We live in the post industrial age. Human evolution is speeding up. Quirks are a part of evolution. The post modern society that we live in is basicly a sensory overload. With some/most people with ADD our brains work on a different level than the average persons brain. Could the fact that computers and other high tech equipment is such a part of modern life be leading to a time when nuro transmitters will be more fine tunned and therefore more in tune with the modern world. Ok, shakey start but ill try and put it together. Is it possible that the week nurotransmitters of our ancient ancestors are simply evolving and in the process the weekest of them are dying out? Is Add a possible first step in a process that would lead to our brains reling on less yet more efficent nurotransmitters that would be better sooted to the future of our race? Secondly, I have always found that when i am not properly medicated that the waking world becomes very dreamlike in that it is fuzzy, difficult to comprehend, and only the most important of facts come to the forefront and are remembered. That said I believe that ADD is in fact a plus for artisticly minded people. When your waking world becomes like your subconcious dreaming world it opens up only the most intense of feelings (good or bad), colors, landscapes, ideas, and questions. Maybe we are just the first line in the next stage of evolution towards a world in which technology and art will be the most important and valued things in society. Either that or we are all screwed up and God dosent like us, kidding. I mean why not, stranger theorys have been put out there. Would love some feedback. Thanks
Pith

Interesting therory, one thing about it, I am sure we are preparing for the future, but in what way, hmm, not sure. I would like to think that I was givin, my gift for fast thinking, and art for a reason. I definetly feel us adders will lead us into the future.

It does make for an interesting discussion, however, research doesn't support the idea.

At a recent presentation by a neurodevelopmental pediatrician, I saw data presented that was attributed to Joe Biederman,MD.,noted ADHD researcher and Harvard psychiatrist.

What she mentioned was a study by him that highlighted "psychosocial adversity" in the form of a single parent household, as one of the perinatal risk factors for ADHD.

In an earlier post, someone mentioned Dr Hallowell's new book,which I haven't read. as making mention of "environmental triggers."

Again, I haven't read either the book or seen the article.

To the best of my knowledge, these are the only 2 references I've seen that lend any support whatsoever to the environment playing a larger role than having the potential to make things worse (for any type of problem).

The bottom line though, is that it will take a lot more data than these 2 references to undo all the years of research to the contrary.

I know i have no basis it was just an idea that i have been toying with and heck it beats thinking of ourselves as damaged goods.
Pith

It's not sound on the evolutionary level. The industrial age actually significantly slowed human evolution and evolutionary development. Genome research significantly alters the ability of the race to evolve in unnatural directions. Humans are the pinnacle of evolution, in that we no longer adapt to our environment. Survival of the fittest does not apply any longer. Instead of adapting to fit our environment, we change our environment to meet our needs, in most countries.

For example, in the past, humans that couldn't stomach bad drinking water would've died off, and those with stronger immune systems would have thrived, eventually allowing us to drink whatever water we so pleased. However, instead we invented iodine tablets and boil-purification, and now anyone can drink any water, we change the water to fit us, not vice versa. In the past, winters would've killed those of our species without a strong endurance to the cold. Now, we wear coats. One could argue that evolution at this point is adapted towards who is more capable of best changing their environment to suit their own needs.

Unfortunately, the very nature of ADHD requires "impairment," which is caused by maladaptive qualities. Maladaptive qualities are still mainly those that aren't survivalistic. Really, chances are that ADHD still exists because evolution has stopped. In a more perfect world, our negative traits would have been bred out (impulsivity kills, more so in a survival geared world, and stalking prey takes patience), while positive traits may have been emphasized (acute senses are useful in hunting). ADHD would have been selectively bred out of the human species.

This is why there aren't many psychological disorders in animals, or really any genetic disorders in undomesticated animals, that last very long. They don't reproduce because natural selection does its job. Remember the dog that impulsively chased the ball into the street? Bam. Evolution. When the kid did the same thing, we spent tons of money and resources rebuilding him. When the dog did that in the wild, his pack left him and the "impulsive" gene died off.

