38% of Stanford Students ＂Disabled＂ (I Was One Of Them) Disability-Maxing
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Summary
In this episode, we talk about the insane numbers of people with disabilities in the United States, and why they're getting even more out of control. We also talk about why it's a good thing there are so many disabled students at Stanford.
Transcript
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Hello, Malcolm. I'm excited to be speaking with you today because we're going to be talking about
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how disability accommodation at universities is getting insane, both in scale and in nature. So
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from a recent Atlantic article on the issue, I'm just quoting, this year, 38% of Stanford
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undergraduates are registered as having a disability. In the fall quarter, 24% of
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undergraduates were receiving academic or housing accommodations. 27%? 38% have a registered
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disability. 24% were receiving accommodations. One administrator told me that a student at a
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public college in California had permission to bring their mother to class. This became a problem
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because the mom turned out to be an enthusiastic class participant. Oh my gosh. Can you imagine?
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Like, how does this not embarrass you? Who is this person? How did the student die of
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mortification? And I can get into it, but these out of control numbers are mostly coming from
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people who are gaming the system. I gained the system with disabilities. I got, well, I wouldn't
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say gain the system. I mean, I feel like I definitely benefited from accommodations. We can put it that
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way, right? That's fair. Yeah. Like, like, untimed testing, everything I had to do, everything on
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computer. That one I actually really- The computer thing, yeah, you actually, like, his handwriting is
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actually illegible, so that one was real. After yesterday's episode of me calling Garvism
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Garavism and saying that he was a skill seller instead of a silk seller, I don't think you're gonna
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disbelieve my dyslexia after that. I have to take all testing alone, never took it in a room with
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other people. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I did this all the way through college and high school.
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It's now, I think, way more out of proportion than it was before. And what's clear in the discourse on
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X about this Atlantic article, which has been quite interesting, is that people have really pointed out
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the reason why a lot of these numbers have ballooned, right? So, Stanford really has this insane
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proportion, right? 38%. Like, at some point, you know, just everyone at Stanford is gonna be disabled.
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But everyone isn't disabled. And when everyone's super,
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Yeah. I mean, like, and that's a genuine problem that now universities are talking about, right? Like,
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well, how do we even, like, when everyone is being accommodated, what does it even mean to
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accommodate? But, so, it was, it's pretty crazy that, that many people already at Stanford are like
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that. But, it, what's that quote about, like, you know, if, if you measure it, like, it's, it's going
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What, what, what, what, what, I'm being, do you have a wheelchair?
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Um, someone pointed out with on X that with Stanford, because you can use a disability
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That's one of the big reasons why Stanford specifically has these insane high numbers.
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Actually, you don't know this, but one of the reasons why I went to GW instead of UCLA or
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The George Washington University in DC, at least when I went, probably still is, was famous
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Like they just bought hotels in downtown Washington, DC.
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Maybe you stayed in crappy dorms, but like they bought old apartment buildings.
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They bought old hotels and like for two years in a row, I just stayed in a converted hotel.
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And it was like, still like the hotel wallpaper and the hotel, like kitchenette and like all
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the, it was like, for me, for a college student, it was really nice.
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My freshman year, I stayed in a pretty much like brand new, really nice accommodations.
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And I remember like instantly when I saw the dorms, I was like, nope, just like seriously,
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Wait, would you have had a scholarship to Berkeley?
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And then I had a decent, like pretty nice scholarship to UCLA.
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And I got into a special program at the UC Santa Cruz.
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But yeah, but like the, the dorms there, I remember walking into a dorm room and it was
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like, I think it was four bunk beds or sorry, sorry, two bunk beds.
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So four people in one tiny room, a shared bathroom down the hall.
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So I can, I absolutely understand why a student would bend over backward just to get a private
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And that's what the thing is that you get so much.
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I want to go over all the things that I was able to get with disabilities even back in
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And I got all of this because my mom was an expert at the system.
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Like this wasn't like my plan to get all of this.
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She was the one who sort of started my past to getting like basically showed me that the
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She knew how to like zero and when she knew that something would give you a benefit,
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I took exams in private or at least in a room with only a few people, oftentimes not even
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Two, I did them on a computer because I have dysgraphia.
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I would have really struggled in school without that.
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For our kids, when people start using handwriting as a way to get around AI or people may be
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So we'll see what happens there at the schools that restrict that.
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I mean, any school that's restricting that is not really educating kids because you live
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So learning to get really good at doing something without AI is just pointless and destructive.
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Actually, I've noticed this with coding where people who I've worked with who are like good
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coders, I can often go faster than they can in the same amount of time and sometimes solve
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issues that they have been unable to solve because they over rely on older ways of doing
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And I was talking to my brother recently, actually, and I learned, he learned to vibe
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code, but he learned to vibe code before the era of cursor and windsurf.
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So he does it by dumping the code directly into GPT, which is just like strictly a worst
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I learned how to do it within the ecosystem of the new vibe coding apps.
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Now, oftentimes, especially early in my career, the computer would be locked or it wouldn't
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But by the time I was in college, I was just like on my own computer often.
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I mean, I did fall like I'm a paranoid person, but you know, not because I'm a moral person,
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So I'd get extended time on, you know, pretty much all of my whatever exams, both like I
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And I typically got double time or 50% more time on things like my GMATs and SATs and stuff
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So I like people like, oh, you know, you have all these fancy degrees and it's like, well,
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Like, and I think that people can be like, well, then, you know, you're not really at
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the same level of quality of like the other people at Stanford Business School or St.
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And I'd point out, I'd be like, well, I've done more with my life than a lot of the other
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people at these who are my classmates at these.
