4 ms·

Here are three separate metaphors: 1. A linear continuum (like wavelength for light) from "no autism" to "really bad autism". 2. A collection of disjoint sets

Here are three separate metaphors: 1. A linear continuum (like wavelength for light) from "no autism" to "really bad autism". 2. A collection of disjoint sets (like individual named colors like "cyan" and "puce") for cases like "really into trains autism", "freaks out at parties autism", "non-verbal autism", etc. 3. A continuous mixture of different properties (like rgb(.1, .2, .05)) for symptoms like "10% social dysfunction", "20% repetitive behavior", "5% sensory overstimulation". When people describe autism as a spectrum disorder, they generally mean the third metaphor. It's a mixture of different symptoms and different autistic people have different amounts of those symptoms but all people diagnosed with autism have a significant amount of them and their symptoms will have some amount of overlap with other autistic people.

hosh 11mo ago
Number (3) has better explanatory powers than (1). However, for the purpose of assessing social and family impact, it is rendered to (1). Both schools and state (US) programs use (1) to assess if a child qualifies for support. This is not always related to how to parent or educate the child. Fortunately, the US school system with IEP (individualized educational plans) are developed along (3). (Source: two of my kids have ASD) None of that necessarily helps in informal social contexts or in professional workplace settings. I think the American Disabilities Act covers reasonable accommodations for people with autism spectrum disorders, though I am not sure if it requires legal disabled status. Lastly: I met a Native (Navajo) family with a child that seems to me, have some developmental disabilities — but I think they take a very different approach. For one, they don’t seem to have the usual social stigma associated with this, and are baffled why I would suggest getting state support for early childhood intervention. If anything, I would not be surprised if they thought I was, yet again, someone unthinkingly pushing a colonialist worldview.
- Pet_Ant 11mo ago
  > Number (3) has better explanatory powers than (1). However, for the purpose of assessing social and family impact, it is rendered to (1). My first thought was is (1) more of a projection of (3) from multiple dimensions to one, or more like the magnitude. Also, it is known thing or are "trains" a euphemism now like "friend of Dorothy"?
  - dfxm12 11mo ago
    It's the punchline to a meme. This is one example: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRgeiEhXUMDBIeGK5mJSMSLxrwF7GJb-8HwnA&s https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRgeiEh... I don't think it's quite the same as calling yourself or someone else a "friend of Dorothy". People who say they are into trains usually precisely mean they are into trains.
    - llbeansandrice 11mo ago
      Speaking literally is also a symptom of autism so I think it ends up full circle by accident haha
  - tbrownaw 11mo ago
    While that word does get used to refer to people sometimes, it's afaik always hostile (slur rather than euphemism).
  - munificent 11mo ago
    > Also, it is known thing or are "trains" a euphemism now like "friend of Dorothy"? I meant it only as a reference that one of the common characteristic symptoms of autism is a deep focus on some topic of special interest. In boys with autism, trains, cars, or other machines are a common one.
  - estimator7292 11mo ago
    Within the community it's a bit of an in-joke. It's not a coded message or anything, just an acknowledgement that autistic people are disproportionately into trains.
    - fragmede 11mo ago
      But they're just so cool! How is everyone not into trains this much?
      - cwmoore 11mo ago
- energy123 11mo ago
  (1), (2) and (3) aren't mutually exclusive either. It can be disjoint sets and a spectrum, which is modelled by (3), and (1) is a special case of (3) where the other axes are fixed to a constant. But you're right that (3) is the most powerful.
  - cwmoore 11mo ago
    I like this answer, it’s concise and comprehensible, and among these options, (3) exceeds all others. I’d argue (4), (5), (6) and so on are even better, if not all always readily available.
    - ethbr1 11mo ago
