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ciphergoth comments on What bothers you about Less Wrong? - Less Wrong
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This all sounds less like a lack of innate ability and more like a barrier of fear. Not to say that can't be just as disabling.
It could be a case of discalculia.
That's certainly entirely plausible, and something my mother (a primary school teacher of a quarter-century's experience, who's known a lot of children well) has always suspected. I've never had it checked out, though. Maybe I should.
ETA - particularly as I've just had a look at the wikipedia article and every single thing in the symptoms list applies to me to some degree. I'm even a pretty good writer. Good grief.
Certainly some of it is. The anxiety and fluster and horrible panic feeling is certainly emotional, and the "number blindness" thing is probably related too. It's much, much worse if there's anyone else around - the only thing more embarrassing than knowing I've failed simple arithmetic is failing simple arithmetic when other people who might assume I'm moronically stupid can see me doing it.
And of course that makes me a nightmare to teach, because I'm horribly resistant to learning maths because I know I'll fail and look stupid and whoever it is will think I'm thick. You of all people have encountered that in me!
Struggling to parse strings of numbers, though, can happen no matter how calm and unpressured and private I am. I've emailed myself things like my debit card number so that I can just cut and paste them when I buy things, because I can't always reliably type them in by looking at the card.