[HN Gopher] The Price of Discipline
___________________________________________________________________
The Price of Discipline
Author : yamrzou
Score : 172 points
Date : 2021-12-31 09:57 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (perell.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (perell.com)
| trinsic2 wrote:
| I didn't ready all the way through but I gather this issue isn't
| really about being disciplined, which you can generate healthy
| qualities of in yourself, this is about toxic and violent
| behavior, and the unresolved responses to that.
| csdvrx wrote:
| "computers" used to be like that: they gave you the freedom to
| create.
|
| Now they seem to have evolved in rigid walled gardens where the
| prospect of riches make it even worse: you are surrounded by
| people who do not really care about doing a great job, but just
| want to strike down tickets.
|
| I seriously hope the author is right, and that indeed, "the more
| you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through
| your fingers."
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| What's to be done now, after a childhood spent under heavy-handed
| parents with a singular goal of sucking away fun to optimize for
| college admissions, violent and emotionally abusive punishments,
| leaving me in a life of executive dysfunction and depression?
|
| Most of the article resonated with me. But I'm not sure I agree
| with the "ADHD medication is drugging children" part, since I've
| heard that ADHD medication can (in many cases) help _adults_ who
| haven 't been treated as children put their lives back together.
| (Sadly I was recently prescribed stimulants, tried them for a
| bit, and often got anxiety/panic attacks from the pills and
| caffeine.)
| tchalla wrote:
| Pain is mandatory, suffering is a choice. The pain won't go
| away - to suffer from the pain is an active choice we make.
|
| You clearly need therapy. Decide your values, be conscious of
| your choices they move to/away from your values and
| wholeheartedly accept the opportunity costs.
| chandmk wrote:
| At the end it is very inspiring to learn that Andre chose tennis
| on his own to become the number one on his own terms. But somehow
| it feels very ironic that he chose what he was already good at!
| Perhaps his father saved him a lot of time by choosing for him
| and using that time to make him skilled at tennis. It just feels
| like a perspective change. He could have simply said now I
| understood what my father was trying to do. Because no one really
| knows what Andre would have chosen and done by himself.
| ACow_Adonis wrote:
| There's a tragic irony/flaw in the use of agassi in this
| article.
|
| His "enlightenment" moment didn't result in him walking away
| from his father's world (or the money, or the emptyness of
| living a life to play tennis). in many ways its the opposite
| lesson of the article.
|
| It helps to remember of course that the whole anecdote and
| narrative is likely just more commercial promotional fiction.
| everyone likes a redemption story, especially when it's somehow
| a redemption story that doesn't result in recognising the
| emptiness of fans and fame and money and professional sport but
| a kind of self- congratulatory reawakening that involves no
| actual change. This allows the commercial engine of a
| professional tennis players life to keep turning and draw in
| new fans and retaining old ones... presumably the whole actual
| point of publishing his "autobiography".
|
| I'm guessing of course agassi didn't write his biography
| either. I'm sure his pr team/managers just hired a ghost
| writer.
|
| I've got nothing personally against agassi, just for he record,
| don't even know or care much about him. I'm sure his father
| probably was overbearing: that's the harsh reality of
| professional sports preparation. But it does well to read these
| things with a critical eye and recognise the reality behind
| them rather than the image. At the end of the day, he's still a
| guy that hit balls back and forth for money just like he was
| brought up to.
| vkk8 wrote:
| Yes, it almost sounds like Agassi sort of showed his father was
| right to force him to play tennis. If I suddenly "chose
| tennis", it wouldn't do me much good because becoming a world
| class tennis player requires decades of training starting from
| a young age.
| keeptrying wrote:
| Better title: The price of not choosing discipline.
|
| The article assumes discipline needs to be forced on you. Which
| is false.
|
| The few people I know who have been able to build self discipline
| on their own are immensely successful.
|
| It seems to comes from an extreme form of self determination.
| bambax wrote:
| > _are immensely successful_
|
| How do you know / what does it mean? Are they happy? Or just
| rich? Are they destroying what's left of the world by building
| stupid penis-shaped rockets to pretend they're astronauts when
| they're really not and never will be?
|
| The modern world is way past the point of stupid. And we dare
| call it "civilization". It's the opposite of civilization. It's
| active destruction by accelerated accumulation of useless
| wealth.
|
| I think it's better to not be part of that machine at all.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| I think it's mostly genetic, childhood education or dramatic
| life changes. I have rarely seen anyone who has zero discipline
| slowly acquires very good discipline without any significant
| changes in his/her life.
| analog31 wrote:
| Indeed, I've noticed that people who are self disciplined
| tend to have self disciplined children.
|
| I made the mistake of reading a number of parenting books,
| and they pretty much all start out with some form of: "You
| must be self disciplined or this method won't work."
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| Yeah agreed. I believe the only way to educate children to
| do X is to do X consistently as parents. It's kinda
| difficult to fake it in long term.
| keeptrying wrote:
| You definitely need a source. I would not say it was anything
| you mentioned.
|
| In one case it was just sheer ambition but he wasn't poor to
| begin with and in the other it was practicing a religion
| focusses on positive thinking which she adopted that also
| buikt her determination.
|
| It is interesting to juxtapose with Agassi and The William
| sisters.
|
| These two people are also on the top 0.1% Of their respective
| disciplines.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| I'm not sure. I can only judge from my own experience plus
| my friends' experience. Maybe people gather by kind so I
| don't get to see other possibilities.
|
| About William sisters, wasn't their father the first coach?
| Not to indicate anything but it falls in childhood
| experience catalog I think.
| gjvc wrote:
| self-discipline is a secret weapon
| anonymoushn wrote:
| People can't increase their conscientiousness through force of
| will any more than they can increase their height that way. It
| might be helpful to believe otherwise though.
