TL;DR: The author, by their own words, is simply coping. ADHD is a disorder, not a "different way of thinking" one chooses to "drug your way" out of. Discovering one has ADHD can be a huge relief. Generally, if you have it, you want to know.
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I disagree with your reading. The article describes the mechanisms the author has developed to cope with their "thinking style." Whether they merely have a unique thought process, or they are suffering from a common mental disability, their optimistic, solution-oriented attitude is adaptive and healthy.
> I'm not a quick witted person. In fact, I’ve always been worried about my brain’s slow processing time.
> But recently, I've realised that slow processing time is not as much of an issue as I thought it was. And even if I was wrong about that, I still think I’d do better for myself by leaning into it, instead of spending energy trying to fight it.
The author has "always" been worried about this. But he's realized it's "not as much of an issue." It reads to me like the author is working to cope with a long-standing difficulty. And they do not say that they have overcome the difficulty, but only that they've found certain approaches to be superior to others.
If the root cause of this long-standing, much-vexing difficulty might be a well-understood condition with standard methods of treatment that have been helpful to many people, it's reasonable to think the author might appreciate that suggestion.
Also, ADHD is not a "different thinking style" anymore than anxiety, depression, or autism are "different thinking styles." It can feel like that to someone who hasn't been diagnosed yet, and even many people diagnosed with ADHD will downplay the condition as being different--not worse. Furthermore, there are even doctors who will indulge in this wishful rhetoric. This is not unlike those in the Deaf community who assert that deafness isn't a disability[1].
In fact, ADHD is a mental disorder. It does not give one special powers of creativity or insight or anything else in compensation for the lack of executive function and emotional regulation. As Dr. Russel Barkley says[2]:
> Now let's be clear, this is a very serious disorder. This is not some trivial little fly-by-night disorder.
> Also, to emphasize something which I don't think is emphasized enough: ADHD is no gift. There is no evidence in any research on any of hundreds of measures that we have taken that show that ADHD predisposes to anything positive in human life. Now let's be clear, ADHD is but a small set of hundreds of psychological abilities that people will have, and many people may be gifted and talented in various aspects of these other human abilities, but never attribute that giftedness or that success to ADHD itself.
I know you hold no malice in your heart, but your comment has drawn several indignant responses because it expresses an attitude that those with ADHD frequently see, and one that easily shades into an outright stigma towards people with ADHD.
I'm not saying that you were saying this, but many people seem to think that people with ADHD are pathologizing normal difficulties and using it to get their hands on fun drugs.
> You get bored at work. Sure, everyone gets bored.
> You have a hard time starting big projects. I can relate.
> You lose track of time sometimes. Me too!
> You know, it kind of seems like you have all the normal struggles in life we all do, but instead of bucking up and just getting stuff done, you've decided to cry to a doctor so you can get cheap addies.
There is nothing admirable about refusing to acknowledge a mental disorder. ADHD is more or less severe in different people, and it's perfectly valid to make an informed choice to forego any treatment for any condition. But it isn't doing the author or anyone else any favors to "refuse to pathologize it" by ignoring the resemblance to a common disorder.
The other part of the puzzle you are missing is that getting diagnosed with ADHD was a hugely positive, life-changing event for many of us who were not diagnosed until adulthood.
To live with undiagnosed ADHD is to live with a condition that makes others see you--and you see yourself--as chronically late and unreliable, unfocused and slow, and disorganized. You are, by all appearances, lazy, irresponsible, and careless: a bad, virtueless person. And over and over again, you fail to reach the eminently achievable goals you set for yourself.
It's an immense relief to discover your life-long shortcomings are not those of a morally defective soul, but of a medically defective brain. And this relief is entirely apart from the hope that medication or another treatment might help.
So perhaps you can now understand why those who have experienced this unburdening are eager to pay it forward. It's not like being diagnosed with cancer. We've always known the struggle. Now we know the enemy with whom we struggle.
Snowden also swore an oath to uphold the constitution, including the fourth amendment that the NSA was illegally violating (one NSA crime) and covering up (second NSA crime), including by lying to congress (third NSA crime), as well as to protect America from domestic enemies, like the kind of traitors who'd come up with a secret plan to violate the constitutional rights of the entire country and lie about it to congress.
Thank goodness he took his oath more seriously than the "I was just following orders" crowd. We know from WW2 that "I was just following orders" is not a legitimate excuse to help facilitate grave atrocities, like all of those other NSA employees did every single day, in violation of their own oaths that they each swore.
> Deny that there is a problem.
> Deny that it is your problem.
> Ask for more information.
> Complain.
Oh my does this ever bring traumatic memories!
This entire article reminds me of a previous company I used to work for. There was a sufficiently large number of engineers that had a similar, if not more elaborate, deliberate, and sinister way of responding to bugs:
* Deny {bug} is a problem - "I don't see how this affects you/anyone?"
* Deny {bug} can even be fixed - "Ok, fair, but I don't see how this can be fixed?"
* Deny {bug} is their problem - "Ok, fair, but have you tried asking {other employee?}, they are responsible for this." (they are obviously not)
* Be rude - "If you think this is a problem, then go fix it"
All this was just obvious defensive walls of lies to protect their reputation and hide their lack of skill and their laziness.
Around 5% of the engineers were like this and I've always analogized it to the proportion of U238 in a sample of Uranium - just enough enriched dogshit to cause a critical mass of misery.
I left (for greener pastures) shortly after I had a couple of tasks requiring interaction with these "engineers", which made working around them impossible, and then realizing that leadership had totally lost control of the zoo and didn't care one iota.
The dark forest is the dumbest concept. Nature advertised our presence a long time ago. Any aliens with a telescope able to gather spectra of Earth would be able to determine with a reasonable certainty life exists here. Any aliens with such a telescope within about 200 light years would be able to say with a reasonable certainly a technological civilization lives here, with that certainty increasing the longer they conduct observations.
Before the Industrial Revolution Earth was teeming with biomarkers. After the IR we not only have biomarkers but increasing industrial pollutants in the atmosphere. Such markers are interesting because they are short lived and need replenishment. It's the same reason we look for them.
The sphere advertising the Industrial Revolution is ever expanding. Anyone that can gather spectra of Earth will see it once the light reaches them. So there's no hiding from any aliens that happen to be looking.
But the dark forest theory gets more absurd with the idea that some alien species upon seeing a technological civilization on Earth is them going to hope in their spaceships for a visit. Ignoring entirely that space is fucking huge and physics is unforgiving.
Some alien species that had the capability to fly the obscene distance to Earth would by definition have the capability to fully exploit all the resources in their own solar system (which is gigantic). They could also save themselves the effort of an invasion by exploiting uninhabited solar systems much closer to them (also gigantic). For as awesome as Earth is, it doesn't have any unobtainium some hyper advanced species couldn't find elsewhere.
Any aliens with the capability of visiting us already has the capability to detect us. We can't go un-advertise ourselves.
Here's our overall pitch: https://zed.dev/blog/sequoia-backs-zed#introducing-deltadb-o...