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Autism's confusing cousins

• HPsquared 11mo ago
  The internet is turning society into a kind of "social emulsion" where everyone is their own little droplet in the fluid, but they don't merge together.
  • kaoD 11mo ago
    It's not "the internet". It is "this internet". Back in the 90s early 00s the internet made us mesh together because each one of us there was a specific person. We had forum signatures and every single post was clearly made by a person, for a person. Then social media took over and relegated every single person into a tiny unidentifiable avatar next to a non-prominent name, not unlike NPCs in CRPGs. In turn this has been exploited by the powers that be to ensure the social glue gets even weaker: a society barely held together won't revolt. There's only one thing left to do: productivity, productivity, productivity. The political opponent is no longer a person. Just a nameless, faceless NPC (personifying everything that's wrong) spawned there to be defeated and collect their social loot tokens. But I might just be an old fart rambling about the good, old days.
    • squigz 11mo ago
      Maybe the issue is this perception that "the Internet" consists mainly of the big 4 social media sites. Go on Discord. People have usernames, avatars. Discord Profile Bios are just as unique as forum signatures.
      • kaoD 11mo ago
        I am on Discord and the balkanization+homogeneization is still as prominent there as everywhere else. Server admins are just NPCs providing @everyone announcements from time to time, to keep the player engaged (spoiler: the average Joe is just irritated by those). Sometimes you get a quest from them. Also: 99% won't read profile bios (and you have to pay for actual customization, don't you?) while forum signatures were front-and-center. I have to say I'm surprised to see Discord mentioned as an opposite to social media instead of... just yet another iteration of the same ploy.
        • squigz 11mo ago
          > Server admins are just NPCs providing @everyone announcements from time to time, to keep the player engaged. Sometimes you get a quest from them. Maybe you should join better servers. I'll also add that this was common back in the forum days too. Most admins would just... admin the site. > Also: 99% won't read profile bios (and you have to pay for actual customization, don't you?) while forum signatures were front-and-center. Wrong on both counts. > I have to say I'm surprised to see Discord mentioned as an opposite to social media instead of... just yet another iteration of the same. I did not present it as an "opposite to social media" - I presented it as a counter to the idea that we've lost the personality GP is talking about
          • BeFlatXIII 11mo ago
            You're one of the 1% who reads profile bios.
            • squigz 11mo ago
              Of course, because the alternative - that they're wrong, and more people actually do read bios - couldn't possibly be true. In any case, I see no reason to believe any higher % of people paid any particular attention to forum signatures back in the day.
              • BeFlatXIII 11mo ago
                “Paid attention”, you're probably right. Seen them enough to remember? Forum signatures were far harder to miss than Discord bios.
      • iammjm 11mo ago
        Fuck discord. Another big for-profit platform that is swallowing big chunks of the internet. before discord there were lots of self-organized forums with their own communities and rules. Now I need to register with some big overlord and download their shitty app just to read what has before been just an URL away?
        • kaoD 11mo ago
          But you can enjoy it before enshittification arrives! All praise our VC overlords.
        • lanyard-textile 11mo ago
          Nah. Right in the browser works great: discord.com/app You’re going to keep running into a wall thinking of discord like a forum replacement; It’s designed to be an IRC replacement. The invitation system intentionally creates some privacy so you can build a sense of enclosed community around them, and so you have some control over who sees what. Not having your conversations on full automatic blast to the public is a feature.
          • deleted 11mo ago
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          • beeflet 11mo ago
            IRC works in the browser now thanks to IRCv3. Matrix is another option The invitation system gives a false sense of privacy. There are bots that crawl publicly posted invites, public IRC channels, etc. Eventually people will understand that IRC and discord are public in the same way we understand usenet to have been public
        • astrange 11mo ago
          > before discord there were lots of self-organized forums with their own communities and rules. And running them was awful and drove the people who did it insane, mostly because you had to fight spambots.
          • 11mo ago
      • Aldipower 11mo ago
        Discord also is a centralized piece of proprietary totalitarianism. No thanks.
    • beeflet 11mo ago
      back in the 90's a minority of people were on the internet in the first place. it predates eternal september. The internet is now dominated by the opinion of the lowest common denominator, so we find ourselves holed up on forums like this.
    • seec 11mo ago
      It's not specific to the internet. It's just that basically everyone came into the internet when it became cheap and easy enough to use. However, previously it was only a subset of people who were willing to put in the effort because it offered some benefits to them. It is simply the typical effect of regression to the mean of large groups. Previously there was the illusion of meshing because the group was more homogenous. Diversity is touted as a panacea, but it actually has many deleterious effects, the most obvious being the reduction of what is deemed acceptable/normal behavior and speech. It is not surprising that everyone looks like an NPC because bringing everyone into the fold requires a redefinition of what is considered the acceptable norm. It systematically goes through narrowing the definition to artificially create the illusion of homogeneity (necessary to reduce conflicts). This is the same process happening to society at large. Psychology is just a replacement for religion, and the various diagnostics just serve as a tool to police what is acceptable behavior. This is very much the same thing as the various religious scriptures, using moral arguments, appeals to emotions, and enforced tribalism to promote the “correct” way to live one's life. The endless discussion of psychologists around diagnostics is hopeless; they are just gurus replacing preachers, but instead of using gospels and mythological stories, they use pseudoscientific bullshit to categorize/label behaviors and argue for what they believe should be the norm.
  • ricardo81 11mo ago
    I wouldn't say Internet is a problem, but centralisation towards big tech algos and clearly gamed social media comment sections do control the narrative of what the majority of people see most of the time.
• sublinear 11mo ago
  > I remember seeing a woman who was a classic example of someone with high neuroticism, poor self-esteem, and severe social anxiety, and she had believed for much of her life that she was autistic ... it fit in with her experience of being awkward-shy-weird. I so strongly agree with this and it's not just based on my own experience, but many people I know. Growing up broke and in sketchy places with sketchy people will induce plenty of anxiety. Then I managed to get out of all that as an adult and starting a career. The anxiety never fully went away, but it now presents itself the way one would expect instead of "weirdness". Maturing and having a more stable life happened to my friends also and nobody says "I think I'm autistic" anymore like we did in high school and college. Now it's hard to distinguish if we were saying that to ourselves as a slur in self-deprecation, or if we really believed it. Young people are just awkward and too many people get older without letting go of the things they told themselves a long time ago. Make of that what you will. I know my story is super common, but the only reason I bothered to write this is that it doesn't get said enough.
  • zwnow 11mo ago
    People nowadays are just desperate to have a diagnosis. Everybody wants to be special and unique, everybody wants a stamp on their forehead that says "I have [x]" "I am [x]". People cant accept that the issues they have might just be not special at all and are mere human issues all of us have. Its the result of aggressive sensationalism and the desire to stand out from the crowd.
