Handicaps

[Marie1]

In any case, doesn't an IQ test simply show how well people do IQ tests?

Pretty much... I know some really dumb people who have scored realllly high on those... and now run around calling themselves geniuses...

 

[Myasishchev]

On the other hand, if one accepts blindness as mere cognitive diversity, there's no reason to fix it because it ain't broke. I understand this sentiment is more common in the deaf community, though--probably because deaf people aren't at the same risk of walking off the side of a cliff or petting a gorilla thinking it's a cat, so they can afford to be more intransigent on the issue of whether their way of experiencing the world is a "disability."

Cognitive diversity? Blindness is an impairment of a sense, not an impairment of intelligence. So is deafness. Both conditions are on a continuum, so complete blindness and complete deafness are rare. A sensory disability is not directly linked to any form of learning disability, although it does put learners at a disadvantage to their sighted/hearing peers. Suggesting that people have learning disabilities simply because they are blind or deaf is, how shall I put it, oh I'll let someone else come up with a description.

I think the misunderstanding here is simple--you think I'm using "cognitively diverse" as a euphemism, when it absolutely isn't. It's kind of a PC term, but not in the same vein as "differently abled," because in many cases there are actually valid arguments besides nicety for using it. It is emphatically not a synonym for "stupid"--or even "unhealthy." Congenital deafness or blindness most definitely are forms of cognitive diversity.

Likewise, "neurotypical" does not at all mean "smart." (It might even mean "faintly dumb," if you take "typicality" to mean exactly what it says.)

True, the label "cognitively diverse" or "neurodiverse" encompasses two overlapping, indistinct subsets, which do include stupidity and other unhealthy or undesirable mental wirings. The first set is of those neurological states which reasonable minds really can't differ over whether they're disabilities (profound retardation, schizophrenia, the more severe depressive disorders, and blindness all likely fall into this category). And the second consists of those which can be characterized as different perspectives or lifestyles which are worthy of preservation and (I believe I recall some aspies and deaf activitists advocating this) deliberate replication.

I've pondered before whether in Trek's future, and in our own futures, whether or not the socio-political movement is going to pick up to the point where it really will be considered just another difference. I wouldn't be that surprised; a deaf human is still more fundamentally relatable than a telepath or a two-ton blob of acid-spewing silicon dioxide... let alone a Goddamn Talaxian...

Speaking of neurodiversity and handicaps, what's Lon Suder from Voyager? I mean, if I were a Betazoid, and had no telepathic or empathic faculties, I'd probably consider myself handicapped. Hell, Deanna Troi is on the borderline between sighted and blind, from a Betazoid perspective. But Suder's on absolutely equal footing with humans; Troi possesses sensory abilities well outside the human experience. Are Suder and Troi disabled, or simply neurodiverse?

I still have problems with that label. I think we have to recognize the potential for greater awareness in all humans regardless of age.

Well, that logic's gonna lead us down the rabbit hole, and I've had about ten times as many online debates about abortion than any person should ever have been a part of. But I will concede that one would prefer to err on the side of caution when dealing with prospectively sapient beings, so the prohibition on outright infanticide is probably a good, bright-line rule.

Even setting that aside, I still think we must be very careful in the types of definitions we set because there are some jerks who will always take legal language and try to bend it in some sick way that pleases them, unless the loopholes are closed.

Actually we're ethically required to.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

And the second consists of those which can be characterized as different perspectives or lifestyles which are worthy of preservation and (I believe I recall some aspies and deaf activitists advocating this) deliberate replication.

Speaking from the perspective of one who is a synesthete and has ADHD, and by some standards would count as neurodiverse, I know I would be unhappy with the suggestion that my parents' wish that I have a child "JUST LIKE ME" shouldn't be allowed to come true. I come from what I suspect to be a long line of people who have ADHD, and frankly I look at my family and I see a lot of success. Not financially necessarily, but as people. The synesthesia is probably either a de novo mutation or someone in my family isn't telling me something (VERY possible knowing my family). Or it may even be affected by premature birth (senses wiring differently because of being stimulated at high levels two months earlier?). However, I wouldn't trade it in for anything. Nor would I want someone telling me that I shouldn't have a kid with the same thing.

