Supporting neurodivergent talent in physics and space sciences

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symbolipoint
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symbolipoint said:
I post this online article I found and I at least at present, give no commentary about it.
(Exact placement in this forum may need to be adjusted.)

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physics/articles/10.3389/fphy.2023.1223966/full

I think it’s “common knowledge” that Feynman “suffered” from “grapheme-color synesthesia”. I’m not going to link to wiki or other websites I can’t vouch for. The information is out there for anyone with access to a search engine though.

I’ll trust this one enough to link to it:

Coloring the Black Box: What Synesthesia Tells Us about Character Embeddings

“In contrast to their word- or sentence-level counterparts, character embeddings are still poorly understood. We aim at closing this gap with an in-depth study of English character embeddings. For this, we use resources from research on grapheme-color synesthesia -- a neuropsychological phenomenon where letters are associated with colors, which give us insight into which characters are similar for synesthetes and how characters are organized in color space. Comparing 10 different character embeddings, we ask: How similar are character embeddings to a synesthete's perception of characters? And how similar are character embeddings extracted from different models? We find that LSTMs agree with humans more than transformers. Comparing across tasks, grapheme-to-phoneme conversion results in the most human-like character embeddings. Finally, ELMo embeddings differ from both humans and other models.”
 
@sbrothy
This time I did notice the quotation marks around "suffered". So this helps some of us to sense that a difference is not supposed to be a disorder. Or should not on its own be thought of as a disorder.
 
symbolipoint said:
This time I did notice the quotation marks around "suffered". So this helps some of us to sense that a difference is not supposed to be a disorder. Or should not on its own be thought of as a disorder.
Heh, I wondered at first which exchange you were referring to when you said you noticed the quotation marks this time as I’m often being sarcastic. I quickly found it though. :smile:

It would probably be naive to think of Feyman’s synesthesia as a “gift” considering his chosen profession (although they might have been linked in some way). I don’t know how it works and I could imagine it might as easily have been a problem as a boon.

I stutter and I assure you there are no upsides to that (except maybe knowing a lot of synonyms and being able to rearrange sentences on the fly but that last thing is more of a curse as I can’t turn it off and my brain is always a sentence or two ahead of my speech which gets annoying really fast).

But yeah I agree. Not many people with a potential “disorder” want peoples sympathy.
 
We had a long-banned member who claimed his autism was responsible for his beating up two "chineze" (sic) students. I know he was asked to leave one institution after threatening faculty members with violence. He claimed this was really because of his autism.

I don't think this guy is helping the "cause". I also see problems if people feel they can't get rid of him because of his disability. I could easily see him as the next Valery Fabrikant.
 
Vanadium 50 said:
We had a long-banned member who claimed his autism was responsible for his beating up two "chineze" (sic) students. I know he was asked to leave one institution after threatening faculty members with violence. He claimed this was really because of his autism.

I don't think this guy is helping the "cause". I also see problems if people feel they can't get rid of him because of his disability. I could easily see him as the next Valery Fabrikant.
Yeh well that just sounds like an extremely thin excuse using his short attention span to act like an a…hole. I suspect the “cause” (to stay with the quotation marks thingy) is better off without such a bigoted, err…. yes.

EDIT: I don’t know Valery Fabrikant and I’m not touching anything coming from you without doing my homework first. :biggrin:
 
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No disagreement. But "autism made me do it" is unhelpful. Especially if his violence escalates.
 
Vanadium 50 said:
No disagreement. But "autism made me do it" is unhelpful. Especially if his violence escalates.
As you say: no disgreement there.

EDIT: Deleted remark. Might have went a little overboard there. Looking back at it that wasn’t funny.
 
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Going back 60 or more years a neurodivergent person was usually characterized by their non-typical behaviors. I don't remember hearing about autism until the 80's. ADHA was known openly since it produced issues in school. The same with dyslexia. Speech disfluency (stuttering) of course was difficult to hide. Neurodivergence is introduced to destigmatize nontypical behaviors or needs. This movement is similar to the accommodation of those with physical impediments and addressed by ADA (The Americans with Disabilities Act). Nontypical behaviors are often difficult to appreciate as being inherent traits or in the vernacular being who they are. The same with transgender persons. One would think intelligent persons especially scientists would have no trouble understanding the existence of variations in behavioral traits.
 
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gleem said:
[…] One would think intelligent persons especially scientists would have no trouble understanding the existence of variations in behavioral traits.

Are you aware of any statistical inquires made along those lines, however biased, showing any significant sigma level?

EDIT: I clipped too much. I mean still within the context of the thread and maybe with a “gleem” in my eye. :)
 
gleem said:
Here is another article about neurodivergent people in the work place and what can or should be done.
https://www.theguardian.com/society...can-help-neurodivergent-people-thrive-at-work




​

Now I read the article. Good Find! Some of the political stuff at the end I did not actually read carefully.

Article makes one wonder, maybe neurotypicality is not as great as people believe. (It makes me wonder.)
 
symbolipoint said:
Article makes one wonder, maybe neurotypicality is not as great as people believe.

