Facinating, but depressing too! How typical, that money can be found to research potential ways to make people work harder (who benefits?) but hardly anything's done to reditribute the available work so more people could be gainfully employed?
I guess to turn 'procastiating' organsims into workpholics is pretty much the agenda in medical science today. You could argue, I suppose, that Asperger & co is not diagnosed because people do not comply to social conventions. Rather, people are grown and educated - and treated by psychatrist - to make them a productive (=profitable) memeber of our (economic) society. We are not 'dosordered' biologically, nor 'sociological', but 'economically'.
There are studies in the US showing that racism does not root primarily in people's skin colour, but poeple's money. In the end, in western capitalist economies, there is a great social preassure imposing money to be the ultimate judging criteria, with all its advantages and disadvantages.
I do not intend to make a principle argument about capitlism being bad or good. I am just afraid that people will go and try to 'cure' autism and asperger as long as we are not people integrated in society that make money. This is how illness is defiened in our society today.
It is explicit in the DSM-IV: "impaired function" .. to make money!
I am afraid, that if they apply gene treatment to turn procastinating monkeys into Workaholics, what will be next for us??
There's also that we're as smart as th E-types, but don't share their values, which is perhaps something they perceive as an even greater threat.
It's that other minority (which I refer to as E-types) which drives this as they can not have enough money (by definition) nor a sufficiently large prtion of said money. It's this insatiable greed that, in part, ensures that their priority is to grab the jobs that gives them control of where the money goes (and so, as much as possible always goes to them).
Most people, NT or otherwise, hate the rat race, but the relentless propoganda keeps them at it regardless! The only way out of the loop is to run your own business. This is the real reason why the jobs that attract clever non'E's (who usually become techies of some kind) ususally pay "well". That is to say less than they are worth, but enough to discourage them from taking the risk of trying to start their own companies.
It's that other minority (which I refer to as E-types) which drives this as they can not have enough money (by definition) nor a sufficiently large prtion of said money. It's this insatiable greed that, in part, ensures that their priority is to grab the jobs that gives them control of where the money goes (and so, as much as possible always goes to them).
Most people, NT or otherwise, hate the rat race, but the relentless propoganda keeps them at it regardless! The only way out of the loop is to run your own business. This is the real reason why the jobs that attract clever non'E's (who usually become techies of some kind) ususally pay "well". That is to say less than they are worth, but enough to discourage them from taking the risk of trying to start their own companies.
But I thought you had to work very long hours if you had your own business; at least in the early years when you are getting it established. I do agree that there should be no need for so many people to work such long hours and it's obvious that a lot of places aren't putting on enough staff.
Thanks for the article. I love Wired.
If anyone cares, Dr Piers Steel has a math formula for human procrastination, called Temporal Motivational Theory.
Utility = E x V / ΓD
Expectancy a person has of succeeding with a given task (E), the value of completing the task (V), the desirability of the task (Utility), its immediacy or availability (Γ) and the person's sensitivity to delay (D).
The title of the paper is "The Nature of Procrastination: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory Failure”
This scares me because I'm afraid that the government is going to use this to make us all there slaves.
"Gene Treatment turns Monk".... That's what the homepage thing said...
Thanks for the article. I love Wired.
If anyone cares, Dr Piers Steel has a math formula for human procrastination, called Temporal Motivational Theory.
Utility = E x V / ΓD
Expectancy a person has of succeeding with a given task (E), the value of completing the task (V), the desirability of the task (Utility), its immediacy or availability (Γ) and the person's sensitivity to delay (D).
The title of the paper is "The Nature of Procrastination: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory Failure”
This could be particularly useful for parents of kids who procrastinate with chores and the like. The kids probably see the task as quite undesirable and don't see much use in doing it. This leads to the idea that putting it off isn't such a problem.
They might also doubt they can do it successfully - it wouldn't hurt for the parents to make sure the child understands exactly what is expected of them. A tick list which can be done as progressive stages are completed is helpful.
They do say it could be useful for people with schizophrenia, manias, or OCD. It seems that people with those problems have the same sort of brain chemical imbalance the monkeys had.