7 ms·

The line you draw between "weirdness" and "neurodivergence" is interesting. Would neurodivergence have to be native (so, not grown "naturally") and at which po

The line you draw between "weirdness" and "neurodivergence" is interesting. Would neurodivergence have to be native (so, not grown "naturally") and at which point does weirdness fit on the spectrum ? Recently I think people are more receptive to lower degrees of neurodivergence. I see it the same way people understand that you have a gradation between having difficulties climbing stairs and not being able to walk. We could probably have it more in the open that many are not full blown clinically diagnosed ASD patients, and I wouldn't see it as an issue to have "false positives" of diversity lumped into neurodivergence if it was destigmatized.

kristjansson 2y ago
At some point the question is “why?”. We can keep atomizing human variability into smaller, more graduated buckets of neurodivergence, but what’s the point, esp. for those that don’t really suffer negative impacts, and for which there isn’t really any remedy besides acceptance?
- belinder 2y ago
  Just a guess here - but to make diagnosed people feel more included and part of a group, the more people get diagnosed even if it's 0.01%, the more safe the others feel because they're not alone, it stops being a stigma
  - ambicapter 2y ago
    How does sifting people into smaller and smaller buckets work to make people feel more part of a group? Seems more like people who have felt marginalized in the past want others to feel marginalized like they did, and work to place people into smaller and smaller categories to do so.
    - licebmi__at__ 2y ago
      Because the buckets were always there and the main difference is their visibility.
    - beaned 2y ago
      And for every group there is an anti-group, another set of people for whom the group-included feel justified in feeling resentful towards in some way.
  - faeriechangling 2y ago
    This is not my experience at all. Being diagnosed directly led to immense stigma over and over. You are literally giving people the language they need to stereotype you and put you into a bucket by getting diagnosed and telling people your diagnosis. Stigma is literally an iatrogenic consequence of diagnosis itself, never mind diagnosis stopping stigma! I hear "Autistic" thrown around as an insult maybe 10x more than I heard the same 20 years ago. People feeling safe because they're not alone does not end stigma whatsoever either.
    - Aurornis 2y ago
      > by getting diagnosed and telling people your diagnosis One of the things I try to emphasize with newly diagnosed young people is that they should not make their diagnosis an outward part of their personality. There's a trend of putting your diagnoses in everything from your LinkedIn profile to your resume lately. I've been helping with resume review in a group and I've been stunned by how many times I've had to tell people that they need to remove their ADHD diagnosis from their resume.
    - andoando 2y ago
      I dont even like it on a personal level. People use these terms to describe themselves in very narrow buckets and stereotypes, and there is no logic to that at all. I saw a post on /r/ADHD for example thst went something like "Does anyone else svoid eye contact during sex" and everyones like "omg thats me too!". I mean...need I say more? I get how it might be fulfilling to have a label to explain away all your behaviors but it makes no sense to do so and I find it extremely self-limiting
  - Aurornis 2y ago
    > but to make diagnosed people feel more included and part of a group, the more people get diagnosed even if it's 0.01%, the more safe the others feel because they're not alone, I've worked with younger people in tech. I'm seeing a mix of effects, positive and negative, from increased diagnosis rates. On the plus side, some people are using their diagnoses to find helpful support material, techniques, and advice. On the negative side, some people get a diagnosis and then try to use it as an excuse for every personality trait they can fit under the umbrella of that diagnosis. It's really difficult as a mentor to have to explain to someone that their diagnosis of anxiety or ADHD or autism doesn't give them a free pass in society for all of the things they struggle with. I've had to explain to numerous people that having an ADHD diagnosis doesn't, for example, exempt them from the same performance review standards as their peers at work. This can be difficult to acceptance for someone who was given extra time on tests and possibly more leniency on assignments throughout high school and college due to their diagnosis. The educational institutions meant well, but the students took the wrong message from their accommodations and assumed it was always the world's responsibility to bend to their personal quirks rather than the other way around. Teaching people that their diagnosis is, to be blunt, not other people's problem is a difficult hurdle to clear for some. Many others get it right away, of course, but the internet rhetoric about neurodivergence leads a lot of people in the wrong direction.
    - aspenmayer 2y ago
      > I've had to explain to numerous people that having an ADHD diagnosis doesn't, for example, exempt them from the same performance review standards as their peers at work. I can’t speak for you, but that isn’t at all accurate as far as I know. I myself would not say these kinds of things to a coworker, and definitely not to a subordinate one or one that reports to me, as I don’t work in HR or legal department, and I’m not intimately familiar with actual existing accommodations for ADHD and other conditions under the FMLA and other disability discrimination laws and regulations in the US or other countries. This is a legal minefield and accident waiting to happen. Tread lightly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_of_1993 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_o...
