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Some People Just Never Learn
Iddo Genuth writes "German scientists recently showed what many of us suspected but could not prove — some people just don't learn. The German researchers have found a genetic factor that affects our ability to learn from our errors. The scientists demonstrated that men carrying the A1 mutation are less successful at learning to avoid mistakes than men who do not carry this genetic mutation. This finding has the potential to improve our understanding of the causes of addictive and compulsive behaviors."
I call them "co workers"
Well this explains my entire morning commute right here. The same people making the same mistakes every week. At long last we have a scientific explanation.
...all those people who voted for Bush the second time.
Apparently the editors have this genetic deficiency as well: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/08/1414258
but the technical name for them is "Bush supporters"
"This finding has the potential to improve our understanding of the causes of addictive and compulsive behaviors."
"stubbornness" or inability to learn from mistakes has zero to nothing to do with compulsive disorders. I notice the source paper makes no mention of cumpulsive behaviours. Probably just another crap journo writeup of something he/she didn't understand and they pulled some bogus connection out of their ass.
says "you'll never change" I guess now i have a genetic excuse.
It had to be Germans to establish scientific proof of eugenetics.. :-(
...doesn't it mean it has some evolutionary advantages?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
This story should be tagged "Homer".
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
It makes you dumb and you also forget big dates as well.
This finding has the potential to encourage genetic prejudice based on the causes of addictive and compulsive behaviors
Fixed it for you. Gattaca here we come!
Just think of the relevance for politics, religion, almost everything...
I'm curious what the probability for that allele is in the general population.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Reproduction should not be a universal right.
Think about it, a single gene. Go to protocols-online, grab a few documents pertaining to viral gene therapy, encode the correct gene that you want to modify, and let's do viral intelligence enhancement. Granted, this is Slashdot, so the virus will have to be transported at first via needle and vile instead of sex, but whatever.
When they say "men" who have this mutation are slower to react, do they mean men as in humans or men as in males? If they mean the latter, what makes women immune to this mutation? I definately do NOT need another supposed scientific reason to make all women think that they are correct when in fact they are very wrong, and make them all convinced they are masters of multi-tasking and males are simple minded. All stereotypes have their exceptions! All of you women need to learn this!
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
They are in their second or later marriages...
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
I wonder if this implies that medication that affects dopamine levels reduces (or increases) a persons failure to learn from mistakes.
damn straight.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
I plead not guilty by reason of genetics.
Chain Gang Sheriff: (whips Homer) "No listening! You hear me?"
Homer: "Um.... n... no?"
Chain Gang Sheriff: "You just don't learn do ya?"
"And then I visited Wikipedia
My guess (I didn't RTFA) is that they did the study in male volunteers, and thus can't comment on females. It has nothing to do with differences between the sexes.
Then they'll brainwash there kids into thinking they have a genetic disorder that prevents them from learning (educators will propagate this as well). Then the activists will get involved and say that poor grades are discriminatory against something that these people have no control over. Then...
I was diagnosed with some sort of generic learning disability when I was a teen.
I tend to bang my brain against new concepts again and again, until I finally understand them in big chunks. I tend to overlook the obvious, and go for the bizarre interpretations of things.
So I often find myself in situations where I feel stupid for not grasping something that is readily apparent to most everyone else, but at the same time I've been successful with teaching myself certain concepts other people wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.
For instance, I've taught myself how to program in Haskell, whereas most programmers run screaming from anything with more than a minimal functional paradigm component. It did take me quite a while to get some concepts in Haskell, though.
-------
Incite and flee.
Of course it would be the Germans to discover that there is a Dummkopf gene.
Reminds me of our math teacher that would say "Dummkopf" if you gave the wrong answer.
Yep, it's all fun and games until someone thinks of the children.
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So perhaps they won't invade Poland a third time?
HTH
It's also unclear whether the behaviour is properly labeled. "Learn from your mistakes" is a phrase that assumes your choice and its consequences are clear: do this or do that, and if "this" leads to bad consequences, why, you need to "learn from your mistake" and do "that" instead.