      At this point, I can't tell if this thread is straight-faced or meta.
dfxm12 11mo ago
I don't think the 3rd metaphor fits. rgb values still points to a single color, which maps back to a single value on a 0 -> 1 or red -> violet continuum. It's more apt to describe it like a multi channel audio mixer. Many different channels ("really into a specific topic", "freaks out at parties"), each with their own value (10%, 20%). Metaphors often fail though, so it might just be best to say what we mean plainly.
- darzu 11mo ago
  RGB doesn't map to a single line, you're thinking just about the hue. RGB is a proper vector that addresses a whole 3D color space.
- delecti 11mo ago
  An RGB value points to a single color, but if R is "really into trains" and B is "repetitive behavior" and G is "susceptibility to sensory overload", then it's basically the same metaphor as a multi channel audio mixer, except understandable to a different (and likely bigger) pool of people.
  - dfxm12 11mo ago
    That line of reasoning doesn't follow as RGB implies there are exactly three measures, which isn't the case.
    - jfindper 11mo ago
      >RGB implies there are exactly three measures It's a metaphor. It helps people build an intuition. It doesn't need to be exact to do that.
      - dfxm12 11mo ago
        It doesn't have to be exact, but it's counter productive when it is clearly and meaningfully incorrect though. That's the problem with the two dimensional [0,1] scale as well.
overfeed 11mo ago
> 1. A linear continuum (like wavelength for light) from "no autism" to "really bad autism" This is the least helpful metaphor, when applied to anything with more than one dimension. "Really bad autism" can describe a multitude of unique symptoms.and is nearly information free, similar to describing someone as having "A really serious illness"
- brudgers 11mo ago
  For reasons I am compelled to comment that “really bad autism” is not a medical description.
  - 453yuh46 11mo ago
    Generally under "really bad autism" is not meant as part of the spectrum of conditions, but a very narrow behavioral problem that parents have to deal with. The difference between what makes autistic person a "really bad autism" also differs for various social situations, so let's not go there...
    - danudey 11mo ago
      > a very narrow behavioral problem that parents have to deal with Let's not define autism in relation to what other people have to deal with. For years, autism has been discussed not in terms of what the autistic person experiences but what the people around them experience. That's kind of BS. Someone else being autistic isn't about you, it's about them. You're welcome to talk about people with "high support needs", or people who have certain struggles in social situations, but discussing "really bad autism" just reinforces that negative stigma that autistic people shouldn't be thought of as people but rather as problems that "normal" people have to deal with.
frereubu 11mo ago
To take the rbg metaphor further, it should really be a "gamut" rather than a "spectrum".
- giardini 11mo ago
  Perhaps "big ball of mud"? "mess"? "cluster f*k"? Arguing relevant metaphors in HN?! A new low...
  - echelon_musk 11mo ago
    If this is a new low, that's news to me. The top comment chain on the front page 'Plane crashed after 3D-printed part collapsed' is nothing more than arguing about metaphors. This happens all the time in just about every story.
- munificent 11mo ago
  "Spectrum" works too in that if you take white light and split it in a prism, it is spread out into its separate but overlapping components of light at different wavelengths.
  - thfuran 11mo ago
    Good luck finding magenta there. RGB is not modeling the monochromatic light spectrum.
sam_goody 11mo ago
Humans range across such spectrum that actually match all 3. We range from being blind to having exceptional eyesight, so we are all on a continuum. But there are various subsets, such as color or light sensitivity, far/nearsighted, better tracking of motion or text - and these have their own subsets, such as the ability to scan text quickly (or dyslexia), read a room better or see things that require training (such as the details a race driver immediately sees that you wouldn't). Someone with an issue of vision usually finds himself in a cross of these sets, borrowing tools form one to compensate for another The same can be said for hearing, for height and weight, and for any other physical, psychological or mental property we have. (I've always felt it odd that "spectrum" usually refers only to Autism.)
