (eg on prevalencd ADHD, or on obesity and diabetes) or USA now and before, it is a sign that the problem is upstream — often having to do with corporations, diet, and societal changes.
But I will go even further. Even effective cures to major diseases that are not approved by the bureaucracy, are shut down by the USA. All the way up to and including cures for diseases that you would think you’d know about. You as an individual probably NEVER heard of this:
This is a video showing actual footage from all the congressional hearings, the actual results of multiple scientific inquiries at the highest level — the text of the actual letters from the CDC, and actual medical journal reportings that you have never heard about.
It is like “progress and poverty” by Henri George, a bestselling economic book totally forgotten today… similarly this kind of stuff has been systematically buried by your government.
I know I got really deep with this comment but who on HN has seen for example the video I linked to above, and how deep the rabbithole goes?
- Bigot [definition] a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic towards a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.
I do not recall being antagonistic towards people with ADHD. On the contrary, the resources I have linked to (such as the book https://www.amazon.es/ADHD-Hunter-Farmers-Thom-Hartmann/dp/1...) are by people whose kids have ADHD and they opted to embrace them and accept them, rather than saying they have effectively a neurological disorder. You can make similar cases for autism spectrum, gender dysphoria and so on being zealously overdiagnosed and medicated (https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/10/theres-no-autism-epidemi...)
Medication is often a band-aid and the default way systems handle a cog in a machine. One in four middle-aged women is on antidepressants. Do you think they are ALL clinically depressed? And the opiates that men started to take have reached epidemic proportions too... surely, you wouldn't call everyone a bigot who wants to address the underlying societal reasons for this? Or you'd be the guy prescribing vodka to every USSR citizen as a way to deal with issues?
You are redefining the word "bigot" to mean its opposite, it seems. A system that systematically ignores meeting the basic needs of humans, and then dismisses their resulting behavior as "irrational" or "needing medication" is far worse than a bigot. It's like systemic racism or sexism, but directed against non-neurotypical kids, or adults or elderly.
Were people bigots who said "women have real needs that need to be addressed, stop delegitimizing their real issues by labeling them all as Hysterical Women (TM) and sending them to the doctor to get tittilated"? Because today, we agree with all those people, but in the past, we didn't. To borrow another politically loaded term, you could be on the "wrong side of history", just like people who defended lobotomies and medicating hysterical women.
Maybe you should look into the profit motive of doctors and pharma who stand to gain from more medications. And the school administrators who need to cover their own ass before actually caring about the kids and speaking to their parents. I happen to know about such school administrators and cases personally. The SYSTEM doesn't care about the parents, nor the kids, nor the grandparents which they also stick into nursing homes and medicate -- because again, they need to work 10 hour days to pay the rent. Just like under socialism, the capitalist system externalizes costs onto individuals, you should open your eyes. Try looking at some links I posted above. What you call bigotry, I call basic concern that society should have for human beings.
- While I don't have a child diagnosed with ADHD myself, I would definitely start by reading Thom Hartmann's books about the subject:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thom_Hartmann#Attention_defici...
Next I would probably seek to address any vitamin and mineral deficiencies, notably vitamin D, vitamin B and magnesium.
As for upbringing, I firmly believe you should seek to minimize anything that explicitly or implicitly can inflict guilt in your child. A good friend of mine has a wonderful son who is diagnosed with ADHD, and often the son would sit down and say to himself “Why can't I ever do anything right?” — and in his case I'd say that the guilt and self-loathing were a bigger problem [for the boy] than the ADHD.
I'm afraid that's all I can contribute with, but I wish you all the best.
- I read the second part of the essay, about the author choosing to transition and live their life identifying and presenting as female. If that makes them happier then I am all for it but I certainly think society’s norms are upstream of people’s decisions. I personally believe that society should be more accepting in general, of autism, tomboys, femboys and other ways of presenting, especially for children. If they were, then people wouldn’t feel so much pressure to conform to a specific stereotype.
