I was described to someone, right in front of me, as “…the sort of person who educates people involuntarily.”
this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
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Nothings better than a captive audience >:)
Yeah I’ve never thought about it until then. Now I’ve tried hard to modify my behaviour.
Or find a flock of other ADHD people that do the exact same thing.
One of my friends enjoys listening to me ramble about things in the same way you'd put an hour long YouTube video essay on
I feel like I'm in the handful of people in this world that finds this trait kinda cute. I know nothing about solving rubiks cubes, but I listened to a guy talk about it unrestrained for like 2 hours.
"Congratulations, you are being educated!"
Please don't resist.
The saddest thing is that as I get older, I find my recall starting to fail. I'm struggling more and more to pull facts I know that I know. The deluge of information coming from my yammering maw is increasingly choppy and punctuated by trying to remember exact bits of info.
Yeah, and just so that it's extra frustrating, it's not the memory (retention) that is failing as much as the recall of it.
My wife told me the most impressive and the most annoying thing about me both is the amount of random knowledge that comes out of my mouth. If only she knew how much time I spent on Wikipedia since that site became a thing. And just following links around before that...
Between Wikipedia and TV Tropes it's a miracle I have spare time
My nicknane was "walking encyclopedia" when I was a kid so that tracks.
In my undergrad I went from being a chemistry/physics double major to a biochemist and finally finished my chemistry degree. (I am not far from having 3 degrees) I studied ASL, German and Japanese, modded video games and competed in a semiprofessional starcraft league. I wrote instrument guides and procedures for undergrads, contributed to papers on bioremediation, synthesized nanoparticles using genetically engineered enzymes. I developed a method for a plant alkaloid assay and a new way to reduce noise in an experiment designed to measure the rate of certain reactions that occur in extremely diluted systems. i.e single or double digit number of molecules in the entire sample.
Now I tutor college students in chemistry, physics, math and biology and work on computational chemistry projects.
Could I borrow your ability to productively function for 3-5 years? I need to clean up a decade of wasted time real quick
"Inhumanely" fast is right.
"Uh, sub- or super- ?"
"Yes"
Trust me, you don't want this. It took me 15 years to finish my degree. I was diagnosed in my last semester right before the pandemic started after having a mental breakdown and subsequent year of therapy. It turns out it wasn't (clinical) anxiety and depression, it was ADHD.
As a kid, my grandfather used to say I knew everything.. not seriously, but I sure thought I knew everything.
Checkmate papa.
Friends started to make bets that within 5 minutes of any conversation, I'll perk up and say excitedly, "I researched that!" And then bring up obscure, detailed facts. I don't like that I can be so predictable.... But wait, you ask, did the three fates have names? Well, I only know the Greek version, but there were Roman fates, fates in other cultures, woah, that made me think of Romulus and Remus for some reason, I read a fascinating book about them... 2 minutes later we are talking about the rise and fall of Rome, and the geopolitical realities of some obscure eastern European country in the spring of 1654.
You say "predictable", I say "effective brand image". I'm not joking, being known for things that you like doing is a pretty effective strategy to select for the kind of people who enjoy your infodumps.
That's trivia night for me. I get my question, everyone looks at me bemused, there's no way you know that, and I prattle off whatever answer comes to my head. Usually I'm dead on
Everything I know about the three fates I learned from playing Hades.
mutual infodumping is fun
At dinner with my friend tonight I tried explaining quantum entanglement and also explained the double split experiment. Then I went on a long tangent about how we are probably in a simulation.
Holy hell. In the past few days, I've been thinking a lot about quantum physics, the observer effect, the double slit experiment, how misunderstanding leads to a lot of confusion, quantum woo, quantum mysticism. Ive literally been practicing how to explain these things to a lay person. That, for instance, the observer effect, it has nothing to do with a human observing.
Anyhow, hello from my equally nerdy side of the universe.