Same goes for the ADHD, too, even...I think that schools are lazy as hell when it comes to children who don't fit the norm. Kids with ADHD have a lot of potential, for the most part, and shouldn't be treated as though they're nothing but troubled and drugged out of laziness. (Now, when kids NEED medication, they need it. I'm talking about overprescription, not the idea of meds existing and being used at all.)

Speaking of neurodiversity and handicaps, what's Lon Suder from Voyager? I mean, if I were a Betazoid, and had no telepathic or empathic faculties, I'd probably consider myself handicapped. Hell, Deanna Troi is on the borderline between sighted and blind, from a Betazoid perspective. But Suder's on absolutely equal footing with humans; Troi possesses sensory abilities well outside the human experience. Are Suder and Troi disabled, or simply neurodiverse?

Humans would probably think of Troi and Suder as merely neurodiverse, whereas Betazoids seem to act like it's a disability. (Now, I think being cruel, as Suder was, is a decision and falls under an entirely different category.)

Even setting that aside, I still think we must be very careful in the types of definitions we set because there are some jerks who will always take legal language and try to bend it in some sick way that pleases them, unless the loopholes are closed.

Actually we're ethically required to.

I think I lost the connection between what I said and what you replied. We are "ethically required" to do what? To be careful in the defintions we set? Or to bend legal language around until we exploit every loophole?

 

[Myasishchev]

^We (sort of) = lawyers. But lawyers are indeed ethically required to take language and twist it in sick ways, although it's in whatever way pleases our client, not necessarily us.

"Jerks" is an accurate description, though.

Synaesthesia (ignorant comment time--it sounds like it would be cool for a while but get annoying; but that's likely my neuronormative prejudice) obviously isn't a disability, and if it has a dominant genetic component, then passing it on should be no problem for you. Blindness and to a lesser degree deafness, however, are clearly maladaptive, and are probably best classed as disabilities. Asperger's, as I noted in the other thread, probably does impose a fitness cost (if the all the Internet aspies' dating woes I've ever heard are true), but it does not make the individual less survivable. But the Federation, because its society promotes diversity, perhaps even to a fault, may indeed feel much differently. And like (I think) I remarked, I'd reckon the holodeck takes some of the sting out of dating woes.

ADD/ADHD I'm not even convinced really exists, but this may be a personal grudge. If it does, it's clearly not a disability. At the very least, it's overdiagnosed. I mean, I don't find it very hard to believe that neurotypical children have a difficult time paying attention to an algebra lesson or the $#@^@%$%@ idiots* who think teaching Beowulf in Middle English is a good idea. Of course, I have a whole rant stored up for high school English curricula, just waiting for the secret, silent alarm to trigger me off.

*Oh, I'd say "fucking," but it's just not a sufficient adjective for these people.

I mentioned the Betazoids because one thing I've become interested in is the fact that despite the language of equality, the peoples of the Federation are not equal in a quantifiable sense. I mean, humans may have some mystical specialness (I suspect it's because it's exclusively humans who write the shows--talk about racist ), but, for example, Betazoids are in a very real way better than human beings. They are capable of perceiving the world in much richer detail, with much greater accuracy. It's a thread that I'm working with lately, actually--how would a Betazoid relate to non-telepathic, effectively crippled fellow Betazoids, and more important, how would they relate to humans, who are autistics in the most literal sense of the word?

 

[Marie1]

I loved taking Beowulf in it's oldetyme speak! But I digress...

 

[DevilEyes]

ADD/ADHD I'm not even convinced really exists, but this may be a personal grudge. If it does, it's clearly not a disability. At the very least, it's overdiagnosed. I mean, I don't find it very hard to believe that neurotypical children have a difficult time paying attention to an algebra lesson or the $#@^@%$%@ idiots* who think teaching Beowulf in Middle English is a good idea.

That would indeed be a very weird idea... Why would anyone today bother to translate 'Beowulf' from Old English into Middle English?

Anyway, you make a good point about the fact that 1) a lot of school curriculum is incredibly boring, not to mention 2) it makes students passive receptors of information, and 3) sitting in the same place for hours, with short breaks, usually leads to a loss of attention - especially when you get up early in the morning... and especially when you have to listen to someone talking most of the time! Schools suffer from large classes and the fact that they are rarely stimulating students to be really active and creative. Although maybe American and British schools aren't that bad - but my experience of school mostly consisted of cramming large quantity of data I would never need.

