[HN Gopher] Autism's confusing cousins
___________________________________________________________________
Autism's confusing cousins
Author : Anon84
Score : 195 points
Date : 2025-12-06 11:18 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.psychiatrymargins.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.psychiatrymargins.com)
| HPsquared wrote:
| The internet is turning society into a kind of "social emulsion"
| where everyone is their own little droplet in the fluid, but they
| don't merge together.
| kaoD wrote:
| It's not "the internet". It is "this internet".
|
| Back in the 90s early 00s the internet made us mesh together
| because each one of us there was a specific person. We had
| forum signatures and every single post was clearly made by a
| person, for a person.
|
| Then social media took over and relegated every single person
| into a tiny unidentifiable avatar next to a non-prominent name,
| not unlike NPCs in CRPGs.
|
| In turn this has been exploited by the powers that be to ensure
| the social glue gets even weaker: a society barely held
| together won't revolt. There's only one thing left to do:
| productivity, productivity, productivity.
|
| The political opponent is no longer a person. Just a nameless,
| faceless NPC (personifying everything that's wrong) spawned
| there to be defeated and collect their social loot tokens.
|
| But I might just be an old fart rambling about the good, old
| days.
| squigz wrote:
| Maybe the issue is this perception that "the Internet"
| consists mainly of the big 4 social media sites.
|
| Go on Discord. People have usernames, avatars. Discord
| Profile Bios are just as unique as forum signatures.
| kaoD wrote:
| I am on Discord and the balkanization+homogeneization is
| still as prominent there as everywhere else.
|
| Server admins are just NPCs providing @everyone
| announcements from time to time, to keep the player engaged
| (spoiler: the average Joe is just irritated by those).
| Sometimes you get a quest from them.
|
| Also: 99% won't read profile bios (and you have to pay for
| actual customization, don't you?) while forum signatures
| were front-and-center.
|
| I have to say I'm surprised to see Discord mentioned as an
| opposite to social media instead of... just yet another
| iteration of the same ploy.
| squigz wrote:
| > Server admins are just NPCs providing @everyone
| announcements from time to time, to keep the player
| engaged. Sometimes you get a quest from them.
|
| Maybe you should join better servers. I'll also add that
| this was common back in the forum days too. Most admins
| would just... admin the site.
|
| > Also: 99% won't read profile bios (and you have to pay
| for actual customization, don't you?) while forum
| signatures were front-and-center.
|
| Wrong on both counts.
|
| > I have to say I'm surprised to see Discord mentioned as
| an opposite to social media instead of... just yet
| another iteration of the same.
|
| I did not present it as an "opposite to social media" - I
| presented it as a counter to the idea that we've lost the
| personality GP is talking about
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| You're one of the 1% who reads profile bios.
| squigz wrote:
| Of course, because the alternative - that they're wrong,
| and more people actually do read bios - couldn't possibly
| be true.
|
| In any case, I see no reason to believe any higher % of
| people paid any particular attention to forum signatures
| back in the day.
| iammjm wrote:
| Fuck discord. Another big for-profit platform that is
| swallowing big chunks of the internet. before discord there
| were lots of self-organized forums with their own
| communities and rules. Now I need to register with some big
| overlord and download their shitty app just to read what
| has before been just an URL away?
| kaoD wrote:
| But you can enjoy it before enshittification arrives!
|
| All praise our VC overlords.
| lanyard-textile wrote:
| Nah. Right in the browser works great: discord.com/app
|
| You're going to keep running into a wall thinking of
| discord like a forum replacement; It's designed to be an
| IRC replacement.
|
| The invitation system intentionally creates some privacy
| so you can build a sense of enclosed community around
| them, and so you have some control over who sees what.
| Not having your conversations on full automatic blast to
| the public is a feature.
| Aldipower wrote:
| Discord also is a centralized piece of proprietary
| totalitarianism. No thanks.
| ricardo81 wrote:
| I wouldn't say Internet is a problem, but centralisation
| towards big tech algos and clearly gamed social media comment
| sections do control the narrative of what the majority of
| people see most of the time.
| sublinear wrote:
| > I remember seeing a woman who was a classic example of someone
| with high neuroticism, poor self-esteem, and severe social
| anxiety, and she had believed for much of her life that she was
| autistic ... it fit in with her experience of being awkward-shy-
| weird.
|
| I so strongly agree with this and it's not just based on my own
| experience, but many people I know.
|
| Growing up broke and in sketchy places with sketchy people will
| induce plenty of anxiety. Then I managed to get out of all that
| as an adult and starting a career.
|
| The anxiety never fully went away, but it now presents itself the
| way one would expect instead of "weirdness". Maturing and having
| a more stable life happened to my friends also and nobody says "I
| think I'm autistic" anymore like we did in high school and
| college. Now it's hard to distinguish if we were saying that to
| ourselves as a slur in self-deprecation, or if we really believed
| it. Young people are just awkward and too many people get older
| without letting go of the things they told themselves a long time
| ago.
|
| Make of that what you will. I know my story is super common, but
| the only reason I bothered to write this is that it doesn't get
| said enough.
| zwnow wrote:
| People nowadays are just desperate to have a diagnosis.
| Everybody wants to be special and unique, everybody wants a
| stamp on their forehead that says "I have [x]" "I am [x]".
| People cant accept that the issues they have might just be not
| special at all and are mere human issues all of us have. Its
| the result of aggressive sensationalism and the desire to stand
| out from the crowd.
| harimau777 wrote:
| I think it's less a result of a desire to be special and more
| a result of the way that late stage capitalism will throw
| away anyone who doesn't fit into its narrow mold of what
| makes an "ideal employee". When only a small number of career
| paths provide a good quality of life and employeers can fire
| people at will, then any divergence from the ideal becomes a
| disability.
| squigz wrote:
| People are desperate for an identity. It has always been that
| people would latch on to things that seem fitting for them -
| maybe they put a lot of stock in their identity as a soldier,
| or as a fan of a band, or maybe as a member of a group like
| skateboarders. And, interestingly, most of these historic
| manifestations also have an aspect of "stamp on their
| forehead advertising their identity" - patches, shirts, other
| identifying aesthetics from their community.
| sublinear wrote:
| Upon realizing "I just have anxiety" and there's "nothing
| wrong with me" it initially reduced my anxiety... then I
| wondered why I'm so fixated on some mirage of "normal" and my
| anxiety flared up again thinking about it way too much.
|
| Anxiety with intrusive and obsessive thoughts is definitely a
| real phenomena, but nowadays it's just a sign I'm getting
| fussy and need a break or a nap.
| tome wrote:
| > People nowadays are just desperate to have a diagnosis.
| Everybody wants to be special and unique
|
| I've never managed to understand this when it comes to
| autism. Autism used to be considered something as extreme as
| a severe disability (e.g. Rain Man), and latterly with the
| inclusion of Asperger's into the spectrum, at the very least
| a collection of undesirable behavioural characteristics. Do
| people really _want_ to be diagnosed with something wrong
| with them, or has the perception of autism shifted to at
| least neutral (if not positive)?
| harimau777 wrote:
| I think it's useful to look at the alternative. It is still
| socially acceptable, even among progressives, to viciously
| mock people who are socially awkward and simply write them
| off as undeserving of help. At least with autism many
| people extend some degree of sympathy and willingness to
| help.
| hasbot wrote:
| Yes. Social awkwardness then is not seen as a character
| flaw but more like a birth defect.
| sublinear wrote:
| At the risk of offending some people, I think it's similar
| to why people lie about their dog being a "service dog".
|
| It may genuinely be that their dog is their emotional
| support, but it's ultimately a bit of selfishness and
| wanting to be treated preferentially in a world that feels
| crowded and rigid.
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| "unique" and "diagnosis" are opposites. If you have a
| diagnosis then, by definition, you are part of a group of
| people with defined attributes.
| zwnow wrote:
| Unique meaning unique within their social bubble, I agree
| with the general statement
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| Almost all of the people I know who are neurodivergent in
| some way are friends with a bunch of other neurodivergent
| people.
|
| Either deliberately or because that's how all of the
| other train spotters/board gamers/coders they've ended up
| hanging out with are.
| jancsika wrote:
| > Everybody wants to be special and unique, everybody wants a
| stamp on their forehead that says "I have [x]" "I am [x]".
|
| Spend a moderate amount of time with some humans-- e.g., war
| veterans-- and you'll find that denial of a diagnosis is
| common enough to trivially disprove this statement.
| zwnow wrote:
| Pretty sure war veterans dont hang out on TikTok or
| Instagram 24/7
| habinero wrote:
| There are lots of them on both.
| dqv wrote:
| Yeah, of course. When a "normal" person asks for a reasonable
| accommodation--like being able to wear a smooth cotton polo
| alternative they bought with their own money rather than the
| pique fabric one assigned by the company--they get "wow you
| want to be so special and unique, no you need to wear the
| shirt assigned by the company and get over it." Is it any
| surprise that someone would want to go get an autism
| diagnosis or whatever else so they can... just wear the damn
| shirt that doesn't make them half-grimace at all the
| customers?
|
| They're going to be accused of wanting the special and unique
| stamp in either case, but at least in the second one they can
| feel somewhat comfortable.
|
| People will, of course, conjure up an _unreasonable_
| accommodation (in an attempt to paint all accommodations as
| unreasonable) in their head to try to justify why this sort
| of request can 't be accommodated, which just increases the
| fuel for the desire to get the autism diagnosis.
|
| Put another way, if people were a little more accepting, less
| only-slightly-weird people would be seeking these diagnoses.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Based on personal experience with others, for some I think the
| diagnosis is a substitute for an identity that then brings
| belonging into a group, filling a need for them that has been
| otherwise unfilled.
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| The day-to-day impact of being diagnosed is practically non-
| existant for me. It might explain "why" I might react to a
| specific stimuli but it doesn't stop the reaction. At best it's
| something to laugh about with my wife. It does also offer an
| early-warning system when I'm over stimulated and that I need to
| 'get home' soon.
| alexfoo wrote:
| > The day-to-day impact of being diagnosed is practically non-
| existant for me.
|
| Yeah, as the old adage goes: with an ADH?D diagnosis you get to
| try drugs like lisdex or methylphenidate (or the non-stim
| options if those aren't suitable), but with an Autism/ASD
| diagnosis you get some pamphlets, coffee morning invites and a
| reading list.
|
| I don't have a formal diagnosis but my child does and that made
| me read lots on the subject. Authors like Eliza Fricker, Ellie
| Middleton, Pete Wharmby amongst others.
|
| It's opened my eyes to many other related aspects, specifically
| Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD) and Pathalogical Demand
| Avoidance (PDA) and how those play into both ADH?D and ASD. In
| reading about them I've worked out just how much they apply to
| my-undiagnosed-self and how understanding the triggers and
| recognising the early behaviour has allowed me to adapt to
| minimise their impact.
| Y_Y wrote:
| I don't know if PDA is real, one of the popular books on the
| subject is just a copypaste of the discussions on the
| facebook group.
|
| Anyway I have it and it's crippling.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| For my sister, getting diagnosed was important to her because
| she always felt like she was broken but now sees herself as
| simply different. I'm not aware of any workplace accommodations
| she has requested but it has been good for her self-esteem,
| which is a benefit in of itself.
| lazide wrote:
| Being able to laugh about it, and know what is going on however
| is _huge_. Especially compared to being shit on all the time by
| others and self blaming (a common pattern!).