      - 2y ago
  - kristjansson 2y ago
    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/13/why-were-turning-psychiatric-labels-into-identities https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/13/why-were-turni...
  - YurgenJurgensen 2y ago
    This fails the placebo test. People feel more included and part of groups even if the groups are assigned at random.
- fragmede 2y ago
  so that people can identify themselves as being part of a group, and then find others who are also part of that group, just to have a community for support. if I want to find a group of left handed pansexuals who are into Pokemon Go, the Internet facilitates finding your exact flock.
  - zarathustreal 2y ago
    Seems to me like enabling further segregating people would be a negative thing. Eventually groups become so isolated that conflict is inevitable
    - blueflow 2y ago
      There is a mean trick to make people stop pushing their own group identity. Refer to them as their group identity instead of by their name.
- detourdog 2y ago
  My guess is to try to improve human relationships. Trying to understand why someone has consistent surprising/inappropriate reactions might help. The flip side is someone who consistently seems to be surprised by how people are reacting to them and wants better connections.
  - folsom 2y ago
    I do know that people do not like me. Don't get me wrong, my coworkers all get along with me and I think most enjoy working with me but in general people outside of work don't want to be around me. Hell I couldn't even keep my wife interested enough to stick with me. So how could we study what makes me turn off other people and have it make a difference in my life? It is unlikely that I would be able to change myself and there is almost zero chance that whatever it is about me that disgusts others will change their natural reaction. In addition, I am not sure that this isn't how things are supposed to be. This may be part of social evolution that just makes the world tick. I would prefer we stop classifying people and just let them be who/what they are without pointing fingers at them.
    - detourdog 2y ago
      It’s all about realistic introspection. People with a disorder often prefer the disorder to change. I think it is a personal decision. If one feels the need to be closer/understand an individual or is not satisfied with the quality of their human relationships than understanding personalities including one’s own can help.
    - johnny22 2y ago
      > So how could we study what makes me turn off other people and have it make a difference in my life? It is unlikely that I would be able to change myself and there is almost zero chance that whatever it is about me that disgusts others will change their natural reaction. Highly unlikely, but you didn't rule it out completely. Plus there are others who also might be able to change.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  Acceptance comes from understanding, on both sides. We have small and graduated buckets for absolutely anything that impacts how we socially interact with someone. Which town they come from, nationality, ethnicity, educational background, religion down to specific cult group, football team, wealth level, parent's profession, family composition etc. Any of these has potential for negative discrimination, but we also use them for improving the interaction and mitigate confronting issues. The small and graduated buckets do IMHO help avoiding the negative impacts in the first place.
- Mathnerd314 2y ago
  Maybe this will be an unpopular opinion, but hear me out: it is the video platforms like YouTube, TikTok, etc. Before these platforms, it was relatively difficult to find videos of "ordinary" people in everyday situations. Sure there was funniest home videos and other carefully curated channels, but now it is easy. And with consumption of these videos comes the desire for a vocabulary to classify and describe them. Like how food is spicy or sweet and has different ethnic styles, or music has a tangled mess of genres and substyles, the teenagers of today are developing a classification of (videos of) human behavior. And part of this is non-neurotypical behavior - I don't know why, I haven't really investigated this, but it is clear that some (a lot?) of people enjoy watching content from autistic people, ADHD people, etc. For them, or at least the ML algorithms that feed them content, it is a genre like any other, and in the incestuous cycle of hunting for views, whether the origin was man or machine, at this point it has become branding. What I'm not clear on is whether this translates to better real-world interactions. Certainly, it raises awareness of the conditions, but just watching a video does not necessarily lead to smooth conversation. Generally meetings with famous actors are pretty awkward and it is even less clear to me that someone who watches ADHD videos would necessarily enjoy meeting an ADHD person irl, particularly one that doesn't make engaging videos with millions of views.
giantg2 2y ago
ASD has different levels of diagnosis. I've been told by a therapist specializing in ASD that there are a lot of diagnosed and undiagnosed ASD workers in tech. It's very possible the only reason they are "full blown clinically diagnosed" is because they haven't been tested.
- Gigachad 2y ago
  At this point we could diagnose basically everyone on the planet with some flavour of neurodivergence. I’m sure there’s one that makes people good at sales, one that makes people ruthless CEOs, one that makes people programmers, etc. But I just don’t see the point of diagnosing people with things unless it causes some kind of actual disability and dysfunction.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    No, you can't diagnose most people. Yes, the diagnosis generally requires there to be disabilities related to it. Otherwise it doesn't meet the criteria.
