After Neurodiversity
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I'm worried that once we start "celebrating" autism, researchers will be scared to study it in fear of getting cancelled. This is important because there are studies that show, for example, that gut microbiome can affect autism symptoms. I might be downvoted for saying this but we should be trying to prevent autism, not celebrating it.
Ultimately I'm pessimistic. I don't think normal people will ever truly understand and accept autistic people, merely tolerate them. This notion of celebration is just feel-good, wishful thinking. What'll actually happen is we'll pressure normal people into putting up a facade of acceptance. But privately, I think normal people will still want to avoid autistic people when possible. Will autistic people get invited to social events more often? Will normal people want to date them more? I don't think so.
I realize now that I'm older that I'm a creep I'm a weirdo (I'm not a creep) and it is because I had a ton of undiagnosed neurodivergent behaviors that I didn't really figure out how to handle (or even have diagnosed) until I was in my 30s.
Would I ask for my disorders? Would I want them on anyone? Hell no. It sucks, I've felt out of place more than once, not noticed obvious social clues more than once, and not wanted to exist for days on end more than once. I'm not going to throw a party over it and when people pat me on the back it annoys me. We're all fucked up, some more than others, and some more aware of it than others.
However, I don't know about you, but to function in my mid 30s I'm pretty aware of my mental state. I know that I can be really, really wrong. Nobody has to tell that to me. I know how this machine runs and how it breaks down. I also know that a lot of people never ever figure that out because they don't have to.
I think the part of this "divergence" that is absolutely, absolutely critical is the ability to see the world from different perspectives. We're slowly understanding the importance of that as a society through notions such as representation, but the way some people will look at you when you admit you are in one of these categories - you know we still have along ways to go. But be proud of yourself, things will continue to improve and most importantly, you've got a lot of wisdom you can share if you wish.
I'd just like to point out among certain groups, like programmers, the behaviour you describe is not so weird. Maybe that's one of the things that attracts us to fields like this.
I think I have some kind of "condition" too. I have a mood disorder of some kind. I can get very depressed from time to time, and it has no obvious connection to real-life events. It just comes and goes. It's just never been severe enough to really justify taking medication that comes with huge side-effects, so I cope as best as I can. Ultimately, I hope that if I ever got really depressed, the company I work for would show understanding and support. But I also think what we really need is more science. We need a much deeper understanding of the brain. Some conditions are clearly genetic, not explainable by past trauma. I don't want depressive tendencies to be celebrated, I want to understand exactly what causes them, so we can help people like me and many generations to come.
If your experience is like mine you’ll explain it to him, he’ll think it’s a good theory, and then due to his ADD he’ll never actually get around to going to a doctor about it. It’s frustrating because his life could be so much better. He had to feel like a failure, and to lose years of your life to something “fixable” is rough.
There's something I'm curious about with your colleague: You already know he is disorganised in the specific ways you observe. So telling him what you see, asking him whether he would welcome some help with that, and providing your suggestions if he says yes, seems a good way to support him independent of a medical diagnosis. How do you see the label/diagnosis helping you?
As someone with autism, I'm proud of it and I suffer from it. There are many aspects to it and some of them are great and some of them are terrible. For this reason, I don't think there should be any problem in both having pride in the good and wanting medicine for that bad. I don't see them as necessarily mutually exclusive. We may find out they are, but there's no reason to assume that at this point. For now, I hope for a future where I can keep the good and get rid of the bad.
I honestly don't think most people are capable of the nuance you describe.
It doesn't seem like they are to me either, but I hope that's something that can change. I think a lot of what's going on right now is a fad and everyone's going to wake up in the morning with a bad hangover at some point.
There's no amount of drugs, psychology or rehabilitation that will "fix me", to the best of current human knowledge. Sure, it's nice that society might be taking steps to accommodate me, but I'd rather just be a "normal" person.
This is in stark contrast to folks for whom drugs, psychology and rehabilitation is proven to fix their problems.
Should society be understanding and accommodating of people who don't fit the traditional mold? Of course. But should we pave a path for people to double-down on problematic behavior? I'm not so sure.
In some milder cases I can see the argument, but I agree for the most part it gets into dangerous territory - doubling down on bad behavior like you said. It reminds me of how parts of the deaf community will refuse treatments that could improve their ability to hear, as they use strikingly similar arguments to the neurodivergent people that act like they have an advantage.
