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Autism is genetic – and why this information matters now
- la6479 16d agoTHis is where rubber meets the road. Show me how AI can make life easier for autistic people and their caregivers , mentally challenged people and their caregiver and I will believe in the promise of AI.
- deleted 16d ago[deleted]
- contingencies 16d agoIt has infinite patience as a teacher in an infinitesimal number of detail oriented specific areas where others would fail. It can maintain perspective on longer term goals and repetition and such through proven autism treatment pathways like CBT/speech therapies where humans be prohibitively expensive or would tire. That's surely something? It can reinforce bringing detail out to generalities. That helps for some. I'd say pedagogy and communications therapy are therefore both clear areas of promise. These are viable for the population as a whole, not just people with autism or identified learning difficulties.
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- thin_carapace 16d agoin a better world your vision would be very promising. in our world, ill bet 'different' people are gonna get lumped in with old people, to be placated by robots instead of being allowed community engagement.
- contingencies 15d agoDon't blame others. Inaction is the only thing between you and a better world. Go do something about it.
- mitxela 15d agoDismantle car centrism all by yourself?
- thin_carapace 14d agowhile I do feel obliged to share my compute with wider humanity, it must be noted that commanding me to perform my obligation does remove what meagre autonomy i could claim from the process. if your goal is to encourage compute sharing, you may wish to reexamine your employment of imperatives. or in other words, telling a dickhead like me to do something is more likely to result in you getting told to fuck off than it is for me to do the action being commanded. but I see your intentions are true so I don't need to do that. thanks and all the best
- contingencies 14d agothick_skin certainly isn't your play is it ;)
- thin_carapace 14d agoyea, you got any cool world saving plans in the works? im currently working on ones of my own, was carer for an elder family member many years before and didnt have the bandwidth then. nowadays i could lend some time if needed.
- contingencies 14d agoNot especially. I'm working on feeding people more efficiently which sounds dystopian but disintermediates the population from some corporations who currently dominate such matters and have not shown themselves to be morally or environmentally responsible. I would make a lot more money if I worked on military drones, financial leeching apparatus or AI bullshit like everyone else, but at this point I would prefer to have less and be better behaved.
- VCFundedGenYer 16d agoThe neurodivergent community thoroughly and resoundingly rejects AI and for damn good reason.
- scottyah 16d agoThat's cool, but what about the actual neurodivergent people?
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- ChickeNES 16d agoI'm neurodivergent, you do not speak for me.
- steve_adams_86 15d agoI'm neurodivergent (got all the proper stamps and papers and everything) and I think it's very useful in the right places
- scottyah 16d agoOne low hanging fruit is that it can file their taxes. Boom, that'll save a few hours and like $100 a person. After that, it's just a matter of your creativity.
- Quekid5 16d agoWe have a marvelous thing in developed countries where the IRS (equivalent) already knows how much your tax should be paying[0] and you basically have to just look at a few numbers and click "That seems right". They even have a form where you can change things that aren't correct! Marvelous, I know... we've had that for 15+ years in Denmark. EDIT: To add, if you get it slightly wrong... you're fine, it'll be adjusted for in next year's taxes. [0] ...because it has to, in order to investigate evasion.
- opan 15d agoTax filing in the US being so deeply intertwined with proprietary software is extremely unfortunate. I actually emailed Richard Stallman the first time I had to file to see what he does. He basically recommended grabbing the forms as PDFs, using xournalpp to edit/sign them, then print and mail them the old-fashioned way. I did do this but I found the process clunky and upsetting. I would kill to have some official government thing that's free software and covers all the common cases, or to have it automated like in other countries. I simply should not have to do this myself, it's ridiculous. I don't care about a tax refund either, just don't make me do this at all. Maybe leave the process optional for those who want to try to game the system and get some money back. I don't see AI as a solution here as it's all rather murky and proprietary.
