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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?

#651

Post by astrange »

bradlys wrote: post #442
jaredklewis wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone explain to me why the accommodations make sense in the first place? Like what's the point of having the test be time constrained? If there is no point, then just let everyone have more time. If there is a point to having the test be time constrained, then aren't we just holding one group to a lower standard than another group? Why is that good? Same question about lectures. Is there a reason everyone can'…

The reason is because employers are insanely brutal in the job market due to an oversupply of qualified talent. We have more people than we have positions available to work for quality wages. This is why everything is so extreme. Students need to be in the top X percent in order to get a job that leads to a decent quality of life in the US. The problem is that every student knows this and is now competing against one…

> This country doesn’t build anything anymore and we are concentrating all the wealth and power into the hands of a few. This leaves the top 1% getting richer every year and the bottom 99% fighting over a smaller piece of the pie every year.

Wouldn't say this is an accurate description of the US economy.

https://realtimeinequality.org/?id=wealth&wealthend=03012023...

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

#652

Post by WalterBright »

bawolff wrote: post #434
Aurornis wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original article which is linked in this post goes into much better detail: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/01/elite-universit... Schools and universities have made accommodations a priority for decades. It started with good intentions, but parents and students alike have noticed that it's both a) easy to qualify for a disability and b) provides significant academic advantages if you do. Another big acc…

> Another big accommodation request is extra time on tests. Maybe the real problem is we are testing people on how fast they can do something not if they can do something. In general, being good at academics require you to think carefully not quickly. I suspect there is a correlation between people who think things through and people who do well in school.

Caltech had timed exams (2-3 hours) and infinite time exams, at the discretion of the professor.

The students hated the infinite time ones, because nobody knew how much time other students spent on the test so one felt obliged to spend inordinate amounts of time on it.

Besides, if you couldn't solve the exam problems in 2 hours, you simply didn't know the material.

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

#653

Post by astrange »

lumost wrote: post #394
ultrarunner wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adderall and other amphetamines only have problems with long term usage. My research was done a long time ago. I understood Ritalin to have mild neurotoxic effects, but Adderall et al to be essentially harmless. Do you have a source for the benefits giving way to problems long-term? Regardless, your overall point is interesting. Presumably, these drugs are (ridiculously tightly) controlled to prevent society-wide h…

I went to university at a time that Adderall was commonplace, and am now old enough to see how it turned out for the individuals. At college, it was common for students to illicitly purchase Adderall to use as a stimulate to cram for a test/paper etc. It was likewise common for students to abuse these drugs by taking pills at a faster than prescribed pace to work for 48 hours straight amongst other habits. In the wor…

Adderall doesn't particularly have long-term tolerance. If you're developing tolerance to it, you have a magnesium deficiency and should take magnesium threonate supplements. (Not oxide, the cheap ones, that doesn't work.)

And then remember to drink water, exercise and get enough sleep.

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

#654

Post by WalterBright »

bawolff wrote: post #637
HDThoreaun wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can not think of a single test I have ever taken where I could be limited by handwriting speed. Most of the time on tests is spent thinking, not writing.

I had a test once where we had to do RSA by hand (with 4 digit numbers), no calculators allowed. There was a lot of handwriting on scrap pieces of paper. Do humanities have to do handwritten essay tests in the modern world. I had to do those in middle school/high school. No idea if that is still a thing.

> scrap pieces of paper

The exams I took were done in blue books where you were required to show your work.

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

#655

Post by astrange »

JCharante wrote: post #635
lumost wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to university at a time that Adderall was commonplace, and am now old enough to see how it turned out for the individuals. At college, it was common for students to illicitly purchase Adderall to use as a stimulate to cram for a test/paper etc. It was likewise common for students to abuse these drugs by taking pills at a faster than prescribed pace to work for 48 hours straight amongst other habits. In the wor…

I prefer to cycle between addictions of modafinil and caffeine, you shouldn't chronically use 1 drug forever

You get addicted to modafinil? I've tried it. It doesn't cure ADHD but it is remarkably like if those boomer newspaper comic jokes about coffee were actually real.

But… it's not addictive at all. Taking it made me not want to take it again. I was just like damn, I kind of smell like sulfur now.