| trinsic2 wrote:
| I could be misinterpreting your statement, if so please let
| me know. My understanding is that force of will is developed
| by repetition and it can definitely be learned. [My
| life](https://www.scottrlarson.com/books/book-most-improved/)
| is a perfect example of that. A great book on the subject is
| "[Constructive Living](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24
| 4742.Constructive_Livi...)" by David K. Reynolds.
| [deleted]
| layer8 wrote:
| But you also need the required willpower/discipline to do
| the repetition and learning. So there is some recursion
| here.
|
| To paraphrase Shopenhauer, you are free to do what you
| want, but you are not free to will what you want.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Isn't that just habit building?
|
| The whole idea that we have some attribute (willpower or
| self-discipline) that we can apply to our lives seems
| really iffy to me.
| kashunstva wrote:
| > People can't increase their conscientiousness through force
| of will...
|
| Admittedly I don't know the literature; but I increasingly
| hear that the so-called Big Five personality traits (of which
| conscientious is one) are regarded as more plastic than they
| once were. But perhaps it is simply, as you imply, isolating
| and substituting the behavioural components of the trait you
| wish to change. "Fake it 'til you make it," in a sense.
| anonymoushn wrote:
| I briefly read about this and you are correct. I didn't
| find anything too actionable but it's exciting to think
| that people may not be as stuck with their low stats as we
| had thought.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| They absolutely can, and force of will does get built up
| through "exercise"/"struggle".
|
| The brain is plastic, to an extent.
| achenet wrote:
| from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5991502/
|
| >After mindfulness-oriented meditation training, participants
| in this group (n = 15) showed an increase in character traits
| reflecting the maturity of the self at the intrapersonal
| (self-directedness) and interpersonal (cooperativeness)
| levels. Moreover, increased mindfulness and conscientiousness
| and decreased trait anxiety were observed in participants
| after the training.
|
| In patients with MS.
| m_a_g wrote:
| They can actually. Personality traits are not fixed.
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25822032/
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Must it be an act of will?
|
| I can grow my biceps, not through willing them bigger, but by
| doing dumbbell curls. We absolutely can change our ways of
| thinking about the world in a similar fashion. Otherwise
| there would be no point in going to school, of seeing a
| therapist, of reading a book.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| This is actually the whole point the author is trying to make:
| if you enforce strict discipline on your kids, they never learn
| to do it themselves. Give them the space to be kids and don't
| place your anxieties on them.
| phlipski wrote:
| I generally enjoy reading David Perell's article but he generally
| frustrates me with his ad-hoc mix of science/research and his
| personal opinions. Example - he references the 300% increase in
| college degrees amongst the population since 1970 and the
| pressure it places upon everyone else to "get a degree" and then
| turns around and bashes the idea of ADHD medications with ZERO
| evidence of its supposed dangers:
|
| "To their credit, my parents didn't drug me. I had all the
| features of a kid who would have binged ADHD medications like
| shots at a New Year's party. No matter how badly I acted, my
| parents never caved into the twisted logic that leads doctors to
| hand out prescription pills faster than candy on Halloween."
|
| Maybe if his parents HAD drugged him he wouldn't have been such a
| mess in middle school.
|
| I find him to generally be thought provoking but his immaturity
| (and youth) as a human shows through in a lot of his writing at
| times...
| zepto wrote:
| He does say that there hasn't been time for evidence of the
| long term dangers to become apparent.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Like the vaccine?
| zepto wrote:
| If the vaccine altered behavior and was taken every day
| during a decade of rapid brain development, there would be
| a reasonable basis for comparison.
| wswope wrote:
| He can say that, but the drugs have been around and
| extensively studied using every reasonable approach for many
| decades. Choosing to ignore evidence doesn't make it not
| exist - he's wrong according to a well-established scientific
| consensus.
| zepto wrote:
| The drugs have been around for decades. Using them daily
| with increasing numbers of children during a decade or so
| of brain development, has not.
| BirdieNZ wrote:
| Ritalin's been used to treat ADHD for about 70 years. Also,
| we know that ADHD results in reduced life expectancy, so ADHD
| medication just has to improve that number for it to be
| pretty good. If your life expectancy due to taking ADHD meds
| improves by a couple years because you're less likely to
| crash your car or overdose on recreational drugs then ADHD
| meds are a far preferable option to not taking them.
| zepto wrote:
| > If your life expectancy due to taking ADHD meds improves
| by a couple years because you're less likely to crash your
| car or overdose on recreational drugs
|
| Do we know that accidents are the causes of excess
| mortality for people with unmedicated ADHD, or are they
| deaths of despair because of a lack of accommodation?
|
| Edit: Looks like there is evidence supporting the idea that
| it's accidents.
|
| I would still be cautious about assuming this is true given
| how weak almost all social science and medical research is.
| randallsquared wrote:
| Wow, these first few paragraphs are terrible. "opening message...
| , _Open_. " Anger leading to resentment, leading to, uh, rage?
| Hm. Snorting meth "with the speed of a U.S. Open serve"? When I
| read that, I went to see when Agassi had died, since I thought
| the author was obviously implying suicide by meth... Apparently,
| Agassi just, you know, did some drugs in the late 90s, though.
|
| I was reminded of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29734242
| from a few days ago. :)
| tartoran wrote:
| Perhaps you haven't read through till the end of the story
| where Agassi makes his own decision as opposed to his father's
| and chooses tennis then goes on to become a champion once
| again.
| randallsquared wrote:
| I was actually only referring to the first few paragraphs; I
| have no comment on the rest of the essay.
