Based Camp - September 09, 2025Disability Maxxing： The Race to Retardation
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
183.94298
Summary
In this episode, Simone and Malcolm discuss their own experiences with dyslexia and autism, and how they came to terms with their differences. They discuss how to stop being retarded about being disabled, and the best way to deal with it.
Transcript
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I don't know, every time I hear someone talk about their disability,
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And the scene of him being lifted down from a bus very slowly in his wheelchair looking so humiliated and embarrassed and, like, feeble, attempting to look feeble.
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It's so exciting to be speaking with you today because we are both disabled, but we're not disabled the way you would think.
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A lot of people have asked us to talk about this because they, too, have various diagnoses and they want to know how to...
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Well, what you said is stop being retarded about being retarded.
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People are being way too retarded about being disabled, and I think that we should talk about the right way to do disability.
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And our society teaches them to engage with disability in a way that is really, really destructive.
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And where this came up in one of our episodes is I was reading about Gavin Newsom, and Gavin Newsom had this sob story about how difficult it was to grow up with dyslexia.
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And when I was reading it, I was like, I just, you know, his learning disability and everything like that.
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It just sort of occurred to me, and it hasn't occurred to me in maybe half a decade that I have dyslexia.
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And then that prompted people to say, okay, well, I have dyslexia and I struggle with it.
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And someone else wanted to know, well, what's... Because you called it a learning inconvenience, not a learning disability.
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And they're like, well, what's the difference between a learning inconvenience and a learning disability?
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Like, literally... Simone, and you can back this up.
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When was the last time you think I have mentioned having dyslexia to you or anyone before that episode?
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I mean, I think you've mentioned having it, like, once or twice.
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Like, it was only one of those things of, like, it didn't matter to you, and it didn't affect your life.
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And yet, you know, we have good friends who've gone to, like, disability camps for dyslexia only.
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Literally, the only time... And Simone is diagnosed with autism, right?
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So again, like, this is something... The only time I remember it mattering in my entire life
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was trying to remember the difference between a B and a D, which I severely struggled with.
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But other than that, it was completely irrelevant throughout the rest of my life.
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I think that your mispronunciations are a result of your dyslexia.
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Yeah, I was diagnosed by psychologists about this.
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And one of the reasons why, when somebody's like, what's the difference between a learning
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I suppose, as somebody who has a plethora of both, it's how much it actually ended up
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The one that hit me the most growing up, by far the most, much more than, like, Simone's
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autism, or I would think even, you know, like, having one arm or something like that,
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is I have dysgraphia, which means I cannot handwrite.
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So I cannot... And Simone made jokes about this when we were dating and stuff like that.
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I'd come home and I'd give her a writing or something, and she'd go over and she'd be
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like, Malcolm, like, did you... What was it? You thought that I had, like, tutored a...
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Yeah, so Malcolm comes home and he leaves on the table this, like, drawing and a little
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bit of writing. And it's like this, this, like, stick figure of a man and drawing that,
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like, literally looks like a first grader did it. If I can find... I think I took a
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photo of it. If I can find it, I've got to put it up. And I put it on the fridge and
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I was like, oh, man, like, at the Stanford Business School, they must have done some
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kind of big brother, little brother, like, thing, you know, where they brought in kids
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and you talked with them about business. And you're like, oh, you put that on the fridge.
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And I'm like, yeah, like, who are you working with? And you're like, I did that.
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Yeah. And so I, um, going back to when you first learned to write in school, I had to
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use something and only people who, like, have disabilities would know about this called
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an alpha smart. So they don't want you to be able to use spell check or any computer
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augmented things to help you write. But because you can't handwrite, they need to give you
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something to write with. And so it's a simple computer that can only write strings of text
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and then plug it in. It's like a typewriter. It's basically a typewriter, but digital.
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It's like a digital typewriter. Yeah. Okay. And so that's what I would use for everything
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in classes and everything like that. And I was also incredibly slow at writing as well,
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which also really, and this is the other thing, like. That's so crazy because you've written
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five books. There are things that didn't impact me as much as the reason I call dyslexia learning
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inconvenience is there is just random genetic variation that impacted me dramatically more.
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Like for example, I am terrible at languages. I took Spanish because I grew up in Texas, right? I lived in
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Spanish speaking countries at times with a kid. And because I live in Texas, you take Spanish every
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year from kindergarten. I didn't pass Spanish one. That is your first year of Spanish until my junior
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to senior year in high school. That meant I failed Spanish every single year of my formal education.
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No, you're like literally a language retard. Like literally. You are retarded.
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Now who can tell me what famous person wrote the Declaration of Independence? Let's see.
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Uh, Mr. Garrison, haven't you figured it out? Timmy's retarded.
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Now, Timmy, you need to work on your study skills.
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Are you mocking me? Because if you are, I have no problem sending your butt to the principal's office.
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Now, that is not something I am diagnosed with. That impacted me dramatically more than dyslexia.
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No, but that's the thing. And like a big point here though, is that this, the definition of disability
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disability has much more to do with what makes you non-compliant or non-functional in some way
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within a typical environment. And because your typical environment doesn't involve you needing
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to be bilingual, that in itself doesn't come up as a disability.
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I was about to mention the second thing that has impacted me way more than dyslexia.
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The second thing that's impacted me way more than dyslexia is that I am a very slow
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writer and a sort of processor of information. Thinker more broadly. I just think very slowly.
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And what this means is that in class, I couldn't take notes. So what I'd always do
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is for every single class that I did in college, I recorded it on a recorder. Then I went back to
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my room and I played it and slow speed and typed it out. And then I went over that and memorized
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that. The amount of time, now this is not a, this is something everybody has to do and it wasn't due
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No, no, no. I disagree because in college, one of the ways that I made money, and this was the school
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paid me to do this, was there were students who had exactly the same problem and I took notes for
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them. I know the school offered that to me, but I, I didn't find. Then it's clearly a recognized
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disability. And it is because we live in a fast paced world that this was not, I think it is not
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a diagnosed disability. You know, so the point here is it's not a diagnosed disability. And the, the,
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the point is also with your autism. It's not even just a disability because your autism is clearly
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like a label disability, but it is pretty much only helped you in life outside of maybe not picking
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up on social cues and almost getting graped or something because of that. But I think outside
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of not knowing how to flirt, but knowing how to flirt with the type of guy. Anyway, I'll let you
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continue from here, but I wanted to go on that sort of side tangent because that's what brought all this
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up. I think that in our society, we have these, these words for like specific, like ADD or something
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like that. ADD is not a learning disability. ADD is not an important part of who you are as a person.
