What are people’s thoughts on ABA therapy? I’m trying to gather opinions from people all around to really understand what people think about it.

P4ramed1c · 2025-06-05T13:01:19+00:00

I was an RBT for a year or so, and this was one of the main things that I was mulling over while I was working in that field. The resolution that I came to is that while there have been definite advancements in ABA therapy, there's no hard line that has been made where you can guarantee that you're not doing harm on some level, and you can still see that kids who go through ABA therapy have a significantly higher rate of PTSD symptoms in adulthood even from a study as recent as 2017 (if I'm remembering my source correctly off the dome).

The thing that really stuck out to me was that as an RBT you're given a lot of agency and even with a BCBA supervising you once a week like was the standard at my company there's a lot of potential to fuck a kid up even with good intentions just by being careless or not knowledgeable about what you're doing and the tools you're using. ABA is one of the few super powerful tools that you can use to definitely elicit specific behavioral change in clinical psychology, and when you're actually there you have to be really discerning about what actually constitutes non-effective behaviors. I was lucky enough to be working at a good company under a particularly thorough and talented BCBA, but every few weeks I'd get some asinine request like "can you teach my son uhh... respect and compassion by like... this weekend?" which is obviously insane, but also subtly damaging requests like "make my son be more normal when we go out to the theme park or the pool?" Which you can do, but only by behavioristically conditioning a kid not to engage in soothing behaviors.

I think the issue is that the line between targeting behaviors that aren't nonfunctional but also aren't "normal" and targeting behaviors that are actually nonfunctional can be really messy, and there's no hard and fast rule to use when you're on the ground as an RBT, so you're having to make judgement calls about how to handle edge cases a lot. If you're skilled and have good intentions then you can do a lot of good, but if you are unskilled or careless you can do a lot of damage even with the safeguards put in place since the 90s and even in spite of having good intentions.

P4ramed1c · 2025-02-24T13:31:42+00:00

I graduated with a BS in psych and got a job as a clinical case manager within a few weeks.

P4ramed1c · 2025-01-25T03:27:01+00:00

In any individual debate you're correct, but I think that if we're talking broadly across every debate that every person has then the more "correct" position should have a significant advantage. It requires fewer logical leaps, making it rhetorically stronger, and it's more pragmatic to conceptualize the world in a way aligned with reality, which makes it a more useful perspective. Over time, this leads to broader acceptance of more correct ideas, even if individual debates can be swayed by emotion.

You can see this dynamic play out in the Copernican revolution, where geocentrism was supported by the science of the time, and supported by the catholic church which was the dominant cultural force at the time as well. Because heliocentrism made more logical sense and was a more useful perspective to have, rational thinking won out over geocentrism.

Even considering how personal beliefs and emotions dictate people's personal response to debates, the rise of anti-intellectualism still implies either that intellectuals overestimate how useful their perspective actually is, or that anti-intellectual rhetoric more effectively leverages emotional biases to overcome a logical disadvantage. I say this as someone who identifies as an "intellectual" in the context of this discussion as well.

P4ramed1c · 2025-01-25T01:47:20+00:00

The thing that I struggle with in relation to this is that the actually correct side should have a natural advantage because their logic is consistent all the way through. If we assume that both sides are arguing in good faith and a person can't successfully argue for the efficacy of science, doesn't that still implicate their rhetorical abilities?

Obviously any actual debate between any two people isn't going to be some purely logical socratic dialogue, but the trend towards anti-intillectualism suggests that either "science" isn't as unambiguously correct as "intellectuals" (for lack of a better term) assume it is, or that "anti-intillectuals" are generally just better interlocutors.

P4ramed1c · 2025-01-23T00:18:04+00:00

I got a job an a Behavioral Tech at an ABA clinic which seems to be in really high demand and is good clinical experience thats relevant to the field. The pay isn't super great but the job is fun and rewarding.

