Reply to Wall Street Journal on rampant growth in percentage of college students with “disabilities”

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]People with disabilities aren't inherently inferior to you.  Using a computer instead of a pencil to type an essay isn't cheating any more than using a ramp instead of the stairs is cheating. [b] Having simply average working memory isn't going to make a surgeon botch a surgery. [/b] Using a calculator isn't going to doom an engineer into a life of professional ineptitude.  Having dyslexia doesn't mean that a writer won't become a best seller or a financier won't succeed so wildly that he becomes a household name.  Having ADHD and dropping out of college doesn't mean a person won't create a start up and become filthy rich.  And a single test that arbitrarily penalizes anyone with atypical strengths and weaknesses in no way justifies withholding future opportunities from that individual.
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Visual working memory is important to performing surgery. It's been studied in simulators.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00464-007-9287-8

It's dangerous to make claims consistent with what you want to believe that are not consistent with the pushback of reality.[/quote]

"Low" working memory in most cases is relative to the person's strengths.  I think it's a fairly safe assumption that someone who succeeds in the medical field has a high overall intelligence.  Two standard deviations between working memory and their strengths would still put working memory at average if not high average.  Your study shows that someone like this may not be as skilled in certain types of surgery as peers with superior or gifted range working memory.  It does not show that they would botch surgery.  Botched surgeries have much more to do with poor team dynamic and communication.
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I don't think you have performed surgery, then.[/quote]

Of course not.  I'm an engineer.  But I can read and I know the source of CRM.  You really, really want to define people by their weakest areas alone and moreover[b] you only want to talk about weak areas [/b]that impact testing.  I'm saying that first, areas of strength can more than make up for areas of weaknesses and second, the areas of weakness that you're talking about are not the dominating factor.  People with no IQ subtest disparities botch surgeries all the time because of those weaknesses, but strangely you don't want to talk about that.
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I just wrote above about intelligence, talent, and creativity in kids who previously would not have received accommodations, but should. So this is an interesting claim.

So let me ask you this -- honest question, and I'll listen to the answer. Please be honest back.

If your child (or your mom, or you) is going into surgery, are you okay with knowing that the surgeon has a simple average working memory? That the surgery won't probably not be "BOTCHED" botched, but just not as good?

For most people, not totally "botched" is not good enough. And not as good as it could be is not good enough, either. Someone with average working memory shouldn't go into surgery.[/quote]

For most types of surgery, yes.  I know people with life altering (fortunately not life-ending) results from botched surgery.  In every case it could have been prevented by the team actually caring about the patient and/or communicating better amongst themselves.  If you want the best results, you want to have a surgical team who's worked together many times in the past and have smooth communication, you want them to leave their personal lives outside the room, and you want to be scheduled earlier in the day.

I meant that while you may say the word talent, you're still defining people by their disability regardless of their talent.
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