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

#656

Post by trow232134 »

swatcoder wrote: post #117
hibikir wrote: post #58

I think there's a non-malicious explanation for a percentage of this. As I grew up in the 80s, there were two kinds of gifted kids in school: The kind that would ace everything anyway, and the kind that, for a variety of reasons, lacked the regulation abilities to manage the school setting well, with the slow classes and such. A lot of very smart people just failed academically, because the system didn't work for the…

> 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…

Some people have harder lifes than others.

Saying everybody has a few things that they struggle is kind of offensive.

I struggle because my parents were drug addicts and my father tried to kill us all when I was 5.

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

#657

Post by jrflowers »

JackMorgan wrote: post #641
MagicMoonlight wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lmao, imagine saying this kind of slop to someone with diabetes. “Cognitive behavioral therapy matches insulin after 5 years” (because they die - so they’re no longer counted)

The results seem pretty clear that CBT can be quite effective in helping with ADHD. Unlike insulin, which cannot be produced with any sort of therapy, it does seem that ADHD can be significantly improved. I'm sorry though that the facts seem to bother you so much. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22480189/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28413900/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32036811/

Imagine posting “sorry that the facts bother you” and then linking to

- A study with a sample a size - A study that says that medication improves outcomes over CBT

- A study that says that evidence for CBT improving ADHD symptoms comes from studies with such small sample sizes that the conclusions could be the result of bias

The only way someone could conclude “CBT has the same outcome as medication” from the studies you linked to would be to not read them. The first two don’t really say that and the third one literally refutes that position.

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

#658

Post by snapdeficit »

hibikir wrote: post #58

I think there's a non-malicious explanation for a percentage of this. As I grew up in the 80s, there were two kinds of gifted kids in school: The kind that would ace everything anyway, and the kind that, for a variety of reasons, lacked the regulation abilities to manage the school setting well, with the slow classes and such. A lot of very smart people just failed academically, because the system didn't work for the…

“Smart kid” who did “poorly at school” is a fascinating doublespeak. School is where you demonstrate you are smart. Skilled is different from smart btw. Not being able to do an integral but being able to tune a holly four barrel carb are not the same thing. It’s just baffling that you would make this claim.

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

#659

Post by kenjackson »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #628
kenjackson wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But where is that level of speed distinction important? I just don't know anywhere where being 10% faster translates into much actual real value. If you can write a function in five minutes and it takes this other person 5.5 minutes -- do you really view that as the key difference in ability? Even in time constrained situations, compute/processing speed is almost never the issue.

I mean.. if you can finish a task for a client in a day, and someone else needs two days, isn't that a huge difference? Or to turn it around, if someone does 10%, 20%, 50% more in the same time period, isn't that significant? I mean.. we are comparing students abilities here, and doing stuff fast is one of those abilities. Even potato peelers in a restaurant are valued more if they're faster, why not programmers too?…

"I mean.. if you can finish a task for a client in a day, and someone else needs two days, isn't that a huge difference?"

I've never seen that come down to processing speed. Even as a programmer -- I can program probably 10x faster than most of my peers in straight programming contest style programs. But in terms of actual real work -- I'm probably slightly faster. But my value is really I spend a lot of time really understanding the ask and impact of the work I'm doing -- asking good questions, articulating what I'm delivering, etc...

That is, my faster processing speed results in very little added benefit. That is, time to deliver results can matter. Processing speed typically is a very small percentage of that time. And for these tests processing speed is often the main distinction. It's not like they're distinguishing one kid who can't solve this equation and another kid who can. It's generally more likely one kid can finish all 25 questions in 32 minutes and the other would take 38 minutes so they only finish 23 of them in the allotted 32. I don't think that ends up mattering in any real way.

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

#660

Post by WalterBright »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #607
bawolff wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another big accommodation request is extra time on tests. Maybe the real problem is we are testing people on how fast they can do something not if they can do something. In general, being good at academics require you to think carefully not quickly. I suspect there is a correlation between people who think things through and people who do well in school.

I mean... usually those tests check the correctness of answers too, so you're comparing students under the same circumstances, evaluating how much (writing, calculations.... whatever) they're able to do, correctly of course, within an alotted time period. If someone can correctly solve 17 math problems in that time and someone else can do 21, the second one is "better" than the first, since they're both faster and th…

If I'm paying a professional by the hour, yes, it matters if he can do it in one hour rather than two.

I once hired a civil engineer to do a job for me, and he started billing me for time spent learning how to do it. I refused to pay him. (There was nothing unusual about the job, it was a simple repair task.)

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