| addsubtract wrote:
| I think the idea that all people figure things out on their own
| and will escape a life of freedom or hedonism because "its empty
| and hollow" have never experienced drug addiction. Agassi might
| have made it out but a lot of people don't. In a lot of ways I
| feel the opposite of this article. I rebelled against discipline
| throughout my teenage years and later came to appreciate my
| parents and teachers efforts way more. I wish I had stuck with
| instruments or tried harder in my math classes. Life is hard work
| and building the skill of discipline when it comes to life long
| learning is invaluable and fulfilling.
| pizza wrote:
| It should be easier for people to say "I no longer feel like I
| have free will" and also "I now feel like I have free will
| again" so that others can take care of them, but also in a way
| that won't take away their rights. I also think people who help
| people who are close to rock bottom often put a lot of skin in
| the game, and not always but sometimes can get hurt in the
| process- they should have protection too.
|
| Depressive hedonism is powerful.. The death drive is like
| playing a tit-for-tat strategy against one's own lebenswelt. I
| hope people don't take me as being dismissive or insensitive or
| ignoring the contributions of biophysics to drug dependency
| etiology, but from a free will frame of analysis it resembles a
| kind of very dark and very negative discipline itself.
|
| Imagine if it were just a thing that people could get help with
| as unshamefully as eg going to the dentist.
| aikiplayer wrote:
| I think I'm going to take a slightly different approach to some
| of the comments and the article. Notes: My wife is a long-time
| primary grade (think Kinder - 2) teacher and I've got 3 kids, 1
| fully baked and 2 in college.
|
| 1st, regarding Agassi, there are few folks in the history of the
| world who get to #1 in something and have a "normal" or perhaps
| "well balanced" life. It takes a lot of innate
| skill/ability/talent, drive, luck and the willingness to
| sacrifice. For a really chilling take, look at Ichiro Suzuki's
| upbringing (baseball).
|
| From a parent's perspective, at least mine, I tried to strike a
| balance between letting my kids choose their own paths while
| trying to help avoid closing too many doors. Some kids change A
| LOT and it would be a shame (to me at least) if they made a
| short-sighted decision at age 13 that prevented them from doing
| something later that they might decide they love and are good at.
| And the reality is, despite the occasional "against all the odds"
| stories out there where somebody made a late decision to pivot,
| most of the time the odds win.
|
| I also coached youth sports for a number of years and I struggled
| because one of my kids was a pretty good athlete but not super
| intense about it and a bit of a late developer. It meant they got
| selected out because of these things. I could have forced them to
| practice more, more intensely, etc. It turned OK because they
| ended up getting cut from a soccer team (twice no less), decided
| to work stick with it, lucked into a spot on a good team w/ good
| coaching and ended up as the varsity keeper on their high school
| team (well, until COVID became a thing).
|
| Like it or not, the world is super competitive. As a parent, it's
| hard when you see something that you know will normally close a
| door for your child. Many times parents are pushing their kids
| because they themselves are competitive. Other times, it's just
| trying to keep options open for your child. From a distance,
| they're indistinguishable.
|
| Finally, the education system is not perfect for all children and
| situations. It's an XX% solution (pick your number). This didn't
| sound like a typical ADHD situation. It clearly didn't fit this
| situation.
|
| Ultimately I see it as helping your children position themselves
| for situations that are right for them. The hard part is that
| what's right for them is pretty opaque until they're about 20...
| bittercynic wrote:
| >Like it or not, the world is super competitive.
|
| I think this is a choice, at least partly. If you have the good
| fortune to have been born in a place where the median income
| affords reasonable housing and healthy food and medical care,
| you're kind of set, and can get on with enjoying life and
| finding fulfilling relationships. As long as you're not hung up
| on having fancier things/higher status than the next guy.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| There's a really interesting discussion about societal values and
| the tendency of the ambitious to only take on goals that are safe
| and socially pre-approved.
|
| We see this in the dev community, where there is automatic
| admiration for and an an unspoken belief that our careers are
| just a big ladder to working at a FAANG. And there's nothing
| wrong with working there.
|
| But once you adopt a goal like that, you find you're in
| competition with people who are driven more by a feeling of
| winning rather than genuinely wanting to be there. They'd be
| gunning for Salesforce if it was en vogue.
| brador wrote:
| > There's a really interesting discussion about societal values
| and the tendency of the ambitious to only take on goals that
| are safe and socially pre-approved.
|
| Survivor bias?
| graycat wrote:
| Generally, I agree with the OP.
|
| From my experience, some of the claims seem right on target.
|
| There are a lot of claims in the OP, and I can't agree with all
| of them.
|
| I would add: In my experience, there is a small fraction of
| parents and teachers who really understand all that stuff, avoid
| the dangers, and do well as parents, teachers, whatever. Then
| there are the rest of the parents and teachers, and, yes, they
| can do a LOT of really serious damage -- I've seen too much of it
| close at hand.
|
| I'm an example of avoiding the dangers in the OP: My parents took
| the attitude that in nearly all things I should not be lectured
| to, disciplined, etc. and, instead, just left to my own devices.
|
| My collection of interests grew, and it's still huge. I pursued
| my real interests with a lot of effort with good results.
|
| In grades 1-8, the teachers talked to each other and agreed that
| I was a bad student. Yup, no doubt, a bad, poor, slow, not very
| smart student. Then there were some standardized tests, and,
| oops, no way saying I wasn't smart. But I was still a bad
| student.
|
| Then I discovered math and science, especially chemistry and
| physics. I was plenty interested, worked hard, and learned a lot.
| Some of the math teachers were torqued: I refused to show
| homework! That's because I found the assigned problems to be too
| easy and, instead, found the much more difficult supplementary
| problems in the back of the book and worked ALL of those, made
| sure I never missed one!
|
| But, there were standardized achievement tests, and again I did
| well and the teachers had just to swallow their belief that I was
| a bad student. It appears that the Principal of the school
| understood me and made sure I got some good opportunities -- I
| was sent to a math tournament and also a summer NSF funded math
| and physics program.