Damn it! I want us all to be Cyber Punk superhumans! Thanks for reading my post i know its far out but at least i finally said it in a way that i could understand it, that was important to me. I have read enough about ADD to know that im basicly wrong but I wouldent go so far as to think that ADD will be weeded out through natural selection. I have just met to many amazing ADDers with beautiful minds to believe that we are all just messed up genetic mishaps. If we where why would the average ADDer once properly medicated and in therapy have higher IQ's than your average Joe. Im not putting anyone down by saying that because the average Joe's inteligence and creative drive is lower than i think most of you would believe. Hell, if we are just defects then at least trying to deal with life with that on our backs we are becoming stronger by the day and that alone may be enough.
Pith

Russ has just released his 3rd edition of The ADHD Handbook.

I believe its co -authored by Kevin Murphy.

If you aren't familiar with him, he is widely considered to be the most respected researcher on ADHD in adults.

That's an area that is sorely lacking in terms of there being great a deal of research.

The material I've previously posted in other threads on this topic has been from ADHD and the Nature of Self-Control and/or the 2nd edition of the ADHD Handbook.

If you'd like to preview one of the chapters, please go to the Guilford Press website.

Thanks, i will check it out but i still like my idea even though it is wrong and bassed on nothing but ive been wrong before and really didnt belive it when i was writing it, it had just been rolling around in my head and i wanted to try and figure out how to express it. Thanks for reading it at least.
Pith

That could be the start of a great novel--just keep developing the idea and see where it takes you.

I agree. It does sound cool.

It goes without saying, that there are some very bright and creative people in here.

We are not prepared for the future that OTHERS want to put infront of us, school criples us, slows us down. We are told we don't work to OUR potential, when in fact we just refuse to work to OTHER'S poetential. Why practice what we already know how to do? We see something, do a problem once, it runs though our mind continuously, we don't need to do it again on paper to remember. That is where homework cripples us, our grades drop, our self esteem, others view of us follows. We are on a spiral down to where we dtop things, stop caring about school, hating it, some quit reading. We don't like hearing what we do wrong, we already know, we hear one thing once and never foreget it. We repeat what you say in our head until we almost believe you. "You can't do that..., How would you know?... You don't know everything!... You are stupid... What are you so slow?... No, do it this way!!.. That is the wrong way... Don't look at me like that... Stop satring... Look at me when I'm talking to you... why are you smiling, wipe that stupid gring of your face... are you retarded?" What normal people think about once, or not at all, we think about in prolly this equation: x^a*y^b; where x is how many time we see that person a day, a is the number of times you say it each time we see you, y is how much we care about the person, and b is how many stupid things we said when this happened... I dono maybe thats just me. We learn from our mistakes better than you, you don't need to remind us, we've already done so a million times. Let us learn the we can, we can't learn the way you do, or want us too, don't force your 'learning strategies' on us, we won't use them, our brains only work one way, we only do things that one way, so we won't learn anything otherwize. We plan ahead, but not linearly, it's more like consecutive stacks, queues, not just a line of dates. Asking us to plan is making us have to completelly rearrange the queue, we have to start all over. We do things in the order of real importance, we have bad short term memories, or atleast we thought we did, we tend to forget if we might have forgoten already. IF we never get the top things in one of the stacks we never get to the next planed thing, we then skip to the next stack, or we continue to fail, get stuck on the one thing. One day at a time, or one thing at a time; we think in the terms that we have one thing to do now, and one next and so on, not we have 3 things to do now, we just sit trying to figure out how we can do them all at once, and never start. It's like our schedualed things are in stacks of paper, we can't see whats at the bottom untiul we get there, so we 'forget' to do things when we don't finish the 'more important things first.' :faint:

I did my Master's thesis on invertebrate paleontology. One of the things I had to consider was the evolutionary implicationsa for inherited traits in living things, so this topic interests me a lot.

It works like this... Some people are just a little different than others, and a few are ... well... a LOT different. :)

If that inherited difference leads to a better chance of reproducing succesfully, you end up with a lot more people with that new inherited trait in just a few generations.
If the trend escalates, you end up with that small group of "different" people becoming the "normal" ones by virtue of being the new majority.

What this means is, that people who have the so-called "geek syndrome" might just have an evolutionary advantage in a high tecnology culture. There may be something to the idea, but it is too soon to say for sure. Some claim there is evidence that the numbers of people with ADHD and aspergers syndrome are on the rise in the high-tech areas of the USA. If this is so, it is a remarkable thing and we are likely to see this trend continue.

