Because sometimes having been "weird" is only recognized in hindsight. Attempting to project a persona, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autistic_masking, is already difficult at the best of times. It's especially difficult under stress, like being in an interview.
The issue with the "keyboard in front of huge monitor" type of arrangement for people who need to get their face really, really close to the monitor is they have to lean far in and hunch over the keyboard, putting their arms in an uncomfortable position. Speaking from my own experience, this causes RSI problems fairly quickly. And the keyboard can't be moved farther back to allow the person's arms to be in a more natural position because the base of the TV or monitor blocks the way.
A monitor arm of the right length and height lets you sit so that the monitor is close to your face, floating at or beyond the front edge of the table, and the keyboard is physically behind the monitor, letting your arms be in a more natural position for typing.
> " ...I have to be about 6 inches from a 27 inch screen. I'm tall, and I'm almost bent in half to do it ... The part that makes it so tough is monitor arms come in standard sizes and are nowhere near long enough or extend far enough for me to sit comfortably ... "
Google for "long reach" monitor arms; some models have a reach of 30 to 40+ inches. They're not exactly cheap since they come from ergonomics vendors but they allow you to bring a large monitor as close to your face as you like and, depending on the model, clamp to a table like a standard monitor arm. I've had various models of them for a couple of decades now.
I'm not sure I'm ready to accept the fact that having rights restricted is a body autonomy issue outside of being in solitary confinement. I commented in a different thread about "exigent conditions" which sometimes can trump personal liberties or even body autonomy when the "greater good" is concerned. If I'd entertain your statement as being on topic, I'd say that national measures in a global pandemic fit that.
I could argue the opposite. If your purported "exception" applies to 80%+ of the global population, a minimal dash of common sense would make me think that's the rule, not the other way around.
OK, don't answer that, I did my own research[1] and from the Western democracies that have mandatory military service there are: Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Greece and Estonia. They're more than I expected, and overall, including less democratic nations, there's a total of 66 (out of 194). By population it's even less, as none of the top countries except Brazil and Russia have mandatory service.
So overall that's very much less than 80%, but definitely more than I was expecting.
Just so there isn't any doubt: I dismiss your initial theory that somehow the response to the Corona virus is a violation of anyone's bodily autonomy.
My whole thread here was about trying to understand your reasoning, and perhaps make you understand mine, but instead of helping me you refuse to engage in good faith so I'll stop here.
I think the draft qualifies as "exigent conditions" in which some rights and ethics get suspended in favour of the "greater good", or if you mean mandatory military service, I think most western nations stopped having that. Do you have something more mundane in mind?
[edit] To answer your question: yes, there are only 66 countries with mandatory military service. Among the Western democracies there are the Nordics, Estonia, Austria and Greece. From here: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...
The ethical system on which modern Western societies are built allows for body autonomy, while at the same time covers some corner cases: war, pandemic, etc. The fact that there are exceptions doesn't somehow invalidate the basics.
The GP conflates "tech workers" and "CS" but it's pretty clear that this is the target of the second paragraph: folks who are happy to do work that harms society without doing anything that rises to the level of mandatory treatment. That tendency has been a big part of the so-called "techlash" the last several years.
That said, I don't think this is unique to tech (cf. finance or politics).
What is the definition of “harms society”? Does it include a lifestyle which produces more carbon and other harmful emissions at a 50th percentile or greater level on the global scale?
I made no personal attack. See Genters comment above. Asocial people care deeply. Often too deeply about others. However from a statistical standpoint of external observance both could be investigated by the very people that exhaust asocial people daily.
Asocial people don’t have time to educate every single person with a grave misunderstanding about them that they encounter so they choose to keep their circles small and valuable.
Furthermore it is all on a spectrum as Aristotle told us ages ago but with an average life span under 90 (while deteriorating) we only merely approach true wisdom. Rarely obtaining it.
I also fit that definition and wouldn't generalize. What I've observed is that the places that contain a lot of asocial people also have an above-average rate of sociopathic behaviors. This certainly fits my CS experience.
asocial doesn't necessarily mean lack of care for others.
Take something like autism, there is NOTHING that stops autistic people from caring about others and being extraverted, but repeated social rejection may eventually make them withdrawn. Or maybe social interaction is just overstimulating and unpleasant. Such a person may do empathetic things like volunteer and donate to charity.
asocial people also suffer from their inept self-promotion abilities often making their virtues go unnoticed and uncelebrated. So if you're relying on personal experience, you're running into inductive reasoning problems right away. Whereas people with antisocial personality disorder might happily tell you all about the great things they do for everybody, even if their claims are total lies.
Not one of the people preaching about "ableism" are giving themselves disabilities because they're oh so wonderful and that tells you really all you need to know that nonsense. Disabilities suck, take it from me, and no, it is not remotely wrong to cure them.
There is an earlier claim to coining of Shit(ty) Life Syndrome not mentioned in the Wikipedia entry, a ha-ha-only-serious parody diagnosis in a medical humor collection named "Placebo Journal": https://authenticmedicine.com/2019/08/did-i-discover-the-con... Skip down to the "Diagnosis: SLS (classical type)" section for the meat of the parody if you don't want to go through the miscellanea that goes with a clinical visit report, although those bits are interesting in their own way.
I've always wondered whether using a projector as a computer display avoids the near focus eyestrain problem. Does anybody know? Granted, 4k projectors aren't inexpensive but they're not unmanageable either.
You don't necessarily have to stop coding. Various technologies such as voice recognition systems developed for users with disabilities exist and, with advancements in algorithms and the overabundance of processing power available on modern hardware, are much more capable than they were before. Businesses are also generally more receptive to accommodating employees with disabilities than they were in the past.
To address an uncomfortable point, yes, such systems are more awkward to use than typing and you may hate to have to use them and be unhappy to compare yourself against what you used to be able to do and what your peers remain able to do. I can only say, having a disability myself, that becoming disabled does indeed suck and that it may be of some small comfort to remember that everyone eventually becomes disabled by the progression of age.