People should be able to make their own choices about medical treatment of course, but I don't think we as a society/culture should be indulging delusions. Not being able to hear is very clearly a bug. With neurodivergence there is such a range of severity it's harder to quantify, but I've seen way too many articles/posts in ASD communities encouraging behavior that clearly shouldn't be encouraged.
I think some of this arises from how hard it is to walk the line between accomodations and enabling. Society was so unaccommodating for a long time that I think we are seeing the pendulum swing the other way. It's interesting to talk to therapists that work with children, as it's especially critical to find this balance in that population. It can be a hard thing for the trained professional to determine in some cases, let alone for the parents to handle.
Ultimately I think we need to emphasize the fact that everyone has things they could improve on, because that mindset seems to be increasingly lost across the board (see obesity epidemic, "I'm just not a math person", etc.). It's okay to struggle with something but it's an entirely different beast to stop trying because you've decided that society is actually the wrong one and you're perfect the way you are. Doubly so if you proceed to bitch about research on these issues (which others may have much worse!) or impose your beliefs on your children. The latter being a problem in the deaf community, as some treatments work much better at a young age but parents will deny for their children: https://time.com/76154/deaf-culture-cochlear-implants/
Although it's hard to blame the individuals here too much, because it's compelling to humans for obvious reasons to push the blame off themselves, and when you see 1000s of people online agreeing that you don't have a problem, it's easy to believe that.
It’s not obvious that the software sense of a problematic deviation between design and implementation is a good model.
Deafness clearly causes problems for people, that most people would not wish for.
However that doesn’t mean an individual deaf person can’t be happier than an individual hearing person with their overall experience of life, and therefore not experience deafness as an impairment.
> way too many articles/posts in ASD communities encouraging behavior that clearly shouldn't be encouraged
What kind of behaviors are you talking about?
That's a few examples, but the general trend (and this isn't specific to the ASD community, I just read those pages more often) is that any deficit that relates to the disorder can be completely excused even if the person makes no reasonable effort to mitigate. And anything that could possibly be spun as a positive (and in some outlier cases may indeed be a positive) will be excessively praised.
This of course doesn't reflect everyone's opinions, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually just a vocal minority. But it's having a broader effect on attitudes inside and outside the community.
See also depression pages that push back on things which could legitimately help because none of them are a cure all (e.g. exercise).
Edit: to address the hearing loss point you added I was just using an expression. The point is that whether it is good to be deaf is objectively not debatable, nobody (outside of those wrapped up in deaf culture) would want to make themselves deaf. Just because an arbitrary deaf person could be happier than an arbitrary hearing person doesn't mean that the deafness doesn't impair them relative to their own baseline.
Ironically, that misconception is something some people with disabilities have had to fight! High IQ individuals with learning disabilities do well enough in school that they are often ignored, despite the fact they could do even better if they were taught how to manage their shortcomings. The comparison has to be made to yourself longitudinally, not to others.
When there is no good treatment available there's some argument for the sort of positive attitude you are describing, but it makes no sense when it leads people to avoid help.
This is not straightforward. Many late diagnosed autistic people have followed your advice and engaged socially to the benefit of their career only to have dramatic collapses when the stress of engagement becomes too much. There is no simple answer to this.
> or have family issues.
Here there is a real question of what it means to be part of a family. If the autistic person is not receiving empathy and support from the family, then its reasonable for them to disengage. This doesn’t make it good, it just means that socially interacting with one’s family is not automatically good. It seems like this would apply to anyone, regardless of neurodiversity.
> Not needing to apologize for or otherwise address situations where the person said something legitimately mean.
I don’t agree that “legitimately mean” is an objective concept, but I do agree that it’s unhelpful to encourage anyone not to try to understand why what they have said resulted in someone else experiencing pain, and that it’s usually good to repair relationship damage when possible.
That said, there are certainly limits to this, and reciprocity is rarely available to neurodivergent people because of the double empathy problem, so I can see why someone might err on the side of advising someone not to spend too much energy on addressing issues.
> Obsessing over something to the point that other basic life functions get ignored.
If you are literally talking about someone harming their health through neglect, then I agree that this should not be recommended, however I am not sure this is what you mean.
> nobody (outside of those wrapped up in deaf culture) would want to make themselves deaf.
Not strictly true (there are certainly tinnitus sufferers who would choose to be deaf if it ended the ringing), but I know what you mean and accept that it’s true enough.
But likewise there are many deaf people who would not choose to become hearing, because they are happy with their lives.