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It is going to impact your daily life less than random genetic variations in terms of how you
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learn or your happiness set point or your, it's almost like people think because we have named
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specific random genetic variations that really aren't that particularly impactful in an individual's
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daily life that we now need to elevate them to like a part of your identity because we ripped out
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everything else about people's identity. We say, oh, you can't identify with your birth culture. You
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can't identify with your parents. You can't identify with your ethnicity. And so if you can't
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identify with anything, any of your history. Along with being gay or whatever, it's still the last
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form of white pride. And your disabilities are, that's all you are at this point. And this is really
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psychologically harmful because then you, you lean into this stuff. Yeah. And I'm going to argue
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that actually identifying with ADHD is incredibly damaging because I don't think you've watched a
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lot of ADHD influencers and seeing the extent to which their identification with the disorder makes
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them really non-functional. It is insane. I mean, I know how I'm handling ADD with my kids and I'll put
00:10:03.620
the South Park. Hello, I'm Dr. Richard Shea here to tell you about my exciting new drug-free treatment
00:10:09.940
for children with attention deficit disorder. This treatment is fast and effective and doesn't use
00:10:16.880
harmful drugs. Watch closely as I apply treatment to the first child. I want a horse. I want a big brown horse
00:10:21.920
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00:10:37.240
If you would like more information on my bold new treatments, please send away for this free brochure
00:10:41.680
entitled, you can either calm down or I can pop you in the mouth again. Thank you.
00:10:46.120
Yes, exactly that. But I'm first going to push back on your argument that disabilities aren't really
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just a declaration of societal norms and what you need in order to be functional in mainstream society.
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Because you have to consider what was considered a disability in even recent history, like same-sex
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attraction, which was classified as a mental disorder in 1952 and only removed as such in 1973.
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You know what else was considered a disability, which I have? Left-handedness. That was a
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disability. Really? Yes, it was. Okay. Also, PMS, which was also known as hysteria or neurasthenia.
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Oh, right. Masturbation. Everyone's favorite thing to do online. That was a disability.
00:11:34.720
What? Masturbation? It was a symptom of nervous diseases and insanity in 19th and early 20th century.
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Yeah. So also, guess what? Shyness, introversion. That was formally described as neurasthenia as well.
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So I guess they just groped it with PMS and social neurosis or inadequate personality disorder.
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Inadequate personality. Inadequate personality disorder?
00:11:58.460
Shyness, Malcolm. Shyness. Because being shy in history made you non-compliant with the rest of
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society. And now you can be functional and shy at the same time, given the way our economy and school
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and everything else is set up. But yeah, it was absolutely seen as a disorder. Also, grief, although
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I'm kind of with them on this, they called it pathological grief. It was once considered that
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like any grief lasting longer than like a few weeks or months was a disorder. I'm with them on that.
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Yeah. But like, yeah. They were like, dude, you're too sad. Something's wrong with you. Get over it.
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Smile. I wish we could have grief as a disorder. Bring it back. Bring it back. Bring back grief. Yeah.
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But now the way that disabilities are diagnosed is also really weird and different. And what seems to
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have been the catalyst for this change was the Americans with Disabilities Act in the United
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States, at least in the 1990s. And then the ADA Amendments Act in 2008, which is just an expansion
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of that, which basically expanded the definition to include invisible disabilities, like learning
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disabilities, mental health disorders, chronic conditions. So like PTSD or bipolar disorder or
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anxiety or depression. These things weren't really seen as disorders in the past that would get you
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special privileges. And now often they are, but I still think that we need to diagnose menstruation
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as a disability. Like, I mean, yeah. If you look even back like further and it's like, well,
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let's remove you from, go, go to menstruation hut. They had those, by the way, that was like a common
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thing. I mean, and some women even today, I think wish it were classified as a disability. I mean,
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you see it like in school, there's the girls who were like, I'm on my period. And I think that means
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they get to like do nothing. Girl. Okay. Okay. No, I agree that disabilities change over time,
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right. Based on social norms. I'm wondering now, what, what, what sort of correlates with the
00:14:07.100
disabilities today? Because like, you wouldn't say like grief, but then people can be like, well,
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depression, right? Like, you wouldn't say like, it's weird to me, actually, that ADD is considered
00:14:16.880
a disability today. Yeah. Because it seems like such a trivial thing. But it, I mean, it isn't
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because typically where this shows up, you know, when people are in institutional environments is like
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both in jobs and in school, you are supposed to sit down, sit still and do a job and not switch
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around a billion times. Like you have to do the job and finish the job and then do the next job and
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finish the next job. And people with, with ADD or ADHD struggled to do that. Therefore they're
00:14:47.360
non-compliant with today's society. I mean, here's, here's one way you can look at it. You had heard
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someone identify or describe autism as like most people are just normal cars. They can just drive on
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normal roads and autistic people are like NASCAR cars or like really like fine-tuned race cars. And like
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on any normal environment, they're going to break down constantly. They do not work on normal roads. You
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cannot drive them off road, but like on very specific types of tracks, they are amazing. And I, I really
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feel like that's apt, not just with autism, but with any sort of mental disorder in general, it's really more
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a description of the road. Um, and I think that in, in some environments, for example, like,
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okay. So, you know, uh, introversion was seen as a disability for a while, but I think that in some
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environments, introversion is like the most adaptive thing. Like if you're like on a spaceship traveling in
00:15:44.300
a highly isolated environment for years on end, introversion. That's true of autism in a modern
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context. So 100% autism that Simone has is very similar to what we were talking about there. And she needs
00:15:55.580
very controlled environments to be productive. But when she is productive, she's much more productive than
00:16:00.800
other people. And she can work much longer hours than other people and work straight much longer hours.
