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> People with WS are empathetic, social, friendly and endearing but they tend to have a low IQ, making tasks such as counting money difficult. > They can feel

> People with WS are empathetic, social, friendly and endearing but they tend to have a low IQ, making tasks such as counting money difficult. > They can feel anxious over stimuli such as the buzzing of a bee, or the texture of food. Plenty of autistic folks are empathetic, social, and friendly. And many experience stimuli that cause anxiety. The whole "it's the opposite of autism" doesn't actually help anyone understand and, IMO, reinforces the incorrect idea that autistic people are asocial, emotionless automata.

antonvs 1y ago
[flagged]
ratmeadow 1y ago
From what I've read there's been a history of people not fitting the strict "Asperger's boy" type traits being excluded from autism diagnoses, so we end up with a narrow, wrong stereotype. Plenty of autistic people who outwardly appear antisocial and plenty who appear quite social. Also worth remembering that autism occurence significantly overlaps with other conditions like ADHD, which may mold the presentation of the traits.
- porknubbins 1y ago
  Having worked with some brilliant people with autism, I argue that deficits in cognitive empathy/ inability understand intuitively what other people are thiking in real time is the hallmark of autism. Moreso than anything about emotions, body language, social skills etc this is the most common trait. It pops up in odd places no matter how much you mask or learn the visible skills.
  - FollowingTheDao 1y ago
    But as someone with Asperger’s I can tell you we have a lot of emotional empathy. In fact, we have too much.
    - shazbotter 1y ago
      Yep. Too much empathy can be a diagnostic signal for folks with autism. (These days Asperger's is now diagnosed as autism and not a separate diagnosis.)
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - exmadscientist 1y ago
    I think the actual hallmark is one layer deeper: the brain's "input filter" is different and doesn't assign "important" versus "not important" distinctions in the same way as a "neurotypical" brain might. (In fact, the brain just might not be very good at input filtering, period.) This shows up in a lot of ways: sensory (can't just filter out the tag on the back of your shirt), interests (can't recognize that you're spending just a liiiitle too much time on that model train), food (don't categorize trying new foods as interesting, so you don't), etc. But human socialization is incredibly complex, and while many of us can do decently well at learning it, imagine trying to get a grip on social cues without being able to tell what's relevant and what's not. Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it? It also is a working theory that well matches my experience with the autistic people in my life. "Deficits in cognitive empathy/ inability understand intuitively what other people are thinking", aka "theory of mind", is a really good description of how things are often difficult, and I think "different stimulus input filter" is a pretty good hypothesis for how it might arise.
    - shazbotter 1y ago
      As an autistic person, what you say is correct to my experience. I have all sorts of sensory processing issues that all basically are variations on "I can't ignore signals".
      - Muromec 1y ago
        Well, autism is sensory integration problem, that's the core thing.
    - accidentallfact 1y ago
      It's the other way round - let's say you have a thousand inputs, and those contain 1 bit/s in a way that you can't pick one or a few inputs that allow you to correctly decode that one bit of information. Or let's say you have a million inputs, or pixels, and you need to determine if there is a cat in the picture. Selective attention won't work for that either. You can't pick six pixels that allow you to reliably answer this question. You need dimensionality reduction, that will reduce the data into a manageable amount of abstract features, from which you can pick what features matter to you. Neurotypical people lack (or only have remnants of) this second filter.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - accidentallfact 1y ago