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So clearly my ability to game the system was predictive of one category of real world skill
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And note here, when I say game the system, I really did have disabilities.
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Oh, and in addition to all of that, I was allowed to do the tests on amphetamines, which
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is, you know, what Ritalin is and stuff like that, right?
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So, so, so, you know, other people are just like raw dogging these tests in giant rooms
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And here you are like hopped up extra time on your computer.
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But the point I'm making here is learning how to adapt to and game bureaucratic systems like
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this is an important skill, like, like, and to, to have a more important skill and a more
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important test that I think is, is accurately reflected in the higher score, because you're
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going to game all of life to your advantage, you know, as, as you move forward.
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You can't do that when you reach, when you get into Google.
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I guess you make a really interesting point because, you know, a lot of people are like,
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well, like this, this, this article has sparked a lot of really interesting discourse on X and
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one person, Josh Barrow pointed out, if you have a condition like ADHD, anxiety or, or
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depression, and it makes it harder for you to complete tests on time, that is something
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the test should measure, not something you should avoid measuring.
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And then Molly followed up saying, I wonder what happens to these kids upon graduation.
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No employer is going to give you extra time on a deadline or let you bring your mom to
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And then I actually, even like, actually our buddy Razeeb Khan, right?
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Do you want your lawyer to get more time on their LSAT?
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Do they get more time to bill hours when they work on your case?
00:11:09.800
And I think I want to sort of discuss them in context as well, but the point that you're
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making, I think is also really valid, which is to say that like, if I'm hiring kind of what,
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what makes a lot of competitive edge work for a company these days, or for a lawyer,
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I would have is I want a lawyer who knows how to game the system, who knows how to play
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the game, who knows how to manipulate laws and rules in my favor.
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And someone who has manipulated laws and rules in their favor throughout their academic career
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Same with sales, same with like coding, same with everything else.
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Like you want, like if, if the world is now about cheating and about getting ahead through
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this, this form of manipulation and exploitation and arbitrage, then yeah, you, you need people
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Let's, let's talk about the lawyer question here, right?
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Like it part of being a lawyer is getting the case in front of the right judge of having
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We actually were, I think, pitched by a startup at one point that had this really, I don't
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know, like, I don't, I don't know what happened to them, but they, they had a database that
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allowed you to see not a lawyer's success rate, but rather like how I think cases played out
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So you could see how often the lawyer won or lost to certain judges.
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Mm-hmm because that's, that was kind of the key thing is that law firms might be able to say,
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But like, basically they were able to manipulate things in a way that really skewed their actual
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And what you really want to know is how do they do vis-a-vis a certain judge, which actually
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matters so much more than their ability to argue or anything like that.
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Like in reality, my response to me is I actually would care way more about a person's ability
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to skirt systems as a lawyer than I would care about their actual argument skills or
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knowledge of like legal proceedings because all of that stuff they can get from the internet
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The skirting the system skill, that's an actual human skill, right?
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And that's not just in law that that's in, in so, so many different systems with, with
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The individual who tells you, I would rather make the job harder for myself than do the
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thing that through my deontological lens looks like cheating is someone you don't want to
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The person who in the early days of AI says, well, I just refuse to use AI because that's
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And I'd say that culturally, some cultures are going to really struggle as society continues
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As I've mentioned in our Jackdales episode, if you look at Appalachian culture, you know,
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the hero stories were the guy who looked for ways to basically cheat or outwit the people
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who were much wealthier or smarter or larger or stronger than him.
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And that's what makes you a hero was in this cultural tradition.
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And so, you know, when I saw these problems for the first time, that would have been the
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And I think a lot of people are going to really struggle in this new world.
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Actually, I think I might have just hit on something.
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I didn't even think of this until I was thinking about this episode in reflection afterwards.
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And this could explain fertility collapse and the collapse of a lot of Western civilizational
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And when I talk about some systems being more resistant, like Appalachian and Jewish culture
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than other systems, and I was like, oh my God, I get it.
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It is about the level of trust of outside systems.
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So with Jewish culture, they are used to historically being a minority population wherever they are.
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With Appalachian culture, they are used to dealing with a system that is set up to screw
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And so they always looked at the system adversarially.
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But if you are in an extremely high trust and homogenous society and your people have like
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your culture evolved in a high trust, homogenous society, breaking rules like this is going
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Whereas to someone with my cultural background, it just seems like the natural thing to do
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because the system is, of course, adversarial to you.
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And there's other groups out there that will exploit the system to try to screw you over.
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And so a lot of these European cultural groups that had evolved to be incredibly high trust
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because they're used to this homogeny are unable to compete within the new system.
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And really, the only thing you can do is either reintroduce homogeny, which is just almost
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completely unrealistic, or become lower trust, at least when you're dealing with outgroup
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And I think even if these groups successfully tried to reintroduce homogeny along the metrics
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that they think homogeny works, what they'd quickly find is that there are a lot of people
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who look the same as them and might be technically the same religion as them that are from different
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And like, like, again, like my people might do that, right?
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And yet you would look at me and think, oh, he looks just, you know, he's a normal white
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And that's just due to the nature of travel now and groups intermixing and it being so
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You really cannot have a society that relies on high trust anymore unless that society is
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something that you have to earn your way into or is sort of like a gated community, which
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you can do like a kibbutz or something like that, but you can't do at the level of a state.
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One of the things that I think is the biggest challenge for a lot of these previously high
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trust cultures is to determine what the in-group population is and what the out-group population
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They don't know, is it other people who look like me?
