Blind people can use a cane for echolocation, but it's not necessarily reliable (especially in a busy city), and to be honest I'm hard-pressed thinking of any blind people I know that actually know how to do that.
Wha? Well, there are blind people who barely know how to use their cane, but... Let me explain.
Manfred Spitzer once wrote that he thinks there are two groups of people on this planet who really have good audio location capabilities. Blind people and conductors. Conductors because they need to be able to listen to a particular performer, to isolate them from the rest of the orchester. And blind people, because we use the ear to navigate the world.
Now, I actually use everything around me as a source of sound. Tapping with the cane is one of them. However, if I want to "scan" my environment, I usually make a clicking noise with my tongue.
But those are the a small part of the game. The rest of the noises I use come from outside. Just a small example, before I loose myself in thsi comment: I can hear poles and trees on the sidewalk. Not because they emit so much sound, but because they eat it up. If a car drives behind the pole along the street, I can actually hear the point where the external sound doesn't reach me, infering that there must be a pole or a tree.
Echo location is not always about what you send. Its m6ore about you learning how the sound waves around you behave. Sometimes, but this is getting borderline esoteric, I can hear the materials involved. Walking towards a wooden wall sounds destinctly different from walking towards a concrete wall...
Subsidized in what way? I've heard many dubious things in the UK / EU called "fossil fuel subsidies" when it's mostly generic things like electricity having a lower VAT rate than the usual 20% (or whatever) on most consumer goods. This is the sort of thing that gets called a fossil fuel subsidy. I think a lot of these things are grasping at straws.
The top subsidy of fuels that emit carbon emissions is the externalities experienced by future generations. Not really measured in numbers, it will just be a change in quality of life.
This is exactly why the biggest thing in gamedev, and all software dev to an extent, is getting your software in front of users as soon as possible. As a developer it isn't just that you know how it works, but you'll also have played the game or used the front end of the experience for thousands of hours.
New eyes will see fresh flaws. The user might not be right about how to fix the flaw, but they are absolutely right about where the flaws are.
ADHD makes me utterly incapable of holding a job down, creating a CV, or even "performing being disabled properly" because to "perform being disabled" you have to do things like regularly travel to the job center, do lots of phone calls and scheduling with medical professionals, actually going through the "disability application" process (which requires going to court when they inevitably refuse you), etc. There's a laundry list of medical issues I've been putting off for- literally years now- and only half of those got solved when one of my friends stepped in and acted as a carer. The rest seem intractable at the moment.
The last psych I saw for ADHD ignored my two prior failures at holding a job down, my inability to properly access healthcare, my inability to sit down and read a god-damned book or study at something for more than an hour, and wanted more salient evidence. Namely, she wanted me to acquire another job (I'm not quite sure how, because despite my skill and very large breadth of knowledge (acquired back when I could focus on things — I suspect stress has had an impact on this), I have two large gaps on my CV and less than 2 years combined in a position) and fail at it before providing treatment. To me, right now, in the current status of the hiring economy, that's basically an insurmountable task where there's no guarantee that if I do those things, that I will actually be prescribed treatment. Which is a hell of a situation to leave someone in, especially when my symptoms match up exactly with people I know who have ADHD (I've literally pointed at people with my symptoms and gone "sounds like ADHD buddy", and they've been prescribed, lmao), and the solution to all of this is a non-stimulant like guanfacine, or literally just "adderall". The doses are small enough that when it's working well it doesn't feel like you're on anything, which is very hardly comparable to me downing so much caffeine at my first job to function that I ended up having panic attacks in meetings.
So like — what, do I pay 3k on a private psych that might say the same damn thing? Do I struggle uphill forever until I can finally "perform adhd" enough for them to see me and believe that I'm not just trying to find a way to sell pills? What are my options here supposed to be that aren't "get ground up by a system that doesn't want me around"? It makes me wonder why I bothered putting my life on pause for (honestly much longer than,) two years for the appointment in the first place.
