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Lol I don't necessarily agree or disagree with this but this line is blatantly ableist and I doubt very much true at all: > NSA hackers are given specific task

Lol I don't necessarily agree or disagree with this but this line is blatantly ableist and I doubt very much true at all: > NSA hackers are given specific tasks to achieve, they must play by the rules, and the paperwork involved is more arduous than the actual hacking. Such autistic kids would not do well in that environment.

manmal 3y ago
Author seems to have only pop culture fidelity knowledge of autism. The first error is talking about autists as a group - no two autists are alike in their sociability or tolerance for bureaucracy. Infact, some even like and thrive in bureaucracy.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- faeriechangling 3y ago
  It seems to me it's medicine to blame for people treating autistics as a group, since that is literally how they prescribe that they be treated. They used to have 3 divisions, PDD-NOS, Aspergers, and Autism and thought that they overlapped and overlap was supposedly bad. The root of the problem hardly seems to be pop culture, which to me has shown a pretty wide spectrum of autistic behaviour and generally portray it far more positively and heterogeneous than medicine does, which treats somebody having a diagnosis of Autism in the same light of them having a diagnosis of cancer. It's pop culture which has eased the stigma, it's high culture which truly looks down upon autistics as poor lambs to be saved. When I was a kid, doctors were in love with emphasising how I would probabilistically never succeed. Meanwhile, Hollywood put out a bruce willis film about how autistic children are smarter than NSA cryptographers. I listened to Hollywood, and ignored the doctors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Rising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Rising
  - manmal 3y ago
    I do agree with your sentiment that pop culture has been mostly „nice“ to autists. But I‘d argue that it has focused mainly on savants and very high functioning, very intelligent autists. That‘s IMO positive ableism. Most autists are neither exceptionally intelligent, nor are they savants.
    - faeriechangling 3y ago
      If a conceptual framework we're using, that a large heterogenous set of people are "autistics", results in any portrayal or generalisation of that group of people feeling inaccurate, maybe the conceptual framework itself is what's wrong? I would love for people to move past talking about "Autism" and start talking more about anxiety, Social difficulties, digestive issues, obsessions, compulsions, and so on. If treating autistic people as homogenous is wrong to begin with, why is giving them all the same label a good idea? That's a rhetorical question - the answer is that "Autism" became insurable, so ever since then there has been this pressure to describe increasingly diverse groups of people using the same label, and for people to NEVER lose this label. I had a psychiatrist re-diagnose me on the grounds that "Autism" had more funding than "Asperger's" at the time. I think pop cultures autistic savant obsession is just a reflection of this, and the root cause of nonsense portrayals and generalisations is money.
      - manmal 3y ago
        I personally think the term is useful for research purposes. The upshot is that there‘s interventions you can do today to improve symptoms, and they can be found by searching for the term. Maybe the confusion comes from „no two autists are alike in their symptom signature“ (which seems to be true), vs „most autism cases can be treated by X“ (which seems to be true at least sometimes). While it’s a highly individual syndrome, the metabolic and other causes could be more general. If that’s not the case - then we might actually need sub-syndromes, and I think this is actually WIP. Eg there‘s now pathological demand avoidance (PDA) which could, if it occurs outside of autism, become its own disorder.
        faeriechangling 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
brailsafe 3y ago
The reality is that it depends on the person, because autism spectrum people have various intensities of various traits that might make them practically useless in even the most trivial job, or a strict adherent of the systems to a problematic degree, or somewhere in the middle but incapable of working with others in a way that's really difficult to manage, or they're just luckily well-suited for the context. Doing well in that sort of environment is a skill or disposition that's well-suited to a low degree of volatility and a high degree of predictable behavior, both of which are not so likely to be present in someone with autism. Seeing how people who become managers in tech fail to adapt to someone who works in a marginally different way than they'd like, I don't have so much optimism unless their superiors have specific training and possible accomodations. Some autistic people are no-doubt brilliant and super productive, some can't do anything on their own, much like the general population I suppose, but I'd wager with a lower chance of being productive in a very typical office setting, even if they're brilliant.
- faeriechangling 3y ago
  All of the focuses wholly on the various ways that autistics can be weak. It also seem to ignore the reality that relative to other domains, there's more autistic employment in cybersecurity and government than elsewhere. What exactly explains that, if autistics are supposedly so unsuited to the work, despite this apparent stigma in the form of this common sense view that autistics obviously can only uncommonly succeed at such work?
faeriechangling 3y ago
In this case, the full context is very important, and I would say it shows more nuance and understanding of autism than the general member of the population does. Honestly if anything was ableist it was the combination of these two non-consecutive paragraphs: "The one thing that would be valuable to the NSA is autistic obsession with tech... ...You don't have to 'train' them, they'll train themselves" "If you are an organization with zero skills of your own, then sure, hiring such kids will at least get you started. But you'll exhaust their value *within 3 months*, after which you've got a *sociopath* on your hands" To put it another way, Autistics being good at hacking is nothing else but a matter of them doing extra training out of self-interest, but their inferiority is permanent. The reason why autistics get interested in tech is because they're innately good at technology leading to a positive feedback loop. They don't just wake up one day and decide to be obsessed about tech. Such notions are why at my last employer I veiled my autism diagnosis. Which was not good for me, or for my employer, but what choice do I have? If I worked for this man, and I disclosed on day 1, he would fire me immediately or in month 3 due to his pessimism about my potential. Whereas if he found out later about my autism, he could slap his head and say I must be "socialised" and that he made a good hire. It would be in everybody's interest if autistics were open about their diagnosis, but could be confident they would be given time and support to understand corporate social norms they may have extra trouble understanding.

