People used to brush away this argument with plain statistics. Supposedly, if the death statistics is below the average human, you are supposed to lean back and relax. I never bought this one. Its like saying LLMs write better texts then the average huamn can, so you are supposed to use it, no matter how much you bring to the table.
If you don't know german culture, this story might be hard for you to imagine. Fact is, germany has a massive stick up its ass. If there is a written rule, they will follow it, no matter what.
> initial reaction is hard to hide and is profoundly impactful to the people who see it a million times
I can relate this very much, and I am "just" 100% blind. I believe what we are talking about is not "neurotypicals" vs "non-neurotypicals", it is really the way society treats anyone with a pertceived disability. We are, even though society tries to keep the mask on, outcasts, and we are regularily enough treated like that we learn on a deep level that we are just not part of the rest of society. Sure, there is a "spectrum" of how good a person with a disability might cope, but at the end of the day, if I throw myself into the masses and have random interactions, I always learn the same lesson: random strangers will keep treating me in a very uncomfortable way. Sure, many people try their best. Some even come across as creepy by trying so hard. But the statistics never changes. I will never feel like a "normal" person, they will make sure I never will.
> I will never feel like a "normal" person, they will make sure I never will.
Saying "make sure" suggests intent. I would hope the discomfort causing reactions are an unintentional side effect of ignorance. Because if so then there's hope that even the masses can learn to be more considerate and inclusive.
Ultimately, nearly all of us will develop some physical or mental impairment due to accidents or aging.
If you have been treated repeatedly in an uncomfortable way by strangers, and sometimes even your own family, intent at some point no longer matters to you. It is the end result that counts. I dont have any sympathy for weirdos, they are what they are, but they definitely dont deserve me explaining away their shortcomings. I am the one that has to do home and wrestle with my reaction to them crossing borders they are to dense to even realize exist.
In a society based around ranking others perceived worth and value, having a disability gets conflated with "being a burden". Silently overcoming a disability and adapting to an unsuitable world becomes the "hustle culture" variant of modern-day working life. Praised for being ultra self-sufficient and "paying our way".
It's harrowing how people prefer donating resources over exerting mental effort to bridge simple psychological boundaries in understanding the different needs of others, especially for disabilities (which nobody chooses to have). I often wonder if the root of this is the individual fear it could happen to us. By exercising empathy, we are reminded that ourselves and our families are vulnerable to disability at any time--from birth to life events this second (injury, illness, luck), existence is vulnerability.
Our intrinsic fears combined with societies lacking safety nets and breathing space has created a positive feedback loop for hyper-individualistic living. Our own bubbles. I try to do the opposite, but it's not easy.
> I will never feel like a "normal" person, they will make sure I never will.
I'm going to tangent a bit here but so far in my life, after observing lots of people discussing things related to this, every single person feels this way.
Every person thinks they're atypical. That they're experiencing things other people don't. That they're different in some way to "everyone else".
Exactly what this means is up to the reader, but it sure implies some interesting ideas here.
Hi there - I’m really sorry about your negative experiences. I read the replies to your comment and felt sad that I didn’t read one that recognised how much work you’re putting into what sounds like an indifferent society - and how unfair that is. I also hope I’m not crossing the line of too much/trying too hard. Frankly, it sounds like a shit place to be.
Csound (I think v3) was the first music language I played with, back in the early 90s, under DOS even. Back then, running in real-time wasn't a thing. Generate a WAV file and play it after the program finished.
Later, at the end of the 90s, I remember playing with CLM/CM, in common lisp.
But the most productive experience was definitely SuperCollider. I can only recommend giving it a try. Its real-time sound synthesis architecture is great. Basically works sending timestamped OSC messages AOT (usually 0.2s). It also has a very interesting way of building up so-called SynthDefs from code into a DAG. I always wondered if a modern rewrite of the same architecture using JIT/AOT technology would be useful. But I digress... SC3 is a great platform to play with sound synthesis... Give it a try if you find the time.
I can vouch for the tutorial series from Eli Fieldsteel[0] for getting into SuperCollider and audio synthesis in general. If you were ever curious on how to bridge the gap between signal processing and music theory through mathematical operations, I think this is one of the best series out there.
I get the "outliers are useful" thing you're trying to emphasis. But as someone from a mountainous country, please dont "climb[ing] mountains in Crocs", we regularily get media reports of hopelessly underequipped people having to be rescued with a whole team of people, in the middle of the night, with horrible weather, usually also endangering the people that do the rescue. I guess what I am trying to say is, there is a limit to how silly you can/should be.
While there is a lack of semantic HTML, "completely unusable" is an inappropriate exaggregation. At least I am pretty happy that HN is one of the last places on the internet that still work pretty well with a text browser like Lynx. I wonder, do you rely on accessibility, or are you just parroting things you read elsewhere?
Systemic discrimination, happens all the time. I am blind. I regularily fail the "tell computers and humans apart" test. You imagine, that feels very much like the dehumanisation it is. Big tech couldn't care less. After all, they need to protect themselves against spammers. Much like the guy who was on the HN frontpage just a few days ago, arguing that he is now trashing accessibility because he doesn't want to be web scraped. If you raise these issues with devs, all you get it pushback, no understanding at all. Thats the way it is. If you are amongst a minority small enough and without a rainbow coloured flag, you end up being ignored, stepped over, and pushed aside. If you are lucky. If you are unlucky, and you raise your voice, you will be critizied for pointing out the obvious.
I agree anti-bot vigilantes as well as corporate anti-ddos middle-wares have had a detrimental impact on accessibility. I'm afraid they consider your use case as acceptable collateral damage if they consider it at all.
> arguing that he is now trashing accessibility because he doesn't want to be web scraped
Interesting, because he failed me too just because I use Firefox. Have you been told about the article or it actually worked with your screen reader software?
In fact progressives are much more oriented toward freedom than others. They just don't think the powerful need much assistance and instead focus on the freedom of LGBTQ people to make their own decisions about gender and sexuality, the freedom of racial minorities to do what everyone else does, the freedom and opportunity of undocumented, unhoused, and addicted people. Freedom is the heart of progressivism. (I don't subscribe to any group, but HN usually does not understand and mischaracterizes progressivism.)
Trumpists tell a similar story about themselves. "Freedom" for the few, ignorance & hate for the other.
Rhetorical bumper stickers do feel good; they may even be, on some surface level, true. But they ring like lies to anyone who seen the deeper, realer and truer beliefs of the self-righteous.
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