Comments on Existence is Wonderful: Like It Or Not, Everyone Needs Stuff

Or what about cost in time and attention as well? ...

2008-05-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

Or what about cost in time and attention as well? When M was in school other parents were upset that "children like her" were taking up more of the teachers time and attention. Needless to say I was less than pleased with these comments. I have even heard some of my own friends say comments like this to me about their child's class. Needless to say most regret letting it slip from their mouths the moment they say it! I don't keep quiet.

Yokomizo: Thanks, I had wondered if it was some ki...

2008-05-07T14:54:00.000-07:00

Yokomizo: Thanks, I had wondered if it was some kind of Bell curve.

@kakalina: A gaussian distribution is a statistica...

2008-05-06T17:03:00.000-07:00

@kakalina: A gaussian distribution is a statistical artifact. Basically a distribution (in this sense) can be seen as the percentage of things that have a certain value. If we use things to be people and the value to be IQ (for example), we'll see that some people fall in the middle range, some before and some after. If the distribution is a gaussian then it is shaped like a bell, with very few people on each side and most of the people under the main part of the curve. Actually it can't be any kind of bell curve, because a gaussian has many important properties that defines it, particularly it says how much percentage falls under a certain range of values given a number that can be calculated from the distribution. The Wikipedia article is quite good, but it is technical.

Theoretically things that are produced by random processes tend to follow this distribution, so it's found in many places, probably definitions of "normalcy" that can be measured objectively will follow this distribution. So my point was that if we optimize the costs for the middle of the curve and the middle is too narrow we end up driving up the costs to both sides of the curve and the cost will most probably be a reversed gaussian.

Nick:People don't like it when their group is excl...

2008-05-06T15:39:00.000-07:00

Nick:

People don't like it when their group is excluded, so it would have to be when being excluded very bad (like in this case).

tarleton: how on earth is "disabled people" a well...

2008-05-06T14:44:00.000-07:00

tarleton: how on earth is "disabled people" a well-defined group?

yokomizo: What is a gaussian distribution? I understand what you're saying about social cost, though. Have you heard about Martha's Vineyard, and Nicaragua? At Martha's Vineyard they were once completely isolated, and about 96% of the people (hearing) learned sign language from birth so that the other deaf 4% of the population could live a completely normal and non-ostracized lifestyle. In Nicaragua, the deaf students over a certain number of generations developed a complete Sign Language all on their own, completely non-artificial (which is usually the case with sign languages). Sort of throws the idea that disabled people are incapable somehow to the wind, doesn't it? ;)

I think peco is asking what the difference is betw...

2008-05-06T08:09:00.000-07:00

I think peco is asking what the difference is between excluding some well-defined group (say "disabled people") and excluding an equal number of randomly selected individuals representative of the whole population.

Peco, I don't understand what you are asking. All...

2008-05-05T18:38:00.000-07:00

Peco, I don't understand what you are asking. All groups are made up of individuals.

Your question sounds to me like something along the lines of: "How is excluding a 10 apples (from anything) much worse than excluding 10 individual apples?"

And that doesn't make sense.

How is excluding a group (from anything) much wors...

2008-05-05T15:53:00.000-07:00

How is excluding a group (from anything) much worse than excluding the same number of individuals if the consequences of the exclusion are much more serious than the injustice the group members feel?

Just a few remarks:@annec: I've been reading your ...

2008-05-05T07:01:00.000-07:00

Just a few remarks:
@annec: I've been reading your blog for a while and knew that it was an assumption you didn't believe. I was trying to strengthen your case by providing an argument against the core assumption.

