TheActualDevil

Some doctors can be real shitty like that sometimes. The medical community's understanding of ADHD has really evolved a lot over the past couple decades, but a lot of people are still stuck in the mindset that it's mostly in kids or that if you're managing your life then it's not worth worrying about. The good news is you can bypass them! Typically a good doctor will send you to a therapist for an eval, so you can just find your own to do the test. It usually takes longer to get an appointment, but if you can get with a psychiatrist and not a psychologist you don't even need to go back to a doc for meds. Psychology today's website is a pretty good starting point to find someone in your area that focuses on ADHA, and possibly even adults with ADHD. The diagnosis takes some time and often finding the right meds can be a long journey sometimes, but when you find what works it can be life changing.

As much as I dislike diagnosing strangers on the internet... this is classic ADHD. The brain doesn't really form working memory so short-term things just don't exist unless you see them. Meds help but even still I rely on a lot of those same tools you described. I can't live without my calendar with everything written down. I have daily alarms for set things in my schedule so I don't forget. Notes around my workspace that don't go until the task is 100% resolved. I've also learned to organize my house so that as many things as possible are visible. If it's away in a cabinet then it may as well not be there so I have a ton of nice-looking baskets and things all around for organization. I think the only things in my house that are really tucked away are dishes and cleaning supplies, mostly out of necessity for space/safety. And even those I'll remember because they a separate task will drive me to need them and seek them out.

I spent years thinking I had a serious memory problem. A partner once said my memory was worse than her ex who had brain damage. I accepted it as just a part of me. Turns out, I have severe ADHD and the Adderall does wonders for my day-to-day functioning.

Ooh! I've actually got something for this! It takes some work and consistency, but it's pretty fool-proof eventually.

You got to play with them right before bed.

And I don't mean just a little waving the wand around and watch them jump at it a bit. Give them a workout. My two cats, one's pretty chill and her energy level isn't too high. The other guy though, he's basically a dog. Always wants to play, and play a lot. This worked wonders for him.

Anyway, so you find a toy they really like, and figure out the kind of play that gets them engaged. Some like to hunt, some like to chase. But whatever it is, you got to get them moving, and keep it up until they're panting like a dog. It's perfectly healthy, cats just don't often get that much of a workout so we don't see it. So you do that, and they'll rest for 5-10 minutes, then want to go again. Do that over and over until they don't get back up begging for more after 10 minutes. They'll be exhausted. Then do your nightly routine and go to bed.

This won't work overnight as their routines will get them up and running soon. But you do that every night for a couple weeks and they'll start to sync up to your schedule.

Couple other things that make it easier:

1. When they try to wake you up in the morning and get your attention, don't get out of bed. Don't give them attention. You're trying to get their sleep schedule to match yours so you have to let them know that you're not available until a certain time.

2. Having your own routine of going to sleep at the same time every night. Cats are really good at knowing about what time it is and they need consistency. I'm in bed by 9:30 every night, play-time starts at 8:30 every night. If you vary it up they're never going to know when to sleep.

3)Feeding times. I know a lot of people just leave food out in a bowl, but that's not healthy for most cats (And honestly, for the healthiest, at least wet food is best). You want to figure out how much they should be eating every day and measure out just that much divided by meals. Most are fine with twice a day, since cat's would naturally eat at dusk and dawn, so just before you leave for work (assuming typical 9-5 schedule) and right before bed. I work from home so I do 3 meals a day, and that helps to wake them up mid day so they'll need more sleep at night.

3b) This can vary a lot, but typically a wild cat's routine would be to hunt, eat, groom, then sleep. So you organize play-time with eating, you play them tired (simulate hunting), feed them, They groom themselves while you get ready for bed, then you both sleep. My cats are weird though, they don't play before eating. Not into it. But right after they eat they get excited to chase each other around a bit and play, so we do it then.

It did take my energetic boy longer than 2 weeks (closer to a month), but his energy levels even after a year old were through the roof and abnormal. I think it's the breed. But now when it gets close to play time he waits next to the toy closet anticipating it. Then I play with them, then they chase each other around for about 10 minutes, but then they're tired so we all go to bed and he sleeps next to me in bed every night instead of running around.

Where do you think Pratchett got the idea?! They got to him first and paid him off so we'd think it was ridiculous!

No joke, it wasn't a flat earth thing, but I had a coworker years ago who was big into conspiracy theories and he claimed that movies like Men in Black were made to make everyone think that kind of thing only happened in fiction so we'd laugh at people who think it's real.

When I tried to point out to him that there was no evidence for the things he claimed were real, he said the lack of evidence was proof, because it meant they were hiding the evidence.

But if the flat earth goes on, what can be assumed to be, infinitely past the ice wall (since no one really gives an answer for what's past there), think of how big maps would be! They would have to sell giant maps and make a fortune.

