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Comment by detritus | Hacker News Reader

Having had a child this year, my greatest fear was that it might be profoundly autistic. I can't begin to imagine what it must be like to be stuck with a physiologically-broken child, for life, that is incapable of empathy or love for its parent.

I appreciate that's the sort of thing that happens at the extreme ends of the spectrum and not at all representative of many high-functioning autists, but I don't think it's terrible to have that as a fear.

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Autists have empathy and all the other emotions that neurotypicals think they lack. They're simply deficient in learning the complicated ways that neurotypicals use to credibly signal their internal state.

I did think about clarifying that point of my post, and should have, I suppose. What I mean is that 'from the perspective of a parent' no signalling of empathy or love is essentially the exact-same outcome as there not being empathy or love.

I know I couldn't handle that lack of feedback.

Perhaps that's a severe failing, but there we are.

>incapable of empathy or love for its parent

Autistic people are not sociopaths, they are not incapable of empathy or love, they just struggle to understand when you're expressing it, or to express it in appropriate way.

Your fear of being unable to communicate with your child is valid, but autistic people are not "broken".

You seem to be, by choice or haste, missing the conditions in my post - profoundly autistic people at the ends of the spectrum are, by societal standards 'broken' and are indeed incapable of empathy or love.

It's not a nice thing to say or admit, but it is .. well, true.

I have an autistic uncle who is not profoundly so, but is hard to communicate with and has problems existing by himself, often getting into trouble that is hard for the rest of the family to understand the logic of.

We know how kids who really might be "incapable of empathy or love" behave, and it's not the sort of stuff autistics do. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppositional_defiant_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conduct_disorder

Autistic kids are demonstrably not "incapable" of empathy as commonly understood. They may be impaired in their expression of it, but that's something quite different.

There's debate whether ODD even exists or is just PDA profile of ASD. I think it's PDA but not expert in this area by any means.

I should say-- I think it's often PDA misdiagnosed as ODD. Which is very sad for those ASD kids not getting the help they need (because the "treatments" for ODD are probably not going to work well on a PDA kid).

"Lack of empathy" in ASD people does not refer to love of other people. It simply means ASD people have a hard time predicting the behavior of others. That's it. They can love just fine. It's a pervasive myth, unfortunately.

Indeed ASD people often suffer from extreme empathy e.g. towards animals or something upsetting on the news (war/famine/etc.)

There's some ambiguity between cognitive and affective empathy. There are people who seem to be quite lacking in affective empathy and the pro-social emotions, that one might definitely call incapable of love. But autism is not like that, indeed it's very different; at worst, autistic folks might be said to have impairments in cognitive empathy, and AIUI even that's disputed to some extent.

(I'm a parent of a kid on the spectrum)

While the fear is natural, there are tons of other childhood conditions that are, in fact, worse than autism.

Would you decline vaccines for yourself or your child because you fear they might "get autism" (which has been debunked).

Edit: clarity

Nope, and I'm not sure I even began to infer that.

And also nope, because we ran the gauntlet despite our slightly higher age and subsequent increase in probability of autism (amongst many, may other conditions).

As I say, I don't think it's wrong to fear the possibility, and as your post admirably points out, life is inherently full of risks.

No, because vaccines don't cause your child to "get autism"

Thanks I clarified my comment.

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