- fragmede 15d ago> make life easier for autistic people Where life does not come with an instruction manual, I've found it useful to ask AI, "hey, I got kicked out of a social group (again), what happened?", and AI is able to tell me what it is I did wrong and what to do differently next time. There is a danger of AI psychosis, and autistic people I've discussed this with have had varying levels of luck with this strategy, depending on how honest they are able to be with themselves and the machine, but AI has helped facilitate difficult conversations for me. Eg Say I want to tell someone they "fucking suck and to go kill themselves". Obviously that's not very nice. My caregivers don't deserve to be told that. AI is able to help me find the words that aren't that, while helping me figure out the words I need to communicate the underlying issue. My human therapist is only available one hour a week and doesn't come cheap. Friends only have so much patience. AI is available 24/7 and is much more affordable.
- mitxela 15d agoIt's able to tell you something that sounds right. That doesn't mean it is right.
- flippingheck 15d agoI cannot see why this litmus test is either necessary nor sufficient for evaluating the success of LLMs.
- wolvoleo 15d agoAI certainly makes it easier for me with ADHD (and probably Autism too, they often go together). It helps me do planning and research which are the boring parts of a project for me and I abhor them so I tend to procrastinate so long that the project is no longer relevant. AI helps me get through this phase much more easily.
- jmspamerton 16d ago[dead]
- NamlchakKhandro 16d agoI think Claude is not autistic enough
- catchnear4321 16d ago[flagged]
- lioeters 16d ago[flagged]
- adfm 16d ago[flagged]
- itsdesmond 16d agoYou’re being weird.
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- brewcejener 16d ago[dead]
- mlboss 16d ago> Autism is genetic. You’re born autistic and you’re autistic for life. Most autistic people are autistic because of genes they got from their parents. This is why autism often runs in families. Much less commonly, other factors can play a role, but usually in combination with genes from parents. There isn’t a single ‘autism gene’. Thousands of genes combine to make a person autistic. Scientists have identified many of these genes, but they think there are still many more to find. And there is no genetic test for autism. We don't fully understand how genes combine to make a person autistic. It is complex and no simple test can give an accurate answer. Genetic testing cannot predict whether a child will be autistic or not, and it can’t be used to diagnose someone as autistic. Autism is genetic but we cannot do genetic testing and prove that you have autism. Seems like a very circular reasoning.
- DoctorOetker 16d agocan't wait until large scale datasets and LLM powered studies either debunk or confirm and quantify the effects objectively.
- DoctorOetker 15d agonot sure why the downvotes? I predict it would be possible to quantify the effects objectively, as a thought experiment: assuming functional proteins, gene regulation is about binding affinities of cellullar chemical species to promoter regions, so 200k promoter regions x number of chemical species present in humans give us the number of binding affinities that describe the behavior of human cells (essentially all cell types excluding some germ-line cells, but including brain cells). the thought experiment: apart from ethics nothing prevents humanity from going to all the remaining wild-type or near wild-type humans (when did 5% of the local population start wearing glasses? as a measure of wild-type-ness), and collecting as many individual genomes as possible, for a reference data set for the table of binding affinities. For each individual genome there is 1 table of binding affinities. Now we start averaging the value of each location in the table by averaging this table over all the collected genomes. So theoretically we could collect the bulk of the gene regulatory information / skills encoded in the genome for wild-type humans. Next we can traverse the medical literature on autism and collect all the reported or suggested features, survey answers, diagnostic indicators for the full autism spectrum, and for each population in such a separating indicator, fetch example genomes from the purported indicated and unindicated groups, and compare their averaged binding affinity tables until you resolve or exclude any genetic correlation. Or people downvote because I can't wait for science to ... progress?
- profsummergig 16d agoSo many misconceptions in this writeup. Here's one: even if it were genetic, there could be triggering environmental factors that trigger the onset of autism (I'm just giving a hypothetical example, not making a claim here).
- dwroberts 15d agoThe writeup is a summary of having done a meta analysis of actual research. It also covers environmental factors already
- bluGill 16d agoThey specifically said there are environmental factors, and not all of them are known. A few are known though: older parents for example.
- sksisnbs 16d agoWouldn’t susceptibility to those environmental factors be dictated by your genetics?
