Responding to your comments on ADHD as advantage

[@FirstmaninRome]

Oh, great, i was worried about you over there Anna! ❤

[@E.Pierro.Artist]

I enjoy your videos - you'd fit right in, in my friend group. We have conversations like this a lot (we live in murica though). I wanted to give my input on this topic because I've heard and seen this question crop up about adhd and asd, as well as some other disabilities. My perspective is currently as follows: It's not a useful question - whether ADHD (or any disability) is an evolutionary advantage. I say this for many reasons but the main thing to remember is that we don't have to justify our disabilities or abilities to *anyone*. The answer to such a question, anyway, is neither here nor there. The fact of the matter is that differences in neurodevelopment happen, regardless, and adaptations don't happen because they're 'useful' - they simply happen; but even that is not that relevant because humans still don't understand entirely how DNA translates into things like neurodevelopment (besides the fact that the brain is still too complex for us to understand), so whether genes are even the driving factor in adaptations or evolution, in the first place, is still sort of up for debate, even in mainstream science. It can be fun to muse over but my question is: Why does it matter? 8:30 I'm not sure it's realistic to say that someone would be cast out of a tribe if they didn't keep up with everyone else. Even today, we don't see that happening to people in tribes (unless extremely disabled - like can't even fend for themselves, can't eat, can't wipe themselves, etc); in certain cultures and in certain contexts, it isn't uncommon for someone with, say, ASD, or certain schizo-spectrum traits, etc. to achieve a shamanic position in a tribe, such as a medicine man, or an oracle, or a Wiseman (or female counterparts thereof). Additionally, plenty of people still fulfill roles of creatives, whether in a tribal society or a capitalistic society. As for 'back then', the time everyone refers to as some hypothetical past where homo sapiens were virtually chimpanzees with less hair, there is really no evidence that would suggest that they didn't care for their disabled comrades or relatives, so we can't really say one way or another 💁‍♀️

[@chrstopherblighton-sande2981]

Ironically I suspect researchers probably wouldn't get the ethical permission to put diagnosed ADHDers into a real world foraging, survival situation, specifically because ADHD would make those volunteers more vulnerable to harm! Your point about pseudoscience was well made, I'm very worried that more and more ideology is distorting the study of psychology. I've participated in a few online studies around autism & OCD over the past couple of months and in each of them they stated you didn't need a diagnosis to participate which was concerning as surely that would create a lot of noise in the data! That said they did have a question asking whether or not you had received an official diagnosis so it's got me wondering if they allow self-diagnosed people to participate for inclusion reasons but then separate out their results from those who are diagnosed?

[@zachsmith9127]

I hyperfocus on the weirdest things. None of it really useful.