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Is it other people who swear, you know, similar political affiliation to me?
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The other thing I'd note about all of this that I think is really interesting is people
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can be like, well, the disability accommodations were unfair to begin with.
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So in a way, by opting into them, you are helping break an unfair system.
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The final note I'd add that I'd been thinking about afterwards was people are like, oh, well,
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And the truth is that you do actually get extra time in real life.
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I happen to know, you know, from living with other people and everything like that, that
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I work significantly longer on my homework than other people, literally probably two to
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three times as much as a lot of the other people on a similar assignment.
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When you, a weird thing about internalizing that it takes you longer to do things like
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extra time on a test is that you also internalize that with everything else that you do in your
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life, you're going to need to work harder and you don't feel as bad about it.
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And yet, you know, with this, hopefully as the site comes out, like hopefully we have
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Like we're uploading the new version, but you know, I've been able to hire other people
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with extensive programming backgrounds, as I've said, and I just can clearly outcompete
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them without looking at the, the functional end of state product between the two of us.
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Malcolm's talking about reality fabricator, our fab.ai, which is an AI chatbot site that
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he's been working on with Bruno, a friend of the pod for a long time now.
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Supposed to be like replica, character AI, et cetera, but way, way better with encrypted
00:18:47.320
Like, and I think that's, that's a really great point that you bring up.
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And it's something that wasn't discussed in the article and it's something that's not
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being discussed in the online discourse, but the only discourse on this is still super
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Like people are, are coming in as students or recent students, just showing how crazy
00:19:06.480
Basil wrote in my high school AP chem class, there were 11 students and I was the only one
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So I had to hand in my test early while everyone else in the class got to continue.
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And then Calder McHugh shared over a decade ago.
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So to your point that this has actually been happening for a long time at the private New
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York city high school, I attended in an 18 person math class.
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There was once a quiz that only three of us took on time without accommodations, ADHD and
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And that's not to mention the tutors, et cetera, that we're writing everyone's essays for them
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as someone with artist parents who didn't know how to, and didn't want to game the system
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in that way, I felt constantly disadvantaged in the moment.
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But years later, I'm so grateful that that wasn't my experience in high school or college
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So because I was at the beginning edge of this, right?
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When I was the one doing it, there would maybe be three or four other people in the entire
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Like, not school system, I'd say within my grade, right?
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So if I was like, you know, alone, there'd be like two other, three other people in the
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room with me and this was for the entire grade, right?
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So those people almost always ended up in their professional lives out competing everyone
00:20:34.760
Well, I mean, one thing that people, like an underlying theme of this is that this is
00:20:39.160
just, let's see, Bobby Fijin described this behavior on X as the upper class version of
00:20:47.940
He said breaking rules just because you can and making everyone who follows the rules
00:21:00.260
Like on one hand, you have everyone who's trying to be moral about this, getting out
00:21:08.320
I guess like another person on X put it really well.
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Armand Domolowski noted that, quote, one thing I feel like conservatives grok better than
00:21:20.040
liberals is if you create an honor code based on rules that give someone an advantage, don't
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enforce fair collection most people pay, eventually even honest people feel compelled to cheat to
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And I mean, as he's pointing out, basically like once this sort of becomes a pervasive
00:21:38.140
source of strategic advantage, you have no choice but to participate.
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And you're kind of, you're being, you're being willfully destructive or I don't want to say
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dumb, but like it's a dumb choice to not do the thing that enables you to get ahead when
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It's a, it's a dumb choice to not do the thing the moment the option to not do it is
00:22:03.880
So what I'd point out here is it's very much like that scene in Indiana Jones.
00:22:18.560
Where, you know, the guy comes out swirling the swords and he's like, Indiana Jones just
00:22:22.620
pulls out a gun and shoots, like, I'm not playing that game.
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Like, why would I, why would I play by your dumb sword game where we both do a big like
00:22:38.740
Like when you, when you're, when you're playing in a multicultural society, right?
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Like maybe if it was one culture and everyone I was competing against was essentially like
00:22:47.560
me and not playing across my rules and cross my value systems, which many are, then okay,
00:22:56.280
But if you're, we don't live in a high trust culture.
00:23:03.500
Basically these people are saying you should act high trust in a multicultural ecosystem
00:23:11.120
That is the easiest way to get your teeth kicked in by life.
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Or as, as Michael Gibson, you know, also someone we've, we've met a bunch of times.
00:23:20.320
He had a great zinger on this that I think sort of feeds into this.
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He, which is exactly why socialism doesn't work in multicultural societies.
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He writes to each, according to their need, creates a society where people compete to be
00:23:40.040
That's actually a, that's a really, we have an episode with him, by the way, if people
00:23:45.720
Like, and I mean, everyone's weighing in on this.
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Like that's actually what you're being judged on, like meaningfully judged on.
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And I, I, I know that there's going to be people here because you know, you, when they
00:24:00.660
get rid of circles, you get deontologists who think that their deontological logic is
00:24:14.280
Meanwhile, their people end up getting cucked out of reality.
00:24:17.440
Well, I think, yeah, like they're sort of missing that like, well, I'm sorry.
00:24:22.140
The new test is, you know, can't, it's like a trick question.
00:24:25.580
Like the question was never like, can you answer two plus two?
00:24:29.460
It's, can you pick up the calculator that you're not supposed to pick up and not that
00:24:35.200
you need to add two plus two, but you know what I mean?
00:24:36.740
No, no, it's, it's, it's actually, you know, this, this again shows where, you know, even
00:24:40.840
in America, you're dealing with cultures that are, that are going to be different from you
00:24:44.820
and are going to have different ways of relating to this stuff.
