| ▲ | alexfoo 2 hours ago | |
> I find all these conversation around neuro-divergence extremely weird, for the simple reason that I have a never seen a proper definition of what a "normal" person actually is, and for good and obvious reasons: The problem is that no-one can easily understand how their brain works compared to other people. People on both sides don't talk about it enough or openly enough. If you look at the science it quickly descends in to endless confusing/impenetrable psychiatric terminology. You can study things like anaemia as you can objectively measure the red blood cell count of a patient's blood. You can't objectively measure a patient's "focus" or "motivation". It's really hard to even get a good subjective measure of those things. For example, it's just one aspect, but prior to diagnosis and taking methylphenidate (Ritalin/Concerta) I thought everyone had hundreds of competing thoughts running through their head all the time. I thought everyone just had better ways of dealing with it than I did. I had no idea that's not the case. I'd got to 50+ years old, got several degrees, married and had a family, had a successful career, not quite FAANG but earning more than 6 figures, all in spite of how my brain works. Surely there can't be anything "wrong" with me. But when the medication first kicked in I was simply astounded how quiet my brain became and how clearly I could think about just one thing (it may not be the thing I actually wanted to focus on at that time but that's another facet of the fun). How the hell did I manage to get by all this time without this? It's only then in speaking to other people do I find out that, no, most other people don't have hundreds of competing thoughts running through their head all the time snapping at their focus. > On that premise, the whole idea of neuro-divergence and the idea that you can classify people in arbitrary categories such as ADHD, Autism, etc ... and that this classification will lead to a way to "fix them" is complete and utter BS. I agree with point about broad classifications, but medicine is far from the exact science that people believe it is. Got these symptoms? Does medication A improve them? Can you live with the side effects of medication A? Does medication B help with the side effects of medication A and not interfere with the improvements given my medication A? etc... | ||
| ▲ | ur-whale 37 minutes ago | parent [-] | |
> but medicine is far from the exact science Truer words ... As a matter of fact, calling it science ... quite the stretch when it comes to most medical professionals I've met in my long life. | ||