4 ms·

That makes no sense. What is the opposite of autism? Please give a citation, because I've never heard of this condition you speak of. The scale exists because

That makes no sense. What is the opposite of autism? Please give a citation, because I've never heard of this condition you speak of. The scale exists because it's a scale of severity in diagnostic criteria. The scale exists to distinguish between "non-verbal and incapable of ever caring for oneself" to "experiences impairment but can generally hold a job and live independently". It's not a scale of how good you are at finding boxes in colored square pictures. Frankly it's kind of insulting to imply autism is just a grouping of logical behaviors and anyone who is good at those things has some "level" of autism. It's a disability. I got picked on, I got mocked, I struggled to understand basic things and it took me a lot longer than my peers to get this communication thing down. Besides, if programmers had enough incidence of autism to justify this level of imbalance, would pair programming really be a thing? (this was a joke).

chongli 9y ago
What is the opposite of autism? If I had to guess, it'd be the extravert. The social butterfly, life of the party, comedian. The one who wins all the popularity contests and the weekly sales competitions. The person who finds math (and any math-related technical field) to be arcane and impenetrable but has all the business class profs eating out of his/her hand.
- andrepd 9y ago
  Yeah, but you can't guess. That's not how it works. It's a medically recognized neurological disorder, not a vague personality trait.
  - jonny_eh 9y ago
    Maybe it doesn't get a named diagnosis because in our society, being an extrovert is hugely reward and isn't seen as a debilitating disease.
    - andrepd 9y ago
      Are you putting suffering from autism and being extroverted on the same footing? Being 'an extrovert' isn't a disease, and it doesn't negatively impact your life. Nothing to do with "society".
      - optimuspaul 9y ago
        I think the point was that extrovertism(?) is hiding whatever might be a disorder that is the opposite.
        andrepd 9y ago
        But there's no reason to believe there is "an opposite"... Would you say there is a scale ranging from having the flu, to being normal, to... having the opposite of flu, I guess? Makes no sense.
        AnthonyMouse 9y ago
        > But there's no reason to believe there is "an opposite"... Nearly every disease has an opposite which is also bad. If something was an unmitigated evil then there would be strong selective pressure for it to not happen and nothing pressing in the other direction to cause it to actually occur in the population. > Would you say there is a scale ranging from having the flu, to being normal, to... having the opposite of flu, I guess? Contracting the flu is a failure of the immune system to fight off the virus, so the opposite of contracting the flu would be an autoimmune disease.
        andrepd 9y ago
        >Nearly every disease has an opposite which is also bad. [citation needed]. Also, you can't use evolutionary arguments like that, to justify everything. What about the plague? What about an anvil to the head? What's the opposite of getting a heavy object dropped on your head and if there is none then why didn't we evolve a titanium skill? You see where I'm going? It just didn't because we don't immediately evolve defenses against every single danger and disease in existence. Evolutionary arguments aren't worth very much and certainly can't be applied in such a maximalist way.
- davidcbc 9y ago
  Autism and introversion are not the same thing
AnthonyMouse 9y ago
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/12/its-bayes-all-the-way-up/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/12/its-bayes-all-the-way-u... So the opposite of autism would be something like hallucinations and delusions.
- stared 9y ago
  Or rather... politics. All about social interactions, group identity and building one's position in the social ladder, but with any information being only incidental. (Idea not mine, it was somewhere in http://www.afieldguidetoearthlings.com/ http://www.afieldguidetoearthlings.com/ book.)
discreditable 9y ago
> What is the opposite of autism? Some would say Williams Syndrome. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126224885 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1262248...
- sudosteph 9y ago
  Is there a scientific basis for that statement? Sure some of the symptoms seem opposite (but others are actually kind of similar), but the genetic component of that disease is pretty specific and well understood. Not like autism which has been much harder to pin down on any single chromosome.
  - wlesieutre 9y ago
    If what we're talking about is the societal impact of people's behavior, does the genetic basis matter? Maybe AnthonyMouse could've been more precise and said "personal behavior opposite of behaviors characteristic of people on the autism spectrum", but that's awfully wordy and pretty clearly what he was getting at.
baccarat 9y ago
> What is the opposite of autism? Donald Trump
- dang 9y ago
  We've banned this account for trolling. Doing this will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't.
chillacy 9y ago
Yea, autism is a disorder, there's a lot of conflating that with the "autistic savant" myth in this thread, but I understand it's usually pretty debilitating. Nonetheless I'd like to point out that there are broad, statistical, gender differences between those who are "thing-oriented" and "people-oriented", that would need to be addressed before we could hope to see 50-50 splits of M/F ratios in every subject today: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-mostly-not-due-to-offensive-attitudes/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-m...
stared 9y ago
Well, not. Autism is a spectrum and there is no clear cut between a perfectly neurotypical person and a profoundly disabled. You can measure number of autistic traits in general population and see that there are differences between groups, look e.g. here: - The Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ): evidence from Asperger Syndrome / high-functioning autism, males and females, scientists and mathematicians (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1005653411471 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A100565341147...) There is no a single paper proving that HFA is a binary condition, and many hints that it isn't. (BTW: I dived into this topic some time ago, with already linked here http://crastina.se/autistic-traits-science-and-the-nerd-stereotype/. http://crastina.se/autistic-traits-science-and-the-nerd-ster...)
threatofrain 9y ago
I speculate that the person has an intuition of human variation on any dimension as normally distributed, including performance on metrics on the Systemizing Quotient or the Autism Spectrum Quotient.

