[HN Gopher] Autism should not be treated as a single condition
___________________________________________________________________
Autism should not be treated as a single condition
https://archive.md/zOQv5
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 162 points
Date : 2025-12-04 16:25 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://archive.ph/zOQv5
| ilvez wrote:
| What's with these archive links these days. I just get locked
| behind "Are you a human" clicking and random captchas.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Robert F. Kennedy junior, America's health secretary, thinks
| that autism has become an "epidemic" in his country. His concern
| stems from figures from the Centres for Disease Control and
| Prevention, which shows that the condition now affects 32 per
| 1,000 eight-year-old children in America (see chart). That is in
| contrast, he says, with the near-absence of the condition in his
| childhood. Mr Kennedy was born in the 1950s, and studies estimate
| a prevalence of autism to around two to four per 10,000 in the
| 1960s.
|
| I'd note that RFK Jr.'s very own aunt was lobotomized then
| _hidden away_ for something that sounds a lot like autism if
| diagnosed today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy
| bluGill wrote:
| Read any old book (like from the 1800s), or look into anyone's
| family history. There is always some version of "Larry never
| leaves the farm". Nobody every diagnosed "Larry" so we don't
| know what he had and often we only have a small fraction of the
| symptoms recorded, but what we have sounds suspiciously like
| Autism (and one of a dozen other things we now have names for)
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yup. Or if they were rich, "eccentric".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bentinck,_5th_Duke_of_Por.
| ..
|
| > The tunnels under the estate were reputed to have totalled
| 15 mi (24 km), connecting various underground chambers and
| above-ground buildings. They included a 1,000 yd (910 m) long
| tunnel between the house and the riding house, wide enough
| for several people to walk side by side. A more roughly
| constructed tunnel ran parallel to this for the use of his
| workmen.
|
| > The duke was highly introverted and well known for his
| eccentricity; he did not want to meet people and never
| invited anyone to his home. He employed hundreds through his
| various construction projects, and though well paid, the
| employees were not allowed to speak to him or acknowledge
| him.
|
| > He ventured outside mainly by night, when he was preceded
| by a lady servant carrying a lantern 40 yards (37 m) ahead of
| him. If he did walk out by day, the duke wore two overcoats,
| an extremely tall hat, an extremely high collar, and carried
| a very large umbrella behind which he tried to hide if
| someone addressed him.
|
| > He insisted on a chicken roasting at all hours of the day
| and the servants brought him his food on heated trucks that
| ran on rails through the tunnels.
| DaveZale wrote:
| Pugsley's tunnels! The Adams Family old black and white tv
| show...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I think this explains at least some of it. In my childhood
| (1970s) as best I recall, these kids were hidden away. They
| went to separate special education schools or a separate
| classroom in the main school and didn't really mix with the
| rest of the kids. Today the attempt is made, for better or
| worse, to mainstream everyone as much as possible.
|
| It still feels like there is more autism today compared to
| then though. I would guess that it's some combination of more
| people waiting to have kids until they are older,
| environmental factors, mania about cleanliness and sanitizing
| everything, maybe social factors such as putting more kids in
| daycare at a very young age, IDK. I'd say the same thing
| about asthma and food allergies too, seems that half the kids
| today are allergic to something, need inhalers, etc. It was
| unusual among my friends as a kid, at least I don't remember
| it being common.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > I'd say the same thing about asthma and food allergies
| too, seems that half the kids today are allergic to
| something, need inhalers, etc.
|
| I mean, if you were deathly allergic to eggs in the 1800s,
| you _died_. Very early.
|
| If smoke sent you into respiratory distress, you _died_.
| Very early.
|
| Or see the "left-handedness epidemic". It is probably not
| massively more prevalent now than it was in 1900s, even if
| that's what the stats say.
| https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-overall-rate-of-
| left...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| No real argument, but I'm not talking about that long
| ago. When I was a kid, lots of parents smoked, in the
| house, in the car, everywhere. My father did. Yet I don't
| remember any of my friends having asthma or using
| inhalers. Peanut allergy is very common today, among my
| kids friends, several of them had it. Was almost unheard
| of when I was a kid, schools served peanut butter often
| at lunch. Nobody was ever asked what food allergies they
| had.
|
| It's possible my anecdotes are not representative, but
| this is just what I have observed.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Asthma_prevalence
| .pn... looks relatively steady over the last ~50 years or
| so.
|
| > Asthma was recognized in ancient Egypt and was treated
| by drinking an incense mixture known as kyphi. It was
| officially named as a specific respiratory problem by
| Hippocrates circa 450 BC, with the Greek word for
| "panting" forming the basis of our modern name. In 200
| BC, it was believed to be at least partly related to the
| emotions.
|
| Theodore Roosevelt had asthma.
| hexedpackets wrote:
| I think the argument still applies on a shorter
| timescale. The child mortality rate in the US fell from
| 26 per thousand in 1970 to 7 in 2020 [1]. It seems
| reasonable that some portion of kids that now have
| treatable but persistent illnesses such as
| allergies/asthma would have died just a few decades ago.
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-
| states-al...
| squigz wrote:
| You don't notice nearly as much as a kid as you do as an
| adult; nor do you get a representative picture of your
| friends.
|
| Beyond that, there's a question of, while maybe they
| didn't have an inhaler, how many _needed_ one but didn 't
| get one due to awareness or whatnot? Or how many people
| had allergic reactions, because we didn't ask about their
| allergies?
| scythe wrote:
| Peanut allergies might be caused by poor advice in some
| cases. There was a period where people believed that
| babies should be protected from any food allergens, in
| case they were allergic. Later research suggested that
| early exposure to allergens might actually prevent
| allergies.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| In the 1970s it was still easy to just abandon the school
| system. Kids who didn't obviously thrive were usually
| treated as family burdens, and still mostly removed from
| society.
|
| They also usually died young.
|
| People with ADHD for example, are more prone to abusing
| drugs and alcohol. How many people died from alcoholism who
| were untreated ADHD cases?
|
| >It still feels like there is more autism today compared to
| then though.
|
| This is objectively true, do you know why? We changed the
| name of really poorly functioning people in some cases from
| "Mentally retarded" to "Autistic".
|
| That's it.
|
| Look at a graph of generic "mental retardation" diagnosis
| and it's fall coincides with the "rise" of autism
| diagnosis. Those people were always actually autistic, but
| we did not have the institutional knowledge and tools to
| know that, because _the science of psychiatry and
| psychology is still in its infancy_ and struggled with
| rampant a-scientific thought even into today. Jordan
| Peterson for example is a "Jungian" trained psychologist
| even though that's not science, and he was fired when his
| college discovered he was leaning more on that unscientific
| worldview than actual hard science in his college courses.
|
| >I'd say the same thing about asthma and food allergies
| too, seems that half the kids today are allergic to
| something, need inhalers, etc.
|
| The food allergies is real because a bunch of doctors were
| "nervous" about babies with peanut butter allergies, and
| _without any scientific study or consideration_ , spent
| over a decade recommending parents not expose kids to
| peanuts.
|
| Now that we have _actually done the science_ , we know that
| was dead wrong, completely irresponsible, _unscientific_ ,
| and directly responsible for something like 8 million fully
| preventable peanut allergies. That's what happens when you
| let _even medical professionals_ use their "intuition"
| rather than hard data. This is why medical studies blind
| those professionals. Doctors are not usually scientists.
|
| There is no education that removes human biases and
| cognitive missteps, and it is impossible to cure yourself
| of the standard human fallacies. Statisticians can still
| become gambling addicts, and can still suffer from gambling
| fallacies when not being rigorous.
|
| >I would guess that it's some combination of more people
| waiting to have kids until they are older, environmental
| factors, mania about cleanliness and sanitizing everything,
| maybe social factors such as putting more kids in daycare
| at a very young age, IDK.
|
| The only one of these with any real evidence is that
| Geriatric Pregnancy is a known risk factor for autism.
| Everything else is nonsense.
|
| Don't feed into the _rampant_ misinformation and
| _malicious_ refusal to learn what is _already known_ by
| throwing out baseless guesses and letting them carry any
| weight. How often has one of your customers correctly
| guessed what caused a bug without understanding, access,
| and rigor? You are doing the same.
| bluGill wrote:
| (read the other replies first, they make good points)
|
| I knew plenty of kids in the 1970s that were "a little off"
| (probably including me), but they were not so bad that we
| would remove them from society which was the only option
| back then so we called them normal. Now that we have
| treatment we give it not only to those so autistic that
| they can't function in society at all, but also those who
| could function but not well and treat them.
| alaithea wrote:
| It could be, but the Wikipedia article notes that she may have
| also suffered a birth injury from hypoxia.
|
| Rosemary's story is so tragic and heartbreaking. Her life was
| filled with what would today be considered multiple instances
| of medical malpractice, and heartless, unethical behavior on
| the part of the Kennedy family. Her father didn't even tell her
| mother about the lobotomy until after it was done.
|
| Incredible that she lived to the age of 86. The nuns taking
| care of her might have actually cared, which could hardly be
| said of the Kennedy family.
| o11c wrote:
| Those are not unrelated. Both from my family and from looking
| at the research, there's a strong correlation between
| long/difficult births (sometimes explicitly hypoxia) and
| autism.
| marklar423 wrote:
| Would you mind pointing me at the research you found? I've
| been looking for studies that correlated hypoxia and autism
| (and related interventions that might help) but I haven't
| been successful.
| neilv wrote:
| The Rosemary Kennedy story is tragic.
|
| JFK was great in some ways, but that political dynasty had
| serious problems even before RFK Jr.
|
| The Wikipedia article paints this as partly driven by the
| political aspirations of the patriarch. I suspect this is yet
| another example of we'd be in much better shape if the US
| didn't have quasi-royalty, nor families aspiring to that.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| The only reason JFK was JFK is because his older brother was
| killed in an aircraft mishap in WWII. Joe Kennedy, Jr. would
| have gotten the big political push if he'd lived.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I will admit that I stopped reading the article because I think
| the article is completely mixing things up and honestly just did
| not feel like reading anymore of it.
|
| I think very few people actually consider it a single condition.
| To the point that most people that I know, including myself, say
| that we are "somewhere on the spectrum" or some variant of that.
|
| This isn't a post diagnoses understanding either, it is well
| understood by anyone I have talked to about this in the last
| 10ish years? (maybe less, I cant really pinpoint that).
|
| While I feel like there is value for professionals to be more
| specific about it, from an everyday person prospective I feel
| like "Autism" is well enough understood to be not just a single
| thing. Enough so that some phrasing along the lines of "my tism
| is..." is somewhat commonplace.
|
| The real problem is anti-science people joining the conversation,
| but splitting up Autism is not going to change that.
|
| Edit: To be very clear here I am not trying to say that most
| people in general are saying "I am somewhere on the spectrum". I
| am saying that most people _I_ know which a larger portion of the
| people I regularly talk to are also diagnosed.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > I think very few people actually consider it a single
| condition. To the point that most people that I know, including
| myself, say that we are "somewhere on the spectrum" or some
| variant of that.
|
| Couldn't disagree more. The "autism is my super power" movement
| is borderline offensive to people dealing with severe or low
| functioning autism.
|
| Dismissive, uninformed comment.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I have never in my life used "autism is my super power" so
| please don't put words in my mouth. I will agree that it is
| offensive but that is very different from saying "somewhere
| on the spectrum" when I don't feel like having a more in dept
| conversation.
|
| And again my point is that contrary to what the article seems
| to be trying to make, no one really considers Autism a single
| thing.
| nxor wrote:
| The article is about ASD.
| dpark wrote:
| You obviously did not claim autism as a superpower.
|
| Still this "everyone is a bit autistic" stuff is kind of
| absurd. It diminishes the condition.
|
| > most people that I know, including myself, say that we
| are "somewhere on the spectrum"
|
| No one says "everyone I know is a bit paraplegic", because
| that would be insane. Yet people glibly call themselves
| autistic as if having geeky hobbies or a job in software is
| the same as being diagnosable as having an autism spectrum
| disorder.
| nerdjon wrote:
| > Still this "everyone is a bit autistic" stuff is kind
| of absurd. It diminishes the condition.
|
| Again nowhere am I saying that.
|
| Maybe I could have worded it much better but I never
| meant to imply, it happens that like myself a larger
| portion of the people I hang out with are diagnosed which
| for me works with just saying "most people" but I can see
| why that was not clear.
| dpark wrote:
| Fine. You said most people you know.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| I'm not putting words in your mouth. What I'm saying is, if
| we had different names for different types of autism,
| saying "autism is my super power" wouldn't be such an
| issue.
|
| And if "no one considers autism a single thing" THEN WHAT
| IS EACH THING? lol
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > And if "no one considers autism a single thing" THEN
| WHAT IS EACH THING? lol
|
| We don't have a name for every color on the light
| spectrum, nor can the average person tell you what's
| different about #FF0000 vs #FE0000. They still exist!