|
| When the SAT scores came back, the teacher who read them to me --
| I'd had in the sixth grade, she was fully on board that I was a
| dumb student -- saw the Math SAT score and got confused, "There
| must be some mistake." I didn't miss 800 by much -- I'd love to
| know what the CEEB thought I'd missed. It was the city's premier
| college prep school and had a lot of traditional good students.
| So, of #1, #2, #3 on the Math SATs I came second. Poor teacher
| was confused!
|
| In my Ph.D. program, the department Chair was a high discipline,
| dot i's and cross t's, straight As type of guy. But his research
| didn't amount to anything. At one point I pursued my interests
| instead of a course beneath me, and he got really torqued! Ah, to
| heck with him! From an advanced course, I saw a problem in an old
| field and asked for a _reading course_ to address it. I already
| had an idea for a solution -- "Never give a sucker an even
| break.". Two weeks later I had a nice solution, ready to publish
| -- later did publish it in JOTA (Journal of Optimization Theory
| and Applications).
|
| Net, doing that research got all the faculty and all the high
| _discipline_ guys totally OFF my case. The rest of the way
| through my Ph.D. I had some secret help at least from the Dean
| and maybe from the President -- the department Chair was soon
| fired.
|
| Net: In my experience, most of all students need to be INTERESTED
| and, then, given maybe a little very well considered advice but a
| LOT of freedom. THEN the student will likely work REALLY hard and
| maybe do some good things.
|
| If I have to hire some people, I may reject straight A,
| Valedictorian, PBK, _Summa Cum Laude_ applicants as people who
| worked for grades but not really for interests or learning --
| someone with strong interests will likely do a LOT better.
| gjvc wrote:
| (self-)discipline weighs ounces, regret weighs tons
| rhapsodic wrote:
| throwaway14356 wrote:
| an applausworthy article.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| "Students benefited from college not because of the education
| they received, but because of sexy diplomas and tight personal
| networks."
|
| It did make a difference in what institution issued the diploma.
| But was more about getting a diploma at all. So I'd say I
| disagree with what this statement implies.
| drakonka wrote:
| I went through a few different phases in my education:
|
| First, in my home country, were 6-day school weeks and hours of
| evening study. I remember a very specific instance of sitting at
| my desk at home with a light on when I was 8 or 9 years old,
| racking my brain over a math problem I just could NOT figure out.
| My grandmother, a retired math teacher, would come in once in a
| while to see how I was doing: no progress. I'd write out so many
| attempts at solutions and all of them were wrong. She grew
| increasingly frustrated with each visit to my room, and would
| then leave me to keep sitting, trying to figure it out. At some
| point what felt like hours later I just broke: I sat there crying
| onto my notebook after she yelled at me again during her last
| check-in. No matter how much I tried, I just could NOT figure out
| this problem. It felt like hitting my head against the wall and
| like I'd be sitting there for an eternity. I knew she wouldn't
| let me stop until I got the right answer. Eventually my mom came
| in to check on me and saw that I was basically sobbing trying to
| scribble something - anything - that made sense. She didn't
| realize how upset I was. She comforted me and we stopped the
| homework session for the night.
|
| When we moved to the US, my parents were more hands-off than my
| grandmother. I think they grew very relaxed when it became
| obvious that the math curriculum seemed to cover all the things I
| already learned in my home country. For several years I didn't
| need to put any effort in at all, since I already knew all the
| material. Sure, my classmates thought my way of writing out long
| division was "weird", but I was the one getting straight As. It
| was a breeze, and I got complacent. A few years in, I suddenly
| had to learn new stuff in Math and my discipline for having to
| actually learn new math concepts again just was not there
| anymore. My grades slipped really quickly after that and I became
| an average math student.
|
| In some ways, I wished the situation was somewhere between the
| strictness of my grandmother and the leniency of my parents. It's
| not that my parents didn't care or anything, it's just that I
| felt like I got into the habit of producing mediocre work with
| mediocre habits. I did love learning, just not learning at
| school. My mom would take me to the library and I'd check out a
| bunch of programming textbooks to tinker with my own websites and
| projects at home. I wish I'd put more effort into math at school,
| though. It was my own fault of course, but I could've used an
| adult to push me to put more effort in after moving to the US.
|
| Luckily, I ended up doing what I love via the self-taught route
| despite not ending up going to university. Looking back on it, I
| really lucked out with having a relatively supportive mother and
| a computer at home. My parents thought my computer time was a
| problem, but they let me pursue my interests in spending hours
| learning how to code websites, writing stories, and playing video
| games nonetheless. I think that early and ongoing practice in
| self-learning via hobby projects is the main reason I ended up OK
| despite a not-ideal formal education progression. Also luckily
| (for my specific case), no medication was prescribed.
| trinsic2 wrote:
| I think something like this happened to me as well, but on the
| other end. I was not pushed in any direction and I struggled
| through life until my existence was threatened by a brain
| hemorrhage. I wrote a self-published book on the topic, it
| still needs work, but at least I finished it.
| https://www.scottrlarson.com/books/book-most-improved/
|
| Something changed in me after that and I learned a new way of
| living with the help of the Constructive Living practice by
| David K. Reynolds and the works of James Allen.
| e1g wrote:
| I had a similar path, and recently realized that the brain can
| handle only so much _intensity_ of learning (in a sustainable
| way). Min /maxing is common: folks go all-in on one area
| (business, finance, tech, arts, history, sports, work,
| startups, etc), and exceptional learning there happens at cost
| of learning in other areas.
