[HN Gopher] ADHD traits were an advantage in evolution
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ADHD traits were an advantage in evolution
Author : ljlolel
Score : 26 points
Date : 2024-05-27 19:41 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| riedel wrote:
| https://archive.ph/oHxJw
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| I hit the paywall but I'm wondering how scientists can
| differentiate between something that was an evolutionary
| advantage, and something that was a mutation (is that the right
| word?) that wasn't relevant to the evolutionary survival aspect
| and just lingered.
| lithos wrote:
| Proliferation, like lactose and carbohydrate tolerance.
| lantry wrote:
| As the sibling comment put it so succinctly, "proliferation".
| To expand upon that, natural selection basically says that
| traits which are beneficial to survival or reproduction will
| become more widespread in a population over time, and traits
| which are detrimental to survival or reproduction will become
| more rare in a population over time. Ergo, the fact that ADHD
| is rather widespread indicates that it is, on the whole,
| beneficial to the survival and/or reproduction of the
| individual that carries it.
|
| Of course, this is a drastic simplification. If you want to
| dive deeper, I suggest reading "The Selfish Gene".
| overstay8930 wrote:
| It's an advantage now if you know how to weaponize it for your
| purposes. The best dev I've ever worked with was an iOS/macOS
| Swift dev that had horrible adhd, but as long as someone was
| running the project that helped him focus on what needed to be
| done (i.e. on his ass enough to keep the work interesting without
| being annoying), he was doing the work of 5 different people (and
| was well compensated for it).
| anthonypz wrote:
| Was his title lead developer who typically helps out a team
| with any blockers, or was he a lone iOS dev outputting as much
| work as 5 people? I wonder what a dev with ADHD can do to stand
| out when they are just beginning a career in tech. I know that
| working on difficult tickets that nobody else wants to touch
| can help because you can keep shifting focus to something new,
| like you mentioned.
| overstay8930 wrote:
| Solo dev with deadlines. They were one of those people who
| also wrote plenty of swift in their free time, so I'm not
| sure how realistic it is for people who have normal work life
| balances.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| >doing the work of 5 different people (and was well compensated
| for it)
|
| The compensation part is very rare
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I made it through grad school, postdoc, and got a really good
| academic PI position with untreated severe ADHD... I can't do
| simple things I'm supposed to do or get any work done most
| days, but every now and then I get hyperfocused on an important
| scientific problem and solve it. I can't stop thinking about it
| until I solve it, and I can get what looks like years of work
| done in a week. It can take my years to write these up as a
| paper after. I get paid well but it is stressful as hell when I
| don't get any work done for a long time and am worrying about
| the consequences.
| zingababba wrote:
| "Using an online berry-picking game" uh-huh...
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Title is: ADHD-like traits could offer humans an advantage in
| foraging, study suggests
| falcolas wrote:
| This study bugs me. They got 450 qualified participants, of which
| over 80% were scored as having ADHD (wildly out of proportion
| with society at large). And the test was only 6 "How often" style
| questions.
|
| And then it extrapolates advantages based on how shorter loiter
| times scored better on their game.
|
| Sus as fuck frankly.
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