I loved taking Beowulf in it's oldetyme speak!

You mean, in its ealdspræc?

 

[Myasishchev]

ADD/ADHD I'm not even convinced really exists, but this may be a personal grudge. If it does, it's clearly not a disability. At the very least, it's overdiagnosed. I mean, I don't find it very hard to believe that neurotypical children have a difficult time paying attention to an algebra lesson or the $#@^@%$%@ idiots* who think teaching Beowulf in Middle English is a good idea.

That would indeed be a very weird idea... Why would anyone today bother to translate 'Beowulf' from Old English into Middle English?

D'oh.

Anyway, you make a good point about the fact that 1) a lot of school curriculum is incredibly boring, not to mention 2) it makes students passive receptors of information, and 3) sitting in the same place for hours, with short breaks, usually leads to a loss of attention - especially when you get up early in the morning... and especially when you have to listen to someone talking most of the time!

Okay, I'm tempted, but I'm not doing my rant. It is not the time. It is not the place.

But English instructors might be the dumbest, worst teachers in the whole school system, as far as my experience goes (and before anyone gets too offended, my mother was an English teacher, although never my personal English teacher--interestingly, she had atrocious taste in reading materials, mainly the kind of romance novels with Fabio on the cover; but far be it from me to judge my mom's taste in porn -_-).

Er, anyway... to illustrate what I'm saying about English teacher idiocy, here's a little story. In 12th grade, we had to read Brave New World. And discuss Brave New World. The discussion didn't go well. Anybody that's expects you to talk about the novel, but won't countenance a discussion of the sexual sublimation inherent in John Savage's self-flagellation, obviously has a few problems with planning ahead. If the frigid old bat didn't want to talk about sexual issues, I think it would have been wise if she had not had us read a novel consisting in large part of drug-fueled orgies and a guy literally beating himself off.

Schools suffer from large classes and the fact that they are rarely stimulating students to be really active and creative. Although maybe American and British schools aren't that bad - but my experience of school mostly consisted of cramming large quantity of data I would never need.

No, that's pretty much American high schools. I don't want to say they're outrightly terrible; it's mainly English that I ever had a problem with. Math is essentially going to have to be force-fed to many people (including me). Same with the sciences. Math skills in particular are so vital to the operation of the economy--indeed, the operation of a successful life--that forcing students to learn them is inescapable. English, by contrast, barely justifies itself as a required subject. My objection to English basically boils down to three key points:

1)Serious literature is written by adults, for adults, not for fourteen-eighteen year olds;
2)there is no objective method of determining a work's artistic value, and tastes vary (and the corollary: a work that required skill to create does not equate to something that is good or worth looking at*);
3)art is meant to be enjoyed, not merely suffered.

(*Michelangelo's David, for example, is okay, but it's pretty laughable to me because the classical style the Renaissance revived, along with I reckon the mores of his day, dictated that the poor king of Israel be saddled with a microweiner. And even taking that away, it's just some guy I don't care about, standing in a boring action hero pose. But just so I don't come off as a complete philistine--ha ha--I'll add that his pieta is bitchin'.)

 

[TerokNor]

In the one episode, where we see that disfigured Cardassian.... I wonder, why did no one help him? I mean he is badly disfigured and suffers from a trauma... Cardassian doctors can transform Dukat to a bajoran, so why did he not got a "new face" and such? Only payable for the rich and powerful?
He also seemed not to have made good experiences living in cardassian society the way he looked ....


Know what the sad thing is with our school systems ( the german system is as bad, if not worse I sometimes think)...we know how it could be done better, we even have scientific prove, about how children educate themselves and how important bonding/interaction/relationship is with their teachers, and nontheless it seems we are powerless to make a fast change...its slow changing, with lost and lots and lots of discussion...and there surly are some good teachers who go into good relationships with their pupils, but still... it is SO frustrating that it takes so endlessly long.
A friend and I just talked about recently that with a different aproach towards learning in school and some more encouraging teachers, who do not kill your self-worth and joy for learning, how much more of our potentials we could have developed....and there will be still many children having to go through those school systems and will not be able to develope as they could...sad!

