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Comment by fasteo | Hacker News Reader

Slightly off-topic, but I have seem some great responses here I would like to add a somehow controversial comment.

I have a 10 year old kid diagnosed with severe ADHD-Inattentive type. He is on meds and behavioral therapy, and I must agree with most of the posts that meds is a must for these kids.

My very personal an unscientific explanation is that ADHD is not a disease in the traditional sense; instead, it is just a brain that does not fit in our current lifestyle. Would my kid have any problem living in a simpler society (hunter-gatherer group) ? Definitively not.

From time to time I tell my wife - and she gets very angry - that our kid has a MS-DOS brain, while we are all running Windows 10. The analogy is no exact, but it is just to emphasize that my kid belongs to another time. I only wish he can find his place in this world.

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There's a lot of research about ADHD, more than many other mental diseases...

There are a couple of things to remember:

  - ADHD is a deficit in executive function, and one of the main symptoms is impulsive behaviour (unable to control urges). This is what causes hyperactivity, but also causes things like angry outburts, and other improper social behaviour that follows into adulthood

  - The concensus among the research community is that ADHD is all negative. Measurably negative among all axes, especially when comparing people when on treatment and when not on it (drugs).

 I know some people like to do the whole "silver lining" thing (like with autism), but ADHD is a disease, an impairment. You should think of it like you would think of having the flu your entire life. Sure, you get good at vomiting your guts out cleanly, but not much great about it.

  - And a super important part is that this basically never goes away. There's this great analogy with a paraplegic. If you had a prosthetic leg, no matter how long you walked with it, you could never "train yourself" out of needing a prosthetic leg. Same thing with ADHD. The impulsive feelings don't leave, it's just that adults tend to be better at dealing with it than kids. But treatment is still very useful even later.


 (That last part is important: emotional outbursts at work can be a bit hard to manage...)

> - The concensus among the research community is that ADHD is all negative. Measurably negative among all axes, especially when comparing people when on treatment and when not on it (drugs).

I disagree. I love my brain, it makes certain parts of life hard, but my hyperfocus and way of thinking about things that interest me are just so wonderful.

My life is at constant risk of screwing up but I'm really happy as a person.

I think for me a better analogy might be everyone else is on Win10, while I'm here running Plan9 or something.

I really don't see my condition as a disability, but I'm also not at the severe end of the spectrum. I do perfectly fine with activities I find stimulating, particularly when I get to work with my hands or it requires a lot of physical coordination. I can focus amazingly well on anything if it becomes crunch time and I absolutely need to. I forget to pay bills, schedule appointments, can't maintain a todo list, etc. These are all modern constructs though

There's also been research in the past few years showing individuals with ADHD are more likely to have received some sort of creative award (science fair, musical accomplishment) and can generate more ideas than typical individuals (divergent thinking).

Maybe it's just a difference in thinking that requires a different sort of structure, and only manifests as a disability as were not well suited for the modern ways of living that have arose.

How has your career played out? Do you work for a company or for yourself?

I used to freelance and motivating myself for that was HARD.

I'm now working for a company full time, I get paid silly money and have quite a lot of freedom because if they keep giving me interesting problems, I solve them quickly and well. I think I'm in a really good role because as lead for the "innovation" team we're constantly moving onto new weird and wonderful projects.

Conversely, I cannot do a role which is about code maintenance. I get bored and demotivated very quickly.

There is pretty solid evidence that ADHD is grounded in differences in structure and wiring of the brain - its more of a hardware problem than software.

I'm not sure ADHD would have a better time for lifestyles. People with ADHD would always be a minority, and probably perceived as odd by others. Organisation and focus have always been useful traits - but also creativity and adventurousness have led to rewards as well (but also risk).

A better analogy I've heard is ADHD is like a Ferrari engine in a golf cart. There's loads of power and energy, but the steering and brakes struggle to keep up.

Would my kid have any problem living in a simpler society (hunter-gatherer group) ? Definitively not.

I know some children like that. Children who cannot keep quiet while hunting would not fare well in a hunter-gatherer society. Indeed, young members of a hunting party who move around too much and make too much noise are in danger of being eaten themselves by larger predator animals. I'm not sure that there has ever been a selection advantage to having difficulty maintaining attention focus.

The thing with ADHD is that the difficulty to maintain attention is often highly situational. As someone diagnosed I personally have a lot of trouble focusing on a lot, but when it comes to something like juggling or playing counter-strike it's pretty remarkable how well I suddenly tune everything out and get extremely engaged. Probably more so than a "neurotypical" person and their preferred activities. I'm also generally hyperactive, but not impulsive. I move around constantly at home, but in other social settings I'm able to sit still if it's socially unacceptable for me to be walking around or fidgeting.

Agreed. I've been a big fan of billiards for 20 years and I think a part of the reason is that playing well basically requires very short bursts of absolute focus, something that I'm good at. Pool is hands down the only game I can play for 14 hours straight and not get bored/tired of playing at all.

Yep. Get me in front of KSP(or World of Warcraft in the past) and 14 hours will have passed without me even looking up.

My older sister hates fidgeting. She punches me(somewhat playfully, on the arm/leg/etc...) every time I start 'bouncing'. I generally wind up with a few bruises when we have lunch. My leg will unconsciously bounce, or I'll start tapping, she'll give me a warning, I'll stop. Then in 30 seconds unconsciously start again. WHAP!. I might remember for a minute this time. Rinse repeat.

Another thought about ADD/ADHD in the olden days.

I'm inclined to doubt that these traits could have been a serious handicap in earlier times if we didn't really notice this as a template of behavior until recently.

People have talked about other kinds of mental disorders, not necessarily using modern names, for a long time. I don't know of any anachronistic terms that mean the same thing as what we mean by ADHD today, or older sources that made much recognition of ADHD symptoms at all.

Happy to be corrected here.

At least sometimes kids with ADD symptoms are capable of very focused attention on the things they're actually interested in.

If I imagine my kid hunting, I see him quiet, hyper-focused, fully committed to get the beast down.

The thing about ADHD is that you really don't get to pick what you hyperfocus on. Some days you may be focused on getting that beast, other days you may find an interesting termite mound that grabs your attention while on the hunt.

Termites are an excellent food source.

If I imagine myself hunting, I can't. I see myself too focused on creating the perfect spear (and never achieving it because I "squirrel" off onto another spear building tangent) to actually bother myself with the act of hunting.

Not to mention, one of the common symptoms of ADHD is bumping into objects when walking around. I can't imagine that going well on a hunting trip.

But once you got to the point of near starvation, assuming you were still physically capable, I bet you would become an excellent hunter. Until your appetite is satiated. Then it's off to lizard chasing in the middle of building your shelter.

I feel like the best tech analogy would be ADHD is like a GPU, great with lots of independent parallel tasks, but not as good as a CPU for tasks that have many interdependent steps.

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