- nomel 15d agoFor example, 45% reduction in symptoms from fecal transplant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48158494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48158494 > Prior to the study, 83% of participants had "severe" autism. Two years later, only 17% were rated as severe, 39% as mild or moderate, and incredibly, 44% were below the cut-off for mild ASD. Incredible! Sure, there could be a genetic component to what flourishes, or ever seeded, in one's microflora, but there's definitely some external complexities involved here.
- donkey_brains 15d agoOf all the misguided, abusive studies. It beggars belief that a board somehow approved this. What happened here is simple: the autistic kids got better at masking in order to placate the researchers who were shoving poop up their butts. In the hope of making it stop.
- zug_zug 16d agoI feel like this is a willfully confusing article. So autism may involve disrupted genetics, but you may not have inherited those genes from your parents, they may be what are called "de novo mutations" which are mutations to the sperm or egg cells in the parent. This is evidenced by autism being more prevalent when the parents are older and those mutations are more common. Also it clearly must be to some degree mutations if you believe the rates are going up, which even the government is no longer disputing (though that may not be conclusive proof, to me it seems evidence leans to more likely than not currently). De novo mutations can also be caused by environmental factors, this is very well established and called "genotoxicity"[1] and certainly some people have been exposed to known genotoxic chemicals to varying degrees over time (formaldehyde) and who knows what undiscovered ones there are, newer standards of pesticide testing are starting to look for reproductive health effects but many chemicals that have been in use for a long time haven't been held to the highest standard. Another reason you might think it would be "de novo" mutations is that this could be any sorts of random errors in the genome. If autism is an umbrella label for various genome errors (which it very well may be, since it correlates with other conditions very often), that may explain why it's so hard to pin down a few genes and why symptom expression varies so drastically. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genotoxicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genotoxicity
- LoganDark 15d agoI wouldn't characterize it as "disrupted" genetics. Autism makes the world go round, if there were no autism we'd lack most of the innovations we take for granted today. There are other differences that can co-occur with autism to cause issues, but autism itself feels like a normal and beneficial genetic variation.
- erelong 16d ago"They think" autism is genetic and that would be fine as a title, but they have not proven it is (only or even mostly) genetic > We don't fully understand how genes combine to make a person autistic.
- threethirtytwo 15d agoIf you read the article it says they don’t know what genes influences autism. That means they don’t know. They established correlation but not causation. Could be the causative factor is environmental and genes simply makes a person more vulnerable to that causative factor.
- LoganDark 15d agoI would encourage anyone interested in autism to take a look at this paper, "Decomposition of phenotypic heterogeneity in autism reveals underlying genetic programs": https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-025-02224-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-025-02224-z It's, I believe, the peer-reviewed version of this preprint from a couple years ago, "Decomposition of phenotypic heterogeneity in autism reveals distinct and coherent genetic programs": https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.15.24312078v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.15.24312078v... Essentially, there are four types of autism! I think they deserve to be known more individually rather than having only one "autistic spectrum". Ever since seeing the preprint I've practiced telling the different types apart, it's been very interesting.
- treebeard901 15d agoIt's an evolutionary trait that is in response to increasing use of electronics and computers. As being good with technology is a larger part of survival of the fittest, the autism traits will only increase along with it.
- flippingheck 15d agoIt's advantageous in rules-based systems, but many aspects of life, particularly interpersonal, are not rules-based. Systems thinking pays well, which is advantageous, but this might be short lived, now that LLMs can mediate interfacing with rules-based systems.
- bronlund 15d agoTrust the science! :D
- bcjdjsndon 15d agoApart from when uta frith, a major player in including Asperger's into autism, says people are being over diagnosed.... then screw the science, what do they know?
- mitxela 15d agoHeadline is obviously AI slop
- tancop 15d agoThe part about being autistic for life is not really helpful. I personally know people who learned to "stop being autistic" from an outside POV, and they got to the point where they're not consciously masking anymore, it all comes natural. Just decided to act "normal" for a change and stuck with it. Of course it's not easy, not everyone can do it (like if they also have some intellectual disability) or wants to do it, but it's the right solution for a lot of people. It's not really curing autism because it's not changing your DNA but it's definitely treating the most socially disabling symptoms. But I think the statements all good and does what it's supposed to if it helps fight forced therapy child abuse and anti vax movements. Don't need to be perfect to make a change.