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| If you happen to have built a functioning support nets already,
| being diagnosed is at best a curiosity. If you didn't, or your
| existing ones have crumbled, it gives you tools to do that.
| TimByte wrote:
| Yeah, that's basically the best-case scenario: the diagnosis
| doesn't change who you are, but it gives you a map of the
| terrain
| ricardo81 wrote:
| I enjoyed reading that. My daughter had recently been diagnosed
| with "social anxiety" but had suspected it was autism.
|
| Somewhat related, "Health Secretary Wes Streeting is launching an
| independent review into rising demand for mental health, ADHD and
| autism services in England."
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8q26q2r75o
|
| Working in IT I've came across lots of extremely smart people
| with their quirks and eccentricity (not exclusive to smart people
| of course), I guess there's just a higher proportion of _quirky_
| smart people in IT. A lot of the time it just seems to be
| introversion- it seems lack of interaction with society has to be
| justified.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| It's worth noting the UK already commissioned a review that was
| published this year, that showed ADHD is in fact under-
| recognised here[0]. I can only assume they're commissioning a
| new one because that one gave the "wrong" answer.
|
| For a long time ADHD was ignored or dismissed in the UK as an
| "americanitis", so it's no surprise that there's a backlog of
| people who weren't diagnosed in childhood.
|
| [0] https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/report-of-the-
| independe...
| captainbland wrote:
| I think a crucial bit of context is that in the UK, many
| people who are seeking diagnosis as adults grew up in areas
| where there were no or very few child psychiatry services in
| the 80s/90s. In such areas only very profound cases would be
| referred to out of area services. Most people with
| neurodevelopment disorders in such areas were diagnosed with
| SpLDs like dyspraxia or dyslexia which could be diagnosed by
| community paediatricians, usually with evidence from
| educational psychologists and occupational therapists.
|
| In fact the pattern is almost the opposite of what you'd see
| in the US where it would be hard to get diagnosed with a SpLD
| and e.g. ADHD was more widely recognised. But the rub lies in
| the fact that ADHD, ASD and many SpLDs have fairly high rates
| of comorbidities with one another, to the point where if
| you've got dyspraxia and no other diagnosable comorbidity,
| you're actually in the minority of people with it.
| alexfoo wrote:
| Also the NHS ADHD/ASD services are completely overrun.
| Waiting lists for children can be more than 5 years long.
|
| In order to cope with this the NHS has spun out much of the
| ADHD/ASD assessments through the Right To Choose program
| (well, in England at least, Scotland/Wales/NI are on their
| own), which means that private companies are being paid by
| the NHS to make up the shortfall. Ref:
| https://adhduk.co.uk/right-to-choose/
|
| Some people say some of the private companies are too lenient
| with their diagnoses. Some people say that the NHS is too
| strict with their diagnoses. I'm sure the real answer is
| somewhere in the middle.
|
| As you say, the sharp rise in diagnoses is probably more due
| to people become more aware, with less stigma attached, and
| having better access to assessment.
|
| Shit like _Rain Man_ almost 30 years ago or, more recently
| stuff like _The Good Doctor_ really don't help though, as
| those just reinforce the negative stereotypes of Autism.
|
| ADHD also has a strong genetic component with heritability
| around 75% according to various studies. My parents
| (undiagnosed but one definitely ADD+ASD) have 1/4 children
| diagnosed (and another 2/4 almost certainly undiagnosed, one
| neurotypical), and 6/10 grandchildren diagnosed (the other 4
| are neurotypical).
|
| Who knows, in 20 years time mainstream schools could have
| switched from 20% SEND and 80% neurotypical to 80% SEND and
| 20% neurotypical.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| In my family it's been difficult for some to accept my
| sister's autism diagnosis because Rain Man is the prototype
| of autism they have in their heads. Younger family members
| who have been exposed to classmates who are on the Autism
| spectrum have been accepting of the diagnosis as their
| image of autism is very different than the one older family
| members have. Good thing is despite some not believing in
| the accuracy of the label, they're still supportive of her.
| H8crilA wrote:
| BTW, there's research that shows that schizotypy
| (schizotypal/schizophrenia) is sort of the opposite of autism.
| You have to squint your eyes a bit, for example both of these
| neurotypes involve social difficulties, like the subjective
| feeling of being alien in the world (known as Anderssein in
| German psychiatry). However if you peel off the social layer then
| the remaining autistic features become anti-correlated with the
| remaining schizotypal features on the scale of the population.
| There are also some decent theories that suggest this should be
| the case - for example in the predictive coding theory it is
| believed that autistic brains over-weigh sensory inputs over
| their model of the world, whereas schizotypal brains over-weigh
| their model of the world over the sensory inputs. Or the Big Five
| traits, openness to experience is usually low in autism and high
| in schizophrenia.
| Unlisted6446 wrote:
| I think I understand what you mean.
|
| You're saying that relative to the 'typical individual',
| autistic brains weigh sensory inputs more heavily than their
| internal model. And that in schizotypal brains, relative to the
| 'typical individual', the internal model is weighed more
| heavily than the sensory input, right?
|
| I don't know much about this area, so I can't comment on the
| correctness. However, I think we should be cautious in saying
| 'over-weigh' and 'under-weigh' because I really do think that
| there may be a real normative undertone when we say 'over-
| weigh'. I think it needlessly elevates what the typical
| individual experiences into what we should consider to be the
| norm and, by implicit extension, the 'correct way' of doing
| cognition.
|
| I don't say this to try to undermine the challenges by people
| with autism or schizotypy. However, I think it's also fair to
| say that if we consider what the 'typical' person really is and
| how the 'typical' person really acts, they frequently do a lot
| of illogical and --- simply-put --- 'crazy' things.
| WJW wrote:
| Isn't "what the typical individual experiences" pretty much
| the definition of "normal"?
|
| Whether "normal" is also "correct" is a completely separate
| question. There are plenty of fields where the behavior of
| the typical person is also widely perceived to be incorrect,
| like personal finance or exercise routines.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _However, I think we should be cautious in saying 'over-
| weigh' and 'under-weigh' because I really do think that there
| may be a real normative undertone when we say 'over-weigh'. I
| think it needlessly elevates what the typical individual
| experiences into what we should consider to be the norm and,
| by implicit extension, the 'correct way' of doing cognition._
|
| No biggie, there's a real normative undertone to the world in
| general too.
|
| Norm itself means "what the majority does" or the socially
| (i.e. majority) accepted yardstick ("norma" in latin was a
| literal yardstick-like tool).
|
| It's not about the typical person _ _always_ _ doing things
| in a better way, or the autistic person always doing things
| differently. It's about the distribution of typical vs
| atypical behavior. So, it's not very useful to characterize
| such atypical behavior better or worse based on absolute
| moral or technical judgement. Morality changes over time,
| cultures, and even social groups, to a bigger or smaller
| degree.
|
| If, however, we use "degree of comformity with majority
| behaviors/expectations" as the measurement, autistics do
| perform worse on that.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Norm is descriptive. Normative is prescriptive.
|
| Knowing the difference is important to understanding and
| empathizing with the person you replied to.
| coldtea wrote:
| Normative is just the adjective form of "related to norm"
| - can still be perfectly descriptive in use. The
| difference you allude do is more about the practical
| enforcement of a norm (or lack thereof), than the kind of
| the part of speech use to refer to it.
|
| I 100% understand and empathize, doesn't mean I agree.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| > Normative is just the adjective form of "related to
| norm"
|
| You might want to recheck the definition of normative.
| Yours is a non-standard usage and you will be
| misunderstood if you continue to use it that way.
|
| Norm is is, Normative is ought.
|
| > Normative: pertaining to giving directives or rules
|
| > Synonyms: prescriptive
| dragonwriter wrote:
| A "norm" can refer be either descriptive (average) or
| prescriptive (standard), but "normative" specifically is
| an adjective which refers to things establishing or
| relating prescriptive norms (this subtle distinction is
| often not made in short dictionary definitions but is
| readily observable in use.)
| heyjamesknight wrote:
| The center of the normal ditribution is "normal" or
| "normative." That's where the term comes from.
|
| It's like saying we shouldn't call immigrants "aliens"
| because that conjures images of space. Where do you think the
| term comes from?
| coldtea wrote:
| If the mind is a kind of "prediction machine", wouldn't that
| make _ALL_ psychiactric disorders a specific variation of
| faulty prediction mode though?
| Noaidi wrote:
| Yes, but not always faulty. My (diagnosed) OCD and Anxiety
| have saved me from many bad situation. I see the many many
| many possibilities that something can go wrong and I have
| very low risk tolerance.
| neom wrote:
| Given we're long evolved, and also tribal based animals, and
| that culture is an evolutionary pressure feedback mechanism,
| and prediction is fundamentally useful to our reality,
| different "thinking styles" (ways to predict/understand
| outcomes) are useful, aannnd, tribally we used people for
| their usefulness, I often wonder if "faulty" is the correct
| lens. That is to say, If prediction variation was useful to
| tribes, having both 'trust the model' and 'trust the senses'
| type people, I suppose framing these as disorders rather than
| trade offs is probably the wrong lens entirely.
| Society/culture/reality is so narrow and predictable these
| days, faulty in what context, you know? If you breed 20
| generations of "best night watchers", in the jungle at night
| looking down, quiet, still, dark... you'd probably be
| selecting for specific traits, and creating new traits,
| retinal rod density and sensitivity, faster dark
| adaptation/contrast etc, attention/vigilance traits, pattern
| detection, anxiety adjacent traits in hypervigilance, prob
| something about circadian rhythm tolerance etc etc. (https://
| www.researchgate.net/publication/40886135_Not_By_Gen...)
| pas wrote:
| it becomes a disorder when the person faces "too many"
| difficulties due to their difference (instead of enjoying
| the advantages)
|
| and of course there are extreme cases, like the many non-
| verbal people (who likely wouldn't be able to live alone,
| their communication is limited to poking at pictures on a
| board), and the truly end of the spectrum where nothing
| sort of institutionalization can provide the environment
| and care necessary for survival
|
| but of course having our society somehow become so narrow
| allows for the economic efficiency to even have the surplus
| that then we give to people with these disorders (in the
| form or care, attention, medical research, and so on)
| neom wrote:
| Yes, having society "somehow" became ordered for a
| certain "norm" on a spectrum certain does create a
| disordered reality for the others...
| SecondHandTofu wrote:
| That is fascinating, I have seen the schizophrenia model of
| having "trapped priors" before.
|
| I figured that this is probably something Scott Alexander has
| written about, and lo and behold:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/12/11/diametrical-model-of-a...
| Noaidi wrote:
| > BTW, there's research that shows that schizotypy
| (schizotypal/schizophrenia) is sort of the opposite of autism.
|
| And I disagree with that. There is a wide overlap of symptoms
| in all mood disorders. People with ASD show many traits of the
| negative symptoms of schizophrenia. This paper might change
| your mind:
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8931527/
| H8crilA wrote:
| Yeah, at face value the two diagnoses are positively
| correlated. This is simply true. And traits of these two only
| become negatively correlated if you remove the shared social
| difficulties, which includes a lot of the negative symptoms.
| Unfortunately everything is positively correlated in
| psychiatry. If you want to explore this deeper I recommend
| the "p factor" (general psychopathology factor), which is a
| serious, multi-year attempt at identifying something like the
| "first eigenvector of psychiatry", a loading common to all
| psychopathology, including substance use, affective
| disorders, psychotic disorders, conduct/personality
| disorders, ... The idea is that if you only know that someone
| has whatever goes into this vector then you know that person
| is quite likely to develop some disorder, but you don't know
| which one.
|
| I would only add that ASDs do not have "real" negative
| symptoms of schizophrenia, but what they do have can look a
| bit similar. The research on anti-correlation was using
| questionnaires and binned the social questions taking that
| into account.
| TimByte wrote:
| Yeah, the "mirror image" idea makes a lot of sense to me. Both
| groups feel out of sync socially, but for opposite reasons:
| autistic cognition leans too hard on raw sensory input,
| schizotypal cognition leans too hard on internal
| interpretations
| notnullorvoid wrote:
| Wouldn't the implication of them being "opposite" be that in
| some sense they are mutually exclusive? I don't really see
| evidence of that. Your example of sensory input vs world model
| weight is a bit flawed, because both of those are extremely
| multifaceted. One can have extreme weight in sensory input in
| one sense but not others, as well as extreme weight on world
| model for certain aspects of life.
| treis wrote:
| I don't think there's much underlying relationship. True they
| will both impact social relationships. But it's more like how
| being blind or being deaf will impact social relationships. The
| mechanics might be the same but the cause is very different.
|
| IMHO schizophrenia is a breakdown in the barrier between
| imagination and processing of reality.
|
| Autism and the like is an inability to process social cues like
| a blind person might have a damaged visual cortex.
| cess11 wrote:
| What's your interpretation of this study?