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By the way, one of the reasons when people are like Malcolm, you talk a lot of terrible stuff about ADD. I was
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diagnosed with ADD. That's why I, that's why I, I, I'm like, this is all of the disabilities that I have
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by far the most trivial, you know, growing up. So I don't, I don't take it seriously. I was,
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God, I'm trying to think of other things. I was diagnosed with bipolar. That one, I don't believe
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I ever had. I think that was made up. Yeah. But I was diagnosed with it at one point. I think that
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that was because my mom was bipolar. So from a bipolar person's perspective, my mood was constantly
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varying, but my actual mood wasn't constantly varying. It was hers. It was very, she reported her
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subjective experience of my mood to psychotherapists. They thought, oh, it's him because you've lived
00:16:49.220
with me. Do I have fluctuating moods? No, no, you don't. No. Okay. No. I mean, I think that like
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someone who has not encountered you before might guess that you are manic, but like you're, you're
00:17:04.160
only just all always by their definition. That's called hypomania, by the way, to be always a little
00:17:10.080
manic. There is a, hypomania is slightly below true mania, but there's a form of, I forgot where
00:17:16.540
you're just like only hypomanic. But who wouldn't want that? That's perfect. Yeah. Who wouldn't want
00:17:22.020
that? This is why people buy cocaine. All right. Like this is why people get addicted to meth. No,
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but I think that this is why I was diagnosed with ADD, right? Like I'm very excitable. I'm very like,
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try to work all the time. And no, but like ADD, you can't focus. And like, you do, you do concerted
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focus work. I focus on things that I like, which is what most ADD people are like. That's true.
00:17:46.800
Yeah. Your ADD. Yeah. That's so true. And like, well, so Scott Alexander had talked about this
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because, you know, he, you know, has, has, has, you know, diagnosed and treated a lot of people with
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ADD and he helps them, you know, they get their, their ADD medications that they want. And he,
00:17:58.360
he pointed out and I can't find the original blog post, but just like, Hey, maybe sitting in front
00:18:03.620
of a computer in an office doing work that you personally find meaningless, like, isn't something
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we were evolved to deal with in the first place. Like our definition of this as a disorder is again,
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Our ADD was useful to me only insofar as, and this is where I do think it is useful as a
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That's and that's, that is where we get to the not retarded part of dealing with disability is
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okay. A disability is basically, okay. The way your, your car doesn't work on these roads.
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And sometimes you need to know that your car doesn't work on these roads. Cause if you're
00:18:36.480
stuck on these roads, you're going to need modifications. You have to buy different tires.
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You have to just, yeah. And so, yes, it is important to do that, but only so you can drive
00:18:45.880
on those roads long enough to get to a kind of road where you can drive well. Like that's the point
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of this. This is how you do the non-retarded disability approach. And this is, this is the way to
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do it, but first let's go into the ways to not do it. And I'm going to start with self-diagnosis.
00:19:01.060
So can you, cause everyone's doing this now, can you guess the accuracy of most like online
00:19:06.660
self-diagnoses? I'm going to guess 20, 20%. Pretty good. It's, it's 19 to 38%. There are some things
00:19:14.640
that it's, you can more accurately diagnose online than others, but it's 19 to 38%. You know what you
00:19:19.800
should pull up by the way that, and I'll, and I'll talk on this subject while you do. There's the graph
00:19:24.340
of the percentage of young people that identify primarily was a disability and they went through
00:19:31.140
different age ranges. Try to pull that one up. And I, and all the self-diagnosis thing,
00:19:36.180
one of the problems with self-diagnosis is when particular diagnoses get trendy, like everyone
00:19:42.780
just opts into them. And the reality is, is that you can, if you lean into it, present whatever you
00:19:49.060
want. For example, there was a period, and this is well studied in psychological literature where
00:19:53.960
people famous who had Tourette's. Oh, by the way, that's another one that I have.
00:19:59.860
Oh yes, you do have Tourette's. Oh, Taco Lantern.
00:20:04.340
People, people don't even, because I'm, I'm fairly good at controlling it. So only if you were like
00:20:08.840
a family member of mine, would you know? Because again, I don't lean into it. Like,
00:20:13.960
So the sweetest way that you do, like you used to say stuff with like Tourette's that would get
00:20:19.640
you in trouble, like, which is the common version of it, right? Like people saying stuff. Like I
00:20:23.720
recently saw someone who knows if they really had it post online of like them having Tourette's in an
00:20:29.860
airport TSA line saying, I have a gun, pew, I have a gun, pew. And like, just keep saying that in
00:20:35.600
the TSA line. Like that's classic Tourette's. And you had some things that you used to like say when
00:20:39.760
you were stressed that would have made people concerned. But guess what he says now, when he
00:20:44.500
has moments, he says, I love my wife. How do you do that? That is like, that is the most romantic,
00:20:55.160
Well, I tried really hard to redirect the neural pattern because it's a neural pattern that's like
00:20:59.600
all of a sudden I describe it as it's sort of like there are tire tracks in your head, you know,
00:21:04.900
like tire tracks in the mud that like the more times you drive through it, the car gets pulled into it.
00:21:09.100
And I think that's sort of what's happening with Tourette's is when you sort of are in certain
00:21:12.720
periods of anxiety or lose self-control, it's pulled down specific neural pathways. And if you
00:21:18.760
exercise control over them for long enough, I can sort of force it down a new pathway. It doesn't
00:21:24.980
work every time, but it works enough. And the, by the way, the thing that causes it for me,
00:21:30.880
for people who don't know, it's extended periods of social interaction.
00:21:36.100
Because I over process what's happening in those moments. And I, and what's funny here is I even
00:21:40.620
have the, the rare, but cartoonish type of Tourette's where you say offensive things,
00:21:44.780
right? Like, but I don't know if it's, if it's regular Tourette's because it doesn't appear
00:21:49.160
like the, the, the phrases are slightly longer than they would be with normal Tourette's.
00:21:54.060
Sometimes. Yeah. Sometimes like there was, there was one sentence series.
00:21:58.220
My favorite, if you don't mind me saying was Taco Lanterns.
00:22:02.100
That's what I was trying to redirect to anything that wasn't offensive.