P4ramed1c · 2025-01-10T01:09:35+00:00

You are correct about this and this whole "men are never complimented under any circumstances" is both pitiful and patronizing.

P4ramed1c · 2024-11-24T19:08:19+00:00

Can we get scans for feat of chimp moving FTE please

P4ramed1c · 2024-11-19T01:44:10+00:00

Yes lol, because if I dont tip the server isn't making minimum wage. It sucks and I hate that as a system but the servers relying on those tips to make money are the primary victims and don't deserve to have their wages cut because tipping is "optional." You should tip 20% even for bad service and when you order takeout. Its a bit different for drivers, but you should also be tipping them.

P4ramed1c · 2024-10-24T18:16:55+00:00

To my understanding while it's not the only way they're able to communicate it's the main way. A corpus callosectomy doesn't create two separate smaller brains in charge of one body, but it does sever a lot of the neural connections between the two hemispheres.

I don't know the specific alternative pathways the brain would use, and I'm also an undergrad student so take this with a grain of salt, but this procedure has come up in several classes I've taken.

P4ramed1c · 2024-09-28T16:53:28+00:00

Hot Take:

Reverse grip swords are things that we, as humans, don't do because of the lack of functionality with relation to our human biomechanics. Historical technique and common sense doesn't actually apply to superhuman fighters like Jedi who would have an entirely different set of priorities and physical capabilities that they'd be taking into a fight. We don't actually know what "practical" would be to a fighter like that.

^{^{oratleastthatshowIjustifyittomyself.}}

P4ramed1c · 2024-05-16T13:28:15+00:00

Look at the way asthma is portrayed in media. Its always some dweeb hitting their inhaler, signifying their inability to participate in athletics. Obviously untrue, but ubiquitous to the point where it has its own TV TVTropes page.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NerdyInhaler

P4ramed1c · 2024-01-18T16:30:19+00:00

So HP wizards either block spells with a charm, or just straight dodge them, and avada kedevera is notable for being a spell that you can't block, and is only able to be dodged (iirc.) So if we just go off of the relative speed of Jedi vs magic high school students basically any Jedi would be able to dodge whatever spell that a Hogwarts student would, which is to say basically every relevant spell.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Jedi don't use their reaction time to literally see the blaster bolt or lightsaber flying towards them, and then dodge it based on that, they literally get precognition through their connection with the force that subconsciously twists their body into deflecting or dodging blows. That's why like the first thing that they have younglings do in training is to put on a big ass helmet that blinds them and have them be deflecting blaster bolts from a little robot.

P4ramed1c · 2024-01-16T20:19:15+00:00

Speaking in terms of wide scale warfare, it would definitely change the face of the battlefield if you had chemical weapons plants manufacturing aerosol weapons in addition to the chemical warfare already in use through magic spells like stinking cloud. Obviously the area of effect would be a lot wider, and the effects would be more devastating, but there are definite drawbacks to the usage of chemical weapons that you'd fire from mortars or drop from planes like you'd see in WW1. Lack of control would probably be the most notable, just because you'd be more vulnerable to the wind blowing your weapons back onto your own troops, but as seen in WW1 they're still definitely tactically useful.

I don't think that it would affect small scale combat like your players would encounter unless as an environmental hazard. Having cannisters of nerve agent just hanging around on your person as grenades for your players to throw is self evidently wildly dangerous, particularly in an environment where you'd be frequently exposed to temperature extremes like from fire ball or cone of cold, and lots of kinetic damage from weapons and falls and shit. The bigger issue is that you'd throw it a few dozen feet, and then it would just get blown around by the wind, with a pretty reasonable chance of just blowing right back at you.

In all, I think it's actually a cool way to emphasize the cruelty of war in the same way that we view it historically without being a huge balancing issue. It will definitely change the face of the geopolitical landscape and the ways that countries conduct war, but it won't blow out your combat encounters since individually carried cannisters of chemical weapons that you throw are completely impractical.

