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Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

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Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#211

Post by paulpauper »

qazxcvbnmlp wrote: post #171
swatcoder wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people that are just in the line where they are very productive workers anyway Of course, that applies to everybody who achieves a stable career at all. Exceedingly few people (if anyone) are competent and capable at everything, even when you're just talking about basic skills that are handy for common, everyday work. Your doctor may be a incorrigibly terrible driver, your bus driver may pass out at the sight of bl…

Well put. > A lot of modern, aspiring-middle-class and online culture Theres also a pernicious way of identifying with the struggle. Instead of I have trouble focusing in certain situations, so maybe I should find ways to spend my time (careers, hobbies) that work well with that. We instead go to 'I have ADHD' and my 'job' should make special accommodations for me. Regardless of whether a job should or should not mak…

Being diagnosed with a learning disability or other type of neuro-divergency does not automatically entitle someone to special treatment. The vast majority of that 38% are likely just "diagnosed" people who are asking for no special treatment at all.

Hmm ..the irony is that jobs that require the least amount of credentials have the least accommodations. White collar jobs, especially in tech, seem to have so many accommodations or delays and extra time. Think how often employees come in late or delay work. HR exists to accommodate these requests. College, and school in general, has far fewer accommodations and flexibility than seen in most work environments, save for low-skilled jobs where puantiality is necessary.

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#212

Post by JumpCrisscross »

esafak wrote: post #139
skzjxhz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

American society is high trust and diverse. Lots of interesting charts here: https://ourworldindata.org/trust

> American society is high trust and diverse

Would note that this is almost a prerequisite for great societies. Small and homogenous, or powerful and diverse. There really isn't a middle course.

Rome. China. Britain. Each had empires that were remarkably diverse for their time. (Rome, perhaps, most of all.)

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#213

Post by internetter »

windows_hater_7 wrote: post #113

I go to one of those elite universities now, and I get academic accommodations. I think some of the increase is truly from greater awareness about disabilities among teachers and parents. My mom was a teacher, and she was the one who first suspected that I had dyslexia. I repeated kindergarten, and I was privileged that my parents were able to afford external educational psychology testing. Socioeconomic status is a…

Yeah I suspect that people are being over-diagnosed, but I also suspect we're catching dramatically more cases than we were previously. An overcorrection if you will.

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#214

Post by guizadillas »

esafak wrote: post #144
sureglymop wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does the idea/reasoning that highly academically successful students cannot have a disability come from? I would go a step further and say there is probably a high chance that neurodivergent students are more academically successful, iff they did get to that level of education. And it's not impossible that they are overrepresented in that group of people. And people may be intellectually gifted, and yet experie…

Nobody said that. They are saying or insinuating that 38% of successful students are unlikely to be disabled. That certainly was not the case as recently as a decade or two ago. People have not changed drastically, so what gives?

Change in diagnosis criteria, that doesn't mean people before weren't disabled. You need to understand people with ADHD usually overcompensate to meet the academic performance needed and it is not sustainable in the long run. It also doesn't mean they need accommodations, just that they are categorized as disabled in some way or form.

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#215

Post by jay_kyburz »

apical_dendrite wrote: post #166
Detrytus wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, some kinds of disability still are a stigma, but here on HN neurodiversity/autism is celebrated as some kind of superpower, basically.

I'm aware. See for instance, VC Arielle Zuckerberg's comment that when deciding which founders to fund she looks for "a little of the rizz and a little of the tis" with "rizz" referring to charisma and "tis" to autism. One could argue that mythologizing a particular characteristic is itself a form of stigma.

I'm all tis and no rizz

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#216

Post by powerclue »

That doesn't seem outrageously high for a high cap school?

15-20% of the world is estimated to have a disability. So Stanford population is high, but approximately double the average of a random global population sample.

Now, think about the selection pressures Stanford applies. Stanford selects students who are fighting for top academic honors. Those students are dealing with brutal competition, and likely see their future as hanging on their ability to secure one of a small number of slots in the school. Anxiety would be genuinely higher in the student body than, say, students at a mid rate state school.

Stanford wants students with strong test scores, especially those who are strongly capable in mathematics. High spatial awareness, cognitive integration, and working memory can be positive traits in some autistic people and some find strong success in standardized environments and in mathematics.

We're also improving diagnostic tools for autism and ADHD, and recognizing that the tools we used missed a lot of cases in young women, because they present differently than for young men.

Imagine a house party where the guests are selected at random from MIT or Stanford, then imagine you selected guests at random from, say, all Americans. Are you telling me you'd be surprised if the MIT and Stanford crowd had a noticeably different population demographic than the overall American population?

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#217

Post by IAmBroom »

shermantanktop wrote: post #155
delichon wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A culture that honored truth telling and integrity. Was that long ago or far away?

"culture i grew up in" could easily mean "what my parents/older relatives told me they did, when they told me to be like them." Once you grow up, you realize your parents were human, made self-interested decisions, and then told themselves stories that made their actions sound principled. Some more than others, of course.

I'll skip the "my parents" part, because I'm an old, but ... NO ONE had independent housing their Freshman year in college at my hometown uni, unless they had prior residency in the area (were commuting from home).

So, yeah: that morality did exist, and not just in fables.

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#219

Post by dcchambers »

OGEnthusiast wrote: post #25

American society is at the point where if you don't play these sort of games/tricks, you'll get out-competed by those who do. Bleak.

Long ago I remember reading society in China was like this. There's SO MANY people that you HAVE TO cheat the system to even maintain pace with your peers, much less get ahead. And cheating is so rampant that it's expected you will do it.

Really sad that mentality seems to be normalizing world-wide.

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#220

Post by shadowgovt »

acedTrex wrote: post #39
OGEnthusiast wrote: post #25

American society is at the point where if you don't play these sort of games/tricks, you'll get out-competed by those who do. Bleak.

Basic game theory at work right there. You only need a few bad apples to cause the entire system to devolve.

Perhaps the fundamental issue isn't the apples; it's the barrel.

If everything is a competition, then of course people will leverage personal advantage for personal gain. But why is everything a competition?

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