00:24:47.020
And I've pointed out, you know, in the past, if you, if you want to understand the way my
00:24:50.380
culture would have taught me how to relate to this, you can look at our episode on the
00:24:57.020
Which are common within the, the greater Appalachian cultural tradition.
00:25:00.320
And in the Jack tales, you had Jack, you're probably familiar with one Jack and the Beanstalk,
00:25:05.940
And it was about a, a young trickster male who would take people who are either wealthier
00:25:12.780
or bigger or more powerful than him and often trick them into killing themselves and then
00:25:19.780
I mean, you can read, you know, we point out like you can read Jack and the Beanstalk and
00:25:27.020
Like in some versions of the more cleaned up versions today, the, the, the giant has wronged
00:25:36.940
He's just like, Hey, the giant has a lot of stuff.
00:25:39.780
But what I'm saying is, is, is if you grow up learning morality from these sorts of traditions,
00:25:44.580
this seems like the most natural thing in the world to you.
00:25:46.640
Like, Oh, if it works, you know, I'm, and better yet, I'm not even breaking any rule,
00:25:51.540
Like I'm, I'm playing the system as it's laid out.
00:25:54.760
I'm playing a card and people are like, well, my parents are artists.
00:26:00.400
It's like, you could have learned, like you could have Googled, like, why did my mom know
00:26:04.760
You know, not, not, she knew about this stuff because she investigated it and she, she woke me
00:26:10.980
As soon as I was woken up to it, I was like, well, this is cool.
00:26:14.140
What they talk about in the, in the article is that what often happens is, you know, in
00:26:20.400
high school, someone's classmate gets extra accommodation and they're like, well, my mom
00:26:26.000
And like, no, I, and then it's like, well, Hey mom, like I want this.
00:26:29.480
And some people were like, it's like this, this rite of passage in elite high schools.
00:26:33.640
Like you turn 16 and you get your ADHD diagnosis and then you get an easier time on tests.
00:26:39.280
And I'd also point out to people, because I think that there's this myth that if you gain
00:26:44.060
access to this sort of stuff, that you're not going to be able to compete in top level
00:26:50.380
You know, I've had access to this stuff since middle school.
00:26:53.500
And in college I went, you know, undergrad to St. Andrews, which is occasionally, I
00:26:58.780
don't know if it still is, but it's often on ranked the top school in the UK, but it's
00:27:03.040
almost always was in the top for, uh, you know, often beating Oxford and Cambridge.
00:27:06.740
And so I was there and I graduated with a two one, right.
00:27:13.280
And then at Stanford for business school, which is another, you know, one of the top
00:27:18.200
By the time I graduated at first, I really struggled in year one.
00:27:21.320
But by the time I graduated, I was in the top quarter or so.
00:27:24.040
I know I would, I was easily in the top quarter if I remember.
00:27:27.700
But the point being is that like these people, I think that there's these smug fantasies that
00:27:32.280
people build for themselves, that the people who take the, the, these alternative options
00:27:38.880
of the system are going to be at some sort of like permanent life disadvantage because
00:27:43.780
they want to believe that if they play by the rules, that the people who are more creative
00:27:50.140
was how they engage with the rules in the system that are thinking outside the box of
00:27:54.300
the rules as the deontologist understands them.
00:27:57.280
And it's like, you know, as long as I'm not, you know, functionally or technically breaking
00:28:02.560
any rules, I'm allowed to, to, to move with this pathway that these people like just end
00:28:09.200
And that is not both, not my experience and not what I've seen in the real world.
00:28:14.780
In fact, now that I think about it, what's really interesting is the number one, because
00:28:19.200
when I was young, before any of these systems existed, I was in the, the gifted program.
00:28:26.140
Have you, did you, were you, do you have a gifted program at your public school?
00:28:32.300
So, you know, like the gifted program, it's for the people who store the highest on the IQ
00:28:44.220
But yeah, we stayed in school, but anyway, so gifted programs exist.
00:28:47.580
So you have a gifted program and this was before any of the accommodations, any of that
00:28:52.620
Like years before, cause it started in elementary school.
00:28:54.720
I want to say the gifted program batch of students was, I'd say 85% overlap with the batch
00:29:04.460
of extended time students when that started becoming a thing.
00:29:07.040
Well, and you know, now they've even invented the term two E twice exceptional, which is
00:29:12.520
to say that a child is both gifted, but also they have ADHD or they have autism or they're
00:29:19.200
But I almost, I remember there was a time and my mom was really mad at me where, while I
00:29:23.340
was in the gifted program, they thought about putting me in the special ed program as well.
00:29:30.480
That's really twice exceptional when you're in the special ed.
00:29:40.500
Not I'm in the class with the like literal down syndrome people.
00:29:44.320
Like that's, that's a bit different than the, oh, I, I sometimes take Adderall, therefore
00:29:56.400
I'll, I won't go too, too far on that, but actually I do think that there is a downside
00:30:02.140
And it was pointed out by a couple of people on X and Catherine Boyle, for example, put
00:30:08.540
She wrote parents encourage or let their kids opt into disability diagnoses because it
00:30:14.960
seems like there's little downside, more time on tests, better chances at college admissions,
00:30:19.960
optional performance, enhancing drugs, accommodations of all types.
00:30:27.960
Many kids genuinely believe they're sick or that there's something wrong with them.
00:30:33.060
You tell a girl, she seems anxious and she'll believe she's anxious.
00:30:36.500
You tell a boy, he has a true disability in the form of ADHD.