Please tell me how you explain it without just reading the wiki directly to them. Also the observer effect is so crazy that it keeps me up tonight. I feel like I'm in a simulation because it doesn't make sense to me.
I dont understand everything about quantum physics. I'm trying to learn. It reminds me about chaos theory and the properties of closed dynamic systems.
Rough analogy. Imagine a small fresh water aquarium. Exact size, always same location. Indoors, water temperature same. Same terrain on the bottom. Only 4 fish, simple behavior.
If you try to predict where a certain fish will be at an exact time, can do so with high accuracy.
But now... aquarium can change size. Freshwater. Saltwater. Sometimes indoors, other times outside. More effected by external forces. And fish behavior is way more complicated. At one temp, fish is a gas. Another temp, solid. Another fish in one setting behaves as particle , other settings, as a wave.
There's also a chaotic element in the aquarium, randomness, chance.
Try to predict the exact physical location of a specific fish at a specific point in time... you can't. What you can do is track patterns, trends over time. Expressed mathematically, you take into account various variables, environmental forces, etc. End result: equation says that a specific fish's location at a specific point in time is a range of possible locations, possible states.
Some people incorrectly think us observing the fish causes it to be at that location. Nope.
This abstract superimposed multiple states thing is a math concept. But this can be confused with a separate tenet of quantum physics, the observer effect.
First double slit experiment was 1800s. Proved light was both particle and wave. In 1900s, scientists recreated this experiment with other elements. Electrons, etc. They realized other elements behaved the same. In one experiment, trying to figure out what was causing this behavior, they built tiny detectors, put it at one of the slits. Electron(?) stopped behaving as a wave, behaved as a particle. They removed the detector, wave behavior resumed.
The observer effect has nothing to do with human observation, human perception. All it means, when something is measured, it can change.
Here in the larger macro world, you've got a beam of wood. Get a tape measure to measure it. Hook metal tab at one end, run tape along wood to other end.
Rough analogy here... when tape measure hooks onto wood edge, a few molecules are shaved off. But it's so infinitesimal. Doesn't matter. But descend into quantum realm, where stuff is way tiny, and the tiny difference becomes huge.
So, with our limited scientific knowledge, we measure stuff, it changes it. Cuz of the clumsiness, imprecision of our instruments.
Semantically, observer effect can mean, anytime 2 things meet, they can effect each other. If a tree falls in the forest and no humans to witness it, it still makes a sound.
No idea if I'm understanding any of this correctly.
Sorry it took this long to reply. This message was daunting for an ADHD mind like myself.
Thanks for all this insight. I honestly learn alot from this.
If the person is unlucky, I am firehose mode...
I tend to accumulate seemingly random know-how and info but it is all easily traced back to interests and projects. (Assuming i can remember where I learned it ...)
"How do you know this tailgate comes from a 1987-1991 Jeep Grand Wagoneer and why?"
My wife is still amazed that I know the make and model of every car by the headlight's light beams from the view mirror. My knowledge goes back to the mid 80s.
I'm in a bit of a similar situation. I like to get mad at people who drive witg their lights off when it's raining and I've memorized which cars have their tail lights off when the daytime running lights are on so I know which ones to flash my highbeams at and which ones can be seen by people behind them.
I'm like Cliff Clavin from Cheers except I'm not full of shit. At least not completely.
... Fucking called out damn
Why is this associated with ADHD? I feel like I do this sometimes. (I don't have ADHD I think? Maybe I have some very very mild symptoms at best)
Easily distracted and bored = binging wikipedia and any other reading material you find interesting when you should be doing literally anything else. Combine that with poor impulse control and now you're metaphorically strapping people into chairs and taping their eye lids open for your 6 hour lecture on random things you learned that week.
I have autism and love Wikipedia
Yeah, I do the hyperfixation thing but don't have ADHD (I assume, since I can't focus on more than one thing at a time).
Typical neurodivergent answer
What you said makes no sense
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