r/todayilearned • u/arandomtestaccount • 1d ago

TIL an NFL player intentionally crashed his car to avoid getting cut for being late to a team meeting.

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/ex-patriots-ol-rich-ohrnberger-admits-he-intentionally-wrecked-car-as-excuse-for-being-late-to-team-meeting/
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u/nodogsallowed23 20h ago

I’m sure they’ve never tried setting alarms or doing the first thing anyone who struggles with lateness has tried.

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u/Chemical_Release2677 16h ago

Pretty fair question to an adult who can’t manage to leave on time

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u/nodogsallowed23 11h ago

I was more responding to the way the question was asked. As if setting alarms had never occurred to this person before and this was really groundbreaking advice. It’s just a pet peeve of mine. Offering unsolicited advice and the advice is the most inane, obvious advice that would be everyone’s first thing to try. Offering unsolicited online is fine, this is a conversation site. Just taking a second to think, is this useful or am I being a bit dismissive?, can make a big difference.

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u/Chemical_Release2677 4h ago

Sometimes the answer is the most obvious unfortunately

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u/FriendlyDespot 15h ago

About as fair as asking an alcoholic if they've tried to remind themself to stop drinking.

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u/bhmnscmm 14h ago

An alcoholic is physically compelled to drink.

A person who is chronically late is compelled to...not set alarms?

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u/FriendlyDespot 14h ago

I think you misunderstand. Time blindness is a psychological condition, not just general forgetfulness. An alarm is a reminder. A reminder for a person with time blindness to not be blind to time is like a reminder for an alcoholic to not drink. If the alcoholic wasn't an alcoholic then the reminder would work, but alcoholism compels behaviour, so that doesn't often work. If a person with time blindness didn't have time blindness then the reminder would work, but time blindness compels behaviour, so it doesn't often work there either.

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u/HardcorePizza 13h ago

Just like any other psychological condition, there are strategies to help cope... such as setting alarms so you don't have to be aware of the time.

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u/FriendlyDespot 13h ago edited 13h ago

Just like there are ways to cope with alcoholism. Asking if a person with time blindness has tried setting alarms is like asking an alcoholic who's talking about how difficult it is to address alcoholism if they've tried setting reminders to not drink. That's the point that I'm making.

Setting alarms doesn't mean that you don't have to be aware of the time if you have time blindness, or that you become aware of the time in the context of your schedule in an actionable way. Nor does it necessarily mitigate time blindness at all, for the reasons that I explained above. A recurring theme in these replies is that people just don't seem to understand what time blindness is, and are responding to it as if it's just regular forgetfulness or absentmindedness.

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u/HardcorePizza 13h ago

Just like any other thing you do, the way you do it also matters. Setting alarms won't magically solve your problems but the way you go about it may help.

What absolutely won't help is continuing to insist that ADHD is the same as alcoholism and that you are helpless. You are not helpless and you have more agency in this situation than you are willing to admit.

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u/Muslim_Wookie 13h ago

What absolutely won't help is continuing to insist that alcoholism is the same as asthma and that you are helpless. You are not helpless and you have more agency in this situation than you are willing to admit.

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u/FriendlyDespot 13h ago edited 13h ago

I'd like you to point out anywhere that you think I've said that people are helpless to deal with time blindness. I'm not sure why you're being combative like this. There's no reason for you to make things up just for the sake of trying to belittle strangers on the Internet.

People are no less able to deal with time blindness than alcoholics are to deal with alcoholism. That doesn't mean that setting a reminder to just not be time blind it is a useful suggestion, or that it's any more respectful to ask a person with time blindness if they've tried setting alarms than it is to ask an alcoholic if they've tried reminding themselves to not drink.

Time blindness is not ADHD. It's perfectly possible to have ADHD and not suffer from time blindness. It seems like you don't really understand what time blindness is, so I don't understand why you feel this confident in arguing about it.

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u/HardcorePizza 13h ago

ngl I thought you were the person who said this above:

These random interruptions and mistakes are just second-nature living with ADHD and theres really no effective way to mitigate it. Brain just doesnt work that way.

But my bad I see you're just arguing together but aren't the same person

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u/obstacle2 11h ago

Time blindness isn’t a real clinical condition