If 38% of the top 1% of students have learning disabilities then I'd expect students near the mean to be 100% learning disabled, if those words have any meaning left.

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everdrive 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I was sure you were going to say "then it follows that the top 0.1% must be 100% learning disabled."

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anon84873628 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Let's posit that modern society is not really well suited for the true primate nature of humans. If participating in society is the benchmark, then almost all of us are disabled.

As Scott Alexander opens his essay:

>The human brain wasn’t built for accounting or software engineering. A few lucky people can do these things ten hours a day, every day, with a smile. The rest of us start fidgeting and checking our cell phone somewhere around the thirty minute mark. I work near the financial district of a big city, so every day a new Senior Regional Manipulator Of Tiny Numbers comes in and tells me that his brain must be broken because he can’t sit still and manipulate tiny numbers as much as he wants. How come this is so hard for him, when all of his colleagues can work so diligently?

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much-mo...

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jancsika 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You are implicitly hard-coupling work ethic and ease of learning. Especially in the U.S., it is within the realm of possibility that the students near the mean possess a comparative ease of learning but value that advantage at roughly 0%.

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alwa 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Aren’t some of these “accommodations” for “disabilities” things as simple as, like, asking their professors not to put them on the spot in class if they have crippling social anxiety? Because while that might “toughen up” some people, with this person, that technique amounts to just punching them in the face for no constructive purpose?

How much of this is a terminology problem—that the word “disability” serves this blanket purpose for statutory reasons rather than to signal the type or severity of impairment?

Like, at the end of the day, these students still have to perform or not. I get the impression that a lot of these accommodations are kind of just a formal way of not being a dick about obstacles tangential to the actual learning.

	▲	OneDeuxTriSeiGo 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I went to the university half way through my undergrad to file for a disability because I have ADHD and I go through short periods where my medication just stops being effective for whatever reason. It's not a major disability but it was a barrier to me performing at my best so I filed the paperwork and got some minor accommodations. It was basic stuff like letting teachers know during periods when I was struggling and they would allow me to take tests in a separate room (same time limit, just by my self in a quiet room) or allow me an extra 24 hours on certain assignments provided I requested it X amount of days ahead of time. Certainly they provided a minor "advantage" but not substantially. And these were things that most teachers are already generally willing to accommodate regardless of disability but the disability system provides a formal framework for doing so and avoiding the justifying yourself over and over again (vs just getting it cleared up at the start of the semester). Disabilities come in many shapes and sizes. Most of them are small and it's way easier to deal with an office that deals specially with disabilities to come up with accommodations that make sense for you and keep them consistent across your entire time at university than it does to try and negotiate terms with every single professor or TA.

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morkalork 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe they're all that academically gifted kinda autism and students near the mean are less likely to be disabled? /s

	▲	wongarsu 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I can't talk about Stanford, but STEM-related jobs (including software engineering) certainly seem to be full of people with ADHD, autism and related "neurodivergances" I wouldn't be surprised if most of these Stanford cases are people gaming the system. But I would be equally unsurprised if screening all students of elite universities revealed that over 50% of them had some condition listed in the DSM-5, with clear correlations between condition and field of study
	▲	Brybry 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I know you did /s but in public school gifted programs here the gifted kids have IEPs (a document defining their Individualized Education Program) similar to what is required for special education kids with disabilities.