6 ms·

Are you sure you want that? We could lose people like like Alan Turing, Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton in the bargain. The estimates now are that autism affe

by dimal 2y ago

Are you sure you want that? We could lose people like like Alan Turing, Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton in the bargain. The estimates now are that autism affects about 1 in 35 people. That’s not a disorder. That’s human diversity. I realize that there are less lucky autistic people who are severely disabled. If this helps them, then good, but I don’t want to be cured. I want to be accepted. And the way our medical system works now, I don’t trust that any treatments will only be used to help those who most need it. Children who simply need acceptance and a little support will be drugged, because that will be the convenient option.

darby_nine 2y ago
I certainly wouldn't want to change myself, but autistic people kill themselves at rates many times that of the general population. It may not be a disorder but it's certainly capable of impacting peoples' lives negatively.
- ndynan 2y ago
  Taking another perspective here, is suicidaility an individual problem or a social one?
  - bravura 2y ago
    Alternately, we could amplify the gene in the entire population, so that allism becomes a disorder. From DSM-2300: https://www.fysh.org/~zefram/allism/allism_intro.txt https://www.fysh.org/~zefram/allism/allism_intro.txt edit: "The underlying trait that makes people allistic is a dysfunction of the parts of the brain dealing with emotion. Allistic people lack the capacity to independently experience emotions. That is not to say they lack emotions: far from it, the allistic mind experiences emotions just like any other. The dysfunction is that the allistic person's emotional state is not determined by eir own thought processes but instead is borrowed from other people that are expressing emotion nearby. Emotional cues in tone of voice, posture, facial expression, and so on, cause the allistic person to automatically and unavoidably experience the same emotion being expressed."
    - noindiecred 2y ago
      This is amazing, thank you for sharing!
    - ziddoap 2y ago
      What is DSM-2300? Quick Google of "DSM-2300" yields some vibration monitors and carpets, and I'm only aware of DSM-1 through 5 when it comes to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
      - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
        Yeah, I think that’s part of the joke. DSM-2300 would be 2300th iteration of that Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.
        ziddoap 2y ago
        Ah, didn't realize it was meant to be a joke (didn't read the wall of text in the link).
        lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
        Actually, I think I was mistaken. I’ll admit that I just skimmed it but it seemed to read like a paper describing autism but with the script flipped such that it’s written from the perspective of someone with autism writing about their observations about people without autism. It appears the same upon closer reading; in the post script it calls itself a parody. (It also claims to invent the term “allism” for the purpose of the paper, which is good to know as someone who’s heard the term, presuming its innocence. I don’t think its use is intended to be particularly kind. Kind of a bummer: I like words and that’s a good one.) > If you haven't already worked it out: allism is the condition of not being autistic. In current psychiatric practice, it is autism rather than allism that is considered pathological. This article, up to the postscript, has been a parody of conventional psychiatry; the parody would be a serious article in a fictional world where what what we in the real world call autism is considered normal. Anyway, I seem to have confabulated this, but I got the idea of the paper being written in some hypothetical future where DSM-2300 would kinda make more sense, hence being part of the joke. After looking for it, I found that the page actually mentions DSM-IV specifically, so I really have no clue where 2300 came from. (I do notice that the digits add up to 5 but it’s not clear whether or not that was intentional, nor why it would be written as a set of digits which sum to 5.) All that said, I think it’s actually worth a read but it is a bit inflammatory. Indeed, that seems to be the point.
  - darby_nine 2y ago
    I mean, it's kind of both? It's inherently individual, but if loads of people are killing themselves it might be a symptom of societal dysfunction.
- cortesoft 2y ago
  How much of this is because of intrinsic traits about autism and how much of this is because of how we treat autistic people? If we actually support neurodivergence, and celebrate it instead of trying to 'fix' it, we might do a lot to reduce those rates.