chongli 9y ago

What is the opposite of autism? If I had to guess, it'd be the extravert. The social butterfly, life of the party, comedian. The one who wins all the popularity contests and the weekly sales competitions. The person who finds math (and any math-related technical field) to be arcane and impenetrable but has all the business class profs eating out of his/her hand.

andrepd 9y ago
Yeah, but you can't guess. That's not how it works. It's a medically recognized neurological disorder, not a vague personality trait.
- jonny_eh 9y ago
  Maybe it doesn't get a named diagnosis because in our society, being an extrovert is hugely reward and isn't seen as a debilitating disease.
  - andrepd 9y ago
    Are you putting suffering from autism and being extroverted on the same footing? Being 'an extrovert' isn't a disease, and it doesn't negatively impact your life. Nothing to do with "society".
    - optimuspaul 9y ago
      I think the point was that extrovertism(?) is hiding whatever might be a disorder that is the opposite.
      - andrepd 9y ago
        But there's no reason to believe there is "an opposite"... Would you say there is a scale ranging from having the flu, to being normal, to... having the opposite of flu, I guess? Makes no sense.
        AnthonyMouse 9y ago
        > But there's no reason to believe there is "an opposite"... Nearly every disease has an opposite which is also bad. If something was an unmitigated evil then there would be strong selective pressure for it to not happen and nothing pressing in the other direction to cause it to actually occur in the population. > Would you say there is a scale ranging from having the flu, to being normal, to... having the opposite of flu, I guess? Contracting the flu is a failure of the immune system to fight off the virus, so the opposite of contracting the flu would be an autoimmune disease.
        andrepd 9y ago
        >Nearly every disease has an opposite which is also bad. [citation needed]. Also, you can't use evolutionary arguments like that, to justify everything. What about the plague? What about an anvil to the head? What's the opposite of getting a heavy object dropped on your head and if there is none then why didn't we evolve a titanium skill? You see where I'm going? It just didn't because we don't immediately evolve defenses against every single danger and disease in existence. Evolutionary arguments aren't worth very much and certainly can't be applied in such a maximalist way.
davidcbc 9y ago
Autism and introversion are not the same thing

AnthonyMouse 9y ago

http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/12/its-bayes-all-the-way-up/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/12/its-bayes-all-the-way-u... So the opposite of autism would be something like hallucinations and delusions.

stared 9y ago
Or rather... politics. All about social interactions, group identity and building one's position in the social ladder, but with any information being only incidental. (Idea not mine, it was somewhere in http://www.afieldguidetoearthlings.com/ http://www.afieldguidetoearthlings.com/ book.)

discreditable 9y ago

> What is the opposite of autism? Some would say Williams Syndrome. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126224885 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1262248...

sudosteph 9y ago
Is there a scientific basis for that statement? Sure some of the symptoms seem opposite (but others are actually kind of similar), but the genetic component of that disease is pretty specific and well understood. Not like autism which has been much harder to pin down on any single chromosome.
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  If what we're talking about is the societal impact of people's behavior, does the genetic basis matter? Maybe AnthonyMouse could've been more precise and said "personal behavior opposite of behaviors characteristic of people on the autism spectrum", but that's awfully wordy and pretty clearly what he was getting at.

baccarat 9y ago

> What is the opposite of autism? Donald Trump

dang 9y ago
We've banned this account for trolling. Doing this will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't.

chillacy 9y ago

Yea, autism is a disorder, there's a lot of conflating that with the "autistic savant" myth in this thread, but I understand it's usually pretty debilitating. Nonetheless I'd like to point out that there are broad, statistical, gender differences between those who are "thing-oriented" and "people-oriented", that would need to be addressed before we could hope to see 50-50 splits of M/F ratios in every subject today: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-mostly-not-due-to-offensive-attitudes/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-m...

stared 9y ago

Well, not. Autism is a spectrum and there is no clear cut between a perfectly neurotypical person and a profoundly disabled. You can measure number of autistic traits in general population and see that there are differences between groups, look e.g. here: - The Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ): evidence from Asperger Syndrome / high-functioning autism, males and females, scientists and mathematicians (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1005653411471 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A100565341147...) There is no a single paper proving that HFA is a binary condition, and many hints that it isn't. (BTW: I dived into this topic some time ago, with already linked here http://crastina.se/autistic-traits-science-and-the-nerd-stereotype/. http://crastina.se/autistic-traits-science-and-the-nerd-ster...)

threatofrain 9y ago

I speculate that the person has an intuition of human variation on any dimension as normally distributed, including performance on metrics on the Systemizing Quotient or the Autism Spectrum Quotient.