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Autism should not be treated as a single condition
| ceejayoz wrote:
| No one is disagreeing with that.
|
| People are trying to point out that the "spectrum" thing
| is the medical field doing precisely what you're asking
| for.
| nerdjon wrote:
| Please point me to anywhere that it is treated as a
| single thing that isn't the people using Autism to push
| an anti-science agenda.
|
| It is an Umbrella term that is well understood to be a
| "spectrum" and well understood to not be the same for 2
| different people.
|
| My question though, what is the point of separating it.
| What do we actually gain from doing so? I guarantee you
| these attacks will still exist.
|
| I don't have a degree in this but I have to imagine there
| was a good reason that Aspergers is no longer its own
| diagnosis.
| squigz wrote:
| ???
|
| In what way is GP being dismissive, or taking the "autism is
| my super power" position with that comment?
| mystraline wrote:
| > Couldn't disagree more. The "autism is my super power"
| movement is borderline offensive to people dealing with
| severe or low functioning autism.
|
| I doubt those types are saying much of anything. Its more
| likely their caregivers.
|
| Again the old name for those of us who think its more a super
| power used to be called Aspergers syndrome.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome . And we got
| folded in to Autism Spectrum Disorder, as did a whole host of
| other diagnostics.
|
| And we have been found to be more truthful, better at
| focusing, can hyperfocus, notice more details than NT's, and
| plenty more. We're only a disease cause we're the minority.
| kube-system wrote:
| Many with Aspergers take advantage of their strengths (as
| anyone does) but it is not without its difficulties
| some_random wrote:
| >And we have been found to be more truthful, better at
| focusing, can hyperfocus, notice more details than NT's,
| and plenty more. We're only a disease cause we're the
| minority.
|
| Yeah and this is why Autism shouldn't be treated as a
| single condition, even if the cause is the same the outcome
| is meaningfully different than someone who cannot function.
| alphager wrote:
| It's not a disease, it's a disability.
|
| As someone with a diagnosis, I would add several sensory
| issues (for me it's noises, multiple conversations at the
| same time, stickiness, physical contact, whole categories
| of food and several others) and several social issues to
| your list of superpowers.
|
| Seeing it purely as a positive is insultingly reductive.
|
| To be clear: I would not take a cure if it somehow got
| invented, but it /is/ limiting in a multitude of ways even
| in the best cases.
| mystraline wrote:
| I only have so many comments before idiotic rate
| limiting. But I'll comment here.
|
| So for dis-ease or dis-ability, it doesnt interfere with
| ease of life. Nor does it materially affect my ability.
|
| > I would add several sensory issues (for me it's noises,
| multiple conversations at the same time, stickiness,
| physical contact, whole categories of food and several
| others) and several social issues to your list of
| superpowers.
|
| And too true. I have some as you listed as well. However,
| I also figured out what causes them in me, and how to
| reduce their effects to nil. In a way, its self-treatment
| with n=1.
|
| Noise: I dont have a problem with noise per se. However,
| when multiple people are talking or music with lyrics are
| on in the background, its incredibly hard for me to
| process what's spoken along with it.
|
| Weirdly though, when I was principal clarinettist in a
| symphony, I could easily pick out any instrument by
| simple concentration. All I know is the noise issue with
| me is something with vocal processing of over-talking
| voices.
|
| stickiness: for me, its dirt on my hands. Or
| chicken/turkey/beef/pork/lamb/goat blood. I do a lot of
| cooking. I hate those feelings on my skin. But I find
| that as long as I wash my hands before and after with a
| good degreasing soap (Dawn), the icky goes away. I can
| still do the task at speed.
|
| I dont have the physical contact issues for people I'm
| close with. So, thats not an issue.
|
| Food: theres only a few foods I can't eat, due to
| vomiting reasons. Tapioca based products are the big one.
| Aside from that, I eat everything from blue cheese, to
| cow tongue, offal from beef and birds,ghost peppers, pork
| brains, hakarl. I like the tastes and sensations that
| foods have. In a way, I'm wondering if this is also
| relayed to the supersensitive reject-foods type.
| Definitely not a disability.
|
| And of course, theres the huge downsides with
| interpersonal interactions. Took me decades to really
| piece together and emulate and identify emotional state
| in others. But the psychologists dont know how to fix
| this either. Most of them are NTs who it comes naturally.
| But they want their indefinite sessions to do basically
| nothing but pay $200/hr.
|
| > Seeing it purely as a positive is insultingly
| reductive.
|
| Again, there are up and downsides to NT's and ND's.
|
| Neurotypicals are more known for deception and lying. Or
| they use the term "little white lies". These things
| slowly stack up in NT conversations until they become
| huge problems. Sitcoms are based on this. But ND's, well,
| we are the weird ones. When someone asks "do I look good
| in this?" And you say "no, it clashes with your skin
| tone" - you were supposed to know they wanted a yes.
|
| I feel sad that NTs can't properly hyperfocus, and can
| easily drop out of hyperfocus with low sensory input.
|
| NTs memory is foggy and badly reorders things. Or they
| misremember and blame others for ill-perceived issues.
|
| There are good and bad. I'm glad I'm ND, likely Aspergers
| (hence autistic). Most of these problems are ones that
| can be solved, at least for Aspergers side of things.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > I doubt those types are saying much of anything. Its more
| likely their caregivers.
|
| It doesn't really matter whose saying it. The point is that
| autism is not cool or fun for many people. We need a way to
| distinguish the difference, besides saying high or low
| functioning.
|
| > We're only a disease cause we're the minority.
|
| WHICH WE ARE WE TALKING ABOUT THEN? IS IT NOT A DISEASE
| WHEN SOMEONE IS NON-VERBAL? Holy shit. Point, meet case.
| mystraline wrote:
| I immediately started with 'Aspergers was folded into
| autism spectrum disorder'.
|
| I dont think they ever should have did that.
|
| If the doctors say that "someone is nonverbal, pisses
| their pants, and needs spoonfed at 17yr old" is somehow
| the same as "someone who is a professional engineer who
| can hyperfocus but misses social cues and says weird
| stuff" - the doctors are completely wrong.
|
| Those are demonstrably NOT the same thing.
|
| And yes, my Aspergers is a super power. Those abilities
| (many positive, some negative) have gotten me far.
| staticman2 wrote:
| The diagnostic criteria for "Aspergers" never required
| above average, or even average intelligence.
|
| If you had visited the Aspergers and autism website
| support forum "wrong planet" 20 years ago you'd have seen
| many lower functioning than you people with "aspergers"
| complaining about aspects of their lives.
|
| So I don't see how "aspergers" is a superpower.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Then we agree that autism should be comprised of several
| named and distinct "disorders."
| bluGill wrote:
| The reason we say "somewhere on the spectrum" is there are a
| lot of high functioning people who have a few autism like
| symptoms that benefit from some autism treatments. You can
| change the name/diagnosis what you want, but in the end we need
| to get people the treatment they need.
| cogman10 wrote:
| That's the benefit of a broad diagnosis. Narrow diagnoses
| make it hard to get specific treatments for problems.
|
| That's my main concern about trying to split up autism. It's
| all well and good for study purposes, but for "can I get my
| insurance to pay for my kid's occupational therapy" purposes
| I'm really skittish about such a breakup. All the sudden my
| kid might have "omegaism" or whatever and boom, it's uncommon
| for them to need OT so insurance won't cover it.
| phito wrote:
| That's exactly my issue with "autism" because it feels like
| lumping a bunch of things together just for the sake of
| simplifying health care. Meanwhile you have a bunch of
| people that have completely different symptoms, experiences
| and causes with the same diagnostic.
| cogman10 wrote:
| The vast amount of treatment for autism is therapies.
|
| It really doesn't matter if the underlying cause is very
| different in terms of treatment because a speech
| therapist works the same with a kid with autism as they
| do with a kid with down syndrome.
|
| If there were more pharmaceutical interventions then I
| might care a bit more. But there's just not.
|
| In terms of the research, the researchers already have
| tools to sort and filter individuals based on their
| specific set of symptoms. Just because 2 people share an
| autism diagnosis doesn't really impact the research.
|
| What objection do you have other than not liking that
| it's not a "pure" diagnosis?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's lumping a bunch of things together because _they are
| empirically linked together_
|
| People with sensory issues _often_ also have more
| cognitive rigidity for example.
|
| Autism, and many other psychological disorders, are quite
| literally just a lump of symptoms and presentations,
| _because we do not have better options_.
|
| Sure, it makes navigating american health insurance
| easier if you can just say "Autism" and get various
| treatments paid for, but very similar diagnostic criteria
| and definitions are used in countries with fully
| socialized medicine.
|
| Those people with those linked issues tend to benefit
| from similar treatment, and that's _the entire point of a
| diagnostic criteria_.
|
| All the complaints come from people who seem to just not
| like the vibe of that?
|
| Deal with it. Go fund more research into the heritability
| of neurodivergent pathologies if you want a blood test.
|
| Some day we WILL be able to separate "Autism" into very
| specific diseases with specific causes, and some of those
| causes will have a genetic test. Unless we kill the
| concept of medical research because we elected morons who
| tear apart our institutions.
|
| I have "Impaired vision", and I share that with people
| who are profoundly (but not totally) blind, and it does
| not matter that I can drive with glasses and they can't,
| and the name of that condition is not the important part.
|
| All this handwringing about "but but but my mildly
| autistic son is mostly functional and I'm sad that he has
| the same name of condition as someone who cannot be
| educated past a 3rd grade level" is _stupid_. It does not
| benefit anyone struggling with autism to complain about
| it.
|
| Are you aware that we have multiple medical conditions
| called "Palsy"s, and that they have drastically different
| causes and effects, such that my sister's Palsy which was
| caused by medical malpractice and prevented her from
| using her dominant hand in some cases is very different
| from my schoolmate's Palsy which left her wheelchair
| bound and requiring professional help day to day? They
| are both palsy because they are (partially) movement
| disorders stemming from nerve damage or dysfunction.
|
| The horror!
| cogman10 wrote:
| I honestly can't help but feel like the main point of
| people whinging at autism being a broad diagnosis is
| because they don't like that it makes getting treatment
| easy (especially coming from "the economist").
|
| Maybe I'm not being charitable. But that really does feel
| like the only real outcome of trying to piecemeal the
| diagnosis.
|
| I don't believe research or treatment is negatively
| impacted in anyway by the diagnosis being broad. If
| anything, that opens doors so that research isn't
| accidentally too narrowly focused.
| nerdjon wrote:
| So... you agree with what I am saying?
|
| My point is, if it is commonplace to refer to Autism as a
| spectrum we are already acknowledging that it is not a single
| thing.
|
| Which seems to be the entire basis of this article while also
| mixing in the rambling of someone anti-science that frankly
| won't change even if it was split up.
| bluGill wrote:
| I don't know enough above the subject (and what I could
| make of the article isn't helpful) to know if I agree or
| not. We should split Autism if we can conclusively separate
| people into the different diagnoses and then give them the
| correct treatment (which would be wrong for the other).
| However if we still give the same treatments in the end
| there isn't any point even if we can find different
| symptoms to result in a different diagnosis.
|
| As science learns more (or I learn more) I reserve the
| right to change my position.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| If a person can take care of himself, hold a job, and
| generally not burden anyone else why does he need treatment?
| To try to make him into whatever we consider "more normal?"
| Just let him be who he is.
| bluGill wrote:
| Is that person happy? Would/could they be more happy?
| cogman10 wrote:
| The entire point of diagnosis is because a person needs
| help.
|
| The point of treatment isn't to "fix" or "make normal"
| someone. It's to give them the tools needed to participate.
|
| For example, someone with autism might be more prone to
| having a meltdown. What therapy does is give them the tools
| to both identify that they are on the verge of such a
| meltdown and to de-escalate themselves.
|
| The point of treatment is to help someone take care of
| themselves, hold a job, and generally not burden anyone.
| It's also to help a person feel better about themselves.
| abigail95 wrote:
| The diagnostic criteria would exclude someone from an
| autism diagnosis unless they had persistent deficits across
| time and context.
|
| Your example person may function well within a narrow band
| of capability - the purpose of treatment/support is to
| expand that band and help maintain it. I'm not advocating
| forcing support on someone that doesn't want it, but I am
| for improving someones quality of life by expanding their
| choice of occupation and social environment.