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6982569/
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Something fascinating that has been noticed by many people is
| that LLMs with a low temperature setting produce output similar
| to autism and high temperature is schizo in style. You even see
| the AIs get stuck in repetitive loops at very low temperature
| settings.
| nis0s wrote:
| This fits in with another thread on an article about over-
| diagnosis.
|
| I think it's safe to say that if someone appears "weird" to the
| hive mind of a community, that person is more likely to be
| correctly diagnosed.
|
| There are people who desire a diagnosis for special treatment,
| but if the first time you find out about a person's diagnosis is
| after knowing them as "weird" the whole time, then they're not
| acting weird on purpose, or saying they are X for attention or
| special treatment.
|
| Disabled people, mentally or otherwise, usually like to keep
| their business to themselves, unless they absolutely don't need
| to. Some mentally disabled people might even forgo getting
| special treatment via disability services at their colleges, or
| getting parking permits for disability because they're not
| interested in bringing attention to their difficulties or
| differences, or using these issues as a cause for special
| treatment. Though, I'd advised that people who need
| accommodations should get them.
|
| I also saw a comment about disability becoming normalized due to
| late stage capitalism, which sounds like a thesis out of
| postmodernist thinking. The fact is that group behavior has
| always isolated "weird" behaviors and put undue negative
| attention on them, but it just happened to be the case that that
| weird behavior was evolutionary helpful, which is why it has
| persisted for millions of generations of humans across their
| evolutionary history.
|
| This only applies to high-functioning categories of behaviors.
| But I've found that more often than not, it's the social reaction
| of groups that is the problem for high-functioning autists, and
| less the autism itself. Maybe neurotypical behavior or
| neurotypical mindedness is the disease because I don't understand
| why or how some people find it so hard to think differently. Are
| they not individuals, are they zombies?
| nis0s wrote:
| Let's also shed light on what behaviors neurotypicals usually
| have a problem with that they cast as negatives in high-
| functioning autists:
|
| 1) Not being mindful of hierarchy
|
| 2) Not being mindful of socially determined rules, that is
| rules which are not codified in any official language of
| conduct
|
| 3) Not wanting to socialize, or wanting to socialize
| differently
|
| 4) Trouble with emotional regulation, possibly due to social
| issues
|
| Tell me, which of these points, and there are many more, point
| to this being an individual's problem?
|
| For high-functioning autists, the problem is other people.
|
| People need to realize that they're not great to deal with on
| average, and if someone chooses to not engage with you, don't
| take that as an insult. Maybe you're all better off not
| interacting with each other, but that doesn't imply causing
| someone financial, emotional or physical harm just because
| they're autistic.
|
| Society both explicitly and implicitly punishes high-
| functioning autism.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| But note that the not interacting bit messes with you in both
| the job and romantic markets. That's not intentional but it
| sure hurts them.
| nis0s wrote:
| It shouldn't interfere with the job market, but the sad
| truth is that NTs need to make everything into a social
| game because otherwise they can't compete or survive.
| bitwize wrote:
| > I think it's safe to say that if someone appears "weird" to
| the hive mind of a community, that person is more likely to be
| correctly diagnosed.
|
| It's officially frowned upon, but doctors still use the term
| "FLK" (for "funny looking kid") to describe babies or children
| with nonspecific facial deformities, which are pretty reliable
| indicators of cognitive or learning disability even if the
| doctor can't put his finger on what the deformity actually is.
|
| > This only applies to high-functioning categories of
| behaviors. But I've found that more often than not, it's the
| social reaction of groups that is the problem for high-
| functioning autists, and less the autism itself. Maybe
| neurotypical behavior or neurotypical mindedness is the disease
| because I don't understand why or how some people find it so
| hard to think differently. Are they not individuals, are they
| zombies?
|
| It's the uncanny valley effect. I'm convinced that one of our
| primal atavistic fears, besides snakes, spiders, and so forth,
| is "something evil or hostile disguised as one of our own". In
| the EEA this fear would have protected a community against
| spies, as well as profoundly sick (e.g. rabies) individuals who
| risked spreading their disease throughout the whole village.
| Different cultures give different names to creatures of this
| sort: vampire, zombie, changeling, skinwalker, bakemono, etc.
|
| Profoundly autistic people are clearly disabled, and so attract
| nurturing and care; "high functioning" autistic people resemble
| humans who can function independently, but their behavior is
| different enough to trigger what I call the Kendrick Lamar
| response ("they not like us, they not like us") and hence are
| viewed with fear and suspicion. It's a flaw in the neurotypical
| mindset born of a trait that helped preserve neurotypical
| communities against invasion or outbreak, but it's not very
| specific so others get caught in its dragnet.
|
| That's my idea anyway. Maybe I'm just steelmanning the NT
| perspective. There has to be a reason why the poor blighters
| are the way they are...
| nis0s wrote:
| > There has to be a reason why the poor blighters are the way
| they are...
|
| Maybe I am biased, but to me NT appear as cognitively lazy.
| They don't question norms or standards, unless those norms or
| standards interfere with their feed-fuck cycles.
| bitwize wrote:
| They come built in with a set of heuristics that help them
| interact with other NT minds very well with very little
| cognitive effort, so why spend it if you don't need to?
| There's a certain perverse genius to it which you'd see if
| you spend any time around profoundly NT people: for example
| those who fit the "theatre kid" archetype, or even skilled
| marketers. They can shape the trajectory of an
| interpersonal relationship in real time as easily as we
| breathe.
|
| Expending large amounts of cognitive effort to better
| understand and deal with others can be exhausting. We do it
| because we have to just to survive. The benefit is we have
| a lot of uncommitted neural capacity potentially freed up
| for other things, like experimenting with computers. But
| it's a stiff price to pay, and in the EEA it's advantageous
| to be able to participate in a cohesive group without
| thinking much about it. Our brains are our most energy-
| hungry organs, and sustenance could get scarce...
| ryukoposting wrote:
| If you think you (or a loved one) may have a psychological
| condition, go to a psychologist and get a screening. The
| diagnosis isn't the important part. The value is in the
| 20-something pages of detailed analysis by a professional.
|
| At a bare minimum, it will give you a fresh perspective on things
| you already knew. In my experiences, there _will_ be things you
| didn 't realize about yourself.
|
| They aren't going to tell you what the solution is to all your
| problems; that's for you and your doctor to figure out. They
| _will_ give you everything you need to make well-informed
| decisions, and that 's priceless.
| WA wrote:
| Autism diagnosis has targeted screening questionnaires. So what
| kind of general purpose screening do you mean?
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Get screened for whatever you think you've got. Think you've
| got ADHD? Go get an ADHD screening. Autism? It's not easy to
| find a psych who does adult Autism screenings, but they're
| out there. OCD? You get the idea.
|
| Regardless of whether the conclusion is "yes you have x" or
| "no you don't have x" the diagnosis will be accompanied by a
| detailed analysis of your psychological condition. Whether or
| not you are diagnosed, that analysis will cover the issues
| that led you to believe you may have that condition.
| lostlogin wrote:
| This approach might help some, but it might hinder too.
|
| There is a post here about someone who was misdiagnosed and
| bipolar and that later came up when security clearance was
| needed for a job.
| dns_snek wrote:
| I think you mean the full diagnostic process? Screening is
| just the first step in (what should be) a long process to
| decide whether the full workup makes sense. Screening takes
| on the order of minutes to an hour and it doesn't come with
| a diagnosis, the actual diagnostic process should take many
| hours and several appointments.
| nico wrote:
| > It's not easy to find a psych who does adult Autism
| screenings, but they're out there
|
| And it's very expensive to get the diagnosis, it can be up
| to $20k in California
| codelikeawolf wrote:
| I'm getting a full neuro-psych screening next month because
| my therapist suspects I may have OCD. It's a 4-6 hour series
| of tests/interviews (and probably other stuff, I'll find
| out). I'm guessing that's what they're referring to?
| ZpJuUuNaQ5 wrote:
| I never understood why people, especially americans, are so
| hyperfocused on "mental health" and wear their pseudoscientific
| bullshit diagnoses like medals. I agree that there is a small
| fraction of people that do have mental issues, but it is very
| likely that most of the people that encourage "therapy" and yap
| about "mental health" very likely don't have any meaningful
| issues worth diagnosing and are just unnecessary burden on the
| medical system. The term "autism" in itself is so overused
| nowadays that it doesn't mean absolutely anything anymore, the
| fact that it doesn't have precise, rigorous definition doesn't
| help either.
| alexashka wrote:
| Because it's what has been advertised to teenagers to
| maximize profit.
|
| Western culture is a mental issue beyond repair. It will soon
| be gone and it will not be missed.
| habinero wrote:
| Maybe if you were less angry at people trying their best to
| live a life that's happier and easier, things might be easier
| for you.
| orangesilk wrote:
| By downvoting we missed out a joke: Lets apply the article to
| the comment
|
| >> I never understood why ... americans ... wear their
| pseudoscientific bullshit diagnoses like medals.
|
| > Borderline Personality Borderline personality disorder
| involves intense emotional instability, ... and devaluation
| of others.
|
| >Social Communication Disorder ... knowing how much detail to
| give, adjusting their speaking style for different
| situations, understanding implied meanings or hints,
|
| > B5: Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD): People
| diagnosed with ASPD show a lack of respect toward others.
| They generally don't follow socially accepted rules.
|
| > B5: Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD): People
| diagnosed with NPD have a sense of being better than
| others... They lack empathy for others
|
| ---
|
| > I agree that there is a small fraction of people
|
| What exactly makes you believe the fraction is small?
| flyinglizard wrote:
| I'll ignore the baiting and just answer this: >> What
| exactly makes you believe the fraction is small?
|
| Because it's not as prevalent in other societies. The
| fixation of Americans, and especially younger Americans
| with mental health is not something I've (or clearly, GP)
| witnessed elsewhere.
|
| I don't think the discussion here is due to a lack of
| empathy, rather it's curiosity of people looking into this
| society from the outside (which we're doing all the time
| because we live in an Americanized world, after all). It
| seems like the participants in this game of self diagnosis
| and mental health crusade are very self centered and not
| very fit to deal with life (which is a complicated matter,
| I admit to that).
|
| This is not to dismiss the hardships of those people
| professionally diagnosed with mental conditions, obviously.
| thayne wrote:
| The problem is such screenings are incredibly expensive (at
| least in the US), and for things like ADHD or Autism, you need
| a specific screening that is often even more expensive.
