theguyonthemove
Member # 375
posted 16 February 2002

Einstein, I think, had both ADD and Dyslexia.

The ADD I think is why he believed time can speed up or slow down. When I took slow release Ritalin (Concerta) for the first time, time slowed for me and the world became more solid and less fluid. If Einstein had ADD and took coffee with a lot of caffeine or even a lot of tea with caffeine, time may have slowed down for him. It would have stimulated his front lobe blood flow and his experience of time would vary due to this effect.

That was his key insight into the theory of relativity - that time varies in different frames of reference. For an ADDer this is no surprise, for they experience it.

ADD, I will define as a genetically passed-on trait that is a lack of blood flow to the front lobe of the brain. In short, people with ADD do not have enough blood flow going through the front lobe of the brain effecting memory, organizations and transitions.

Stimulants drugs help some ADDers by stimulating increased blood flow through the front lobe of the brain. The radio dye traces of ADDers have shown this. The lack of blood flow through the front lobe of the brain is the physical sign of ADD, by a SPECT or radioactive dye trace of blood volume through the front lobe of the brain.

Aerobic exercise helps ADDers because it helps increases front lobe blood flow through the front lobe of the brain and releases anti-depressants to fight.

The question I have for you guys is: How do ADDers experience time? Does it go quick, slow or erratically?

************************************************************************ Rick Hunter
Member # 379
posted 18 February 2002

Very interesting indeed, but I must disagree. I, for example, do not feel that time is fluid. Einstein’s breakthrough, in my opinion, was due to his ability to conceptualize beyond his perceptual senses, not his ability to experience the fluidity of time.

Let me give an example. Common (Euclidean) Geometry is based on five postulates, such as 2 points determine a line, etc.. One of these postulates states that parallel lines do not intersect. Now what happens if we keep the other 4 postulates, and instead allow the possibility that parallel lines do intersect? The result is a rich branch of math called “Hyperbolic Geometry” - a very bizarre geometry indeed. Although this geometry is far outside our perceptual senses, it has many useful and valid applications in the real world. Einstein’s super ability was to engage in “thought experiments”, that is, abstract reasoning.

This common view of ADD as a under active frontal brain has some merits, but does not give the entire picture. I suppose this view is supported by Zametkin’s study of blood flow in the ADD brain, where he reported an average 8% decrease of blood flow compared to control subjects. I have to wonder why the decrease is only 8% for a condition which can have such severe effects on those with the condition. In the future, I believe that research will show another type of ADD where the blood flow is actually above average! If this is the case, it would indicate that the mechanism by which the stimulants work is different than merely increasing the blood flow to the front of the brain.

Also, I have to say that I am somewhat dismayed by the notion that Hunters have a “damaged” brain, or a neurochemical imbalance.

************************************************************************ theguyonthemove
Member # 375
posted 16 February 2002

I have also heard of the reduced glucose absorption off the front lobe, if I remember correctly. I think it is worst than 8%.

In addition, briefly on Einstein’s ability to visualize. To me the heart of his relativity experiments had to do with him imagining a space ship going at 99.99% the speed of light. That time slowed down in that frame of reference compared to say us on earth and light started acting funny in the space ship at these speeds. I see this as real. Not as abstract thought.

************************************************************************ carlajane
Member # 197
posted 22 March 2002

I finally got a chance to go back and read some of the older postings. This one really hit home. I now take concerta and have found that time has slowed down for me. However, for 50 some years I have felt like I was on the front of a speeding train and that time was definitely going to run out.

Also, there are still times when I can feel a clock ticking away the seconds in my head. Of course, these are the things that always made me so impatient and I felt like I had to hurry constantly. My wish is that my partner and family could possibly understand how this concept of time affects me. I hate it, but sometimes it just won’t quit.

************************************************************************ Pat D.
Member # 421
posted 23 March 2002

For me, time is very slow if I have to do a boring task, and fast if I am involved in something I like... but that seems, to me anyway, to be a common experience. I do have the thought that time is running out. Which is to say that I spend so much time feeling like I am getting nothing accomplished, that I feel like I never will, and pretty soon, there will be no time left.

During that time of getting nothing accomplished, in a way it seems like I have plenty of time, it’s just when the day, week, month, year, decade is over I feel like I am running out.

There are two things I remember as a child, though. One is when I would be lying in bed kind of daydreaming or waking up in the morning, and I would get extreme perceptions on spatial relations.... I could see something that is (in our regular perceptions) small being gigantic (as if I were tiny next to it). And then it would be normal sized. It kind of scared me or bothered me, because I didn’t know how to understand it. (Later in high school I had a friend who in retrospect I think had ADD who understood and related similar experiences).

The other thing was an experience, usually while listening to music, but not always, of time slowing way way down, where it was just so slow and unending. As if that song had been on forever. That always bothered me too.

I don’t really have either of these experiences anymore. I’m not sure why, maybe the pressures of living in the world have taken up the room those kind of perceptions occupied.

************************************************************************ Rick Hunter
Member # 379
posted 15 May 2002

Sorry to burst everyone’s bubble, but I do not experience time as fluid - I rarely space out and forget deadlines, regardless of medication. Adderall helps me ignore “something” which is hitting me from a place I can’t perceive (the subconscious?), thereby allowing me to execute my farmer responsibilities

Ok, so first a little background about Relativity. Most people who have heard of this believe that it’s main point is time dilation when, in fact, time dilation is one of the consequences.