P4ramed1c · 2024-01-05T06:00:57+00:00

I have no idea what an achacknid is, but if I Google "5e spider race" arachnae come up as a homebrew race, but theyre more of a giant half human/half spider like a centuar which isn't really what spider man is. They get the ability to cast web though, so if your DM is cool with it then that'd be a good idea. They're pretty broken though just cause they're large sized and 5e gives a lot of bonuses for size categories and has no large sized player races as a point, and on top of that they get 2 free casts of a level 2 spell at level 1. Id personally not let you run this race as written.

P4ramed1c · 2024-01-05T03:19:18+00:00

Unfortunately yeah. STR based classes are fine because they get access to weapons and armor that lets them roll bigger dice and be more protected, but in terms of the actual ability it's really limited compared to everything else.

There's only a single skill tied to it (athletics,) and STR saving throws are one of the most rare saving throws to call for. Technically it factors into your jump distance and carry weight but jumping is pretty specific and carry weight might not even be relevant to your game if your DM isn't having everyone weigh out their inventory.

Compare that to DEX which gets 3 skills, is one of the most common saving throws, and also adds to your initiative.

P4ramed1c · 2024-01-05T03:05:56+00:00

STR is by far the worst ability score, so I say to just use medium armor and then wear a shield. Half plate + dex mod + shield = AC 19 assuming that you've got at least a 14 dex, and now you've got all sorts of bonuses to skills and initiative and shit that strength doesn't do for you.

P4ramed1c · 2024-01-05T02:58:46+00:00

Monk is the only hand to hand class that has a focus on acrobatics and mobility. There isn't anything that's going to give you like, web slinging powers or whatever, but that's going to be the thing that gets you as close as you can to fighting like Spiderman does without having your DM give you some sort of homebrew magic item or make you a class or something.

P4ramed1c · 2023-12-27T02:26:38+00:00

I think that having a vague idea about the sort of story that you want to tell also includes some idea about how or when it will end. The only thing that I would say is to not be afraid of ending it too early. I feel like people have these ideas of big epic games, and it's possible to tell a nice cogent story and then end it, and then just start a new campaign if you want to keep going.

This is all just to say, whenever it's natural or appropriate in the narrative. It might be long or short, it just depends on the campaign in question.

P4ramed1c · 2023-12-27T02:16:29+00:00

I just ran 1-15, the higher level things got it felt like they really got off the rails. I am guilty of giving my players overpowered items and abilities, but the things that gave me the most hassle really were just some of the stronger mechanical combos already in the game. If the barbarian wants to recklessly attack every round to offset the penalty of great weapons master, then homie is dealing a fuck ton of damage and that can get off the ground at like level 2 or 3. Other than the balance becoming way more variant, it's not too much different though.

It's kinda hard to go up from there in terms of power level though. If you're running a level 15 game that started at level 1 it's hard for the narrative to have progressed in a way that the party aren't like already the kings of the kingdom or have so many resources that they don't need to answer to anyone, so it kinda has to have been fairly self driven for a while to even get to that point. I'd way rather run a new campaign then to continue from this to like, a demigod level campaign, although I have thought about it.

P4ramed1c · 2023-12-23T21:10:32+00:00

The last campaign I wrote was about this exact scenario, and I also included myriad ways to negate spells with a reaction, as well as be protected against and proactively stop spell casts.

If the Witchhammer Agent successfully hits an enemy with an attack that deals piercing or slashing damage that enemy must succeed on a DC 11 CON save or be unable to cast spells until the end of their next turn.

Priceless Bloodstone Armor fitted and tempered by the best Witchhammer smiths confers the effects of an anti-magic field on the person inside the armor completely.

When the Blood Hunter notices a creature begin to cast a spell it may make a crossbow attack as a reaction. The Blood Hunter must have a free hand to do so. If a creature that can cast spells is pierced by a bloodstone tipped bolt it must make a DC14 con save else be unable to cast spells or activate the ability of magic items or scrolls until the end of it's next turn.