    • harimau777 11mo ago
      I think it's less a result of a desire to be special and more a result of the way that late stage capitalism will throw away anyone who doesn't fit into its narrow mold of what makes an "ideal employee". When only a small number of career paths provide a good quality of life and employeers can fire people at will, then any divergence from the ideal becomes a disability.
    • squigz 11mo ago
      People are desperate for an identity. It has always been that people would latch on to things that seem fitting for them - maybe they put a lot of stock in their identity as a soldier, or as a fan of a band, or maybe as a member of a group like skateboarders. And, interestingly, most of these historic manifestations also have an aspect of "stamp on their forehead advertising their identity" - patches, shirts, other identifying aesthetics from their community.
• UI_at_80x24 11mo ago
  The day-to-day impact of being diagnosed is practically non-existant for me. It might explain "why" I might react to a specific stimuli but it doesn't stop the reaction. At best it's something to laugh about with my wife. It does also offer an early-warning system when I'm over stimulated and that I need to 'get home' soon.
  • alexfoo 11mo ago
    > The day-to-day impact of being diagnosed is practically non-existant for me. Yeah, as the old adage goes: with an ADH?D diagnosis you get to try drugs like lisdex or methylphenidate (or the non-stim options if those aren't suitable), but with an Autism/ASD diagnosis you get some pamphlets, coffee morning invites and a reading list. I don't have a formal diagnosis but my child does and that made me read lots on the subject. Authors like Eliza Fricker, Ellie Middleton, Pete Wharmby amongst others. It's opened my eyes to many other related aspects, specifically Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD) and Pathalogical Demand Avoidance (PDA) and how those play into both ADH?D and ASD. In reading about them I've worked out just how much they apply to my-undiagnosed-self and how understanding the triggers and recognising the early behaviour has allowed me to adapt to minimise their impact.
    • Y_Y 11mo ago
      I don't know if PDA is real, one of the popular books on the subject is just a copypaste of the discussions on the facebook group. Anyway I have it and it's crippling.
      • astrange 11mo ago
        Intuniv/guanfacine helped me a lot with that and time blindness, but in exchange it makes you tired and affects your sex drive. Also have to ramp off it, which is a problem if you run out or are traveling and can't get a refill.
        • Y_Y 11mo ago
          Thanks for the advice. There's never a free lunch with psych meds, eh?
• ricardo81 11mo ago
  I enjoyed reading that. My daughter had recently been diagnosed with "social anxiety" but had suspected it was autism. Somewhat related, "Health Secretary Wes Streeting is launching an independent review into rising demand for mental health, ADHD and autism services in England." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8q26q2r75o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8q26q2r75o Working in IT I've came across lots of extremely smart people with their quirks and eccentricity (not exclusive to smart people of course), I guess there's just a higher proportion of _quirky_ smart people in IT. A lot of the time it just seems to be introversion- it seems lack of interaction with society has to be justified.
  • RobotToaster 11mo ago
    It's worth noting the UK already commissioned a review that was published this year, that showed ADHD is in fact under-recognised here[0]. I can only assume they're commissioning a new one because that one gave the "wrong" answer. For a long time ADHD was ignored or dismissed in the UK as an "americanitis", so it's no surprise that there's a backlog of people who weren't diagnosed in childhood. [0] https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/report-of-the-independent-adhd-taskforce-part-1/ https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/report-of-the-independe...
    • captainbland 11mo ago
      I think a crucial bit of context is that in the UK, many people who are seeking diagnosis as adults grew up in areas where there were no or very few child psychiatry services in the 80s/90s. In such areas only very profound cases would be referred to out of area services. Most people with neurodevelopment disorders in such areas were diagnosed with SpLDs like dyspraxia or dyslexia which could be diagnosed by community paediatricians, usually with evidence from educational psychologists and occupational therapists. In fact the pattern is almost the opposite of what you'd see in the US where it would be hard to get diagnosed with a SpLD and e.g. ADHD was more widely recognised. But the rub lies in the fact that ADHD, ASD and many SpLDs have fairly high rates of comorbidities with one another, to the point where if you've got dyspraxia and no other diagnosable comorbidity, you're actually in the minority of people with it.
• H8crilA 11mo ago
  BTW, there's research that shows that schizotypy (schizotypal/schizophrenia) is sort of the opposite of autism. You have to squint your eyes a bit, for example both of these neurotypes involve social difficulties, like the subjective feeling of being alien in the world (known as Anderssein in German psychiatry). However if you peel off the social layer then the remaining autistic features become anti-correlated with the remaining schizotypal features on the scale of the population. There are also some decent theories that suggest this should be the case - for example in the predictive coding theory it is believed that autistic brains over-weigh sensory inputs over their model of the world, whereas schizotypal brains over-weigh their model of the world over the sensory inputs. Or the Big Five traits, openness to experience is usually low in autism and high in schizophrenia.
  • deleted 11mo ago
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  • coldtea 11mo ago
    If the mind is a kind of "prediction machine", wouldn't that make ALL psychiactric disorders a specific variation of faulty prediction mode though?
    • Noaidi 11mo ago
      Yes, but not always faulty. My (diagnosed) OCD and Anxiety have saved me from many bad situation. I see the many many many possibilities that something can go wrong and I have very low risk tolerance.
    • neom 11mo ago
      Given we're long evolved, and also tribal based animals, and that culture is an evolutionary pressure feedback mechanism, and prediction is fundamentally useful to our reality, different "thinking styles" (ways to predict/understand outcomes) are useful, aannnd, tribally we used people for their usefulness, I often wonder if "faulty" is the correct lens. That is to say, If prediction variation was useful to tribes, having both 'trust the model' and 'trust the senses' type people, I suppose framing these as disorders rather than trade offs is probably the wrong lens entirely. Society/culture/reality is so narrow and predictable these days, faulty in what context, you know? If you breed 20 generations of "best night watchers", in the jungle at night looking down, quiet, still, dark... you'd probably be selecting for specific traits, and creating new traits, retinal rod density and sensitivity, faster dark adaptation/contrast etc, attention/vigilance traits, pattern detection, anxiety adjacent traits in hypervigilance, prob something about circadian rhythm tolerance etc etc. (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/40886135_Not_By_Genes_Alone_How_Culture_Transformed_Human_Evolution https://www.researchgate.net/publication/40886135_Not_By_Gen...)
