> And by adulthood, height doesn't change significantly and you probably know it ...
But height does change in adulthood [0]. On average people living past 40 gradually lose height. At age 80, it's likely height loss will be >=2 inches. This loss is reflected in higher BMI even when body fat content hasn't changed. Average BMI increase isn't large, but think about a person losing 4 or 5 inches of height while maintaining body fat unchanged.
Self-reported height is generally greater than measured height. Adding 1/2 to 1 inch is common (per experience measuring height). "Height inflation" has modest effect on BMI but problematic in research and workup for medical procedures. In the latter cases, measuring height is necessary.
MDD is the "bread and butter" of psychiatric practice. I'm not really sure how much that's changed over decades. Of course, depression treatment options have evolved greatly since the late 80s, truly a blessing.
You're probably right that increased awareness, reduced stigma and improved attention to diagnosis play a role in apparent population rate increase. Interesting how the comments here put forth quite a few "theories" regarding sources of the increase.
AFAIK there's no definitive explanation of the observation. In passing we should note that many other psychiatric conditions have parallel rising incidences. The factors you cite apply to those conditions as well.
Psychiatric conditions in general are very complex, with associations to a wide array of factors. Most likely many small contributors add up to vulnerability to one or more of these conditions. Our brains are constructed to prefer lumping things into simpler categories. What we call MDD clearly enough is not a unitary disease but outcome of a messy set of myriad "causes" diagnostically lumped together.
The progress made in identifying and treating psychiatric disorders is impressive and gratifying. The more we accept the messy reality, the greater the level of progress we'll make.
Treating many ADHD adult students some did take advantage of accommodations available to them.
Problems with test-taking varied, but common issues were getting distracted by extraneous stimuli in "regular" classrooms. Frequently ADHD students were slow readers and really did need/use extra time. But the biggest problem was test-taking anxiety, often quite prominent, contributing to difficulty with tests.
Interestingly, more than not ADHD students were reluctant to ask for accommodations. Some never availed themselves of this benefit. Others only used part of the options they could use.
In my practice were a number of ADHD adults admitted to nursing school, some having serious academic difficulties and eventually asking for accommodations. The assistance was effective. Notably, none of these student-patients failed or dropped out, all graduated. A pleasant footnote to add is a subset of these nurses developed exceptional skill earning them leadership positions in their institutions.
Reputable clinicians wouldn't give an ADHD diagnosis or support academic accommodations without sufficient clinical evidence.
Part of the problem here is that this college has <5% acceptance rate. Very hard to get into and prestigious. The students who get in have been minmaxing and exploiting every advantage they can for their entire life.
> The students who get in have been minmaxing and exploiting every advantage they can for their entire life.
Not a school I'd be tempted to apply to. Scholastic competition is one thing, but scrapping for every conceivable speck of "I'm better than the next guy" is not a bit attractive. I wonder about the campus atmosphere. Seems likely contesting would be a hard to break habit. I feel tense just thinking about it :/
Of course, ADHD students are less likely to achieve near-perfect grades than non-ADHD peers. Though it's not impossible for an ADHD student to succeed. Anyway, not at all uncommon for a student to do very well until subjects become more complex and challenging. Conceivably a student could look promising, but then suddenly have great difficulty keeping up.
So a safe bet that at least a few students at the top-level school have ADHD. If the school offers little or no accommodation, affected students probably have to accept getting educated elsewhere. Fortunately, more than not ADHD treatment is effective, a favorable response can make a pivotal difference in the student's outcome.
Very few artists earn a living in art let alone become wealthy. The art world is highly competitive, though real talent and innovation are rare. But making it big in art is more about self-promotion and marketing than artistic ability. So success is only marginally correlated with what they do with their hands, as opposed to what's done with their mouths.
The number of artists that succeed is irrelevant to my comment. No one needs to tell me about the life of an Artist or the Art world. My dad was a fine art painter, my mom was a potter, another uncle is a kinetic sculptor, one uncle made pastel's of Sulky races to get by. I have a cousin that was a pioneer in computer graphics attending the Media Lab while it was still in the architecture department.
I was raised in the art world by a multi-generational art family. None were wildly successful all managed to make enough for a good life. Farmers, bakers, masseuses, carpenters,... all work with their hands generally only artist can take rubbish and turn it into big money. The criticism of the art world you put forward is very one-dimensional.
Your family certainly has an impressive record of success in the art world. My father was a talented painter but didn't attempt to sell his work. He was an even more talented pianist but rarely performed publicly. My sister is an exceptionally talented painter and sculptor. I encouraged her to put her work out there but never did, a real shame.