00:22:05.920
Yeah. That, that came on later. And I tried so hard on Etsy to find a lantern that was a taco
00:22:15.820
But it was funny here is like, I am coming at this and like a lot of the people, watchers of
00:22:20.800
our show, they're like, wait, he has dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADD. He at one point was diagnosed with
00:22:27.580
bipolar. He has Tourette's. He didn't even think of that as like something to mention. Like the,
00:22:32.200
one of the reasons why I forgot abilities with such disdain is I will see people build their entire
00:22:39.380
persona around a disability that I consider trivial because I have so many.
00:22:47.760
Gotta catch them all. Did you find that chart, by the way?
00:22:49.840
I found a bunch of charts. I don't think they're exactly the ones that you want. I'll send them to
00:22:55.260
you real quick on WhatsApp. So you can tell me if I've found it. There's a lot that show rates of
00:23:00.740
both being LGBTQ and having these disabilities. So that's maybe what we're thinking about. I found
00:23:10.020
one that's a table that show that 45% of youth identify as having a disability, but I wanted to
00:23:17.840
touch on your Tourette's thing because that's, I think a really good example of sort of self-diagnosis,
00:23:24.580
having a negative effect. But I also first want to point out that, so first, okay, 19 to 38% of
00:23:30.100
self-diagnoses, like if someone's like, oh, I self-diagnosed with autism. They are, if you flip
00:23:37.020
a coin, I mean, like the odds are they're wrong. Okay. The odds are they are incorrect with their
00:23:42.140
diagnosis, but research nevertheless indicates that people who self-diagnose are more likely to report
00:23:48.360
high levels of psychological distress and impairment, similar to those with a formal diagnosis.
00:23:52.560
So even though they're more likely than not to not actually have the condition they think they
00:23:57.160
have, they are still just as likely as someone with the condition to experience the adverse effects
00:24:03.620
of that condition. So self-diagnosis can result in, in, in increased anxiety and a sense of, of
00:24:09.500
stuckness or self-fulfilling beliefs, even when the diagnosis is not later validated or supported
00:24:16.480
through chronic clinical care. So like, this is just so damaging. And it's really important that
00:24:26.080
people understand too, that like just perceiving something can be more damaging than actually
00:24:32.500
having it. And, and there's a sleep study example that I like to cite with this because it's so apt.
00:24:38.540
There's research that shows that people who perceive themselves as poor sleepers,
00:24:42.260
despite objective evidence from sleep labs, where they like can actually tell if you're asleep,
00:24:47.040
like better than your aura ring or your Fitbit or whatever, that their sleep is fairly normal.
00:24:51.520
If they believe they're poor sleepers, they can experience more adverse effects than those who
00:24:56.620
report good sleep, but who actually sleep poorly, like in the sleep labs are like, damn, like this guy's
00:25:02.280
not sleeping very well at all, but they feel fine because they don't see themselves as poor sleepers.
00:25:07.380
So like identifying as someone who has a condition can be really, really damaging. I mean, this specific
00:25:13.960
phenomenon is known as, as sleep state misperception or paradoxal insomnia, but it's such a thing.
00:25:20.380
It's such a thing. And I found that it totally exists. Like during the, the newborn days where like,
00:25:25.200
I don't sleep much at all. Right. If I act like it's normal and like, oh, well, you know what,
00:25:30.440
you know, human bodies have evolved to deal with this, like, because they have, you know,
00:25:34.000
like, we're fine. I don't really experience problems. Yeah. I don't know. Note here as a
00:25:40.600
side here where people could be like, how could somebody have so many comorbid disabilities?
00:25:46.200
This is actually, how can someone be so retarded? Right. Yeah. No, this is actually very common.
00:25:51.180
If you actually have mental disabilities to generally have a collection of them, because if one thing's
00:25:57.060
broken, it's usually there's a cascade and a lot of things are broken. Yeah. And anyone who got brain
00:26:02.040
wiggles, it's just that's at the way that I think through things, they can tell that it is very,
00:26:07.740
your brain is wiggly lateral or sort of orthogonal, orthogonal to the way that a normal human
00:26:14.400
sinks through things, which is one of the reasons why, like the core reason I think I perform so well
00:26:20.540
within the intellectual market is because I am both relatively intelligent, though, not super
00:26:26.900
intelligent. Like I've been in environments, you know, I got my MBA at Stanford. I've been around like
00:26:30.360
the actual smartest people on earth and they're much smarter than I am. But I mean, I still was
00:26:35.800
in like the top quarter of my class, but yeah, I don't know how many were smarter than you actually,
00:26:39.720
but there were some that were smarter than me that I could just, there are a lot who have a lot of
00:26:43.140
like raw intellectual, like they can crunch numbers and do math in their heads and stuff. And,
00:26:47.620
and you don't do that. But I mean, the point you're making though, is that the mere fact that you
00:26:52.380
have a wiggly brain that you think orthogonally and that like, of course, in the, in the real world,
00:26:57.220
in mainstream society, this makes you non-compliant with like normal test taking and normal school,
00:27:02.780
it still gives you a huge advantage. And people who identify with their mental disabilities are just
00:27:10.000
choosing to make it clear. But how do you, how do you utilize this to get ahead?
00:27:14.600
Is you just, and, and, and because maybe I grew up with it and I was always in like the most
00:27:21.220
disabled of the disabled group. I always really, and I never identified that way. I never saw it
00:27:27.220
as particularly important to who I was. I was like, it may give me access to Ritalin, which is what
00:27:35.040
It may give me access to being able to do everything on a computer, but I just saw that as cool. And it's so
00:27:40.780
weird that like, as a disability, it's completely disappeared. Like dysgraphia has not been relevant
00:27:45.540
to me as an adult since my first job. I bet Octavian has it. I'm pretty sure Octavian has it.
00:27:53.460
I mean, our kids might not even ever learn that they have it if they don't have to handwrite.
00:27:57.940
I mean, they might have to for like AI tests. So I guess we'll see how that goes.
00:28:01.420
It's, it's, it's showing up in, in his work at school. I look at his work every day. So that's,
00:28:06.580
and I also have like those learn how to write books with him. And like, even though there are grooves in
00:28:10.380
the paper, he's like, but I mean, the point I'm making is just take inventory of, be aware of,
00:28:18.300
you know, if you are different in some way that can be diagnosed, there are many advantages to that.
