4 ms·

Jeff Atwood Doesn't Know What Autism Is

26 points by WrongBot 17y ago

btilly 17y ago
Psychology is prone to having fad diagnoses that lots of people could fit into. For a while everyone is astonished that so many people could be X. And then the popularity of the diagnosis fades, and eventually a lot of the X's turned out to be something else. In extreme cases the X can even cause or turn out to be the result of bad therapy. (For 3 nasty examples read the history of frontal lobotomies, electroshock therapy, and false memory syndrome.) When the dust settles I am firmly convinced that Aspberger's Syndrome is going to turn out to be one of those fads. Yes, it is a real disorder on the autistic spectrum. Yes, a lot of healthy people are somewhere on this spectrum and feel that the diagnosis fits. Yes, a high proportion of those people are geeks. But there are a lot of people walking around today diagnosed by themselves or others as having Aspberger's who wouldn't have been so diagnosed 20 years ago, and who 20 years from now won't be considered to have a significant handicap that is worth worrying about.
nkassis 17y ago
I don't think Attwood really meant that Ted Nelson had autism he was just trying to describe him in a way that people who don't know him might be able to understand what he is like. Maybe I don't get what the author is trying to say. I know there a lot of people talking about how Asperger's could explain geekish behavior but I think it's a very small minority of geeks so it doesn't make sense. But saying someone displays autistic behavior doesn't say he's autistic.
- kscaldef 17y ago
  I think the author is trying to say that "not good with people" is rather different than "autistic". Yes, as a consequence of their disability, autistic people often do have trouble interacting with other people, but there's a specific pattern to their difficulties which is not shared by your typical "not good with people" geek. > But saying someone displays autistic behavior doesn't say he's autistic. Actually, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism#Diagnosis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism#Diagnosis "Diagnosis is based on behavior, not cause or mechanism". I.e., autism is defined by exhibiting autistic behavior. (Although, I grant that in this case the person labeling the behavior as autistic is not a doctor and not qualified to make just a diagnosis.)
jrockway 17y ago
English has idioms. Not every sentence means exactly what it says.
- shermans 17y ago
  This is a symptom of autism:"complete inability to understand metaphor."
blasdel 17y ago
Correction: Jeff Atwood doesn't know what anything is. Despite his enthusiasm, the man is constitutionally incapable of Reading Comprehension. If you're lucky he'll get a glimse of the truth in his final paragraph, contradicting the rest of the post and telegraphing that the the whole thing was a waste of time for both of you. I used to think he was intentionally trolling his audience, but he's really just dull-witted.
- TrevorJ 17y ago
  It's kind of ironic that you are mentioning Jeff as being a troll considering the overall tone of your comment.
- damienkatz 17y ago
  I'm sorry, but you are just wrong. He's an extremely talented writer and pretty good developer. He blogs about stuff that interests him, he often presents the newcomers point of view, he rarely claims to be an expert on the topics he's writing about. And sometimes he gets it wrong, but he sparks lots of discussion and more people are enlightened. I honestly don't understand the why people think it's cool to dump on Jeff Atwood.
  - jeremymcanally 17y ago
    Because he (and to an extent, Spolsky) get a rather large contingency of things wrong. And then I hear people repeat those things, a lot. Even if it totally contradicts their actual experience. "I must be doing it wrong because this guy who has no real experience or projects to recommend him said so." It's dumb. He's like the Paris Hilton of programming bloggers: he's famous for being famous. Outside of that, he seems like a nice guy. And Stack Overflow is a tremendous project. I just think his blog is a dangerous cesspool of ignorance sometimes.
  - dinkumthinkum 17y ago
    I just worry that "extremely talented" dangers on being too charitable.
swombat 17y ago
"I don't want to sound like I care overmuch about political correctness" "... But... I do want to write a blog post calling out Jeff Atwood, because it makes for great linkbait." Describing someone as borderline autistic is, as others have said, an idiom, a throwaway expression, not one meant to make a reference to real autism. It might be slightly un-PC to some, but that's a question that you claim you don't want to address. I think this is a decent article, but a slightly dishonest starting point. You write well, you can do better. Edit: I'm willing to accept that perhaps you honestly misunderstood the expression. In that case, I withdraw my accusation of dishonesty.
- WrongBot 17y ago
  If it's an idiom that isn't meant to have anything to do with real autism, then I genuinely missed that memo. And the title wasn't really intended as linkbait; I was annoyed with Atwood after seeing that phrase because I genuinely like his writing and expect better from him. After seeing his post about autism that someone linked above, though, I do regret the title, and if I'd seen that before (which I should have), I would have gone with something a lot less inflamatory.
  - swombat 17y ago
    If everyone understood everyone else all the time, we wouldn't have wars, politics, crime, etc. :-)
goodside 17y ago
Clinical depression is a serious, debilitating, and often fatal disease, but you know exactly what I mean when I say I'm depressed because my hard drive died. These shifts happen all the time; linguists call them euphemistic (or dysphemistic) treadmills. There's a nonprofit advocacy group for the rights of the mentally handicapped called "Friends of the Retarded". At the time it was founded, that was the most euphemistic and inoffensive name that came to mind. "Slow" was too insulting, so they had to replace it with a Latin-derived synonym. Now anyone that makes a bad move while playing blindfolded chess is instantly a retard. Similarly, "idiot", "moron", and "imbecile" were once scientific terms to describe different severities of retardation. "Autistic" is especially justified, because the connotation of "geek" has shifted from a definite negative to a mild positive. People like to be thought of as geeky, and so now everyone is, which weakens the term. If you refer to your vacuum-cleaner-collecting friend as "really geeky" people will just think he reads Slashdot or something.
BobbyH 17y ago
Jeff clearly knows what autism is, as he demonstrated in a previous post written about autism and Asperger's here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000490.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000490.html His use of "borderline autism" in his Xanadu post may be inaccurate, but I don't think he should be pilloried for hating on people on the autistic spectrum when he clearly respects them.
- baddox 17y ago
  The author of this article is doing exactly what he's accusing Jeff of doing: using a phrase to convey an idea while knowing the phrase is technically not accurate. The first few lines of this article are spent admitting that the article's title itself is purposefully inaccurate.
- WrongBot 17y ago
  Thanks for pointing out that post; it leaves me with some egg on my face, but I'm glad to see yet more proof that he's a pretty awesome dude.

