It does not affect IQ, but the average ADHD brain is smaller.
this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2025
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We just have good compression
There’s a point in the movie Frank where the protagonist is talking to the parents of the mentally disabled musical savant he rode to fame and the subject eventually turns to his disability. The protagonist suggests to Frank’s parents that Frank’s experiences with mental illness are probably what made him so good at music. The parents object, and insist that he was always good at music; his illness only ever held him back.
running in circles doesn't make you faster
going blahblahblahblah doesn't make you smarter
I thought of a quick mental pace, frequently jumping from thought to thought, inevitably going off on tangents. That's what I interpreted from the line about being "smarter and faster." However, having that quickness translated into "smartness" is far from the only way for it to manifest.
You may have a quick mental pace, but it doesn't help you find solutions - it just repeatedly pulls you into depression or anxiety by effortlessly connecting negative thoughts to literally anything that crosses your mind. Or you have quick thoughts, but struggle to track back to things from earlier on - leading to a feedback loop of distraction that makes conversations, movies, and sometimes even your own ideas, very difficult to follow.
Side note: I feel like if I lived in a pre-literate society, I'd be far more disabled than today. I don't know how I'd function if I weren't able to write down my thoughts, or read (and re-read) information. The written word provides a structure and direction that the spoken word and abstract thoughts don't have. I may be seen as "smarter" in the modern world, but someone like me from the ancient past would've been at a massive disadvantage.
I feel like if I lived in a pre-literate society, I'd be far more disabled than today
Living and working in a more close knit social group could offset many ADHD issues. Our strengths and weaknesses could balance each other out.
Information retainment and such can be accomplished with songs and stories.
And we would be the scouts and night watch for the community. If neurodivergence isn't environmentally caused, and I don't believe it is, why would it still be so common in our species?
ADHD makes you smarter? That’s some bullshit
Saying that ADHD makes you smarter is bullshit. However there are definitely tasks that ADHD can make you better at which is likely what this person was refering to. There's a reason a lot of the best repair techs I work with have an ADHD diagnosis or show clear symptoms despite having never sought out a diagnosis. ADHD can make you really good and forming connections between different ideas that most people wouldn't be able to do as quickly which can help with, for example, diagnosing issues in complex systems. However if you ask those same people to perform a basic task thoroughly and in a standardized fashion then we're usually going to be way worse at it than the average person. It's literally just being differently abled.
For example, when I'm off my sweet sweet prescription speed, I can narrow down and locate issues in a building wide automation system in a couple of hours where other techs spent all day trying and failing to find it. But at the same time, when I'm off my meds, cleaning an ice machine can take me 6 hours where one of our neurotypical techs would easily have it done even better in under 3 hours and I will have no idea what I spent all that extra time on because I will have felt like I was rushing the entire time.
Some people see being able to do complex troubleshooting quickly as beeing "smart" but it's really just a different skillset. You could call me "smart" but I literally need regular doses of amphetamines just to be able to do the most basic prioritization like paying bills on time, and cleaning my house so I personally wouldn't say that I'm particularly "smart".
There's also a reason a very large portion of developers are neurodivergent.
Curiosity is often enough.
Yes. I got it from an ex and now I'm smart af
Can we stop with the narrative that disorders that completely fuck your life up and make you struggle with things normal people do without thinking is somehow a ""superpower"?
If you have an above average Intelligence, the mechanisms you develop can lead to excelling in many areas. But it comes at great costs and not everyone is this way. It also depends how bad you've got it.
The last word is “disorder” for a reason
And the other D is for "deficit"!
ADHD makes you more intelligent in the same way that being chased by a bear makes you a runner, or having kids makes you a morning person.
A weaponised intellect is a useful counter to ADHD. We also tend to be built differently. Think tank Vs car. This makes us abnormally good at certain tasks, at the cost of others.
Poor impulse control, novelty seeking, and unlimited internet access tends to explain the rest.
ADHD doesn't make you smarter or faster.
What are you talking about? I know very little about so many things! I can hyperfocus on like 3 different activities that just pass the time until death and don't benefit me at all!
I don't ever stop moving. I do isometric exercises constantly as part of my fidgeting. Some of my muscle groups, weird ones, are genuinely terrifying at this point. Like i have to be careful what gear i buy because ill just break some of it while im watching a movie.
If i didnt id be a lump. So not faster, but stronger, more flexible, more coordinated, with a little more endurance.
My curiosity and tangents over the decades have lead me to a ridiculously broad pool of knowledge, with very small wells of substantial depth, just kind of passively as a result of being me.
Feels like gassing adhders up.
Fun but not accurate.
please stop glazing my mental condition it will get more confident and take over the world
all i can say is ive met many people with adhd who are definitely not smarter than, well, anybody.
I don't think ADHD itself makes you smarter. It's more about autism and some personality disorders which look very similar to ADHD or even live alongside it.
Autism and other personality disorders don't make you smarter or faster, either...
Hmm maybe if you have a very distorted definition of "smart". I'm talking about intelligence and it's a well known observation amongst therapists that such disorders are related to increased intelligence. Faster though? More likely the opposite.
And yet there's people whose autism is severely debilitating...
I'm certainly not saying autism makes you stupid but people diagnosed with it have a huge range of intelligence so it's unfair to say it "makes you smarter" IMO. There's no proof of causation even if it often does correlate
Oh I probably forgot to mention that the mentioned disorders don't always correlate (very good word for it btw) but in many cases (2/3 I'd say) they do. It also depends on the exact condition as some do not have such effect. And I don't have proof of causation either. They're related but idk what causes what. However for the purpose of meme creation it's enough.
I need you to realize that the numbers you're pulling out of your ass have no basis in reality. Nothing you're saying has a basis in reality. Your gut feelings aren't facts.
The fastest lemmy alive