This kind of escalation of an inherited trait over time is not so unusual... For example: Americans have evolved a large percentage of adults who can tolerate eating diary products in large amounts... in many countries a large percentage of adults can not eat dairy products like milk, cheese ,etc. If you can not eat the available food, you don't live as long and you do not have as many children to pass your traits on. If one of your primary food sources is dairy products you are at an evolotionary advantage if you can digest diary products as an adult. That is natural selection and evolution in action! Amazing eh ??

I don't think I'd run out and corner the market on pocket savers to sell to the next generation of super-geeks, it is just too soon to tell what is really going on, but something curious is certainly happening.

Has anyone read A.C. Clarke's "Childhood's End" ???

Me :D


We live in the post industrial age. Human evolution is speeding up. Quirks are a part of evolution. The post modern society that we live in is basicly a sensory overload. With some/most people with ADD our brains work on a different level than the average persons brain. Could the fact that computers and other high tech equipment is such a part of modern life be leading to a time when nuro transmitters will be more fine tunned and therefore more in tune with the modern world. Ok, shakey start but ill try and put it together. Is it possible that the week nurotransmitters of our ancient ancestors are simply evolving and in the process the weekest of them are dying out? Is Add a possible first step in a process that would lead to our brains reling on less yet more efficent nurotransmitters that would be better sooted to the future of our race? Secondly, I have always found that when i am not properly medicated that the waking world becomes very dreamlike in that it is fuzzy, difficult to comprehend, and only the most important of facts come to the forefront and are remembered. That said I believe that ADD is in fact a plus for artisticly minded people. When your waking world becomes like your subconcious dreaming world it opens up only the most intense of feelings (good or bad), colors, landscapes, ideas, and questions. Maybe we are just the first line in the next stage of evolution towards a world in which technology and art will be the most important and valued things in society. Either that or we are all screwed up and God dosent like us, kidding. I mean why not, stranger theorys have been put out there. Would love some feedback. Thanks
Pith

Can one of you very bright super-intellect ultra-educated folks please explain something to me. At 119.5 IQ I am no more than the high-side of average intellectually. Here is my problem. You can take a bucket of 100,000 or so 50/50 black and white marbles, and shake and toss them for octeen billion years and they will not come out in the right order to form a "hello world" program in binary - never. It is estimated that our brain contains 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) neurons, with each neuron interfacing with its neighbors via 1000 synapsis each synapsis specialized to communicate in one or more of the 50 known neurotransmitters and this electrochemical hardware reconfigures itself to accomodate new memory not just store on some black space and blind forces are responsible for this machine none of us humans - even those freaks with 200+ IQs can figure out?

Explain it please to the simple-minded. BUT do not resort to "all the intellectuals believe" and "only uneducated people think otherwise" sophistry BS that permeats the topic.

Thank you.

Simple minded,
Bob

Here is my problem. You can take a bucket of 100,000 or so 50/50 black and white marbles, and shake and toss them for octeen billion years and they will not come out in the right order to form a "hello world" program in binary - never.


No, but one only needs 224 marbles (448 in the bucket) to assemble a hello world program on a certain architecture and OS! I get the point, though.


It is estimated that our brain contains 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) neurons, with each neuron interfacing with its neighbors via 1000 synapsis each synapsis specialized to communicate in one or more of the 50 known neurotransmitters and this electrochemical hardware reconfigures itself to accomodate new memory not just store on some black space and blind forces are responsible for this machine none of us humans - even those freaks with 200+ IQs can figure out?


Without reading this thread in its entirety, I would assume that you are bashing the theory of evolution (development through pure evolution)? I, myself, do not believe that life started from a pile of dirt, cloud of dust, etc. That doesn't mean that the all of the ideas involved in the theory of evolution are necessarily invalid.

At a recent presentation by a neurodevelopmental pediatrician, I saw data presented that was attributed to Joe Biederman,MD.,noted ADHD researcher and Harvard psychiatrist.

What she mentioned was a study by him that highlighted "psychosocial adversity" in the form of a single parent household, as one of the perinatal risk factors for ADHD.
If people with ADD have a higher rate of divorce, unplanned pregnancies, and the like than the general population, you could find a genetic story for this as well.

Unfortunately, the very nature of ADHD requires "impairment," which is caused by maladaptive qualities. Maladaptive qualities are still mainly those that aren't survivalistic. Really, chances are that ADHD still exists because evolution has stopped. Our ancestors were using stone tools 2.5 million years ago, yet we have still evolved. The lack of notable evolution since our technological boom started 12,000 years or so ago is scant evidence for your theory, because the span of time is so short. If anything is halting/slowing human evolution, I would say it is lack of isolated populations more than anything.

