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Why Am I So Lazy?

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Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#71

Post by Morizero »

lawn wrote: post #66
bambax wrote: post #52

> I see this shit every day in other parents: “She hates to read!” “He’s lazy!” “She’s bad at math!” You are imprisoning your kid with your words, fuckers! That's spot on. It's really upsetting to hear people say that about children, especially people with authority (parents, grandparents). DON'T DO THAT! Or, if you have to do that (!?!) at least be positive. Don't tell a kid she's bad at math, tell her she's good at…

I don't think you should ever say that someone is naturally good, "a natural" or anything like that. Instead kids should be praised for effort, for trying and having a growth mindset. If we only comment on how inherently good they are they might get lazy as whenever they get bad grades excuses like "I wasn't trying" works. It doesn't matter if the parents continue being surprised of the bad grades, the answer can als…

The name for this topic is fixed vs growth mindset:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindset#Fixed_and_growth

You'll see that and related phrases as buzzwords sometimes.

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#72

Post by dudzik »

bambax wrote: post #52

> I see this shit every day in other parents: “She hates to read!” “He’s lazy!” “She’s bad at math!” You are imprisoning your kid with your words, fuckers! That's spot on. It's really upsetting to hear people say that about children, especially people with authority (parents, grandparents). DON'T DO THAT! Or, if you have to do that (!?!) at least be positive. Don't tell a kid she's bad at math, tell her she's good at…

I would like to add that praising can backfire as well.

For example, if a child gets a good grade and you praise its intelligence instead of their work it seems that they won't put in the effort next time.[1]

1: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007....

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#73

Post by sifoo »

We've been carefully programmed to look down on inability to conform and perform tasks that feel meaningless and uninteresting. If anything, most of what we call ADHD and Aspbergers is a superior mental immune system, the ability to act from common sense and truth despite massive outside interference. We would be better off prescribing cannabis and shrooms to the rest of society, they are the ones who really need help.

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#74

Post by cc81 »

koonsolo wrote: post #69
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> extravagant, bizarre theory Absolutely not. Self-sabotage is psychology 101. > why can't she just be lazy Because laziness, like demonic possession and telepathy has not been identified by any medical science. > we're too eager to accept such explanations because they are more comforting than more straightforward, harsher ones Or maybe one explanation is backed by decades of research while the idea of "laziness" is…

Sorry, but I have totally no clue what you are talking about. Laziness is preserving energy, which seems pretty vital to survival for me. Have you ever seen a "lazy" lion just laying there, doing nothing most of the day? The reason why he's not running around all day doing active stuff is because of survival, energy preservation. He will put his energy where it is most important, food and sex. He's even so lazy that…

Laziness is a thing (at least we describe something with the word) but for a lot of people in that situation the laziness is not a good strategy for preserving energy. They will procrastinate to a point where the total amount of work is much more than just doing something immediately.

For example instead of doing the dishes immediately they will wait until they pile up with dried food stuck to them making the total effort much bigger.

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#75

Post by TeMPOraL »

taneq wrote: post #37
sudosteph wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The science is not on your side for this view. I suggest you read up to get a more informed view, Dr. Russell Barkley is a great resource, has videos all over youtube. In the meantime, here's a quote from "International Consensus Statement on ADHD" (Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, Vol. 5, No. 2, June 2002) > We cannot overemphasize the point that, as a matter of science, the notion that ADHD does not exi…

I'm not saying ADHD doesn't exist or that it's not a genuine disorder. I'm saying that there's a huge no-mans-land between "you're fine" and "woah yeah you clearly have ADHD and we should fix this."

Indeed there is, and the way psychiatry approaches it in terms of diagnosis isn't really good, either. There is a long but very insightful article on this topic that was recently featured on HN, by Scott Alexander, who's a practicing psychiatrist:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much-mor...

Key quote for this topic:

> But “ability to concentrate” is a normally distributed trait, like IQ. We draw a line at some point on the far left of the bell curve and tell the people on the far side that they’ve “got” “the disease” of “ADHD”. This isn’t just me saying this. It’s the neurostructural literature, the the genetics literature, a bunch of other studies, and the the Consensus Conference On ADHD. This doesn’t mean ADHD is “just laziness” or “isn’t biological” – of course it’s biological! Height is biological! But that doesn’t mean the world is divided into two natural categories of “healthy people” and “people who have Height Deficiency Syndrome“. Attention is the same way. Some people really do have poor concentration, they suffer a lot from it, and it’s not their fault. They just don’t form a discrete population.

(Emphasis mine - pointing out the sentence which, in original article, is basically one big collection of links to references backing it up.)

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#76

Post by TeMPOraL »

manigandham wrote: post #60
adrusi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think ADHD is? It's defined by its diagnostic criteria, and those are very vague. There's certainly no consensus that ADHD is anything other than a term to describe the lowest performers on the metrics which Adderall improves. ADHD is definitely not some kind of genetic defect of the prefrontal cortex or anything of that sort.

