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I fully acknowledge that conditions affecting the brain will have a much larger impact on one's identity. That much is obvious. That being said, if I had the o

I fully acknowledge that conditions affecting the brain will have a much larger impact on one's identity. That much is obvious. That being said, if I had the option to "correct" most of my personal atypical genetic "variations," I would do so. Colorblindness? Yep, I don't want that. Congenital flat feet? I don't need those. IBS? No thanks. Hair loss starting at 17? Nope! Weird neurological symptoms no doctor has ever been able to fully diagnose? I would pay almost any amount of money to make those go away.

solipsism 7y ago
You'd pay almost any amount of money to make your color blindness go away? Do yo have one of the ultra rare varieties that severely impact your sight? As a person with run of the mill red-green color blindness, it doesn't affect me much at all. Edit: read it wrong, sorry!
- kop316 7y ago
  I was thinking the same thing. In the genetic lottery, I have colorblindness and 20/13 vision. I would much rather that than normal color vision and 20/20 or worse vision.
  - civilitty 7y ago
    You'd rather have color blindness than something that can be corrected by surgery so effectively that poor vision is no longer disqualifying for fighter jet pilots?
    - kop316 7y ago
      Yes. The only reason I notice I have color blindness is because it is pointed out to me. Outside of that, I would never know I have it. It is at best worst a mild annoyance once every few months. On the other hand, eye corrective surgery does not correct to 20/20 unless your vision isn't very bad (to your fighter jet pilot reference, it says your vision must be correctable to 20/20). There is also a lot of side effects to corrective surgery. One is you suffer from dry eyes for the rest of tour life. You can also get halos at night and have permanent damage to night vision. This is on tip of the fact that corrective surgery is not permanent, age will revert the issue. If I had a choice between the two, I would much rather take naturally good vision with colorblindness versus bad vision without.
- jetrink 7y ago
  I think that that list was in order of decreasing desirability and his opinion of color blindness was "I don't want that" and his opinion of weird neurological symptoms was that he would pay anything to make them go away.
sbenitoj 7y ago
What have you tried? At least 2 of those are autoimmune conditions which can be greatly improved with the auto-immune protocol.
- tapland 7y ago
  I hear this a lot on here. Do you know what the point of not wanting for example IBS or Chrohn's (which I have) is? SURPRISE It's not to be forced on a restrictive diet SURPRISE Yes, diet makes it work. We know. That's like the majority of treament. The point is, you don't want to have to go on a weird diet.
ekimekim 7y ago
Everything you described is a physical trait, not something deeply intertwined with your personality and identity. For people with mild autism, a closer analogy would be an aspect of your personality. Do you like to travel and explore new places? Imagine it was a major aspect of your life, to the point that you'd get uncomfortable staying in one place too long. How would you like it if someone told you that you should be cured of that, and you'd be better off able to settle down and be "normal"? Do you feel that you would still be you after that kind of change? If it helps, take the exact same question and reverse it. If you were told you had to be "cured" to love travelling to that degree, would you consider that a major change to your personality? I'm purposely not speaking for severe autism here. I think the big problem with this debate is people arguing past each other, both sides saying "autism" and meaning wildly different things. I really wish they had different names.
- aetherson 7y ago
  But the reason it's called a spectrum is that there's no easy/non-arbitrary place to put a line between these "things that you wish had different names." Sure, it's easy to see the difference between a very mildly autistic person and a non-verbal, highly interesting impaired person who can't possibly live alone. But when you fill in the population of all the people between them, it becomes clear that there's no natural place to draw a line.
  - aetherson 7y ago
    (Sorry, missed a phone autocorrect. It was supposed to read "highly intellectually impaired person")
  - Balgair 7y ago
    Which is why there is a push to get rid of the 'disorder' wording in Autism Spectrum Disorder in the popular zeitgeist. If all humans can be placed somewhere on the continuous spectrum of autism, then that's just a measure of humans. Just like how height or weight are continuous but normally distributed measures, autism is beginning to be seen as a normally distributed measure (more research required though). Granted, how autism is measured is not at all the same as how something like height is measured. As we continue to advance with social media, digital tracking, etc, we may find a window into how to measure autism empirically, but who knows. If/when that occurs, then yes, you could at least talk about standard deviations and start drawing borders between highly/mildly/average/low/lowest autism that a person has. But, again, we're a long ways away from this.
nosianu 7y ago
How do you know its genetic? Things like mercury does that too. I don't like to bring this up too often if I have no data at all because it sounds so alarmist, but I can only post publically so just in case... My own unfortunate experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19575424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19575424 Do you have any tooth fillings, for example, if so what kind? Was the source in my case. Jaw bones in very bad shape, never noticed by x-ray, only when a doctor trying to inject into buccal mucosa ended up diving deep into the jaw bones was it discovered how bad it was. In four places - all of them ex amalgam tooth fillings for two decades, and healed by injecting chelator. Lots and lots of conditions cleared that are quite common, such as psoriasis, and where no doctor ever considers heavy metals. How much it had affected my brain, direction of thoughts, dreams (literally), I only noticed through years of (university clinic researcher doctor controlled) chelation (DMPS, DMSA). Huge changes. And until I was forced to look into my problems I called myself "health" all the way through three decades of suffering from things which are all completely gone now, but which I always thought were "normal" and/or "part of (my) life".
- Nomentatus 7y ago
  The extra copy alpha tryptase trait is may very well be involved in a large number (perhaps majority) of cases of autism, but it's very early days re that trait. Here, "involved" means a necessary condition (for those cases) but not a sufficient condition. PS - melanin (a tan) is more effective than chelation in sequestering mercury.