• nis0s 11mo ago
  This fits in with another thread on an article about over-diagnosis. I think it’s safe to say that if someone appears “weird” to the hive mind of a community, that person is more likely to be correctly diagnosed. There are people who desire a diagnosis for special treatment, but if the first time you find out about a person’s diagnosis is after knowing them as “weird” the whole time, then they’re not acting weird on purpose, or saying they are X for attention or special treatment. Disabled people, mentally or otherwise, usually like to keep their business to themselves, unless they absolutely don’t need to. Some mentally disabled people might even forgo getting special treatment via disability services at their colleges, or getting parking permits for disability because they’re not interested in bringing attention to their difficulties or differences, or using these issues as a cause for special treatment. Though, I’d advised that people who need accommodations should get them. I also saw a comment about disability becoming normalized due to late stage capitalism, which sounds like a thesis out of postmodernist thinking. The fact is that group behavior has always isolated “weird” behaviors and put undue negative attention on them, but it just happened to be the case that that weird behavior was evolutionary helpful, which is why it has persisted for millions of generations of humans across their evolutionary history. This only applies to high-functioning categories of behaviors. But I’ve found that more often than not, it’s the social reaction of groups that is the problem for high-functioning autists, and less the autism itself. Maybe neurotypical behavior or neurotypical mindedness is the disease because I don’t understand why or how some people find it so hard to think differently. Are they not individuals, are they zombies?
  • nis0s 11mo ago
    Let’s also shed light on what behaviors neurotypicals usually have a problem with that they cast as negatives in high-functioning autists: 1) Not being mindful of hierarchy 2) Not being mindful of socially determined rules, that is rules which are not codified in any official language of conduct 3) Not wanting to socialize, or wanting to socialize differently 4) Trouble with emotional regulation, possibly due to social issues Tell me, which of these points, and there are many more, point to this being an individual’s problem? For high-functioning autists, the problem is other people. People need to realize that they’re not great to deal with on average, and if someone chooses to not engage with you, don’t take that as an insult. Maybe you’re all better off not interacting with each other, but that doesn’t imply causing someone financial, emotional or physical harm just because they’re autistic. Society both explicitly and implicitly punishes high-functioning autism.
• ryukoposting 11mo ago
  If you think you (or a loved one) may have a psychological condition, go to a psychologist and get a screening. The diagnosis isn't the important part. The value is in the 20-something pages of detailed analysis by a professional. At a bare minimum, it will give you a fresh perspective on things you already knew. In my experiences, there will be things you didn't realize about yourself. They aren't going to tell you what the solution is to all your problems; that's for you and your doctor to figure out. They will give you everything you need to make well-informed decisions, and that's priceless.
  • WA 11mo ago
    Autism diagnosis has targeted screening questionnaires. So what kind of general purpose screening do you mean?
    • ryukoposting 11mo ago
      Get screened for whatever you think you've got. Think you've got ADHD? Go get an ADHD screening. Autism? It's not easy to find a psych who does adult Autism screenings, but they're out there. OCD? You get the idea. Regardless of whether the conclusion is "yes you have x" or "no you don't have x" the diagnosis will be accompanied by a detailed analysis of your psychological condition. Whether or not you are diagnosed, that analysis will cover the issues that led you to believe you may have that condition.
      • lostlogin 11mo ago
        This approach might help some, but it might hinder too. There is a post here about someone who was misdiagnosed and bipolar and that later came up when security clearance was needed for a job.
      • dns_snek 11mo ago
        I think you mean the full diagnostic process? Screening is just the first step in (what should be) a long process to decide whether the full workup makes sense. Screening takes on the order of minutes to an hour and it doesn't come with a diagnosis, the actual diagnostic process should take many hours and several appointments.
• yesitcan 11mo ago
  I have all the symptoms listed by the author. I went to get professionally diagnosed and I have… autism AND anxiety AND ADHD surprisedpikachu.jpg
  • sakompella 11mo ago
    extremely high comorbidity rates
  • tiborsaas 11mo ago
    It feels like that whatever you seek to get diagnosed with you can get it.
    • cameroncarlg 11mo ago
      This has been my experience, it’s not very convincing and doesn’t give me confidence in the field.
      • Noaidi 11mo ago
        I would say people who are not as disabled as I am should not get a diagnosis. My condition is obvious. I was hospitalized several times and now I cannot work, I have one friend, and I am homeless living in a minivan. I had one good PDoc who helped me, with my genetics, not to diagnose me, but to help me find what helped me and my specific symptoms. Diagnosis is not as helpful as looking at your own symptoms and own history and using that to find what helps you.
        • cwillu 11mo ago
          If you don't get the diagnosis before it causes a crisis, it can be _much_ harder to get appropriate support _after_ a crisis.
          • Noaidi 11mo ago
            That is absolutely false. And I stare that from experience. I was looking for help long before my life collapsed and no one thought I was sick enough.
• deleted 11mo ago
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• ur-whale 11mo ago
  I find all these conversation around neuro-divergence extremely weird, for the simple reason that I have a never seen a proper definition of what a "normal" person actually is, and for good and obvious reasons: I personally believe that "normal", when it comes to people's behavior, social interactions, and the way their mind works, is a completely broken idea. All of these attributes are completely fluid, depending on the when, where and who with you happen to be. On that premise, the whole idea of neuro-divergence and the idea that you can classify people in arbitrary categories such as ADHD, Autism, etc ... and that this classification will lead to a way to "fix them" is complete and utter BS.
  • alexfoo 11mo ago
    > I find all these conversation around neuro-divergence extremely weird, for the simple reason that I have a never seen a proper definition of what a "normal" person actually is, and for good and obvious reasons: The problem is that no-one can easily understand how their brain works compared to other people. People on both sides don't talk about it enough or openly enough. If you look at the science it quickly descends in to endless confusing/impenetrable psychiatric terminology. You can study things like anaemia as you can objectively measure the red blood cell count of a patient's blood. You can't objectively measure a patient's "focus" or "motivation". It's really hard to even get a good subjective measure of those things. For example, it's just one aspect, but prior to diagnosis and taking methylphenidate (Ritalin/Concerta) I thought everyone had hundreds of competing thoughts running through their head all the time. I thought everyone just had better ways of dealing with it than I did. I had no idea that's not the case. I'd got to 50+ years old, got several degrees, married and had a family, had a successful career, not quite FAANG but earning more than 6 figures, all in spite of how my brain works. Surely there can't be anything "wrong" with me. But when the medication first kicked in I was simply astounded how quiet my brain became and how clearly I could think about just one thing (it may not be the thing I actually wanted to focus on at that time but that's another facet of the fun). How the hell did I manage to get by all this time without this? It's only then in speaking to other people do I find out that, no, most other people don't have hundreds of competing thoughts running through their head all the time snapping at their focus. > On that premise, the whole idea of neuro-divergence and the idea that you can classify people in arbitrary categories such as ADHD, Autism, etc ... and that this classification will lead to a way to "fix them" is complete and utter BS. I agree with point about broad classifications, but medicine is far from the exact science that people believe it is. Got these symptoms? Does medication A improve them? Can you live with the side effects of medication A? Does medication B help with the side effects of medication A and not interfere with the improvements given my medication A? etc...
• captainbland 11mo ago
  I think this is broadly well considered although I have a bit of trouble understanding this point: > Social awkwardness refers to social ineptness without meaningful impairment Isn't social awkwardness sort of inherently impairing in social relationships?