- pixl97 11mo ago
  >(I've always felt it odd that "spectrum" usually refers only to Autism.) It depends where the term is in use, when you get in to more medical like fields then people will use the ASD term to separate it from other spectrum disorders like OCD or different types of schizophrenia.
  - 453yuh46 11mo ago
    To be fair, I have a bit different impression from specialists, where ASD as spectrum overlapps with other conditions, like ADHD, OCD, BP and I have a bit of linguistical background to extend and call it spectrum spectrum... also, I'm too lazy for that.
andai 11mo ago
A small difference in quantity can become a radical difference in quality. (Look at what happens if you cool or heat water! Or the effect that small amounts of lag have on UX, it goes from interactive to not.) i.e. #3 here can be approximated as #2, and this can be helpful. But the really interesting thing is, with neuroplasticity and skill training, you can make tiny adjustments to #3 which produce a change in the set of #2, i.e. real differences in quality and enjoyment of life.
- 453yuh46 11mo ago
  No. #2 is bad analogy and the way you are describing is misunderstanding of what ASD means as spectrum. It is not RGB, but more like list from tens of different diagnoses - probably ranging to 20 or 30 in number, so more than 4, that colors are offering and that also means more dimensions, but could include more, that some people manage to get as some kind of collection - some people have collected nearly 20 of those to illustrate the problem, that people diagnosed with ASD are similar but at the same time different in their own way. Another issue is because of ASD you do not get to collect other Autistic-related diagnoses, that would narrow your condition. On top of that, if you have ASD diagnosis, you definitely have other issues that describe your condition more, especially mental issues. Also, some of them are going to change - some can go away, because environment changes or simply because your understanding of issues have changed. A lot of the struggles are because diagnosed people even after diagnoses do not understand what exactly they have to deal with. The issue is how these conditions are diagnosed - there are some similarities with LGBTQ+ that initially was labeled as a disease. And there is cautious fluidity in labeling because of that as well, because ASD is not completely understood, as we are really in the very beginning on mapping both of our brain functions and DNA - what those genes are responsible for. Also, the number increase of ASD might have other factors involved in the way how we as modern people are using our brains by dealing with all that information that humans previously did not need to do and most probably ASD is species wide change that we are causing as our behaviour has changed, especially when our unwritten beaviour rules are breaking down. When we have to compare this to how species are described, humans alone would be consisting of different species - the only difference why we are not different species is because of mixing.
fragmede 11mo ago
yeah my thoughts on this is to present it as a kivat diagram which is multiple 2 dimensional axis arranged in a circle. https://blog.onepatchdown.net/autism/2023/01/13/autism/ https://blog.onepatchdown.net/autism/2023/01/13/autism/
__MatrixMan__ 11mo ago
Well said. I had mischaracterized their usage. I also think they mean 3, but that's not a spectrum either, that's a vector space.
coldtea 11mo ago
>When people describe autism as a spectrum disorder, they generally mean the third metaphor. Yes, but that's not what a spectrum technically is. It's also not a very good idea descriptively, all the various properties people pile into this "spectrum" don't have nowhere equal weight with respect to relative importance to warrant the equal weight they get in such 'diagrams'.
- munificent 10mo ago
  > that's not what a spectrum technically is. It's a metaphor. A series of bytes within RAM interpreted as human text is not lterally a piece of string made out of some sort of wound fibrous material either, but we still call it a "string".