I'm also an artist, primarily a printmaker. I've made my living otherwise, though my work sells at a modest pace.
I know many artists in galleries but only a few earn enough to pay their bills. Artists who do earn a living are good self-promoters of their work or build reputation through family connections to patrons. The shy ones remain unknown. Hardly a "criticism of the art world" just a summation of decades-long observation.
For every artist turning rubbish into big money there are many who only turn rubbish into garbage. Perhaps my comments are "one-dimensional", but so is implying that turning rubbish into big money is easy to achieve.
I agree with what you are saying. My point is mostly that artist occupy a strange spot in our culture. They are the only “trade” that I know of that can fabricate items that have a value beyond their utility.
Making a living at art is a big sacrifice. Maybe I should have said earn a living rather than big money. The big money comment was focused on stock market returns which was really my point.
It’s hard to make big money using just one’s hands outside of the stock market.
My judgement may have been skewed by families like the Calder. Alexander Calder was a third generation artist.
My families success was much closer to middle class. The big advantage they had was time
To focus on their curiosities.
It’s true that being embedded in any societal effort will increase the odds of success for the young raised in the environment.
I never mentioned the simplicity of earning only that it was possible. I have observed this being done. It was not fast or easy but is possible.
My uncle always had good reviews but his pieces were never purchased by the art world. His work was purchased or rented by the science museum world.
I’m glad you are able to sell some prints. The most important thing is creating.
The challenge of selling art is tough. Earning a living leveraging one’s artistic training is easier then the gallery path.
My uncle worked his whole life and never sold a piece to the art world. Society did find values in his objects. One has to take success even if the form is unexpected.
I went to art school and studied industrial design a career I wanted since puberty.
> My point is mostly that artist occupy a strange spot in our culture. They are the only “trade” that I know of that can fabricate items that have a value beyond their utility.
Thank you for the clarification. You're right artistic success usually requires enduring arduous effort. Art, well, visual art, is making something out of very little. Hard to explain why the value of art is quirky. The word "value" is ambiguous, has multiple meanings.
I think paintings, prints, etc., are approximate expressions of an artist's visual imagination. Material value of painted canvas is negligible, price can be assigned by dealers and other players. Real value is individual, created when a viewer strongly resonates with an artistic expression. OTOH market/art-world value is mutable. I've often remarked that it won't be decided which of the art created today is "good" until 50 years after we're all gone.
> The most important thing is creating.
It's true, motivation to make art is more than selling art. A very successful artist in his sixties told me he feels a need to create art whether it sells or not. I've donated prints to schools, hospitals, libraries, etc. It's gratifying to know my work will be around long after I've passed on. That's more important to me than money.
I visited your uncle's website. His kinetics are superb, entertaining but also expressing visually complex, 4 (or more) dimensional ideas. Translating to concrete form is an admirable accomplishment.
BTW I think industrial design is underappreciated. Shape, color, etc., of utilitarian objects has to be determined by at least one real person. Some of these objects are endowed with subtle beauty. Working with beautiful things makes the labor less burdensome.
Interesting comment. FWIW the idea of God as Being accords with Spinoza's philosophy, which in turn accords with Greek philosophy and ultimately accords with biblical philosophy. These are roots among the many roots of our modern world.
What we learn from these philosophies is that God is necessarily the author of life and love, but as well hatred and destruction. Worth noting that the latter are most (but not exclusively) expressed in human conduct. Among all animals humans have the most developed ability to decide how to act. That ability is not absolute, often enough logic or reasoning is bypassed and emotion rules.
Naturally cognition is not unbounded, we are limited by constraints of our construction. It means aspects of the universe are unknowable, we can't know what we're missing.
But knowing what we can know is an obligation of our privileged existence. As knowledge expands it exposes the utter complexity of all things emerging from common fundamental processes.
Seeing what is seen, a human may for a moment get a glimpse of the hand that binds everything together. That's a gift if there ever was one.
> ... multi-tasking is not a strength, it's a sign of distraction
Interesting point of view from one who's been there. Intuitively the comment makes a lot of sense.
In a way human multitasking resembles how single-threaded computer programs work. That is, we focus on one task at a time but tasks can be interleaved to give an illusion of doing several tasks at the same time. Managing several tasks requires remembering the next step to do when leaving one task to attend to another.
That suggests ADHD people lose track of where they left off when performing several tasks. Distraction plays a role, but I think problematic working memory is the major issue. Among ADHD researchers there's a saying, "people with ADHD know what to do but don't do what they know." ADHD task performance may improve with proper treatment.