  • alpinisme 11mo ago
    Probably but at the risk of giving a bad analogy maybe the distinction here is like that between an itchy wool sweater (uncomfortable, broadly decreases mobility by making you not want to move) and a garment that actually restricts movement (a too small blazer that won’t let you reach straight up or, in the extreme, a straight jacket).
    • H8crilA 11mo ago
      Yep. Psychiatry (or most of medicine really) is not trying to bring everyone up to the top 10% of the population, or even the top 50% along some dimension of interest. Psychiatry is mainly trying to move people from the bottom ~5% (what we call a "disorder") to the top ~95% of the population - which is then considered normal variability. So, if you take for example extraversion/social skills, then many "psychiatry-healthy" people will not be good at this at all, will make fewer connections, will not ask for raises, will be skipped for promotion, will have weak social support structures if shit hits the fan, etc. That's just normal trait variation. I think a really good example of this is self-diagnosing with bipolar disorder (and thus mania). Let's forget for a second that mania must last at least a few days non stop; most people do not notice this part somehow :). If you read the DSM criteria you may think that you actually fit them sometimes: elevated/irritable mood, highly talkative, distractible, flight of ideas, ... . However, you probably don't, and it is mainly a matter of understanding the scale of the problem. Most people do not know just how wide the range of "mood" is in humans, and what does it mean to be on either of the far ends of it. (percentages are much more illustrative than accurate)
  • TheOtherHobbes 11mo ago
    I read it as "without other psychological or psychiatric issues which cause social difficulties." It seems very tightly focussed, and more behavioural - and open to behavioural training - than other categories.
• petesergeant 11mo ago
  > Social communication disorder is rarely diagnosed in favor of autism primarily because autism provides access to critical services, insurance coverage, educational support, and legal protections that social communication disorder does not reliably offer That feels important
  • LorenPechtel 11mo ago
    Yes. When I first read about autism it really felt like me, but overstated. Then, years later, I ran into Asperger's--score way out there on the screening test and it very much feels like me. Still later, found the actual diagnostic criteria--comes down to at least 2 of 4--and I clearly have 1 yes, 2 no, and one hint of a yes that's impossible to confirm without a time machine. DSM V comes along, I do not feel the autism diagnosis fits me, but social communication disorder again comes down to 2 of 4, 1 yes, 2 no, 1 maybe that again can never be resolved. And it describes me to a T. But what benefit would there be to a diagnosis? As someone well into adulthood before I ever heard of any of this it's not going to change anything.
• elif 11mo ago
  Based on what I've read lately, my consensus perspective is that 80% of what people consider autism is actually just the western diet's effect on normal brain chemistry.
  • MarkMarine 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    • tiborsaas 11mo ago
      You should also think before you call people stupid. If you google autism test, you'll find this: https://www.clinical-partners.co.uk/for-adults/autism-and-aspergers/adult-autism-test https://www.clinical-partners.co.uk/for-adults/autism-and-as... "I prefer to do things on my own, rather than with others." "I prefer doing things the same way - for instance my morning routine or trip to the supermarket" "I find myself becoming strongly absorbed in something – even obsessional" These are all questions everybody living in a modern society can relate to. Of course autism is a real condition, but modern society somewhat requires people to be machine like and that can easily look like someone is on the spectrum.
      • habinero 11mo ago
        Those have the same diagnosis power as "what Hogwarts school are you in" quizzes. Real assessments are different. Also, ADHD/ASD folks tend to overestimate how universal their experiences and preferences are.
      • MarkMarine 11mo ago
        Didn’t call anyone stupid. I said the comment was stupid. I maintain it was.
      • Nasrudith 11mo ago
        No, I'm afraid the original poster was right. The original comment was just plain stupid. For one there isn't a single 'western diet' any more than there is one 'eastern diet'. If you had attributed a single social issues cause to 'eastern society' like conformity to what you think 'the eastern diet' is and does you'd rightfully be called out for racist stereotyping.
• billy99k 11mo ago
  Autism is over diagnosed, because you get government money as a doctor and a patient. My niece has a disibility that they haven't really been able to diagnose. If it is Autism, there is all kinds of free care available. Usually when you follow the money, you get answers.
• maverick98 11mo ago
  I found this article very interesting, because I feel that I fall in the category of people that think they have it, although I probably don't. My psychiatrist who is not an expert on autism told me I display autistic traits but that doesn't necessarily put me on the spectrum. Also my RAADS-R scores fall into the autistic spectrum but on the low end. Another psychiatrist diagnosed me with OCD. I am in my late 20s and I don't see how I could ever know for sure or if I am autistic or not, but nowadays most people in my country would say "we are all somewhat autistic in some way or another"
  • Noaidi 11mo ago
    I am in the same boat as you (Schizoaffective, OCD, Panic Disorder). My therapist said I had many traits but the overlap in these disorders is quite substantial. I was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital once and my behavior had them thinking I was Autistic.
  • spectralfriend 11mo ago
    > nowadays most people in my country would say "we are all somewhat autistic in some way or another Careful with this. In small amounts it can be good -- recognizing that autistic traits are human traits and we should recognize each others humanity -- but in large amounts it is regularly used to deny autistic people experiences. Like, "it's not so bad. It's not a disability. We're all a little autistic." Etc.
    • maverick98 11mo ago
      I know that this is a slippery slope. I just meant with this that even if I get diagnosed it wouldn't really change anything in my daily life, because people in my country are not very well educated on these issues anyway.
• d-lisp 11mo ago
  Eye contact makes me very uncomfortable.” “I suck at small talk.” “I have rigid routines.” “I hyper-focus on my hobbies.” “I am always fidgeting.” “Social interaction exhausts me.” “I really bad at making friends.” “I don’t fit in; people find me weird.” I never considered it althought I'm ticking all the buttons (bad gear ? [0]) [0] https://youtube.com/@audiopilz?si=g6iGJK3ygnCWESWW https://youtube.com/@audiopilz?si=g6iGJK3ygnCWESWW
  • coldtea 11mo ago
    You could add "I'm a HN regular" as a diagnostic criterium. The HN crowd is surely over-represented in ASD, which makes sense for people enjoying debating nerdy topics and pedantry. And "I like Lisp" should be an automatic qualifier.
    • escanda 11mo ago
      I am schizotypy and I very much love Common Lisp but not so much Racket haha
      • d-lisp 11mo ago
        How do you feel about Scheme ?