But real life is not nearly so simple. First, there are many cases where people don't see all the choices, or even any choice. You can't be guilty of failing to learn from your mistakes if you're not even aware of the alternate choices you could be making.
Second, it's only in fairly restricted cases that a perfectly clear connection can be drawn from choice to consequences. If you try to beat the train at the RR crossing and get creamed, well, that one's easy. But what if you take a job at X corporation and are then unhappy five years later? Is it really the job, or is it the crappy marriage that you contracted, too? More importantly, how do you really know that if you'd not taken a job at X corporation, you'd be happier? Maybe things would be even worse! Real-life choices are usually befogged by the difficulty of being sure of the connection between choice and consequences, and by the difficulty of accurately guessing what the consequences of alternate choices might have been.
Finally, there is sufficient statistical noise in many choices that sometimes the best decision is not to "learn from your mistakes." We call that "persistence" and give great credit to people who display it, when their continued "failure" to learn from their mistakes eventually pays off. The guy who starts business after business, each failing, until he finally hits on the one that pays off. The athlete who comes in 2nd and 3rd, time after time, until eventually he wins. We can go back and, with 20/20 hindsight, argue that he did "learn from his mistakes" in that he didn't do the same thing in exactly the same way again. But it's still the case that on the topmost issue, the main choice, he "failed to learn from his mistakes" by deliberately choosing to do again and again something at which he failed again and again. Until one day, he didn't.
For all these reasons, I think the definition of what it means to "learn from your mistakes" in real life (as opposed to the narrow world of the academic psych lab) is pretty problematic.
If that strategy works, you're talking about bankrupting Taco Bell and the death of the Republican party.
However, I'm pretty sure stubborness can be considered both an asset and a liability. Some brick walls you might break through if you hit your head on them enough. Others will just give you a concussion.
There are certainly plenty of cases where an A1-carrying mutant...err...strong-willed person will beat out an out-of-the-box thinker.
Just because some people have a harder time learning does not mean they can't learn.
/. post), it means they have a lower capability.
It's just harder.
Seriously, it doesn't mean they don't learn (the title of this
It's like saying that Americans can't speak more than two languages. Most have never tried, nor had the easy resources to do so, but they could probably learn additional languages, even if it might be harder here.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
...our new A1 mutant overlords.
Well they took power 7 years ago, but better late than never!
I see previous comments insinuate as much, but to choose a topical example, explorers such as Sir Edmund Hillary must have known that their efforts were both dangerous, and likely to fail. Repeated previous attempts had been unsuccessful (negative feedback) and so why bother trying (again)? Presumably because the rewards of success outweighed the risks of failure.
Evolution evidently agrees, otherwise how would this mutation have become so widespread?
For example, I still can't read Harry Potter. If I were to accept the covert suggestion these Good Germans offer, "if at first you don't succeed give up", I'd be miserable like millions of other depowered humans on our little globe today. But I believe in possibility, and I'll eventually get my imagination working like it's supposed to. It took me years to define the problem, more years to find a solution, and another three years to implement it.
Yes, I much prefer the old "if at first you don't succeed, try try again." Not the same thing over and over, of course, but always trying something new.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
It's like saying that Americans can't speak more than two languages.
I think the general assumption around the world is that Americans can't speak MORE than *ONE* language and most of them don't even speak the one very well. That's certainly the image our current president propagates to the rest of the planet.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
the ability to learn new things is a learned behavior in itself, some are just slower at it than others (and some are really slow), and a few are exceptionally well at it...
personally i think i am just average, maybe slightly below average on those days when my brain feels like a light-bulb that has been left on for too long, you know the kind of light-bulb that is sort of yellowed with a slight buzzing sound and a few fried bugs stuck to it...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Maybe the article is badly written, but it appears as if the scientists are jumping conclusions. The test subjects were asked to pick a symbol, they got feedback in the form of a smiley face or an angry face. Some short time later they were asked to pick a symbol again. If they now picked the happy face, the scientists assumed they had learned.