    - Gigachad 2y ago
      That's the current medical way, but the author and this thread like to put up the idea that basically all if not all programmers and "weird nerds" are autistic but it's just massively under diagnosed. To which I disagree, if there are essentially no disorders in your life, you shouldn't be diagnosed. The ASD spectrum has become incredibly broad to the point where someone who likes just programming too much is being classified in the same group as someone who can hardly speak, let alone look after themselves.
      - giantg2 2y ago
        "The ASD spectrum has become incredibly broad to the point where someone who likes just programming too much is being classified in the same group as someone who can hardly speak, let alone look after themselves." This isn't true at all. The ASD grading has different levels based on the level of assistance needed. Unless that programming is significantly impacting your abilities in life, you would be told that you display some ASD like behaviors but that you don't actually have ASD. I know a therapist that specializes in adult ASD and they believe that many people in technology fields do have undiagnosed mild ASD. The strong logical basis to the work and other characteristics of the job may play a role in attracting people whose minds work a certain way. It also seems the few people I know who have been diagnosed later in life tend to be in technical fields. The observations and the theory behind it seem to make sense. But not everyone has it, and there is criteria that need to be met to diagnosis it (disabilities).
parineum 2y ago
You didn't use this word specifically but this whole conversation has the underlying prior of the "everything is a spectrum" mindset. In that context, everyone is neurodivergence because, afterall it's a spectrum we're all on and nobody is going to be deadest average. At some point we have to define at what point these spectrums become clinical. The kind of language you see in the DSM for stuff like this is "does it affect daily living/relationships/health in a negative way". Being neurodivergent isn't a disorder, not showering because you're obsessed with programming probably is.
- kylebenzle 2y ago
  Autism is a result of neurons failing to "trim" or being over-connected. Being "on the spectrum" refers to the degree of above average physical over-connection of neurons. The opposite, when neurons fail to connect or lose too many connections is called schizophrenia. People that are between the two, the vast majority of people, are not said to be either autistic or schizophrenic (you can't be both at the same time but can go from autistic to schizophrenic with a degenerative disease). Everyone is not "on the spectrum" for autism, again by definition no one that is schizophrenic is "on the spectrum" for autism at all so your comment is nonsensical.
  - parineum 2y ago
    You've really only redefined the spectrum. It's now a single spectrum from Autism to Schizophrenia. You can't be on two spots on the spectrum at once. You've still put everyone on a spectrum and my question still stands. How far on the spectrum towards schizophrenia have to be before they are clinically schizophrenic? I don't disagree with the tendency to place things on spectrums but I find that people fail to adress that some people are so far on any spectrum that they become clinical.
  - magicalist 2y ago
    > not said to be either autistic or schizophrenic (you can't be both at the same time I've never heard this before and a quick search can't find any evidence of it. The "over-connected" suggestion did pull up studies like this[1], but that's one effect of one set of genes sometimes associated with autism, and, of course, it was in mice. I'd definitely like to learn more, but at first impression, a spectrum with autism and schizophrenia at opposite ends seems way too simple a model for human brains. [1] https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/in-autism-too-many-brain-connections-may-be-at-root-of-condition/ https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/in-autism-too-many-brain-con...
dbtc 2y ago
The phrase has sounded weird to me for some time but here it strikes me as especially so: "the spectrum" Just one spectrum, 2 dimensions? Is that all we get? It's a linguistic short-cut, I get that, but I wonder how useful it is, how much nuance it conceals.
- kylebenzle 2y ago
  Yes, 2 degrees, because autism is a neural "over-connectedness" in the brain that leads to common physical and mental symptoms like toe walking, double hair whorl, sensitivity to sound, etc. The spectrum can essentially be thought of has the degree of neural "over-connectedness".
- ModernMech 2y ago
  Picture a color wheel instead of a continuum. Here's an image that shows what I mean: https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.4683716510.9542/raf,360x360,075,t,fafafa:ca443f4786.jpg https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.4683716510.9542/raf,360x360,...
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Yeah, a Kiviat diagram, or radar graph https://blog.onepatchdown.net/autism/2023/01/13/autism/ https://blog.onepatchdown.net/autism/2023/01/13/autism/
- ianbicking 2y ago
  Yeah, "the spectrum" feels like squeezing lots of things into one diagnosis. Kind of the opposite of neurodiversity. It also feels a bit tech-centric... probably tech is someplace autistic attributes are particularly helpful, but other subjects are probably most compatible with other kinds of neurodivergence.