|
| In your example, when you moved as a child, your brain had to
| intensely learn the entire new social world - the new language,
| cultural norms, media that everyone else grew up with,
| interpersonal comms, your place in the world etc, on top of
| normal learning in school. It's possible that your brain
| couldn't maintain the old intensity of learning math because
| even if you wanted - it was already overloaded. And if you did
| push it, the math could come at the expense of other learnings
| - social, emotional, cultural, computer skills etc. To me it
| sounds like you ended up with the best balance, and sacrificed
| the learnings (in math) that are least correlated with long-
| term success or happiness.
| anonymoushn wrote:
| TFA says that being prescribed ADHD meds as a child increases
| one's odds of experiencing ADHD in adulthood (compared to having
| ADHD as a child but refusing to take meds). Andrew Huberman of
| Huberman Lab[0] says that giving an ADHD child meds and therapy
| can allow them to influence their own development in such a way
| that lowers their odds of experiencing an ADHD in adulthood. I
| wonder which of these is correct.
|
| [0]: https://hubermanlab.com
| _zamorano_ wrote:
| What about looking to countries who doesn't drug kids like
| crazy and see the results?
| anonymoushn wrote:
| I don't think we have good data about this because the
| prevalence of adult ADHD diagnosis will vary a lot between
| countries for cultural reasons or because of differences in
| distributions of careers, even if the underlying level of
| adult ADHD does not vary.
| BirdieNZ wrote:
| I wasn't drugged in childhood (other than paracetamol?) and
| ADHD made adult life incredibly difficult until I started
| medication. Now it feels like adult life is easy, and I can't
| believe it is so easy for other people. N=1 but not being
| drugged didn't prevent ADHD for me.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| What's with medication anxiety?
| inter_netuser wrote:
| It is correct to a degree.
|
| ADHD is just a short hand for "mild brain impairment/damage of
| unknown cause"
|
| It's not a single disease but a collection of dysexecutive
| syndromes that impact higher cognitive functions: strategic
| planning, organization, etc.
|
| This could be due to low oxygen during birth, infections (not
| necessarily CNS invasive), neck/head injuries, chronic pain,
| sleep disorders, genetics, vitamin deficiencies and a myriad of
| other causes, pretty much anything.
|
| The same medication is utilized as in traumatic brain injury:
| amphetamines. They are quite effective in both ADHD and TBI,
| and as been in active use for nearly a 100 years. Both can be
| often diagnosed by the same psychometric tests, and can be
| pretty much indistinguishable.
|
| Of course, finding mechanisms to cope with impaired executive
| function can help reduce the need for medication later in life.
|
| If you can find the underlying condition, and it happens to be
| reversible, as is often the case in case of vitamin/mineral
| deficiencies or some sleep disorders, it can be often
| eliminated entirely.
|
| However, due to paranoia around stimulants in our society there
| is some laymen hysteria about giving essentially lifelong
| access to stimulants to adults. It is an extremely harmful
| attitude, as medication is nothing but just a tool.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Minor correction: ADHD may be largely attributable to
| genetics (it had a heritability of 74%!)
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-018-0070-0/
| inter_netuser wrote:
| It could be, but I'm rather distrustful of such high
| numbers backstopped by nothing but the same exact set of MZ
| twins they've been using for lab rats for decades now in
| various studies.
|
| How many monozygotic twins can you find with a robust
| diagnosis of ADHD, and how much money can you afford to
| spend to thoroughly exclude every other possible cause
| (TBI, sleep breathing disorders, deficiency, thyroid,
| autoimmune, neuropathies)?
|
| Quite expensive, nobody gonna do that. Science is about
| finding evidence to support a hypothesis, not some quaint
| notion of "truth".
|
| All that's needed from such studies is to support the
| "biological cause" conclusion so that you can substantiate
| the need for a pharmacological as opposed to talk therapy
| intervention.
|
| Those studies certainly support that, but all they really
| say "ok this is biology".
|
| Given a disorder is usually defined by being outside the
| normal range, as defined by two sigma interval, 5% of
| people have ADHD by definition. How many of those are due
| to bad genes, and other causes is actually very hard to
| say, as there isn't that much profit to be made in
| discerning this any further.
| 8note wrote:
| Note: earrings hare also quite heritable, but unrelated to
| genetics
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| > "mild brain impairment/damage of unknown cause"
|
| Is ADHD not a developmental disorder, causing an
| underdevelopment or delayed development of the frontal lobe?
| It seems incorrect to refer to this as "brain damage"?
|
| Edit: I guess I'm referring to the official "medical
| narrative" as it stands.
|
| I do happen to believe that the DSM-5 criteria is wildly out
| of date for ADHD diagnosis and at odds with the findings of a
| lot of more recent research. But I'm just questioning the
| "brain damage" terminology - I've never heard it described in
| that way before.
|
| Most medical professionals that I've encountered stick firmly
| to the line that ADHD is a lifelong condition that develops
| in very early childhood and is not currently curable. You can
| almost entirely alleviate symptoms. But this is != a cure.
|
| My current understanding is that if your ADHD is "curable" by
| eg. vitamins or a change in sleep pattern then it is unlikely
| to be considered to have been ADHD in the first place (but
| the symptoms may well have been indistinguishable). That's
| not to say that the _symptoms_ of ADHD can 't be greatly
| _reduced_ by these things.
|
| However, I'm not a doctor. Happy to be corrected by anyone
| who is.
| BirdieNZ wrote:
| > It seems incorrect to refer to this as "brain damage"?
|
| Some people have car crashes or other traumatic head
| injuries and receive an ADHD diagnosis after the event, so
| it is usually from childhood but sometimes from brain
| damage.
| [deleted]
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| Giving psychotic medications to children feels like a very
| dangerous experiment, kinda like climate change. I'm not that
| old, but in my educational period I've never seen or experience
| anyone who would be ADHD or for whom one would that they need
| to take some medication.
|
| That being said, I come from a farm/vineyard and I've lived
| most of my life in a village, so my perception is certainly
| skewed. But I do know that you can't force a kid to do what
| they don't want to. I never liked vegetables so whenever we had
| a vegetable soup I didn't eat it, which made my mother angry.
| Her solution was, that I'm not allowed to leave the table until
| I eat everything that's on my plate. That gives you two
| options, either eat the food and be done with it... Or just sit
| there until the evening and then go to bed.
|
| What I'm trying to say is, if a child is full of energy, go
| outside with them and let them run around, don't give them
| medication to suppress that energy.
|
| I'm not certain what it's called but, it's better to prevent
| then to cure. It's better to prevent getting cancer then to
| cure cancer. Or in other words, would you rather prevent
| getting cancer or get cancer and then cure it?
