Neurodiversiphiles

We are all on a spectrum.  There are no disorders.  

Though the title for the DSM or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders would have us all believe otherwise, but we know better. As the great satirist Mark Twain allegedly quipped:

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

But never mind which old white guy said it, it's remains as relevant as ever. Statistics, as I learned about this summer, is a BIG part of what machine learning relies upon, i.e. Artificial Intelligence.  This creates all kinds of inequity in our society, or rather amplifies and reflects back to us many of our collective biases, like some sort of carnival fun mirror, but maybe not so fun.

A recent article in Rolling Stone published a "Truth in Tech" article by Lorena O'Neil: 

These Women Tried to Warn Us About AI

Like The Social Dillemma, this article is media worth consuming. 

It invites us to think about what it means to be human in a world in which we increasingly relate as symbionts with AI.  How shall we classify this symbiosis - mutualism, commensalism, parasitism?  It remains to be seen. 

As with all questions, the answer will depend on how you define your assumptions.  Expanding our view to encompass the Gaia hypothesis first promulgated by James Lovelace, many have argued that humans are a parasite upon the planet.  And maybe we are.  Can AI be leveraged to give us a definitive answer to this question?  The caveats go to the creators, and the creators use our content, so in some respects: we are the Creator. AI can only be as good as the data it is trained on. 

All living things have two jobs that we must accomplish in order to play a role in our ecosystem and its sustenance/evolution through time: (1) we must eat/be eaten and (2) we must reproduce.  In nature, everything exists in a delicate balance.  Our urge to seek novelty and convenience has caused our consumerism to outpace the rate at which our waste can be assimilated back into the natural cycle. Have we accelerated entropy?

There is disorder - chaos, entropy - and no judgement implied therein.  We are, but we are out of balance.  

Lately, on the news, I've been hearing a lot about the shortage of mental health care.  Perhaps all the hubbub is because of Biden recently endorsed plan to expand mental health care. 

The DSM has been collating all of our so-called mental "disorders"... perhaps now with AI, we can leverage these data to recognize that it is largely not the individual people who have been labeled with a disorder that need to be "fixed" rather there are drastic systemic changes that need to be identified and addressed.  

Which is to say: bringing more mental health care providers on board is only part of a much broader solution.  Survival will require a giant cultural mindshift that puts the human spirit as the central metric of what is healthy - both for us as individuals and for the life support system that is our planet.  

We are a part of nature, though we often put ourselves apart, separate.  Increasingly, evidence is showing just how much we need trees and plants.  Let's not re-state the obvious benefits photosynthesis provides to our atmosphere and its role in the water cycle.  

Researchers have known for more than a decade that microbes in soil work in similar ways to antidepressants. No wonder gardening is so therapeutic.  

Less researched are the health benefits of grounding, but I can personally attest to how much more at peace I feel after a good forest bath. You don't have to take my word for it! 

The World Economic Forum reports that Japanese forest bathing is scientifically proven to improve your health. 

Or better yet, go try it out for yourself.  

Or you could just sit here glued to your device, taking tests to classify yourself within the vast probability field that psychologists have only partly mapped out in the DSM.  

Being human is bigger than statistics, and still statistics matter.  As an educator, the greatest advice offered comes from the Oracle of Delphi and inscribed on the Temple of Apollo, "Gnothi seauton", which translates as "Know thyself" 

If you've read this far, but find it's a bad time for you to head to the forest, why not get to know yourself a little better.  You grow like a tree.  Make sure you offer yourself non-judgement, just as you would a tree.

Aspie Quiz

My results:

Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale–Revised (RAADS–R)

My score: 100

Autism Spectrum Quotient

My score: 29

Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale for DSM-5 (ASRS-5)

My score: 16

Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS v1.1)

My score: 14 (Part 1: 6; Part 2: 8)

ACES scores are a whole 'nother cosmic sack of worms to explore that deserves a trigger warning (and probably at least one whole blog post).

Somatic processing - like EMDR - is just one way that science is exploring how the body, as an integrated whole, is essential to healing the wounds left by Trauma.  There is a reason people who run, walk, hike, or regularly do yoga are more mentally and emotionally fit than lazy bums like me.  (I really need to start building my miles up again).

If you want to know you ACES score, take the ACES quiz.

Do you want to know mine? It's an 8.

Be kind y'all, you never know what folks are carrying with them.