        • escanda 11mo ago
          lisp-1 (s) give me the chills: very much prefer doubled namespaces. Though these days I focus on systems security or threat analysis. I still fondly remember the days where I could launch Emacs with sbcl and write some Montecarlo simulations on Common Lisp with electric-parens haha Those were the days of stimulating learning
          • d-lisp 11mo ago
            That's funny, I never found doubled namespaces that interesting; what are your opinions, why do you prefer them ? > electric parens I get you, I was amazed by the litterature around lisps (I always found the beginning of SICP (the wizard-programmer analogy) quite inspiring and fun)
• tolerance 11mo ago
  I’m beginning to wonder whether one can qualify simply as an “eccentric” is a function of social + economic standing. Or whether whatever people think you are, or what you think of yourself are determined by these factors. Often times it seems like the “soft diagnosis” of a condition can be used to hedge against less-than-desirable personality traits if the person is held in high enough esteem. If they aren’t held in popular regard to some extent or if there’s other factors that can be used to explain their behavior (e.g. the stereotypical “German coldness” or whatever) then they don’t get those benefits. Characteristics like their political views may also negatively affect the likelihood of this “psychiatric hedging”. At what point do idiosyncrasies become subject to pathology.
  • jt2190 11mo ago
    This is the wrong framing: We all have degrees of “diagnosable” traits, it’s only when those traits become problematic do we need to seek help. For example, obsessive tendencies can help you stick with a tough problem or they can become an unhealthy fixation. Also, if someone is mean they are mean: Diagnosis is not a “get out of jail free” card for bad behavior.
    • spectralfriend 11mo ago
      I'm autistic and the difficulty was high for me to learn, "being autistic is no excuse for also being an asshole". I had to work a little harder, sure, but it's doable for many of us.
  • spectralfriend 11mo ago
    Regarding your last sentence, typically when the individual seeks it. It's generally considered both rude and ineffective to diagnose others who are not seeking diagnosis.
  • Atlas667 11mo ago
    This is kinda how I've come to view psychology because in the context I was raised mental health support was a luxury left for the wealthy. Albeit more about personality, upbringing and status rather than just individual idiosyncracies. I understand that this may be a categorical error, since psychology can be the categorization of symptoms, but a lot of the things I learned "from the outside" really still stick. Like the wealthier populations getting neat little explanations/excuses whenever convenient. Theres the scholastic benefit of ADHD diagnosis and anxiety diagnosis, which can help a lot in school/academia and to everyone else who cant afford it they get the cheaper label: "being bad at school" or "dumb". And still requires even more effort. Theres the trauma and therapy cycles for otherwise normal behaviors like separation anxiety from parents, not being popular or highly esteemed, stress from not attaining goals, etc. The cheaper treatment being to suck it up. What is normal for the poor to carry is a diagnoses and special treatment for those who can afford it. And this is also reflected within the office as well! The outcome can be better if the professionals empathize with the one seeking treatment (theres a whole class/racial component here). I agree with your sentiment and I think it's really all down to wealth and/or availability.
• Noaidi 11mo ago
  As some on with Schizoaffective Disorder, OCD, and Panic Disoder, I know why people want to have an Autism diagnosis. It is because people with Autism are more studied, get more assistance, and are get more sympathy from the general public. Someone with Autism can act out and people will be like "That's OK, he has Autism". But when I act out, there is no understanding. What is missing in the article is there does exist overlap in these condiations, not only symptomatically, but also genetically. As far as genetics, just take a look at the calcium channel gene CACNA1C: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31805042/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31805042/ I would probably had an Asperger's diagnosis when I was a kid, but most of my Autism was beaten out of my by my older brother's and kids in school. I mean, I was so deep into astronomy when I was 10 and I would not let go if it even though everyone teased me about it and I talked about it all the time anyway. I am in my early 60's now, homeless, living in a Minivan, driving around, researching my genetics obsessively to the point where I communicate with some leading specialists in the United States, but still no one cares. So yeah, do I wish I could say I had clinical Asperger's? Yes. Yes. Only so I can be accepted for my neurodivergence.
  • escanda 11mo ago
    No worries. I am schizotypy but I have suffered plenty. It's not so much better than Asperger's but I can lead an autonomous life. I could prefer to be normal but there's that. Some people use it for greatness, some suffer it for live; thing is you're not alone. Please give some time to the outward world and focus on some socials from time to time. Things will be fine.
  • LorenPechtel 11mo ago
    I think it also comes down to whether the person's behavior is seen as a threat. Autism weirdness translates into disengagement always works. Schizo doesn't have that same safety, thus people are a lot more worried.
• resoluteteeth 11mo ago
  Even if you don't think it has validity as a single disorder, autism is at least diagnosed in a way that's fairly consistent between clinicians using ADOS. I'm more dubious of clinicians who like to pick random dubious rare disorders that people can't even agree about the basic description of like schizoid out of the DSM like the author of this article.
  • ocschwar 11mo ago
    And then they enroll their patients in the Drug of the Month Club.
• conartist6 11mo ago
  If anything this just kinda suggests to me that the diagnostic categories are almost completely random/useless. It's just a set of pigeonholes made by people whose goal is to have a pigeonhole for every kind of thing so that the world doesn't seem messy and complicated anymore. But the one thing we know for sure it's that the world is more complex than even this set of 10 pigeonholes. These are more like good insults for people. Haha, a loner, that guy's a schizo! The clinical coldness is almost a perfect mirror for the way we express personal cruelty to others. To reduce them to a factoid, an epithet. It's no wonder people want to reclaim these words as terms of identity, of pride, of nuanced meaning.
  • f13f1f1f1 11mo ago
    They are useful if they are understood properly. For example different "similar" groups respond to different treatments differently. Social phobia responds very well to exposure therapy, anti-social personality disorder does not. If you are able to follow the distinctions you are able to leverage more effective treatments. I don't think they have any use outside of psychological treatment though. This is a great video on a good way of breaking down how personality disorders in general are broken down and function and are separated. https://youtu.be/4mgifm3ftl8 https://youtu.be/4mgifm3ftl8
  • bawolff 11mo ago
    > It's just a set of pigeonholes made by people whose goal is to have a pigeonhole for every kind of thing so that the world doesn't seem messy and complicated anymore. I mean, that is kind of how science/medicine work in general. Group the things that look similar, try and find things that work, and use the patterns to generalize the solution. If you don't generalize you can't apply knowledge from other cases.
  • FuckButtons 11mo ago
    I mean, they literally called AD(H)D after what annoyed parents and teachers would complain of (pay attention!) rather than any of the actual symptoms of the patents.
• tezza 11mo ago
  While this topic is here Also see specialisms WITHIN Autism that are different to the mainstream Autism The one I know most about is PDA: Pathological Demand Avoidance [1] PDA presents differently and needs very different strategies to mainstream Autism. Main signs… kids under 12 attend school. However they explode at home or in private. At school the PDAers are masking (pretending to fit in) which is draining. When they get home the pent up frustration is released (explosively). So the family at home see a very different kid to the one that school/extended family witness. If this is an A-Ha! lightbulb moment for you or your child, see the questionnaire at the PDA Society[1] [1] https://www.pdasociety.org.uk/what-is-pda/ https://www.pdasociety.org.uk/what-is-pda/
  • wisty 11mo ago
    But ... pda behaviour is very similar to OCD. Is it due to stimulous overload or anxiety? I think that's the difference. The point being misdiagnosis ocd as pda is a risk if autism is the only thing people consider. Maybe not a a huge deal since realistically a misdiagnosis often means you get a pamphlet with broadly similar advice and maybe and cbt anyway ... but maybe I'm being overly cycnical.