00:30:40.660
And he starts thinking create creativity or daydreaming is a deficiency.
00:30:45.960
You can gaslight people into believing they're sick.
00:30:48.940
And we have entire systems and institutions encouraging this.
00:30:54.260
It's fine to be weak and frail when we should be doing the opposite, convincing them they're
00:30:59.500
resilient, independent, strong people who can handle any challenge.
00:31:03.260
If there's one thing I believe as a parent, it's that you can will your children into greatness.
00:31:08.380
Society will encourage them to do the opposite, but you don't have to comply.
00:31:12.760
Now, I think the difference with what you experienced is while you got all these accommodations,
00:31:17.180
your mom also, like, threw you into prison camp and diagnosed you with a whole bunch of other
00:31:22.980
untrue things that she tried to medicate you for.
00:31:25.500
Because, you know, she's like, oh, you know, you're difficult.
00:31:29.900
I'm going to get you diagnosed with this thing to try to drug it out of you.
00:31:38.000
You know what's funny is all of those, like, extra diagnoses that, like, I clearly didn't have
00:31:43.360
that she was always trying to get me diagnosed with and get me medicated for.
00:31:53.100
And so you didn't also end up in this victim mentality.
00:31:58.100
All of the stuff for, like, extended time and everything like that.
00:32:08.740
She's like, shut up and tell them you have this.
00:32:12.000
She's like, here's what shit you can say when you get in that way.
00:32:20.200
Like, the quote unquote ethical or non-harmful way to do this to a child is to literally
00:32:28.740
And then the unethical way to do this is to be like, oh, sweetie, I think you have
00:32:35.520
Because then you're actually hurting someone in an unethical way.
00:32:38.500
What's funny is I probably really had, like, I obviously really have dysgraphia.
00:32:42.040
I obviously, I honestly, I'm also, I mean, I don't know what causes it, but I'm a much
00:32:46.140
slower thinker than other people at my intelligence level.
00:32:52.340
You didn't leave the car on all day yesterday because you just forgot.
00:32:59.720
The point I'm making here is my first, like, like, like interaction with all of those parts
00:33:05.860
of, of like my psyche was, oh, these are just things you use to get extra time.
00:33:14.240
But that, and that was, that was the key thing because, and it wasn't just Catherine
00:33:18.100
Boyle chiming in to say this and an actual teacher also chimed in on X.
00:33:22.060
And I thought this was really interesting and insightful.
00:33:29.040
And by the way, this is a Simone outlined episode.
00:33:31.620
So I have a linked outline that I'll put in our sub stack and Patreon articles for our,
00:33:41.080
But she wrote lots of people assuming this is purposeful manipulation.
00:33:49.920
That's the, the parents who like paid for those essays and sports things.
00:33:52.980
Remember the, but the reality from what I've seen first among my peers.
00:34:03.860
It's ridiculous to the rest of us willing to plainly state that the emperor has no clothes,
00:34:08.580
but for these kids and their parents, the disability, she puts that in quotes, scare quotes
00:34:16.100
And that learned helplessness, which leads to actual crippling anxiety is why discussing
00:34:26.100
And I think that's like another aspect of this that is, is really important to factor in because
00:34:33.240
while on one hand you have the, like, I guess this is like the midwit dangerous part of this
00:34:39.460
dynamic where you have like a bunch of people who like drink the Kool-Aid and they're like,
00:34:43.580
And then you have, then you have like the geniuses who are like, I'm disabled.
00:34:50.240
And then you have like the, the, the, the halfwit side, which is just like, I'm very smart.
00:35:00.200
So I don't, I don't know what to make of it all, but it, I think these are, these are
00:35:05.260
really good points that everyone's been making and I love the additional skew that you, you
00:35:10.640
You're dealing people are like, Oh, I'm going to play by the rules.
00:35:14.120
All this DEI stuff is going to work against you, but probably depending on who you are,
00:35:17.720
you know, all this, you know, you're, you're dealing with DEI has worked really, really
00:35:20.940
well for specific populations that have learned how to play the game.
00:35:23.820
So I love that you pointed that out, but this is more than this like competitive flywheel,
00:35:30.820
And it's, it's more about, it's, it's more than also what some people were implying, which
00:35:36.380
was that this kind of, this accelerates the, the, the falling apart of legacy education
00:35:43.340
as well, because if we're no longer measuring like someone's actual ability to do something
00:35:47.700
like on a compressed time basis or whatever, then like, what are we even measuring?
00:35:52.980
I'd point out here that like the, the, I forgot, I talked about the disability stuff
00:35:58.860
I got for like testing that got me ahead, but that wasn't the only ways I would use the
00:36:08.720
And so I only had to go to gym for a certain amount of time, which was the shortest amount
00:36:12.720
of time I could dedicate to, to some sort of like exercise activity.
00:36:18.160
So I'd have more free time during the day, got a, a private room when everybody went to
00:36:23.820
So I was able to do that by myself and just sort of chill out, lay on the ground, get a pillow,
00:36:27.880
you know, set up my computer when everyone else is supposed to be studying and like video
00:36:34.480
I got, Oh God, what were some of the other things that I was able to get?
00:36:37.740
I'd regularly skip classes and then just go to the nurse because I was at the nurse so
00:36:43.520
frequently, you know, for all the disability related stuff.
00:36:46.960
I could just be like, Oh, X happened and I need a pass.
00:36:50.040
And then I'd like go, go to class was like the, the nurse pass.
