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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?

#921

Post by peterfirefly »

deaux wrote: post #723
astrange wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

That link supports the thesis if everything? Top 0.01%, +9.1% Top 0.1%, +13.9% Top 1%, +15.2% Top 10%, +6.1% Middle 40%, -6% Bottom 50%, -0.1% This supports exactly GP's two statements: > we are concentrating all the wealth and power into the hands of a few. Correct, their slice of the pie is growing, the bottom 90%'s is shrinking > This leaves the top 1% getting richer every year and the bottom 99% fighting over a s…

People move a lot between those "buckets" over their lives. It's not the same 1% decade after decade.

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

#922

Post by hrimfaxi »

koolba wrote: post #674
Aurornis wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being diagnosed doesn't immediately mean you should be accommodated. This is the loophole. Universities aren't the ones diagnosing, they're the ones accommodating. The current meta-game is for parents and students to share notes about which doctors will diagnose easily. Between word of mouth and searches on Reddit, it's not that hard to find doctors in any metro area who will provide diagnoses and accommodation req…

> There are now also online telehealth services that don't hide the fact that this is one of their services. You pay their (cash only, please) fee and they'll make sure you get your letter. The same thing is happening with "emotional support animal" letters. This used to be a thing with medical marijuana as well (maybe still is?). The answer is for schools to grab their share of this money by selling each of these ac…

> The answer is for schools to grab their share of this money by selling each of these accommodations directly, or perhaps via some kind of auction. Acceptance to such a school will be the “basic economy” of attendance. If you want to pick your seat, you can pay to upgrade.

I don't think you can charge more for accommodations for the disabled.

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

#923

Post by hackeraccount »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #314
jph00 wrote: post #147

Amongst groups for extremely gifted kids I’ve seen, well over half are neurodivergent. It’s a well understood issue in gifted kids psychology. When these kids are accommodated appropriately they ace their classes, and when not, they fail out entirely, even at the most basic levels of education. So the statistics mentioned in the article are not necessarily inconsistent with what we’d expect, since Stanford is a highl…

Your point about Stanford having a larger-than-average proportion of 'extremely gifted' kids is reasonable. Perhaps the smartest 20% at Stanford are drawn from the smartest 0.1% nationally. But I think you're too dismissive of this part: The professors Horowitz interviewed largely back up this theory. "You hear 'students with disabilities' and it's not kids in wheelchairs," one professor told Horowitch. "It's just no…

There's a difference in kind not degree to the two sets of questions.

It's the difference between someone giving me a ride to work and someone doing my job for me. If the the point of the Calculus class is - ugh, it's been awhile for me so I might be messing this up - to teach the power rule or the thing being taught in English class is how to write a cogent essay in a set period of time then giving a student a calculator or more time is doing the job for the kid.

If they're incapable of doing the work why are the in class? Maybe there's a different class that's more appropriate for them?

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

#924

Post by treis »

sokoloff wrote: post #174
lostmsu wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The percentages of workers that are neurodivergent is much higher than usual Is it much though? 38%? I haven't seen one in 15 years across 5+ different companies. > there's a big cadre or neurodivergent people that are just in the line where they are very productive workers anyway Alternatively, it just became popular to label others or oneself that way. And tech elites have nothing better to do in free time. Also…

> I haven't seen one in 15 years across 5+ different companies. Were you a solo founder of 5 companies? I literally cannot fathom that you worked at 5 even very modest-sized tech companies and never experienced a colleague with some level of what we’d call neurodivergent. I can’t validate that the rate is 38%, but I find it hard to believe it’s under 5% and if it’s 5%, you’d be hard-pressed to avoid crossing paths ac…

There's neurodivergant and there's neurodivergant. I've definitely worked with oddballs and nerds and various atypical folks. But there's a massive gulf between them and someone with legit no questions about it autism.