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| My understanding is that ADHD and it's medication is actually
| one of, if not the most, well supported/researched
| relationships in psychiatry and neurological medicine.
|
| It's also not at all what is being described here; it's
| actually a neurodevelopmental disorder, not "full of energy".
| The medication doesn't suppress energy; the medications are
| actually amphetamines! If it wasn't being used to an ADHD
| brain, they'd be considered recreational stimulants.
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| Has ADHD been prevalent throughout the history and have
| I've just been blind or is it a new-ish development (in the
| past ~100 years)?
| zqna wrote:
| ADHD is epidemic in the rich countries that are obsessed
| with a so-called "success". Especially in the country
| where getting sick makes somebody else rich.
|
| https://adhd-institute.com/burden-of-adhd/epidemiology/
| inter_netuser wrote:
| do you think infections, traumatic brain injury, vitamin
| deficiencies, and the myriad of other reasons that can
| impair your cognitive function been prevalent throughout
| the history? That's all ADHD is, an umbrella term for
| impaired executive cognitive functions.
|
| ADHD can very often be due to undiagnosed conditions, or
| comorbidities that aggravate it.
|
| To put in perspective: there are billions walking around
| with undiagnosed hypertension, which is trivial to
| diagnose and treat.
|
| When was the last time you took your blood pressure?
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I don't know if ADHD has been diagnosed throughout
| history, but it seems to exist in a similar prevalence
| internationally regardless of culture, so my suspicion is
| that because the study of the human brain and behavior is
| pretty new then neurodevelopmental disorders diagnosis
| and discovery would be pretty new. It would be like
| dismissing germ theory because the prevalence of germ
| theory is about as new as ADHD.
| zqna wrote:
| Well, not true. It's very much a disease that was
| invented in US, and which is propelled by multibillion
| pharma-business:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/health/the-selling-of-
| att...
| inter_netuser wrote:
| you are doing a great disservice to millions who suffer
| from a very real condition.
|
| Go to a local support group and tell people on disability
| their problems were invented by multibillion pharma
| business.
| bobthechef wrote:
| zqna wrote:
| They are suffering there where being different and not
| participating in a rat race is considered as the problem.
| Here, tell this to my support group.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| everyone is different from one another. so you
| differentiate yourself by being different others...?
| seems very circular.
|
| You are absolutely free to drop out of the "rat race",
| aka the evolutionary process, which admittedly can be
| quite stressful. Just have to accept the consequences
| first, every choice comes with trade offs.
|
| The diatribes against well established condition as some
| sort of a pharma conspiracy is just the defence mechanism
| to avoid facing the disability. Not an uncommon strategy,
| but probably not very productive.
|
| ADHD is most effectively treated with basic 100 year old
| generic drugs, as well many thousand old remedies like
| nicotine. What's next, common cold is the aspirin lobby
| conspiracy?
|
| Guess what, some people manage to live happy lives, have
| happy families and success in business (that you call rat
| race) despite being fully paralyzed waist-down, and some
| even with limbs severed.
|
| I know some of those personally. I also know others, that
| chose instead to do nothing but complain. I'm sure you
| can guess the outcomes easily.
|
| Best of luck in the new year.
| misja111 wrote:
| It's not so long ago that the appropriate way to deal
| with homosexuals was to 'cure' them, for instance by
| therapy or if that didn't work, by medication. Once
| 'patients' would be cured they could manage to live happy
| lives and have happy families. And who knows, the society
| being the way it was at the time, maybe it would be
| easier for them at the time to live their lives. But
| nowadays most people would agree that it was not those
| individuals who needed to be cured, but the society
| around them.
|
| Your comment made me think of that.
| zepto wrote:
| > You are absolutely free to drop out of the "rat race",
| aka the evolutionary process,
|
| Modern American Education is not 'the evolutionary
| process'. If anything it is quite the opposite. More like
| forced domestication.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| you can always drop out and prove the world wrong.
|
| good luck. i'm sure you'll do great either way.
| zepto wrote:
| Bizarre comment.
|
| You seriously think the modern American education system
| represents 'the evolutionary process' or that the only
| option is to drop out?
|
| Education in its current form is relatively new, but also
| outdated, having been developed to train workers for an
| industrial society that no longer exists.
|
| There is no reason we can't be intelligent about this,
| and recognize that as a society we can do better if we
| understand its problems. We do that by discussing it.
|
| If you think it's perfect, that's ok, but then it's odd
| that you choose to come here and engage.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| But that article was published in 2013, closer to a
| decade ago. Do you have anything more recent? Recent
| studies I've casually googled point to 3-5% prevalence
| internationally.
| watwut wrote:
| There were kids who were seen as "bad" from young age and
| often beaten. Not doing tasks they were told to, playing
| instead, being lazy (meaning not doing what they were
| told to), misbehaving. So, they have beaten them or
| accused parents of spoiling them. It was not particularly
| rare. The young delinquency was a thing too.
|
| Kinda hard to say how many of them were adhd, but it is
| quite likely some were.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| > I've never seen or experience anyone who would be ADHD or
| for whom one would that they need to take some medication.