00:36:54.160
You know, and everyone can be like, Oh, like all of this clearly, it, it must've added
00:37:03.040
A lot of people on X were like, yeah, well, how's it going to work for them when they actually
00:37:13.680
It, it probably mattered more to my ability to navigate the workforce than everything else I
00:37:23.280
The, the big, the big fantasy that they're still operating under is that at some point
00:37:29.320
you're going to get to this moral meritocracy when instead, no, like the whole world is
00:37:38.480
Well, no, no, it's not just that they're the person who's sitting there diligently studying,
00:37:43.720
you know, 15th century French architecture thinking one day, this is going to help me get
00:37:50.480
And I remember, cause there were like the top students, like we had students who were
00:37:57.060
But I was like, oh, they hate, like the top goody good two-shoe kids.
00:38:01.680
I was the like, because I was clearly exceptionally intelligent.
00:38:06.140
Um, but I also got into better colleges than they did.
00:38:17.760
They actually, I know because I, I would occasionally just cause I love following and seeing them
00:38:22.580
It made me feel good, but they blocked me mostly.
00:38:25.900
So I just think that my existence, it's not good for their mental health, man.
00:38:36.480
And then, and then as an adult, people are going to care that I had a near perfect score
00:38:46.240
I'm like, I'm like, I, I would often, you know, play hooky and, and, and you'd have the
00:38:52.200
Cause you know, you weren't allowed to leave campus where I was.
00:38:54.200
They, they come pick me up and we go off and we go hang out at the mall or whatever.
00:39:01.480
Cause I was studying a lot of my own things, right?
00:39:06.560
It's done by like college professors and everything like that.
00:39:09.260
And then when it came to studying for like the actual exams and everything, I just like
00:39:17.620
I just actually, I think someone was joking about that.
00:39:20.120
I think, I think it was even someone we knew on X who was like the
00:39:23.880
actual correct way to do this for ADHD is you give them like an extra hour, but that's
00:39:30.280
just like time to look at the textbook probably for the first time.
00:39:36.480
So I feel like the way it often works is like, you have absolutely no problem focusing
00:39:41.040
when like it's down to the line and you actually have to do it.
00:39:45.620
And this is why I'd suggest, you know, say, if you're a younger listener, you are going
00:39:51.840
St. Andrews is most much cheaper than American colleges.
00:39:57.720
But almost all of your grade is based on a test you take twice a year.
00:40:05.120
It's 90% of your grade or 100% of your grade, depending on the class.
00:40:11.200
And then two weeks before the test, you have no classes.
00:40:15.760
And what I used to do during that period is I would close all of my windows.
00:40:19.540
So I wouldn't know what time of day or night it was.
00:40:21.820
And I had an alarm that would go off every two hours.
00:40:25.940
And there's like pictures of this from when I was a kid where you could see me laying down
00:40:29.680
on the floor with like all of my notes around me and just piles of Dr. Peppers.
00:40:33.620
Cause I was like caffeinated out of my mind on, you know, the Ritalin, right.
00:40:37.780
You know, like, gosh, this is that period of your life too, where like when you did
00:40:45.140
finally clean your house, you would put on a gas mask to do it.
00:40:49.420
Because I, you know, just let stuff brought in parts of the room because I've been studying
00:40:56.240
But I like, like, I think that that's the thing.
00:40:58.420
People are like, how could somebody like this ever develop good study habits?
00:41:01.620
Now that sort of study habit wouldn't have served me in high school, but it did serve
00:41:05.960
Well, and that's, I mean, again, like when, when you come to any sort of real world work
00:41:10.100
environment, you know, people will work with whatever deadline they're given, you know,
00:41:19.600
And if you are trying to get into a job where you can't make the work requirements or sorry,
00:41:26.860
There, there is another element of this, what this article covers that I didn't see come
00:41:32.940
And that hasn't come up in our discussion yet that I do think is important.
00:41:38.160
I do have to read the opening paragraph of this, of this article though, because it sounds
00:41:43.560
like, like the premise of a South Park episode.
00:41:46.480
The article, by the way, is called Accommodation Nation.
00:41:50.240
America's colleges have an extra time on tests problem.
00:41:55.160
And the Atlantic really does have some great articles and it's just about this big problem,
00:41:59.340
but it starts with, administering an exam used to be straightforward.
00:42:04.120
All a college professor needed was an open room and a stack of blue books.
00:42:08.520
At many American universities, this is no longer true.
00:42:11.080
Professors now struggle to accommodate the many students with an official disability designation,
00:42:15.960
which may entitle them to extra time, a distraction-free environment, or the use of otherwise
00:42:26.560
The University of Michigan has two centers where students with disabilities can take exams,
00:42:31.420
but they frequently fill to capacity, leaving professors scrambling to find more desks and
00:42:38.160
Juan Collar, a physicist at the University of Chicago, told me that so many students now
00:42:43.280
take their exams in the school's now distraction testing outposts.
00:42:51.140
Told me that so many students now take their exams in the school's low distraction testing
00:42:55.520
outposts that they have become more distracting than the main classrooms.
00:43:00.260
I'm just like, it just, it seems like some, like an episode, of course, with, with Cartman
00:43:11.860
Now, now, now, now the place to be is just in the normal class.
00:43:15.540
I think someone on X was talking about like their, their experience as a professor or something
00:43:21.080
where like a shock came to them when like, finally they got a really, like a real disabled
00:43:29.760
And they were the most low maintenance of all the students.
00:43:32.680
Like they didn't send any like barely coherent, full of excuses, 4am emails about why they couldn't
00:43:38.980
Like they just literally just did the work and they were actually disabled.
00:43:42.980
We need to be, that's a, that's a, that is a scab.