Somehow, I doubt that seeing a smiley face is enough of a reward to make the subject avoid making the same choice again. I mean, the angry face might look more interesting, or the subject might just wonder what happens if the takes the other card (given that he took the happy one first).
I'm just saying - there could be many reasons other than "not learning" why a person picks the symbol that gives an unhappy face as a result. Hopefully, the scientists thought of this, but it's not in the article (as far as I can tell).
I call them "Microsoft Windows users".
Yeah, I still cannot learn to not read slashdot...
To paraphrase my cultural history professor: "Experience is bullshit. There is nothing preventing one from repeating the same mistakes the world over. The positive adjective we should be looking for in our peers (and ourselves) is credibility: consistence, critical thinking. This manifests through a lifetime of work, and is not easily quantifiable. Nothing you could gage by reading someone's resume."
He had a thick jewish-german accent and looked like a James Bond villain. Re-read the above in appropriate accent (while rubbing your palms together),
"OS/2 Supporters Petition IBM To Open OS/2 Source In 2008"
"Bill Gates Says Capitalism Shouldn't Be So Cut-Throat"
"Microsoft Says Current Windows Is The Most Secure"
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
I think the general assumption around the world is that Americans can't speak MORE than *ONE* language and most of them don't even speak the one very well. That's certainly the image our current president propagates to the rest of the planet.
I can confirm that.
Seriously, we know there are some pretty smart people in the US. What we cannot figure out is why they are not leaving.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Just because some trait exists or still exists doesnt mean that it has evolutionary advantages. It could mean that the mutation hasnt been around long enough for evolutionary preasures to take place. It could mean that the trait doesnt have any advantages but also doesnt have any disadvantages. It could mean that the disadvantages arent significant enough to prevent the organism from producing offspring.
Seriously, we know there are some pretty smart people in the US. What we cannot figure out is why they are not leaving.
Well, our L1 and L2 visas haven't expired yet.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
My spouse is utterly untrainable in anything vaguely related to anything invented later than the Renaissance. Anything electronic or technical or related to any repetitive task, operating a cell phone, hearing and giving directions to anywhere. Any device, appliance, application. Online purchases of all kinds are impossible. She 'learns' such as it is, the simplest things by brute force endless repetition, if it's possible at all. Every appliance in my home has been broken in one way or another by her absolute inability to even listen to simple instructions.
She is an attorney, and, ironically, a teacher.
didn't the Germans make a strong effort for solid ground in eugenics in say... WW2 ?
that certain people are unable to learn from their mistakes. I think this explains most people with bad credit, unable to hold down any decent job, or that get addicted to illicit drugs and/or alcohol, and never seem to learn from past mistakes to avoid making them in the future. I have known of some people who bad bad credit and recovered it later, who had a bad work history and were able to turn it around to get a good paying job, or who were able to give up addictions to drugs or alcohol and improve their lives.
Sadly most people effected by this inability to learn from their mistakes end up poor, or homeless, or in jail, or have a very bad life. They often blame others for their misfortunes, and I always thought that they kept making bad decisions because they didn't learn from previous bad decisions in order to avoid making bad decisions and start making good decisions. So they blame the government, they blame the wealthy, they blame authority figures, they blame people who make a good living, and anyone else they can.
So now it shows that it might not even be their fault, that they have a genetic disorder that prevents them from learning from their mistakes, and thus they are disabled with a mental illness, and need some medical help to get over this disorder. We need to do more research into it and learn what can be done to help these people out who are afflicted with this genetic disorder. Not just to help them out, but also to help out society and other people who are effected by people who are unable to learn from their mistakes and thus harm others as a result.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
"... This finding has the potential to improve our understanding of the causes of addictive and compulsive behaviors."
Contrary to their conjecture I have found that learning is instrumental to developing my addictive and compulsive behaviors!