> Just because an arbitrary deaf person could be happier than an arbitrary hearing person doesn't mean that the deafness doesn't impair them relative to their own baseline.
There is no ‘their own baseline’. This is a flawed concept. What you are talking about is a counterfactual world in which they weren’t born deaf.
That’s not different comparing the person with what you imagine their life would be like if they weren’t deaf. I.e. no different to comparing them to an arbitrary hearing person.
> Ironically, that misconception is something some people with disabilities have had to fight!
I don’t see how this is connected.
> High IQ individuals with learning disabilities do well enough in school that they are often ignored, despite the fact they could do even better if they were taught how to manage their shortcomings.
Mostly true, but you have smuggled in the word ‘shortcomings’ which is the fallacy of affirming the consequent.
Who wouldn’t be better off if they weren’t taught appropriate skills?
> The comparison has to be made to yourself longitudinally, not to others.
See the earlier comment. Comparing yourself to an imaginary different version of yourself is of questionable utility, indeed one could regard this as a kind of delusion. It is certainly not objective.
> When there is no good treatment available there's some argument for the sort of positive attitude you are describing,
Why only if there is no good treatment available? A positive attitude would seem to be beneficial for anyone. This is strongly supported by research.
> but it makes no sense when it leads people to avoid help.
True, but this is a tautological straw man which also affirms the consequent. To paraphrase: A positive attitude is harmful when it causes harm. The problem is that you are assuming it does cause harm.
There are many degrees to "harming health", what I am referring to harms health in a similar way as encouraging an obese person to eat whatever they want. It's a slow burn. Failure to keep on top of cleanliness, appointments, groceries, etc. is one type of example. Failure to compromise with friends which over time degrades relationships is another.
Not fixing something that is wrong because you are otherwise happy is exactly the fallacy I am talking about. It's not just some theoretical world where the person was never deaf, because for a number of children that grow up deaf they did not actually have to!
Sure you can't disentangle things like "I never would have met my wife if I weren't deaf" - but there are so many random choices like what college you go to where one could say the same thing. It's just a secular version of "God has a plan" type thinking. There is nothing inherent to being deaf that caused any of the person's happiness.
The connection is literally just a matter of plugging in different words - a deaf person being happier than a hearing person does not mean deafness isn't an impairment for them, in the same way that someone with a learning disability performing better in school than a typical child doesn't mean the LD doesn't impair them. But that was a misconception among the people that should have been helping those students, for a long time.
The point was pretty obviously not that helping those students would help them, but rather that they were not helped because of a sentiment similar to what you are pushing. It's an attitude to be discouraged, yet for some reason there is now this trend in parts of the neurodivergent community to encourage it - I'm a good person/successful/happy/whatever so clearly there isn't anything at all wrong with me.
If you literally decline a treatment that would improve your life (or even worse do so for your child!) because you've somehow deluded yourself into thinking your disability is good for you, that's very obviously a bad thing, and that is exactly what this overly prideful attitude breeds, as can be seen on full display already with deaf culture. In a world where there is absolutely nothing we could do about deafness, sure let deaf people think they have some sort of secret advantage over all us hearing normies. But in reality there are things we can do, so we should be encouraging people to get help.
There is no evidence that autism is like anxiety or can be ‘treated’ with exposure therapy.
We don’t encourage people with light skin to increasingly expose themselves to sunlight.
> You don't tell them it's okay to spend their life avoiding it.
Why not? There is a very wide range of possible lifestyles and occupations. Why shouldn’t someone choose to spend their life in a way that is consonant with the way their mind and body works?
We encourage light skinned people to carefully manage their sun exposure because their skin is sensitive to it.
What is different about encouraging autistic people to limit their social exposure?
> There are many degrees to "harming health", what I am referring to harms health in a similar way as encouraging an obese person to eat whatever they want. It's a slow burn.
There is no similarity with obesity at all. It’s not an analogy or model for autism.
> Failure to keep on top of cleanliness, appointments, groceries, etc. is one type of example.
This is a misattribution of cause. Not doing these things is an observed effect, not a cause. What has ‘failed’? If you can identify that then we can reason about what might be helpful.
> Failure to compromise with friends which over time degrades relationships is another.
See above - you are misattributing cause. Perhaps the issue is not having the right friends. Compromising in order to keep unhealthy relationships going is generally bad for everyone.
> Not fixing something that is wrong because you are otherwise happy is exactly the fallacy I am talking about.