|
| Without any external support I would wake up, work, sleep,
| repeat. Eating? Cleaning? annoyances that just interrupt
| work.
|
| I've made a lot of money doing that but it's unfulfilling
| and at times, disgusting.
|
| If you want to live in a society that leaves me be - I
| won't starve to death but I'm never going to have a partner
| or a family without external services like psychology,
| occupational therapy, social events.
|
| Whether I pay for these services or someone else does it
| doesn't matter. I want them to be available for people like
| me to understand that we are not alone, there's a reason we
| can only exist comfortably in our narrow slice of the
| world, and if we want to leave our bubble there is support
| available.
| Lendal wrote:
| It's a personal decision. I haven't gotten a diagnosis
| because I've been able to hold a job for many years, and
| I'm married, so I'm mostly fine. But I have spent my life
| avoiding most human contact, precisely because I know I'm
| incompatible with them, and people often want to know why I
| never leave the house.
|
| I don't think there is any treatment. I think it's just a
| set of skills that you learn in case you want to try to
| pursue activities that most neurotypicals take for granted.
| It seems like a lot of work to me, and maybe it would be
| easier to just let things be, as you're saying.
|
| I know what my limitations are and I can observe others
| doing the things that I can't do, including my own wife,
| and I imagine what life would be like if I could do those
| things too. But it mainly boils down to having FOMO, and
| thinking about how much work you want to go through in
| order to be able to do some of the things that you're
| having FOMO about.
| staticman2 wrote:
| The diagnostic criteria isn't based on whether the condition
| is treatable.
|
| For example, nobody who is diagnosed with autism is
| proclaimed "not autistic" if they find therapy to be
| unhelpful.
| bluGill wrote:
| Yes, but the whole point of diagnosis is we have treatments
| for those things that usually [sometimes] work and so we
| need to diagnosis people because that is the first step in
| getting them treatment.
| stuffn wrote:
| > Enough so that some phrasing along the lines of "my tism
| is..." is somewhat commonplace.
|
| In the 1990s we drugged kids (especially young boys) who
| weren't able to sit still with ADHD medication. Every parent's
| kid suddenly had ADHD, people would talk about their quirky
| behavior as "oh its my ADHD".
|
| This generation it's autism, and it's likely over-diagnosed
| just as much as ADHD. You do it in your own post, attributing a
| defined, binary, thing as "I am somewhere on the spectrum". If
| anything, your own post demonstrates the anti-scientific (pop-
| sci) instagramification of mental illness. You either have some
| quantity of illness or you don't. You can't just ascribe some
| quirky, possibly somewhat anti-social, behavior as being on the
| spectrum. Sadly, this is often used like ADHD self-diagnoses to
| gain sympathy or social leeway. Much to the disservice of
| people suffering from the condition.
|
| It comes as no surprise that psychiatry, and medicine in
| general, is suffering from a massive reproducibility crisis.
| It's not anti-science to call into question the amount of bunk,
| p-hacked, corporate funded garbage coming out of even the
| highest tier of medical grade journals.
| flatline wrote:
| I both agree and disagree with the over-diagnosis claim. Yes,
| everyone is suddenly autistic, which lessens the meaning or
| impact of the term. Also, the DSM 5 reclassifies a good
| portion of human behavior under the umbrella of ASD, so this
| is in part driven by the diagnostic model itself. We continue
| to see rising rates of severe autism in children, which are
| likely attributable to this reclassification as well as
| better common understanding of the diagnostic criteria.
| Presumably, just as many adults either qualify now or would
| have qualified as children.
|
| At the same time, there's the neurodiversity movement that
| seeks to destigmatize and depathologize these diagnoses for
| both high functioning and more profoundly disabled
| individuals. Just because you don't conform to the norm - and
| ASD is heavily defined in relation to deviation from an
| underspecified norm - does not make you "mentally ill." So we
| have autism as an identity additional to a diagnosis, which I
| think can be really empowering for people, and also cause
| confusion and frustration for others. It's a reclaiming of
| "disability" from the paternalistic and abusive medical and
| pseudoscientific practitioners that have been harming
| autistic people for decades.
|
| I also wish you were not being downvoted. You express some
| common sentiments and I think your comment adds to the
| conversation.
| squigz wrote:
| There's a lot of stuff to unpack in such a discussion, but
| I only want to add that I see the prevalence of things like
| autism as a sort of "over correction" to practically all of
| history. Sure, some kids might relate to it and incorporate
| it as part of their personality, but 1) I don't think
| that's as widespread a problem as some people claim, 2)
| kids do this all the time with various things, and have
| done forever, and 3) I think that's a small price to pay
| for society learning about these things and destigmatizing
| them
|
| > I also wish you were not being downvoted. You express
| some common sentiments and I think your comment adds to the
| conversation.
|
| Common or reasonable sentiments or not, the whole "kids
| these days" overtone is tiring and annoying, and most
| people - online and in person - don't want to engage with
| that, because it does not imply a position of good faith.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >In the 1990s we drugged kids (especially young boys) who
| weren't able to sit still with ADHD medication
|
| This never happened. We did not overprescribe Ritalin.
|
| What actually happened, is uninformed people like you with no
| actual evidence spread FUD about how giving kids well
| understood medicine was "bad" and the direct result of that
| was people like me, my sister, and my brother who all had
| stereotypical ADHD symptoms that we inherited from our
| stereotypically ADHD parents were tested and _rejected_ an
| ADHD diagnosis by untrained school guidance counselors
| terrified of something that _wasn 't happening_.
|
| Each of us spent the next 30 years utterly failing to thrive
| due to struggling with these symptoms, and experienced
| immense suffering from normal life things. We all have
| finally gotten real diagnosis, and some of us are getting
| real treatment, and we are so much better off now and able to
| function, and we are even able to pass those learnings back
| up the chain to our parents.
|
| A huge part of the "ADHD Epidemic" right now is the fact that
| a couple million people with clear ADHD symptoms were _passed
| over_ by people who were supposed to be helping them due to
| the exact FUD you are spreading now.
|
| >This generation it's autism, and it's likely over-diagnosed
| just as much as ADHD.
|
| ADHD is not overdiagnosed. Autism is not overdiagnosed.
| Provide any evidence _at all_ to support your shit claims.
|
| If someone with just a whiff of autism struggle gets
| diagnosed as autism, that's fine, and they will be explained
| how they might not even need significant support, and they
| don't really get any treatment at all. For people with gentle
| autism like that, it's mostly just about understanding _why_
| you are the way you are. "Oh, that's why I <X>". And you
| suddenly have a framework and vocabulary to better explain
| the struggles you have and the problems you experience, and a
| way to bond with people who have similar difficulties, and a
| way to think about your own brain that can help you lessen
| the negative impact of being different.
|
| >It comes as no surprise that psychiatry, and medicine in
| general, is suffering from a massive reproducibility crisis.
|
| There is ZERO reproducibility crisis in ADHD science, and
| amphetamine based ADHD medications are some of the most well
| supported, scientifically, medicine we have _full stop_. You
| can literally measure _physiological_ brain differences of
| people with ADHD, and if you give a kid with ADHD a stimulant
| medication for their life, _those measurable differences go
| away_
|
| If you give ADHD people stimulants, _all cause mortality
| decreases_. They become statistically better drivers, which
| is something that ADHD people are statistically worse than
| average at. You lower all forms of addiction and substance
| abuse, because ADHD people struggle with self medicating and
| abusing substances as a rule. Notably, all the good Ritalin
| does for people who struggle with ADHD is _not_ duplicated in
| people who do not have ADHD. People who take unprescribed
| Ritalin as a "study drug" have worse outcomes than people
| who take it for actual ADHD.
|
| Giving kids with ADHD stimulants _reduces bone fractures and
| STDs!_
|
| >You either have some quantity of illness or you don't.
|
| This is stupid. Some people with bad eyesight need glasses to
| do normal day to day things while others don't, or only need
| glasses for reading, but _both are diagnosed nearsighted_
|
| >Much to the disservice of people suffering from the
| condition.
|
| Stop talking for me, you are doing an atrocious job of it.
|
| >It's not anti-science to call into question the amount of
| bunk, p-hacked, corporate funded garbage coming out of even
| the highest tier of medical grade journals.
|
| It is _entirely_ antiscience to demonstrably have no clue
| what you are talking about and yet claim the experts are
| wrong. That is literally antiscience. There 's no p-hacking
| in ADHD science. There's no corporate funded garbage for
| ADHD. Ritalin is old and cheap and no longer patent
| protected.
|
| >If anything, your own post demonstrates the anti-scientific
| (pop-sci) instagramification of mental illness.
|
| How dare you thumb your nose at kids self diagnosing on
| tiktok (not instagram, pay attention) as "pop-sci" when you
| yourself know only reactionary FUD. Shame on you. Educate
| yourself.
| flatline wrote:
| I think your point could be better made with less vitriolic
| language, and I also think you get a few things wrong: a
| bunch of my peers were _over_ -medicated to the point of
| being senseless during the late 80s and early 90s. These
| drugs were pushed on kids by many well meaning but
| exasperated parents whose children - mostly boys - could
| not sit still and behave in the way demanded of them by
| school and society. So it's a mixed bag with regard to the
| intent behind medication, and the effectiveness with which
| it was applied. Nowadays, if anything it's harder than ever
| to get amphetamines because of US drug scheduling policies
| and our patchwork, piecemeal healthcare system.
| nerdjon wrote:
| > This never happened. We did not overprescribe Ritalin.
|
| I think it is important to stress a difference between
| "over medicated", "over prescribed", and "over dosed"
| (often also called over medicated, something I have been
| guilty of).
|
| An example being my partner, apparently when he was a kid
| and diagnosed with ADHD he was put on a very high (I am
| only relaying what I was told) dose that he hated being on.
| That has caused him now as an adult to be very cautious to
| go back on the medication.
|
| Where as for myself I was not diagnosed until an adult, was
| able to actually advocate for myself and I started on the
| lowest dose possible for all of my medications (also
| treating Anxiety and Depression). While I do take several
| medications I would not consider myself over medicated
| because we have identified that at this point in time all
| of these medications are actually helpful, but I am very
| cautious of being on too high of a dose for each of these.
|
| I do think there are likely people that were put on too
| high of a dose too quickly to expedite treatment, but being
| on the medication in the first place was not the issue. It
| doesn't mean that the diagnoses was wrong though.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| I just want to say, I wish I could give 100 upvotes, but
| I'll have to settle for one.
|
| It's definitely the case that there is undue paranoia about
| stimulants.
|
| One case you only briefly touch on, addiction. Let me
| elaborate. I have struggled with severe ADHD(largely
| untreated during childhood, mainting severity into
| adulthood as a result) for all my life. I've struggled with
| drug addiction for most of my adult life(mainly cannabis).
| The amount of hoops addicts are made to jump through to get
| access to amphetamines is insane. Generally the
| requirements in my country(Norway) are to deliver weekly
| clean drug tests for 3 months. In the case of heavy
| cannabis use, it takes up to 3 months from going cold
| turkey until tests are negative. So, a 6 month commitment
| before treatment can even begin. Now, the relationship
| between ADHD and cannabis is interesting. I know some
| ADHDers who swear by it as a treatment. These tend to be of
| the predominantly hyperactive/impulsive type.
|
| For me, it can't really be called a treatment. It actively
| worsens my condition in terms of executive dysfunction.
| Although it does improve some of the aspects like
| hyperactivity and emotional lability and helps make things
| bearable.
|
| By the time I'm a year into a binge, my life is such a mess
| that getting myself out of it without meds is completely
| hopeless. Here I'm talking my apartment being such a mess
| I'm generally expecting to be woken up by people in
| biohazard suits any day now, and wondering how the hell I
| haven't contracted some kinda crazy bacterial disease by
| now. Cleaning it up is weeks if not months of work even
| with meds. Without it's inherently impossible. And the
| cannabis at least numbs me to the horror of it all.
|
| So for 6 months I have to abandon that small comfort and
| just exist in this hellish life until I can even begin to
| improve things. Try to imagine how hard that makes going
| cold turkey in the first place. Not to mention the fact
| that meds significantly help me manage the addiction in the
| first place. I've successfully made it through this 6 month
| purgatory 3 separate times in the last 13 years. I've made
| more failed attempts than I can count. Wasted most of my
| 20s hiding from the purgatory inside a bong. I often wonder
| ehat my life would've been like if the rules weren't so
| strict. There's no evidence supported medical justification
| for waiting any longer than about 4 weeks. Out of the
| bajillion or so failed attempts, I reckon maybe 3/4 made it
| that far. Go figure.