Articles like this leave me in a position of — ok, but who is this point of view helping. Almost anyone I know with a mental health disorder that has actually managed to create a stable life for themselves has said medication was the key — that yes, over the long term, the solution was to reframe and reorganize their environment, acquire stability, etc. but that they wouldn't have achieved any of that without medication and therapy to provide the tools and stability necessary to do that from. I know people, and I myself personally, have gone to heath services seeking support for mental health issues with, e.g. depression[1], and been presented with — not even social options (group therapy) — but mindfulness therapy[2]. I genuinely wonder how many people are driven to suicide by a system that takes years of work to basically battle them into giving you a solution to something, and that provides approaches that leave people putting in a lot of work and feeling utterly uncared for.
Increasingly, the health systems that people rely on do not want to give those initial tools — and while there are a number of very good reasons for this, it drives people to unsafe alternatives. I very literally know someone in another country who buys black market amphetamines and purifies them into ADHD treatment, simply because the alternative is "no treatment" or shelling out 300 bucks a month. Drugs are a huge risk for people with ADHD, I wonder how many people are out there doing cocaine or street meth to function when they could be taking drugs at low dosages dispensed by a doctor with medical training all with a level of certainty that trace elements present are not going to completely rot your brain.
I'm not quite sure how to finish this, since the graphomania has kind of left me. 50/50 chance on whether i can focus long enough to read the comments! lmao
[1]: Before I discovered that my depression is entirely because of how fucking hopeless my circumstances feel like.
[2]: Mindfulness therapy can be very effective, I've used it on myself. But it requires a better presentation than the website's "wish yourself better with the power of your mind!", it should absolutely not be a first-line approach of therapy, and especially not for depression. If I hadn't had personal experience with it it probably would have taken many months with a therapist for me to be convinced that it's a thing that works, quite frankly. What I'm trying to say is that most people are not as open minded as I am towards mindfulness as a Thing, and it felt like a slap in the face to me. It was almost as bad as me waiting 8 months for speech therapy and getting a letter that boils down to "Sorry! The best we can do is these recorded zoom links, 30 minutes each, one of which is a dead link!"
> Articles like this leave me in a position of — ok, but who is this point of view helping.
To me, this point of view is helping a younger me and a younger you: future generations. It is prescribing a sociological solution to this problem. One where my mother wouldn't have had nearly as much anguish from the neuroticism of managing her own deficits while also trying to manage mine. One where in my twenties, I wouldn't have struggled trying to form foundational habits (like brushing my teeth longer than 10 seconds and twice daily).
They describe providing support systems that go beyond just medicating. But for those of us who didn't have all the structural support needed to thrive, medication is absolutely necessary, there is no question about it. For future generations, maybe we can lessen the need for these medications, because they do have side effects for some people independent of the benefits.
Probably the most frustrating part of these types of discussions are when someone who is so insular, so lacking in the ability to understand what it's like to be someone else, that they can't understand that the forming and ingraining of basic functional habits does not come natural to everyone.
How did I actually go about getting the medication? A private psychiatrist, like you say; paid out of pocket (the total cost of the psych and meds being $160/month total). Someone who was OK with not being overly critical of how I described the problems I was having because they were going to be paid for it without insurance bullshit. Then GoodRX to get a lower price on the amphetamines. In other words... an existing support system already had to be in place for me to be able to get the medication. I don't really need it anymore, or rather, I don't need it all the time.
I'm wishing the best for you, please don't give up hope. Even with some semblance of a support system, my situation was shitty, so I can't imagine what it's like for you, but--well, there is no but. I hope you get where you want to be.
I’ve managed to make it to retirement age with inattentive ADHD having only been fired from one job. I wish I could tell my daughter (with ADHD) how to deal with it. It’s all so exhausting…
I'm not sure that a hallucinated image of something is better than the original image when you're doing spywork.
The difference between whether someone has 4 or 5 fingers, whether they're holding a gun versus a random object, or whether they're mixed-race or caucasian, all seem like they would be pretty important things. Likewise, car number plates, signage in the photo that help identify where it is, metadata of the image itself (often more useful than the image), are all incredibly important. All of those are things that AI is absolutely terrible at lmao.
> Now they just have to exfiltrate the keywords describing the images instead of the images themselves.