    No, the core difference is the level of abstraction, and the inability to communicate between people with different levels of abstraction. The opposite of autism is schizophrenia, where abstract thinking fails completely, and the person is unable to find correct answers to everyday problems. Neurotypicality is merely a socially acceptable level of schizophrenia. Autism results when the level of abstraction is significantly higher than the surrounding society: You can't automatically understand the concrete speech, and you especially can't understand the "implications" that rely on the concrete magical thinking. People can't understand you, because their level of abstraction isn't sufficient to understand the actual meaning, so they assume you talk about something random. People overread the gaze of more abstract thinkers, and underread the gaze of less abstract thinkers, due to the difference in the field of view. Compare Taylor Swift (ultra concrete, easily understood by neurotypical people) vs Rihanna (very abstract)
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - orthoxerox 1y ago
      > The opposite of autism is schizophrenia, where abstract thinking fails completely, and the person is unable to find correct answers to everyday problems. I've heard this one before, but expressed in causal fallacy terms. Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it's often right to assume a causal relationship even though you are unaware of the underlying mechanism. If your criteria for assuming causality are too lax, you are schizophrenic (seeing relationships that aren't there), if they are too strict, you are autistic (missing the obvious).
      - accidentallfact 1y ago
        This is correct, except the last paragraph. Indeed, corellation equals causation for the schizophrenic. Which is why you often don't get neurotypical people - when they say A, they often mean to imply B, because they correlate. You are not too strict when you're autistic, you simply hallucinate less.
  - sillywabbit 1y ago
    Having worked with some brilliant people who don't have autism, I'd argue that their hallmark is deficits in cognitive empathy / inability to understand intuitively what autistic people are thinking in real time.
    - sillywabbit 1y ago
      Not even my theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_empathy_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_empathy_problem
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
      I'm not sure how to describe this phenomenon where one person says $CLASS has $DEFICIENCY and they are respected and understood. Then someone else uses the same phrasing to reframe the statement to mean the same thing from a different perspective and that idea is rejected without explanation as to why. Allistic people do fail to empathize with autistic people everyday. To suggest otherwise only ignorantly refutes my lived experience. Only gaslighting will convince autistic folk that they should disregard that. (And that happens everyday, sadly.)
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
- dagurp 1y ago
  As they saying goes. If you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism.
  - latentsea 1y ago
    I feel terrible for wondering this but... is the same true for Down's Syndrome? Because from the outside you wouldn't think so...
    - shazbotter 1y ago
      Are you asking if people with Down's syndrome are unique people with unique experiences and personalities? Because I hope you'd pretty quickly arrive at "yes, of course people with Down's syndrome are unique people with unique experiences".
      - Sprocklem 1y ago
        I think a more generous reading of their comment would be: do people with Down's syndrome vary significantly in terms of their Down's syndrome symptoms? Or: do they vary significantly in how they experience their symptoms? I don't have enough experience with Down's syndrome to answer either – I've only met a few such people in passing – but would be interested in knowing the answer. Edit: I feel I should note that, given the phrasing of the comment, I think your interpretation is closer to the original intent – or at least, a clearer reading of what was said – but I wanted to add this in the interest of taking the strongest interpretation of their comment (and to satisfy my personal curiosity).
        latentsea 1y ago
        I was just making a joke in bad taste, since they all physically resemble one another. My assumption is yes, they're all different.
ekianjo 1y ago
the term "autistic" pretty much lost all meaning since its an umbrella term for a bunch of very different traits.
- sethaurus 1y ago
  It didn't lose all meaning, it just became more difficult to stereotype. The diagnostic criteria for ASD are about its impact on the individual, not how it superficially presents to other people. The DSM-V combined together a bunch of old disorders with largely overlapping symptoms and no consistent differentiation at the diagnostic level.