  - darby_nine 2y ago
    I don't really think it much matters, tbh, as both factors are out of my control, but it can feel extremely isolating at times. Positive intentions can only overcome so many differences in conversation and social expectations.
    - cortesoft 2y ago
      I think it does matter, because while it is out of your individual control, we can still work to push society to be more accepting and accommodating.
      - darby_nine 2y ago
        Sorry, I should have said "from my immediate perspective". Society certainly has a responsibility to autistic people that is mostly overlooked, although I am not complaining personally.
- SkyBelow 2y ago
  How does it work if we apply this logic to other groups who have been treated in such a way that historically led to worse average life outcomes, but which have recently had improvement due to society becoming more accepting of them? When does someone being treated differently indicate something off about the person compared to something off about society?
fliglr 2y ago
None of those people had autism
- gaze 2y ago
  citation needed
  - onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
    Autism is first diagnosed in 1911 and Asperger's in 1944. It wasn't commonly diagnosed during any of these people's lives, so you're not going to find conclusive evidence. None of them were diagnosed (obviously not Newton). So you're only going to find people arguing over straws.
    - gaze 2y ago
      absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
      - onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
        There is no strong evidence to go on. What are you arguing? They have Autism until proven otherwise? About 0.5% of people were diagnosed with Autism before 1990: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4113600/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4113600/ If we're making assumptions, statistically, we'd probably want to assume the other way.
toddmorey 2y ago
My son has rather severe autism and I know from his own self expression that he hates how much he struggles every day and would absolutely want better help were it available. For him, autism is unpredictable, frustrating, and exhausting. It absolutely can be a disabling disorder. Perhaps not for everyone, but please don’t minimize the community who are genuinely struggling. As they always say, this is a very broad spectrum disorder and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it subdivided as our understanding improves. Those who want to continue to live with autism will continue to have that option. But those like my son who struggle want options, too.
weeznerps 2y ago
I think anyone who is able to post on Hackernews does not have the kind of autism the GP comment is suggesting needs to be cured. I wish there was a name that allowed us to distinguish the "old" autism of the 90s (non-verbal, severely disabled) with the new (apparently helpful?) kind of autism that other people frequently suggest me and many of my colleagues have.
- greyface- 2y ago
  "Asperger's" and "autism" used to be classified differently in the DSM, and they (crudely) captured this difference. In DSM-5 (2013), they've both been merged under "autism spectrum disorder", in part because there's no widely agreed upon diagnostic criteria to differentiate the two. I can't speak for whether this has been a net positive or net negative on the clinical side of things, but culturally, these sorts of conflicts seem to be happening with higher frequently since the merge.
- squigz 2y ago
  > I think anyone who is able to post on Hackernews does not have the kind of autism the GP comment is suggesting needs to be cured. What the...
- dimal 2y ago
  I don't think most people understand how difficult things are for "high functioning" autistic people and how much work we have to put in just to get by in society. It's not like I've had an easy life. At times, life has been pure torture. For example, I've barely been able to work at all for the past three years, because of being discriminated against in interviews, not because I was actually unable to work. The toll this took on my life and health has been incalculable. From one angle, my autism is a superpower. From another, it's a curse. I'm able to solve intractable problems that other people can't. But since my way of solving these problems is impossible for neurotypicals to understand, and I can be kind of odd, I've been essentially unhireable. I've had to go into consulting because that's the only route open to me. And this is just one of many problems I've had fitting into society. It's exhausting to be "high functioning" in a society that doesn't accept what you are. But yeah, I do agree that merging everything into one spectrum has made things unintentionally confusing.
squigz 2y ago
Their contributions were only because of their autism?

