3 ms·

I disagree. The problem is that the Aspergers-vs-Autism distinction was largely "looks normal at first glance" vs "doesn't", which is almost entirely unrelated

by o11c 1y ago

I disagree. The problem is that the Aspergers-vs-Autism distinction was largely "looks normal at first glance" vs "doesn't", which is almost entirely unrelated to the many axes of actual symptoms. An glaringly incorrect division is more harmful than a lack of division. If it had been a "good enough" division it could've been kept. The best-attested actual axis is "has epileptic seizures?"; partitioning by it gets rid of most of the bimodalities in the data. My estimate is that there are around 5 individual axes but many of them are continuous and it's not perfectly clear if some are actually correlated to others. And since the others are usually not bimodal it becomes difficult to choose different diagnoses based solely on symptoms, in the absence of knowing and testing actual mechanisms.

bagful 1y ago
What are the other axes in your theory?
- o11c 1y ago
  Some candidates include: sensory processing (including keen senses, overload, and undersensitivity - sometimes different for each sense!), trauma when unplanned/unexpected actions or lies occur (part of "patterns/routines" in general, but I exclude mere "pop-sci OCD"), difficulty reading facial/social cues (and the sheer terror of how people can read your mind if you meet their eyes). I'm unsure about "difficulty expressing yourself clearly even when you know exactly what you mean". Nonverbality is a possibility but I'm actually skeptical of it, though it does give a very useful hook for experiments - there are some toddlers who are initially verbal like normal, then gradually become nonverbal and can recognize "something is happening to me!". I specifically exclude intelligence-vs-retardation; though both are common, neither seems intrinsic to autism itself (though perhaps they are potential causes?). Despite their correlations, I also exclude general introversion, ADHD, special interests as being either external or secondary. And "making repetitious movements" or even "throwing tantrums" is clearly on the side of "coping strategy" rather than a part of the disease. Many autism quizzes split the questions into categories which somewhat align with the axes, but as I said before it's not clear what's actually independent and forms a meaningful difference. Two axes outside of autism are also clear: schizophrenia is the formation of the patterns too detached from the world (as opposed to autism which where internal patterns result from the real world being too strong in some way - it's quite striking that for all the comorbidities autism has, diagnosis of schizophrenia in the same individual is exceedingly rare and probably wrong in at least one of the cases, though they intermingle at the family level); dementia is when the brain fails to build enough patterns (where autism builds too many). One opinion I hold vehemently: if you're still in the "the problem is other people" phase, you aren't claim autism, you're just an asshole. Doing anything useful about autism requires recognizing: "my brain (my body?) is the reason I am suffering"; the best others can give is palliative care.
  - Doxin 1y ago
    > if you're still in the "the problem is other people" phase While I'm sure there's plenty of people who adhere to that theory, I'm worried you're getting that confused with the theory that a bunch of handicaps (among which is autism) are mostly just handicaps because the world isn't accommodating them. You can imagine if everyone in the world was in a wheelchair it'd be real easy to get around in a wheelchair. Similarly if everyone in the world had autism it'd be much easier getting around having autism. Whether you like it or not, to people with autism "other people" are a large part of the problem. Having sensory issues around shaking hands isn't inherently a huge problem, but fuck me if people don't make it a huge problem. Your options are basically to either have people think you're a gigantic asshole or to be deeply deeply uncomfortable whenever it comes up.

by o11c 1y ago

bagful 1y ago

What are the other axes in your theory?

o11c 1y ago
Some candidates include: sensory processing (including keen senses, overload, and undersensitivity - sometimes different for each sense!), trauma when unplanned/unexpected actions or lies occur (part of "patterns/routines" in general, but I exclude mere "pop-sci OCD"), difficulty reading facial/social cues (and the sheer terror of how people can read your mind if you meet their eyes). I'm unsure about "difficulty expressing yourself clearly even when you know exactly what you mean". Nonverbality is a possibility but I'm actually skeptical of it, though it does give a very useful hook for experiments - there are some toddlers who are initially verbal like normal, then gradually become nonverbal and can recognize "something is happening to me!". I specifically exclude intelligence-vs-retardation; though both are common, neither seems intrinsic to autism itself (though perhaps they are potential causes?). Despite their correlations, I also exclude general introversion, ADHD, special interests as being either external or secondary. And "making repetitious movements" or even "throwing tantrums" is clearly on the side of "coping strategy" rather than a part of the disease. Many autism quizzes split the questions into categories which somewhat align with the axes, but as I said before it's not clear what's actually independent and forms a meaningful difference. Two axes outside of autism are also clear: schizophrenia is the formation of the patterns too detached from the world (as opposed to autism which where internal patterns result from the real world being too strong in some way - it's quite striking that for all the comorbidities autism has, diagnosis of schizophrenia in the same individual is exceedingly rare and probably wrong in at least one of the cases, though they intermingle at the family level); dementia is when the brain fails to build enough patterns (where autism builds too many). One opinion I hold vehemently: if you're still in the "the problem is other people" phase, you aren't claim autism, you're just an asshole. Doing anything useful about autism requires recognizing: "my brain (my body?) is the reason I am suffering"; the best others can give is palliative care.
- Doxin 1y ago
  > if you're still in the "the problem is other people" phase While I'm sure there's plenty of people who adhere to that theory, I'm worried you're getting that confused with the theory that a bunch of handicaps (among which is autism) are mostly just handicaps because the world isn't accommodating them. You can imagine if everyone in the world was in a wheelchair it'd be real easy to get around in a wheelchair. Similarly if everyone in the world had autism it'd be much easier getting around having autism. Whether you like it or not, to people with autism "other people" are a large part of the problem. Having sensory issues around shaking hands isn't inherently a huge problem, but fuck me if people don't make it a huge problem. Your options are basically to either have people think you're a gigantic asshole or to be deeply deeply uncomfortable whenever it comes up.