- watwut 15d agoThey are still autistic.
- flippingheck 15d agoUnconsciously masking is still tiring, and masking doesn't generalise well to unfamiliar situations.
- wjnc 15d agoKnowing something you’ve learned to live with for life has a name and by learning that name thus recognizing your ordeal can be very helpful. Neurodiversity is real and learning that you are perhaps somewhat special (not wired like others; perhaps prone to using social tricks as a mask) can help. My personal learning of the last few years. For me the tricks and masks didn’t hurt me, but recognizing how I am and even a bit of sharing that with closest relations helped me massively.
- bcjdjsndon 15d ago> Knowing something you’ve learned to live with for life What have you been living with for life?
- wjnc 14d ago
- Ylano 15d ago[dead]
- Llamamoe 15d agoHeritable != genetic. There are very strong reasons to suspect that gut microbiome at least plays a major role in at least a large portion of autism cases, complete with studies where we've been able to induce/reverse a subset of autism symptoms in mice, and even humans, as well as linking individual gut microbe metabolites to them. And ~80% of autistic people have gut problems. There's no question in my mind that at least some of the propensity to develop autism is genetic, but calling the whole of it genetic feels ridiculous in the face of preliminary evidence to the contrary consistent with the massive increase in diagnosis rates beyond what can be explained by changing criteria.
- general_reveal 15d agoEven if it is genetic, do we know what causes truly original cases ? What causes the first genetic case, over and over?
- WA 15d agoYou gotta provide some sources for your Twitter bro science take.
- tonis2 15d agoYeah, even if some people are genetically favored to get it, it doesnt mean the enviornment doesnt increase the chance it will happen, how strong it will be. I don't like the direction some research is pushing it, like its just genetics there's nothing we can do here.
- deadlast2 15d agoI lived in New York 2004 to 2009. 2006 I think there was this epidemic in cases when I say everyone had kids who were autistic I am not even exagerating. I was one. Was like a movie I dont think I could exagerate what happened it was everywhere all at once. It was vaccines everyine knew it everyone still does. These people are liars. They were then they still are dont believe them.
- heyyeah 15d agoThese people are not liars. It’s anti-vax conspiracies that willfully mislead people and for what? The scientist who claimed a link between autism and vaccine was a fraud who misrepresented research data. Why do intelligent people perpetuate conspiracy theories?
- GoToRO 15d agoAutism looks to me similar to what a guy had when we were children. His mother was known for drinking even durring pregnancy. I'm pretty sure that we are disrupting some development mechanism today with all the substances we consume, even without knowing. Food, cosmetics, clothes, the air and so on. I think this onslaught on our bodies is what disrupts normal body functioning, in unpredictable ways. Combine that with pregnancy and the disruptions get written in "hardware". So no real cure, maybe some improvements. At government levels I think this is known, but they don't know what to do about it. Giving people a clean environment again, will have to undo most of the "progress" we got. Anyway, this is just my hunch but at individual level is better not to wait for 100% scientific confirmation.
- mrbluecoat 15d ago> Until recently, ideas about what causes autism have been vague, and this sense of uncertainty has allowed misinformation to escalate. ... Autism is genetic. You’re born autistic and you’re autistic for life. Most autistic people are autistic because of genes they got from their parents. This is why autism often runs in families. Much less commonly, other factors can play a role, but usually in combination with genes from parents. Psst, words like "most", "often", and "usually" aren't helping your "vague" problem.
- OutOfHere 15d agoThe article is shamelessly false and misleading. If you want the truth, here is the science: Plasticizer exposure during pregnancy linked to increased autism- and ADHD-related symptoms in children (2026) https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-plasticizer-exposure-pregnancy-linked-autism.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-plasticizer-exposure-... https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.medj.2026.101291 https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.medj.2026.101291 https://youtu.be/j4Tz86TENvs https://youtu.be/j4Tz86TENvs Basically, environmental harm during pregnancy via plasticizer phthalates leads to epigenetic dysregulation which develops the brain defectively. This is distinctly not genetic.