TerokNor

 

[Deckerd]

Speaking of neurodiversity and handicaps, what's Lon Suder from Voyager? I mean, if I were a Betazoid, and had no telepathic or empathic faculties, I'd probably consider myself handicapped. Hell, Deanna Troi is on the borderline between sighted and blind, from a Betazoid perspective. But Suder's on absolutely equal footing with humans; Troi possesses sensory abilities well outside the human experience. Are Suder and Troi disabled, or simply neurodiverse?

This isn't really on-topic but since you bring it up I feel the need to air a beef about telepathy. Since humans do not have any telepathic ability (aside from a range of sensations I shall condense into the word "instinct") it stands to reason that science fiction writers are going to have to use their imaginations in writing telepaths into their stories.

My problem is that I would imagine telepathy to be like radio. You can only be received by another telepath and likewise only transmit to other telepaths. A species like humans will be a closed book to telepaths because humans do not have telepathy, so if I take the analogy to its logical conclusion, their transceiver is absent.

Gripe over.

 

[Marie1]

I loved taking Beowulf in it's oldetyme speak!

You mean, in its ealdspræc?

Yep! Boy was one student mad about it!!

One thing interesting about the way this conversation has turned- it's got me thinking about my relative, who is "borderline special needs" - she can hear, not a lot gets by her that way, and she's surprisingly smart... but on the other hand, everything is "black and white" and there are a lot of things she just doesn't seem to grasp, even though she works, takes courses (and does really well at them). Mental ilness is soooo complex all across the board...

 

[Myasishchev]

Speaking of neurodiversity and handicaps, what's Lon Suder from Voyager? I mean, if I were a Betazoid, and had no telepathic or empathic faculties, I'd probably consider myself handicapped. Hell, Deanna Troi is on the borderline between sighted and blind, from a Betazoid perspective. But Suder's on absolutely equal footing with humans; Troi possesses sensory abilities well outside the human experience. Are Suder and Troi disabled, or simply neurodiverse?

This isn't really on-topic but since you bring it up I feel the need to air a beef about telepathy. Since humans do not have any telepathic ability (aside from a range of sensations I shall condense into the word "instinct") it stands to reason that science fiction writers are going to have to use their imaginations in writing telepaths into their stories.

My problem is that I would imagine telepathy to be like radio. You can only be received by another telepath and likewise only transmit to other telepaths. A species like humans will be a closed book to telepaths because humans do not have telepathy, so if I take the analogy to its logical conclusion, their transceiver is absent.

Gripe over.

I actually do agree with you, but that ship has unfortunately sailed.

On the other hand, there are interesting avenues to be explored regarding human interaction with aliens that can read and maybe can't even stop reading their minds. But even if you postulated magnificently sensitive microwave- and infrared-range vision, skin lined with biological magnetoencephalographic SQUIDs, and good general people skills it still only barely scratches plausibility...

Telekinesis is just flat-out stupid. Thermodynamically speaking, that is.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Telekinesis is just flat-out stupid. Thermodynamically speaking, that is.

Perhaps telekinesis is actually Maxwell's demon put into practice, breaking thermodynamics.

 

[Myasishchev]

Maxwell's Demon applies, if at all, to the 2d Law of Thermodynamics, not the 1st. In many depictions, telekinesis breaks conservation.

 

[Hofner]

In any case, doesn't an IQ test simply show how well people do IQ tests?

Heh, maybe they should add cognitive tests for very high frequency sound and sense of smell to the IQ tests. That way dogs could start scoring as high as humans or even higher depending on the weight given to the added tests.

Robert

 

[DevilEyes]

In any case, doesn't an IQ test simply show how well people do IQ tests?

Heh, maybe they should add cognitive tests for very high frequency sound and sense of smell to the IQ tests. That way dogs could start scoring as high as humans or even higher depending on the weight given to the added tests.

Robert

I dunno, I still think that dogs' overall results would be severely hurt by their scores the written test...

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Maxwell's Demon applies, if at all, to the 2d Law of Thermodynamics, not the 1st. In many depictions, telekinesis breaks conservation.

Sure, the telekinetic person uses much more energy than his muscles should provide during telekinesis - apparently breaking the 1st law of thermodynamics.