| xgulfie wrote:
| And even then if you get an autism diagnosis as an adult,
| this report is effectively all you get, there are no
| medicines or treatment options that this opens up afaict.
| yesitcan wrote:
| I have all the symptoms listed by the author. I went to get
| professionally diagnosed and I have... autism AND anxiety AND
| ADHD surprisedpikachu.jpg
| tiborsaas wrote:
| It feels like that whatever you seek to get diagnosed with you
| can get it.
| cameroncarlg wrote:
| This has been my experience, it's not very convincing and
| doesn't give me confidence in the field.
| Noaidi wrote:
| I would say people who are not as disabled as I am should
| not get a diagnosis. My condition is obvious. I was
| hospitalized several times and now I cannot work, I have
| one friend, and I am homeless living in a minivan.
|
| I had one good PDoc who helped me, with my genetics, not to
| diagnose me, but to help me find what helped me and my
| specific symptoms. Diagnosis is not as helpful as looking
| at your own symptoms and own history and using that to find
| what helps you.
| cwillu wrote:
| If you don't get the diagnosis before it causes a crisis,
| it can be _much_ harder to get appropriate support
| _after_ a crisis.
| Noaidi wrote:
| That is absolutely false. And I stare that from
| experience. I was looking for help long before my life
| collapsed and no one thought I was sick enough.
| cwillu wrote:
| Don't read what I didn't say.
| lazide wrote:
| Or it's entirely predictable that those who have a set of
| symptoms get diagnosed with the stuff that tends to cause all
| those symptoms
| spectralfriend wrote:
| Do you think neurotypical people often go, "I would like to
| spend significant time and money to get an autism diagnosis"?
|
| I don't think it's particularly common. When I went through
| my dx, I was really hoping for adhd because then I could get
| meds, but my doc and all my screenings were like, "definitely
| not adhd, definitely autism".
|
| So, maybe you are seeing rising diagnosis rates and
| considering that too easy? If encourage you to think about
| why you feel this way.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| How do I know if I'm neurotypical? I have some challenges,
| I've done a few tests, but I could just be a lazy
| neurotypical bastard. I think if you go to therapy you can
| get to take yourself more seriously, look at the signs,
| self reflections and process that. Now that can easily lead
| to "I need to get diagnosed with XYZ". Just to be sure.
|
| It's not about the rising rates, that could be explained in
| other ways.
| geekamongus wrote:
| You go to a testing center, not a therapist, to get a
| diagnosis. The online tests don't count. A thorough test
| will take a half-day or more, with tests ranging from
| conversations to Q&A to visual to a battery of multiple
| choice questions.
| delecti wrote:
| Yep. For some extra anecdata, mine included a 2 hour
| introductory session (briefly covering the _many_ forms
| and [official] online tests she had me do ahead of time),
| and then two 4-hour test sessions, each of which left me
| utterly exhausted.
| yesitcan wrote:
| The real question should be how many false positives does
| ADOS-2 produce? (The gold standard of autism diagnosis)
| toast0 wrote:
| How do you measure a true positive? Afaik, we don't have an
| objective, repeatable method of diagnosis.
|
| If you can't measure a true positive, you can't determine
| the false positive rate.
| soderfoo wrote:
| I've read that fMRI may be used as an objective
| diagnostic tool for autism. This was a few years back and
| I'm not sure how further research panned out.
| dns_snek wrote:
| It feels like some people just say things these days.
| Research shows that autism and ADHD are highly comorbid, I
| forget the exact numbers off the top of my head but they're
| something like ~50% of autistic people having ADHD, and ~20%
| of people with ADHD having autism.
|
| So then you grow up as autistic and/or ADHD person which
| creates a lot of social friction and conflict in your life,
| you're called lazy, careless, difficult, overly sensitive,
| and this is particularly bad if you're undiagnosed. You don't
| fit in socially so you develop social anxiety (this is par
| for the course), and after a while that can spiral into
| depression or even a personality disorder, you might start to
| self-medicate which can turn into a substance use disorder,
| and ultimately people afflicted by these disorders are taking
| their own lives at alarming rates. You should look up
| statistics for suicidal ideation among children and adults
| with autism for a reality check.
|
| Most of this can be prevented if those affected were
| diagnosed and offered support as early in life as possible.
|
| So no, having ADHD and autism, two very closely related
| neurodiversities, and then developing anxiety as a result of
| that is not at all unusual.
| sakompella wrote:
| extremely high comorbidity rates
| esseph wrote:
| You had to catch them all ;)
| ur-whale wrote:
| I find all these conversation around neuro-divergence extremely
| weird, for the simple reason that I have a never seen a proper
| definition of what a "normal" person actually is, and for good
| and obvious reasons:
|
| I personally believe that "normal", when it comes to people's
| behavior, social interactions, and the way their mind works, is a
| completely broken idea. All of these attributes are completely
| fluid, depending on the when, where and who with you happen to
| be.
|
| On that premise, the whole idea of neuro-divergence and the idea
| that you can classify people in arbitrary categories such as
| ADHD, Autism, etc ... and that this classification will lead to a
| way to "fix them" is complete and utter BS.
| alexfoo wrote:
| > I find all these conversation around neuro-divergence
| extremely weird, for the simple reason that I have a never seen
| a proper definition of what a "normal" person actually is, and
| for good and obvious reasons:
|
| The problem is that no-one can easily understand how their
| brain works compared to other people. People on both sides
| don't talk about it enough or openly enough. If you look at the
| science it quickly descends in to endless
| confusing/impenetrable psychiatric terminology.
|
| You can study things like anaemia as you can objectively
| measure the red blood cell count of a patient's blood. You
| can't objectively measure a patient's "focus" or "motivation".
| It's really hard to even get a good subjective measure of those
| things.
|
| For example, it's just one aspect, but prior to diagnosis and
| taking methylphenidate (Ritalin/Concerta) I thought everyone
| had hundreds of competing thoughts running through their head
| all the time. I thought everyone just had better ways of
| dealing with it than I did. I had no idea that's not the case.
| I'd got to 50+ years old, got several degrees, married and had
| a family, had a successful career, not quite FAANG but earning
| more than 6 figures, all in spite of how my brain works. Surely
| there can't be anything "wrong" with me.
|
| But when the medication first kicked in I was simply astounded
| how quiet my brain became and how clearly I could think about
| just one thing (it may not be the thing I actually wanted to
| focus on at that time but that's another facet of the fun). How
| the hell did I manage to get by all this time without this?
| It's only then in speaking to other people do I find out that,
| no, most other people don't have hundreds of competing thoughts
| running through their head all the time snapping at their
| focus.
|
| > On that premise, the whole idea of neuro-divergence and the
| idea that you can classify people in arbitrary categories such
| as ADHD, Autism, etc ... and that this classification will lead
| to a way to "fix them" is complete and utter BS.
|
| I agree with point about broad classifications, but medicine is
| far from the exact science that people believe it is. Got these
| symptoms? Does medication A improve them? Can you live with the
| side effects of medication A? Does medication B help with the
| side effects of medication A and not interfere with the
| improvements given my medication A? etc...
| ur-whale wrote:
| > but medicine is far from the exact science
|
| Truer words ...
|
| As a matter of fact, calling it science ... quite the stretch
| when it comes to most medical professionals I've met in my
| long life.
| undeveloper wrote:
| Lot to unpack from what you said, but whatever you want to make
| of the classifications (created by people much more
| knowledgeable than you or I in this field, but with plenty of
| conformist baggage), my time with ADHD or whatever you'd like
| to call it has absolutely shaped the experience of my life, and
| taking medication has objectively helped. My brain objectively
| processes things differently from whatever you'd like to call
| the median of people, and functions different with different
| chemicals. Personally, because of this medication that allows
| me to focus, I have been able to remain on par with my peers,
| if not with more elbow grease -- so I quite benefit from the
| label, weird and fluid as it may be.
|
| An interesting fact is that caffeine will often affect the
| "ADHD mind" differently. It's been reported to have no effect,
| or have very limited effect, or make people even sleepy, but
| almost always something non-standard. Once, in high school,
| without the supervision of my parents, I drank maybe 2 red
| bulls and 2 cups of coffee, 1 black. I remember feeling
| disappointed it didn't work, and I didn't feel any rush of
| energy.
| ur-whale wrote:
| I was certainly not trying to say that differences between
| people do not exist and most certainly never claimed that
| your brain should work the way other people's brain do (At my
| age, I absolutely know mine does not, by a wide margin, and
| never has, and I'm in fact quite fond of that fact).
|
| I'm simply saying that the way we're classifying people is
| utter BS, and assigning labels is very hurtful
|
| _Everyone_ is different. The "median man" does not exist.
| Or if he does there are maybe 3 on the whole planet, not
| something significant.
|
| Much like your fingerprints, your brain is completely unique,
| and what chemicals / lifestyle / circumstances affect it in
| what way is a hugely personal affair. And to make matters
| even more complicated, it changes very much over time.
|
| If you agree to let any kind of random bozo, with a so-called
| specialist title and a diploma tell you that you are a
| "typical neuro-divergent belong to class XYZ", run like hell.
|
| The only way is to experiment with the way your mind works:
| chemicals, social groups, type of work, meditation, yoga,
| sports, more or less social interaction, whatever ultimately
| gets you to where you want to be.
|
| But if you let every other snake oil salesman out there, or
| the rest of humanity in general, tell you who you are and who
| you ought to be ... good luck to you.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > Social communication disorder is rarely diagnosed in favor of
| autism primarily because autism provides access to critical
| services, insurance coverage, educational support, and legal
| protections that social communication disorder does not reliably
| offer
|
| That feels important
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Yes. When I first read about autism it really felt like me, but
| overstated. Then, years later, I ran into Asperger's--score way
| out there on the screening test and it very much feels like me.
| Still later, found the actual diagnostic criteria--comes down
| to at least 2 of 4--and I clearly have 1 yes, 2 no, and one
| hint of a yes that's impossible to confirm without a time
| machine. DSM V comes along, I do not feel the autism diagnosis
| fits me, but social communication disorder again comes down to
| 2 of 4, 1 yes, 2 no, 1 maybe that again can never be resolved.
| And it describes me to a T. But what benefit would there be to
| a diagnosis? As someone well into adulthood before I ever heard
| of any of this it's not going to change anything.
| elif wrote:
| Based on what I've read lately, my consensus perspective is that
| 80% of what people consider autism is actually just the western
| diet's effect on normal brain chemistry.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| This is a remarkably stupid comment. I'm not going to go into
| detail refuting it, but you might want to read more about
| autism in children or just think before you type.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| You should also think before you call people stupid. If you
| google autism test, you'll find this:
|
| https://www.clinical-partners.co.uk/for-adults/autism-and-
| as...
|
| "I prefer to do things on my own, rather than with others."
|
| "I prefer doing things the same way - for instance my morning
| routine or trip to the supermarket"
|
| "I find myself becoming strongly absorbed in something - even
| obsessional"
|
| These are all questions everybody living in a modern society
| can relate to.
|
| Of course autism is a real condition, but modern society
| somewhat requires people to be machine like and that can
| easily look like someone is on the spectrum.
| habinero wrote:
| Those have the same diagnosis power as "what Hogwarts
| school are you in" quizzes.
|
| Real assessments are different. Also, ADHD/ASD folks tend
| to overestimate how universal their experiences and
| preferences are.
| immibis wrote:
| If you think you've explained autism, I invite you to publish a
| paper.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| What you read lately is likely derived from Brain Worm's
| attempts to blame diet for the ills of society. Remember, he
| doesn't believe in infectious disease, think he gets the rest
| of it any better?