|
| You must then accept that you are ignorant. By comparison, I
| have seen and experienced children and adults who, without
| medication, would be unable to live remotely functional
| lives.
|
| > What I'm trying to say is, if a child is full of energy, go
| outside with them and let them run around, don't give them
| medication to suppress that energy.
|
| You demonstrate a lack of understanding of ADHD, so I would
| recommend further research before commenting in the future.
| It _used_ to be a common misconception that ADD /ADHD was
| just being full of energy, but that's not remotely accurate.
| Briefly, there are two dominant classifications: primarily
| inattentive and primarily impulsive (or hyperactive). There
| is also a combined impulsive/inattentive. I am inattentive.
| Among my numerous issues likely related to ADHD, I have
| trouble falling asleep and waking, I will stay up far too
| late reading. I make bad decisions when unmedicated, and I am
| unable to effectively wield the concept of time. Letting me
| run around as a child would accomplish nothing.
|
| > I'm not certain what it's called but, it's better to
| prevent then to cure. It's better to prevent getting cancer
| then to cure cancer. Or in other words, would you rather
| prevent getting cancer or get cancer and then cure it?
|
| Sure? But you're now assuming that ADHD is environmental,
| which I don't believe to be the modern understanding. It's
| likely hereditary.
|
| In any case, I found your comment quite disheartening.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| Forcing children to eat unpleasant foods or go hungry is
| abuse: https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/comments/rs6oy0/realisi
| ng_a_c...
|
| > I wasn't able to leave table a few times. One in
| particular- I used my absent father's pepper mill and put too
| much in my mashed potatoes. It burned my mouth and they
| wouldn't let me leave until I ate it all. Which I couldn't
| do. Crying. Furious. Humiliated. Trapped.
|
| > It got late and I started to fall asleep at table. I was
| greeted with the potatoes as breakfast. Then when I opened my
| lunchbox at school- there they were. At least I could throw
| them away. That was the day my anorexia began. There were
| incidents after where I didn't eat enough, where I took too
| much and wasted it- stuck at table in a power struggle I did
| not understand nor could I win.
|
| > My Mom did thuis with with my brother. If food is left out
| overnight, it is a trigger for him. He sees the food, and
| immediately thinks he has to eat it. I was forced to eat
| foods that made me sick, or I just didn't like. So, I would
| eat while dry heaving, and throwing back up into my mouth. I
| didn't dare not eat after seeing what my brother went
| through. That was the start of my eating disorder. I'm
| completely disconnected from my fullness/hunger cues. To eat
| mindfully is incredibly difficult because my brain is so used
| to dissociating while eating. My ED is binge eating because I
| used to eat a lot of anything I liked to get me through
| eating small amounts of anything I didn't like. I over-salt
| everything because I used to use salt to cover the taste of
| things, and need everything overcooked because my mom would
| undercook meat.
| rvba wrote:
| What does "common core" have to do with school problems?
| analog31 wrote:
| When my kids were starting school, I looked it up, just to get
| an idea of what was being taught these days. Each state had its
| own web page with the standards laid out in outline fashion.
| Common Core looked very much like what I had learned in school
| myself.
|
| I think Common Core just gave people an easy focal point of
| attack, like publishing the salaries of teachers.
| 8note wrote:
| It imposes constraints on what's taught that doesn't allow for
| students who are ahead or behind the curriculum. Growing up and
| learning are messy processes that demand flexible solutions
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > What does "common core" have to do with school problems?.
|
| It's a set of educational standards, and every such set newer
| than the 1800s is right-wing boogeyman that is attacked for
| things that are completely unrelated to it's actual content.
|
| (Often for doing the exact same thing they accused the last one
| of doing, where they hope you forget that the collapse of
| civilization they are predicting from it is the same thing, for
| the same supposed reason, they predicted from the _status quo_
| it is replacing.)
| Ostrogodsky wrote:
| Regarding Agassi,no doubt he had a hard childhood, but I always
| take those celebrities books with a huge grain of salt. A book
| that says, "I had an OK childhood, nothing wild, nothing out of
| the ordinary, when I won I was happy and when I lost, I was down"
| would not sell.
| research_studio wrote:
| I've often wondered how my career would have turned out different
| if I'd learned to love learning earlier rather than being forced
| into it. With a baby daughter I hope I can keep an eye out for
| some of these flags.
| amelius wrote:
| I wonder how ideas like this oscillate through generations, as
| one generation imposes them on the next, and the next forgets.
| tartoran wrote:
| Yes, that's a good point. Plenty of forcefully disciplined do
| 180 on their kids and give them complete freedoms.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| As a parent I also ponder such things frequently.
|
| I grew up with a lot of family friends who chose a hands-off or
| more "fun" approach to learning for their kids, while
| downplaying rigid formal education. I can't think of a single
| case where this resulted in a natural love of learning or a
| natural self-discipline. I do know a significant number of
| people in this cluster who grew up to embrace things like
| alternative medicine, MLMs, and even conspiracy theories,
| though.
|
| I think the reality is that self-discipline and academic
| learning is something that benefits greatly from teaching and
| coaching, even if it can be uncomfortable or un-fun at times.
|
| I also don't think it's helpful to try to make everything as
| enjoyable, fun, or comfortable as possible for kids. Some
| amount of struggle (though not too much) is healthy for
| building resiliency and persistence. I grew up with a number of
| people who's parents stepped in and made everything easy or
| comfortable for them at every step of the way, and as adults
| they tend to crumble when faced with the slightest adversity or
| stress. It's hard to re-learn self discipline and self control
| as an adult.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| >family friends who chose a hands-off or more "fun" approach
| to learning for their kids
|
| >alternative medicine, MLMs, and even conspiracy theories,
| though.
|
| This is just trait openness in action. Have considered the
| obvious, they are their parents children?