ADD is a disorder only if there is a harmful dysfunction. That relies heavily on the context -- pre-industrial revolution, most people with ADD today would not have had a disorder.

For all its weaknesses, that "Edison gene" theory has some interesting points to chew on. The three genes implicated in ADD (so far) have been around for at least 40,000 years -- back when we were very much susceptible evolutionary forces. If ADD were maladaptive, it's hard to think that it would be as prevalent as it is. The other genetic "diseases" are very rare.

I hate to be a pain in the ***, but would someone please point out a new genetic trait that is not maladaptive? Here is were I am coming from: Software evolves because very intellegent designers keep making improvements on it. If you are not a developer, you might be surprised to kwow that some "improvements" suck. Done a few myself :D Such "improvements" are discontinued because it becomes evident that they are not improvements at all.

Please help me understand how blind forces without intellect determine what is good evolution and what is not. Help me to understand irreducible complexity. Hey, I'm working on a progect where my role is developing dlls for the parent program. Me and the developer of the mother program communicate regularly because my interface and his interface must "grow" concurently. Think about it. The brain is not a stand-alone program. It must interface with a least a 1000 subsystems (which is a gross underestimate) that had to come into existance simultanteously. Just like my dlls have to be developed concurently along with and knowledge of the master program. How did it ******* happen? How did all those thousands of interfaces come together at exactly the right time. If one or more was missing, the whole kit and kaboodle fails. Pull the fuel injection out of your car if you don't believe me.

Please explain it to me.

Simply minded, low IQ, never did a disertation,
Bob

PS I can't help by laugh at myself. Heck, I don't even know if disertation is spelled correctly. Have mercy on the weak minded. :D

I hate to be a pain in the ***, but would someone please point out a new genetic trait that is not maladaptive?
Most evolutionary changes are maladaptive -- then die out quickly. That ADD has not died out suggests that it is not (entirely) maladaptive.

As to irreducible complexity and other matters, discussions of evolution vs. "intelligent design" and the like are probably best confined to the debates section.

Then why bring them up here?

No, but one only needs 224 marbles (448 in the bucket) to assemble a hello world program on a certain architecture and OS! I get the point, though.

Without reading this thread in its entirety, I would assume that you are bashing the theory of evolution (development through pure evolution)? I, myself, do not believe that life started from a pile of dirt, cloud of dust, etc. That doesn't mean that the all of the ideas involved in the theory of evolution are necessarily invalid.
High Functioning,

I have two windows programs that start with WinMain functions. Very, very few new window programmers have ever seen a WinMain in actual practice. They are programming no top of multiple layers of abstraction. Nevertheless, I think about 250 line of code including 1 callback function would produce a "hello world" program. But we can not dismiss the millions upon millions of lines code in the Win OS that are drawn on. The point of my illustration is to develop a windows program takes all toll several hundred thousand lines of code including the library Bill's geeks supply. After all, it wouldn't work without said libraries.

I find it interesting you call me a evolution THEORY basher. As if I am a heretic worry of death by fire tied to a stack. That's what those religionists wanted to do to Capernicus and Galileo if they could. Those guys in essence said, something does not make sense here - with the cenntric world crap. That got them labeled heretics. All I am saying is that blind force evolution is an insult to my intellegence.

Then check this out: After others bring up the topic, and, just to think I have the gonands to dispute it, they tell me smugly, this is something better left to the debates board. Wanna know what I heard: I heard, agree with us you heretic or get the hell out. There was no attempt to answer not even one of my very serious questions. Serious to me, that is.

ADHDers are NOT out-of-the-box thinkers. Most conform to the dictates of society much like the abhorred "normals."

My opinion is not necessarily those of this board. Hey guys, I'll got you off the hook for you.

Bob

Then check this out: After others bring up the topic, and, just to think I have the gonands to dispute it, they tell me smugly, this is something better left to the debates board.
"Others" -- glad to know that I have become an army of one. :)

Such matters are best left to the debates section because these are support forums, not debate forums. Religious debates can cause a lot of acrimony -- not conducive to the mission of the forums.

