He concluded not, and driven crazy by his terrible situation, decided to throw in his lot with the devil worshippers, and sold his soul to Santa.
Happy holidays!
I’m sure that Dyslexia is a real impediment that afflicts some people. But, it just seems that I hear, “I am dyslexic” or “my child has dyslexia” a little too often to reflect the actual pervasiveness of the affliction.
I suspect that it is oftentimes used to mask stupidity.
Nevermind. Probably over the line.
You know, even if someone has a really low IQ and struggles across the board at all sorts of mental activity (as opposed to just struggling with a specific activity like reading), I still think it’s pretty obnoxious to call them “stupid.” It’s just a rude word, like calling an overweight person a “fatso” or something. Totally uncalled for.
Plus, I always suspect that people who feel the need to put others down in this way are compensating for something. Frankly, I doubt you’re any genius yourself.
So you read the OP, too?
I do wish you’d get to your point. Are you arguing that no money should be spent on learning disabilities, since in your view the bulk of these disabilities are fake, or what?
sey I nca edra hawt oyu tower ubt I hkitn uyo lexpame si ilrsyuose dwelfa dan frectlse oryu sabi.
Wosoh!
Still don’t get it. Sorry, I’m dense – not sure why you pulled out the Cambrige University part and gave it special attention as a smoking gun.
I thought it was a “gotcha!” – IOW, that Cambridge University wasn’t really called “Cambridge University”, and that any legit studies coming from there would be attributed to “Cambridge College of XYZ” or something. But Wikipedia struck that idea down.
So I dunno. Begbert’s post didn’t address what was so special about the “Cambridge University” reference.
EDIT: another way to explain it – why is the following true?
It does? Simply because it’s referring to too prestigious of an institution?
bordelond: The fact that Cambridge did such a study is an urban legend. Cambridge did no such study. This little paragraph gets trotted out every now and then, and the first response is often some asshole who, instead of discussing the “scrambled words phenomenon,” will just take issue with the assertion that the study was done at Cambridge, thus dismissing the entire topic. Not to put words in her mouth, but N,S seems to have taken issue with this out-of-hand dismissal.
Thank you. I’m glad that sombeody got it.
OK … so there’s nothing special about the Cambrige reference on its own, separated from the dyslexia-study urban legend, correct? It’s not like dozens of false Cambridge University studies being trotted out to all corners of the Internet so that when you see “Cambridge University” connected to ANYTHING, you can be sure it’s an UL, right?
EDIT: Thanks for taking the time to explain, Randy.
I thought it was just being overly specific that makes it suspect. That is, it’s easy to fact-check when you put in details like that. Hell, it even makes it more googlable (love that word) and thus, easier to come across Snopes, for example.
Yeah, that’s how I feel about liberals who call Sarah Palin “stupid”. She is obviously not stupid, but compared to Sarah Palin, the average liberal is lacking and must feel the need to compensate.
No, just borderline, but then, like Sarah Palin, I’m also better looking than most and physically stronger than most. Now, let’s hear you compensate.
This. Fortunately, most of us (myself included) don’t have it. I would imagine it is very frustrating for those that do have it.
There is no such thing as a study by “Cambridge University”, because that university is made up of independent colleges rather than being a single entity (and on the occasions that it needs to be referred to as a whole, it’s usually “the University of Cambridge” instead).
A student would be said to be attending Trinity College, say, or more vaguely “Cambridge”, meaning that collection of colleges. But not “Cambridge University”. Research programmes would be conducted by the individual colleges rather than by the university as a whole.
This brings to mind the fellow who thought he had daily sex.
Please, tell us more about how awesome you are! Regale us with tales of Paleface the Borderline Genius and his Inherent Majesty! How much can you bench? Probably like 800lbs I bet! Do you have a strong jawline? Ha! Why am I even asking you that? I know you do! I bet your cheekbones are really defined! Man, this is great! This is just great! Tell me more! Don’t be shy, I know you’re probably a very humble man but we’re so very excited to know everything so just go crazy and give us all the inside scoop! Wow!!!
Well, do you have a cite to back up your suspicion? Now that it’s been explained to you that the paragraph in your OP is not related in any significant way to the problems that actual dyslexics face in learning to read, do you have any genuine evidence to support your claims in this debate? Do you have specific facts and figures about over-diagnosis of dyslexia?
Because if you do, it’s appropriate in a debate thread to cite them. If you don’t, it’s appropriate to admit candidly that you don’t really know what you’re talking about.
By the way, another dissimilarity between your OP paragraph and the experiences of actual dyslexics is that none of the individual letters in the paragraph were reversed, nor were consonants swapped in an ambiguous way.
That is, you may be feeling smug about your non-stupidity because you can easily recognize that “taht” means “that” and “phaonmneal” means “phenomenal”. However, that doesn’t mean that you could distinguish as easily between words like “dub” and “bud” or “saw” and “was”.
If you see the sentence “I saw a red-headed kid” and your eye perceives it as “I was a red-headed kid”, are you just stupid for misunderstanding the meaning?
Changing the subject to an unrelated topic like Sarah Palin, instead of providing actual evidence to support your position in this thread that you voluntarily started, kind of suggests that you’re trying to divert attention from the fact that you don’t really know what you’re talking about.
Great, but I’m afraid that here on this messageboard, we can judge your intelligence only by the content of your posts. To put it kindly, you are not exactly posting like a borderline genius in this thread.
I would like to return to the thread in support of those of us who are stupid.
We are all stupid relative to someone smarter and there can only be a few smartest. That means I’m stupid and so is pretty much everyone else.
Most of us have tacitly accepted a casual construct that intellect is one of the highest goods, that it is an accomplishment of some kind, and that having a higher intelligence somehow renders that individual superior to the next.
I submit that such a construct makes no sense and that it makes no more sense to be proud of intelligence than to be proud of being tall; no more sense to vilify the stupid than to vilify the short. Both categories are a result of an accident of birth and circumstance. It’s pretty stupid to think a smart person has achieved something by being smart. Achieved what? Being born with good genes for that particular skillset? Nor is a dyslexic with a defined problem area less stupid than someone with a non-specific mental challenge in managing the same problem area.
Aside from the practical problem of just quantifying intelligence across completely different skillsets (language, math, creative problem solving…), we have not come anywhere near figuring out how the brain works. Yet for some reason we have become more comfortable with a “clinical” label such as dyslexia over a non-clinical label such as “stupid.”
The relative palatability of a clinical diagnosis over a non-clinical one definitely promotes a tendency toward diagnosis and away from simple pejoratives. “I have a glandular disorder; I am not just fat. I have a learning disability; I am not just stupid.” But in practice there is no distinction at all, and no difference in worth as human beings or worthiness of accomplishment. The value of a clinical diagnosis lies solely in an approach to amelioration for that particular type of disability. The stupid person is no less accomplished for managing to learn something than the dyslexic, and the fact that their “disability” is less clinically defined does not render them less worthy. Furthermore, the root causes of stupidity and the root causes of dyslexia are the same: genes and circumstance.
We are a products of our genes with our circumstances layered on top. If you are brilliant and accomplished, thank your lucky stars. (It’s likely you are more stupid than you think you are, though.)
When I was a kid I read a comic book story about a guy who was such a genius he created a spaceship powered by his thoughts and found a planet of smart people he figured would be more his type. Alas; they found him so intellectually disadvantaged relative to themselves that they institutionalized him as a mentally-handicapped individual too intellectually inferior to function safely on his own. There’s a lesson in there.