|
| I'm currently, close to 2 years semi-sober(doing a new
| moderation based approach to my addiction, very
| successfully, smoking exactly once every 4 weeks. Bit
| unrelated to the stimulant thing, it's more about relapse
| avoidance. But it's worked wonders so far.) and doing
| better than ever, but I still have a long way to go. And I
| will fight anyone who sows FUD about amphetamine or
| methylphenidate. These are wonder drugs. If you want to
| freak out about psych meds, go read up on neuroleptics. Now
| there's something truly horrifying. But of course, that
| only happens to crazy people hidden away in mental wards,
| so no one cares about them. I've been to those mental wards
| and I have seen some shit I will never forget. People whose
| lives were destroyed, reduced to an unbearable living hell
| for the remainder, by a supposed "treatment". These people
| are treated like animals. Go talk about that. Shut the fuck
| up about stimulants and SSRIs already, jesus. And go touch
| some grass.
| standardly wrote:
| "You do it in your own post, attributing a defined, binary,
| thing as "I am somewhere on the spectrum"
|
| "You either have some quantity of illness or you don't."
|
| I'm not sure what kind of argument you are making for (or
| against?) "binary" symptoms. The DSM-5 clearly lays out the
| spectrum. There is a conglomerate of effects caused by
| autism, and where you are on "the spectrum" is determined by
| how many of the symptoms you have, and their severity.
|
| There is nothing wrong with someone claiming "I'm on the
| spectrum" if you don't know how or what they were diagnosed
| with. That language is consistent with the DSM. Unless they
| admitted to self-diagnosing, it seems wrong to assume someone
| is lying about their own experience.
|
| "You can't just ascribe some quirky, possibly somewhat anti-
| social, behavior as being on the spectrum"
|
| Quriky, somewhat anti-social behaviour (in your words)
| essentially _is_ one of the dialogistic criteria. But nobody
| would be diagnosed with autism for that alone. Just like how
| autistic folks usually avoid eye contact. That doesn 't mean
| they ALL avoid eye contact, and it also doesn't mean anyone
| who avoids eye contact is autistic. It's a wholistic
| diagnosis. One would need to be experiencing SEVERAL of the
| symptoms to receive an autism diagnosis. IME, the majority on
| the spectrum are indeed level 1, and high functioning, even
| to the point others might question if they are really
| autistic.
|
| If you take issue with people self-diagnosing, I don't think
| anyone would disagree. But your combativeness in just
| discussing the topic kind of looks similar to people who
| refuse to accept that autism is really a thing ("there were
| no autisms back in my day" kind of thing).
| grokgrok wrote:
| Agreed; in short: any monolithic system will have individuals
| with natural dispositions transverse to that order, those
| individuals provide resiliance and novelty but also risk
| driving decoherence and defection. Yay pluralism.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > It comes as no surprise that psychiatry, and medicine in
| general, is suffering from a massive reproducibility crisis.
|
| Psychiatry still hasn't coped with the fact that it spent
| most of the 20th century taking Freud seriously. More
| recently, it still hasn't figured out a way to repudiate the
| Satanic Ritual Abuse panic in the 80s. The people who were
| involved are literally still working, and have moved on to
| Facilitated Communication in severe autism, Gender Identity,
| and are still pushing around the fraud of Multiple
| Personality Disorder. Literally the same people involved in
| all of them, and now their children. [edit: forgot about one
| of the most important, Recovered Memory Syndrome]
|
| There's just no scientific method in most of psychology, it's
| simply guru-led systemic theories delivered mostly (but often
| entirely) by a single person who is licensing practitioners.
| What comes along with that is a complete inability for any of
| these theories to die. They just eventually become unpopular
| and unprofitable, and people jump onto the next thing.
|
| The psychopharmacological revolution has complicated this
| even more, because now there are billions of dollars wrapped
| up in it. The only advantage to SSRIs and the new generation
| of knockoffs was that they didn't cause tardive dyskinesia,
| there was never any statistical evidence that they performed
| any better than the previous drugs. And in the case of the
| previous drugs, they weren't ever shown to have much of an
| effect other than quieting down patients. They were all based
| on the wackjob theory that people having epileptic seizures
| suddenly became sane, and were one of the ways of inducing a
| seizure-like state, along with freezing baths, saline
| injections, electrocution, etc. All of the pioneers were also
| _enthusiastic_ lobotomists.
|
| How can we say that these new tactics are medicine or science
| when the statistics on mental illness keep getting _worse_?
| tokai wrote:
| Understanding autism as a spectrum does not at all imply that
| its multiple conditions. Just one with varying severity.
| phito wrote:
| It's not a one dimensional spectrum with just severity as
| variable. It's a multi dimensional spectrum, you could
| potentially assign a "condition" to each dimension
| (hypersensitivity, OCD, rigid thinking, non-verbality, ...)
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| But virtually everyone in the field _does_ believe there are
| many different mechanisms behind autism, some of which have
| little-to-no overlap either in the mechanisms themselves or
| necessarily even in the presentation.
|
| Many scientists believe that one day we will likely be able
| to split off at least some of the undifferentiated mass of
| ASD into potentially completely unrelated disorders that may
| share a lot of aspects of presentation.
|
| For example, we may find out that one set of genes combined
| with cytokine storms in utero cause dysfunction in synaptic
| pruning, while another set of genes combined with gut
| dysbiosis may affect brain plasticity in the critical period
| of early childhood. Those would be two completely unrelated
| conditions, with overlapping symptoms for some (but not all)
| who have them.
| some_random wrote:
| I disagree completely, the discourse around RFK and "anti-
| science people" makes it extraordinarily clear that when most
| people hear "Autism Spectrum Disorder" they think exclusively
| of common, mild cases where the person has no serious issues
| existing in society and frequently benefits from their
| "disorder". They consider discussion of "curing" autism
| insulting, and challenge the idea that it's a read detriment at
| all. They do not for a moment think about the more severe cases
| that require people to have full time caretakers because they
| are unable to feed themselves.
|
| I can't read the article because of the paywall, but I assume
| that it is referring the fact that these two extremes need to
| be treated completely differently and even discussing ASD is
| made remarkably difficult because these extremes are the same
| diagnosis.
| squigz wrote:
| I don't think it's safe to draw conclusions about what "most
| people" think based on the discourse around RFK and his
| nonsense.
| some_random wrote:
| Yeah, that's why I'm drawing conclusions based on what how
| it's being discussed in real life, social media, this
| thread, etc.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| > common, mild cases where the person has no serious issues
| existing in society and frequently benefits from their
| "disorder"
|
| This is not at all a thing. People with some mild
| neurodivergence _sometimes_ being good _at very specific
| tasks_ is not even in the same ballpark as "Benefits"
|
| There's no benefit to a brain that struggles in modern
| society.
|
| >but I assume that it is referring the fact that these two
| extremes need to be treated completely differently
|
| Except they don't. What is different is the _intensity_ of
| the treatment. My girlfriend needs patience and a little
| therapy. Her sister needs _intense forever therapy_ and
| _infinite patience_ and a system that will allow her to live
| despite never being able to be a productive member of
| society.
|
| >They do not for a moment think about the more severe cases
| that require people to have full time caretakers because they
| are unable to feed themselves.
|
| They are regularly _the parents of exactly those people_ and
| are sick and tired of you speaking for them and making their
| life harder. Those people who need fulltime caretakers can
| only pay for them through social security benefits, and guess
| who is trying to change that?
|
| >even discussing ASD is made remarkably difficult because
| these extremes are the same diagnosis.
|
| The reams of neurodivergent people I have interacted with in
| my life have never found issues with this, and have regularly
| been very willing to engage with the nuance of _a poorly
| understood disorder which by definition has no single cause
| and might be several similar looking diseases because that 's
| what the word disorder means in medical science_
|
| The discourse around RFK is that morons with no experience,
| training, or even ability to read introductory material
| apparently should _shut the fuck up_ , and let the adults
| work.
| squigz wrote:
| > To the point that most people that I know, including myself,
| say that we are "somewhere on the spectrum" or some variant of
| that.
|
| I'm not entirely sure why this comment is apparently so
| controversial, but I think people are confused by this. My
| reading of it was that you meant "most autistic people you
| know", and you yourself are. Maybe I'm wrong?
| nerdjon wrote:
| That is exactly what I meant to say which is why I added an
| edit. I for sure could have phrased that a lot better.
|
| Now yes there are people who are undiagnosed for whatever
| reason (including some people I know that don't see the point
| after being diagnosed with ADHD, I know personally I had to
| have this conversation with my psychologist to determine if
| there was a point to actually do it at that point) that use
| that phrase and it gets a bit tricky.
|
| But nowhere am I trying to imply that *everyone* is saying
| this.
| Cypher wrote:
| Who was?
| dboreham wrote:
| What's going on with the brain of any particular person is a
| point in a very high dimension space. What doctors call
| conditions are regions in that space. The definition of those
| regions has something to do with understanding and helping the
| humans and their families, but also something to do with the
| doctors making money. In the US Healthcare system nothing can be
| paid for unless it is in service of treating a "condition".
| Slightly odd that an article in The Economist doesn't mention
| this.
| o11c wrote:
| Related: doctors will refuse to test you to see if what you're
| suffering from is a particular condition unless that condition
| actually has a known treatment.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| We test for plenty of incurable diseases.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| It has always bothered me that by "spectrum" they mean not the
| sort of continuous thing that spectra actually are, but instead
| some disjoint set of "colors" any one of which might describe a
| person. That's called a partition, and its in an entirely
| separate thing.
|
| When I tell this to people they understand immediately that I am
| in fact on that "spectrum".
| 4ndr3vv wrote:
| > It has always bothered me that by "spectrum" they mean not
| the sort of continuous thing
|
| Oh but they do. the "spectrum" is by how socially acceptable
| someone's autism is.
| rusk wrote:
| > how socially acceptable someone
|
| I intuitively understand this but has it been clinically
| defined?
| mikestorrent wrote:
| Has social acceptability in any context ever been defined,
| beyond say, rules of etiquette? It's a free market and
| everyone is arguably entitled to test to see what it will
| bear.
| lazide wrote:
| The entire nature of the field of psychology and mental
| health treatment is relative to pain and dysfunction.
|
| If people fit in well and didn't have issues (either
| internal pain/suffering or society interaction
| pain/suffering), they are not applicable to the field.
| prepend wrote:
| This is key and what makes something a disorder.
|
| Everyone experiences some obsession or compulsion. But
| only some experience it to the degree of a disorder.
|
| Just like everyone has some "autistic" tendencies. But it
| is only a disorder in some.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| ASD is defined by the level of support the individual
| needs. It says nothing about "fitting in" or by pain or
| anything else like that
| fragmede wrote:
| having friends is a level of support though
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| I suspect part of your parent comment's point is that this
| is an implicit bias in the way the spectrum is defined and
| thought of, so it _wouldn 't_ be clinically defined in
| those terms explicitly.
|
| In other words, the "spectrum" doesn't exist to capture the
| variation in the autistic person's own experience - if it
| did, it would look very different. It's a remnant of a time
| when autism was seen as just a "problem" for the people
| around you, and the spectrum measures how much of a problem
| you are and how weird you are seen by their measure; which
| does map onto a continuous line in the same way.
|
| That does capture something useful, but only a small part
| of what autism actually comprises, and is much less useful
| at capturing the autistic person's own experience of it,
| and makes it a less useful tool to them than people might
| assume.
| michaelt wrote:
| It's not unusual for diagnostic criteria to hinge on the
| _impact_ the thing is having on your work /family/school
| life.
|
| Alcoholism, for example - we don't define alcoholism as
| drinking >=2 bottles of wine a week, or say that 1 glass
| of wine a week is part of an alcoholism spectrum.
|
| Instead, we ask whether drinking often interferes with
| taking care of home and family; or leads to job/school
| troubles; or has lead to getting arrested.
|
| How much of a problem an alcoholic is for others being
| roughly equal to how much of a problem alcoholism is for
| the alcoholic.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| > Instead, we ask whether drinking often interferes with
| taking care of home and family; or leads to job/school
| troubles; or has lead to getting arrested.
|
| We don't ask _just_ that, and the diagnosis doesn 't
| hinge on those - in fact those account for only 3 (or 4
| depending on how you count) of the 11 diagnostic criteria
| for alcohol use disorder. The others are about the
| person's own experience with alcohol, the difficulties
| and psychological problems caused by it to the person
| themself. And that's for alcohol use, an external
| behaviour-based problem with a specific narrow scope.
| Autism is a much wider construct with much more varied
| impact and experiences, and yet in practice people are
| placed somewhere on the spectrum based mainly on external
| interactions and troubles.
