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Comment by Altern4tiveAcc | Hacker News Reader

> Roughly 20% of undergraduate students at Ivy Plus institutions (including Harvard, Brown, and Cornell) are registered as disabled and receive accommodations. This figure has surged dramatically over time, rising from fewer than 3% at Harvard and under 6% at Cornell in 2015.

That seems to check out with the period people started getting more addicted to social media, pandemic side-effects and increased awareness of mental health issues

I believe the amount of people dealing with crippling anxiety these days is higher than that 20% figure, and we are still under-diagnosing it

> Hard work is a good in it of itself.

Hard disagree tbh but that's more of a personal values discussion

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> Hard disagree tbh but that's more of a personal values discussion

I'm curious about this. Do you have children? Do you look at someone who does nothing hard in his life with indifference? Someone chooses to spend their life playing video games in their parent's basement. Do you think that's an equally admirable life than someone that spends his life doing hard things?

> Do you have children?

Not yet, but hopefully in the next 3 years.

> Do you look at someone who does nothing hard in his life with indifference?

I look at such people with admiration. Being in peace with not trying to improve their own productivity all the time is a beautiful virtue.

> Someone chooses to spend their life playing video games in their parent's basement. Do you think that's an equally admirable life than someone that spends his life doing hard things?

I'd go further and say it's more admirable than someone spending their life doing hard things. If they reached their goals with less effort, I'm happy for them - that means more time and energy to spend on the pursue of happiness.

> I'm curious about this.

Why did that catch your attention, if you don't mind me asking?

I think it's naive to assume that this phenomenon reflects an actual increase in disability rather than a cohort who has been raised to pathologize every human difference as a sign of some disability and then use those diagnoses to secure advantages in systems meant to help people with actual special needs.

There's clearly a lot of pretending going on. On the extreme end look at the numerous DID[1] "influencers". These folks are plainly pretending to have a debilitating mental disorder (which strangely never prevents them from going on podcasts and YouTube interviews) to curry fame.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder

Agree completely. Its hard to tease out what percent is a cheating response due to increasing accommodations and actual pathologizing.

Some personal observations, I would say about 90%+ of "emotional support dogs" are fake. And I can't remember the last time I saw someone that was actually disabled use a disabled parking spot. They always have the proper license plate or mirror tag, but every time I've seen someone enter their vehicle it would appear that they do not need special accommodations afforded by the preferred parking spot.

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