by dimal 2y ago

darby_nine 2y ago

I certainly wouldn't want to change myself, but autistic people kill themselves at rates many times that of the general population. It may not be a disorder but it's certainly capable of impacting peoples' lives negatively.

ndynan 2y ago
Taking another perspective here, is suicidaility an individual problem or a social one?
- bravura 2y ago
  Alternately, we could amplify the gene in the entire population, so that allism becomes a disorder. From DSM-2300: https://www.fysh.org/~zefram/allism/allism_intro.txt https://www.fysh.org/~zefram/allism/allism_intro.txt edit: "The underlying trait that makes people allistic is a dysfunction of the parts of the brain dealing with emotion. Allistic people lack the capacity to independently experience emotions. That is not to say they lack emotions: far from it, the allistic mind experiences emotions just like any other. The dysfunction is that the allistic person's emotional state is not determined by eir own thought processes but instead is borrowed from other people that are expressing emotion nearby. Emotional cues in tone of voice, posture, facial expression, and so on, cause the allistic person to automatically and unavoidably experience the same emotion being expressed."
  - noindiecred 2y ago
    This is amazing, thank you for sharing!
  - ziddoap 2y ago
    What is DSM-2300? Quick Google of "DSM-2300" yields some vibration monitors and carpets, and I'm only aware of DSM-1 through 5 when it comes to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
      Yeah, I think that’s part of the joke. DSM-2300 would be 2300th iteration of that Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.
      - ziddoap 2y ago
        Ah, didn't realize it was meant to be a joke (didn't read the wall of text in the link).
        lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
        Actually, I think I was mistaken. I’ll admit that I just skimmed it but it seemed to read like a paper describing autism but with the script flipped such that it’s written from the perspective of someone with autism writing about their observations about people without autism. It appears the same upon closer reading; in the post script it calls itself a parody. (It also claims to invent the term “allism” for the purpose of the paper, which is good to know as someone who’s heard the term, presuming its innocence. I don’t think its use is intended to be particularly kind. Kind of a bummer: I like words and that’s a good one.) > If you haven't already worked it out: allism is the condition of not being autistic. In current psychiatric practice, it is autism rather than allism that is considered pathological. This article, up to the postscript, has been a parody of conventional psychiatry; the parody would be a serious article in a fictional world where what what we in the real world call autism is considered normal. Anyway, I seem to have confabulated this, but I got the idea of the paper being written in some hypothetical future where DSM-2300 would kinda make more sense, hence being part of the joke. After looking for it, I found that the page actually mentions DSM-IV specifically, so I really have no clue where 2300 came from. (I do notice that the digits add up to 5 but it’s not clear whether or not that was intentional, nor why it would be written as a set of digits which sum to 5.) All that said, I think it’s actually worth a read but it is a bit inflammatory. Indeed, that seems to be the point.
- darby_nine 2y ago
  I mean, it's kind of both? It's inherently individual, but if loads of people are killing themselves it might be a symptom of societal dysfunction.
cortesoft 2y ago
How much of this is because of intrinsic traits about autism and how much of this is because of how we treat autistic people? If we actually support neurodivergence, and celebrate it instead of trying to 'fix' it, we might do a lot to reduce those rates.
- darby_nine 2y ago
  I don't really think it much matters, tbh, as both factors are out of my control, but it can feel extremely isolating at times. Positive intentions can only overcome so many differences in conversation and social expectations.
  - cortesoft 2y ago
    I think it does matter, because while it is out of your individual control, we can still work to push society to be more accepting and accommodating.
    - darby_nine 2y ago
      Sorry, I should have said "from my immediate perspective". Society certainly has a responsibility to autistic people that is mostly overlooked, although I am not complaining personally.
SkyBelow 2y ago
How does it work if we apply this logic to other groups who have been treated in such a way that historically led to worse average life outcomes, but which have recently had improvement due to society becoming more accepting of them? When does someone being treated differently indicate something off about the person compared to something off about society?

fliglr 2y ago

None of those people had autism

gaze 2y ago
citation needed
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
  Autism is first diagnosed in 1911 and Asperger's in 1944. It wasn't commonly diagnosed during any of these people's lives, so you're not going to find conclusive evidence. None of them were diagnosed (obviously not Newton). So you're only going to find people arguing over straws.
  - gaze 2y ago
    absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
    - onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
      There is no strong evidence to go on. What are you arguing? They have Autism until proven otherwise? About 0.5% of people were diagnosed with Autism before 1990: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4113600/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4113600/ If we're making assumptions, statistically, we'd probably want to assume the other way.

toddmorey 2y ago

My son has rather severe autism and I know from his own self expression that he hates how much he struggles every day and would absolutely want better help were it available. For him, autism is unpredictable, frustrating, and exhausting. It absolutely can be a disabling disorder. Perhaps not for everyone, but please don’t minimize the community who are genuinely struggling. As they always say, this is a very broad spectrum disorder and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it subdivided as our understanding improves. Those who want to continue to live with autism will continue to have that option. But those like my son who struggle want options, too.

weeznerps 2y ago

I think anyone who is able to post on Hackernews does not have the kind of autism the GP comment is suggesting needs to be cured. I wish there was a name that allowed us to distinguish the "old" autism of the 90s (non-verbal, severely disabled) with the new (apparently helpful?) kind of autism that other people frequently suggest me and many of my colleagues have.

greyface- 2y ago
"Asperger's" and "autism" used to be classified differently in the DSM, and they (crudely) captured this difference. In DSM-5 (2013), they've both been merged under "autism spectrum disorder", in part because there's no widely agreed upon diagnostic criteria to differentiate the two. I can't speak for whether this has been a net positive or net negative on the clinical side of things, but culturally, these sorts of conflicts seem to be happening with higher frequently since the merge.
squigz 2y ago
> I think anyone who is able to post on Hackernews does not have the kind of autism the GP comment is suggesting needs to be cured. What the...
dimal 2y ago
I don't think most people understand how difficult things are for "high functioning" autistic people and how much work we have to put in just to get by in society. It's not like I've had an easy life. At times, life has been pure torture. For example, I've barely been able to work at all for the past three years, because of being discriminated against in interviews, not because I was actually unable to work. The toll this took on my life and health has been incalculable. From one angle, my autism is a superpower. From another, it's a curse. I'm able to solve intractable problems that other people can't. But since my way of solving these problems is impossible for neurotypicals to understand, and I can be kind of odd, I've been essentially unhireable. I've had to go into consulting because that's the only route open to me. And this is just one of many problems I've had fitting into society. It's exhausting to be "high functioning" in a society that doesn't accept what you are. But yeah, I do agree that merging everything into one spectrum has made things unintentionally confusing.

squigz 2y ago

Their contributions were only because of their autism?