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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2689 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 2, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I've occasionally heard people allude to the idea that "dyslexia" isn't really a discrete medical condition, but rather a sort of cope that parents use to prevent their kid feeling bad about being a bit on the slow side, or lacking in verbal comprehension. For example, Freddie deBoer:

Let’s set aside whether dyslexia is one thing or many things and whether or not it’s simply a term that we came up with to say that some people are poor readers, as a matter of compassion.

Is there anything to this? Is dyslexia a real medical condition, or a contested one? Is it generally sensibly diagnosed by qualified professionals, or is there an epidemic of self-diagnosis muddying the water?

Dyslexia severity is dimensional, but I'm pretty sure that difficulty differentiating letters with near-congruent/similar geometry (e.g., b, d, p, and q, in this font - you can look up fonts intended for people with dyslexia) is a distinct phenomenon from other learning disorders. is what I wrote, before double-checking the wikipedia page, which I interpret as stating that dyslexia is in the "all neuro-cognitive-developmental badness is correlated" cluster of poorly studied weirdness. But why didn't you read the wikipedia page, before asking?

I did read the Wikipedia page, but I'm also distinctly aware that, for any contentious topic, Wikipedia is ideologically captured and cannot be relied upon to provide a neutral answer. If there were a lot of psychologists, psychiatrists etc. who privately agreed that dyslexia isn't a real illness, and if there was a large community of people diagnosing themselves with it, I'm not sure if I'd trust Wikipedia to say so.

I am an unaware of any large body of psychiatrists considering dyslexia not a real illness. Nobody I know in my professional life has voiced such an opinion either.

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