00:28:23.600
Do you want me to go over some of them? I think there's, there's actually more than you,
00:28:27.400
So yeah, one early diagnosis, actually, I just want to say like, is really important in formal
00:28:33.500
diagnosis. And that's what Malcolm got. And it made a big difference that we're doing that with our
00:28:37.280
kids because studies at like a lot of really consistent research research has shown that
00:28:42.220
children, for example, diagnosed with, with autism spectrum disorder or other developmental
00:28:46.120
disabilities at a younger age tend to experience less impairment in cognitive, social, and adaptive
00:28:52.120
functioning than those diagnosed later in life. So the sooner, the better. One study found that
00:28:57.760
toddlers diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder between 25 and 41 months were more severely impaired
00:29:03.660
across multiple domains than those diagnosed earlier. So like, we're even talking really
00:29:09.040
young. 25 months is pretty young. So like the earlier, the better. And then early intervention
00:29:15.440
and support during critical neurodevelopmental windows is linked to better outcomes. So one,
00:29:21.360
like it actually does make a difference with some things. And in terms of the benefits you get,
00:29:27.520
we're going to talk about the U S because it would be too complicated for us to go country
00:29:31.460
by country for the benefits you get. And also so many countries have like, you know, state medic
00:29:36.840
medicine, but this doesn't matter the same way, but in the USA where healthcare is insanely expensive,
00:29:42.460
children with physical intellectual or developmental disabilities, including serious mental health
00:29:47.700
disorders can, can qualify for Medicaid, which is basically state healthcare, like nationalized
00:29:54.680
healthcare. Um, even if their family income would otherwise exceed typical thresholds, because typically
00:30:00.080
Medicaid is only for people at or below the poverty level. So for example, two of our sons are diagnosed
00:30:07.720
with autism and are, when we were told that we were told like, well, this, this means that, you know,
00:30:15.300
if you are formally diagnosed with your kids, they will be given supplementary insurance from the state
00:30:20.460
that will pay for ABA therapy that, that would not be covered by your insurance, which is huge because
00:30:27.680
we can't afford that. I just learned that people are total retards about ABA therapy and they get
00:30:35.040
all defensive about it. And it's like, it's teaching you to mask. Like, yeah, unfortunately, Simone's
00:30:40.640
autistic, right? Like you would say, you need to know how to mask. You don't get to make the world live.
00:30:45.320
And this is the other thing. I don't go out in the world and say, you need to live by my rules.
00:30:51.220
Right. I'm going to find a way to change myself so that I can work within your systems. Yeah. Right.
00:30:58.040
You know, you have to acknowledge that like, unless you have the privilege of living a totally isolated
00:31:02.260
life, you are going to need to know how to like go to the DMV and get something or possibly navigate
00:31:09.540
a university or, or an office. I mean, this is becoming increasingly irrelevant, which is why
00:31:14.580
we're less and less worried about autism as a trait. And we actually think it's advantageous
00:31:19.400
because we kind of, you know, techno feudal world, people aren't going to need to all work
00:31:24.600
at a big office and like mask so much, but ABA is necessary.
00:31:29.300
Push back on here. They're going to be talking about onto them. Well, some people with autism
00:31:33.680
are like severely disabled. And we're like, we're not talking about them. Right. Like,
00:31:37.320
but like people who are actually mentally disabled, first of all, a few things here. I don't think
00:31:43.000
it's particularly worse to be disabled because of some named disability outside of just being
00:31:49.380
incredibly stupid, which does count you as a disability if you're of a below a certain IQ
00:31:54.580
level. But really that can just be random genetic variation, right? Yeah. If you lack
00:32:00.460
the intelligence to compete within the system that exists, you lack the intelligence to compete
00:32:04.900
within the system that exists. Yeah. And very, there's very little the system can do to get
00:32:10.080
around that. Yeah. Really sucks. Yeah. There's, yeah, there's not a whole lot that can be done in
00:32:15.500
that case. I mean, it's, it's more about communities and governments finding a place
00:32:19.280
or a way to help those people still live productive and happy and fulfilling lives.
00:32:23.280
But back to this, this state supplemented healthcare, I learned recently, cause I thought
00:32:29.060
this only applied to ABA therapy. Yeah. No, we can just use that as supplementary insurance
00:32:35.180
and have it pay for anything. Our, our employer-based insurance doesn't cover,
00:32:41.520
which is basically nothing because we have a family level deductible. This is the amount that
00:32:45.240
you pay out of pocket before your insurance kicks in of $16,000, which we can't afford.
00:32:51.120
So there've been many times where like, we haven't taken our kids to the emergency room because we're
00:32:56.100
like, well, we can't afford it. Like we will never financially recover from this. And now we can at
00:33:01.820
least take our boys to the emergency room because insurance will cover it. And it's because they're
00:33:07.000
autistic, even though it hasn't like, you know, them falling and bleeding profusely has nothing
00:33:11.620
to do with them being on. I mean, maybe, I mean, maybe, but that's incredible. So like, I think
00:33:18.820
there, I know actually of many parents who know that their children are autistic, but they haven't
00:33:24.480
gotten diagnosed because they're like, well, I don't want my son. No, they're like, I can't afford it.
00:33:28.540
It's like, bro, if it gets you free Medicare, that is one factor. Yeah. Getting, getting diagnosed can
00:33:34.120
take a really long time because wait lists in the U S are very long for diagnosis and it is expensive.
00:33:37.960
It can cost like 500. I mean, do you remember what I had to do to get them diagnosed? I booked
00:33:45.180
at like a place in like a really rural area, like two and a half hours away. Yeah. It took us a long
00:33:50.180
time to drive there. I constantly was looking for new practices. It was a new practice in the middle
00:33:54.360
of nowhere. Yeah. And it costs a lot of money. So it is difficult, but the bigger reason I hear from
00:33:59.700
parents who've like signaled that they didn't do this was they didn't want their children to
00:34:04.060
grow up with the stigma. Like they didn't want, you know, it's so funny that you know this when
00:34:09.060
it's the exact antithesis of the way that I was raised. I know exactly. My parents always let me
00:34:14.620
know about all the diagnoses I had. So they, they clearly let me know about all of these. What they
00:34:20.540
did not do is I was, I was not allowed when I took a state IQ test or state, you know, the tests that
00:34:29.160
would like rank you and stuff like that. Yeah. Uh, my parents had a strict policy of never letting
00:34:34.100
me see my score. So you were never allowed to see how like successful you were only how
00:34:38.840
only where I was failing. Yeah. Because they didn't want me to like, to go to your head.