Uminchu,

I agree. Then don't bring up the religion of evolution. It is a badly supported theory that requires as much blind credulity as any religion. I won't touch it again, if you don't. Agreed?

Bob

Bob- No one called you "a heretic, worthy of death by fire tied to a stack". You have a difference of oppinion regarding evolution vs. creative design. That's fine.

However, in this particular thread it is the not the creation of the world but how man has developed and changed over time. Man has "evolved" from stone age eventually to the bronze age etc. We are not the same as we were then. So this has to do with how our brains may have changed over time and does that include ADD and does that make ADD a good thing?

Please contact Wheezie for the password to the Debates Forum. evolution vs. creative design would be an interesting topic.

You're views are appreciated. If I'm reading correctly they're just slightly off topic. Let me know if you have any questions.

I have two windows programs that start with WinMain functions. Very, very few new window programmers have ever seen a WinMain in actual practice. They are programming no top of multiple layers of abstraction. Nevertheless, I think about 250 line of code including 1 callback function would produce a "hello world" program. But we can not dismiss the millions upon millions of lines code in the Win OS that are drawn on. The point of my illustration is to develop a windows program takes all toll several hundred thousand lines of code including the library Bill's geeks supply. After all, it wouldn't work without said libraries.


I know about the level of "skeleton code" involved with Win32 API programming. A hello world program can be as simple or as complex as one wants it to be. I can write assembly that writes the text directly to the video framebuffer, which wouldn't rely on anything but the hardware and the BIOS to start the system. At the other end, I could write a Windows program, a Java program, an Emacs Lisp script, etc.


I find it interesting you call me a evolution THEORY basher. As if I am a heretic worry of death by fire tied to a stack. That's what those religionists wanted to do to Capernicus and Galileo if they could. Those guys in essence said, something does not make sense here - with the cenntric world crap. That got them labeled heretics. All I am saying is that blind force evolution is an insult to my intellegence.


My statement of assumption that you were bashing evolution was not intended to be positive nor negative. My interpretation of your post was that how could something as complex as the brain develop from nearly nothing. That's what I thought the comment about "hello world" programs meant. I was mostly agreeing with you, actually (at least, what I thought your intentions were). I'm not one for blind faith in either direction (either torwards pure science or pure religion).

I would have to respectfully disagree with individuals from the 19th century not having ADHD by today's standards.

That's not the case at all. This is a neurobiological/brain based disorder that is 80% genetic/inherited.

Hyperactive behavior then would still be hyperactive behavior now.

Technology has nothing to do with it.

In order to validate that premise, it would mean that ADHD would have to be heavily influenced by the person's environment, which has been shown in countless twin studies to not be true.

It would also have to not be neurobiological in nature, which is, in fact, the case.

It is simple. Pour them out into an almost semirandom medium that barely favors the selection toward a "hello world" program in binary. Also, each marble has a tendency to fall into a certain order. That tendency is encoded inside each marble. Read the last result on each succesive iteration and use that to determine which marbles you want to use the next time by killing the "bad" marbles and copying the "good" marbles. Also, you will make mistakes in copying a few marbles , so their encoding varies a little, but not a lot from one generation to the next. Do this a few million generations and you get a nice hello world program or something that will functionally pass for it if you have enough extra marbles that are "different" to allow for having the "correct" marbles avaialble.

ME:D

Can one of you very bright super-intellect ultra-educated folks please explain something to me. At 119.5 IQ I am no more than the high-side of average intellectually. Here is my problem. You can take a bucket of 100,000 or so 50/50 black and white marbles, and shake and toss them for octeen billion years and they will not come out in the right order to form a "hello world" program in binary - never. It is estimated that our brain contains 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) neurons, with each neuron interfacing with its neighbors via 1000 synapsis each synapsis specialized to communicate in one or more of the 50 known neurotransmitters and this electrochemical hardware reconfigures itself to accomodate new memory not just store on some black space and blind forces are responsible for this machine none of us humans - even those freaks with 200+ IQs can figure out?

Explain it please to the simple-minded. BUT do not resort to "all the intellectuals believe" and "only uneducated people think otherwise" sophistry BS that permeats the topic.

Thank you.

Simple minded,
Bob

Hyperactive behavior then would still be hyperactive behavior now.
That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that the same behavior can be a disorder or not, depending on whether it creates a "harmful dysfunciton."