| captainbland wrote:
| I think this is broadly well considered although I have a bit of
| trouble understanding this point:
|
| > Social awkwardness refers to social ineptness without
| meaningful impairment
|
| Isn't social awkwardness sort of inherently impairing in social
| relationships?
| alpinisme wrote:
| Probably but at the risk of giving a bad analogy maybe the
| distinction here is like that between an itchy wool sweater
| (uncomfortable, broadly decreases mobility by making you not
| want to move) and a garment that actually restricts movement (a
| too small blazer that won't let you reach straight up or, in
| the extreme, a straight jacket).
| H8crilA wrote:
| Yep. Psychiatry (or most of medicine really) is not trying to
| bring everyone up to the top 10% of the population, or even
| the top 50% along some dimension of interest. Psychiatry is
| mainly trying to move people from the bottom ~5% (what we
| call a "disorder") to the top ~95% of the population - which
| is then considered normal variability. So, if you take for
| example extraversion/social skills, then many "psychiatry-
| healthy" people will not be good at this at all, will make
| fewer connections, will not ask for raises, will be skipped
| for promotion, will have weak social support structures if
| shit hits the fan, etc. That's just normal trait variation.
|
| I think a really good example of this is self-diagnosing with
| bipolar disorder (and thus mania). Let's forget for a second
| that mania must last at least a few days non stop; most
| people do not notice this part somehow :). If you read the
| DSM criteria you may think that you actually fit them
| sometimes: elevated/irritable mood, highly talkative,
| distractible, flight of ideas, ... . However, you probably
| don't, and it is mainly a matter of understanding the scale
| of the problem. Most people do not know just how wide the
| range of "mood" is in humans, and what does it mean to be on
| either of the far ends of it.
|
| (percentages are much more illustrative than accurate)
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I read it as "without other psychological or psychiatric issues
| which cause social difficulties."
|
| It seems very tightly focussed, and more behavioural - and open
| to behavioural training - than other categories.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Isn't social awkwardness sort of inherently impairing in
| social relationships?
|
| Yes, but I think the distinction is explained in the article:
| "show significant improvement with practice and maturity" and
| "generally achieve life goals despite awkwardness".
|
| To put it another way, those who are socially awkward can get
| better, whereas some of the other diagnoses are lifetime
| impairments with little or no possibility for improvement or
| cure.
| billy99k wrote:
| Autism is over diagnosed, because you get government money as a
| doctor and a patient.
|
| My niece has a disibility that they haven't really been able to
| diagnose.
|
| If it is Autism, there is all kinds of free care available.
|
| Usually when you follow the money, you get answers.
| maverick98 wrote:
| I found this article very interesting, because I feel that I fall
| in the category of people that think they have it, although I
| probably don't. My psychiatrist who is not an expert on autism
| told me I display autistic traits but that doesn't necessarily
| put me on the spectrum. Also my RAADS-R scores fall into the
| autistic spectrum but on the low end. Another psychiatrist
| diagnosed me with OCD. I am in my late 20s and I don't see how I
| could ever know for sure or if I am autistic or not, but nowadays
| most people in my country would say "we are all somewhat autistic
| in some way or another"
| Noaidi wrote:
| I am in the same boat as you (Schizoaffective, OCD, Panic
| Disorder). My therapist said I had many traits but the overlap
| in these disorders is quite substantial.
|
| I was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital once
| and my behavior had them thinking I was Autistic.
| spectralfriend wrote:
| > nowadays most people in my country would say "we are all
| somewhat autistic in some way or another
|
| Careful with this. In small amounts it can be good --
| recognizing that autistic traits are human traits and we should
| recognize each others humanity -- but in large amounts it is
| regularly used to deny autistic people experiences. Like, "it's
| not so bad. It's not a disability. We're all a little
| autistic." Etc.
| maverick98 wrote:
| I know that this is a slippery slope. I just meant with this
| that even if I get diagnosed it wouldn't really change
| anything in my daily life, because people in my country are
| not very well educated on these issues anyway.
| d-lisp wrote:
| Eye contact makes me very uncomfortable."
|
| "I suck at small talk."
|
| "I have rigid routines."
|
| "I hyper-focus on my hobbies."
|
| "I am always fidgeting."
|
| "Social interaction exhausts me."
|
| "I really bad at making friends."
|
| "I don't fit in; people find me weird."
|
| I never considered it althought I'm ticking all the buttons (bad
| gear ? [0])
|
| [0] https://youtube.com/@audiopilz?si=g6iGJK3ygnCWESWW
| coldtea wrote:
| You could add "I'm a HN regular" as a diagnostic criterium.
|
| The HN crowd is surely over-represented in ASD, which makes
| sense for people enjoying debating nerdy topics and pedantry.
|
| And "I like Lisp" should be an automatic qualifier.
| d-lisp wrote:
| I honestly prefer C/assembly over lisp, which should be even
| more so.
| coldtea wrote:
| C maybe, Assembly for sure. Haskell too.
|
| The peak ASD diagnostic criterium should be Forth though.
| escanda wrote:
| I am schizotypy and I very much love Common Lisp but not so
| much Racket haha
| d-lisp wrote:
| How do you feel about Scheme ?
| escanda wrote:
| lisp-1 (s) give me the chills: very much prefer doubled
| namespaces. Though these days I focus on systems security
| or threat analysis. I still fondly remember the days
| where I could launch Emacs with sbcl and write some
| Montecarlo simulations on Common Lisp with electric-
| parens haha Those were the days of stimulating learning
| d-lisp wrote:
| That's funny, I never found doubled namespaces that
| interesting; what are your opinions, why do you prefer
| them ?
|
| > electric parens
|
| I get you, I was amazed by the litterature around lisps
| (I always found the beginning of SICP (the wizard-
| programmer analogy) quite inspiring and fun)
| escanda wrote:
| It was kind of a joke intent but it gives out to better
| naming position although unambiguous symbols to specify a
| symbol; such as #' for function names. Plus now that I
| remember the common Lisp ANSI specification is just
| awesome, free and locally installable and browsable from
| Emacs at symbols from ages. Common Lisp images were
| myriads ahead in an intospectable sense, like Smalltalk.
| Objects and primitives can use the built-in debugger to
| display their inwards. The environment is just plain
| astonishing, moreover ten years ago - when I started -
| and Emacs is free as in speech and compilable from
| scratch, plus org-mode is awesome as well. Nowadays I
| feel sorry of Python introspection capabilities although
| hinted typing improved it so much. Not to mention Common
| Lisp tight generated assembly and it's garbage collector
| which was ahead of its own: first with Boehm and then
| with parallel ones. SICP was nice although nicest was the
| one about gravitational physics, or brownian motions,
| also in Scheme. Good times.
| d-lisp wrote:
| Yes, browsing the hyperspec (what a glorious name) inside
| of emacs was such a joy also.
|
| That's truly a shame scripting/glue languages took a
| different path than lisp, but well, you can always lisp
| shape anything.
| bitwize wrote:
| Lisp-2 virgins want to name a variable 'list' and not
| shadow the function named 'list', so they add on a
| separate function binding to each symbol. "So you have to
| type sharpquote if you want the function value of a
| symbol," they say. "What's the big deal?" Except they
| don't stop there: symbols also have to have package
| awareness and "property lists", or in other words an
| arbitrary number of other bindings.
|
| Scheme chads understand that perfection is achieved not
| when there is nothing left to add but when there is
| nothing left to take away. They realize functions are
| nothing special, just another object that can be
| manipulated and operated on, so why create a separate
| namespace and binding for them? Why put bindings in the
| symbol at all, since if you are designing your language
| correctly bindings will vary with lexical environment? So
| symbols have been stripped down to just a name that the
| language recognizes as an identifier for a value,
| function, special form, or whatever else. And functions
| are just values that get applied whenever in head
| position of an eval'd list.
|
| I jest, I jest. Seriously, I love Common Lisp, but I'm
| with you: Lisp-1s appeal better to my aesthetic
| sensibilities.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| I'm reminded of a post on r/Factorio. (Factory builder game.)
|
| (Paraphrase, I don't recall the words)
|
| If you like Factorio you should be tested for autism because
| you might be autistic. If you like Pymods (a mod that adds an
| extreme number of hoops to the game) you should be tested for
| autism because there's a chance you don't have it.
| alexashka wrote:
| > And "I like Lisp" should be an automatic qualifier.
|
| Very funny and on the nose :)
| habinero wrote:
| We definitely do run in packs. All of my really good friends
| have ended up being diagnosed with (or strongly suspected of
| having) ADHD or autism.
| spectralfriend wrote:
| As a diagnosed autistic, I think I would ask -- does ticking
| these boxes make you feel like, "oh shit, this could explain
| some difficulties..." or just go, "huh, interesting?"
|
| I tend to invite people to think about how their lives have
| been impacted. For example, I experience anxiety at late
| invites to events I'd enjoy. I panic and decline them because
| I'm experiencing a highly irrational anger fear response to
| changing schedules. This causes me to miss events I would
| otherwise enjoy, and then I feel guilty. Having to process all
| those feelings takes a lot of energy, and it's really draining.
| That has significant impact on my life.
|
| Compare to a friend of mine who just prefers quiet evenings.
| She declines things all the time but never gives it a second
| thought.
|
| Disability vs preference. It's ok if it's either! Neither of us
| are wrong, we just experience different impacts in our lives.
| d-lisp wrote:
| Well, I exiled myself to the countryside because I want to be
| able to choose how much exposure to society I want.
|
| I guess I gamed the problems you are talking about, but as a
| side effect I am sometimes probably weirder than before
| (which is a non problem when you live where I live).
|
| I would probably live a sad and boring life if I were to live
| in any small/medium/big city.
| habinero wrote:
| Yeah, exactly. Having an ADHD diagnosis has been incredibly
| helpful, because now I can make much more accurate
| predictions on what is likely to be difficult and figure out
| strategies.
|
| It can really be the difference between struggling with or
| enjoying a situation
| vertnerd wrote:
| I used to be an educator, and many of my students had an autism
| diagnosis. I would get to know them and often eventually decide
| that they were "just like" me, except that whatever their
| problems were, I had it worse.
|
| So then I would look at these autism checklists and say, "yep,
| that's me," but when I actually looked at the strict diagnostic
| criteria, it wasn't that clear.
|
| Looking at this article, I get it. There are other, more
| focused criteria that can be more appropriate. But those
| diagnoses don't trigger the special services, so they don't get
| used often enough.
|
| What is my takeaway? People often don't conform to a model of
| average human behavior. Being unusual isn't necessarily a grave
| character flaw (which is what my mother had me believe) but
| merely an expression of the great variety of human intellect
| and behavior. It gives me license, without official diagnosis,
| to enjoy being who I am without shame or embarrassment.
| d-lisp wrote:
| agreed.
|
| I studied philosophy during a large extent of my life, and I
| am a convinced Witgensteinian.
| cardanome wrote:
| The diagnosis criteria are written by and for neurotypical
| people. Autistic people are likely to dismiss them as not
| fitting because they are reading them too literally.
|
| Also we tend to underestimate our own symptoms. As a ADHD
| person it took me a long time to understand that many of my
| struggles were not things everyone experienced. I still find
| it hard to really grasp that most people don't suffer from
| executive dysfunction and can just do things, even things
| they are not interested in.
|
| Honestly if you relate to autistic people chances are high
| that you have some form of neurodivergence. It might be worth
| trying to get a diagnosis, even just to be sure.
| tolerance wrote:
| I'm beginning to wonder whether one can qualify simply as an
| "eccentric" is a function of social + economic standing. Or
| whether _whatever_ people think you are, or what you think of
| yourself are determined by these factors.