I'm not sure how a bunch of probably-correct keywords that miss a lot of the important aforementioned details in the image is more useful than the image itself, or it's metadata. Both of which would be lost. My point applies equally with respect to image classification, too.
Gosh! Another self-help book to "cure" my ADHD and depression! /s
Sarcasm aside, we already have cures for these disorders. It's absolutely insulting to struggle for decades dealing with mental health problems, for the medical industry to hold the cure (which, incidentally, is also the key to allowing you to perform a lot of self-care steps which would improve your mental health), and to then be told that — no, you won't receive the cure because you're not our "ideal patient" so, instead, maybe try and bang your head against this self-help book that "cures" the disease. Obviously, the disease will be cured if you just try hard enough! Or if you just, idk, Cope With It.
The majority of self-help books exist to generate money and only end up reinforcing the point of view that if you are struggling with mental illness it must be your fault. They take the burden off the rotting, decrepit husk of capitalism and put the burden back on to you. "Oh, you have struggled every day of your life with X? Ah, but this self-help book solves X, so if it doesn't work that must be your fault and you need to struggle harder with the methods in the self-help book!"
I hear you. I lost a best friend last year after moving in with him and getting effectively bullied and belittled over my ADHD, which he was adamant was made-up and was just a skill issue that I could meditate my way out of. After he became increasingly hostile and psychotic I had to cancel my lease. Really screwed me up for a while.
I suffer from severe mental illness since I was young - ketogenic therapy is evidence based medicine and has changed my life in a way medication never has.
When you downplay this emerging field of metabolic health you're preventing many people to have access to a treatment that can save their lives.
Please inform yourself better - do not careless spread misinformation that can hurt other people.
There is only anedotal evidence and an animal study that a ketogengic diet reduces ADHD symptoms. There are reasons to be hopeful, but to call this "evidence based medicine" is a lie.
I find it unfortunate that the Keto diet attracts such fanaticism. It makes it much harder to find good information about it.
I couldn't find anything on that site that wasn't marketing material. I didn't dig deep into that organization but it appears to be run by the type of fanatics that I am talking about. It is dedicated to advocating for a certain type of treatment, not dedicated to gathering what we do and don't know about the topic.
I'm not sure why you keep using the term fanatics in what should be a civil cpnversation - it makes me think that either you have an agenda you're trying to hide your simply put you're an extremely rude person.
I'm using the word "fanatic" becuse I think it's meaning is the closest to what I am trying to describe: "a person marked or motivated by an extreme, unreasoning enthusiasm, as for a cause." It isn't intended as an insult or perjorative, but a descriptor.
I am coming from the perspective of being genuinely interested and wanting to try such a diet but unable to find any good information in the sea of fanatical marketing.
> Please inform yourself better - do not careless spread misinformation that can hurt other people.
Please inform yourself on ADHD research. When you downplay the role of genetics in mental illness you're preventing many people from having access to life-changing treatment. The irony of your last statement is quite something. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC161723/
It's wonderful that ketogenic therapy has changed your life. That has absolutely no bearing on people with different a brain structure. Ketogenic diets can be beneficial, meditation is essential, but there are aspects of ADHD that simply cannot be fixed other than introducing more dopamine into your brain.
It's a Oxford’s Keto for ADHD & Depression Randomized Controlled Trial
My personal story is with psychosis which is as severe a mental illness as there can be - and I'm very thankful there are doctors and researchers out there battling all the misinformation about metabolic therapies.
People have different brain structures, but all brains are composed of cells and cells depend on their normal metabolic pathways to do their job.
I actually took dopamine reducing drugs for more than 20 years and I do know from personal experience how these drugs mess up people's lives.
So, yes I'm following a ketogenic therapy to, via metabolic normalization, regulate my dopamine pathways, and after 20+ year of misery I finally feel like I have a brain and a life.
I hope everyone has the chance to benefit from this research as I am benefiting, because I do know how painful it is to be prescribed these drugs for life.
> I actually took dopamine reducing drugs for more than 20 years and I do know from personal experience how these drugs mess up people's lives.