    • resoluteteeth 11mo ago
      Do you really mean OCD? Or do you mean OCPD? I wouldn't think that OCD would be similar to PDA.
      • wisty 11mo ago
        Yes. And yes, OCD can look similar I think (IANAP). Both are often anxiety driven. Try telling someone with OCD to put on their shoes quickly if they are paranoid there's a spider in them ... Sure there might be some "pure" pda where it's 100% down to reacting against demands. But AFAIK it can be also driven by autism related anxieties ("I can't do that because for some reason it's freaking me out and I can't explain it, so I'll get mad and then think I'm mad because I don't want you ordering me around"). Or it's just "I didn't understand the first 16 times and now I'm mad that you're mad ..." which is more like pda as it's often described ... but is it always that? OCD is often anxiety over specific fears ("if I do that I might make a mistake, and if I make a mistake it's the end of the world, so I'll get mad and think I'm mad because I don't want you ordering me around"). Anyone a bit "weird" can be reactive if you tell them something that seems reasonable to you but isn't reasonable to them.
• cardanome 11mo ago
  This is the third article in a row that I am seeing on hacker news that is spreading misinformation about autism. This seems to be targeted campaign. I urge people to not be fooled by ill-researched blog posts. Listen to autistic people. Listen to researchers that represent the scientific consensus. Any diagnosis for autism will first consider whether the symptoms can be explained better by another diagnosis. This is why you fill out a lot of questionnaires and the like when you get your diagnosis. This is the state of art. Also women are systematically underdiagnosed when it comes to autism, they often get labeled with boderline and the like. The idea that someone is labeling everything as autism is silly.
• TimByte 11mo ago
  This honestly tracks with what I've seen: autism has become the catch-all public label for "socially struggling person," even when the underlying cause is anxiety, trauma, personality patterns, or just plain awkwardness.
• f13f1f1f1 11mo ago
  A diagnosis is literally just a heuristic category so they can do research on rough groupings of symptoms to evaluate how treatments impact them. That's it. To get a diagnosis is literally just a statement "my psychologist thinks my symptoms align with this group and that the treatments they found effective for those symptoms will be effective for mine." The idea these things are identities or real categories is completely absurd and disconnected from why they actually exist. There is 0 basis to assume because two people have the same diagnosis they have the same underlying causes for what leads them to end up with that rough grouping of symptoms. There may be some general similarities or correlations but again the whole point of these is literally just to establish heuristic groups so we can do research on how people respond to treatments. People allowing them or speaking in a way that makes them seem like more than that is extremely destructive.
  • Aeglaecia 11mo ago
    a crumbling society is basically ideal for maximizing human stress and its various expressions ... or so dictated the deprecated term neurasthenia ... while many individuals are forced to deal with debilitating mental conditions , this situation is often incorrectly conflated with having experienced temporary behavioural breakdowns that later resolved (aka normal evolutionary response) ... this conflation wouldnt be such an issue if big pharma wasn't in the picture , overpathologization is definitely in somebodys best interests !
• dimal 11mo ago
  > Autism exists, to the extent that any psychiatric disorder exists. Which is to say, not really. I say this as someone who has been diagnosed as autistic, and identifies as autistic. All of these diagnoses are presented as clear, well defined constructs that exist in the world, but in reality they’re fictions that that committees have drawn around a vast gradient of human traits. No individual human truly fits any single diagnosis. For example, I have two family members that depending on how you frame their behaviors could be described as either autistic or narcissistic, yet these are supposedly completely different disorders. Prior to being diagnosed as autistic, I’d been diagnosed with some of the ones suggested in the article as well. Was I misdiagnosed? I don’t think so. None of those constructs are real either. So, they’d not even wrong. For a time, some were useful. Some were harmful. But seeing myself as autistic has been a lot more useful. What matters to me about identifying as autistic is that it allowed me to find other people who experience the world similarly to me. Until I found other autistic people, I felt like I was a single alien stranded on Earth, alone. Finding other autistic people was like finding out that there were millions of other aliens like me hiding in plain sight. I hope that someday we can move beyond the 1950s-style nosology of the DSM and have a more rigorous science of mental health, but right now, it’s what we’re stuck with.
  • nis0s 11mo ago
    I am sorry, but if you’re saying there’s no biological, physiological or neurophysiological evidence of these conditions then you’re just plain wrong. I cannot emphasize that enough.
    • lumb63 11mo ago
      That’s not what GP is saying. He’s saying that a term like “autism” is a lasso trying to capture a gigantic number of individual traits and symptoms. This is true of any other “psychiatric disorder” as well. There is no “autism”, there is no “ADHD”, there is no “OCD”, any more than there are tables or chairs. Something being a table is a label we slap on it to abstract certain attributes, that allows us to reason about it without having to think about all of the non-table-attributes it has. What do tables do? What can we do with them? We can put things on, eat off them. We can’t feed them to our pets. We can’t use them as a trampoline. The object being “a table” is just a categorization we make to allow us to think about the object; it isn’t something that the object is. Similarly, people aren’t “autistic”. They’re just people, who have certain traits, which psychiatrists have decided should be lumped into a category called “autism”, because they’ve noticed a cluster of other people who have similar traits. So, from this standpoint, someone “being autistic” does not tell us anything. We can already see that person’s traits or characteristics. That categorization might be helpful to some people, and it might be harmful to other people; and they should use or avoid using it accordingly. But they can choose to do that, because “autism” isn’t a “thing” - it’s a mental construct.
• flatline 11mo ago
  I have done a rigorous job of self diagnosis. I am autistic. I’ve also had the privilege of being able to pursue meditation, therapy, and other self development practices: I’m not as severely autistic as I was as a young man. I also have childhood trauma that I know contributes to many of my autistic presentations — see the last section on comorbidity. I also have some distinct ADHD symptoms but have never pursued that path because my hyperfocus tends to win out often enough that it’s not a hindrance to productivity. But it still causes problems elsewhere in my life. For some people these diagnoses will be a very good fit with clear predictive outcomes. But many of us have a grab-bag of traits from several categories and still mostly get along in life, maybe with some assistance particular to one of these diagnosis but no more help overall than anyone else needs otherwise. The diagnostic models suck. They are too broad here, too narrow there, misunderstood by professionals. I had a psychiatrist (mis)diagnose me as bipolar based on a 45 minute appointment when I was in some sort of crisis in my early 30s and that ended up haunting me years later when applying for a job with a security clearance. I didn’t even know about it at the time. This was one of the top rated doctors in a major metro area. What a sham. The field is a mess. It has a terrible history of horrific abuse. Some autistic children still receive involuntary-to-them ECT. I think we should be supportive of research into these topics while also being critical of the very obvious problems with them.