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

#925

Post by hackeraccount »

kazinator wrote: post #47

For pete's sake just give everyone extra time on tests; what's the big deal? If you know the stuff, regurgitating it faster is a trivial optimization.

I agree with that but at the same time we've all met people who are masters of a subject matter. They tend to move pretty quickly. Speed is a shortcut to demonstrating understanding. That often seems really unfair when you don't understand a subject and then seems really pointless when you do understand it but I think there's some truth to that statement in any case.

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

#926

Post by hnfong »

barchar wrote: post #294
qazxcvbnmlp wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't see how you spending time in ways that work well with your challenges is different from your job providing accomodations, except that if your employer is willing to work with you then you don't have to randomly roll the dice until you come up with an employer where things happen to work in whatever way you wanted. It's not like one of the accomodations on the table is "not doing your job"

I see your point, but generally you don't need to roll the dice purely randomly. You generally do get some level of control over your career, your job and the people you work with. With white collar jobs employers are also generally relatively more willing to accommodate personal quirks as long as you get the actual job done.

The level control and flexibility is much smaller when you're a student.

Also, in school there's a lot of emphasis on how you get the job done. There's a prescribed process, and learning the prescribed process is more important (to some of the teachers apparently) than getting the actual job done. This is often where neurodivergent people struggle more in school and at work.

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

#927

Post by hnfong »

paulpauper wrote: post #211
qazxcvbnmlp wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 acco…

Saying blue collar work is "low-skilled" is probably inaccurate, I think the important distinction is that most blue collar work requires the person sitting at some physical location doing stuff, while significant amount of white collar jobs have a lower physical presence required.

Like if you work at an assembly line making widgets, the upper bound of productive work you do is proportional to the time you're physically there, so in this aspect it makes more sense for the employer to use that as a metric. In contrast a lot of tech jobs can be done remotely, sometimes if you're trying to solve a particularly nasty problem you don't even need an internet connection while you're thinking deeply about it.

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

#928

Post by hackeraccount »

stevenjgarner wrote: post #119

Not intending to offend, but aren't exceptionally gifted students (i.e. outliers) by definition neuro-divergent? Disclaimer: I am neuro-divergent, but not exceptionally gifted.

Sure but the goal is to get a piece of paper that says you can do that work. There are two neuro-divergent buckets. Can do the work and can not do the work. Accommodations are fine as long as you're not getting the two buckets mixed up.

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

#929

Post by hnfong »

dotancohen wrote: post #837
trow232134 wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And my children grew up with rockets regularly targeting us, and our home has sustained damage, and we have had friends killed. Yet my oldest has succeeded in gifted children's organisations her entire time at school. And at the gifted children's organisations I've seen families who have it much harder than we ever did. Children in those families grew up to be resilient, face danger, and overcome obstacles direct and…

I think you're misreading GP's point, which I think is probably also your point.

The comment they replied to was apparently suggesting that everyone struggles in some areas, so it's meaningless to highlight one group's struggle over another given that they all have reached a certain stable career.

GP main point (as I understand it) is: no, some people actually do struggle harder than others to make it.

I don't know why people get triggered and start comparing traumas but let's avoid doing it here.

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

#930

Post by treis »

scratchyone wrote: post #341
dlivingston wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have, and my experience does not match yours. It was extremely trivial and was little more than (1) booking a psych appointment, (2) filling out an intake ADHD questionnaire at home (which can easily be filled out to give whatever diagnosis you'd desire), (3) meeting the psych & getting a formal diagnosis, and (4) picking up my Rx from the pharmacy.

This is not what they're describing. Have you ever gone through the process of receiving an accommodation at a university? It is significantly more challenging than just having a diagnosis. They will look for every single possible excuse to refuse you access. They will require you to repeatedly book new doctor's appointments to get extremely specific wording for any accommodation you may need. Your doctor will have t…

Come now we're discussing an article where 4/10 students have accomodations. It can't be that hard to get.
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