How do you reason that something wrong with a persons if they are happy other than by comparison with other people? Wrongness in this instance is just an attribute in the mind of someone making such a comparison.
> It's not just some theoretical world where the person was never deaf, because for a number of children that grow up deaf they did not actually have to!
What proportion of children grow up deaf who did not have to? Are you implying that people are autistic who don’t have to be?
> a deaf person being happier than a hearing person does not mean deafness isn't an impairment for them
Impairment relative to whom?
> in the same way that someone with a learning disability performing better in school than a typical child doesn't mean the LD doesn't impair them.
Impairment relative to whom?
“Billie Eilish suffers a physiological impairment which prevents her from playing basketball in the MBA. Fortunately she has been able to accommodate this impairment by singing instead. Someone suggested that gradual and increasing exposure to basketball might help, but she is glad she chose to just avoid basketball courts in general.”
> but rather that they were not helped because of a sentiment similar to what you are pushing
Let’s refrain from making accusations. It’s against HN guidelines.
> If you literally decline a treatment that would improve your life (or even worse do so for your child!) because you've somehow deluded yourself into thinking your disability is good for you, that's very obviously a bad thing,
You can’t tell in advance whether a treatment will improve someone’s life. You also can’t know if a disability is good for someone. To call this a delusion is to claim you understand someone’s life better than they do.
If we had strong signal about autism treatments doing so in general, it would be obvious.
We don’t have a consensus scientific model of what autism even is, let alone treatments that predictably improve an arbitrary person’s life.
> and that is exactly what this overly prideful attitude breeds, as can be seen on full display already with deaf culture.
Or it could be that we just don’t have good treatments for autism and that autistic people can also live better lives by not attempting to fix themselves.
> In a world where there is absolutely nothing we could do about deafness, sure let deaf people think they have some sort of secret advantage over all us hearing normies.
I refer you to the earlier question - what proportion of deaf people are deaf because they refused treatment?
> But in reality there are things we can do,
How do you know they are worth it?
> so we should be encouraging people to get help.
I am curious to know whether you have any statistics on the kinds of help available and the outcomes.
Clearly without such information this is an incorrect statement.
Some amount of exposure to sunlight is important, I do not think anyone would seriously suggest light skinned people don't need exposure to the sun. Further, the way that light skinned people manage exposure is not pure avoidance, it often centers around adaptations like proper clothing, sunscreen, and umbrellas. Mental health is a million times more nuanced than that even, and yet people treat it like our only two choices are to stay inside or stand naked in the sun all day.
Again, no one is saying that someone with ASD has to have the same amount of social interaction as a typical extrovert or can't take some personal time if they are having a bad week. The issue is when avoidance of social interaction becomes the default response, when it starts to impact their life in lasting ways.
It's actually a harmful misconception that people with ASD don't want to be social or have many relationships. People are different of course, but more often than not someone with Autism will be getting less socialization than they personally need, due to some combination of rejection and anxiety.
An alcoholic would spend their life drunk if they were to live in a way "consonant with how their body and mind works", but it isn't what they actually want.
At this point I think you are just intentionally misreading what I write. Obviously Obesity and Autism are not directly similar. What is similar is that encouraging a fat person to eat what they want will slowly degrade their health over time, even if each individual instance may not seem like a big deal, just as lack of social interaction will negatively impact the health of those with ASD. And in both cases you don't want to be a jerk about it, but saying it is fine for them to live how they want is absolutely not the right call.
I'll remind you that HN guidelines also suggest you should interpret comments charitably, yet you keep assuming I'm making bizarre comparisons that I'm not. Should I accuse you of saying that skin cancer is similar to Autism?
I'm also not sure why you keep splitting up sentences that were grouped together. I have seen on multiple occasions someone get left out of group activities because they constantly tried to center everything around their special interest. That sentence was directly grouped with the conversation about special interests taking too much precedence so that it has a negative impact on the person.
The problem is not the obsession directly, but when there is an inability to control it when necessary. Any good friend group will take part in each other's hobbies, it is part of the give and take, and it is something that should be taught to people with ASD. It is counterproductive to tell them it is okay to make everything about them, because 9 times out of 10 the friends don't actually think it is okay, and the person will end up without an invite in the future.
Do you seriously not understand that happiness is not a binary variable? Would you suggest that it is reasonable for someone with Epilepsy who is happy with their life to not get treatment for seizures? People in general should be trying to better themselves throughout life, regardless of what diseases they may or may not have. I have no idea why some people have decided to flip the narrative to be that even disabled people shouldn't try to improve themselves if they can.
