We know that people in history have had conditions like Autism. However even in the present day there are stark differences in prevalence in different regions of the world with modern healthcare systems (Japan, for example).

They weren’t able to stay focused on nearly anything outside of nature, excluding things that brought them anxiety.

However , this is anecdotal. They were before that able to run a semi successful cleaning business for rental properties, with the main issue being paperwork related.

Oh, I feel this. I have ADHD and I can focus on ANYTHING, but I don't get to choose what to focus on. Some days, my body decides I get to focus on Jira - and then my Jira board gets ALL my attention. Some days, I learn a LOT about data governance or clearing out old emails.

The hardest part of ADHD is to STOP focusing on one thing so I can START focusing on the right thing.

What we're seeing since the beginning of petrochemical use in the US (50's) are clear physiology changes (specifically in males) where we're seeing a reduction in physical traits associated with being a biological male of the species.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2011/03/02/134196209/study-most-plastics...

Far from distress, the rate of dissatisfaction trans people after hormonal transition is very low and is most often driven by external factors. https://www.gendergp.com/detransition-facts/

I do not see how plastics are a convincing explanation for current social trends.

Also, these sorts of studies generally look at changes at the population level - an individual won't suddenly wake up with a gender crisis from plastic exposure.

See https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/researchers-found-puberty...

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the control cohort simply stopped responding to the survey over 12 months, so there is no end to potential confounding factors causing children (who for all we know elected not to receive gender affirming care to begin with) to stop responding to a survey issued by a gender clinic, or the confounding factors that caused the others not receiving treatment to remain in the study.

https://somenuanceplease.substack.com/p/is-detransition-the-...

>>The way this question is written makes it very clear that they were primarily expecting to get answers related to “pressure” and what are sometimes called “external factors.” Of the options given, only one option is clearly an internal factor (“I realized that gender transition was not for me”).

>>However, the primary reason that this survey cannot be used to draw conclusions about the number of people detransitioning and their motives is because the 2015 US Transgender Survey was distributed amongst the trans community. It didn’t seek responses from people who detransitioned and never reidentified as transgender.

I suspect it will be a serious issue in another 20, due to not sustaining population, and then we will ban parabens.

It's alex-johns level sounding crazy but it seems true.

[0] https://www.healio.com/news/endocrinology/20120325/generatio...

Also I think we’re rediscovering the power of breath work on performance - as exemplified in the constant record beating times occurring particularly in swimming competitions.

"In 1985, men ages 20-24 had an average right-handed grip of 121 pounds and left-handed grip of 105 pounds. Today, men that age had grips of only 101 and 99 pounds, the study found. Men 25-29 posted losses of 26 and 19 pounds."

source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/13/4815909... and: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26869476/

Don’t have faith in anyone admitting anyone is right or wrong.

I guess I'm just having trouble squaring your comment away; can you elaborate/clarify your caution as it applies to Swan?

Swan's work is dubious on other scientific grounds, however. [0]

[0]: https://www.science20.com/gregory_bond/just_a_dud_swan_book_...

The point of the first part of my comment was to answer the question posed.

This is lazy reasoning - you're imputing on me arguments that I didn't make and even if I had made them, they wouldn't impact the veracity of the other claim I was making.

Edit: I don't care about my comment score, but what about thanking someone for their response and providing perspective is worth downvoting? Asking in the interest of continuing to foster discussion.

> Ah, yeah, I'd forgot about those areas having strong right-wing links.

This is taken to mean that, if there is an idea or conclusion that 'right-wing' people agree with, it is therefore wrong. And you not only think that, but you're thanking someone for reminding you to not actually look at the information objectively, but dismiss it out of hand because the _wrong people_ think it.

It's really revolting behavior.

Personally i see the heavy use of SSRI's and Ritalin etc. for kids through the same lens where societal or psychological changes should be the focus, or a culprit found instead of patching up.

The answer can't be that in the future out of a class room one half will require some dependency from a medico industrial complex, that's dystopian to me.

The difference to "back then" is that the amount of work required both in school and in later work life was far less than today. Only those with actual academic ambitions went to school for longer than eight years, the rest entered the trades and worked on a farm.

The answer will have to be a radical reform of our societies - away from turbo-capitalism that is only focused on hyper-growth and excellence, to a society that actually respects the needs of all of its citizens and nature itself. Not everyone needs to have an academic degree just for a bullshit data-entry job ffs.

[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-tick...

Break it down by race and you see totally different results. Why? You wouldn’t expect that.

>to be a good person you need to be oppressed

So you’re cool with these absurd assertions about society’s direction?

I’m being a bit reductionist, yes. But the overarching point is obvious. It’s what the church and cults have done forever: explain why you are a sinner and then offer ways to not be. But worse because in this postmodern take on cult dynamics it’s about group identity. By virtue of being born with arbitrary DNA you are classified as good or bad and kids don’t want to feel bad so “here’s a way to be good”.

It’s the grooming of jr. revolutionaries.

Your teenage years are naturally a time to "figure out who you are". The widespread acceptance and promotion of LGBT adds an extra variable that teenagers need to "figure out" for themselves.

I don’t have a source for this of course. I’m operating under the assumption that gen z has more internalized the idea of gender/sex/sexuality as a spectrum.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_DSM

I'm not sure how plastics contribute to people becoming more accepting/norms changing over time

The list goes on.

An interesting question is that would the risk of these outcomes be worth the massive amount of savings and productivity that plastics have had on nearly every industry? Then there's also the use cases where plastics are nearly irreplaceable, or at least not easily replaceable without incurring a huge cost increase for example in medical applications (think packaging for syringes, vaccines, surgical tools, or anything that requires contamination control).

It's almost impossible to get away from it. Also plastic bags, clothes shed into the environment and get eaten by fish and animals.

So maybe we all need to be vegetarian.

Source? Lyme disease is from ticks.

Uh, transgender people were scientifically known since at least the late 19th century [1]. The problem is that the Nazis eradicated all the knowledge during their reign [2], and that the Catholic Church was actively fighting against LGBT people for a very long time, even before that era (and modern-day Evangelicals in the US have taken on their mission).

What has changed in "gender and queer issues" is that this negative influence has disappeared as the public importance of the Catholic Church has waned over the last decades and that protections for LGBT people got affirmed by courts, constitutions and laws.

As for ADHD/autism: these were also known to science at least in the mid 19th century [3]. However, for a very long time the issues were not as apparent or problematic in society as they are today, mostly because most of society was working in the agricultural sector with lot less work load than modern-day turbo-capitalism requires [4].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific-Humanitarian_Commit...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissen...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struwwelpeter

[4] https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...

You know, in ancient Indian legends there are characters who one can now perceive as LGBTQ people.

Granted, the accuracy of the stories as a whole is questionable — but the very fact that such people are mentioned means the idea existed even back then.

Maybe if somebody looks deep enough they can find something similar in ancient Greek/Egyptian/Chinese literatures as well.

Just a thought. My hypothesis could totally be wrong.

The ancient greek culture is well known to have a decent prevalence of homosexuality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Greec...

gay frogs

are not pathologies

are not 'wrong'

are not just in kids, they've been in adults and kids for millenia

Please stop perpetuating such misleading tropes.