|
| Historically this came about because people who were
| "low-functioning" caused more difficulties to _others_ ,
| whereas "high-functioning" folk didn't - even though they
| might have comparable amounts of difficulties and
| psychological anguish internally and in need of similar
| help too. This simplistic view is changing slowly within
| the field and with some therapists recognizing it better
| for what it is, but it's still not nearly as widely
| recognized as it needs to be.
| toast0 wrote:
| DSM-V [1] describes criteria / symptoms in two groups (caps
| from document, sorry):
|
| > A. PERSISTENT DEFICITS IN SOCIAL COMMUNICATION AND SOCIAL
| INTERACTION ACROSS CONTEXTS, NOT ACCOUNTED FOR BY GENERAL
| DEVELOPMENTAL DELAYS
|
| > B. RESTRICTED, REPETITIVE PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOR,
| INTERESTS, OR ACTIVITIES
|
| For criteria A, severity is more or less measured by how
| much social impairment is observed --- that's a measure of
| social acceptability in some fashion.
|
| For criteria B, the severity criteria is about
| "interference with functioning in contexts" as well as
| observed distress of the patient. Interference with
| functioning can be related to the patient resisting the
| desired function, but it can also be because the patient is
| socially excluded due to their behavior.
|
| Although, I should point out clinical criteria in general
| and the DSM in specific are a formalization of arbitrary
| judgements that describe observable characteristics grouped
| into a diagnostic category; this can be useful, but it's
| not really an understanding of the underlying condition(s),
| it's a handbook of things to look for when a patient comes
| asking for help and what things to try to help them. If
| someone has the same underlying conditions but manages to
| pass as socially acceptable, they may not come in for help,
| and that's fine too. When multiple underlying conditions
| result in similar observable criteria, the DSM gets pretty
| confused; there's not much in the way of attaching traces
| and getting debug logs for mental processes though,
| especially out in the world, so this is the best society
| has, I guess.
|
| [1] https://depts.washington.edu/dbpeds/Screening%20Tools/D
| SM-5(...
| kube-system wrote:
| "Society's acceptance of a person who has a condition",
| and "a condition that inhibits social interactions" are
| two entirely different things.
| notarobot123 wrote:
| If I persistently ask awkward questions, that might
| "inhibit social interactions". If my community was
| tolerant and even accepting of this behavior it might not
| inhibit social interactions quite as much. They are
| different things for some behaviors but extremely closely
| related for others.
| watwut wrote:
| It is not just about societal tolerance. It is also about
| autistic person having complete emotional meltdown with
| yelling abusive things or even hitting things because
| something was not exactly to his/her liking. You can
| "tolerate" that, but then you are just allowing someone
| else to be abused.
|
| And even in milder cases, the "does not understand social
| rules" is sometimes or even frequently euphemism for what
| would be labeled as abusive or cruel or simply selfish
| behavior for non autistic person.
| bonsai_spool wrote:
| > It has always bothered me that by "spectrum" they mean not
| the sort of continuous thing that spectra actually are, but
| instead some disjoint set of "colors" any one of which might
| describe a person. That's called a partition, and its in an
| entirely separate thing.
|
| Hmm, what are these 'colors' in your framing? I don't think
| anyone feels that ASD comprises totally distinct, 'disjoint'
| descriptions. It's true that there are multiple parameters
| along which one may vary, but that's true of any human
| syndromic disease, and probably true for any human disease, in
| general.
|
| Here's a popular press article that talks about a very recent
| framing of autism that uses clinical and genetic data:
|
| https://www.simonsfoundation.org/2025/07/09/new-study-reveal...
| Hard_Space wrote:
| It seems a poor analogy, since it's impossible not to be on the
| spectrum somewhere, even if it's #000000.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| This is a misconception I see pop up frequently online. In
| terms of the color spectrum, there are plenty of things--even
| things that have qualities in common with color--that aren't
| on the color spectrum. And while there are colors outside of
| what humans can see, we generally use it not to refer to the
| entire electromagnetic spectrum, but only to the subset that
| makes up light visible to human eyes.
|
| Likewise, when we talk about the "autism spectrum," we're not
| including every exhibition of traits associated with autism.
| You can have some traits associated with autism without being
| "on the spectrum."
|
| Also, perhaps as importantly, "spectrum" isn't a term that
| generally applies only to color, or even electromagnetism.
| sfpotter wrote:
| Fun fact: some spectra are discrete, not continuous! And some
| have both parts. Depends on the operator...
| delichon wrote:
| Autism researchers talks in terms of "graded membership" in
| "fuzzy clusters" within trait space.
| jckahn wrote:
| This is the most delightfully autistic response to the article.
| raverbashing wrote:
| The current shitshow was the result of several misshaps and
| naive thinking
|
| - Group together "rainman" type people (and people with even
| harder limitations) with "not overly social/minor social
| impairments"
|
| - The current overmedicalization and diagnostication of
| everyday life wanting to label every minor difference between
| people
|
| - Current "education was too hard, let's build accommodations"
| which is good but not when you can get any diagnosis by
| shopping for it
| maxbond wrote:
| > It has always bothered me that by "spectrum" they mean not
| the sort of continuous thing that spectra actually are, but
| instead some disjoint set of "colors"...
|
| I get what you mean but I feel compelled to point out that
| colors are on a spectrum. A partition can be a quantized
| spectrum.
| rusk wrote:
| GP's concern is that the quantisation scale is not
| representative of linear severity. It's more like
| classification of disjoint characteristics tagged with colour
| maxbond wrote:
| I won't offer an opinion of my own but I don't disagree
| with that take.
| dooglius wrote:
| I think the former is what they are trying to imply?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Actually, the original word has nothing to do with continuity.
| That's a later adoption of it from Latin to English. So to be
| precise, you don't need continuity. It's just a re-adoption of
| the same word form the original Latin.
|
| But many without autism don't have that need for precision so
| they get confused by mixing up later word use in different
| contexts like you did there.
| rusk wrote:
| The present day meaning describes a continuum. The term could
| indeed be defined in the anachronistic terms you describe so
| it is anachronistic, which is a reasonable complaint when
| something enters common usage. We see terms redefined all the
| time thusly
|
| UPDATE I have exceeded my grace with HN spam controls
|
| The confusion arises from the direct import of a medical
| Latin term which means what it means in Latin, into the
| modern colloquial- this is important information
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well, if one is being pedantic about a loanword one must
| admit the possibility of the word being loaned twice with
| different meanings. If one doesn't want to be pedantic, all
| manner of things are admissible, of course.
| kube-system wrote:
| And yet, colors themselves are arbitrarily chosen partitions of
| a spectrum.
| bluGill wrote:
| Not exactly - there are very clear areas where everyone
| agrees the dividing line exists when you look a full spectrum
| map. Even most colorblind will agree with the areas in
| general (there are lots of specific color blind types but
| most will agree what area of the map is which colors even if
| you don't put any scale indications on the map)
| QuercusMax wrote:
| Within a particular culture that may be true, but for
| example the Japanese concept of blue/green is decidedly
| different from most Western concepts which consider blue
| and green separate colors.
| watwut wrote:
| I argued over a color names with a guy who later admitted
| he is color blind. So, no, we don't agree on zones. I mean,
| it was rather clear he is off. Basically, he has seen
| different color.
| spongebobstoes wrote:
| spectrum is a good word because of spectroscopy, where for
| example a single beam of light is broken down into constituent
| parts
|
| in this ASD model, a single person is like a light source, ASD
| traits are like frequencies, and ASD itself is like the EM
| spectrum
|
| this is useful because our best understanding of ASD today is
| multidimensional
|
| as you say, it is not supposed to be used as like "the
| spectrum" is a line from "normal" to "autistic"
|
| unfortunately most people aren't familiar with spectroscopy,
| but I think it's a good metaphor
|
| do you have a suggestion for a better word than spectrum, that
| could convey the same rich metaphor but be less easily
| misunderstood?
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| That metaphor actually fits well with how it is interpreted
| in my head. Even the "visual" of a spectroscope's graph, just
| turned 90o in my mind.
| munificent wrote:
| Here are three separate metaphors:
|
| 1. A linear continuum (like wavelength for light) from "no
| autism" to "really bad autism".
|
| 2. A collection of disjoint sets (like individual named colors
| like "cyan" and "puce") for cases like "really into trains
| autism", "freaks out at parties autism", "non-verbal autism",
| etc.
|
| 3. A continuous mixture of different properties (like rgb(.1,
| .2, .05)) for symptoms like "10% social dysfunction", "20%
| repetitive behavior", "5% sensory overstimulation".
|
| When people describe autism as a spectrum disorder, they
| generally mean the third metaphor. It's a mixture of different
| symptoms and different autistic people have different amounts
| of those symptoms but all people diagnosed with autism have a
| significant amount of them and their symptoms will have some
| amount of overlap with other autistic people.
| hosh wrote:
| Number (3) has better explanatory powers than (1).
|
| However, for the purpose of assessing social and family
| impact, it is rendered to (1). Both schools and state (US)
| programs use (1) to assess if a child qualifies for support.
| This is not always related to how to parent or educate the
| child.
|
| Fortunately, the US school system with IEP (individualized
| educational plans) are developed along (3). (Source: two of
| my kids have ASD)
|
| None of that necessarily helps in informal social contexts or
| in professional workplace settings. I think the American
| Disabilities Act covers reasonable accommodations for people
| with autism spectrum disorders, though I am not sure if it
| requires legal disabled status.
|
| Lastly: I met a Native (Navajo) family with a child that
| seems to me, have some developmental disabilities -- but I
| think they take a very different approach. For one, they
| don't seem to have the usual social stigma associated with
| this, and are baffled why I would suggest getting state
| support for early childhood intervention. If anything, I
| would not be surprised if they thought I was, yet again,
| someone unthinkingly pushing a colonialist worldview.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| > Number (3) has better explanatory powers than (1).
| However, for the purpose of assessing social and family
| impact, it is rendered to (1).
|
| My first thought was is (1) more of a projection of (3)
| from multiple dimensions to one, or more like the
| magnitude.
|
| Also, it is known thing or are "trains" a euphemism now
| like "friend of Dorothy"?
| dfxm12 wrote:
| It's the punchline to a meme. This is one example:
| https://encrypted-
| tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRgeiEh...
|
| I don't think it's quite the same as calling yourself or
| someone else a "friend of Dorothy". People who say they
| are into trains usually precisely mean they are into
| trains.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| While that word does get used to refer to people
| sometimes, it's afaik always hostile (slur rather than
| euphemism).
| munificent wrote:
| _> Also, it is known thing or are "trains" a euphemism
| now like "friend of Dorothy"?_
|
| I meant it only as a reference that one of the common
| characteristic symptoms of autism is a deep focus on some
| topic of special interest. In boys with autism, trains,
| cars, or other machines are a common one.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| Within the community it's a bit of an in-joke. It's not a
| coded message or anything, just an acknowledgement that
| autistic people are disproportionately into trains.
| fragmede wrote:
| But they're just so cool! How is everyone not into trains
| this much?