hosh 11mo ago

Number (3) has better explanatory powers than (1). However, for the purpose of assessing social and family impact, it is rendered to (1). Both schools and state (US) programs use (1) to assess if a child qualifies for support. This is not always related to how to parent or educate the child. Fortunately, the US school system with IEP (individualized educational plans) are developed along (3). (Source: two of my kids have ASD) None of that necessarily helps in informal social contexts or in professional workplace settings. I think the American Disabilities Act covers reasonable accommodations for people with autism spectrum disorders, though I am not sure if it requires legal disabled status. Lastly: I met a Native (Navajo) family with a child that seems to me, have some developmental disabilities — but I think they take a very different approach. For one, they don’t seem to have the usual social stigma associated with this, and are baffled why I would suggest getting state support for early childhood intervention. If anything, I would not be surprised if they thought I was, yet again, someone unthinkingly pushing a colonialist worldview.

Pet_Ant 11mo ago
> Number (3) has better explanatory powers than (1). However, for the purpose of assessing social and family impact, it is rendered to (1). My first thought was is (1) more of a projection of (3) from multiple dimensions to one, or more like the magnitude. Also, it is known thing or are "trains" a euphemism now like "friend of Dorothy"?
- dfxm12 11mo ago
  It's the punchline to a meme. This is one example: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRgeiEhXUMDBIeGK5mJSMSLxrwF7GJb-8HwnA&s https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRgeiEh... I don't think it's quite the same as calling yourself or someone else a "friend of Dorothy". People who say they are into trains usually precisely mean they are into trains.
  - llbeansandrice 11mo ago
    Speaking literally is also a symptom of autism so I think it ends up full circle by accident haha
- tbrownaw 11mo ago
  While that word does get used to refer to people sometimes, it's afaik always hostile (slur rather than euphemism).
- munificent 11mo ago
  > Also, it is known thing or are "trains" a euphemism now like "friend of Dorothy"? I meant it only as a reference that one of the common characteristic symptoms of autism is a deep focus on some topic of special interest. In boys with autism, trains, cars, or other machines are a common one.
- estimator7292 11mo ago
  Within the community it's a bit of an in-joke. It's not a coded message or anything, just an acknowledgement that autistic people are disproportionately into trains.
  - fragmede 11mo ago
    But they're just so cool! How is everyone not into trains this much?
    - cwmoore 11mo ago
energy123 11mo ago
(1), (2) and (3) aren't mutually exclusive either. It can be disjoint sets and a spectrum, which is modelled by (3), and (1) is a special case of (3) where the other axes are fixed to a constant. But you're right that (3) is the most powerful.
- cwmoore 11mo ago
  I like this answer, it’s concise and comprehensible, and among these options, (3) exceeds all others. I’d argue (4), (5), (6) and so on are even better, if not all always readily available.
  - ethbr1 11mo ago
    At this point, I can't tell if this thread is straight-faced or meta.

dfxm12 11mo ago

I don't think the 3rd metaphor fits. rgb values still points to a single color, which maps back to a single value on a 0 -> 1 or red -> violet continuum. It's more apt to describe it like a multi channel audio mixer. Many different channels ("really into a specific topic", "freaks out at parties"), each with their own value (10%, 20%). Metaphors often fail though, so it might just be best to say what we mean plainly.

darzu 11mo ago
RGB doesn't map to a single line, you're thinking just about the hue. RGB is a proper vector that addresses a whole 3D color space.
delecti 11mo ago
An RGB value points to a single color, but if R is "really into trains" and B is "repetitive behavior" and G is "susceptibility to sensory overload", then it's basically the same metaphor as a multi channel audio mixer, except understandable to a different (and likely bigger) pool of people.
- dfxm12 11mo ago
  That line of reasoning doesn't follow as RGB implies there are exactly three measures, which isn't the case.
  - jfindper 11mo ago
    >RGB implies there are exactly three measures It's a metaphor. It helps people build an intuition. It doesn't need to be exact to do that.
    - dfxm12 11mo ago
      It doesn't have to be exact, but it's counter productive when it is clearly and meaningfully incorrect though. That's the problem with the two dimensional [0,1] scale as well.

overfeed 11mo ago

> 1. A linear continuum (like wavelength for light) from "no autism" to "really bad autism" This is the least helpful metaphor, when applied to anything with more than one dimension. "Really bad autism" can describe a multitude of unique symptoms.and is nearly information free, similar to describing someone as having "A really serious illness"

brudgers 11mo ago
For reasons I am compelled to comment that “really bad autism” is not a medical description.
- 453yuh46 11mo ago
  Generally under "really bad autism" is not meant as part of the spectrum of conditions, but a very narrow behavioral problem that parents have to deal with. The difference between what makes autistic person a "really bad autism" also differs for various social situations, so let's not go there...
  - danudey 11mo ago
    > a very narrow behavioral problem that parents have to deal with Let's not define autism in relation to what other people have to deal with. For years, autism has been discussed not in terms of what the autistic person experiences but what the people around them experience. That's kind of BS. Someone else being autistic isn't about you, it's about them. You're welcome to talk about people with "high support needs", or people who have certain struggles in social situations, but discussing "really bad autism" just reinforces that negative stigma that autistic people shouldn't be thought of as people but rather as problems that "normal" people have to deal with.

frereubu 11mo ago

To take the rbg metaphor further, it should really be a "gamut" rather than a "spectrum".

giardini 11mo ago
Perhaps "big ball of mud"? "mess"? "cluster f*k"? Arguing relevant metaphors in HN?! A new low...
- echelon_musk 11mo ago
  If this is a new low, that's news to me. The top comment chain on the front page 'Plane crashed after 3D-printed part collapsed' is nothing more than arguing about metaphors. This happens all the time in just about every story.
munificent 11mo ago
"Spectrum" works too in that if you take white light and split it in a prism, it is spread out into its separate but overlapping components of light at different wavelengths.
- thfuran 11mo ago
  Good luck finding magenta there. RGB is not modeling the monochromatic light spectrum.