Instead when it comes to kids they are often told how they should behave — eg ADHD is another thing that’s overdiagnosed and medicated — including with amphetamines. Notable progressive Thom Hartmann even wrote a book about this ADHD medication industry, with his theory of “hunters and farmers”, when his own son was put through the ringer. In the past, many girls would be called tomboys rather than encouraged to transition because they didn’t like to associate with “feminine” things or present as female. In Sweden, they even had gender-neutral “hen” pronouns for kids.
As far as their observation about trans women being programmers — I want to ask a risque thing on HN. Who are the top female developers that you know? I want to follow their work.
I have found that some of the people I have found to be really innovative female developers, such as the makers of Redbean server (Justine), or decentralized database technology such as Mauve Signweaver, are (I believe) in fact trans women.
What is it that leads to nearly everyone who does hardcore programming and abstract concepts being born as a biological male? In evolutionary psychology “just-so stories”, one could say men were used to long periods of silent stalking animals or building constructions instead of socializing in the cave or raising children. But I am not so sure about just-so stories and the effect size is just way too strong. Was programming really so much different when Ada Lovelace or Grace Hopper or Margaret Hamilton were doing it? Female programmers were more prevalent when it was punchcards. But then you look at, say, Apple and everyone’s a dude and Susan Kare is hired to design icons, rather than programming. Or when I worked at Bloomberg, practically all the developers were male and some of us would go to lunch with the people from the Sales department, because that’s where the females were.
- Was diagnosed as a child. I take no medication. Instead I adopted the role of “hunter” (as opposed to “farmer”), as described by Thom Hartmann in his ADHD books. Which means I don’t sign up for “farmer”-like tasks and delegate them instead.
My fundamental tool for staying on track with the work I do sign up with, pen and paper. It started with pencil and paper and the pencils of many varieties picked up from various bargain stores. The variety of colors and designs was what drove me to keep lists. But over years that evolved to a specially curated set of blue, red and green pens. I keep a book next to my dominant hand on my desk. Short term tasks are written in blue. Crossed out in red upon completion. This is a gamification strategy that gives me a little endorphine hit when I do it. On days where focusing seems difficult, I use the green pen to put a bullet point like some kind of human instruction pointer to indicate what I’m working on. Everything revolves around looking at the book. If there is an issue/inquiry for a teammate, it also gets written down.
I have a second book, in which I allocate 2 pages to each project I have. This has a handwritten synopsis of the project and any large challenges the project entails. Very minimal on details. This book is the forest; it serves long term memory issues. The first book is the trees, for short term, is highly detailed and is a diary of sorts in log form. Things not completed yesterday are re-written today as a means of reinforcing my connection to the task or need.
So this is all ritualistic for me. The pens I now favor have come through years of iteration. The “trees” books are Italian-made that my wife gave me and then I went to Home Goods to stock up on them. The paper is ruled and nice to write on and a little fancy. These weigh less than my phone, so I always grab one that I use as a free form note-taking pad in meetings. The “forest” book is thicker, has a specially-designated and fillable table of contents at the beginning. The paper is not lined and has a line or graph paper template to put under the page you’re writing on.
My point here is not you have to have the same fancy pens and books I use. I have chosen things that just “feel right” to me. “Right” means something I enjoy visually and by touch. If you adopt a paper-based approach, absolutely find what works for you. I mean only to share what I have found as an example.
I occasionally go shopping for alternatives; if I one day find something I like better I will repurpose the stocks on hand of books and/or pens and ruthlessly get rid of the old and bring in the new.
Why do I go to such lengths to facilitate writing? For me, the motion and muscle activity of writing is a different way to form memories. Something written becomes more connected to me than something typed. I do use Notes on my Apple devices for certain things but these always seem very detached from me. If I remember or by random encounter a note in Notes visually, and it seems important, I then write it down.
I also use Calendar and Reminders to trigger me, mostly in a reactive way into action. Siri is literally my administrative assistant.
Oh, and my reasoning for avoiding medication: my ADHD is a gift that I do not want to squelch. Yours may be more difficult and maybe medication is your solution.
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