> That suggests ADHD people lose track of where they left off when performing several tasks
Not quite. At least not for me. My problem is hyperfocus. If I switch tasks I might go down a rabbit hole and forget to change back. It is similar to being distracted, except the distraction can still be legitimate work stuff. My focus is like a freight train, it's hard to change tracks
Which can seem like an attention problem when you're trying to change me from focused code mode to "jump on a call" mode
Yes, hyperfocus is indeed a frequent problem for people with ADHD. One version is getting overly involved in irrelevant details, due to interest or having difficulty pulling away. The latter takes much effort and a good measure of courage. Maybe "rabbit holes" are kind of like that.
For many with ADHD starting tasks is hard and resuming a task can be just as hard. Constant experience of "starting from scratch" is burdensome, and contributes to inertia and inefficiency. More than not, a tough problem to solve.
I've long thought disability associated with ADHD is generally underappreciated despite decades of study proving the point.
Self-observation isn't easy. I always considered it a sign of growth when people shared what they've seen.
Not diagnosed, on online “tests” I score just shy of the ADHD threshold, and I find myself in this. If only I properly remembered and agreed on what I wanted to do yesterday it would be fantastic. Even if I write it down and happen to remember to check the notes, it’s almost like I was a different person yesterday, todays priorities are all new
> Not diagnosed, on online “tests” I score just shy of the ADHD threshold, and I find myself in this.
Don't know the tests you refer to, but it's recognized that many adults have ADHD symptoms not quite meeting DSM-5 criteria for ADHD. It's called "subsyndromal" ADHD which causes as much disability and responds to treatment just as well as "full" ADHD cases. IOW it's absurd to regard someone with 6 symptoms as belonging in a different category vs. a person having "only" 5 symptoms. Anyway, ADHD is a condition that usually responds to treatment, no reason not to check into it.
Thanks, I know I could probably get a diagnosis and treatment for it. However, to be honest I kind of like it!
I think it keeps me on a different path wrt most people, so until it becomes a serious problem (financially) I’ll keep riding the waves of focus and distraction ;)
Of course, it's always entirely up to you. But wise to stay alert to documented ADHD effects, e.g., on social functioning, general health, increased risk of accidental injury, depression, anxiety, to name a few. In any case, treatment won't undo the uniqueness of your path, if anything likely to augment reaching goals your path leads to.
The contest you described (people with ADHD vs. autism) would have an enormously negative effect. But there are reasons to think it's unlikely. FWIW at least 25% of ADHD adults manifest autistic traits. Hardly surprising, clinicians regard overlapping neurodevelopmental disorders as the rule and not the exception.
An online community works when participants learn and share knowledge gained. Contests, with self or others, disrupt learning and sharing, hence by definition constitute "bad behavior". If it exists, the hyperwar you allude to will harm communities more than all LLMs combined could do.
You're probably right about comparative costs. But the problem of getting to an autonomous bus will remain a significant barrier to public transportation use.
My neighborhood is close to the city center. Even so, bus service is very sparse, recently reduced to just twice a day. In addition walking to bus stops is long and difficult, or even impossible, for many elderly or disabled residents.
I envision a Waymo-like car service transporting people to/from destinations or if it's more practical, a transit center. I concur car services wouldn't be the cheapest option but may well be the most effective.
> It seems that elderly nowadays are super vary of any hacking or scams. YMMV.
I'm sure you meant "wary". How amazing, education really does work. There is such a thing as overabundance of caution. But it's possible further education could encourage users to apply more balanced caution policies.
> Have you guys never done IT tech support for your elderly parents' computers?
This kind of comment is frequently made on HN and elsewhere. However, more than a few "elderly parents" are as computer-sophisticated as their grown children. A safe bet it's not rare to be exchanging ideas with an elderly person sophisticated enough to make comments on HN.
AFAIK there's no shortage of careless, uninformed, non-elderly individuals who get scammed into doing stupid things. Age is only one possible factor out of many contributing to scam vulnerability. And let us not forget that youthful, well-trained professional IT workers, developers and software engineers are not immune to scams via misunderstanding elements of the systems or processes they supervise.
But height does change in adulthood [0]. On average people living past 40 gradually lose height. At age 80, it's likely height loss will be >=2 inches. This loss is reflected in higher BMI even when body fat content hasn't changed. Average BMI increase isn't large, but think about a person losing 4 or 5 inches of height while maintaining body fat unchanged.
Self-reported height is generally greater than measured height. Adding 1/2 to 1 inch is common (per experience measuring height). "Height inflation" has modest effect on BMI but problematic in research and workup for medical procedures. In the latter cases, measuring height is necessary.
[0] https://www.uhhospitals.org/blog/articles/2024/10/why-do-peo...
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