I mean, I'm not arguing anything other than your false equivalent. I'm sure, at some point, we'll be able to mimic how the human brain actually works, not just imitate the results. But we're not even close right now. Not in the same ball park. Not in the same tri-state area. We still don't really understand how it does what it does completely. We know some of the processes, and understand that's it's chemicals interacting with the meat in some way, but it's still mostly kinda just weird stuff our body does. We're mostly just pointing at areas that light up with activity when we do a thing and saying "yep, that's the general area that's doing stuff."

And that's just understanding it, let alone figuring out how to imitate it with technology. And none of those parts of the brain work independently. They're spread out and they overlap and exchange and change information constantly, all with chemicals. Getting a computer to mimic the outcome is still something we're far from, but without the same processes, its not really gonna come out the same. We've got just... so long to go before we actually get close to simulating a human brain.

And just for fun, I do think this line of yours is funny:

The idea that the human brain is special is ludicrous and completely without evidence

Again, I wasn't saying anything of any sort, and I'm still not really taking any stance beyond "that shits complicated and we're not there yet." But you're supposing that a "synthetic implementation can achieve the same thing." ... without supporting evidence. This argument was clearly meant for someone else, but it's not really fair to demand evidence from someone for their claim when you don't support your own. Jumping to the conclusion that something is impossible is the same as assuming it's definitely possible. You don't know that. I don't know that. No one really knows that until it's done.

You're equating creativity to the soul. They're not the same thing. But we can definitely look at the brain and see what parts light up when perform creative tasks.

While right now you need to put children and teenagers through years of rigorous training and expose them to immense stress and pressure so most of them break

Uh... I don't think that's a necessary part of the process to making k-pop, or any kind of music. Industry people may think it's critical to making themselves shit-loads of money, but it's not important for the creation music or even selling the music.

Where's your data that, "all else being equal, office-based work IS better"? I mean, I don't have data that says otherwise, but I know the company I work for as well as higher-ups at other companies I've talked to noticed right out the gate that productivity went up when they went work from home. The same work needs to be done, and it gets done. If it doesn't, fire them. I have trouble seeing how the location the worker is in matters, all things being equal.

Dude was a nuclear physicist, so maybe he was on to something.

Let's not go attributing success in one area as relevant to being smart in another, unrelated area, even when they're right. I prefer the other guy who worked in the industry agreeing rather than a nuclear physicist. Unless nuclear physicists typically get their degree by researching the insurance industry and their quality in relationship to advertisement budgets.

You've got some good points there, but it feels a little naive of nuance in parts.

Like, if these are natural rights, presumably this still counted before humans banded together to form the first societies. Before, even, we were small roving migratory groups that only just managed to climb out of the trees. humans, as they were, are basically animals at that point, right? I mean, we're still animals, but you know what I mean. So we still have those rights? What makes us different than the other animals (or even other ape descendants) that we see as food? As a species, we were evolved to eat meat, which requires killing something else that presumably has these same rights that we have to violate to enforce our own right to life. Or did natural rights come later, when we were "better" and "more advanced" than the animals we hunted? Does that mean we get these rights when we reach a certain point in self-awareness?

It's tough to argue with the base arguments you present, and I don't disagree with them... but they can be argued against. Like your slavery argument. It goes against these natural rights that we have always had, yet we started taking our first steps toward stopping it, like, 600 years ago? Slavery predates writing. As far as we know, mankind was enslaving other people as far as we can track, and definitely hundreds, if not thousands of years before. So were they not aware of these natural rights or just didn't care?

It sounds like you're saying these are natural rights that everyone has because it feels right to you dues to the society you grew up in that appreciated these rights. They have to come from somewhere to be natural but only really count for some living things and not others.

Personally, I don't believe in natural rights. We're animals that grew opposable thumbs and learned to make tools. Human rights come about only because we live together in societies. In a way that sounds contradictory, we formed groups and gained rights among those other humans, and in the same instant traded some of those away for that group to function. Rights have to come from somewhere. Without groups agreeing on what those rights are, then the decider of rights is whoever is strongest. Might makes right started to decline only because we got into groups large enough to defend against outside forces, and even then it was only within the group in which those rights existed. Rights themselves are part of the social contract we all participate in when we exist in society and universal human rights is a relatively recent advancement, and we definitely haven't come to a consensus as to what they all definitely are. But if society breaks down, those rights definitely disappear overnight. But I've always been the kind of person who needs reasons to believe a thing and have sound reasons to believe it.

I'm with you on right to life, and bodily autonomy are things that all humans should have. I think we just differ in their origin and universality.

So who decides what rights are natural ones and which ones need a government to enforce? And what are the natural rights? Not just that you believe it to be so, but why? And what you use to make that decision.

Forgive me, but I've been doing a lot of research lately on natural rights and their protections, limits, and origins. I've been reading a lot of philosophy on it and it's extremely interesting. I'm genuinely curious how people come to these conclusions and I love hearing different viewpoints.