Being lazy is not an attention deficit or hyperactivity. Most people can focus just fine, as they do when the deadline approaches. The situation described in the parent post is an issue of motivation and discipline, not attention. To be more clear as to the diagnosis: there is a definite difference between people who don't want to pay attention to certain tasks (the vast majority) and those who cant (the minority tha…

You're all wrong wrt. the scientific consensus :). The current consensus is that the ability to concentrate for longer periods on all the bullshit our modern lives are throwing at us is a normally distributed trait in the population, and ADHD is an arbitrary cutoff on that distribution. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16090523 for details.

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#77

Post by cjsuk »

bambax wrote: post #52

> I see this shit every day in other parents: “She hates to read!” “He’s lazy!” “She’s bad at math!” You are imprisoning your kid with your words, fuckers! That's spot on. It's really upsetting to hear people say that about children, especially people with authority (parents, grandparents). DON'T DO THAT! Or, if you have to do that (!?!) at least be positive. Don't tell a kid she's bad at math, tell her she's good at…

I agree. Another failure mode is that of my sister in law. She spent ten years throwing pens, pencils, paper, Lego, books, all in the bin because they make a mess.

Everything creative was an inconvenience.

Her eldest is in and out of prison. Her daughter was pregnant at 14. Her youngest is violent and has already got a social worker.

If every creative or intellectual outlet is taken away from someone or they are demotivated, what is left?

It makes me sad when I hear of parents prescribing anything negative.

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#78

Post by eludwig »

bambax wrote: post #52

> I see this shit every day in other parents: “She hates to read!” “He’s lazy!” “She’s bad at math!” You are imprisoning your kid with your words, fuckers! That's spot on. It's really upsetting to hear people say that about children, especially people with authority (parents, grandparents). DON'T DO THAT! Or, if you have to do that (!?!) at least be positive. Don't tell a kid she's bad at math, tell her she's good at…

Yes, not screwing up your children is a an excellent goal for a parent, if not a moral imperative.

But the truth is that parenting is a huge messy business that never goes according to plan. You will screw up your kids in subtle ways, even if you avoid the major landmines. This is not due to any failing beyond being a human being that was also raised by fallible parents. The other parents on HN will appreciate this: how many times have you heard the words coming out of your mouth and thought "Oh my god. I swore I would never say that to my child! I sound just like my mother(or father)!" Way too many times, lol. It's completely unavoidable. This thought is usually followed by a small voice which sheepishly admits "So that's why they said that to me!"

As the article says, it is truly up to each one of us to remove the imaginary shackles of self-definition. We, as children, are willing co-conspirators in the building of our own false self-image. It is necessary to have a rigid model of ourselves in childhood? I guess that's debatable, but I would argue that it probably is. I think it gets us through to adulthood, where it can and should be gently discarded as a tool (like bicycle training wheels) that was once useful but no longer is.

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#79

Post by TeMPOraL »

Buldak wrote: post #2

When I was failing classes in college, I had a conversation with a dean who suggested that I subconsciously didn't want to be there, and that I was committing academic self-sabotage as a result. This struck me as an extravagant, bizarre theory. (Cynically, I also wonder if she was trying to convince me to voluntarily leave the college so that I wouldn't ding their graduation rate.) I tend to be suspicious of this kin…

Interesting. Personally, I believe the opposite - that the very concept of "character flaw" should be expunged from our dictionaries, as it tends to be useless. It works only as a way of assigning blame - "you do everything last minute because you're lazy". "You suck and I don't."

Identifying character flaws doesn't help a person fix them - which is the only thing that should matter. Because it's all about some factor making a person unable to do things that are in their best interest, often also causing huge emotional distress when said person attempts to behave in a "more correct" (by their own standards) way.

C.f. http://lesswrong.com/lw/2as/diseased_thinking_dissolving_que..., which is an interesting article on the way we frame diseases and character flaws.

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#80

Post by TeMPOraL »

Profan wrote: post #68
CoolestBeans wrote: post #61

It seems a little ridiculous that the author of the response would know that the "Sloth" isn't actually lazy but really afraid. Especially when the author also tells the "Sloth" to ignore what other people have said about them. Maybe I'm missing the bigger picture, but how is the author not just another one of the squirrels she describes?

It does read a bit like what you would hear a "psychic" write in response to a short question, such a long response seems an unreasonably confident response without any more back and forth between the two. I'm actually a bit surprised so many people here are quickly falling into conclusions about what was and wasn't said when it doesn't seem like it has been explored enough to have anything conclusive determined from…

My immediate impression was that both texts are written by the same person. But then again, the "Sloth" section rings way too true for it to be something just set up for analyzing in the latter part.
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