I very much doubt this is true. Perhaps academics are more likely to have low to mild levels of ADD but it's unlikely that those who have this trait most strongly will do well in academia. There are several reasons why this might be.
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First, they'd likely struggle or fail to get passed undergrad. From mind-wandering in class, to going off in directions that don't help your grade but which you are nonetheless compelled to follow, to getting stuck on digging into that one topic beyond what is wise for grades
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Second, you can look at academia and see that it does not reward cross-disciplinary or synthesis type work. People will yell at you that optimization & search are not the same thing. That the immune system is not a form of intelligence etc. ADD types are more breadth-first types
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But academia is definitely for depth-first or experts type people. A side-effect of breadth-first approach it's easier to see how things are alike than how they are different. But interaction with (ridicule by) typical people shows that the default focus is mostly on differences.
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Finally, I do think attention deficit is a misnomer. While most of the time it's hard to focus for 5 minutes, 18 hour binges are also not uncommon. I have a working theory that ADD is more an error in how uncertainty is managed which in turn affects how attention is allocated.
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It'd explain why bad cases of ADD go with lots of careless mistakes, perfectionism, sensitivity to anxiety, and replaying events over & over or wanting to be over-prepared. All of this, including above tweets, is exactly the opposite of how you need to be to thrive in academia.pic.twitter.com/5FhfGbSjFd
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Couple that with testing or performance anxiety induced by that same uncertainty management error that correlates anxiety with ADD, most simply won't make it passed hurdles.
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Sure, a trail of abandoned over-ambitious projects is shared but I suspect only a lucky (or privileged--you don't want to be this and poor) few manage to make it to grad school where they could thrive in theory. And likely, many of them will have it at a manageable enough degree.
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Sorry, long. But I felt your post--though it was certainly unmeant--too much dismisses difficulties others not as fortunate have fought through by posing the ratio it did. Also possible this is all excuses to shield from the truth that some of us are worthless incapable idiots.
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Sorry that took a depressive turn, but I think, by the last few tweets, I was no longer responding to yous but rather following a trajectory with input from painful triggered memories. So, sorry for injfecting that into your timeline :(
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No worries. Happens on here quite a bit! And it wasn't noise.
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