When there are no fixed working hours, or assembly lines (read repetitive tasks, or "paperwork" in today's society), or need to read and write, and so on, many of the same behaviors simply don't cause a dysfunction.

For example, if you never go to school, classroom-behavior issues cease to exist.

I agree, it has always been around. The querstion is; Is it more common now than ever ?? If so, why ??

Furthermore, technology is not the driver of the evolutionary trend, it is part of the escalating result and also the filter for natural selection. Natural selection over time would be the driver and an increasingly technology based culture would be the filter that natural selection is using and creating (by allowing an evolutionary advantage for neurotypes who are very good at technology) , thus escalation is said to be happening and you get rapid change favoring the enhancement of a particular trait....(I guess that point is academic).

Me :D


I would have to respectfully disagree with individuals from the 19th century not having ADHD by today's standards.

That's not the case at all. This is a neurobiological/brain based disorder that is 80% genetic/inherited.

Hyperactive behavior then would still be hyperactive behavior now.

Technology has nothing to do with it.

In order to validate that premise, it would mean that ADHD would have to be heavily influenced by the person's environment, which has been shown in countless twin studies to not be true.

It would also have to not be neurobiological in nature, which is, in fact, the case.

Most evolutionary changes are maladaptive -- then die out quickly. That ADD has not died out suggests that it is not (entirely) maladaptive.

As to irreducible complexity and other matters, discussions of evolution vs. "intelligent design" and the like are probably best confined to the debates section.yep, the annoying things never go way, by definition something annoying is something that you can't stop bothering you. So, all people who find us annoying should leave us alone, because they are much more annoying... lol

yep, the annoying things never go way, by definition something annoying is something that you can't stop bothering you. So, all people who find us annoying should leave us alone, because they are much more annoying... lol
Dude,

Just ignore me. Sorry I annoy you so much.

To everyone else: I'll use "genetics" if I want to disagree with your assertions that evolution is doing this or that. Indeed, we find common ground.

1. Post-industrial society makes it more difficult for ADHDers. True. However, I'll bet a severely ADHD farmer would get the crops in late, forgot to milk the cows and eventually end up in famine. And, the neighbors would label him lazy.

It is simple. Pour them out into an almost semirandom medium that barely favors the selection toward a "hello world" program in binary. Also, each marble has a tendency to fall into a certain order. That tendency is encoded inside each marble. Read the last result on each succesive iteration and use that to determine which marbles you want to use the next time by killing the "bad" marbles and copying the "good" marbles. Also, you will make mistakes in copying a few marbles , so their encoding varies a little, but not a lot from one generation to the next. Do this a few million generations and you get a nice hello world program or something that will functionally pass for it if you have enough extra marbles that are "different" to allow for having the "correct" marbles avaialble.
ME

Speedo,

You gets to design the semirandom medium that barely favors the selection. Who gets to design each marble so it has a tendency to fall into a certain order. Who reads the last result on each iteration and uses that the next time.

Nevertheless I am game. Set up your experiment and let me know when you finish your hello world program. IF you succeed, though, the only thing you proved is a pretty clever person has come up with an extraordinarily difficult way of writing code whether binary or DNA.


My statement of assumption that you were bashing evolution was not intended to be positive nor negative. My interpretation of your post was that how could something as complex as the brain develop from nearly nothing. That's what I thought the comment about "hello world" programs meant. I was mostly agreeing with you, actually (at least, what I thought your intentions were). I'm not one for blind faith in either direction (either torwards pure science or pure religion).
HighFunctioning,

I apologize. I posed my questions as a challenge fully expecting to be bashed. I mostly agree with you also except religion based on anything other than facts is worse than evolution. Peace.

Moderators.

I'm done with it. Peace. Back to supporting each other.

Bob

Dude,

Just ignore me. Sorry I annoy you so much.

To everyone else: I'll use "genetics" if I want to disagree with your assertions that evolution is doing this or that. Indeed, we find common ground.

Moderators.

I'm done with it. Peace. Back to supporting each other.

Bob
Bob, I'm sorry, you missunderstood me. I mean nothing negative to anyone here, I was speaking about the 'normal' folks, they always have a reason to find us annoying, which inturn makes me annoyed. I didn't find anyone on here annoying, so I'm sure your safe, lol. However I find myself annoying a lot of the time, probably based on a complex afraid I'm already annoying someone else because I aways eventually do. I'm never annoyed by people of our kind, and I doubt any of the rest of us are. It was a pointed joke, but definatelly not aimed at anyone attending, ;) Don't take what I say seriously, just what I meant... hehe

A neurobiological disorder remains a neurobiological disorder.