Like a true slashdotter, I haven't RTFA.
But it could be an X-linked recessive gene, meaning:
1. It shows up on the X chromosome.
2. But is only expressed in the phenotype if there isn't another (dominant) gene to mask it.
Since males only have one X chromosome, all it takes is for his mother to stick him with an affected X chromosome. For a woman to be affected phenotypically, both her mother AND her father would have to donate an affected X chromosome.
For example, baldness can be partly X-linked, which is why your mom, maternal grandmother, maternal great-grandmothers, etc., and father (and paternal relatives) are not bald, but you lose your hair before your midlife crisis.
I've been saying this for years!
Darn. Should have patented it.
Veritas patesco per quaestio questio. Truth is revealed through questions.
"HTML coders"
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I guess I'm drifting away from my point here so to bring it back, I'm just saying that Germans hold no monopoly over hating Jews. There are LOTS of people who had done horrible things to them in the past.
I was with you up until that final qualifier. I'd say there is still plenty of anti-Semitism alive and well today.
Am I the only one who thinks this test is more of a memory test, than a test that shows learning ability in genetics?
You'll only make the rest of the world laugh even harder.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Alle die Weisesten aller der Zeiten lächeln und winken und stimmen mit ein: Töricht, auf Bess'rung der Toren zu harren! Kinder der Klugheit, o habet die Narren eben zum Narren auch, wie sich's gehört! - All the wisest of every age are in agreement: it is foolish to wait for fools to be cured of their folly! The proper thing to do is to make fools of the fools! Or: All of the wise men in all of the ages, / Smile and nod and agree one and all: /It is foolish to wait for fools to be better, / Children of cleverness, make dupes of / The stupid, too, as is their due
> Seriously, we know there are some pretty smart people in the US.
> What we cannot figure out is why they are not leaving.
Several reasons.
1. There is still hope of turning the tide and sweeping the socialists from the field of battle. All we really need is one more Reagan type who understands that when strongly confronted, evil tends to yield.
2. Even with the government about to fall to the socialists, America is still a good place to be.
3. Related to #2, name somewhere better? Lots of socialist pestholes, dictatorships and failed states, but no places with greater individual liberty, rule of law,, respect for property and general opportunity to get ahead.
Seriously, go look at the rankings. Ranked on economic liberty the US is #4. Hong Kong might be #1 but I certainly wouldn't want to make any sort of longterm commitment in a place that is under a deathwatch, just waiting for the Chicoms to complete the takeover. Singapore is #2, but not very big on liberty outside of the economic sphere. Austrailia is a fraction above the US right now but recent events there indicate they are likely to fall faster than the US. And they already have more gun control tnan this NRA member would be able to put up with.
Nope, America is the last best hope for liberty. We make our stand here and either restore the old republic or die trying.
Democrat delenda est
"If at first you don't succeed..."
Think of all the things that would never have come to be if everyone gave up after the first try.
This explains the US strategy in Iraq!
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I must that compulsive behavour is troubling, whenever I hear a word similar to repeat - I need to repeat - whenever I hear a word similar to repeat. This also happen for iterative - this also happen for iterative. I assume you can guess the word I am really afraid of - it is recursive, recursive, recursive ....
Where's the gene for those men who can't pull over and ask for directions? How about the gene in women who can't ask questions they could learn from?
--
make install -not war
I'd like to volunteer a large majority of my high school graduating class as test subjects.
"Teach a man to build a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life."
I think you totally missed the point of his question.
He was asking why with an idiot Republican president in charge aren't the smart people leaving the US. Those smart people would be the Liberals.
You responded with basically "Well there's still hope we'll beat the socialists (Liberals) and even if the socialists win the US is still a great place to be."
Thus your entire response makes no sense to the question asked. Liberals wouldn't want to leave if the liberals were already running the White House. They want to leave because of the current republican administration which is already closer to your what I perceive to be libertarian values than any liberal president would be.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Have you heard the new Democrat slogan? "I want my mommy!"