kristjansson 2y ago

At some point the question is “why?”. We can keep atomizing human variability into smaller, more graduated buckets of neurodivergence, but what’s the point, esp. for those that don’t really suffer negative impacts, and for which there isn’t really any remedy besides acceptance?

belinder 2y ago
Just a guess here - but to make diagnosed people feel more included and part of a group, the more people get diagnosed even if it's 0.01%, the more safe the others feel because they're not alone, it stops being a stigma
- ambicapter 2y ago
  How does sifting people into smaller and smaller buckets work to make people feel more part of a group? Seems more like people who have felt marginalized in the past want others to feel marginalized like they did, and work to place people into smaller and smaller categories to do so.
  - licebmi__at__ 2y ago
    Because the buckets were always there and the main difference is their visibility.
  - beaned 2y ago
    And for every group there is an anti-group, another set of people for whom the group-included feel justified in feeling resentful towards in some way.
- faeriechangling 2y ago
  This is not my experience at all. Being diagnosed directly led to immense stigma over and over. You are literally giving people the language they need to stereotype you and put you into a bucket by getting diagnosed and telling people your diagnosis. Stigma is literally an iatrogenic consequence of diagnosis itself, never mind diagnosis stopping stigma! I hear "Autistic" thrown around as an insult maybe 10x more than I heard the same 20 years ago. People feeling safe because they're not alone does not end stigma whatsoever either.
  - Aurornis 2y ago
    > by getting diagnosed and telling people your diagnosis One of the things I try to emphasize with newly diagnosed young people is that they should not make their diagnosis an outward part of their personality. There's a trend of putting your diagnoses in everything from your LinkedIn profile to your resume lately. I've been helping with resume review in a group and I've been stunned by how many times I've had to tell people that they need to remove their ADHD diagnosis from their resume.
  - andoando 2y ago
    I dont even like it on a personal level. People use these terms to describe themselves in very narrow buckets and stereotypes, and there is no logic to that at all. I saw a post on /r/ADHD for example thst went something like "Does anyone else svoid eye contact during sex" and everyones like "omg thats me too!". I mean...need I say more? I get how it might be fulfilling to have a label to explain away all your behaviors but it makes no sense to do so and I find it extremely self-limiting
- Aurornis 2y ago
  > but to make diagnosed people feel more included and part of a group, the more people get diagnosed even if it's 0.01%, the more safe the others feel because they're not alone, I've worked with younger people in tech. I'm seeing a mix of effects, positive and negative, from increased diagnosis rates. On the plus side, some people are using their diagnoses to find helpful support material, techniques, and advice. On the negative side, some people get a diagnosis and then try to use it as an excuse for every personality trait they can fit under the umbrella of that diagnosis. It's really difficult as a mentor to have to explain to someone that their diagnosis of anxiety or ADHD or autism doesn't give them a free pass in society for all of the things they struggle with. I've had to explain to numerous people that having an ADHD diagnosis doesn't, for example, exempt them from the same performance review standards as their peers at work. This can be difficult to acceptance for someone who was given extra time on tests and possibly more leniency on assignments throughout high school and college due to their diagnosis. The educational institutions meant well, but the students took the wrong message from their accommodations and assumed it was always the world's responsibility to bend to their personal quirks rather than the other way around. Teaching people that their diagnosis is, to be blunt, not other people's problem is a difficult hurdle to clear for some. Many others get it right away, of course, but the internet rhetoric about neurodivergence leads a lot of people in the wrong direction.
  - aspenmayer 2y ago
    > I've had to explain to numerous people that having an ADHD diagnosis doesn't, for example, exempt them from the same performance review standards as their peers at work. I can’t speak for you, but that isn’t at all accurate as far as I know. I myself would not say these kinds of things to a coworker, and definitely not to a subordinate one or one that reports to me, as I don’t work in HR or legal department, and I’m not intimately familiar with actual existing accommodations for ADHD and other conditions under the FMLA and other disability discrimination laws and regulations in the US or other countries. This is a legal minefield and accident waiting to happen. Tread lightly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_of_1993 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_o...