26 points by WrongBot 17y ago

Psychology is prone to having fad diagnoses that lots of people could fit into. For a while everyone is astonished that so many people could be X. And then the popularity of the diagnosis fades, and eventually a lot of the X's turned out to be something else. In extreme cases the X can even cause or turn out to be the result of bad therapy. (For 3 nasty examples read the history of frontal lobotomies, electroshock therapy, and false memory syndrome.) When the dust settles I am firmly convinced that Aspberger's Syndrome is going to turn out to be one of those fads. Yes, it is a real disorder on the autistic spectrum. Yes, a lot of healthy people are somewhere on this spectrum and feel that the diagnosis fits. Yes, a high proportion of those people are geeks. But there are a lot of people walking around today diagnosed by themselves or others as having Aspberger's who wouldn't have been so diagnosed 20 years ago, and who 20 years from now won't be considered to have a significant handicap that is worth worrying about.

nkassis 17y ago

I don't think Attwood really meant that Ted Nelson had autism he was just trying to describe him in a way that people who don't know him might be able to understand what he is like. Maybe I don't get what the author is trying to say. I know there a lot of people talking about how Asperger's could explain geekish behavior but I think it's a very small minority of geeks so it doesn't make sense. But saying someone displays autistic behavior doesn't say he's autistic.

kscaldef 17y ago
I think the author is trying to say that "not good with people" is rather different than "autistic". Yes, as a consequence of their disability, autistic people often do have trouble interacting with other people, but there's a specific pattern to their difficulties which is not shared by your typical "not good with people" geek. > But saying someone displays autistic behavior doesn't say he's autistic. Actually, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism#Diagnosis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism#Diagnosis "Diagnosis is based on behavior, not cause or mechanism". I.e., autism is defined by exhibiting autistic behavior. (Although, I grant that in this case the person labeling the behavior as autistic is not a doctor and not qualified to make just a diagnosis.)

jrockway 17y ago

English has idioms. Not every sentence means exactly what it says.

shermans 17y ago
This is a symptom of autism:"complete inability to understand metaphor."

blasdel 17y ago

Correction: Jeff Atwood doesn't know what anything is. Despite his enthusiasm, the man is constitutionally incapable of Reading Comprehension. If you're lucky he'll get a glimse of the truth in his final paragraph, contradicting the rest of the post and telegraphing that the the whole thing was a waste of time for both of you. I used to think he was intentionally trolling his audience, but he's really just dull-witted.