Is anyone else getting the impression that people are going to use this as an excuse to justify not learning from mistakes?
I'm all for discovering causes and all but I saw nothing about patients with the A1 Mutation being incapable. There was one such local news story about how a virus was discovered that causes obesity. But the way to ditch obesity remains unchanged--diet and exercise. I only hope people don't use this "mutation" as an excuse to do whatever they want. Don't be getting any ideas now kids...
dumb ass.
"The only thing that human learned from history is that human doesn't learn from history."
So we all have this "defect".
I personally don't think this is totally a "defect", since if there is such a "defect", Wright brothers might have given up earlier than 105 years ago.
She's also probably the only person in your house able to do load the dishwasher and have sex at the same time. But don't just take my word for it!
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Sounds close to psychopathy, except psychopaths are aware that they are doing something incorrectly but they keep doing it the same way anyway.
Task Mangler
Unless a person is a complete moron, a gene isn't going to stop learning. Consequences tell a person what is wrong. Learning the right way can still be inhibited by other factors such as not having enough time or not having a good teacher.
Learning in sports is classic. A person can lose point after point by failing to do something, and may well know there is a problem. That doesn't mean the person knows what is right. Instruction or time to think is needed, and these elements are usually unavailable until after the game is lost.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
One of my favorite quotes, author unknown by me. "Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself." Tim S
We have too many safety labels and safety laws to protect people from their own stupidity. If hard-core Mike wants to race without a motorcycle helmet, let him! Let a bug fly in his eye and let us watch something we only get to see on tv. If he doesn't die, at least he may be hideously disfigured. Our safety laws are letting guys like Mike breed with women that should be breeding with us! Brawndo anyone?
That's why I'll always be an Anonymous Coward!
...Affirmative action...
Funny you should mention the connection between Leftists and gun-control. We take for granted that the two will be found together... but why?
I finally figured it out. Guns represent individual moral judgment. They represent one person making a decision that, according to Leftist ideology (Plato->Descartes->Hume->Kant->Hegel->Marx) only a collective can make.
Or maybe they've realized (but cannot openly declare) that blacks + guns = bad. So in true egalitarian fashion, we've got to take them away from everyone.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
You ever made the same mistake twice? I have, I don't call myself stupid and I call the mystery of living the best tutor around.
...
...
...
We got a saying around "First children learn from their parents, after a while parents learn from their children"
It's evolution.. the strongest will survive and the weakest will perish. Too bad there are so many humans trying to be the strongest to overthrow the weakest; although always do think about one thing, the thing you are complaining at; from someone else you could have been doing a dozen time before unnoticed in a different way
If more people could live -and- learn with their mistakes it would be a better world already *dreaming*
And well, some people are really just too stupid to learn because they don't want better or already feel ok with their life.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Don't be modest! ;)
Why else would you let your spouse break all those shiney things, while you could as well read the instructions with her in the beginning
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Isn't this rather old stuff? I've read studies in which, when a certain part of the brain is damaged (a la the famous Phillius Gage), the patient's personality changes such that they seem unable to learn from their own mistakes or act in a way such that it will minimize undesirable consequences (or maximize desirable ones), even if they understand that such actions WILL lead to said (un)desirable consequences. I suppose the fact that in some people it's genetically based is the hot thing?...
I wonder what percentage of the prison population has this gene, compared to the general population.
Something terrible happened 60+ years ago. I am not telling anybody to forget (we should never forget the holocaust), but this means that the scientist of today , may they be 30 , 40 or 60 years old WERE NOT BORN when it happened. Heck for some of them their GP were not even born ! Will we hold against german FOREVER the holocaust ? Will we forbid them certain study because their parents, GP, GGP participated in the holocaust ? Do you realize how stupid this is ?