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Strictly my anecdotal observation but, as someone who
| attends train shows regularly, they definitely,
| absolutely are.
|
| Not an ounce of complaint to be clear. Honestly seeing
| them flip out and flap around and giggle excitedly is
| delightful. I'm glad they're having a good time and I'm
| also glad that all of these experiences have not involved
| some self-involved asshole leering, criticizing or
| yelling at them for being happy.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I don't think the 3rd metaphor fits. rgb values still points
| to a single color, which maps back to a single value on a 0
| -> 1 or red -> violet continuum. It's more apt to describe it
| like a multi channel audio mixer. Many different channels
| ("really into a specific topic", "freaks out at parties"),
| each with their own value (10%, 20%).
|
| Metaphors often fail though, so it might just be best to say
| what we mean plainly.
| darzu wrote:
| RGB doesn't map to a single line, you're thinking just
| about the hue. RGB is a proper vector that addresses a
| whole 3D color space.
| delecti wrote:
| _An_ RGB value points to a single color, but if R is
| "really into trains" and B is "repetitive behavior" and G
| is "susceptibility to sensory overload", then it's
| basically the same metaphor as a multi channel audio mixer,
| except understandable to a different (and likely bigger)
| pool of people.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| That line of reasoning doesn't follow as RGB implies
| there are exactly three measures, which isn't the case.
| jfindper wrote:
| > _RGB implies there are exactly three measures_
|
| It's a metaphor.
|
| It helps people build an intuition. It doesn't need to be
| exact to do that.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| It doesn't have to be exact, but it's counter productive
| when it is clearly and meaningfully incorrect though.
| That's the problem with the two dimensional [0,1] scale
| as well.
| jfindper wrote:
| > _so obviously incorrect though_
|
| I couldn't possibly disagree more.
| delecti wrote:
| That's just the limits of it being a metaphor. Audio
| mixers also only have a finite number of channels, but
| are also much less familiar to most people.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| "spectrum" encompasses any hue, not just those 3, any
| wavelength of light can have a different amplitude
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > rgb values still points to a single color, which maps
| back to a single value on a 0 -> 1 or red -> violet
| continuum.
|
| No, it doesn't. Wavelength is unidimensional, but color can
| mix many wavelengths, and RGB is a 3d color system which
| doesn't cover all combinations of visible light but does
| approximate the way most human vision works, and is
| therefore useful as a description for human-perceived
| colors (and more accurate than picking a single point on
| the unidimensional wavelength spectrum for that purpose.)
| overfeed wrote:
| > 1. A linear continuum (like wavelength for light) from "no
| autism" to "really bad autism"
|
| This is the least helpful metaphor, when applied to anything
| with more than one dimension. "Really bad autism" can
| describe a multitude of unique symptoms.and is nearly
| information free, similar to describing someone as having "A
| really serious illness"
| brudgers wrote:
| _For reasons_ I am compelled to comment that "really bad
| autism" is not a medical description.
| frereubu wrote:
| To take the rbg metaphor further, it should really be a
| "gamut" rather than a "spectrum".
| giardini wrote:
| Perhaps "big ball of mud"? "mess"? "cluster f*k"?
|
| Arguing relevant metaphors in HN?! A new low...
| echelon_musk wrote:
| If this is a new low, that's news to me.
|
| The top comment chain on the front page 'Plane crashed
| after 3D-printed part collapsed' is nothing more than
| arguing about metaphors. This happens _all_ the time in
| just about every story.
| munificent wrote:
| "Spectrum" works too in that if you take white light and
| split it in a prism, it is spread out into its separate but
| overlapping components of light at different wavelengths.
| sam_goody wrote:
| Humans range across such spectrum that actually match all 3.
|
| We range from being blind to having exceptional eyesight, so
| we are all on a continuum.
|
| But there are various subsets, such as color or light
| sensitivity, far/nearsighted, better tracking of motion or
| text - and these have their own subsets, such as the ability
| to scan text quickly (or dyslexia), read a room better or see
| things that require training (such as the details a race
| driver immediately sees that you wouldn't). Someone with an
| issue of vision usually finds himself in a cross of these
| sets, borrowing tools form one to compensate for another
|
| The same can be said for hearing, for height and weight, and
| for any other physical, psychological or mental property we
| have.
|
| (I've always felt it odd that "spectrum" usually refers only
| to Autism.)
| andai wrote:
| A small difference in quantity can become a radical
| difference in quality. (Look at what happens if you cool or
| heat water! Or the effect that small amounts of lag have on
| UX, it goes from interactive to not.)
|
| i.e. #3 here can be approximated as #2, and this can be
| helpful.
|
| But the really interesting thing is, with neuroplasticity and
| skill training, you can make tiny adjustments to #3 which
| produce a change in the set of #2, i.e. real differences in
| quality and enjoyment of life.
| fragmede wrote:
| yeah my thoughts on this is to present it as a kivat diagram.
|
| https://blog.onepatchdown.net/autism/2023/01/13/autism/
| cardanome wrote:
| The more correct way is to think about it as a prisms. It is
| multi dimensional.
|
| Also it is for autistic people. It grinds my gears when people
| say "everyone is on the spectrum", no, just no. Again it is
| only for autistic people and you need to have support needs to
| be diagnosed with autism. You don't get a diagnosis for being
| quirky and a little weird.
|
| And no, just because someone is verbal and seems to be very
| articulate does not mean the person has low support needs or
| vice versa.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I guess it depends on whether you consider RGB(0,0,0) to be
| on the same spectrum as RGB(100,0, 100) or RGB(100, 150,
| 100).
|
| RGB(10,10,10) may be awfully dark but it's definitely not
| black. On the spectrum doesn't necessarily mean you have
| clinically relevant difficulties.
| cardanome wrote:
| The more helpful way to think about is that the
| neurotypical brain is like RGB(63.32, 12.3, 73.02) but with
| thousands or maybe millions of variables. If certain values
| are significantly lower or bigger it might cause you
| trouble.
|
| Having Autism is one cluster of values you can have. So is
| having ADHD. So is having Trauma. And many more things. And
| you can and often have multiple things at once and their
| symptoms overlap.
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| I find this take quite challenging, although I know it is one
| shared by a lot of autistic people.
|
| I understand that if a person has no support needs, they
| cannot be diagnosed with autism. But that person may still be
| neurodivergent, and therefore to me it seems to follow that
| you have folks who are autistic with high support needs, and
| folks who are autistic with low support needs. Then, you have
| neurodivergent folks with no support needs. But this seems to
| me like a difference in degree, rather than category, and
| which would mean that the "spectrum" analogy works quite
| well.
|
| With a clear understanding that I am not trying to minimise
| the struggles autistic people face, a sincere desire to
| learn, and an open mind, would you mind trying to help me
| understand?
| cardanome wrote:
| Autism is something you are born with. It is simply who you
| are.
|
| Support needs can change over time. You can need less help
| because you learn better coping strategies and have a
| stable environment or you can need more as you get older.
| It is not fixed.
|
| Support needs are denoted in level because that is what
| system like schools and the like need. They don't really
| map to reality. Like for example a autistic person can have
| really bad sensory issues, being really sensitive to
| sounds, restricted diet and the like but decent social
| skill. Another autistic person might not have any sensory
| issues but really struggle with social stuff. Who needs
| more help? They need different kinds of help.
| prepend wrote:
| Everyone is on the spectrum, but only some are diagnosed with
| autism spectrum disorder. So there's a tipping point or
| dividing frequency in the spectrum that moves people into
| disorder.
| cardanome wrote:
| Having Covid is a spectrum from having nearly no or even no
| symptoms to having really bad symptoms. Just because
| everyone experiences having a running nose from time to
| time, does not mean everyone has Covid.
|
| Autism is not the only way your brain can be different from
| other people.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > you need to have support needs to be diagnosed with autism.
| You don't get a diagnosis for being quirky and a little
| weird.
|
| The problem is the people who actually have support needs are
| often not in a stable job with great insurance, and then they
| don't have access to the "get an official diagnosis"
| machinery. At which point you have to choose between
| respecting a self-diagnosis even if they're often wrong, or
| not respecting it even if they're often right.
| cardanome wrote:
| Oh yes, absolutely. Self-diagnosis is valid.
|
| It is still important to get a official diagnosis if one
| can but yeah the reality is that it can be a very long
| process and not in reach for some people.
| brightball wrote:
| Numerous people don't realize this or that there's not some
| simple consistent blood test to say "yep, he's got autism."
|
| Moreover, people have no idea how difficult this makes it to
| properly test anything related to it because control groups are
| so difficult. It's why any type of study that claims something
| does or does not, definitively "cause autism" is highly
| unlikely.
|
| You can identify potential contributors, but that's about as
| good as it gets.
|
| People in absolutes about this stuff can't be taken seriously.
| MichaelDickens wrote:
| Isn't this a retcon? As I understand, autism was considered by
| many to be a spectrum in the literal sense, and the "colors"
| thing came later.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > It has always bothered me that by "spectrum" they mean not
| the sort of continuous thing that spectra actually are, but
| instead some disjoint set of "colors" any one of which might
| describe a person.
|
| Wasn't Newton making the point that we normally perceive and
| treat colors as qualitatively different, but that they're in
| fact caused by a single underlying mechanism that can take on
| any of a continuous range of quantities?
|
| Thus using the term "spectrum disorder" would be making
| precisely the same point, to describe a set of apparently
| qualitatively different disorders that are in fact caused by
| some underlying mechanism with a range of quantities? (To be
| clear, I don't know if any so-called spectrum disorders
| actually meet this criterion, and it's probably more
| complicated than that, but it seems to be the reason the term
| was chosen.)
| yunnpp wrote:
| Why are you "on the spectrum" for pointing out the correct use
| of the term?
|
| As far as I can tell, everybody else is on some spectrum of
| "idiot".
| phantasmish wrote:
| There's a whole genre of viral social media posts that amount
| to lumping anyone who appears to have cared quite a bit about
| something that's not obviously exciting (to most other
| people) into the autism spectrum. Especially historical
| figures. "This guy made tons of detailed beetle drawings and
| cataloged them in books! See, there have always been autistic
| folks, because he definitely was!"
|
| Like I mean maybe, but also he was a bored rich aristocrat
| before TV was invented, and sometimes there are no parties
| going on or everyone's hiding in their country estates
| because of a cholera outbreak or whatever, and "making
| shitloads of drawings and organizing them" was like 50% of
| scientific work at the time. So. Maybe he just had a lot of
| time to kill.
|
| Going by randos posting online, "liking things" and "knowing
| stuff" and "caring about things" are all autistic traits when
| present in any but the _tiniest_ of degrees. It 's
| ridiculous.
| bluerooibos wrote:
| It's getting a tad out of hand. A friend "jokes" that I'm on
| the spectrum fairly often any time I speak with any sort of
| passion on topics in interested in or care about.
|
| I feel social media has conditioned people to think of you're
| anything other than bland and "normal" in your personality
| and have any degree of uniqueness about you then you're on
| the spectrum.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >then you're on the spectrum.
|
| Sorties paradox. Everybody is on the spectrum, it's only
| called out when it's noticeable.
| ryandvm wrote:
| It should just be called the "well actually spectrum".
| IAmBroom wrote:
| > "...they mean..."
|
| It's always some anonymous "they". Those bad people. You know;
| not reasonable folk like you and me. "Them".
| humanfromearth9 wrote:
| Isn't a spectrum limited to a single dimension? If yes, that
| doesn't sound like Autism disorders (Asperger's, ADHD, verbal,
| non-verbal, violence, exacerbated sensitivity, social
| abilities...). They all suggest that there are multiple more or
| less independent/orthogonal. dimensions. And everyone scores
| differently on the combination of these dimensions. Which puts
| us on different coordinates in a vector space. Is this still a
| partition?
| pixl97 wrote:
| >Isn't a spectrum limited to a single dimension?
|
| Typically no in the english language usage.
| narrator wrote:
| What you are witnessing is the process of "mystification" where
| it requires an "expert" annointed by some organization to
| interpret arbitrary criteria to make a politically or
| economically important determination that can't really be
| challenged on any objective basis. Since you are not an
| "expert", you are not permitted to do your own research and
| therefore by rule are incapable of being able to access the
| special mystified knowledge that only the "expert" has access
| to.
| pixl97 wrote:
| That, or it keeps non-expert snake oil sales people from
| 'flat making shit up'.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The Economist should not be treated as reliable source of
| information on medical issues.
|
| [edit] To be more specific, this is a lazy take and is about as
| insightful as saying 'cancer should not be treated as a single
| condition' which for HN is about as meaningful as saying 'the CPU
| and the GPU may both contain chips, but they should not be
| programmed the same.'
| zzzeek wrote:
| and times a hundred, Robert F Kennedy Jr., an absolute con
| artist with no qualifications of any kind
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It is called "Autism spectrum disorder"
|
| Disorder _by definition_ means that we do not consider it to have
| a single cause or issue, and we acknowledge that we don 't
| understand it well enough to give it a single name, cause, or
| objective diagnostic criteria.
|
| When we know what _causes_ something, or how to strictly and
| objectively identify it, then we usually call it a _disease_.
|
| This is well understood by medical professionals, and a normal
| part of their job, and not confusing for the vast majority of
| people diagnosed with some disorder or other.
|
| This article is utter trash. As per the usual for the economist
| Lendal wrote:
| Thanks for that insight. I previously had only a vague notion
| of why disorder is used. One of the main reasons I don't want
| to have an official diagnosis is because the word disorder has
| such a negative connotation. I really don't want any disorders,
| so if I just ignore it, try not to think about it, maybe it
| will go away, and then I won't have a disorder.
| ilaksh wrote:
| We don't have any geniuses or stupid people anymore -- just
| autistic and ADHD.
|
| Are you shy, slightly socially awkward and very intelligent? You
| must be "on the spectrum".
|
| The most intelligent, knowledgeable, socially tuned and socially
| integrated people I see online claim to be autistic. I swear it
| is absolute nonsense.
| dontwannahearit wrote:
| I think a lot of it is peverse incentives.