00:34:44.560
One of those people who like grows up thinking that I guess, I mean, it wasn't a secret to me.
00:34:49.620
I was put in the gifted program and everything. I was scoring. I wasn't like they, they should have
00:34:57.240
thought, okay, if he's scoring near the top, he knows the reason we're hiding this is because
00:35:01.500
your mom was onto something there though, because research has shown that telling kids that they're
00:35:05.460
very smart can lead them to take fewer challenges on because they identify as being smart and any,
00:35:11.300
any chance where maybe they, they don't come out on top or get the answer. Right. Is, is a risk
00:35:17.520
to their identity. And that is too scary and threatening for them. So instead parents are
00:35:21.940
encouraged to say things like you tried so hard, you worked so hard. My parents did back then.
00:35:26.600
Yeah. So they'd have me do like testing, right? Like, like standardized testing. And obviously I do
00:35:31.540
the testing that the other kids would do, but I'd also do college level testing. I'd go into like
00:35:39.580
college level testing things and I'd be the one little kid in this giant room of like high schoolers.
00:35:45.420
Uh, and I, I only remember, I, I mean, I didn't do spectacularly on those back then. I remember I'd
00:35:51.320
come in because those, I was allowed to see. I'd come in like 80%. Amazing. But I mean, still,
00:35:56.200
I said, you know, when you're in middle school, that's pretty good. That's very impressive. Yeah.
00:36:00.960
100%. But anyway, so like, don't, don't be retarded about your kids and not get them diagnosed
00:36:06.480
because of stigma, because depending on how you contextualize it, there won't be any, it can be
00:36:11.240
an advantage to them. And you can get, and cause it's hard to get good healthcare in the United
00:36:16.320
States. Like that is an amazing benefit. And as long as that exists and you know, check it varies
00:36:20.960
by state, but still another thing you can get is if your child qualifies for that kind of subsidized
00:36:26.000
healthcare, they also qualify for what's called able accounts, which are their tax advantaged accounts.
00:36:31.040
So if you just in a normal account in the United States, invest money, like for your kids,
00:36:36.340
you're going to be taxed on the income that that money makes like the dividends, able accounts don't
00:36:41.720
tax the dividends. So your kid basically gets more money when you save it for them. Those accounts
00:36:46.220
are supposed to be a statistic that came from a piece called more workers consider themselves
00:36:51.140
neurodivergent. So 53% of Gen Z employees identify as neurodivergent.
00:36:56.340
Only 11% had received an official diagnosis. 86% of a hundred hiring managers told them that they
00:37:07.440
viewed neurodivergent disclosures as having either a positive or neutral impact on an application.
00:37:14.260
They are more, I mean, they're basically signaling that they're in the urban monoculture.
00:37:18.300
Yeah. Yeah. I'm educated and therefore, and like self-aware and therefore I'm a better hire.
00:37:23.940
What's interesting is the person who invented this concept of neurodivergence was only referring
00:37:29.380
basically to Asperger's. And she hates the fact that it has now just been used as this like broad
00:37:35.680
umbrella term. Like she does not consent. She hates it. Yes. But then also when we've touched
00:37:42.360
on these other benefits that there are, that you can get extra time and extra accommodations on exams as
00:37:47.120
you had the typing thing and you had the extra time. So 100%, like you can get in, you, you even got to
00:37:52.960
go to different exam rooms. Like to know. Oh yeah. I got to do private exam rooms because
00:37:57.660
I need an extra time. Cause like for me, that was a big stressor. It's like, like Jimmy over here is
00:38:04.100
mouth breathing and the clock. I'm here in a private room on amphetamines with additional time.
00:38:10.360
With a keyboard. Cause I also remember my hands cramping, the pencil going dull, like, I mean,
00:38:17.500
come on. It's like, why wouldn't you want to give your kid that benefit? There are even things like
00:38:21.800
special, special needs trusts for, for kids with qualifying disabilities, their educational plans.
00:38:27.500
Like our, our, our son who's in kindergarten has all these additional teachers who come give him
00:38:33.500
special attention. You know? So like we're, we're in these like large public school classrooms, but,
00:38:37.780
but then he has like his, his minder who gives him extra attention and like, he gets to go off here.
00:38:42.360
And, and funny that you remember this. I just remembered as well. So another disability I had
00:38:48.120
growing up. I had to go to separate classes for speech therapy. Oh, speech therapy. Yeah. I had a,
00:38:56.160
I had a lisp. So I had to go to speech therapy. I would go to the, I also, for a period was in the
00:39:02.440
disabled class. You were not. My mom was so mad. Cause I was there with the actual retards.
00:39:07.500
And she, she got so mad at me for getting put in that class. And I was like, I don't know,
00:39:14.660
like this is where I am. So then I go from there to the gifted program.
00:39:19.680
Well, and that's so like, if she were, if she were a parent of you today, she would call you 2E,
00:39:25.780
AKA twice exceptional. I know it's, it's so cringe. It's so, yeah, that's okay. We're going to put that
00:39:31.080
in the retarded category of disability, twice exceptional, but I want to go back actually,
00:39:36.360
just to just the, the, the, the damage you can do by contextualizing your disability as a bad thing,
00:39:44.460
because context is important. So we're like, yes, get your kid diagnosed. Yes. Get yourself
00:39:48.180
diagnosed. Yes. Get accommodations. Yes. Absolutely play the system, but don't view it as an actual
00:39:54.580
thing that cripples you. Cause I can't emphasize enough like people and people don't talk about
00:39:59.640
this enough, the nocebo effect, just how powerful it is. So there's, there's a lot of evidence that
00:40:05.500
suggests the nocebo effect, which is basically like, so the placebo effect is where someone tells
00:40:10.300
you something's going to help and it, it helps you. Um, even if it doesn't, it's like, whatever,
00:40:15.360
like the pill they give you is totally inert. The nocebo effect is the opposite. If they're like,
00:40:19.000
oh, this, this cream is going to make your skin burn. And it does, even though it's just like
00:40:23.980
water or lotion. Right. So experimental research demonstrates that nocebo effects,
00:40:31.340
the impact of negative expectations are consistently stronger and more persistent than
00:40:36.100
placebo effects. So healthy volunteers induced with negative expectations. In one example,
00:40:42.260
rated their pain much higher over multiple sessions with this amplification lasting at least a week,
00:40:47.840
almost double the impact seen with placebo suggestions. The nocebo effect is that it's
00:40:52.760
actually strong enough to cause real and serious medical conditions and side effects to require
00:40:58.340
hospital care or even contribute to fatalities. So people have literally died from the nocebo effect.