I mean — and I don't mean to be harsh here — if you have ADHD and Depression, of course dopamine-reducing drugs messed up your life. The issue with ADHD is (generally) insufficient dopamine with unusual dopamine release that leads to peaks and troughs in the dopamine response. Even a cursory amount of knowledge here makes it easy to conclude that dopamine reducing drugs will obviously make things worse.
Where are the studies? His list of publications only had individual case studies, which are nice, I guess, but... Lots of people have theories. Where is the science?
I see you did not read the book - if you go to the notes section you'll find references to all the technical papers that support each chapter of the book.
I suffer from a severe mental illness and following a ketogenic therapy has been life changing for me.
It is giving me hope and I see the mind blowing results every day.
I don't have the book, since you have read it, could you provide some of the scientific studies that it cites? I believe you when you say it helped you, but you will have to agree that your anecdotal evidence is not sufficient as proof that it was the ketogenic diet that helped you.
It's a book. You read it. You are helped by the words and insights in it. Its tagline is "If you or someone you love is affected by mental illness, it might change your life." It is a more accessible format of the scientific papers it uses as sources. That's some definitions of a self-help book, no?
ADHD has been linked to a reduced amount of dopamine receptor sites in the brain, and an abnormally high amount of dopamine transporters, which has a profound neurological and physiological impact.
Please, explain how this is just a metabolic issue and how simply adjusting my blood sugar and meditating will magically grow me more dopamine receptors.
When your insulin levels are deregulated, the receptors in your brain-blood barrier became insulin resistant and despite being drown in a sea of glucose your brain cells cannot access it and let their mitochondria use it to produce energy.
Your brain cells then start malfunctioning and neurotransmitter pathways, like dopamine, serotonin or GABA, get messed up.
This is the link from carbs, to glucose levels, to insulin resistance, to the pathophysiology of neurotransmiter pathways which are the SYMPTOMS, not the CAUSE of mental illness.
Read the book.
Watch videos from metabolicmind.org.
There are a lot of researchers working on metabolic health studies as we speak.
My brain has sufficient glucose otherwise I literally couldn't function and there would be other problems caused by the cell's inability to access the large amount of glucose.
In fact, we have a term of that exact disease — diabetes. You're talking about a book that misdescribes diabetes as ADHD, and then purports to cure ADHD with diabetes cures!
Yeah. If someone repeatedly refers you to external resources instead of explaining a process clearly in their own words, it's a sign that they don't know what they're talking about or are deliberately full of shit. I'm charitably categorizing OP in the first bucket, but their approach is still aggressively ignorant to the point of harm.
I don't need to read some guy's book or watch random videos when I can read peer-reviewed, published medical papers. You're misunderstanding the role of genetics in brain development. From birth, the ADHD brain begins developing differently. In the presence of childhood trauma, often exacerbated by ADHD itself, the brain's development diverges even further.
Your worldview fails to account for genetic, environmental and sociological effects on brain development, and you seem to think that someone can just will their brain to suddenly develop more dopamine receptors and better neurological dopamine regulation systems.
Please read the book. The genetics are accounted for as are all other biopsychosocial factors that correlate with a lot of metabolic and mental illnesses.
Often, people in situations where they require healthcare are least able to assess the implications of their choices, as well. It is very literally praying on the sick.
Exactly, the NHS is only going downhill because the dominant ideology among MPs has been that the NHS is the first place to get gutted for cheap savings. A lot of very efficient systems were removed and farmed out for "cheaper" private systems, that end up being rather costly in the long term with respect to increased error, price rising, and all the myriad ways incompetence and explicit money-grabbing messes with healthcare. They gutted the administration systems and now doctors have to work overtime on the weekends just to get their notes in the system, and now because doctors are overworked, they're putting more work into the hands of the incredibly underqualified PAs. And on top of all of this, repeated mismanagement of the money that is distributed to the NHS — including, of all things, incredibly inept bartering, putting hospitals on a "target system" where underfunded hospitals are given less money for not hitting targets, etc. It's a complete joke, but every step was damned near deliberate for the case of farming public money into the pockets of the friends of MPs.
I figured it would be a good introduction to prolog, but to date there doesn't seem to be any prolog interpreter that lets me copy the things in the book to play with them?