solipsism 7y ago

You'd pay almost any amount of money to make your color blindness go away? Do yo have one of the ultra rare varieties that severely impact your sight? As a person with run of the mill red-green color blindness, it doesn't affect me much at all. Edit: read it wrong, sorry!

kop316 7y ago
I was thinking the same thing. In the genetic lottery, I have colorblindness and 20/13 vision. I would much rather that than normal color vision and 20/20 or worse vision.
- civilitty 7y ago
  You'd rather have color blindness than something that can be corrected by surgery so effectively that poor vision is no longer disqualifying for fighter jet pilots?
  - kop316 7y ago
    Yes. The only reason I notice I have color blindness is because it is pointed out to me. Outside of that, I would never know I have it. It is at best worst a mild annoyance once every few months. On the other hand, eye corrective surgery does not correct to 20/20 unless your vision isn't very bad (to your fighter jet pilot reference, it says your vision must be correctable to 20/20). There is also a lot of side effects to corrective surgery. One is you suffer from dry eyes for the rest of tour life. You can also get halos at night and have permanent damage to night vision. This is on tip of the fact that corrective surgery is not permanent, age will revert the issue. If I had a choice between the two, I would much rather take naturally good vision with colorblindness versus bad vision without.
jetrink 7y ago
I think that that list was in order of decreasing desirability and his opinion of color blindness was "I don't want that" and his opinion of weird neurological symptoms was that he would pay anything to make them go away.

sbenitoj 7y ago

What have you tried? At least 2 of those are autoimmune conditions which can be greatly improved with the auto-immune protocol.

tapland 7y ago
I hear this a lot on here. Do you know what the point of not wanting for example IBS or Chrohn's (which I have) is? SURPRISE It's not to be forced on a restrictive diet SURPRISE Yes, diet makes it work. We know. That's like the majority of treament. The point is, you don't want to have to go on a weird diet.

ekimekim 7y ago

Everything you described is a physical trait, not something deeply intertwined with your personality and identity. For people with mild autism, a closer analogy would be an aspect of your personality. Do you like to travel and explore new places? Imagine it was a major aspect of your life, to the point that you'd get uncomfortable staying in one place too long. How would you like it if someone told you that you should be cured of that, and you'd be better off able to settle down and be "normal"? Do you feel that you would still be you after that kind of change? If it helps, take the exact same question and reverse it. If you were told you had to be "cured" to love travelling to that degree, would you consider that a major change to your personality? I'm purposely not speaking for severe autism here. I think the big problem with this debate is people arguing past each other, both sides saying "autism" and meaning wildly different things. I really wish they had different names.

aetherson 7y ago
But the reason it's called a spectrum is that there's no easy/non-arbitrary place to put a line between these "things that you wish had different names." Sure, it's easy to see the difference between a very mildly autistic person and a non-verbal, highly interesting impaired person who can't possibly live alone. But when you fill in the population of all the people between them, it becomes clear that there's no natural place to draw a line.
- aetherson 7y ago
  (Sorry, missed a phone autocorrect. It was supposed to read "highly intellectually impaired person")
- Balgair 7y ago
  Which is why there is a push to get rid of the 'disorder' wording in Autism Spectrum Disorder in the popular zeitgeist. If all humans can be placed somewhere on the continuous spectrum of autism, then that's just a measure of humans. Just like how height or weight are continuous but normally distributed measures, autism is beginning to be seen as a normally distributed measure (more research required though). Granted, how autism is measured is not at all the same as how something like height is measured. As we continue to advance with social media, digital tracking, etc, we may find a window into how to measure autism empirically, but who knows. If/when that occurs, then yes, you could at least talk about standard deviations and start drawing borders between highly/mildly/average/low/lowest autism that a person has. But, again, we're a long ways away from this.

nosianu 7y ago

How do you know its genetic? Things like mercury does that too. I don't like to bring this up too often if I have no data at all because it sounds so alarmist, but I can only post publically so just in case... My own unfortunate experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19575424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19575424 Do you have any tooth fillings, for example, if so what kind? Was the source in my case. Jaw bones in very bad shape, never noticed by x-ray, only when a doctor trying to inject into buccal mucosa ended up diving deep into the jaw bones was it discovered how bad it was. In four places - all of them ex amalgam tooth fillings for two decades, and healed by injecting chelator. Lots and lots of conditions cleared that are quite common, such as psoriasis, and where no doctor ever considers heavy metals. How much it had affected my brain, direction of thoughts, dreams (literally), I only noticed through years of (university clinic researcher doctor controlled) chelation (DMPS, DMSA). Huge changes. And until I was forced to look into my problems I called myself "health" all the way through three decades of suffering from things which are all completely gone now, but which I always thought were "normal" and/or "part of (my) life".

Nomentatus 7y ago
The extra copy alpha tryptase trait is may very well be involved in a large number (perhaps majority) of cases of autism, but it's very early days re that trait. Here, "involved" means a necessary condition (for those cases) but not a sufficient condition. PS - melanin (a tan) is more effective than chelation in sequestering mercury.