But if this person can break the 2nd law of thermodynamics via Maxwell's demon, he can rearrange the ambient energy into 'hot areas' and 'cold areas', gaining access to a practically unlimited amount of energy.

If telekinesis=Maxwell's demon, then telekinesis truly IS magic.

 

[Hofner]

In any case, doesn't an IQ test simply show how well people do IQ tests?

Heh, maybe they should add cognitive tests for very high frequency sound and sense of smell to the IQ tests. That way dogs could start scoring as high as humans or even higher depending on the weight given to the added tests.

Robert

I dunno, I still think that dogs' overall results would be severely hurt by their scores the written test...

Well, when it comes to trying to read the printed text of the tests, I guess the dogs would do about as well as blind people.

Sorry folks, I'm just making a poor joke here. And I have to say this because I feel like I'm being deceptive if I don't. I'm mostly blind myself. If you're wondering, I can magnify text really big on my big monitor; thast's how I can read this BBS.

Robert

 

[TiberiusMaximus]

A brief though about telepathy...in Trek, there have been instances of telepathic humans, which probably means humans have some latent telepathic abilities and at least the ability to receive telepathic messages and be read by species like Betazoids. However, some species like Ferengi can't be read by Betazoids, which I imagine is because they have NO telepathic abilities whatsoever.
However, for touch-telepaths like Vulcans, it wouldn't matter if the person being melded with had telepathic abilities or not because it's the Vulcan's ability to manipulate nerve endings and interpret bio-electrical impulses from the brain that is creating the bond.

 

[Myasishchev]

Telepathy has even more stumbling blocks than the receiver/transmitter problem.

There's also what I call the "transmission control protocol" problem. In whatever way that the telepathy is obtained physically, the transmission standards between the telepath and the target appear miraculously to be the same. Those blessed with sixth sense is immediately, without prolonged observation, able to parse brain impulses in such a way as to understand what they mean. Interestingly, given that human beings do not communicate mind-to-mind, humans, sharing only a broad genetic component with others, build their cognitive processes from the ground up. In such a case, these processes of given humans are likely to diverge wildly from individual to individual, even before taking the next problem into accoint. Between aliens, there's no serious common ground at all, and the flashes of neurons that indicate anger in a human are not going to be the same as that of a Vulcan.

The linguistic problem is conceptually related to the protocol problem. Cognition is based heavily on language, meaning that telepaths need to be spontaneously competent in the language their target is thinking. Given that one only thinks a few to maybe ten words a second, this is a poverty of the stimulus of such magnitude that would make Chomsky quail. This problem, acknowledged, actually led to one of Heroes' more hilarious and (shock!) realistic moments (for those unfamiliar, the telepath Parkman, an Anglophone, was unable to read his target Bennett's mind, through the simple expedient of Bennett thinking in Japanese, a language Parkman had never studied).

And finally there's the sensory mapping problem. Leaving aside the variations in human sense interpretation--for example synaesthesia, mentioned earlier in this thread--the variations between aliens are likely to be huge. What is a telepath with humanlike vision meant to do with a visual image that is largely in ultraviolet, or infrared? What is a telepath to do with an auditory image that is a few kilohertz above their hearing range? How about that deaf telepath dude in that one terrible episode? Or how about hot telepath-on-telepath action when the two telepaths' abilities operate on different principles, because one's a blackbody radiation reader, and the other's a magnetaesthete (and their sometimes-threesome partner is one of those cheating quantum coherers!)? And remember that this does not pertain only to our perceptions of the outer world; but that our inner lives are informed and rather rigidly limited by our sensory profiles as well.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Myasishchev

Of course, every human's brain is, essentially, an unique neural network, and as such, uses an unique processing language.

This being the case, IF one treates the human thought as merely processing information, of course, this information can't be read without knowing the language the information is written in.

Computers process information, but don't understand it.
The human mind understands the information, the concepts - an action qualitatively different from what a computer does. So far, no one managed to grasp, to quantify what 'understanding' means, how understanding can be replicated in a machine; much as no one understands what 'consciousness' is.

Telepathy can be based on the idea that this 'undestanding' of concepts, of thoughts transcends the 'processing' language, that is is, in essence, an universal language for sentient beings, making telepathy possible.