    - 2y ago
- kristjansson 2y ago
  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/13/why-were-turning-psychiatric-labels-into-identities https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/13/why-were-turni...
- YurgenJurgensen 2y ago
  This fails the placebo test. People feel more included and part of groups even if the groups are assigned at random.
fragmede 2y ago
so that people can identify themselves as being part of a group, and then find others who are also part of that group, just to have a community for support. if I want to find a group of left handed pansexuals who are into Pokemon Go, the Internet facilitates finding your exact flock.
- zarathustreal 2y ago
  Seems to me like enabling further segregating people would be a negative thing. Eventually groups become so isolated that conflict is inevitable
  - blueflow 2y ago
    There is a mean trick to make people stop pushing their own group identity. Refer to them as their group identity instead of by their name.
detourdog 2y ago
My guess is to try to improve human relationships. Trying to understand why someone has consistent surprising/inappropriate reactions might help. The flip side is someone who consistently seems to be surprised by how people are reacting to them and wants better connections.
- folsom 2y ago
  I do know that people do not like me. Don't get me wrong, my coworkers all get along with me and I think most enjoy working with me but in general people outside of work don't want to be around me. Hell I couldn't even keep my wife interested enough to stick with me. So how could we study what makes me turn off other people and have it make a difference in my life? It is unlikely that I would be able to change myself and there is almost zero chance that whatever it is about me that disgusts others will change their natural reaction. In addition, I am not sure that this isn't how things are supposed to be. This may be part of social evolution that just makes the world tick. I would prefer we stop classifying people and just let them be who/what they are without pointing fingers at them.
  - detourdog 2y ago
    It’s all about realistic introspection. People with a disorder often prefer the disorder to change. I think it is a personal decision. If one feels the need to be closer/understand an individual or is not satisfied with the quality of their human relationships than understanding personalities including one’s own can help.
  - johnny22 2y ago
    > So how could we study what makes me turn off other people and have it make a difference in my life? It is unlikely that I would be able to change myself and there is almost zero chance that whatever it is about me that disgusts others will change their natural reaction. Highly unlikely, but you didn't rule it out completely. Plus there are others who also might be able to change.
makeitdouble 2y ago
Acceptance comes from understanding, on both sides. We have small and graduated buckets for absolutely anything that impacts how we socially interact with someone. Which town they come from, nationality, ethnicity, educational background, religion down to specific cult group, football team, wealth level, parent's profession, family composition etc. Any of these has potential for negative discrimination, but we also use them for improving the interaction and mitigate confronting issues. The small and graduated buckets do IMHO help avoiding the negative impacts in the first place.
Mathnerd314 2y ago
Maybe this will be an unpopular opinion, but hear me out: it is the video platforms like YouTube, TikTok, etc. Before these platforms, it was relatively difficult to find videos of "ordinary" people in everyday situations. Sure there was funniest home videos and other carefully curated channels, but now it is easy. And with consumption of these videos comes the desire for a vocabulary to classify and describe them. Like how food is spicy or sweet and has different ethnic styles, or music has a tangled mess of genres and substyles, the teenagers of today are developing a classification of (videos of) human behavior. And part of this is non-neurotypical behavior - I don't know why, I haven't really investigated this, but it is clear that some (a lot?) of people enjoy watching content from autistic people, ADHD people, etc. For them, or at least the ML algorithms that feed them content, it is a genre like any other, and in the incestuous cycle of hunting for views, whether the origin was man or machine, at this point it has become branding. What I'm not clear on is whether this translates to better real-world interactions. Certainly, it raises awareness of the conditions, but just watching a video does not necessarily lead to smooth conversation. Generally meetings with famous actors are pretty awkward and it is even less clear to me that someone who watches ADHD videos would necessarily enjoy meeting an ADHD person irl, particularly one that doesn't make engaging videos with millions of views.