If this is the case, please then point the finger on any genetic discovery toward russia (various wave of pogrom) and the US (ku klux klan, slavery, although not involving jew, it certainly had a citizen and non-citizen population UP TO THE 60).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The prejudice the world has got is not "american can't learn a second langugae" as in "are not able to", but the real prejudice (which i sadly also have) is "american are not WILLING to involve themselves into the world as equals, and also are UNWILLING to learn any second language".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
This story broke in the UK some days ago and I've have been thinking about it because I'm a cautious person who tends to learn too much from my mistakes and I wondered if there was a sliding scale of optimism..caution. But I don't think it's a sliding scale, this is a gene we're talking about, although the emergent behaviour of different life experiences in the presence of such a gene could perhaps present a sliding scale across a population with the one gene. Then I decided .. that's not it at all. These are people who make the EXACT same mistake again and again, not the persevering optimists who try variations.
It might be a surprise to many, but Hitler was actually Austrian. He gained German citizenship later as a adult.
Timo's Audio Software http://www.esseraudio.com
No good can come of this reasearch. The people whom it effects will never learn anything from it, the people researching it already knew it, yet they still research it, like they haven't learned that it isn't going to teach anyone anything they didn't already know.
In the end we end up with more people who just don't learn !
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Heh, sounds like just about every activist, inventor, writer, artist or creative person I know!
After 7 years, I suspect this covers the entire Perl6 development team too.
Thanks for this excellent satire :)
It gave me the first big laugh this morning.
Does that mean I can now park in the parking pay for disabled people at the mall?
Even after repeatedly being told off?
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
:LOL:
Yes, people with a different political viewpoint to you are EVIL!!!
Liberty doesn't mean what you think it means.
Why hasn't such an obvious and simple genetic disadvantage bred out after having been (seemingly) selected against for thousands of generations?
(Or perhaps it's a recent mutation. But how likely is that?)
The limitations of object orientation and embedded references were obvious to me but it was a whole lot better than the alternative.
I'll get back in the game when IT wakes up about relationships and connections, but not before then.
Its a very simple shift in implementation but its so pervasive that I lost interest in the politics of getting it spread.
Podcasting is a whole lot easier and I'm getting too old for that crap.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
in CICS and Command Level COBOL. (It requires playing around with the BLL cells in the Linkage section of your program.)
You would not have believed the comments I got for doing that.
I had to teach the technique to my fellow workers, some of whom never 'got it'.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
the researchers also told that they did not consider women as part of the human species.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This has been linked to the Republicans. Ever heard of G.W. Bush?
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Then they'll brainwash there kids into thinking they have a genetic disorder that prevents them from learning
Did it occur to you that they, umm, might *actually* have a learning disorder?
I mean, jesus christ, yes, I understand, ADHD is getting overdiagnosed. That doesn't mean that a) ADHD doesn't actually exist as a real, serious disorder or that b) other learning disorders don't exist, and should be recognized and treated as soon as possible.
Hell, you should be *applauding* this kind of work. If you could take a simple genetic test that demonstrated, provably, that you had a disorder that affected your ability to learn (as opposed to the wishy-washy criteria used today), wouldn't you welcome that?
Just because some people have a harder time learning does not mean they can't learn.
It's just harder.
And just because some people have impaired vision does not mean they can't see...
And just because some people have difficulty hearing, doesn't mean they can't hear...
And just because some people have difficulty walking, doesn't mean they can't walk...
Etc, etc, etc.
Yes, that's how stupid your argument is. A disability is a disability. Just because a person can somewhat overcome it on their own, doesn't mean we should just forget about providing treatment that could make their lives more comfortable. And I would argue a learning disability is *far* more wide-ranging in it's consequences than a physical disability.
For those that are going to call Goodwin's Law, look up eugenetics. Many US states practiced it up until around the time of WW2 (some states even did it later). Sterilizing prisoners, people they decided were mentally ill, etc. Some really, scary and depressing cases. Sure, it wasn't necessarily race based, but definitely the same idea that a certain European country had.. In fact, they claimed they got the idea from California.