  - cycomanic 1y ago
    Can you give a definition of what autism means then? Because I struggle with the same thing, I don't know what autism is anymore. It's my impression that people now use the term autism is for pretty much any sort of neurodiversity (and even for traits within neuronormal, e.g. likes math). For what it's worth Wikipedia says, ASD is: > a neurodevelopmental disorder by differences or difficulties in social communication and interaction, a need or strong preference for predictability and routine, sensory processing differences, focused interests, and repetitive behaviors. Would you say this is stereotyping ASD? I'm not trying to be combative but genuinely want to understand.
    - Ziomislaw 1y ago
      Basically it means that when you are born you pick a random amound of traits (with different intensity each) at random from a big bag of autistic traits. Of which the most common are the ones you mentioned. Special interests and different body language are guaranteed. For example I don't have a very strong preference for routine (but it wasn't nice when my parents rearanged furniture in the kids room), I only am overwhelmed by wearing socks a little and sound a lot, like when I was at a hospital and 3 people started playing music from their phones at the same time I had to run away from the room and I have a wierd body language but I'm very social, though have trouble keeping in touch with people (can be managed using a calendar reminders but it still feels like a chore). With age you learn to cope with them (some don't do it), like I learned to compensate for my death stare (consiously managing where I look), it is still wierd but less intense. This causes anxiety.
exasperaited 1y ago
It has just dawned on me that I know someone with Williams Syndrome, and I think this idea of an "opposite" is actually quite valuable. The title does put 'the opposite of autism' in quotes, to make it clear it's someone's phrasing, not a matter of fact, but the body of the article quotes someone from a foundation for the disease saying: > "There is a classic autistic profile to which Williams Syndrome is the polar opposite. People can gauge the mood of a crowd and adopt without understanding the nuances of the situation." That, it seems to me, could be a defensible point. That is not something you'd ever say an autistic person would be good at; it's antithetical. But more to the point, not everything is an attack on autistic people. These are people trying to make a case that people should care about and be aware of the welfare needs associated with a poorly-understood disorder (which is maybe a hundred times rarer than autism). It would be fair I think to allow them the room to explain that.
- shazbotter 1y ago
  An autistic person can absolutely be good at that. It might not be intuitive, but that doesn't mean they can't be good at it. > But more to the point, not everything is an attack on autistic people No one said it was. I said it perpetuates a stereotype. I think that's different than an attack, personally. It's careless, not malicious. But careless can still be irritating.
  - Fnoord 1y ago
    Yes, an autistic person can train such, and learn to mask (autistic women are especially trained to mask). I suspect that is what happened here with Williams Syndrome, but that is merely my hypothesis. Are there brain scans such as MRI available of people with Williams Syndrone? Those might be interesting to compare.
    - exasperaited 1y ago
      They are not masking and pretending to be loveable and huggable -- it is very obviously different. These two videos are by an interviewer who works with special needs kids/adults: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxZ7aZMFHPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxZ7aZMFHPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjlwtKAO6yw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjlwtKAO6yw As you can see it's also a physical development disorder, and it may bring to mind Downs syndrome more than autism (indeed, the young woman in the first video makes this comparison and understands the difference). The thing it makes me want to ask a scientist is to what extent does Williams Syndrome change the mirror neurons or their processing.
tsoukase 1y ago
I think I fall under the autistic umbrella (spectrum). I definitely show empathy but "it is not enough", as my wife usually says. I am responding, it might not be enough but that is all my soul gives 100%.

