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PaperclipPerfector  20d ago (text post)   2559 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 2, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I'm not sure what would be the difference? Some people are, for some reason unique to them, bad at X. Is it a "real medical condition"? It certainly seems to be real, it certainly seems to be a "condition" - as in, describable and identifiable phenomenon, as for whether it's "medical" I'm not sure that's a robust term. Can you take a pill to cure it? Currently probably not, but there are hundreds of problems that have no pill to cure it. Do we know a sufficiently reduced biological or chemical level cause? Probably not again, but again hundreds of problems without known causes reduced to chemistry or cell biology. The distinction sounds like a political question - e.g. "should people with condition X be covered by ADA and subject to reasonable accommodation provisions, or you just can fire them at will if they're bad at X and you need somebody who's good at X" - but those are impossible to answer objectively. So I think "simply a term that we came up with" describes a lot of things that also absolutely real conditions.

Say you have a condition that makes your leg muscles be 20% slower than average, and that makes you suck at running. If we call that "disrunnia", is it a real medical condition or just a cope parents use to make kid not feel bad for coming last in every race?

I guess my question is more along the lines of "is dyslexia distinct in any meaningful way from a lack of skills in verbal reasoning?"

I don't understand how it could not be distinct? Dyslexia affects reading, so why would that be related to verbal reasoning?

Grammar aside the answer is yes. My sister is pretty badly dyslexic, I remember it took a ton of effort from my mom to teach her to read. But she does just fine in all other language things (and always did), it was purely reading (and spelling) which gave her trouble.

Completely. I've known people with dyslexia for decades and they have normal or better than normal skills in verbal reasoning. They just have a specific dysfunction that causes easily problems with reading and writing that are easy to recognize and have a specific pattern to them.

To me it sounds like asking "is migraine distinct in any meaningful way from having a headache?" or "is depression distinct in any meaningful way from feeling really bad all the time?" Like yes, I can find a way in which these descriptions might be different (e.g. you can feel bad without being depressed, etc.) but why it would be useful, that's what I am not getting?

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