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Sarcasm Useful For Detecting Dementia
An anonymous reader writes "Sarcasm may be the lowest form of wit, but Australian scientists are using it to diagnose dementia, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of New South Wales, found that patients under the age of 65 suffering from frontotemporal dementia (FTD), the second most common form of dementia, cannot detect when someone is being sarcastic."
Studies also found that old people who do not have dementia are likely to whack you with their canes for sassing them.
Doctor: "Oh, yeaaaa, you're normal"
Patient: "Why you little whippernapper! *WHACK* *WHACK*"
Doctor: "No! Ow! No! It was a medical test!
Patient: "I lived through 15 wars and 5 depressions, and I'm not going to let some damn young quack backtalk me in the name of science!" *WHACK* *WHACK*
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
In certain Ethiopic languages, sarcasm is indicated with a sarcasm mark, a character that looks like a backwards question mark at the end of a sentence, similar to Alcanter de Brahm's proposed irony mark ().
So did the fledgeling movement of Slashdotters who proposed using the tilde ~ as the sarcasm mark beat them to it?
<sarcasm>Really?</sarcasm>
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
...90% of the internet is demented.
I traded all my mod points for these magic beans.
What a great idea.
If you're wondering if you've got dementia, and you thought this comment was sarcastic, then you have because it wasn't.
If you're not wondering if you've got dementia, then you have too because it totally was sarcastic.
Or maybe it's me who has dementia. I don't know if I'm being sarcastic. Oh dear.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Since sarcasm is notoriously difficult to convey online, does this mean the Internet is a dementia simulator? Actually, that would explain a lot of things...
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Doctors Recommend Reading Slashdot to Diagnose Dementia.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
"Sarcasm may be the lowest form of wit, but Australian scientists are using it to diagnose dementia, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of New South Wales, found that patients under the age of 65 suffering from frontotemporal dementia (FTD), the second most common form of dementia, cannot detect when someone is being sarcastic."
I have suffered from Paranoid Schizophrenia since the age of 15. I'm 33 now, and I can say from my own personal experience that this is very true.
One of the many reasons I have trouble 'fitting in', especially at social gatherings, is my inability to detect sarcasm. It can be terrifying when someone says something that could be interpreted 'literally' as demeaning or cruel but is only 'joking around' etc.
I'm better now than I was, but usually only after getting to know a person well. Surprisingly however, even people I've known for 5+ years can still be sarcastic occasionally and it will go right over my head. They know about my illness however, and on occasions like those do me the favor of pointing out they were just being sarcastic, which helps.
I think the approach in the article could be a great diagnostic tool for early detection of these types of mental illness...I suffered from schizophrenia without knowing I had it for almost 10 years. My life fell to pieces; that and my family and friends (the few I had left) finally convinced me I had a problem. I was the last to know I had schizophrenia...and it has been very very difficult coming to terms with it.
Maybe if it was detected earlier I could have been treated earlier, and the damage to my life and my state of mind might have been mitigated considerably. I don't know.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
...parody is being used to detect Alzheimer's disease, and satire to detect lupus.
I hereby propose that the customary "whoosh" be replaced with "You may have Frontotemporal Dementia. Please see your physician."
That's a wicked good observation.
You probably would get the exact same look if you said something not sarcastic with a MA accent.
I found that after a few days in the south I started talking with a drawl. Strangers became much friendlier to me.
Man, you really need that seminar!
I bet you're fun at parties.
Ha! Dementia detected.
From my own experience I have noticed that people
in the very start of a psykosis episode also suffers from not beeing able to understand sarcasm.
This is before they show any real signs of the mental illness.
I lived together with a woman many years that had this kind of problems and I used sarcasm to check her up so to speak. It never failed to indicate when she was about to have a new episode and to be prepared to help her out.
--- Linux or FreeBSD, it's like blondes or brunettes. I like both. ---
Thanks!
I don't know if this is common or not, but an EMT seemed to use this once to tell if I was going to pass out. I had broken my upper arm and at some point I guess I was looking whiter than usual (according to my friends). After putting the arm in a sling the EMT looked at me very seriously and said something like "What's the problem? You're a big guy. What's the big deal?" I was confused for a moment, then I realized he was being sarcastic and I laughed. When I did, he smiled, patted me on the (other) shoulder and announced "Yeah, he's okay. He'll be fine."
I thought that was a pretty good way to tell how out of it I was. Of course some people don't get sarcasm at all, so it might not work all the time.
Irony. The opposite of wrinkly.
sarcasm is cultural.... I grew up in Jamaica, after moving to the US I had a very hard time understanding sarcasm which is very common here. In my experience growing up in Jamaica sarcasm wasn't common at all.
Puns. Goddamn puns.
From TFA:
That sounds almost like a textbook description of Asperger's Syndrome. Hmmmm....