What ever the "norm" would be for the non-ADHD population, there would be impairments of some kind to the ADHD population.

Go back and look at James Wakefield's (universal) definition of a disorder.

One other thing comes to mind here and that is the original ADHD study by George Still in 1902.

He saw what we would call ADHD now as a "moral defect."

Thats not the important part tho.

He coined the term "volitional inhibition."

That's incredibly close to the way we see it now over 100 years later, as a disorder of inhibition and self-regulation.

Go back and look at James Wakefield's (universal) definition of a disorder.
OK:
[A] disorder exists when a failure of a person's internal mechanism to perform impinges on the person's well being as defined by social values and meanings. The order that is disturbed is thus simultaneously biological and social; neither alone is sufficient to justify the label disorder [emphasis added]
So, it is as I said: the same behavior can be a disorder or not, depending on how it is interpreted by society.

Take punctuality: In a society where being on time to the minute is highly valued, ADDers are likely to have a much higher level of impairment than societies where punctuality to the hour or so (or the day!) is considered acceptable.

be nice to each other people. We can debate without flame wars.



Bob;
The medium favors some outcomes over others regardless. It is never neutral.
Without it, you have no selection pressure trending toward a paprticular state and you get a system that changes chaotically.

A good example is braciopods (Lingula). They have not changed at all in hundreds of millions of years. The reason for tha tis that there has been little to no selection pressure placed on them to cause change. Indeed, for the environment they live in, the selection pressure favors no change to lingula.... The environment being the medium the animal lives in, and it definitely has a bias toward a particular outrcome that keeps lingula from changing...it is a very favorable environment for lingula. Otherwise lingual would pick up and move elsewhere and possibly evolve some new traits in the process. Thank goodness it is a favorable environment or Howard Johnson's would run out of fried clams!!!

Me :D





Speedo,

You gets to design the semirandom medium that barely favors the selection. Who gets to design each marble so it has a tendency to fall into a certain order. Who reads the last result on each iteration and uses that the next time.

Nevertheless I am game. Set up your experiment and let me know when you finish your hello world program. IF you succeed, though, the only thing you proved is a pretty clever person has come up with an extraordinarily difficult way of writing code whether binary or DNA.


HighFunctioning,

I apologize. I posed my questions as a challenge fully expecting to be bashed. I mostly agree with you also except religion based on anything other than facts is worse than evolution. Peace.

Moderators.

I'm done with it. Peace. Back to supporting each other.

Bob

be nice to each other people. We can debate without flame wars.

The medium favors some outcomes over others regardless. It is never neutral.
Without it, you have no selection pressure trending toward a paprticular state and you get a system that changes chaotically.

Me :D
Speedo,

Thank you for an intelligent response. I disagree. Medium determines how a species adapts - not how it arrives.

I will not subscribe to blind force evolution until someone explains how multiple complex interfacing systems each mind-boggling complex all came together at the same time. Even an ameba is so complex you and I could spend our lifetimes studying it and have to leave our work incomplete. Systems require engineers. Never saw one that didn't. Have you? (rhetorical question)

I gave my word I'd dropped this. So this will be last post on this topic.

Out of here ... on this topic.

Bob

Thank goodness it is a favorable environment or Howard Johnson's would run out of fried clams!!!
Me :D
Speedo,

Don't eat too many. They're full of toxins. So are most fish. It so happens that I love both, fact is, if it lived in the ocean, I like it. Fish is good brain food.

Which brings us to a non-controversial opinion of mine: Toxins may be more responsible (than information age stress) for what appears to be the higher ADHD rate (% of population) we are experiencing. We certainly inherit our parents traits both good and bad I am learning to my dismay. Inability to metabolize toxins may be our problem. It's the LD-50 thingy. 50% of the rats died but 50% lived. The 50% that lived are stronger and so are their children - until a recessive gene gets 'em or stronger poison.

So we are either being weeded out of the gene pool or are the canarys in the mine tunnel. Either way, our own stupidity is the engineer in this case.

Bob

Let's disagree and leave it at that.