I don't how it works at work, but my ex boyfriend has ADHD and is slightly autistic (Asperger) and that mixed with some characterological traits made me throw chairs out of helplessness sometimes (not at him of course). He had some problems at work (he works as lab assistant) but that resolved after taking medicaments.

gleem said:
One would think intelligent persons especially scientists would have no trouble understanding the existence of variations in behavioral traits.

Universe is complicated, but humans psychology is not, isn't that obvious? :wink: My bachelor's thesis supervisor, a professor, is in the camp of "you can cure depression with sport, and in general stop whining"... Whole LQG group at my uni had "weird" views, I didn't feel safe there, so I moved to 'chair of mathematical physics' for my masters.
 
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weirdoguy said:
that mixed with some characterological traits made me throw chairs out of helplessness sometimes
I would think this may not be neurotypical. Maybe exercise would help.

weirdoguy said:
Universe is complicated, but humans psychology is not, isn't that obvious?
No. This is the first time I heard this.

weirdoguy said:
"you can cure depression with sport, and in general stop whining"..
Well, for some. Check out this article of athletes with depression https://headsupguys.org/22-male-athletes-speaking-depression/

Rob Karr a Canadian ultrarunner has this to say
“It’s something I’ve struggled with for a very long time and have been quiet about. I had this sense beforehand that a lot of people have struggled with similar things, but I didn’t quite understand the extent. I think it’s really a very common thing especially amongst runners and maybe even more so with ultrarunners. “

weirdoguy said:
Whole LQG group at my uni had "weird" views, I didn't feel safe there, so I moved to 'chair of mathematical physics' for my masters.
And straights don"t?
 
symbolipoint said:
[…]Article makes one wonder, maybe neurotypicality is not as great as people believe. (It makes me wonder.)

Personally, I suspect that neurotypicality (however you define it) is, if not a myth, then exceedingly rare.
 
I don't understand your reply @gleem.

gleem said:
I would think this may not be neurotypical. Maybe exercise would help.

What may not be neurotypical? Exercise would help in what? The point was, it was very hard to live with him and a lot had to do with his neuratypicality. To the point that I had a huge problem dealing with my emotions and reactions. And normally I don't.

gleem said:
No. This is the first time I heard this.

This was a sarcasm. Wink emoji indicates that.

gleem said:
Well, for some.

Well, some people cure their cancer with herbs, with positive results. That's not the point. Point is, he downplays depression. And as a person with cured depression, that's insulting. I needed therapy and medication. I know that sports play a huge role in general wellbeing, but again, that's not the point.

gleem said:
And straights don"t?

Straights don't what?
 
Oops. Got people confused there.
 
You really missed my point(s) sorry I was not more clear. My take on your post #13 was that you have issues with neurodivergent persons. Throwing chairs, changing majors.
weirdoguy said:
What may not be neurotypical? Exercise would help in what?
Throwing a chair over others' behavior may not be neurotypical since they typically don't throw chairs. AFA exercise is concerned I was being sarcastic.

weirdoguy said:
Well, some people cure their cancer with herbs, with positive results. That's not the point. Point is, he downplays depression. And as a person with cured depression, that's insulting. I needed therapy and medication. I know that sports play a huge role in general wellbeing, but again, that's not the point. Empasis added

He certainly did (downplay depression). Your post seemed you supported his attitude since you quoted him without comment.

weirdoguy said:
Straights don't what?
Straights don't (Have weird views like LQGs do)?
 
gleem said:
Straights don't (Have weird views like LQGs do)?
I think there is a misunderstanding here: I believe LQG refers to loop quantum gravity.
 
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sbrothy said:
Personally, I suspect that neurotypicality (however you define it) is, if not a myth, then exceedingly rare.
Thanks for the lead in> I was getting ready to discuss neurotypicality.

Many otherwise typical people have issues like phobias, anxieties, quirks, addictions, strange views, or idiosyncrasies some of which can be attributable to neurological conditions. If they do not interfere with one's normal functioning in any significant way then they are accepted and life goes on. Somes conditions occurs which people feel is not normal, and not aware that it is a neurological condition and that can be a life changer. Actress Melissa Gilbert was diagnosed with misophonia and extreme reaction certain sounds like popping gum. The solution is to seek medical advice. It may be difficult to say "What is wrong with me?" But if you need something or do something that almost all others don't then you should try and resolve this. Serious occurrences of autism or AHDH arise at an early age and the symptoms may be improved by early intervention to make their life endurable.


The point is that neurotypicality is nothing to brag about but it is the norm.
 
pbuk said:
I think there is a misunderstanding here: I believe LQG refers to loop quantum gravity.
That makes sense. @sbrothy is that what you were trying to point out in post 17? One has to watch those acronyms. I thought the order was strange. But who knows they might be neurodivergent. No offense intended to the neurodivergent community.
 
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No I intended to tease @symbolipoint about the consequences when people overlook ones smileys or the intended sarcasm doesn't come across, but I had him confused with @gleem.

It was off topic too so I just deleted it but left that comment in case anyone noticed it in the meantime. Sorry for the noise.