|
| I know several families with strong OCD tendencies, maybe
| even clinical idk, and their discipline, follow up, attention
| to detail and organization is absolutely mindboggling. I'm
| talking washrooms cleaner than operating rooms. Probably in
| top 0.01%, def above 0.5%.
|
| None of them learned or were taught, it's just the entire
| family is the same way, even small kids. They also sleep 4-5
| hours habitually, nobody uses alarm clocks, everyone up by
| 5am.
|
| Genetics is VERY real.
| watwut wrote:
| > I can't think of a single case where this resulted in a
| natural love of learning or a natural self-discipline.
|
| I do know such people. And also self disciplined kids from
| normal schools. It does not seem to me that fun learning ends
| up with undisciplined people.
| research_studio wrote:
| I'm not out to make things comfortable and easy for my kid as
| I agree that can foster the wrong attitude to tough
| situations. Worthwhile things are often difficult.
|
| I more meant that I didn't respond particularly well to
| formal schooling and it took me years to learn how to learn
| and if there's a shorter route towards that it would probably
| benefit my daughter if she's similar to me in that way.
| oxymoran wrote:
| Good article, bad title.
|
| It's not the price of discipline, it's the price of enforcing
| discipline on others. Discipline can only be learned through
| personal experience, it cannot be indoctrinated as that leads to
| resentment.
|
| This makes sense. It's like telling a smoker that it will kill
| them. That only annoys them. They need to come to that conclusion
| themselves.
|
| There are also two kinds of discipline, especially for little
| kids. There is the type of sacrificing pleasure for future
| rewards that can be learned naturally. But there is also the type
| of negative consequence for behavior in small children that is
| not acceptable but may not carry any inherent tangible negative
| consequence for the child to actually learn from and the parent
| needs to fill in. For example, children can be very rude and you
| can't treat a rude kid the way you would treat a rude adult, but
| you need to show them this is unacceptable in some way so you
| take away toys or other privileges etc.
| anonfornoreason wrote:
| For the parents out there, there's a really good book aimed at
| 5-13 year old kids on this topic. Honestly I think it's good for
| adults who haven't sorted it out either. Specifically, self
| discipline vs imposed discipline, and how self discipline if
| properly harnessed is the best way to find freedom in life. I was
| skeptical at first due to how the book presents itself but it's
| really good.
|
| "The way of the warrior kid" by jocko willinck.
| albatrosstrophy wrote:
| Thanks I'll check it out.
| watwut wrote:
| I don't particularly want my kids to be warriors. Too many of
| them are psychopaths.
| anonfornoreason wrote:
| I find that exposing my kids to a variety of perspectives
| helps them become a more well rounded person. I reject the
| idea that mere exposure to an idea will make them become any
| one thing, and that I have to shelter them.
| watwut wrote:
| The book is not something you give the kids to read. It is
| something you read in order to be able to shape then in a
| certain way.
|
| It is not about exposing them to ideas, it is about making
| them certain way, because it sounds cool.
|
| ---------
|
| But also with exposure of ideas, pretty much no one exposes
| jids to all ideas equally with no framing. Approving or
| disapproving framing is there, whether direct or subtle.
| anonfornoreason wrote:
| "It's about making them a certain way because it sounds
| cool" is an interesting statement to make. It assumes my
| mental state and motivations.
|
| With all things parenting, there are many correct ways to
| go about raising kids. Whatever you want to call it, I'm
| trying to raise mine to be resilient, recognize self
| imposed limitations, to be humble and to recognize the
| value of hard work and self discipline.
|
| Feel free to disregard the suggestion of those things
| aren't interesting to you as a parent raising a child.
|
| Finally, there's a huge amount of warrior worship these
| days (I have my own theory why but I'll hold that back),
| so I understand skepticism of the book based off its
| title.
| mrkentutbabi wrote:
| I do.
| ido wrote:
| Checking the excerpt online, does this book include
| glorification of the military?
| defphysics wrote:
| No it doesn't. I listened to the audiobook and agree it has
| very good lessons. One of the big ones has to do with
| empathy. I wish I'd had a book like this when I was a kid.
| [deleted]
| anonfornoreason wrote:
| That was my hesitation as well. My kid is young, didn't want
| to start that sort of thing early - he has no idea what the
| military is right now, only thinks guns are for hunting. They
| do say "Jake is a navy seal" but it doesn't go into it in any
| detail. It does have each division of the military's codes
| (along with viking codes, samurai codes, etc) as an example,
| but it's not a major part of the story and you can literally
| just skip those pages.
|
| I am a self-driven adult, but I even found value in how
| simply it explains the concept of self discipline. Have you
| ever had someone explain to you the difference between
| motivation and self-discipline? I was nodding along because I
| knew these concepts, but hadn't seen them explained in a way
| that was just perfectly crystal clear.
|
| Spoilers (funny to write this for a kids book):
|
| In one chapter, the kid learns how to learn, and learns that
| some people are naturally quick at certain things but others
| have to work much harder. That it doesn't mean you are dumb
| if you don't learn something really quick, that there are
| techniques you can learn that help if you just try.
|
| It also has a bunch of good stuff on humility, working well
| with others even if they have bullied you in the past,
| respecting yourself, etc. For example, the kid is getting
| bullied (amongst other things going wrong with his life). He
| trains all summer so he can defend himself, stands up to the
| kid in a way that isn't physical (it doesn't glorify that in
| any way) and then befriends him. He then invites him to come
| play with the other kids. The way he becomes friends with him
| after being bullied by him for an entire year takes an
| incredible amount of humility and kindness, and made me feel
| like I could improve in how I relate to other people I have
| had conflict with.
| ido wrote:
| Thanks for the extensive reply! I'll try to locate a German
| translation when my kids get a bit older (they are now 3
| and 5).
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