|
| Often times it seems like the "soft diagnosis" of a condition can
| be used to hedge against less-than-desirable personality traits
| if the person is held in high enough esteem. If they aren't held
| in popular regard to some extent or if there's other factors that
| can be used to explain their behavior (e.g. the stereotypical
| "German coldness" or whatever) then they don't get those
| benefits. Characteristics like their political views may also
| negatively affect the likelihood of this "psychiatric hedging".
|
| At what point do idiosyncrasies become subject to pathology.
| jt2190 wrote:
| This is the wrong framing: We _all_ have degrees of
| "diagnosable" traits, it's only when those traits become
| problematic do we need to seek help. For example, obsessive
| tendencies can help you stick with a tough problem or they can
| become an unhealthy fixation.
|
| Also, if someone is mean they are mean: Diagnosis is not a "get
| out of jail free" card for bad behavior.
| spectralfriend wrote:
| I'm autistic and the difficulty was high for me to learn,
| "being autistic is no excuse for also being an asshole". I
| had to work a little harder, sure, but it's doable for many
| of us.
| spectralfriend wrote:
| Regarding your last sentence, typically when the individual
| seeks it. It's generally considered both rude and ineffective
| to diagnose others who are not seeking diagnosis.
| Atlas667 wrote:
| This is kinda how I've come to view psychology because in the
| context I was raised mental health support was a luxury left
| for the wealthy. Albeit more about personality, upbringing and
| status rather than just individual idiosyncracies.
|
| I understand that this may be a categorical error, since
| psychology can be the categorization of symptoms, but a lot of
| the things I learned "from the outside" really still stick.
|
| Like the wealthier populations getting neat little
| explanations/excuses whenever convenient. Theres the scholastic
| benefit of ADHD diagnosis and anxiety diagnosis, which can help
| a lot in school/academia and to everyone else who cant afford
| it they get the cheaper label: "being bad at school" or "dumb".
| And still requires even more effort.
|
| Theres the trauma and therapy cycles for otherwise normal
| behaviors like separation anxiety from parents, not being
| popular or highly esteemed, stress from not attaining goals,
| etc. The cheaper treatment being to suck it up.
|
| What is normal for the poor to carry is a diagnoses and special
| treatment for those who can afford it.
|
| And this is also reflected within the office as well! The
| outcome can be better if the professionals empathize with the
| one seeking treatment (theres a whole class/racial component
| here).
|
| I agree with your sentiment and I think it's really all down to
| wealth and/or availability.
| tolerance wrote:
| > Like the wealthier populations getting neat little
| explanations/excuses whenever convenient. Theres the
| scholastic benefit of ADHD diagnosis and anxiety diagnosis,
| which can help a lot in school/academia and to everyone else
| who cant afford it they get the cheaper label: "being bad at
| school" or "dumb". And still requires even more effort.
|
| What I find interesting is that now we're beginning to see
| more of the "un-wealthy" (i.e., not quite middle class, not
| quite rich; just covered by health insurance) achieve these
| diagnoses. Whether or not a child in a single-parent
| household is diagnosed with "oppositional defiant disorder"
| likely becomes a question of where that single parent works.
| While their peers with similar traits are pushed into a
| classroom in the basement.
|
| > What is normal for the poor to carry is a diagnoses and
| special treatment for those who can afford it.
|
| With this I'll defer to our colleague in this thread, jt2190,
| with two modifications of my own:
|
| > We _all_ have degrees of "diagnosable" traits, it's only
| when those traits become problematic [to our position in
| society] do we [become compelled] to seek help.
| Noaidi wrote:
| As some on with Schizoaffective Disorder, OCD, and Panic Disoder,
| I know why people want to have an Autism diagnosis. It is because
| people with Autism are more studied, get more assistance, and are
| get more sympathy from the general public.
|
| Someone with Autism can act out and people will be like "That's
| OK, he has Autism". But when I act out, there is no
| understanding.
|
| What is missing in the article is there does exist overlap in
| these condiations, not only symptomatically, but also
| genetically. As far as genetics, just take a look at the calcium
| channel gene CACNA1C:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31805042/
|
| I would probably had an Asperger's diagnosis when I was a kid,
| but most of my Autism was beaten out of my by my older brother's
| and kids in school. I mean, I was so deep into astronomy when I
| was 10 and I would not let go if it even though everyone teased
| me about it and I talked about it all the time anyway.
|
| I am in my early 60's now, homeless, living in a Minivan, driving
| around, researching my genetics obsessively to the point where I
| communicate with some leading specialists in the United States,
| but still no one cares.
|
| So yeah, do I wish I could say I had clinical Asperger's? Yes.
| Yes. Only so I can be accepted for my neurodivergence.
| escanda wrote:
| No worries. I am schizotypy but I have suffered plenty. It's
| not so much better than Asperger's but I can lead an autonomous
| life. I could prefer to be normal but there's that. Some people
| use it for greatness, some suffer it for live; thing is you're
| not alone. Please give some time to the outward world and focus
| on some socials from time to time. Things will be fine.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| I think it also comes down to whether the person's behavior is
| seen as a threat. Autism weirdness translates into
| disengagement always works. Schizo doesn't have that same
| safety, thus people are a lot more worried.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| Even if you don't think it has validity as a single disorder,
| autism is at least diagnosed in a way that's fairly consistent
| between clinicians using ADOS.
|
| I'm more dubious of clinicians who like to pick random dubious
| rare disorders that people can't even agree about the basic
| description of like schizoid out of the DSM like the author of
| this article.
| ocschwar wrote:
| And then they enroll their patients in the Drug of the Month
| Club.
| conartist6 wrote:
| If anything this just kinda suggests to me that the diagnostic
| categories are almost completely random/useless. It's just a set
| of pigeonholes made by people whose goal is to have a pigeonhole
| for every kind of thing so that the world doesn't seem messy and
| complicated anymore.
|
| But the one thing we know for sure it's that the world is more
| complex than even this set of 10 pigeonholes. These are more like
| good insults for people. Haha, a loner, that guy's a schizo! The
| clinical coldness is almost a perfect mirror for the way we
| express personal cruelty to others. To reduce them to a factoid,
| an epithet. It's no wonder people want to reclaim these words as
| terms of identity, of pride, of nuanced meaning.
| f13f1f1f1 wrote:
| They are useful if they are understood properly. For example
| different "similar" groups respond to different treatments
| differently. Social phobia responds very well to exposure
| therapy, anti-social personality disorder does not. If you are
| able to follow the distinctions you are able to leverage more
| effective treatments. I don't think they have any use outside
| of psychological treatment though. This is a great video on a
| good way of breaking down how personality disorders in general
| are broken down and function and are separated.
| https://youtu.be/4mgifm3ftl8
| bawolff wrote:
| > It's just a set of pigeonholes made by people whose goal is
| to have a pigeonhole for every kind of thing so that the world
| doesn't seem messy and complicated anymore.
|
| I mean, that is kind of how science/medicine work in general.
| Group the things that look similar, try and find things that
| work, and use the patterns to generalize the solution.
|
| If you don't generalize you can't apply knowledge from other
| cases.
| tezza wrote:
| While this topic is here
|
| Also see specialisms WITHIN Autism that are different to the
| mainstream Autism
|
| The one I know most about is
|
| PDA: Pathological Demand Avoidance [1]
|
| PDA presents differently and needs very different strategies to
| mainstream Autism.
|
| Main signs... kids under 12 attend school. However they explode
| at home or in private. At school the PDAers are masking
| (pretending to fit in) which is draining. When they get home the
| pent up frustration is released (explosively). So the family at
| home see a very different kid to the one that school/extended
| family witness. If this is an A-Ha! lightbulb moment for you or
| your child, see the questionnaire at the PDA Society[1]
|
| [1] https://www.pdasociety.org.uk/what-is-pda/
| cardanome wrote:
| This is the third article in a row that I am seeing on hacker
| news that is spreading misinformation about autism.
|
| This seems to be targeted campaign. I urge people to not be
| fooled by ill-researched blog posts. Listen to autistic people.
| Listen to researchers that represent the scientific consensus.
|
| Any diagnosis for autism will first consider whether the symptoms
| can be explained better by another diagnosis. This is why you
| fill out a lot of questionnaires and the like when you get your
| diagnosis. This is the state of art.
|
| Also women are systematically underdiagnosed when it comes to
| autism, they often get labeled with boderline and the like. The
| idea that someone is labeling everything as autism is silly.
| TimByte wrote:
| This honestly tracks with what I've seen: autism has become the
| catch-all public label for "socially struggling person," even
| when the underlying cause is anxiety, trauma, personality
| patterns, or just plain awkwardness.
| f13f1f1f1 wrote:
| A diagnosis is literally just a heuristic category so they can do
| research on rough groupings of symptoms to evaluate how
| treatments impact them. That's it. To get a diagnosis is
| literally just a statement "my psychologist thinks my symptoms
| align with this group and that the treatments they found
| effective for those symptoms will be effective for mine." The
| idea these things are identities or real categories is completely
| absurd and disconnected from why they actually exist. There is 0
| basis to assume because two people have the same diagnosis they
| have the same underlying causes for what leads them to end up
| with that rough grouping of symptoms. There may be some general
| similarities or correlations but again the whole point of these
| is literally just to establish heuristic groups so we can do
| research on how people respond to treatments. People allowing
| them or speaking in a way that makes them seem like more than
| that is extremely destructive.
| Aeglaecia wrote:
| a crumbling society is basically ideal for maximizing human
| stress and its various expressions ... or so dictated the
| deprecated term neurasthenia ... while many individuals are
| forced to deal with debilitating mental conditions , this
| situation is often incorrectly conflated with having
| experienced temporary behavioural breakdowns that later
| resolved (aka normal evolutionary response) ... this conflation
| wouldnt be such an issue if big pharma wasn't in the picture ,
| overpathologization is definitely in somebodys best interests !
| dimal wrote:
| > Autism exists, to the extent that any psychiatric disorder
| exists.
|
| Which is to say, not really. I say this as someone who has been
| diagnosed as autistic, and identifies as autistic. All of these
| diagnoses are presented as clear, well defined constructs that
| exist in the world, but in reality they're fictions that that
| committees have drawn around a vast gradient of human traits.
|
| No individual human truly fits any single diagnosis. For example,
| I have two family members that depending on how you frame their
| behaviors could be described as either autistic or narcissistic,
| yet these are supposedly completely different disorders. Prior to
| being diagnosed as autistic, I'd been diagnosed with some of the
| ones suggested in the article as well. Was I misdiagnosed? I
| don't think so. None of those constructs are real either. So,
| they'd not even wrong. For a time, some were useful. Some were
| harmful. But seeing myself as autistic has been a lot more
| useful.
|
| What matters to me about identifying as autistic is that it
| allowed me to find other people who experience the world
| similarly to me. Until I found other autistic people, I felt like
| I was a single alien stranded on Earth, alone. Finding other
| autistic people was like finding out that there were millions of
| other aliens like me hiding in plain sight.
|
| I hope that someday we can move beyond the 1950s-style nosology
| of the DSM and have a more rigorous science of mental health, but
| right now, it's what we're stuck with.
| nis0s wrote:
| I am sorry, but if you're saying there's no biological,
| physiological or neurophysiological evidence of these
| conditions then you're just plain wrong. I cannot emphasize
| that enough.
| lumb63 wrote:
| That's not what GP is saying. He's saying that a term like
| "autism" is a lasso trying to capture a gigantic number of
| individual traits and symptoms. This is true of any other
| "psychiatric disorder" as well. There is no "autism", there
| is no "ADHD", there is no "OCD", any more than there are
| tables or chairs.