sam_goody 11mo ago

Humans range across such spectrum that actually match all 3. We range from being blind to having exceptional eyesight, so we are all on a continuum. But there are various subsets, such as color or light sensitivity, far/nearsighted, better tracking of motion or text - and these have their own subsets, such as the ability to scan text quickly (or dyslexia), read a room better or see things that require training (such as the details a race driver immediately sees that you wouldn't). Someone with an issue of vision usually finds himself in a cross of these sets, borrowing tools form one to compensate for another The same can be said for hearing, for height and weight, and for any other physical, psychological or mental property we have. (I've always felt it odd that "spectrum" usually refers only to Autism.)

pixl97 11mo ago
>(I've always felt it odd that "spectrum" usually refers only to Autism.) It depends where the term is in use, when you get in to more medical like fields then people will use the ASD term to separate it from other spectrum disorders like OCD or different types of schizophrenia.
- 453yuh46 11mo ago
  To be fair, I have a bit different impression from specialists, where ASD as spectrum overlapps with other conditions, like ADHD, OCD, BP and I have a bit of linguistical background to extend and call it spectrum spectrum... also, I'm too lazy for that.

andai 11mo ago

A small difference in quantity can become a radical difference in quality. (Look at what happens if you cool or heat water! Or the effect that small amounts of lag have on UX, it goes from interactive to not.) i.e. #3 here can be approximated as #2, and this can be helpful. But the really interesting thing is, with neuroplasticity and skill training, you can make tiny adjustments to #3 which produce a change in the set of #2, i.e. real differences in quality and enjoyment of life.

453yuh46 11mo ago
No. #2 is bad analogy and the way you are describing is misunderstanding of what ASD means as spectrum. It is not RGB, but more like list from tens of different diagnoses - probably ranging to 20 or 30 in number, so more than 4, that colors are offering and that also means more dimensions, but could include more, that some people manage to get as some kind of collection - some people have collected nearly 20 of those to illustrate the problem, that people diagnosed with ASD are similar but at the same time different in their own way. Another issue is because of ASD you do not get to collect other Autistic-related diagnoses, that would narrow your condition. On top of that, if you have ASD diagnosis, you definitely have other issues that describe your condition more, especially mental issues. Also, some of them are going to change - some can go away, because environment changes or simply because your understanding of issues have changed. A lot of the struggles are because diagnosed people even after diagnoses do not understand what exactly they have to deal with. The issue is how these conditions are diagnosed - there are some similarities with LGBTQ+ that initially was labeled as a disease. And there is cautious fluidity in labeling because of that as well, because ASD is not completely understood, as we are really in the very beginning on mapping both of our brain functions and DNA - what those genes are responsible for. Also, the number increase of ASD might have other factors involved in the way how we as modern people are using our brains by dealing with all that information that humans previously did not need to do and most probably ASD is species wide change that we are causing as our behaviour has changed, especially when our unwritten beaviour rules are breaking down. When we have to compare this to how species are described, humans alone would be consisting of different species - the only difference why we are not different species is because of mixing.

fragmede 11mo ago

yeah my thoughts on this is to present it as a kivat diagram which is multiple 2 dimensional axis arranged in a circle. https://blog.onepatchdown.net/autism/2023/01/13/autism/ https://blog.onepatchdown.net/autism/2023/01/13/autism/

__MatrixMan__ 11mo ago

Well said. I had mischaracterized their usage. I also think they mean 3, but that's not a spectrum either, that's a vector space.

coldtea 11mo ago

>When people describe autism as a spectrum disorder, they generally mean the third metaphor. Yes, but that's not what a spectrum technically is. It's also not a very good idea descriptively, all the various properties people pile into this "spectrum" don't have nowhere equal weight with respect to relative importance to warrant the equal weight they get in such 'diagrams'.

munificent 10mo ago
> that's not what a spectrum technically is. It's a metaphor. A series of bytes within RAM interpreted as human text is not lterally a piece of string made out of some sort of wound fibrous material either, but we still call it a "string".