antonvs 1y ago

[flagged]

ratmeadow 1y ago

From what I've read there's been a history of people not fitting the strict "Asperger's boy" type traits being excluded from autism diagnoses, so we end up with a narrow, wrong stereotype. Plenty of autistic people who outwardly appear antisocial and plenty who appear quite social. Also worth remembering that autism occurence significantly overlaps with other conditions like ADHD, which may mold the presentation of the traits.

porknubbins 1y ago
Having worked with some brilliant people with autism, I argue that deficits in cognitive empathy/ inability understand intuitively what other people are thiking in real time is the hallmark of autism. Moreso than anything about emotions, body language, social skills etc this is the most common trait. It pops up in odd places no matter how much you mask or learn the visible skills.
- FollowingTheDao 1y ago
  But as someone with Asperger’s I can tell you we have a lot of emotional empathy. In fact, we have too much.
  - shazbotter 1y ago
    Yep. Too much empathy can be a diagnostic signal for folks with autism. (These days Asperger's is now diagnosed as autism and not a separate diagnosis.)
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- exmadscientist 1y ago
  I think the actual hallmark is one layer deeper: the brain's "input filter" is different and doesn't assign "important" versus "not important" distinctions in the same way as a "neurotypical" brain might. (In fact, the brain just might not be very good at input filtering, period.) This shows up in a lot of ways: sensory (can't just filter out the tag on the back of your shirt), interests (can't recognize that you're spending just a liiiitle too much time on that model train), food (don't categorize trying new foods as interesting, so you don't), etc. But human socialization is incredibly complex, and while many of us can do decently well at learning it, imagine trying to get a grip on social cues without being able to tell what's relevant and what's not. Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it? It also is a working theory that well matches my experience with the autistic people in my life. "Deficits in cognitive empathy/ inability understand intuitively what other people are thinking", aka "theory of mind", is a really good description of how things are often difficult, and I think "different stimulus input filter" is a pretty good hypothesis for how it might arise.
  - shazbotter 1y ago
    As an autistic person, what you say is correct to my experience. I have all sorts of sensory processing issues that all basically are variations on "I can't ignore signals".
    - Muromec 1y ago
      Well, autism is sensory integration problem, that's the core thing.
  - accidentallfact 1y ago
    It's the other way round - let's say you have a thousand inputs, and those contain 1 bit/s in a way that you can't pick one or a few inputs that allow you to correctly decode that one bit of information. Or let's say you have a million inputs, or pixels, and you need to determine if there is a cat in the picture. Selective attention won't work for that either. You can't pick six pixels that allow you to reliably answer this question. You need dimensionality reduction, that will reduce the data into a manageable amount of abstract features, from which you can pick what features matter to you. Neurotypical people lack (or only have remnants of) this second filter.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- accidentallfact 1y ago
  No, the core difference is the level of abstraction, and the inability to communicate between people with different levels of abstraction. The opposite of autism is schizophrenia, where abstract thinking fails completely, and the person is unable to find correct answers to everyday problems. Neurotypicality is merely a socially acceptable level of schizophrenia. Autism results when the level of abstraction is significantly higher than the surrounding society: You can't automatically understand the concrete speech, and you especially can't understand the "implications" that rely on the concrete magical thinking. People can't understand you, because their level of abstraction isn't sufficient to understand the actual meaning, so they assume you talk about something random. People overread the gaze of more abstract thinkers, and underread the gaze of less abstract thinkers, due to the difference in the field of view. Compare Taylor Swift (ultra concrete, easily understood by neurotypical people) vs Rihanna (very abstract)
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - orthoxerox 1y ago
    > The opposite of autism is schizophrenia, where abstract thinking fails completely, and the person is unable to find correct answers to everyday problems. I've heard this one before, but expressed in causal fallacy terms. Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it's often right to assume a causal relationship even though you are unaware of the underlying mechanism. If your criteria for assuming causality are too lax, you are schizophrenic (seeing relationships that aren't there), if they are too strict, you are autistic (missing the obvious).
    - accidentallfact 1y ago
      This is correct, except the last paragraph. Indeed, corellation equals causation for the schizophrenic. Which is why you often don't get neurotypical people - when they say A, they often mean to imply B, because they correlate. You are not too strict when you're autistic, you simply hallucinate less.
- sillywabbit 1y ago
  Having worked with some brilliant people who don't have autism, I'd argue that their hallmark is deficits in cognitive empathy / inability to understand intuitively what autistic people are thinking in real time.
  - sillywabbit 1y ago
    Not even my theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_empathy_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_empathy_problem
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
    I'm not sure how to describe this phenomenon where one person says $CLASS has $DEFICIENCY and they are respected and understood. Then someone else uses the same phrasing to reframe the statement to mean the same thing from a different perspective and that idea is rejected without explanation as to why. Allistic people do fail to empathize with autistic people everyday. To suggest otherwise only ignorantly refutes my lived experience. Only gaslighting will convince autistic folk that they should disregard that. (And that happens everyday, sadly.)
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
dagurp 1y ago
As they saying goes. If you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism.
- latentsea 1y ago
  I feel terrible for wondering this but... is the same true for Down's Syndrome? Because from the outside you wouldn't think so...
  - shazbotter 1y ago
    Are you asking if people with Down's syndrome are unique people with unique experiences and personalities? Because I hope you'd pretty quickly arrive at "yes, of course people with Down's syndrome are unique people with unique experiences".
    - Sprocklem 1y ago
      I think a more generous reading of their comment would be: do people with Down's syndrome vary significantly in terms of their Down's syndrome symptoms? Or: do they vary significantly in how they experience their symptoms? I don't have enough experience with Down's syndrome to answer either – I've only met a few such people in passing – but would be interested in knowing the answer. Edit: I feel I should note that, given the phrasing of the comment, I think your interpretation is closer to the original intent – or at least, a clearer reading of what was said – but I wanted to add this in the interest of taking the strongest interpretation of their comment (and to satisfy my personal curiosity).
      - latentsea 1y ago
        I was just making a joke in bad taste, since they all physically resemble one another. My assumption is yes, they're all different.