@kakalina: Yes, trying to enforce some notion of normality ends up costing more and being less efficient in some cases. Unfortunately our culture seems to value similarity too much, so "different" people are seem as worse than "normal" people, so there's a social cost to being different that some see as higher than the costs to "become normal". Ironically most people aren't normal, as they tend to populate all the areas under the curve of possibilities, so we don't have a binary choice of 1% of the people paying a lot more so 99% can pay less, but we have a distribution of people paying more than necessary just because the average person (which usually is a very small population) pays their minimal. If we assume a gaussian distribution of normalcy for any kind of possible axis (e.g. hearing, autism, IQ) we usually see a inverse gaussian of the costs, so at average point the cost is the smallest possible (in the current societal structure) but the cost increases to both of the sides, so the total sum of cost curve (which is the integral of the curve) should be minimized, not the point in the middle, but we are skewed towards the middle because of this fiction that 99% of the people are in the middle.

Modern Society seems to have been organized in suc...

2008-05-04T14:17:00.000-07:00

Modern Society seems to have been organized in such a way that what matters is not it’s understandable complexity, but rather its perceived simplicity.

yokomizo--you're right, high cost is more of a presumption on the part of so-called "normal people" than it is reality. To my bitter amusement, it actually costs a family more to have a hard of hearing child than an entirely deaf child. All costs go towards adjusting the child so she can operate in a hearing culture (i.e. hearing aids, speech therapy, microphone system, etc.). It's much less traumatic on the child to just teach her sign language and request an interpreter for class (even if it does require an adjustment period for the parents--it will be an adjustment for the better). It irritates me to no end that many parents seem to automatically percieve a disabled child as a constant hindrance.

abfh: Thanks for the clarification -- I've edited ...

2008-05-04T13:03:00.000-07:00

abfh: Thanks for the clarification -- I've edited things to better reflect the inclusiveness of your statement.

Thanks Anne. Good point about the unimaginativene...

2008-05-04T11:27:00.000-07:00

Thanks Anne. Good point about the unimaginativeness of the "oh well, we can't change prejudice anyway" attitude. Years ago, when I wondered what the 21st century might be like, I certainly wasn't expecting people to be so apathetic.

BTW, the "us" in my post was intended in a general sense to refer to people who have various disability labels, not just to autistics exclusively, as the post was written for Blogging Against Disablism Day.

Daniel said:But do "different" people really cost ...

2008-05-04T08:51:00.000-07:00

Daniel said:

But do "different" people really cost more than "normal" people when we count all costs (I quote both different and normal because there's rarely a normal or different person in totally, most of the time people have some "normal" behavior and some "different" ones)?

I don't actually think so, honestly -- that's sort of part of the "complexity" thing I was referring to in my postscript.

I was just trying to acknowledge that yes, costs for caring for some kinds of people are higher for individuals right now because of the way things are set up. Just as you say, the costs incurred to support the lives of so-called "normal" people are really heavily "absorbed".

This is even more obvious when you look at people who are really wealthy (and who were perhaps "born into money") -- those folks can often lead pretty extravagant lifestyles, so that the cost of living for them is actually similar to (or higher than) what it would cost in the present socioeconomic situation to support someone who is "different" in some way. So it really is a cultural problem and not actually a "not enough resources" problem, and I really wish people would stop talking like it's some kind of zero sum game to take care of some people, but not others.

Part of the problem is also that services aren't individualized enough, and in some cases, the services offered can both (a) not work, and (b) be more expensive than something that actually would work. E.g., say you have a kid who is really sensitive to noise -- right now I'd guess a fair number of "professionals" would probably recommend something like intensive behavioral therapy to make him stop covering his ears, or medication to sedate him so he won't react, rather than something cheap and practical like plain old earplugs.

IMO, if anything is driving up costs in places where they might otherwise be lower, it's ignorance about (a) what people actually need and (b) what certain kinds of people are actually like.

But do "different" people really cost more than "n...

2008-05-04T08:27:00.000-07:00

But do "different" people really cost more than "normal" people when we count all costs (I quote both different and normal because there's rarely a normal or different person in totally, most of the time people have some "normal" behavior and some "different" ones)? While it may seem so, such calculations usually hide the externalities caused by normality support. I find difficult to assert one way or the other because current society developed a huge infrastructure to "normal" people be more efficient but it may reduce the efficiency of other groups by so much that the overall efficiency is suboptimal.