Imagine yourself at the rear of a train moving in a straight line at 60 mph. Suppose you throw a baseball - in the direction opposite to the train’s movement - at 60 mph. By Newtonian physics, from your point of view, the ball moves away from your hand at 60 mph. But from the point of view of someone on the ground, the ball drops straight down from the point you released it.

Now imagine yourself on the Relativity Train - moving at the speed of light in a straight line. Suppose you click on a flashlight aimed in a direction opposite to the train’s motion. From your point of view, the light moves away at the speed of light, which is consistent with Newton.

However, the paradox arises when considering the situation from the motionless observer. By Newton, what is supposed to happen is that the velocities “cancel” each other - as in the baseball example - so to the observer, light - being particles called photons - should appear as a motionless blob.

In fact, what would actually be observed is that the light from the flashlight moves at the same velocity as all other light from ANY point of view - 186,000 miles per second.

No one could actually do this experiment - that’s why it’s called a thought experiment - but it correlates with known physical data, i.e., astronomical observations.

************************************************************************ theguyonthemove
Member # 375
posted 19 May 2002

Rick, I wrote this after you did your fourth post but not your fifth post, but I see what you are getting at now.

Rick, I still see these thought experiments as real visions of trains coming toward each other and a person throwing, something of the train. Or looking on at the train, while a person is of the train.

This is still a vision to me. Not an abstract thought problem.

The point I realized was my subconscious agenda. There is a school of thought that argues some dyslexics create holographic images in there mind. If the holographic image is created in the mind, then the image is seen and it is tangible. Therefore the thought experiments are seen in Einstein’s mind as real and experienced as such by him.

************************************************************************ Rick Hunter
Member # 379
posted 19 May 2002

How can the imagining of something so far outside our perception be called visual? Here’s the bad news folks - according to my viewpoint, Einstein was absolutely not a VSL. Please note that I’m not saying this because I’m not a VSL either and I want to be associated with him. In fact, I think Einstein was a freak - I do not admire him merely for his intelligence.

The other problem with all the theories that I’ve seen about ADHD is that their complexity seems to grow and grow. Einstein, like all other physical scientists and mathematicians, sought theories which have beauty - that is, simplicity.

It’s time for something new.

************************************************************************ Vaudree
Member # 203
posted 20 May 2002

Thomas, Marlin. Albert Einstein and LD: An evaluation of the evidence. Journal of Learning Disabilities, Vol. 33, Issue 2: Mar/ Apr 2000 (EBSCO)

RE: ALBERT EINSTEIN AND LD (Journal of Learning Disabilities, April 2000)

The discovery that Einstein tended to experience difficulty in any subject taught by rote seems to me to be the piece of the puzzle which makes everything we know, or think we know, about Einstein’s style of cogitating fall into place. Rote is not just about the memorization of facts, it is about a way of thinking or organizing information. The rote pedagogy depends on:

a) the ability to maintain a single perspective
b) the ability to think in a straight line of sequential steps which follow one another
c) the ability to use this sequence of presentation as an organizing tool for memory storage
d) the tendency to have a very limited view concerning what is and is not relevant to a topic
e) the tendency to see facts as solid and immutable rather than transient or context dependent
f) the tendency to accept what one is told without asking why
g) sharing the same assumptions as one’s teacher

“Albert Einstein and LD” tends to portray Einstein as a person which seem unable to think in straight lines, and whose sequences constantly dissolve and reformulate in a succession of different patterns. At least that’s what “And when such pictures form sequences, each member of which calls forth another” (155-156) seems to mean to me. The “difficulties in the sequential processing of information, and a superiority in simultaneous processing of information” (153) which you present as a problem associated with Dyslexia, would also present a problems in subjects taught by rote. Einstein’s ability to understand Kant’s work (153), a theoretical perspective which makes Derrida’s concept of deconstruction appear immutable in contrast, would be the antithesis of the thinking process one would need to adopt to become a good rote thinker. Einstein’s “capacity to draw conclusions independently” (153) even to the point of discovering an original mathematical proof (154), his “active mind” (153) and the fact that he was “reprimanded in school for asking too many questions” (154) all point to a person who did not possess the required characteristics to be a good rote learner.
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Is it possible that the distinction which Einstein makes between thinking and communicating has more to do with the fact that, unlike thinking, communication involves the presentation of information in such a way that rote thinkers will understand it? The standard format used for academic writing and thinking demands that one choose a single perspective, argue the perspective, and then summarize that perspectives main points. As your paper indicates repeatedly, Einstein did not think according to this standard format.

************************************************************************ Rick Hunter
Member # 379
posted 20 May 2002

Not being a rote thinker is not the same as being a VSL. I am neither a rote thinker nor a VSL.

************************************************************************ Vaudree
Member # 203
posted 20 May 2002

Were you originally from Alberta? There are only two places in the world where people are that argumentative and the other is Quebec. If you don’t believe me, why do you thing France traded them to England instead of holding on to them and trading the holdings in India? They figured that giving England a property consisting of a mouthy argumentative people would be a way of getting rid of a headache by passing it on to the enemy.

************************************************************************ Rick Hunter
Member # 379
posted 20 May 2002

Obviously Vaudree has never heard of New York City.

I didn’t write the above merely to be argumentative. Vaudree seems to be saying that Einstein was not a rote thinker, and therefore must have been a VSL. I was saying that being an exploratory (I.e., non-rote) thinker is not necessarily the same as being a VSL. I used myself as an example. I am absolutely not a VSL by anyone’s definition, and who would argue that I am a rote thinker? That is, I dispute the notion that