ekianjo 1y ago

the term "autistic" pretty much lost all meaning since its an umbrella term for a bunch of very different traits.

sethaurus 1y ago
It didn't lose all meaning, it just became more difficult to stereotype. The diagnostic criteria for ASD are about its impact on the individual, not how it superficially presents to other people. The DSM-V combined together a bunch of old disorders with largely overlapping symptoms and no consistent differentiation at the diagnostic level.
- cycomanic 1y ago
  Can you give a definition of what autism means then? Because I struggle with the same thing, I don't know what autism is anymore. It's my impression that people now use the term autism is for pretty much any sort of neurodiversity (and even for traits within neuronormal, e.g. likes math). For what it's worth Wikipedia says, ASD is: > a neurodevelopmental disorder by differences or difficulties in social communication and interaction, a need or strong preference for predictability and routine, sensory processing differences, focused interests, and repetitive behaviors. Would you say this is stereotyping ASD? I'm not trying to be combative but genuinely want to understand.
  - Ziomislaw 1y ago
    Basically it means that when you are born you pick a random amound of traits (with different intensity each) at random from a big bag of autistic traits. Of which the most common are the ones you mentioned. Special interests and different body language are guaranteed. For example I don't have a very strong preference for routine (but it wasn't nice when my parents rearanged furniture in the kids room), I only am overwhelmed by wearing socks a little and sound a lot, like when I was at a hospital and 3 people started playing music from their phones at the same time I had to run away from the room and I have a wierd body language but I'm very social, though have trouble keeping in touch with people (can be managed using a calendar reminders but it still feels like a chore). With age you learn to cope with them (some don't do it), like I learned to compensate for my death stare (consiously managing where I look), it is still wierd but less intense. This causes anxiety.

exasperaited 1y ago

It has just dawned on me that I know someone with Williams Syndrome, and I think this idea of an "opposite" is actually quite valuable. The title does put 'the opposite of autism' in quotes, to make it clear it's someone's phrasing, not a matter of fact, but the body of the article quotes someone from a foundation for the disease saying: > "There is a classic autistic profile to which Williams Syndrome is the polar opposite. People can gauge the mood of a crowd and adopt without understanding the nuances of the situation." That, it seems to me, could be a defensible point. That is not something you'd ever say an autistic person would be good at; it's antithetical. But more to the point, not everything is an attack on autistic people. These are people trying to make a case that people should care about and be aware of the welfare needs associated with a poorly-understood disorder (which is maybe a hundred times rarer than autism). It would be fair I think to allow them the room to explain that.

shazbotter 1y ago
An autistic person can absolutely be good at that. It might not be intuitive, but that doesn't mean they can't be good at it. > But more to the point, not everything is an attack on autistic people No one said it was. I said it perpetuates a stereotype. I think that's different than an attack, personally. It's careless, not malicious. But careless can still be irritating.
- Fnoord 1y ago
  Yes, an autistic person can train such, and learn to mask (autistic women are especially trained to mask). I suspect that is what happened here with Williams Syndrome, but that is merely my hypothesis. Are there brain scans such as MRI available of people with Williams Syndrone? Those might be interesting to compare.
  - exasperaited 1y ago
    They are not masking and pretending to be loveable and huggable -- it is very obviously different. These two videos are by an interviewer who works with special needs kids/adults: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxZ7aZMFHPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxZ7aZMFHPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjlwtKAO6yw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjlwtKAO6yw As you can see it's also a physical development disorder, and it may bring to mind Downs syndrome more than autism (indeed, the young woman in the first video makes this comparison and understands the difference). The thing it makes me want to ask a scientist is to what extent does Williams Syndrome change the mirror neurons or their processing.

tsoukase 1y ago

I think I fall under the autistic umbrella (spectrum). I definitely show empathy but "it is not enough", as my wife usually says. I am responding, it might not be enough but that is all my soul gives 100%.