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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.
...90% of the internet is demented.
I traded all my mod points for these magic beans.
~yeah, ~as ~if ~that ~would ~work().
Sarcasm has no place on the internet. period.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
"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
Your smiley has a goatee.
...parody is being used to detect Alzheimer's disease, and satire to detect lupus.
As an octogenarian who has seen the negative effects of censorship across various media over many decades, I find your desire to absolutely deny peoples' right to express themselves in a particular way to be not only naive, but also -- oooh, look at the bird feeder, that hummingbird is back!!
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
I hereby propose that the customary "whoosh" be replaced with "You may have Frontotemporal Dementia. Please see your physician."
I have a friend who said once that you can give sexual meaning to any statement as long as you end it with "if you know what I mean".
Ironically, the same results can be achieved by ending statements with 'would you have sex with me.'
Unfortunately it can also be a problem in real-life, generally when I'm being sarcastic I sound and act exactly as if I wasn't, combine this with my quirky personalty and it gets interesting.
(while in a job interview)
Interviewer: so what kind of hobbies do you have, apart from coding?
Me: Well, rock climbing, some music production, necrophelia and subtle dark humor.
I wanted to convey that he's just trying to make small-talk to cover up the fact that he's already decided they weren't going to employ me, instead his face twitched for a second and his mouth opened and you could see his brain clicking away trying to digest what I'd just said.
Um yah, getting back ontopic you can be sarcastic on the internet if people know you well, we all understand subtle humour & emotions while reading what other people write, but for complete strangers that's pretty much impossible.
Irony. The opposite of wrinkly.