TrevorJ 17y ago
It's kind of ironic that you are mentioning Jeff as being a troll considering the overall tone of your comment.
damienkatz 17y ago
I'm sorry, but you are just wrong. He's an extremely talented writer and pretty good developer. He blogs about stuff that interests him, he often presents the newcomers point of view, he rarely claims to be an expert on the topics he's writing about. And sometimes he gets it wrong, but he sparks lots of discussion and more people are enlightened. I honestly don't understand the why people think it's cool to dump on Jeff Atwood.
- jeremymcanally 17y ago
  Because he (and to an extent, Spolsky) get a rather large contingency of things wrong. And then I hear people repeat those things, a lot. Even if it totally contradicts their actual experience. "I must be doing it wrong because this guy who has no real experience or projects to recommend him said so." It's dumb. He's like the Paris Hilton of programming bloggers: he's famous for being famous. Outside of that, he seems like a nice guy. And Stack Overflow is a tremendous project. I just think his blog is a dangerous cesspool of ignorance sometimes.
- dinkumthinkum 17y ago
  I just worry that "extremely talented" dangers on being too charitable.

swombat 17y ago

"I don't want to sound like I care overmuch about political correctness" "... But... I do want to write a blog post calling out Jeff Atwood, because it makes for great linkbait." Describing someone as borderline autistic is, as others have said, an idiom, a throwaway expression, not one meant to make a reference to real autism. It might be slightly un-PC to some, but that's a question that you claim you don't want to address. I think this is a decent article, but a slightly dishonest starting point. You write well, you can do better. Edit: I'm willing to accept that perhaps you honestly misunderstood the expression. In that case, I withdraw my accusation of dishonesty.

WrongBot 17y ago
If it's an idiom that isn't meant to have anything to do with real autism, then I genuinely missed that memo. And the title wasn't really intended as linkbait; I was annoyed with Atwood after seeing that phrase because I genuinely like his writing and expect better from him. After seeing his post about autism that someone linked above, though, I do regret the title, and if I'd seen that before (which I should have), I would have gone with something a lot less inflamatory.
- swombat 17y ago
  If everyone understood everyone else all the time, we wouldn't have wars, politics, crime, etc. :-)

goodside 17y ago

Clinical depression is a serious, debilitating, and often fatal disease, but you know exactly what I mean when I say I'm depressed because my hard drive died. These shifts happen all the time; linguists call them euphemistic (or dysphemistic) treadmills. There's a nonprofit advocacy group for the rights of the mentally handicapped called "Friends of the Retarded". At the time it was founded, that was the most euphemistic and inoffensive name that came to mind. "Slow" was too insulting, so they had to replace it with a Latin-derived synonym. Now anyone that makes a bad move while playing blindfolded chess is instantly a retard. Similarly, "idiot", "moron", and "imbecile" were once scientific terms to describe different severities of retardation. "Autistic" is especially justified, because the connotation of "geek" has shifted from a definite negative to a mild positive. People like to be thought of as geeky, and so now everyone is, which weakens the term. If you refer to your vacuum-cleaner-collecting friend as "really geeky" people will just think he reads Slashdot or something.

BobbyH 17y ago

Jeff clearly knows what autism is, as he demonstrated in a previous post written about autism and Asperger's here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000490.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000490.html His use of "borderline autism" in his Xanadu post may be inaccurate, but I don't think he should be pilloried for hating on people on the autistic spectrum when he clearly respects them.

baddox 17y ago
The author of this article is doing exactly what he's accusing Jeff of doing: using a phrase to convey an idea while knowing the phrase is technically not accurate. The first few lines of this article are spent admitting that the article's title itself is purposefully inaccurate.
WrongBot 17y ago
Thanks for pointing out that post; it leaves me with some egg on my face, but I'm glad to see yet more proof that he's a pretty awesome dude.