00:43:54.580
Someone, someone's got to tell them how it works.
00:43:57.720
But so here's, here's the thing that I think is really interesting is she, she, she quotes
00:44:04.780
in the article, a couple of disability advocates or people who work in the, the disability space.
00:44:11.240
And I think that a big thing that is not discussed sufficiently here and, and why this, in addition
00:44:17.080
to, of course, like the sort of competitive flywheel effect that's happening, a sort of tragedy
00:44:21.400
of the commons competitive flywheel effect is the fact that there is a, an unseen, largely
00:44:28.040
unseen, but extremely expensive and extremely lucrative for participants world of disability
00:44:37.580
So I'm going to read some quotes from the article.
00:44:39.140
In 2008, the government broadened the definition of disability, effectively expanding the number
00:44:47.220
It also included a list of major life activities that could be disrupted by disability, quote,
00:44:54.400
learning, reading, concentrating, thinking among others, which of course, like thinking
00:44:58.880
literally like points added to my score because my disability is I'm just not.
00:45:09.700
Anyway, to continue from the article and clarify that individuals were protected under the ADA.
00:45:14.420
That's the Americans with Disabilities Act, the sort of key legislation that drives all of
00:45:18.700
these rights in America, even if their impairment didn't severely restrict their daily life.
00:45:24.480
In response to the 2008 amendments, the Association of On Higher Education and Disability, A-H-E-A-D,
00:45:33.000
an organization of disability services staff, disability services staff, okay?
00:45:40.700
The people who make money from people who claim disabilities and get government money for
00:45:46.820
Released guidance, urging universities to give greater weight to students' own accounts of
00:45:52.780
how their disability affected them, rather than relying on medical diagnoses.
00:45:59.540
Quote, requiring extensive medical and scientific evidence perpetuates a deviance model of disability,
00:46:07.300
undervalues the individual's history and experience with disability, and is it inappropriate and
00:46:13.560
burdensome under the revised statute and regulations?
00:46:16.960
Wait, you don't even need to be diagnosed anymore?
00:46:18.920
You're just like, I identify as needing double time?
00:46:21.620
Well, the people who make the money as service providers to the disabled are trying to say
00:46:27.420
that anyone should be able to say they're disabled and partake of their services.
00:46:35.900
I think that if the deontologists want to screw over their kids by saying like, yeah,
00:46:40.680
Well, but what I'm pointing out here is there's a massive adverse incentive where there's also
00:46:44.440
this really large group of people who make a lot of money from largely government-subsidized
00:46:53.240
I mean, keep in mind, like, we have kids who, one currently and one previously and probably
00:46:59.280
one in the future, get ABA therapy for their autism.
00:47:03.660
We can't afford it, but the state of Pennsylvania pays for it.
00:47:07.380
It is very expensive and they are absolutely motivated to help us get diagnoses for our kids
00:47:14.600
because they'll be able to hire more staff and have a bigger organization.
00:47:23.460
Like, I don't think they're bad people individually, but they're absolutely incentivized
00:47:27.940
to loosen whatever they can with requirements on self-diagnosis.
00:47:32.880
So just to quote from the article, kind of show you how blatant this is.
00:47:37.340
Most of the disability advocates I spoke with are more troubled by the students who are still
00:47:43.540
not getting the accommodations they need than by the risk of people exploiting the system.
00:47:49.700
They argue that fraud is rare and stress that some universities maintain stringent
00:47:56.780
I would rather open up access to the five kids who need accommodation, but can't afford
00:48:03.260
And maybe there's one person who has paid for an evaluation and they don't need it.
00:48:08.620
Emily Tarkonish, a special education teaching assistant professor at the University of Illinois
00:48:16.860
As I said, like my mom was gaming the system, but I had all the disabilities they found in me.
00:48:23.060
If you look hard enough, you're going to find a disability in anyone.
00:48:25.600
I know, but what she's saying is that basically she's okay with a bunch of people exploiting
00:48:32.260
the system as long as one person who would otherwise have trouble getting like the formal
00:48:37.880
And I hear that, but also let's just read off her title again.
00:48:42.780
She's the special education teaching assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
00:48:57.060
Like she won't have a job, you know, if there isn't sufficient demand.
00:49:03.040
Tarconish sees a growing number of students receiving accommodations as evidence that the
00:49:08.760
Ella Callow, the assistant vice chancellor of disability rights at Berkeley.
00:49:16.320
That means that there's a vice chancellor and a chancellor.
00:49:21.540
Like that's at least three people now whose full-time jobs just have to do with disability
00:49:45.400
Remember, this is just the disability rights one.
00:49:47.500
Maybe there's also the disability accommodations chancellor.
00:49:50.540
The, yeah, the Viscount of disability, whatever, right?
00:49:57.720
I won't actually read her full quote, but I just, I also want to point out, this isn't
00:50:02.460
actually the dynamic that Tarlow pointed out in her quote of like, well, you know,
00:50:07.060
like maybe one, one out of six students is, is, is exploiting this because also quoted
00:50:14.280
from the article proof that the growth in disability is exploitative quote, no one is
00:50:19.340
more skeptical of the accommodation system than the academics who study it.
00:50:24.700
Robert Weiss, a psychology professor at Denison University, pointed me to a department of
00:50:30.840
education study that found that middle and high schoolers with disabilities tend to have
00:50:36.660
These students are half as likely to enroll in four-year institutions as students without
00:50:40.960
disabilities and twice as likely to attend a two-year or community college.
00:50:44.620
The rise in accommodations were purely a result of more disabled students making it into college.