Perhaps the disconnect is just that you think society is trying to force people with ASD to be social, but that really isn't the issue here. People with ASD overwhelmingly wish they had more friends and better relationships. Entrenching a "fuck everybody people suck" attitude as a defense mechanism is the exact wrong way to handle it, and that is the underlying message in a lot of these neurodivergent groups.
I'm also curious why you don't seem to even yield the deafness point, if you think it is just about the statistics for efficacy of treatment. There is not a cure all for Autism, but there absolutely are helpful mitigation strategies supported by evidence, as I mentioned above. For many deaf children there is a cure, which is refused, yet you seem to be arguing that it isn't necessarily better for them to be able to hear. You seem to be arguing that deafness and learning disabilities aren't impairments at all so long as the person has an above average life, which is so painfully one dimensional I'm not sure what else to say to you.
True, but also nothing whatsoever to do with what you actually said, which were general statements about whether autistic people should be encouraged to compromise with friends and family or engage more socially.
> Additionally, social anxiety is often comorbid with ASD, so exposure therapy for social anxiety can also be an important part of treatment.
Yes, and can be harmful and traumatizing if it’s not carefully managed.
> The research for ASD is less established..
It’s not established and it’s also not what you said. You said nothing about treatment plans. You said it was harmful to encourage autistic people not to engage socially.
Encouraging people to engage socially is not treatment.
> …can't take some personal time if they are having a bad week. The issue is when avoidance of social interaction becomes the default response, when it starts to impact their life in lasting ways.
This is just a rehash - you are assuming that the lasting impacts are bad relative to just staying in the situation. This is far from obvious. It’s entirely possible that the situation simply isn’t going to accommodate the person and they will burn out if they don’t withdraw. This is a widely reported phenomenon.
> It's actually a harmful misconception that people with ASD don't want to be social or have many relationships. People are different of course, but more often than not someone with Autism will be getting less socialization than they personally need, due to some combination of rejection and anxiety.
Yes, I’m glad you understand this, but what matters is of course the quality of relationships and whether they meet the person’s needs. Blanket advice to not withdraw is obviously harmful if someone is not in a workplace or relationships that give them support.
> At this point I think you are just intentionally misreading what I write
No, I’m responding to what you wrote as it appears.
You are complaining about blanket advice telling autistic people that it’s ok to withdraw, live as they are etc.
However you simply repeat the same mistake, by claiming that the only thing that can help is more social engagement and treatment. This is simply not true.
Many autistic people have found self-acceptance and exploration of their differences to be profoundly helpful.
> At this point I think you are just intentionally misreading what I write.
This is an uncharitable personal attack. A charitable alternative would be to consider that your points are not coming across as clearly as you think they are.
> Obviously Obesity and Autism are not directly similar. What is similar is that encouraging a fat person to eat what they want will slowly degrade their health over time, even if each individual instance may not seem like a big deal, just as lack of social interaction will negatively impact the health of those with ASD.
The problem with your analogy is that this isn’t actually true. Less social interaction can definitely help, and more can definitely be harmful. Not in every case, but that’s the point - the analogy simply isn’t there.
Recommending a treatment or more social engagement isn’t always a bad suggestion. But it is definitely wrong to assume it is the right thing for a given individual at a given point in time. It is also incorrect to assume that withdrawal is always wrong.
In this way, obesity is nothing like autism.
> Would you suggest that it is reasonable for someone with Epilepsy who is happy with their life to not get treatment for seizures?
Doctors have literally make this recommendation to people with epilepsy for years. Epilepsy drugs have side effects, as does surgery. If people can manage their epilepsy without them it is often better for them to do so.
> People in general should be trying to better themselves throughout life
If someone is happy, why ‘should’ they be trying to better themselves?
Even if they want to better themselves, why do you assume you know what will make their life better? There are plenty of people who spend a lot of time doing things other than socializing that make their life better, whether they are autistic or not.
> I have no idea why some people have decided to flip the narrative to be that even disabled people shouldn't try to improve themselves if they can.
Who are you taking about? This is a non-sequitur that has nothing to do with anything I have said. I’m curious what made you write this. Who are these people you are talking about?
> Perhaps the disconnect is just that you think society is trying to force people with ASD to be social
Did I say that somewhere?
> but that really isn't the issue here.
It seems like you read something in that I didn’t write.