  • iambateman 11mo ago
    It’s never occurred to me that someone could become more or less autistic…could you say more about what that has been like for you?
    • cromulent 11mo ago
      Not the OP, but after a couple of decades of people pointedly talking about eye contact, small talk, and body language, you learn “coping mechanisms” to deal with neurotypicals and make them more comfortable. Did your sporting team have success on the weekend? Wonderful, direct eye contact, smile, mirror. Ok, now, to business:
      • 11mo ago
• cluckindan 11mo ago
  > Autism exists, to the extent that any psychiatric disorder exists. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder which causes and contributes to various psychiatric disorders. The author is not seeing the forest for the trees, which is incredibly ironic.
• AngryYokai 11mo ago
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• zzzeek 11mo ago
  the agenda being pushed with the recent spate of articles to the effect of "people are saying they're autistic when they're really not, and should be classified differently" I think has mostly to do with RFKs overarching claim that people who are autistic are all suffering a horrible, debilitating disease, where in his words verbatim: “These are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go on a date” [1] , which from there goes into his bigger goal which is to create a "database" of autistic people [2], for which no valid reason has ever been given. By redefining "autism" to be only those who we've decided are those severely disabled who "will never pay taxes or hold a job", then creating a catalog of exactly who these people are, the final step is quite obvious if you've studied the treatment of autistic people in Nazi Germany [3]. So I'm going to flag these posts for now because the goal in the current US climate is pure eugenics. RFK is at his core a eugenicist, as are all high-level anti-vaxxers. Anti-vaxxers seek to blame the diseased for their disease, on such factors as "poor diet", "lack of exercise", or in the case of autism, "having your child vaccinated", against all scientific consensus, and would prefer people suffer and die of horrible and completely preventable diseases like measles and polio since they somehow "deserve it". Governments like the current one have plenty of plans for people they deem unworthy. [1] https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5256614-autism-community-pushes-back-robert-f-kennedy-jr/ https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5256614-autism-communi... [2] https://www.npr.org/2025/05/08/nx-s1-5391310/kennedy-autism-registry-database-hhs-nih-medicare-medicaid https://www.npr.org/2025/05/08/nx-s1-5391310/kennedy-autism-... [3] https://mjhnyc.org/blog/autism-and-disability-in-nazi-vienna/ https://mjhnyc.org/blog/autism-and-disability-in-nazi-vienna...
• ulrischa 11mo ago
  Life is difficult for people with severe autism (e.g. early childhood). Due to the increasing number of misdiagnoses, self-diagnoses, romanticization and constant trivialization, life is becoming even more difficult for these people. The opinion that autism is not a disease but a buzzword for strange people leads to real autistic people being denied the disease. It is often said: “They should just try harder or pull themselves together”. Please don't use the word autism in an inflated way - it harms those affected.
  • nmca 11mo ago
    In a maximally earnest way — to what degree should we be sure these language harms are real on net? Are there data as opposed to anecdata? (Of course many phenomena are real without data; we can just be more confident in cases with data)
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  • cindyllm 11mo ago
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• empressplay 11mo ago
  It gets even more complicated when you add things like Williams Syndrome into the mix -- WS causes you to feel safer with 'friendly' people and so you're typically more social not less, but is often comorbid with autism and so can make diagnosing autism more challenging (in my case it was mostly because I had an abnormally high IQ and sensory challenges). But I am highly empathetic, have some talent for music and writing and was basically a TA for most of my school years, while still having most of the autism-related issues such as RSD, demand avoidance, meltdowns and so forth.
• ed_balls 11mo ago
  What is missing is the occurence of these disorders. Adhd 5-10%, autism 0.5%, cluster b 5%. The rest is quite rare. Adhd has the highest comormobility.
  • RobotToaster 11mo ago
    The DSM-5 states schizoid has a prevalence of 4.9%, schizotypal 3.3% and OCPD 2.4 - 7.9%
• autoexec 11mo ago
  > But autism may also be the only relevant diagnosis they’ve heard of or are familiar with. They haven’t seen any cool TikToks about being schizoid. No one’s offering them quizzes about being schizotypal. Don't underestimate TikTok. You can find all sorts of weird fad mental illness there. For a while tourette syndrome was all the rage and the platform was filled with kids faking tics. There are fake epileptics faking seizures too. OCD is another common "cool" self-diagnosis and there are online quizzes to tell you how OCD, or ADHD or bipolar you are. It wouldn't surprise me at all if schizoid or schizotypal caught on. I think some people are looking for the self-validation that can come with a diagnoses, an explanation for why they are the way the are, feel the way they do, or why they struggle with certain things. Others are just looking for views, attention, or a community to belong to. While it can be fairly harmless the ability for mass sociogenic illness to spread via social media is interesting and a bit frightening.
  • vantassell 11mo ago
    > For a while tourette syndrome was all the rage and the platform was filled with kids faking tics. Kind of like all those kids in Le Roy, NY who began experiencing involuntary tics. IIRC, it was interesting that it was mostly girls who were affected by the "craze". https://www.npr.org/2012/03/10/148372536/the-curious-case-of-teen-tics-in-le-roy-n-y https://www.npr.org/2012/03/10/148372536/the-curious-case-of...
  • RobotToaster 11mo ago
    There was (perhaps still is) a lot of stuff on there by people claiming to have dissociative identity disorder (what used to be called multiple personalities)
• btown 11mo ago
  I think part of the tension here comes from the way autism is understood both as a broad, fully-continuous, multivariate spectrum, and as a binary diagnosis. To be sure, clinically, thresholds are useful because services, insurance, and research all rely on clear binary classifications, in our current society. But outside that context, it isn’t obvious that everyday language needs to mirror that line. Self-identification can be a way of making sense of one’s life, not an attempt to claim a clinical label. But at the same time, the spectrum includes people with very high support needs, and there’s understandable concern that broad or casual uses of the term can hide those realities in ways that impact care. To me, none of this means people are wrong for wondering about autism. And I do not have the experience to advocate for or against "anxiety disorders" being weighted more heavily in clinicians' priors than they currently are (as the OP article heavily implies with its length). I mean only to highlight the mismatch between a binary diagnostic system and a very heterogeneous spectrum, and the need for language that acknowledges self-understanding without flattening anyone’s experience.
  • austin-cheney 11mo ago
    The largest confusion with Autism is the ever changing definition from one DSM to the next where whole areas are suddenly included and others excluded. It seems in the DSM 5 the definition was narrowed specifically to focus on two performance deficits: 1) immediate harms either to the inflicted or to those they interact with due to social interactions, 2) catastrophic academic failures due strictly to input/output perception irregularities not otherwise explained by neuro-transmission disorders (things that can be treated with drugs) or low intelligence measures. That excludes a massive host of social and perception abnormalities that do result in less immediate social rejection and abstract reasoning failures.