00:50:50.380
The increase would be more pronounced at less selective institutions than so-called Ivy
00:50:58.360
And where we're really seeing this ballooning of disability is at Ivy League schools where
00:51:05.640
No, it's because smarter people are more likely to play the system.
00:51:11.740
And the point is that the people, the bureaucrats and the professionals who are making money from
00:51:18.480
disability related jobs are trying to argue that these, most of these people are legitimately
00:51:25.580
Whereas most of these people are not, most of these people at elite universities are gaming
00:51:30.940
Going back to Stanford, for example, like obviously they want to have singles dorms.
00:51:35.080
So like, duh, of course they're going to say they're disabled.
00:51:37.580
Like no one wants to share a room with some stranger.
00:51:43.800
I got someone who ended up being my best friend of all college.
00:51:47.680
But like, you really don't know what you're going to get.
00:51:54.160
So like, yeah, like I, I, I, I, I think this is the wrong way to think about it.
00:52:00.300
And I think it's the wrong way to talk about it to say legitimate or illegitimate disability.
00:52:04.800
If you're talking about exceptionally smart people, as Simone knows, as our audience likely
00:52:10.340
knows is the thing about exceptionally smart people is they're typically mentally a bit
00:52:19.080
And so when you're talking about people who are exceptionally smart, they are typically
00:52:27.440
You know, and if you're not neurodivergent, but that actually has to do with Asperger's and
00:52:31.600
not any other diagnosis in terms of its original roots, non-neurotypical.
00:52:35.560
And if you're non-neurotypical, like if you're a bit weird, well, that weirdness is, can be
00:52:41.720
definitionally a disability because it's a minority way of acting and thinking.
00:52:47.320
And so the reality is that these people both are getting these accommodations to out-compete
00:52:53.600
other people and are likely genuinely mentally weird in some way.
00:52:59.580
The bigger issue is the way that we are handling tests and stuff like that, I think is the
00:53:05.600
Well, I also think that in the end, like sort of my bottom line on all this is that we
00:53:12.980
I mean, like one, the colleges have a good point when like there are some administrators
00:53:16.560
who are like, when we're accommodating everyone, like what, what do we even do?
00:53:21.500
You should drop the diagnoses and labels and give everyone the accommodations that would
00:53:32.100
Also, this came up in our episode on sexual morality and like people identifying as gay
00:53:39.180
Someone commented on, on that being like, man, I just wish people could just be, just, just
00:53:43.820
be, which is kind of how it has been historically.
00:53:46.200
You know, I always point to the example of Louis Philippe, the brother of King Louis the
00:53:50.980
14th, who was an amazing lawyer and military leader.
00:53:58.660
They would have probably been married in our modern time, but you know, people weren't
00:54:04.100
No, he was just like, Oh, that's Louis Philippe.
00:54:08.000
Sometimes he also kicks ass on the battlefield, like whatever, but he was known as being a very
00:54:14.100
So amazing that his brother like would like redo paintings and make himself, like it was,
00:54:20.740
He was like, man, he's like one of my favorite figures from history.
00:54:25.520
Um, it really bothers me that today you need a label for everything.
00:54:29.540
Like why does everyone have a sexual identity, a gender identity, a DSM diagnosis, a physical
00:54:35.820
diagnosis, a Myers-Briggs profile as a star sign?
00:54:39.840
Like because they don't have personalities anymore.
00:54:42.480
I know it's insane that like, I see YouTubers like prominently and out of nowhere, bring
00:54:48.940
Like, I don't need to know that you occasionally faint, like just be next to a chair.
00:54:56.540
Like it just happens, you know, like I'm not going to go out of my way to get diagnosed
00:55:00.380
to something and in the end, like where I'm going to leave this.
00:55:14.100
But like in the end, actions speak louder than words.
00:55:17.420
And I want us to go back to a time or move into a time forward where it's just our actions
00:55:27.140
Like we, we, we judge ourselves and other people by what they do rather than what they
00:55:33.100
You know, we stopped trying, um, to signal to the world what we are through, like by
00:55:38.960
trying to signal things, by trying to dress a certain way or say things, but instead of
00:55:43.140
It's great for the perinatalist movement, right?
00:55:45.360
We need to get, uh, you know, like the vasectomy fan outside the DNC.
00:55:48.840
We need to get a vasectomy fan, free one, sponsored by us outside of Harvard.
00:55:52.460
Say that, that it's, it's, we heard there's so many disabled people here and we just wanted
00:56:00.320
Uh, no, they're, they're already in the IQ shredder.
00:56:12.360
You're, you're not going to try, you know, just take away the stress of, of hitting age,
00:56:25.020
Be like, we're giving it to the disabled for free.
00:56:54.180
Yeah, but go lighter on the pepper so everyone doesn't cough themselves to death.
00:57:01.460
Like literally everyone is just coughing their heads off in the kitchen.
00:57:06.360
Because we have, we, we, our house was built like over 200 years ago, like in 1790.
00:57:11.180
We do not have a kitchen with proper ventilation.
00:57:13.420
We use a warehouse size like fan to like try to clean the air, but we don't have a hood.
00:57:18.260
And so whenever we make something with peppers or like spicy and like I walk fry it, like
00:57:28.120
I'd really like to get to orange chicken at some point that we can do with mandarins.
00:57:33.760
I'll send me some recipes to look at, but don't send them to me when I'm already down with
00:57:53.860
I know they're disabled, but I don't want to gas them.
00:58:09.680
Well, I mean, we've got to, you know, we've got to play into the new system.
00:58:41.400
Oh, and look at this delicious poison butter chicken.