|
| There are social (cut me some slack, I'm autistic) and in
| socialized medicine systems, financial benefits to an autism
| diagnosis. So yeah, why wouldn't you claim to be autistic,
| what's the downside?
|
| Add to that Gen-Z, socially awkward, isolated and poisoned by
| their obessive phone addictions frantically searching the
| internet "Why do I feel socially awkward?" and a million "Take
| out autism test!" links later get their answer. Yes indeed,
| they have autism, the test proved it.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Autism is much more than social awkwardness, and I'm sure
| you're not intending to be, but this post is extremely
| dehumanizing and insulting to people dealing with the issues
| that an ASD diagnosis typically presents with. and, by the
| way, many high functioning individuals have to fight for
| their entire lives to even get a diagnosis, so I'm not sure
| where you're getting your information from that these are
| being "handed out like candy" or whatever. I can point you to
| a variety of sources online if you're interested in learning
| what this actually is.
| dontwannahearit wrote:
| With respect, I am not insulting people dealing with the
| issues of ASD diagnosis. Autism is real and can be
| debilitating.
|
| The comment I replied to said "...claim to be autistic" and
| that is what I am refering to.
|
| I am calling out self-diagnosing over vague feelings of
| "feeling different" and on the basis of online tests.
|
| Everyone who needs an autism diagnosis should get one. Not
| everyone who wants one.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| Unfortunate you have been downvoted because this is
| definitely the case. I am not actually sure that anyone
| disagrees with this, UK governments on both the left and
| right have identified this.
|
| Ten years ago in the UK getting disability money for autism
| meant being non-verbal, requires extensive in-home care,
| unable to live independently, etc. Whatever you think about
| the definitions, it is very clearly not the same now and
| refers exclusively to some kind of social disorder. Rates of
| the former haven't changed significantly, rates of the latter
| are exploding.
|
| When I say this, I don't think people understand the scale
| here: in some regions of the UK as much 40% of primary-school
| age children are disabled. Spending in this area is projected
| to bankrupt many local governments...to be clear, these are
| economic units with multi-billion pound budgets and
| responsibility for basic societal functions. It is difficult
| to understate the extent to which this is an issue.
|
| I don't necessarily think people who engage in the over-
| diagnosis are ill-meaning: individuals are being given money
| to do this, psychologists are raking it in hand over fist,
| and the UK is now a place with a very effective disability
| lobby with lots of incentives to keep it all going. But it
| remains true despite all of this that it cannot continue.
|
| Just imo, the damage done already is close to irretrievable.
| The situation in UK schools is dire: teachers are frequently
| attacked physically (in some regions in the UK, this is so
| frequent and so little support is provided because of the
| inability to exclude "disabled" children that there are
| frequent staff walkouts), typical classes have 5-6 ASD
| assistants at all times, behaviour is so poor that other
| children are unable to learn, parenting of these children is
| non-existent because parents gain financially and the
| incentives to blame a medical condition rather than poor
| parenting are clear, etc. If you consider other trends, it is
| dire...we are talking about most of the workforce entrants
| coming out: many unable to speak English, can't perform basic
| tasks without support, zero impulse control, usually claiming
| benefits straight out of secondary...it is so bleak.
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| What's your thesis here? I'm getting "shy, slightly socially
| awkward and very intelligent is _not_ what autism is, " _and_
| "people who are intelligent, knowledgeable, socially tuned and
| socially integrated claiming to be autistic must obviously be
| lying, autistics could not possibly be those things."
|
| These seem to contradict each other?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > We don't have any geniuses or stupid people anymore
|
| What planet are you talking about, because that does not align
| with my daily experiences on Earth?
| furyofantares wrote:
| I am an autist in a family filled with autists - some of whom I
| think you would CLEARLY recognize as autistic, but some of whom
| you'd have this "absolute nonsense" reaction to. I say that
| because that is the reaction I had myself, I was very skeptical
| of this whole thing until I came to learn a lot about it after
| my daughter was diagnosed.
|
| I don't think it's mainstream science, but monotropism is a
| theory of attention which has been theorized as the central
| underlying feature of autism and you might be interested in
| looking it up. It makes a lot of sense to me. I think the more
| mainstream way of talking about it is bottom up processing
| (details, the trees rather than the forest) vs top down
| processing (holistic, the forest rather than the trees).
|
| Either way - you can get a very diverse set of results
| depending on how which sorts of things the individual's
| attention gets commandeered by, and by how much. Some people
| can't stop paying attention to individual sounds or individual
| tactile sensations or any other individual sensation, some
| people have difficulty putting sentences together despite
| having an excellent grasp of each word, some get stuck trying
| to process specific individual facial expressions and fail to
| grasp the actual social dynamics going on around them - it goes
| on and on.
|
| Some have special interests (deep attention to a specific
| topic) that are extremely economically profitable (programming)
| or simply socially mainstream (music or movies) which give them
| social cachet. Some have special interests that mark them as
| weird and socially outcast (collecting bugs, memorizing bus
| routes). Some are very intelligent and are able to make up for
| a lot of difficulties with effort. Some have a great focus on
| social dynamics and come off quite charming. All of this can
| add up to very different experiences though life, very
| different sets of difficulties, and that of course can
| compound.
|
| I think you should expect there to be a very wide variety of
| autistic people, if there is an underlying similarity in
| processing things. There is a very wide variety of non-autistic
| people, too. Heck, I think there's a wide variety of people
| with only one hand, just because Jim Abbott was a major league
| baseball pitcher doesn't mean he actually had two hands, and
| just because Muggsy Bogues was a great NBA player doesn't mean
| he wasn't short.
| driverdan wrote:
| Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it's
| real. Spend a few hours to read about these topics and educate
| yourself.
| bolangi wrote:
| Reacting to the headline, I understand the basic concept of
| medicine is you treat a patient who presents with a condition,
| not a condition in isolation like some kind of abstract math
| problem. I think it's a mistake when doctors say to each other,
| even as a shorthand, I have a gallbladder to deal with, when it's
| a real person, and the best results come from considering the
| whole person when pondering how to care for them and which
| treatments to administer, with the medicine being only a part.
| rusk wrote:
| You are speaking commendably from the point of view of
| diagnostics but from the point of view of physical operation
| you absolutely need that specialisation.
| jawns wrote:
| The main argument in favor of treating it as a single condition
| tends to come from the advocacy side, rather than from the
| diagnostic side.
|
| In terms of advocacy, there is strength in numbers, and arguably
| having such a large autism community has been good for both
| research and support. Potentially breaking that up into several
| smaller communities might lead to an overall decrease in impact.
|
| On the other hand, pretty much everyone with autism, or families
| who have children with autism, will tell you that there is wide
| variation in both severity and presentation. And I think most
| would welcome better definition of subtypes.
| pseudocomposer wrote:
| I think "neurodivergence" is a better label if the goal is
| gaining strength in numbers. It fully encompasses autism and
| autism spectrum related conditions, plus ADHD and others. A lot
| of people don't want the label "autistic," but share
| experiences with people who do, and would love to offer
| solidarity as an "inside" rather than "outside" member of the
| community. We now have "AuDHD spectrum" as a thing, but really,
| I think optimum numbers might come from including folks who
| identify as "broadly neurodivergent."
|
| It also leaves room to start distinguishing/separating out more
| subtle variants of what we currently umbrella as "autism,"
| perhaps making it better defined in the future. And I kind of
| suspect doing this with "less profound" neurodivergencies could
| help folks with "more profound" (and rarer) cases.
|
| To look at a historical case: Gay Rights didn't make a lot of
| headway. But adding lesbians, trans folks, etc. ultimately did
| a lot of good for that community in the US.
| reedf1 wrote:
| I was recently labelled neurodivergent by a colleague at
| work, as far as I can tell this is simply because I am good
| with numbers and don't like parties. I'm not sure how I feel
| about this, I wouldn't say I am Autistic or show any
| representative characteristics.
| cardanome wrote:
| Autism or well any form of neurodivergence are about how
| you work on the inside. It is not possible to observe how a
| person behaves and just diagnose someone. That is why
| getting a diagnosis is a whole process involving a trained
| professional.
|
| Your colleague is full of shit. Generally, neurodivergence
| is for everyone who regularly experiences that the way
| their brain works causes them trouble.
|
| Self diagnosis is surprisingly accurate but people also
| tend to under estimate the severity of their symptoms.
| ACCount37 wrote:
| Or so you think. Humans aren't any good at that whole
| "self-awareness" thing.
|
| Even the "no empathy" sociopaths can spend decades thinking
| that they're perfectly normal, everyone is like them, and
| people just pretend to be sad and grieving at the funerals
| because that's some kind of established convention and
| breaking it would be very rude.
|
| What I'm saying is: maybe you just _think_ you don 't show
| any signs of autism - because you think your experience is
| "normal", and you think that everyone has the same
| struggles as you do, even when it isn't true.
|
| Or maybe you genuinely aren't autistic at all! It's just
| very, very hard to say at a glance.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I have serious doubts that an autistic advocate with low
| support needs, as opposed to 'neurotypicals' or impacted
| parents, are meaningfully more qualified to represent the needs
| of autistics with high support needs (e.g. severe intellectual
| disability, nonverbal, severe self injurious behaviors). Those
| autism are very very different with very very different lived
| experiences....and yet, well-meaning autistic advocates often
| bristle at that idea, almost as if it is an attempt to divide
| and and destroy autistic advocacy. The neurodiversity vs
| profound autism battle for hearts and minds continues to rage,
| and even threatens how and what autism research gets
| conducted...sometimes with good consequences, sometimes with
| poor consequences.
|
| I am a proponent of finding neurobiological bases for
| subgrouping autism into different clinically meaningful
| etiologies so that the debate can move forward productively.
| Its one reason that more and more I'd rather forgo acquiring
| non-autistic controls in my studies, but just look within the
| autism sample for how to parse the heterogeneity into
| homogeneous subsets
| cardanome wrote:
| > I have serious doubts that an autistic advocate with low
| support needs, as opposed to 'neurotypicals' or impacted
| parents, are meaningfully more qualified to represent the
| needs of autistics with high support needs
|
| You think a parent without any autism is more qualified to
| speak than someone who has autism but a different cluster of
| symptoms? Because being a parent makes you an expert on what
| exactly?
|
| The is a video of the spokesperson of autism speaks. Her
| autistic child is in the room and can hear everything. She
| talks about how bad it is for her to have an autistic child.
| How she wanted to kill herself by driving down a cliff.
| Again, while her autistic child is in the room. She is acting
| like her child is not even a person.
|
| Autism Speaks is a hate group of abusive parents.
|
| Those advocates with low support needs are the ones that are
| actually making an attempt to give those high support needs a
| voice. Not by speaking for them but by taking down barriers
| so that they can advocate for themselves. Because guess what?
| High Support needs autistic people are still people.
|
| Just because someone is non-verbal does not mean they can not
| communicate in other forms. They can advocate for themselves
| if given the tools.
|
| Support needs are multi dimensional, one person might have
| sensory issues, another no sensory issues at all but more
| social issues. Who has more support needs? They are
| different. And they can change. You can learn better coping
| skills, you can need more or less support as you age.
| anematode wrote:
| The parents you talk about just seem like assholes.
|
| > Those advocates with low support needs are the ones that
| are actually making an attempt to give those high support
| needs a voice.
|
| Having low-support-needs autism is neither necessary nor
| sufficient for being a good voice for others. In fact, it
| can be a very bad thing, if they imply that the problems
| they face are similar to problems faced by high-support-
| needs folks. The focus in the media on low-support-needs
| individuals gives people the wrong impression of the autism
| spectrum's individual experience and broader societal
| impact.
|
| I think a better form of advocacy is the YouTube channel
| "Special Books by Special Kids," which doesn't make a point
| of the channel's author having a disability (no clue
| whether he does), but rather just introduces viewers to a
| broad variety of people.
| GoatInGrey wrote:
| > Autism Speaks is a hate group of abusive parents.
|
| It's an indicator of the current state of affairs in the
| social media autism space that the only organization
| focusing on reducing the suffering of individuals with
| higher levels of dysfunction (i.e. requires lifelong
| support for basic needs) is demonized to this degree.
| Though it also makes sense as the most disabled autistic
| individuals do not post online.
| cardanome wrote:
| > The main argument in favor of treating it as a single
| condition tends to come from the advocacy side, rather than
| from the diagnostic side.
|
| Seeing it as one single conditions is established scientific
| consensus not some advocacy thing.
|
| The diagnosis "Asperger's" was invented by Hans Asperger, a
| Nazi scientist that was responsible for the murder of many
| autistic children. It was never about science. It was invented
| because he thought that some autistic children might have a
| potential to become scientist and the like and therefore useful
| to Nazi Germany and some might not.