|
| Something being a table is a label we slap on it to abstract
| certain attributes, that allows us to reason about it without
| having to think about all of the non-table-attributes it has.
| What do tables do? What can we do with them? We can put
| things on, eat off them. We can't feed them to our pets. We
| can't use them as a trampoline. The object being "a table" is
| just a categorization we make to allow us to think about the
| object; it isn't something that the object _is_.
|
| Similarly, people aren't "autistic". They're just people, who
| have certain traits, which psychiatrists have decided should
| be lumped into a category called "autism", because they've
| noticed a cluster of other people who have similar traits.
| So, from this standpoint, someone "being autistic" does not
| tell us anything. We can already see that person's traits or
| characteristics. That categorization might be helpful to some
| people, and it might be harmful to other people; and they
| should use or avoid using it accordingly. But they can choose
| to do that, because "autism" isn't a "thing" - it's a mental
| construct.
| nis0s wrote:
| It's the same thing as any condition which deviates from
| the set of characteristics considered "normal" for a given
| population.
|
| Eczema is a skin condition which happens to some people,
| it's not something that happens in most people. But we can
| see evidence of varying degrees of severity of skin damage
| due to eczema. This condition can happen for any number of
| reasons, immunological, endocrinological, or some
| combination of factors. There are different types of
| eczema, but for ease for conversation with anyone other
| than a doctor, you just say you have eczema.
|
| Same for mental conditions, they have their underlying
| causes, and some representative characteristics we found on
| average and grouped them as classes for ease of diagnosis
| and treatment.
|
| I understand the folly of mischaracterizing, so it doesn't
| make sense for researchers or medical professionals to not
| care about the categorical distinctions.
|
| However, as far as the normal public is concerned,
| someone's problem is their problem, and they don't owe you
| a detailed explanation of their condition, or a doctors
| note because you've been socially offended (I understand
| maybe that's not the point in either of your posts, but I
| thought I should say it now that it occurred to me in the
| flow of this post).
| solomonb wrote:
| Psychiatric disorders are leaky abstractions.
| nis0s wrote:
| Be that as it may, they're still predicated on a set of
| underlying biochemical and physiological processes.
| flatline wrote:
| I have done a rigorous job of self diagnosis. I am autistic. I've
| also had the privilege of being able to pursue meditation,
| therapy, and other self development practices: I'm not as
| severely autistic as I was as a young man. I _also_ have
| childhood trauma that I _know_ contributes to many of my autistic
| presentations -- see the last section on comorbidity. I also have
| some distinct ADHD symptoms but have never pursued that path
| because my hyperfocus tends to win out often enough that it's not
| a hindrance to productivity. But it still causes problems
| elsewhere in my life.
|
| For some people these diagnoses will be a very good fit with
| clear predictive outcomes. But many of us have a grab-bag of
| traits from several categories and still mostly get along in
| life, maybe with some assistance particular to one of these
| diagnosis but no more help overall than anyone else needs
| otherwise.
|
| The diagnostic models suck. They are too broad here, too narrow
| there, misunderstood by professionals. I had a psychiatrist
| (mis)diagnose me as bipolar based on a 45 minute appointment when
| I was in some sort of crisis in my early 30s and that ended up
| haunting me years later when applying for a job with a security
| clearance. I didn't even know about it at the time. This was one
| of the top rated doctors in a major metro area. What a sham.
|
| The field is a mess. It has a terrible history of horrific abuse.
| Some autistic children _still_ receive involuntary-to-them ECT. I
| think we should be supportive of research into these topics while
| also being critical of the very obvious problems with them.
| cwillu wrote:
| > Some autistic children still receive involuntary-to-them ECT.
|
| Adults too; ask me how I know.
| skrebbel wrote:
| How do you know?
| H8crilA wrote:
| Maybe because it's a highly effective treatment for severe
| affective disorders, catatonia, and occasionally even
| schizophrenia?
| iambateman wrote:
| It's never occurred to me that someone could become more or
| less autistic...could you say more about what that has been
| like for you?
| cromulent wrote:
| Not the OP, but after a couple of decades of people pointedly
| talking about eye contact, small talk, and body language, you
| learn "coping mechanisms" to deal with neurotypicals and make
| them more comfortable.
|
| Did your sporting team have success on the weekend?
| Wonderful, direct eye contact, smile, mirror. Ok, now, to
| business:
| klipt wrote:
| If you teach this to children while their brains are young
| and have high plasticity, they might "grow out" of many
| autistic symptoms entirely?
| empressplay wrote:
| You don't grow out of it as much as learn to manage it,
| this requires that you develop some form of executive
| function though. In my case I was forcefully required to
| be responsible for my younger brother (when I was 7) and
| so learned out of necessity -- but this led to a lifetime
| of resentment and so I don't recommend it as a solution.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I was homeless by 16 and had no safety net, had to
| graduate high school on my own while living out of
| someone's garage, and generally take care of myself most
| of my life due to absentee, drug-addict parents, and I
| can tell you that this trauma only worsened my executive
| function by the time I had the privilege of being able to
| sit back and reflect from a place of security and
| comfort.
|
| I'm sorry you have resentment issues... definitely get
| that.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I don't know the neurological mechanisms behind autism,
| but I know that ADHD is, briefly, defined by a reduction
| of dopamine receptors across your brain.
|
| The brain is neuroplastic, especially when young, but I
| doubt you can just influence the growth of significantly
| more dopamine receptors out of pure willpower and habit-
| forming; _especially_ given that ADHD disrupts those two
| facilities.
|
| This is in part why dopaminergic drugs such as Adderall
| work so well, and why dopamine/reward-center disruption
| due to childhood trauma can have such a negative impact
| on one's ADHD symptoms.
|
| Again, I don't know how much this applies back to autism,
| but it has definitely been a bane of my existence
| constantly explaining to people why I can't just
| meditate, habit-form or diet or exercise away my
| symptoms.
|
| These things _help_ , as does directed research and
| experimentation with what does and doesn't work for me,
| and because of my ADHD these things are _integral_ to my
| ability to function as an adult in this insanely complex
| and stressful world. And it 's definitely made a
| difference in how I manage my symptoms, especially when I
| look at how my siblings don't manage theirs and lack
| basic coping mechanisms.
|
| But I frequently run into people who arrogantly assume
| I've never even heard of meditation, or that I have a bad
| diet, etc. and offer them up as panaceas. These people
| often get defensive and more arrogant whenever I try to
| explain to them that ADHD is not just some "mental block"
| or collection of bad habits that can be "fixed".
|
| So yea... I also think we need to do way more clinical
| studies about the effects of teaching coping mechanisms
| at a young age, but I don't think autism is something
| that you can _grow out_ of, there are likely specific
| underlying genetic and neurological factors that affect
| how much a specific individual can control or cope with
| their symptoms.
| cromulent wrote:
| I get it.
|
| Society is moving in the right direction at least. At one
| point, the bell curve had 3 sections: normal, genius,
| retarded. Now we have more gradients and some of them
| trigger help or maybe longer exam times.
|
| This causes over-diagnosis and resentment. Coping
| mechanisms grow over time. It's definitely better if you
| can appear neurotypical.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| I think so. If I had had somebody in my youth who taught
| me how to interact with people I am pretty sure I would
| have done much better. The worst for me was to notice
| that I don't fit in and had nobody to help. It was
| extremely lonely and depressing. But I am also a pretty
| mild case and performed well in school and work. I am not
| sure how it would have worked with severe autism cases,
| for example non verbal people. That's a different
| ballgame.
| iambateman wrote:
| That's what I'm curious to hear from you and OP...does that
| make the autistic person less autistic? Or is it a mask?
|
| I---as a non-autistic person---have lots of default
| tendencies which were socially discouraged as a child and
| which are now no longer part of my self concept. I'm not
| "repressing" a desire to be awkward, I've simply learned to
| be less awkward.
|
| But my understanding of autism, which is I think backed by
| the article itself, is that autism exists as a fundamental
| cognitive process and tends to be pretty stable.
|
| Btw the reason I ask is to learn...as a software dev and
| manager, several of the people I interact with could
| probably be diagnosed autistic and I'm always curious to
| try to understand what that's like better.
| cromulent wrote:
| I think you can mask to appear less autistic, yes.
|
| I think autistic people would have less eye corner
| wrinkles, because they don't smile automatically when
| others smile. A study would be interesting.
| cj wrote:
| As part of my job, I have to interview and hire people.
|
| When I first started interviewing people, I would have
| crippling anxiety. On days I had a interview scheduled
| with a candidate, I would obsess and have anxiety to the
| point where I wasn't able to focus on anything until the
| interview was over. It was bad. I'd spend hours
| rehearsing every line I was going to say. I was an
| incredibly awkward interviewer.
|
| Fast forward 10 years and hundreds of interviews later,
| the anxiety is completely gone and an interview doesn't
| even spike my heart rate anymore.
|
| I absolutely met multiple DSM criteria for anxiety 10
| years ago, but not anymore.
|
| I suppose I was cured through "exposure therapy" (or
| whatever you call doing something repeatedly that gives
| you massive anxiety).
|
| Interviewing still doesn't come naturally to me. But it's
| easy now because every interview is basically scripted. I
| repeat lines that I memorized over the years. I always
| start interviews with the same ice breaker. I use
| multiple tactics to put myself and the candidate at ease
| throughout the call.
|
| Do I still have anxiety even though I've learned how to
| cope with it? I don't know.
|
| Is someone still autistic if they were able to learn
| coping tactics that make the symptoms invisible to
| themselves and others? I don't know.
| Delk wrote:
| I think the difference is that if an autistic person
| learns to mask, that's probably useful as a coping
| mechanism but doesn't remove the autism in the sense of
| making the fundamental neurological difference go away.
| Anxiety (even in anxiety disorders) can be fundamentally
| reduced by exposure therapy, not only in the sense of
| finding more effective coping mechanisms but in the sense
| of the anxiety itself diminishing or ceasing to exist.
|
| For what it's worth, exposure therapy is a real term and
| it's an actual part of cognitive behavioural therapy.
| 2ICofafireteam wrote:
| The term I've heard is masking.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| It sounds to me like the article author calls that social
| awkwardness not autism, no?
|
| >The key distinctions are that socially awkward individuals
| understand what they should do socially but find it
| difficult or uninteresting (versus genuinely not
| understanding unwritten rules), show significant
| improvement with practice and maturity, are more
| comfortable in specific contexts, lack the sensory
| sensitivities and restricted/repetitive behaviors required
| for autism diagnosis, and generally achieve life goals
| despite awkwardness rather than experiencing clinically
| significant impairment.
|
| It seems to me that this sort of definition would preclude
| any person having general intelligence such that they are
| able to learn to mask (or feel like they have to mask less
| in certain safe areas).
| cromulent wrote:
| Yeah, really good point, and I question my own diagnoses
| sometimes. However: I did not understand for many years
| why I needed to mask. I was not being contrary or looking
| for attention - I really did not get it.
|
| Once you understand that neurotypicals have special needs
| and you must play-act to smooth things over, then you
| play the game.
|
| I think your comment is very insightful. It made me think
| and reflect. I am not socially awkward, however: but I am
| autistic. I really think so. My ability to appear less so
| over time is my own achievement.
| alexfoo wrote:
| Masking is hugely mentally draining.
|
| I masked for years but recently (possibly linked to some
| bereavements in the family, who knows what the actual
| trigger was if there even was one single trigger) the
| constant effort required just burned me out. Anxiety
| spiked, depression symptoms loomed, and I just felt
| exhausted all of the time.