Heh, Margaret Sanger was a pioneer of legalized abortion and the founder of Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortions in the U.S. Sanger was also a well-known eugenicist whose writings make clear the historic connection between abortion on demand and eugenic thinking. Eugenics is alive and well in the US, it just had to have a re-branding campaign after WW2. They've been so successful that they get the middle and lower classes (for the most part) to willingly limit their number of children they have.
Got that? Sample size: 26.
People just eat this shit up these days, they love biological "explanations" for human behavior. Hey, it's not my fault, I was born this way. Work harder in school? But if you don't have the natural talent, what's the point? Spend more money on public education? Oh, what the hell for? Those people will never learn.
Look, I work with disabled veterans in my field, and people who have various diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's - people who have probably done more than most of the readers here ever will - and will probably do more in the future.
My brother has a mild reading disability - he's a manager at a cable firm and makes more than many CEOs. My other brother had a speech impediment - he's an international lawyer who actually wrote Iraq's insurance laws - and does way more than just that.
In medicine there are gradients of impediment - the human brain is very very adaptable, and minor and even some major disabilities can be more than compensated for by people.
So, let's not be all black and white here - most people are on a curve, a gradient, of functionality in many respects. Language is just one thing, as is the ability to learn - there are techniques to compensate for many impairments.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
From what I recall about both the last two presidential elections, it was more about who you were voting against than who you were voting for.
In that light, it would be phrased "6/10 voted against Kerry"
In discussions since then it seems people all immediately equate voting for Bush to liking Bush, or thinking he was good, or agreeing with him or whatever. That is where you get those chestnuts like "60% voted for Bush, so this country is dumb". I don't think you can make that equation. Everyone I could find that said they voted Bush just didn't like Kerry or didn't want him to win. I bet they would have voted for someone better, if someone better would have been available.
I don't think people remember how crappy the candidates were in that election.
Why, yes I have been touched by His noodly appendage. And I plan to sue.
Is this the queue for trolls?
Or is it cue for trolls?
- people who have probably done more than most of the readers here ever will - and will probably do more in the future.
Congratulations for them. What's your point?
My brother has a mild reading disability - he's a manager at a cable firm and makes more than many CEOs. My other brother had a speech impediment - he's an international lawyer who actually wrote Iraq's insurance laws - and does way more than just that.
Gee, yay for them, too. I still don't see what your point is.
Oh, and BTW, the plural for anecdote isn't data. Just FYI. Just because two people you know overcame their mild learning disabilities, doesn't mean it's a problem. For example, I have a family member who has a learning disability that was discovered far too late. As a consequence, he lagged behind in school, and has since achieved very little as a consequence of falling behind the pack. He also has a strongly addictive personality... seems to fit with what's described here, right? But you're right, who gives a shit, he should just be able to get over it on his own.
most people are on a curve, a gradient, of functionality in many respects. Language is just one thing, as is the ability to learn - there are techniques to compensate for many impairments.
So can a person with tremors from alzheimers (ignoring for the moment that the disease is progressive). Does that mean we shouldn't try to cure it, or at least treat the symptoms? Of course not. So why are learning disabilities different? Because some people are worse off? That's a bullshit argument, and you know it.
My point is that you are making assumptions not grounded in the actual science - whether the study of comparitive abilities, the study of psychological abilities, the study of neurology and the ability of the brain to adapt, the study of education and the ability to teach methods to permit people to cope with learning deficits, or even the critical fact that most GENETIC traits are not ON/OFF switches but usually multiple gradients - many syndromes have up to four major controlling genes, but are acted on by many silencing, reinforcing, and alternate biochemical pathways.
Read the underlying scientific paper. Read the tables at the end that explain the PROBLEMS with making the kinds of assumptions you are making.
Is it useful to know people have a deficit? Sure. Can we then say they (as you did) "can't learn"? No.
People aren't cars. You don't just turn the ignition and they work. They have multiple semi-redundant reinforcing biochemical pathways to get things done. As any scientist would know.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
That explains why the most common phrase in tech support is "YOU again?!"