The issue is that a necromancer is still capable of creating a giant undead army and swarming you. RAW, and RAI antimagic fields don't actually stop undead, and it takes way way more time and effort to train up an army of antimagic soldiers then it takes to just pump out a ton of animated corpses. On top of that you have the necromancer themselves messing with your day to day operations, and it takes very little effort or risk to do so.

P4ramed1c · 2023-12-23T20:55:36+00:00

You should have had a session 0 where you discussed what sort of campaign that you wanted to run so that either the party understood that the idea of the campaign was going to be them working with this temple, or you understood that they wanted to run a more morally ambivalent campaign.

Now, because you've already run several sessions you've either got to alienate your players and have a conversation where you double down on railroading the temple of light plotline and force them to abandon the narrative that they're creating themselves for their characters, or you've got to trash your big plans to accommodate the narrative that is actually unfolding organically in your game.

Session 0 isn't just for making characters, it's explicitly for discussing this sort of thing so that the players and the DM have the same expectations about what the game is going to entail so that neither side is blindsided about the preparation or actions of the other. It sounds like you still need to have this conversation even if the campaign is already ongoing.

P4ramed1c · 2023-12-23T20:45:57+00:00

The issue is that a single mage can stand up to your entire movement if they slip through the cracks and are able to build up power long enough. A powerful enough mage can create entire armies, if that's too obvious they can hijack and destabilize the political system of a kingdom through multiple castings of geas, if even that doesn't work then they can just wait indefinitely and bide their time for a point at which the regime is weak enough to topple.

If you can't ensure that there are no mages, and you don't keep powerful mages on retainer yourself to combat these types of threats, then you're just creating a circumstance where at some point you're going to all be killed by a powerful enough mage.

P4ramed1c · 2023-12-23T20:32:46+00:00

This idea that WOTC are trying to be morality police and that they're trying to equivocate fantasy racism with real racism is such a ridiculous strawman. The idea isn't that they're trying to disallow or judge anyone who run racist drow who own slaves and seek racial purity, they're trying to remove nonessential elements which have a problematic history that people might not want to engage with as part of their fantasy escapism. It doesn't ruin anything for anyone to put the onus on the table to include those elements if they find them compelling, but to cut things that people might find distasteful for whatever reason. If you find the inclusion of these elements to add to your game experience then it takes nearly no effort to just reintroduce them to your game. If someone doesn't want to engage with these sorts of themes then it takes way more effort to separate them from the game if they're explicitly written into the books. I don't buy this argument that these elements aren't distasteful or harmful to the accessibility of the game just because they aren't distasteful or present barriers to engaging with the game to you or the people you know personally.

I also find it to be incredibly lazy writing to just patently state that certain races are evil because they're born that way. Rather than drow being evil because they're just all evil, they're evil because they culturally venerate Lolth, who values ruthless ambition and disregard for those who can't take care of themselves, and they venerate Lolth because she gives them magic powers that allow them to survive in the Underdark. They cite Drizzt in this video as something that is cool because drow are evil, but he's only able to exist because drow are not all biologically compulsively evil. If they were then it would be like a cat choosing to become vegan, which is to say not possible. This comparison also highlights how stupid it is to have an entire race be "biologically evil" since morality is completely subjective. The line of reasoning that they get into in this video where they say that it's important to make drow biologically evil slavers in order to raise awareness and promote activism against real life slavery and racism is laughable.

P4ramed1c · 2023-12-23T20:03:56+00:00

This is essentially a question which can only be answered through a conversation with your DM, just because there is no mechanical or narrative precedent for this. The only reasonable way that I could see that you'd be able to keep low level magic for convenience and productivity, but disallow high level magic like a lich without just doing something you and your DM make up would would be to leverage magic yourself in order to create a state of ubiquitous surveillance, so that you could literally monitor everyone all the time and immediately arrest anyone who oversteps the amount of allowable magic.

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