00:41:05.680
Um, explain this, uh, people, because they believe they have these problems, they start to experience
00:41:13.300
real symptoms. We talk about this a lot in our spoonies episode. Um, spoonies being people who
00:41:18.740
self-diagnose with very difficult to diagnose and largely invisible illnesses. And the argument that
00:41:26.060
your body will react to that. Yeah. Yeah. Because a lot of people are like, oh, spoonies,
00:41:29.880
they don't actually feel anything. No, they feel something they're suffering. They have very,
00:41:34.360
very serious problems. Like they are, they are in pain. They cannot move. They cannot get up. Like
00:41:39.160
everything that they say they're experiencing because of the nocebo effect they're actually
00:41:44.100
experiencing. And here's the problem is, okay. So let's say, you know, you, you self-diagnose
00:41:49.600
with some kind of disability, you probably don't have it like 19 to 38% of the self-diagnoses are
00:41:56.020
correct. The rest are not, but you are still going to experience all the problems. And the problem is
00:42:02.700
that a lot of people just now have chosen to identify with their disabilities in a lot of
00:42:10.280
different ways. And you pointed out the Tourette's incident. This is for those who are not familiar
00:42:14.200
with it. In, in 2020 to 2021, clinicians and medical researchers noticed a surge in teenagers,
00:42:19.560
like, and especially adolescent girls, huh? What's going on there? Started presented like
00:42:24.940
presenting these, these onsets of tick like behaviors after extensive viewing of TikTok and
00:42:30.280
YouTube influencers who either claim to have Tourette syndrome or display similar symptoms. And all
00:42:35.380
these studies started documenting that many teens develop not only comparable tips, ticks. So like,
00:42:41.580
you know, like most people with Tourette's have their own thing, but these people all have the
00:42:46.040
same thing and very specific vocalizations and movements that directly mimicked those of social
00:42:51.520
pop, like popular social media influencers, like basically Tourette's influencers. So very,
00:42:57.300
very rare things. And many that weren't even really symptomatic of Tourette's, like it,
00:43:01.820
so it was someone faking Tourette's on social media, causing other people to fake the same kind of
00:43:07.520
fake Tourette's. But then I'm, you know, surely also experiencing true adverse effects for the
00:43:13.200
nocebo effect. So they, they, they describe this phenomenon as mass sociogenic illness being spread
00:43:19.600
with, it used to just be physical proximity, right? Like those villages who dance themselves to death,
00:43:23.800
right? But now it, it spreads on social media. So it's a much bigger issue and, and similar patterns
00:43:29.360
have been noticed with other conditions. A lot of people are identifying with ADHD, with autism,
00:43:34.960
with disassociative identity disorder. And that's really bad. It's really bad. And there are even
00:43:41.140
like renegade versions of people who are very clearly actually disabled, but, and who are trying
00:43:48.480
to like push back against, I guess you could say disability pedestalization who are still getting
00:43:53.920
it wrong. So I had brought up to you Cripple Punk and it's much older. It's not a 2020s thing. It started
00:44:00.280
by, it was started actually by a specific Tumblrina called Tyler Treywella. Basically that it started
00:44:06.300
with just one post. Treywella posted a selfie with a cane and a lit cigarette and labeled it Cripple
00:44:12.020
Punk. Um, and, and just added, I'm starting a movement and a movement was started and it's all
00:44:17.760
about direct, like Cripple Punk is about direct, directly abandoning, like the hang in there kitten
00:44:24.240
inspirational poster version of Cripple People where like, you know, people post videos of adults
00:44:30.780
with Down syndrome and are like, what inspiration, what a blessing. And it's like, I am not your
00:44:35.720
mascot. I am not your inspiration. And it's, it's this idea that disabled people exist for themselves.
00:44:43.160
You know, it's about being proud of who they are. But like, the problem is that I think as much as
00:44:47.660
Cripple Punk, like kind of moves in a good direction of like, I'm taking ownership. I'm not
00:44:53.360
embarrassed about what I am. They don't take it a step further and say, and here's my advantage of
00:45:00.080
being a cripple. You know, it was a lot of this stuff. It's, it's, it's the way you should actually
00:45:06.440
be there. Like, how should you actually be related to it? Then just don't relate to it. It doesn't
00:45:11.140
matter. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, if you don't see it as a superpower, don't relate to it at all.
00:45:16.380
Whatever disability you have, right. It is irrelevant. Usually when contrasted with
00:45:23.020
other genetic traits that you can't identify it with. So for example, right. Um, you know,
00:45:29.740
suppose you can't use your legs or something like this. Would you trade five points, 10 points of
00:45:36.040
IQ for your legs back? Like nobody would, nobody would at the end of the day, just intelligence,
00:45:42.160
except for maybe somebody who's already very stupid. But at the end of the day,
00:45:46.080
it's all just intelligence, right? Like no matter how much you have sort of standing in your way
00:45:51.120
at the end of the day, it's all intelligence combined with agenticness, combined with work
00:45:55.840
ethic, combined with an ability to think outside the box. Yeah. Like resourcefulness. I mean,
00:45:59.420
really like having a disability is about being aware of where you deviate from societal norms
00:46:04.660
or like the mainstream way people handle things and learning how to adapt to those environments,
00:46:09.060
like through, you know, special testing or medication or whatever it may be. And then also learning
00:46:14.620
how to create and benefit from friendly environments, like environments in which
00:46:18.280
your unique configuration of car thrives. And that's it. Like, don't, don't, don't identify
00:46:24.540
with it. Otherwise don't get a fake internet diagnosis, get a formal diagnosis. If you really
00:46:29.480
need one to get the medications, to get the special accommodations you need and only, only use your
00:46:36.000
differences to achieve more, not less like this idea of, of allowing a disability to give you an external
00:46:40.840
locus of control where you blame everything on your disability is, is the worst. If you approach it
00:46:47.280
only with an internal locus of control, like, okay, how am I going to use this to my advantage? Fine.