| Aloha wrote:
| Commonly called masking - learning the 'rules of the road'
| for peopling - the hardest thing that young folks with autism
| or ADHD need to learn is that you _must_ learn how to do
| this, the world will not (often or always) change to
| accommodate you - but once you do it, you can appear more or
| less normal most of the time.
| swatcoder wrote:
| There's nothing in the _diagnostic_ models for nearly any
| mental health concern that presumes a patient would forever
| earn that diagnosis nor (certainly) that its presentation
| would be identical through their life even if the diagnosis
| stood.
|
| There are _some_ clinicians and unfortunately now _many_
| patients and caregivers that nonetheless take an essentialist
| view of diagnosis and come to identify their patient
| /self/child/peer with what's really just meant to be a
| guideline for support with ongoing dysfunctions.
|
| In reality, most people face some fluctuating bag of
| dysfunctions over the course of their life, with fluctuating
| intensity, with contributing causes too diffuse and numerous
| to identify. They might be diagnosed squarely by one
| clinician with one thing thing at one time, then see some
| other clinician the same day who thinks the diagnosis was
| overstated or preposterous. Or they might find that a
| qualifying symptom that seemed very salient at one time of
| their life hasn't been an issue for them for a long time
| because of some new learned behavior, some change of
| circumstance, etc. Likewise, they may even find themselves
| facing new or greater dysfunctions compared to what they'd
| experienced or noticed before, precipitated through known or
| unknown reasons.
|
| For people most intensely disabled by mental health
| dysfunction, they often can't escape that dysfunction
| entirely without the discovery and resolution of some kind of
| radical physiological or environmental issue.
|
| But for the majority of people who just found that they had a
| hard time with their daily life, but were otherwise
| independent, and received a diagnosis that helped them see
| some constellation of related factors and opportunities for
| accommodation or treatment, things are hardly so static.
|
| For most of early psychology, this marked the distinction
| between "psychotic" and "neurotic" presentations. The former
| represented a disruption so severe that escaping disability
| and achieving independence were largely out of reach, whereas
| the latter were understood to be real but fluctuating or even
| ephemeral disturbances.
|
| It's not really until very recently, when so many people
| started to obsess with "identifying" themselves with this
| thing or that thing in some kind of permanent way, that this
| distinction began to fall out of mind.
|
| In the case of those diagnosed with autism as part of
| generally independent and functional lives, it's not hard to
| find people who have experienced changes to the symptoms that
| originally qualified them for the diagnosis -- sometimes
| positively, sometimes negatively; sometimes during certain
| times, sometimes permanently. It's also not hard to find
| people who received such a diagnosis at one time and either
| felt comfortable fully rejecting that diagnosis at some later
| time or had a clinician who strongly questioned it or refused
| to confirm it. None of this stuff is static and much of it is
| subjective.
| nelox wrote:
| Your experience illustrates something that often gets lost in
| the autism-vs-not-autism debate: many people don't fall into
| clean diagnostic categories. You're describing a profile that
| mixes autism traits, trauma adaptations, ADHD features, and
| developmental history, and instead of neatly labeling you, the
| system failed you outright with a bipolar misdiagnosis. That
| alone shows how fragile clinical certainty really is.
|
| I think the most important part of what you wrote is that you
| changed over time. Whether that improvement came from
| meditation, therapy, maturity, trauma processing, or simply
| growing into yourself, it challenges the idea that autism is a
| static essence. Development, coping skills, neurology, and
| environment interact in ways the current diagnostic boundaries
| don't fully capture.
|
| Where I push back slightly is on the conclusion that self-
| diagnosis can automatically fill the gaps. For some people it's
| deeply accurate and validating, for others it may explain one
| part of their experience but obscure another. As you said, many
| people carry a "grab-bag" of traits, and a single label can
| illuminate or compress that complexity depending on how it's
| used.
|
| You're right that the field has a painful history and uneven
| present. Misdiagnosis is real. Forced treatment is real.
| Diagnostic tools are blunt instruments for a very diverse human
| reality. Supporting research while staying critical of the
| system makes sense, not because autism isn't real, but because
| the categories we have are still evolving. Your story is a
| perfect example of why humility in diagnosis matters, whether
| it's done by a psychiatrist or by oneself.
|
| Edit:typo
| ok_dad wrote:
| I was also misdiagnosed as bipolar due to a crisis years ago,
| which destroyed my career path in the military and post
| service. Since then I've been diagnosed as autistic, but much
| like you I'm just capable enough to kind of run the rat race
| but not quite capable enough to thrive.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| How though? Isn't medical data private and you don't need to
| share if you don't want to.
| cluckindan wrote:
| > Autism exists, to the extent that any psychiatric disorder
| exists.
|
| Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder which causes and
| contributes to various psychiatric disorders.
|
| The author is not seeing the forest for the trees, which is
| incredibly ironic.
| zzzeek wrote:
| the agenda being pushed with the recent spate of articles to the
| effect of "people are saying they're autistic when they're really
| not, and should be classified differently" I think has mostly to
| do with RFKs overarching claim that people who are autistic are
| all suffering a horrible, debilitating disease, where in his
| words verbatim: "These are kids who will never pay taxes, they'll
| never hold a job, they'll never play baseball, they'll never
| write a poem, they'll never go on a date" [1] , which from there
| goes into his bigger goal which is to create a "database" of
| autistic people [2], for which no valid reason has ever been
| given. By redefining "autism" to be only those who we've decided
| are those severely disabled who "will never pay taxes or hold a
| job", then creating a catalog of exactly who these people are,
| the final step is quite obvious if you've studied the treatment
| of autistic people in Nazi Germany [3].
|
| So I'm going to flag these posts for now because the goal in the
| current US climate is pure eugenics. RFK is at his core a
| eugenicist, as are all high-level anti-vaxxers. Anti-vaxxers seek
| to blame the diseased for their disease, on such factors as "poor
| diet", "lack of exercise", or in the case of autism, "having your
| child vaccinated", against all scientific consensus, and would
| prefer people suffer and die of horrible and completely
| preventable diseases like measles and polio since they somehow
| "deserve it". Governments like the current one have plenty of
| plans for people they deem unworthy.
|
| [1] https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5256614-autism-
| communi...
|
| [2] https://www.npr.org/2025/05/08/nx-s1-5391310/kennedy-
| autism-...
|
| [3] https://mjhnyc.org/blog/autism-and-disability-in-nazi-
| vienna...
| ulrischa wrote:
| Life is difficult for people with severe autism (e.g. early
| childhood). Due to the increasing number of misdiagnoses, self-
| diagnoses, romanticization and constant trivialization, life is
| becoming even more difficult for these people. The opinion that
| autism is not a disease but a buzzword for strange people leads
| to real autistic people being denied the disease. It is often
| said: "They should just try harder or pull themselves together".
| Please don't use the word autism in an inflated way - it harms
| those affected.
| nmca wrote:
| In a maximally earnest way -- to what degree should we be sure
| these language harms are real on net? Are there data as opposed
| to anecdata? (Of course many phenomena are real without data;
| we can just be more confident in cases with data)
| empressplay wrote:
| It gets even more complicated when you add things like Williams
| Syndrome into the mix -- WS causes you to feel safer with
| 'friendly' people and so you're typically more social not less,
| but is often comorbid with autism and so can make diagnosing
| autism more challenging (in my case it was mostly because I had
| an abnormally high IQ and sensory challenges). But I am highly
| empathetic, have some talent for music and writing and was
| basically a TA for most of my school years, while still having
| most of the autism-related issues such as RSD, demand avoidance,
| meltdowns and so forth.
| ed_balls wrote:
| What is missing is the occurence of these disorders.
|
| Adhd 5-10%, autism 0.5%, cluster b 5%. The rest is quite rare.
| Adhd has the highest comormobility.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| The DSM-5 states schizoid has a prevalence of 4.9%, schizotypal
| 3.3% and OCPD 2.4 - 7.9%
| autoexec wrote:
| > But autism may also be the only relevant diagnosis they've
| heard of or are familiar with. They haven't seen any cool TikToks
| about being schizoid. No one's offering them quizzes about being
| schizotypal.
|
| Don't underestimate TikTok. You can find all sorts of weird fad
| mental illness there. For a while tourette syndrome was all the
| rage and the platform was filled with kids faking tics. There are
| fake epileptics faking seizures too. OCD is another common "cool"
| self-diagnosis and there are online quizzes to tell you how OCD,
| or ADHD or bipolar you are. It wouldn't surprise me at all if
| schizoid or schizotypal caught on.
|
| I think some people are looking for the self-validation that can
| come with a diagnoses, an explanation for why they are the way
| the are, feel the way they do, or why they struggle with certain
| things. Others are just looking for views, attention, or a
| community to belong to.
|
| While it can be fairly harmless the ability for mass sociogenic
| illness to spread via social media is interesting and a bit
| frightening.
| vantassell wrote:
| > For a while tourette syndrome was all the rage and the
| platform was filled with kids faking tics.
|
| Kind of like all those kids in Le Roy, NY who began
| experiencing involuntary tics. IIRC, it was interesting that it
| was mostly girls who were affected by the "craze".
|
| https://www.npr.org/2012/03/10/148372536/the-curious-case-of...
| RobotToaster wrote:
| There was (perhaps still is) a lot of stuff on there by people
| claiming to have dissociative identity disorder (what used to
| be called multiple personalities)
| btown wrote:
| I think part of the tension here comes from the way autism is
| understood both as a broad, fully-continuous, multivariate
| spectrum, and as a binary diagnosis.
|
| To be sure, clinically, thresholds are useful because services,
| insurance, and research all rely on clear binary classifications,
| in our current society. But outside that context, it isn't
| obvious that everyday language needs to mirror that line. Self-
| identification can be a way of making sense of one's life, not an
| attempt to claim a clinical label.
|
| But at the same time, the spectrum includes people with very high
| support needs, and there's understandable concern that broad or
| casual uses of the term can hide those realities in ways that
| impact care.
|
| To me, none of this means people are wrong for wondering about
| autism. And I do not have the experience to advocate for or
| against "anxiety disorders" being weighted more heavily in
| clinicians' priors than they currently are (as the OP article
| heavily implies with its length). I mean only to highlight the
| mismatch between a binary diagnostic system and a very
| heterogeneous spectrum, and the need for language that
| acknowledges self-understanding without flattening anyone's
| experience.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| The largest confusion with Autism is the ever changing
| definition from one DSM to the next where whole areas are
| suddenly included and others excluded.
|
| It seems in the DSM 5 the definition was narrowed specifically
| to focus on two performance deficits: 1) immediate harms either
| to the inflicted or to those they interact with due to social
| interactions, 2) catastrophic academic failures due strictly to
| input/output perception irregularities not otherwise explained
| by neuro-transmission disorders (things that can be treated
| with drugs) or low intelligence measures.
|
| That excludes a massive host of social and perception
| abnormalities that do result in less immediate social rejection
| and abstract reasoning failures.
| tsoukase wrote:
| Autism and schizo- spectrums have a common base: impairment of
| psychic functions (lack of empathy and non verbal commun, shallow
| feelings, social distance and similar). The difference is autism
| starts at early childhood (maybe birth) before any intelligence,
| language, soul and personality have evolved while
| schizo/psychoses start later (after teen age) when all these are
| fully developed.
|
| The impact of the disorder on behaviour is different due to the
| different state the disorder finds the rest of the brain. This
| maturity is the cause of "positive" symptoms in schizo like
| hallucinations/delirium while they lack in autism.
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