manmal 3y ago

Author seems to have only pop culture fidelity knowledge of autism. The first error is talking about autists as a group - no two autists are alike in their sociability or tolerance for bureaucracy. Infact, some even like and thrive in bureaucracy.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
faeriechangling 3y ago
It seems to me it's medicine to blame for people treating autistics as a group, since that is literally how they prescribe that they be treated. They used to have 3 divisions, PDD-NOS, Aspergers, and Autism and thought that they overlapped and overlap was supposedly bad. The root of the problem hardly seems to be pop culture, which to me has shown a pretty wide spectrum of autistic behaviour and generally portray it far more positively and heterogeneous than medicine does, which treats somebody having a diagnosis of Autism in the same light of them having a diagnosis of cancer. It's pop culture which has eased the stigma, it's high culture which truly looks down upon autistics as poor lambs to be saved. When I was a kid, doctors were in love with emphasising how I would probabilistically never succeed. Meanwhile, Hollywood put out a bruce willis film about how autistic children are smarter than NSA cryptographers. I listened to Hollywood, and ignored the doctors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Rising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Rising
- manmal 3y ago
  I do agree with your sentiment that pop culture has been mostly „nice“ to autists. But I‘d argue that it has focused mainly on savants and very high functioning, very intelligent autists. That‘s IMO positive ableism. Most autists are neither exceptionally intelligent, nor are they savants.
  - faeriechangling 3y ago
    If a conceptual framework we're using, that a large heterogenous set of people are "autistics", results in any portrayal or generalisation of that group of people feeling inaccurate, maybe the conceptual framework itself is what's wrong? I would love for people to move past talking about "Autism" and start talking more about anxiety, Social difficulties, digestive issues, obsessions, compulsions, and so on. If treating autistic people as homogenous is wrong to begin with, why is giving them all the same label a good idea? That's a rhetorical question - the answer is that "Autism" became insurable, so ever since then there has been this pressure to describe increasingly diverse groups of people using the same label, and for people to NEVER lose this label. I had a psychiatrist re-diagnose me on the grounds that "Autism" had more funding than "Asperger's" at the time. I think pop cultures autistic savant obsession is just a reflection of this, and the root cause of nonsense portrayals and generalisations is money.
    - manmal 3y ago
      I personally think the term is useful for research purposes. The upshot is that there‘s interventions you can do today to improve symptoms, and they can be found by searching for the term. Maybe the confusion comes from „no two autists are alike in their symptom signature“ (which seems to be true), vs „most autism cases can be treated by X“ (which seems to be true at least sometimes). While it’s a highly individual syndrome, the metabolic and other causes could be more general. If that’s not the case - then we might actually need sub-syndromes, and I think this is actually WIP. Eg there‘s now pathological demand avoidance (PDA) which could, if it occurs outside of autism, become its own disorder.
      - faeriechangling 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

brailsafe 3y ago

The reality is that it depends on the person, because autism spectrum people have various intensities of various traits that might make them practically useless in even the most trivial job, or a strict adherent of the systems to a problematic degree, or somewhere in the middle but incapable of working with others in a way that's really difficult to manage, or they're just luckily well-suited for the context. Doing well in that sort of environment is a skill or disposition that's well-suited to a low degree of volatility and a high degree of predictable behavior, both of which are not so likely to be present in someone with autism. Seeing how people who become managers in tech fail to adapt to someone who works in a marginally different way than they'd like, I don't have so much optimism unless their superiors have specific training and possible accomodations. Some autistic people are no-doubt brilliant and super productive, some can't do anything on their own, much like the general population I suppose, but I'd wager with a lower chance of being productive in a very typical office setting, even if they're brilliant.

faeriechangling 3y ago
All of the focuses wholly on the various ways that autistics can be weak. It also seem to ignore the reality that relative to other domains, there's more autistic employment in cybersecurity and government than elsewhere. What exactly explains that, if autistics are supposedly so unsuited to the work, despite this apparent stigma in the form of this common sense view that autistics obviously can only uncommonly succeed at such work?

faeriechangling 3y ago

In this case, the full context is very important, and I would say it shows more nuance and understanding of autism than the general member of the population does. Honestly if anything was ableist it was the combination of these two non-consecutive paragraphs: "The one thing that would be valuable to the NSA is autistic obsession with tech... ...You don't have to 'train' them, they'll train themselves" "If you are an organization with zero skills of your own, then sure, hiring such kids will at least get you started. But you'll exhaust their value *within 3 months*, after which you've got a *sociopath* on your hands" To put it another way, Autistics being good at hacking is nothing else but a matter of them doing extra training out of self-interest, but their inferiority is permanent. The reason why autistics get interested in tech is because they're innately good at technology leading to a positive feedback loop. They don't just wake up one day and decide to be obsessed about tech. Such notions are why at my last employer I veiled my autism diagnosis. Which was not good for me, or for my employer, but what choice do I have? If I worked for this man, and I disclosed on day 1, he would fire me immediately or in month 3 due to his pessimism about my potential. Whereas if he found out later about my autism, he could slap his head and say I must be "socialised" and that he made a good hire. It would be in everybody's interest if autistics were open about their diagnosis, but could be confident they would be given time and support to understand corporate social norms they may have extra trouble understanding.