giantg2 2y ago

ASD has different levels of diagnosis. I've been told by a therapist specializing in ASD that there are a lot of diagnosed and undiagnosed ASD workers in tech. It's very possible the only reason they are "full blown clinically diagnosed" is because they haven't been tested.

Gigachad 2y ago
At this point we could diagnose basically everyone on the planet with some flavour of neurodivergence. I’m sure there’s one that makes people good at sales, one that makes people ruthless CEOs, one that makes people programmers, etc. But I just don’t see the point of diagnosing people with things unless it causes some kind of actual disability and dysfunction.
- giantg2 2y ago
  No, you can't diagnose most people. Yes, the diagnosis generally requires there to be disabilities related to it. Otherwise it doesn't meet the criteria.
  - Gigachad 2y ago
    That's the current medical way, but the author and this thread like to put up the idea that basically all if not all programmers and "weird nerds" are autistic but it's just massively under diagnosed. To which I disagree, if there are essentially no disorders in your life, you shouldn't be diagnosed. The ASD spectrum has become incredibly broad to the point where someone who likes just programming too much is being classified in the same group as someone who can hardly speak, let alone look after themselves.
    - giantg2 2y ago
      "The ASD spectrum has become incredibly broad to the point where someone who likes just programming too much is being classified in the same group as someone who can hardly speak, let alone look after themselves." This isn't true at all. The ASD grading has different levels based on the level of assistance needed. Unless that programming is significantly impacting your abilities in life, you would be told that you display some ASD like behaviors but that you don't actually have ASD. I know a therapist that specializes in adult ASD and they believe that many people in technology fields do have undiagnosed mild ASD. The strong logical basis to the work and other characteristics of the job may play a role in attracting people whose minds work a certain way. It also seems the few people I know who have been diagnosed later in life tend to be in technical fields. The observations and the theory behind it seem to make sense. But not everyone has it, and there is criteria that need to be met to diagnosis it (disabilities).

parineum 2y ago

You didn't use this word specifically but this whole conversation has the underlying prior of the "everything is a spectrum" mindset. In that context, everyone is neurodivergence because, afterall it's a spectrum we're all on and nobody is going to be deadest average. At some point we have to define at what point these spectrums become clinical. The kind of language you see in the DSM for stuff like this is "does it affect daily living/relationships/health in a negative way". Being neurodivergent isn't a disorder, not showering because you're obsessed with programming probably is.

kylebenzle 2y ago
Autism is a result of neurons failing to "trim" or being over-connected. Being "on the spectrum" refers to the degree of above average physical over-connection of neurons. The opposite, when neurons fail to connect or lose too many connections is called schizophrenia. People that are between the two, the vast majority of people, are not said to be either autistic or schizophrenic (you can't be both at the same time but can go from autistic to schizophrenic with a degenerative disease). Everyone is not "on the spectrum" for autism, again by definition no one that is schizophrenic is "on the spectrum" for autism at all so your comment is nonsensical.
- parineum 2y ago
  You've really only redefined the spectrum. It's now a single spectrum from Autism to Schizophrenia. You can't be on two spots on the spectrum at once. You've still put everyone on a spectrum and my question still stands. How far on the spectrum towards schizophrenia have to be before they are clinically schizophrenic? I don't disagree with the tendency to place things on spectrums but I find that people fail to adress that some people are so far on any spectrum that they become clinical.
- magicalist 2y ago
  > not said to be either autistic or schizophrenic (you can't be both at the same time I've never heard this before and a quick search can't find any evidence of it. The "over-connected" suggestion did pull up studies like this[1], but that's one effect of one set of genes sometimes associated with autism, and, of course, it was in mice. I'd definitely like to learn more, but at first impression, a spectrum with autism and schizophrenia at opposite ends seems way too simple a model for human brains. [1] https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/in-autism-too-many-brain-connections-may-be-at-root-of-condition/ https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/in-autism-too-many-brain-con...

dbtc 2y ago

The phrase has sounded weird to me for some time but here it strikes me as especially so: "the spectrum" Just one spectrum, 2 dimensions? Is that all we get? It's a linguistic short-cut, I get that, but I wonder how useful it is, how much nuance it conceals.

kylebenzle 2y ago
Yes, 2 degrees, because autism is a neural "over-connectedness" in the brain that leads to common physical and mental symptoms like toe walking, double hair whorl, sensitivity to sound, etc. The spectrum can essentially be thought of has the degree of neural "over-connectedness".
ModernMech 2y ago
Picture a color wheel instead of a continuum. Here's an image that shows what I mean: https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.4683716510.9542/raf,360x360,075,t,fafafa:ca443f4786.jpg https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.4683716510.9542/raf,360x360,...
- fragmede 2y ago
  Yeah, a Kiviat diagram, or radar graph https://blog.onepatchdown.net/autism/2023/01/13/autism/ https://blog.onepatchdown.net/autism/2023/01/13/autism/
ianbicking 2y ago
Yeah, "the spectrum" feels like squeezing lots of things into one diagnosis. Kind of the opposite of neurodiversity. It also feels a bit tech-centric... probably tech is someplace autistic attributes are particularly helpful, but other subjects are probably most compatible with other kinds of neurodivergence.