|
| Hans Asperger decided which autistic children should be
| murdered and which one to be spared purely based on ideology.
|
| Autism is something you are born with but support needs can
| change over your life depending on many factors like you
| environment, if you are diagnosed early and so on. They are not
| fixed.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The diagnosis "Asperger's" was invented by Hans Asperger
|
| No, it wasn't. The diagnosis of "autistic psychopathy", which
| loosely corresponds to much of the range of the modern
| diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder was invented by Hans
| Asperger (Asperger does not seem to be the first to have
| described the condition, though he invented that name; a
| Societ doctor seems to have recognized a similar condition a
| couple decades earlier.) The distinct separate diagnoses of
| "Asperger's syndrome" was invented later (the term seems to
| have first been used in 1976), and roughly corresponded to
| the "higher-functioning" individuals within his diagnosis of
| "autistic psychopathy" that Asperger described as potentially
| socially useful.
| bena wrote:
| It's difficult because the variance is so wide.
|
| To compare: Three profiles of people with diagnosed Autism.
|
| Blindboy Boatclub: An Irish satirist who wears a plastic bag on
| his head in public appearances. Formerly of a band called The
| Rubberbandits. Today he is known for his podcast and has authored
| three books of short stories. He comes across as eccentric, but
| he's quite capable of managing in society otherwise.
|
| Side note, one of the other members of The Rubberbandits went by
| the moniker of Mr Chrome, but is better known to people as Bobby
| Fingers today.
|
| My stepson: Just a teenager navigating one of the more
| emotionally turbulent times while being noticeably different. He
| has fine motor issues and some social deficiencies. The best I
| could describe it is that he's emotionally a few years behind
| where other kids his age would be. He has few accommodations,
| mostly extra time and the ability to leave a situation that is
| overstimulating him. He's odd, probably always be a bit odd. May
| never be able to tie his shoes, but with work, he should be able
| to navigate society as a functioning adult one day.
|
| Wife's student: My wife is a special education teacher and she
| has a student who is completely non-verbal. However, he is
| noticeably intelligent and can form complex thoughts and can
| attempt to express them. Managed to use his visual communication
| device to insult one of his teachers based on her appearance. He
| will likely have issues for his entire life and will likely need
| constant therapy.
|
| Now, what one thing can we do for these three very different
| autistic people?
|
| There's a reason people say "When you've met one person with
| autism, you've met one person with autism". While there are some
| commonalities and typical comorbidities, what we regard as autism
| presents in so many different ways, it's incredibly difficult to
| construct a single program to address it.
|
| And I can see why we'd want to break it up. But that gets
| difficult as well. My stepson started low-verbal. Didn't speak
| for a while. Spoke rarely for a while longer. And now he speaks a
| lot. And he's learning when it is appropriate to speak and to
| handle people speaking around him but not _to_ him. So he was
| non-verbal. But then became verbal. But not all autistic children
| cross that border.
|
| All that to say: I dunno. Shit's complicated, yo.
| toast0 wrote:
| > My stepson: Just a teenager navigating one of the more
| emotionally turbulent times while being noticeably different.
| He has fine motor issues and some social deficiencies. The best
| I could describe it is that he's emotionally a few years behind
| where other kids his age would be. He has few accommodations,
| mostly extra time and the ability to leave a situation that is
| overstimulating him. He's odd, probably always be a bit odd.
| May never be able to tie his shoes, but with work, he should be
| able to navigate society as a functioning adult one day.
|
| As someone with some similar issues, a) my motor skills _are
| fine_ , b) the focus on tieing shoes is so frustrating; velcro
| shoes are everywhere, you can even get Dr. Martens high boots
| with zippers so you don't have to tie them... like sure, try
| laces and if it works great... but just provide the
| accommodation and move on. :P
|
| On the plus side, everyone said playing video games would help
| my fine motor skills, so I got an out to play a lot of video
| games, which I enjoyed. :D And my atrocious penmanship hasn't
| been an issue in adult life, because nobody writes anything
| anymore (and have you seen the penmanship for kids that were in
| 2-4th grade during covid ... it's worse than mine!)
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Autism seems more like a symptom than a condition.
|
| "Stomach ache" is not a spectrum disorder, even though is comes
| in many severities. It's a _symptom_ of dozens of different
| medical conditions.
|
| I suspect "autism" is similar.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| Autism isn't a symptom because Autism Spectrum Disorder isn't a
| singular "thing" it is a combination of features that manifest
| in various "symptoms" - eye contact avoidance (or the
| opposite), sensory processing (over- or under-stimulating),
| restrictive interests (singular focus), etc.
|
| A stomach ache is a single manifestation of something
| happening. A stomach ache can have varying degrees and reasons
| behind it. The stomach ache is the signal. The disorder that
| causes it could be psychological (GAD) or external (someone
| punched you, and the flesh is bruised) or internal (someone fed
| you a weeks old egg salad sandwich).
|
| In autism the 'symptom' could be model train enthusiasm or
| being nonverbal. There are a lot of symptoms the fit under the
| umbrella of the disorder.
| pseudocomposer wrote:
| I've long thought that autism is basically a few thousand very
| normal, small neurodivergencies (which may each be compounded
| with social effects). The absence of any of them is "perfect
| functioning human cog/prime chunk of workmeat."
|
| The presence of too many/particular ones of them is notably
| disabling for certain tasks, or makes perceiving some things
| difficult (and other things easier). But I think the presence of
| _some_ is preferable to having none, and implies "can think
| abstractly for /about oneself."
|
| (And yes, a lot of the "problems" that arise with folks on the
| spectrum happen because, well, being aware of yourself as a
| cog/workmeat creates friction... It's important to keep in mind
| how much of our history of psychological medicine that created
| the label "autism" is ultimately oriented towards "fixing the
| cog/workmeat.")
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| This is highly accurate. Presently its a whole set of entirely
| different diagnosis make up "the spectrum".
|
| They even eliminated "Asperger" and then just folded that into
| the spectrum as well.
|
| I sometimes think about two women sitting on down on a bench.
| Once says a bit uneasily "my son, well he is on the spectrum" The
| other responds with "Oh I know what you are going through my
| daughter is also on the spectrum"
|
| At this point neither has any idea whatsoever about what the
| others experience is like.
|
| One may be highly functional, socially awkward and doesn't think
| like normal people and processes sight and sounds the same. I
| find myself moderately down this path.
|
| The other may be non verbal and violent.
| cardanome wrote:
| If you have met one person with autism you have met one person
| with autism.
|
| This is true for anything else and no argument against the
| current diagnosis.
|
| There are people with Covid that ended up in the hospital and
| people with Covid who barely had any symptoms. Both have Covid.
|
| Autism doesn't work from "little autism" to "a lot of autism".
| One person can have strong sensory issues but decent social
| skills. Another bad social skills but not sensory issues at
| all. And care needs can change over your life, they are not
| fixed.
| suddenlybananas wrote:
| The crucial difference is that we know the etiology of COVID
| and so are justified in treating those two people as having
| the same disease. Autism is much more complicated because we
| don't have a thing to define it other than a bunch of
| disparate symptoms.
|
| It might turn out like if we treated the cold, COVID,
| tuberculosis and lung cancer as the same thing because they
| all involve coughing.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45451103
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Autism was split into autism and Asperger's.
|
| But calling people with social challenges "Assburgers," I mean,
| wow. Just wow.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > Asperger's
|
| This term has a complicated history so people use "high-
| functioning" now. Many refer to Hans Asperger as a Nazi
| eugenicist. Reasonably, I'd say.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Asperger#Children_sent_to...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am_Spiegelgrund_clinic#Experim...
|
| > Just as the physician must often make painful incisions
| during the treatment of individuals, we must also make
| incisions in the national body, out of a sense of
| responsibility: we must make sure that those patients who would
| pass on their diseases to distant generations, to the detriment
| of the individual and of the Volk, are prevented from passing
| on their diseased hereditary material
| wslh wrote:
| https://archive.is/zOQv5
| prepend wrote:
| I've been using "autism that I care about" because a large number
| of people I encounter are on the spectrum / neurodivergent
| (hobbies and work I suppose) that require very different
| interventions and accommodations that people with whatever you
| call significantly affected people with autism are called (eg,
| Rain Man, etc).
|
| Not that people low on the spectrum aren't important, they are,
| but that just using standard interaction tactics that I would
| with non-spectrum people works well enough.
|
| So trying to save time that someone doesn't need to interrupt the
| conversation to say they are on the spectrum and can only eat
| smooth foods or whatever.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| The article does not mention Pathological Demand Avoidance as a
| form of autism. Everybody avoids chores they don't like, but
| people with PDA take it an extreme. For somebody to have PDA
| enough that it becomes a shade of autism the world exists only in
| the form of _I want_ and _I don 't Want_ so much so that it
| limits the imagination and perceptions of the world.
|
| For example somebody with PDA autism cannot interpret the
| nonverbal communications of other people because they have
| already made the immediate decision that they want to be liked by
| others, so therefore they are. They cannot try new foods because
| they may not like it if they do try, so therefore they don't like
| it already. They would rather suffer hours of punishment grounded
| in their room than accomplish a 2 minute chore, because they
| already know in advance they would prefer to not do the chore
| given a choice to not do it.
|
| People with PDA autism often appear to be sociopaths and
| pathological liars. They are not either of those things, due only
| to a minor difference in motivation. Sociopaths don't care if
| somebody else gets hurt so long as they get what they want, while
| harm to others does impact somebody with PDA in a very normal
| way. Since they have no capacity for empathy and color every past
| observance to fit their world definition of saving face it takes
| a lot of time with a PDA person to see the distinctions between
| them and a sociopath.
| nathias wrote:
| I think we will slowly come to understand that we all start
| neurodivergent and only some people converge.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Ironically very accurate for an _en vogue_ theory of how autism
| occurs.
|
| Babies are born with many more neural connections than most
| adults have. The learning process appears to include a
| "winnowing" process. OTOH, autistic individuals appear to have
| a larger number of neural connections, which suggests that they
| did in fact "not converge" (or not weed out excessive
| connections that distract from more productive decision-
| making).
| creatonez wrote:
| This is an idiotic media talking point not actually reflected in
| the clinical evidence. Unifying autism diagnosis under the ASD
| label was not a mistake, for a lot of reasons.
| squidsoup wrote:
| I'm concerned that the identification of genetic subtypes of ASD,
| as mentioned in the article, will lead to more terminations of
| pregnancy. We need people that see the world differently.
| scythe wrote:
| The most easily identified "autism genes" (eg "fragile X") tend
| to lead to severe variants of the condition, which probably
| don't benefit anyone. We may eventually have a "Gattaca
| problem" but this isn't that, at least not yet.
| carlCarlCarlCar wrote:
| Autism emerges from higher intelligence:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4927579/
|
| If anyone must be branded atypical (not saying anyone should but
| am willing to pushback on those who do) and in need of special
| attention it should be the historical story-mode dependent who
| cannot move on from childhood allegory.
| ianberdin wrote:
| I have some sort of it and I built an AI tool to help myself to
| get emotional intelligence.
|
| https://getpartner.ai
| tiberriver256 wrote:
| YES PLEASE.
|
| This actively harms diagnostics and encourages cure-all peddlers.
|
| Definitely has been good for financial benefits and such but...
| Once someone gets the "autistic" diagnosis all further research
| stops.
| LoganDark wrote:
| This preprint inspired me greatly:
| https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/untangling-biologica...
|
| It looks like this article is talking about that exact preprint,
| but a quick skim didn't reveal any sort of link.
|
| Ever since I first read it, I've been training myself to identify
| the subtypes. I don't have good names for them, nor do I know how
| they correspond to the names in the preprint, but I can usually
| tell them apart. I have indeed seen exactly four.
|
| I would love for there to be more research into the intricacies
| of each subtype, because I feel that care and accommodation could
| get a lot more personalized and helpful if there were less of
| "anything goes / anything could happen" and more specialization
| to what's most likely to be effective for each particular
| subtype. As it is, a lot of care programs or individuals
| supporting them may be specialized to an unknown degree to
| particular subtypes and not really understand how to become less
| specialized or even specialize further.
|
| On top of that, I greatly want to understand better the subtypes
| other than my own, not least because a couple of them I can find
| very difficult to communicate with because my knowledge and
| arguments are formatted differently than how they learn. I want
| to learn how to format my knowledge in a way that's easier for
| them to understand and more convincing for them.
|
| I'm just very curious and interested and I really hope the idea
| of autistic subtypes takes off because it absolutely agrees with
| what I've seen in practice.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-12-04 23:00 UTC)