00:46:52.040
But yeah, I, I think that that basically sums it up. I mean, you and I have adapted to our
00:46:58.840
disabilities by just creating weird schedules, mostly online lives, social isolation. Like we work from
00:47:06.380
home. We don't go out much and we live life according to our unique needs and our kids' unique
00:47:14.440
needs. So like, we don't all sit down together around a table to eat dinner. Everyone eats in
00:47:20.060
the way that like, we'll maximize the amount of nutrition they need to get, which means that
00:47:24.740
our kids are running wild or like in another room or whatever, like, and they all get their own thing.
00:47:31.240
It's like different food for everyone, but that's what it takes. And just, that's not the societal
00:47:35.780
norm. It's super not okay by most people's standards, but like it works for us. So yeah,
00:47:40.320
just build the environment that works for you and get the tools you need to navigate the hostile
00:47:45.080
environments, get your space suit. Yeah. Well, I just, I mean, we used to understand this. There,
00:47:50.440
there is a difference between the, you know, disabled person. And it's so interesting that this has
00:47:55.720
been sort of taken out of media, the disabled person who was like exceptional in spite of
00:48:01.220
their disability, which was definitely a thing in like 80s media and stuff like that.
00:48:06.960
Well, you know, we're thinking like X-Men or whatever, whatever.
00:48:12.840
But then there was the disabled person who was just like, just figured it out. It was like everyone
00:48:18.900
else. I was thinking like, we were actually watching, cause I didn't even remember that they
00:48:22.600
had a guy in a wheelchair on this, the Incredible Ghostbusters cartoon. I was like, oh my God,
00:48:26.500
that's so mid nineties. Whatever happened to people in wheelchairs and shows?
00:48:29.960
And I also just don't see people in wheelchairs anymore, but like, I remember, yeah, growing
00:48:33.940
up as a kid in the nineties, like every show as their diversity thing had someone in a
00:48:42.020
And they always played basketball. Whatever reason, people in wheelchairs love playing
00:48:47.600
basketball. I know very little about being in a wheelchair, but I know it makes you great
00:48:51.820
Yeah. No, what is that? Oh my God. It's such a thing.
00:48:54.900
I don't know. One person saw it. And then like all the TV execs are like, where's the
00:48:59.840
basketball scene? He's in a wheelchair, right? You've got to show him that he's like, cool.
00:49:04.460
But the point being is if you were blind back then or whatever, you just figured it the F
00:49:09.780
out, right? And you didn't make it into this big effing thing, but now people with these
00:49:14.980
trivial disabilities are making it into this giant thing.
00:49:17.820
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So anyway, you guys have, you have the dirt on us now. You got
00:49:24.320
dirt, maybe some practical advice for those of you dyslexics who watch the show. Hope you
00:49:31.340
Yeah. I love you to that, Simone. I hope that people stop freaking, I suppose every time
00:49:37.120
you go out there and you talk about your disability or your hard childhood, know that there's a
00:49:42.600
decent chance that the person you're talking to has that plus like 10 others. And it's
00:49:48.340
secretly thinking, oh my God, this person is such a buffoon. If that was, if that's what
00:49:53.620
they tripped on, you know, rock one of 30 rocks, it flew at my face. I'm like, what a f***ing
00:50:12.600
By the way, it looks amazing. And people really enjoyed the episode today. They also
00:50:23.820
The sliders reference. They were like, oh, I just remember sliders.
00:50:27.600
Well, today's episode was one of, I think my favorites. I think it's up there in terms
00:50:30.720
of our theories with the one civilization hypothesis.
00:50:33.600
At least one other commentator said this was their favorite episode.
00:50:39.780
Yeah. And a lot of other people said they loved it. I'm just sending you.
00:50:45.520
Oh, you know how to lighten my heart. People say nice things about us.
00:50:49.660
There's one random accidental screenshot of Binance not letting businesses connect.
00:50:56.660
It looks great. Oh my gosh. I'm so excited about it. Like you wouldn't even know I'm so
00:51:01.720
excited about it. It looks good. Did you generate the images too?
00:51:05.840
Yeah. I generated the images. I got them in the backend asset folder. I connected them. I did
00:51:12.680
Vibe coding is awesome. And we're going to add that to our Patreon paid stuff for anybody who
00:51:16.260
wants to learn about how to do like vibe coding and other things like that. Because
00:51:20.040
I find it's, it's weird how, you know, inaccessible a lot of this information is when it's so important
00:51:25.320
to surviving in the modern world, but like, I don't know how to code and I just picked it
00:51:33.420
Well, and it's not just, see, I thought it would just sort of do it all for you without
00:51:38.000
you knowing really what's going on in the background. But what you're actually doing
00:51:40.800
is it's helping you learn the actual underpinnings of it, which is so cool that you're doing more
00:51:45.760
stuff manually now than I expected at all. It's, it's really awesome. Yeah. Just so FYI,
00:51:51.760
for those listening, we have paid only Patreon, VIP, Substack. Also, if you're paid on Substack,
00:51:59.080
you get these episodes, two on the weekends. We're trying to keep that up, which may be tough
00:52:03.260
given our schedules going forward, but we're going to, so far we've, we've kept an unbroken
00:52:07.620
streak. We're going to try to keep going. So if you want more, you can get more. I just have to
00:52:26.960
So instead of showing you guys a picture of our kids today, I'm going to show you a picture of one
00:52:31.300
of my old honeymoans with Simone because they showed up in Google Photos memories, but it also
00:52:35.220
shows just how weird living with somebody who has like autism like her can be, which you'll notice
00:52:40.700
that she's doing in this is she is observing the exact category of food she's about to eat.
00:52:48.120
Then she is looking up that food in her apps. Then she is putting that food on a portable scale
00:52:55.980
she brought with her so that she can calculate all of her numbers.
00:52:59.900
It's a pavlova. It's a pavlova. All right. How to do this. I think I'm just going to grab it.
00:53:10.400
Oh my God. This is going to be more to fill than I thought.