    • cyanydeez 11mo ago
      As far as I can tell, the definition of autism coincides with the desire of healthcare to address it without having to carve out 100+ variations of behavioral outcomes to get insurance to pay for it. We know autism affects all sorts of long term outcomes, but if you tried to split it into actual diagnoses, you end up with insurance companies dividing and conquering approvals. So instead of having several definitions, we put them all behind autism because that has already received appreopiate laws that establish requirements to treat both at school and in healthcare settings. So basically, once it breached the "we need to address this", rather than every new diagnosis having to struggle to say "look, this problem effects society", it just grows offshoots and spectrum status. Because it's definitely not a physically identifiable disability. It's all behavioral and that will always have more coincidences.
• tsoukase 11mo ago
  The following are my half-processional half-radical POV. Autism and schizo- spectrums have a common base/mechanism: impairment of psychic functions (lack of empathy and non verbal commun, shallow feelings, social distance and similar). Their difference is autism starts at early childhood (maybe birth?), before any intelligence, language, soul and personality has evolved, while schizo/psychosis starts later (after teen age) when all these are fully developed. The impact of each disorder on behaviour is different due to the different state it finds the rest of the brain. The maturity in schizo, for example, is the cause of its "positive" symptoms like hallucinations/delirium because the brain is full of images and words. On the other side autism heavily blocks social and verbal skills because it kills any "motive" of the brain to develop further from a very early stage.
• lo_zamoyski 11mo ago
  It's also become quite fashionable to pathologize oneself and make it a kind of marker of identity. "I'm neurodivergent!" they declare, even though the concept is dubious as a bona fide category. It's a weird phenomenon; a disease or disorder is not an identity, but a defect. But people in general seem to be starving for identity - hence the popularity of odd subcultures and ideologies - but too weak to forge their own. Part of the motivation also seems to be that we've fetishized disorders; having or claiming to have disorder X is a weird way to feel "special" or exceptional. Another part of it is that it functions as a kind of instrument for uptight people to gain a sense of exemption from social norms - real or merely perceived - that they feel burdened by or live in terror of "violating", but who are incapable of or unwilling to ignore them, because what would people say! "Oh, I'm weird, because I have disorder X. Can't help it, sorry! Can't judge me, because then you, not me, are the asshole!" Needless to say, it's not very rational. Which is not to say various disordered conditions don't exist.
  • dimal 11mo ago
    That's a misunderstanding. I argue elsewhere in this thread that these categories aren't real, yet I identify as neurodivergent. One problem is that the language we've been given is one of defects (ADHD, ASD) and often people are stuck using that label even if they don't see their trait as a defect. So we're stuck saying "ADHD" because psychiatry decided that it's a defect. In reality, nearly every "disorder" has some other context-dependent benefit. And while there's no "neurodivergence" in nature, there is a divergence from what is considered "normal" by society. "Normal" is an artificial construct, but we all have to live with it, and there are many aspects of my nervous system that clearly function in a way that's outside of two standard deviations from the mean, and this causes me a lot of problems in a society that can't tolerate that. These are very very real, and 95% of the time, I never say a word, and no one else has any idea that I'm suffering. I'm not telling anyone else that they're the asshole. Most neurodivergent people are living like this, despite what you're implying, that we're all just walking around being assholes to everyone we meet. That, is bullshit.
• kittikitti 11mo ago
  Thank you for sharing this article. I find people claiming I have autism for random reasons, mainly because I like to code. It's frustrating and they can concern-troll all they want. "They haven’t seen any cool TikToks about being schizoid. No one’s offering them quizzes about being schizotypal." I'm eagerly awaiting the Great Meme Reset of 2026 when people will stop using memes as their shared knowledge. I even know a pediatrician who does this to support her anti-vax practice so meme culture has reached frightening levels. Therapy-speak has become weaponized by people who are not well meaning. Please don't go around diagnosing people. If you say someone is bipolar, a lawyer can use this against them in court. I urge people to identify the sources of their (mis)information and humble themselves before offering diagnostics.
• gaigalas 11mo ago
  There's one type of autism that doesn't really exist as a disease but as a social phenomena. It appears when someone sees a smarter person and cannot accept that fact, proceeding then to look for any sign of awkwardness so that gap can be explained by "autism". Not medically relevant, but probably one of the most common uses of the word.
• cbeach 11mo ago
  Some casual unscientific research - a question to my fellow autistic HN contributors: Do you have a "mind's eye" - that is, can you close your eyes, and voluntarily visualise mental images? If you can't, you have a condition called "Aphantasia" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia When I found out about aphantasia, I was fascinated. I'd always imagined that "mind's eye" was a metaphor. I never knew it was literal, and that most of the population are able to visualise imagery in their head. Could there be a link beteen aphantasia and autism? Since I'm unable to visualise the faces (and thus expressions) of people, maybe this contributes to my lack of empathy and ability to predict other people's emotional state. If you have autism, do you also have aphantasia?
  • ezekg 11mo ago
    Interesting! I'm autistic and I'm the complete opposite! I've always been super artistic, and usually visualize what I design/draw in my head before it ever hits paper/screen. It blew my mind when I learned about aphantasia.
• Ziomislaw 11mo ago
  it does not mention that since ICD-11 you are "allowed" to have both autism and schizotypal personality.
• deleted 11mo ago
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• jackyard86 11mo ago
  Schizoid personality is not a "disorder". Having your own ideal and philosophy and not sheepishly following corporate and government propaganda (so called "trend") is what every other person should do.
• nephihaha 11mo ago
  There was this notion of psychiatry promoting conformity back in the 1960s, and while that has diminished, I detect conformist tendencies in this writer. Stuff like social isolation and magical thinking can be the result of cultural forces. (In some parts of the world, magical thinking is still the norm.) Urban environments can also be antisocial for a number of reasons despite high population density.
• DarkGauss 11mo ago
  Yeah, he lost me here: "Autism spectrum is wide enough to have very different prototypes within it. On one end we have profound autism, representing someone with severe autistic traits who is completely dependent on others for care and has substantial intellectual disability or very limited language ability. At the other end, we have successful nerdy individuals with autistic traits and superior intelligence, often seen in science or academia, à la Sheldon Cooper." He's just another ableist crank who thinks people with intellectual disabilities who are also autistic are “profoundly” or “severely” autistic. Neither of those are actual diagnostic categories; they were invented by “autism parents” (not autistic parents; parents of autistic children) as a way to exclude everyone except level-3 autistic kids with intellectual disabilities. Then he throws in the “superior intelligence” nonsense. No. Just no. More ableist BS. I’m a late-diagnosed “level 1” autistic adult (also ADHD) who works full-time as a network admin. Functioning labels don’t make someone “less autistic”; they just reflect different support needs. He also brings up BPD. Lots of autistic women get misdiagnosed with BPD. My wife was one of them. Once I dug into how autism presents differently in men vs. women, it became obvious she checked all the boxes. She later got an autism diagnosis too.