> People with ASD overwhelmingly wish they had more friends and better relationships.
True, but as mentioned earlier, simply recommending that they don’t withdraw can be counterproductive.
> Entrenching a "fuck everybody people suck" attitude as a defense mechanism is the exact wrong way to handle it, and that is the underlying message in a lot of these neurodivergent groups.
What has this got to do with our conversation? What groups? How do you know what this underlying message is?
> I'm also curious why you don't seem to even yield the deafness point,
What deafness point exactly do you think I might yield? Deafness has been used in various ways in this conversation.
> if you think it is just about the statistics for efficacy of treatment.
I don’t, but the statistics matter for evaluating the relevance of treatment as a recommendation.
> There is not a cure all for Autism,
This is an important acknowledgement.
> but there absolutely are helpful mitigation strategies supported by evidence, as I mentioned above.
Yes, certain strategies which help some people according to limited evidence. Nothing which supports discouraging anything other than applying those strategies.
At any given point, adopting those strategies isn’t necessarily what a person needs to do. There are autistic people who have many friends, and are highly adept at social skill who nevertheless need to withdraw for long periods of time.
> For many deaf children there is a cure, which is refused,
Is it common for this cure to be refused?
> yet you seem to be arguing that it isn't necessarily better for them to be able to hear.
I have made no such argument.
> You seem to be arguing that deafness and learning disabilities aren't impairments at all so long as the person has an above average life,
I have made no such argument.
I do claim that people with disabilities can be happy without needing to fix their disabilities and that that there is no blanket argument that they ‘should’.
> which is so painfully one dimensional I'm not sure what else to say to you.
I think you have misunderstood my position.
What I have repeatedly wrote is that those types of responses, which permeate the neurodiversity movement, are bad. I never said that the solution was for people to instead write generic comments telling the person they should socialize. You are again painting this as a false choice between two extremes when it is not.
People should be encouraged to seek help which will likely end up involving more socializing, but that is not the same thing as suggesting people should be aimlessly told to socialize.
I even repeatedly said that it is not about overwhelming the person right off the bat or forcing them into every social situation. Because again we shouldn't be talking about two extremes here. Building up these skills is a process, but it requires acknowledging the deficit before the process can begin.
Neurodiversity movement is often found denying there is a deficit at all, and for ASD people in particular suggesting they should socially withdraw as much as they'd like. That is not the way to build the close relationships you describe. Every relationship short of your immediate family begins with pleasantries.
I am not advising anyone with ASD to do anything at all besides seek professional help for anything they are struggling with, if it is at all possible. Different treatment plans will obviously be used for different people, and I have no idea where you got the idea that I said there are only a few things that can help. Exercise can help some people!
By the way, not eating any food is also harmful dude, so your comment about obesity falls pretty flat. I'm not sure why you think that because there theoretically could be too much socialization that it's okay to tell people they don't have a problem and they should carry on with their shitty defense mechanisms. Because that's exactly what happens when social withdrawal is treated as a perpetually good thing, which is exactly what you will find among the "neurodivergent" preachers.
Since it seems I have to reiterate: Discouraging people from addressing their symptoms is actively harmful. Telling ASD people that it's okay if they avoid socializing as much as they'd like is one such example.
That's it. I will happily provide you dozens of links showing that lack of socialization correlates with numerous bad outcomes in both the general population and ASD folks. As I've already discussed socialization-based therapies have been shown to improve outcomes in numerous studies. It would be unethical for a clinician to advise people to not socialize, so there is no way to do a causal experiment that shows that discouraging socialization is bad, but there are many reasons to believe so.
I was also providing evidence about treatment because you literally asked about that, and even further claimed that ERP has no evidence in ASD people. It seems much of your info is outdated.
You also seem to not have a good grasp on what kinds of things get posted in these neurodiverse "support" groups. It is not about advice to withdraw from a particularly distressing situation, it is literally a blanket cultural value. People will get likes for posting shit like "I try to avoid neurotypicals as much as possible". I'm not saying that person should be lambasted for the post, I'm sure there are very legitimate reasons they came to that defense mechanism. But it's straight up an unhealthy attitude and it is a sign the person needs help. Not something to encourage and joke about.
And believe me there are people that really feel this way, it is not simply people being edgy on the internet. IMO it is a much broader, worrying cultural trend, that has happened to also affect the way some ASD communities interact.
I'm also not sure why you keep writing half responses and then editing lol, this conversation is all over the place because you keep changing your comments, which makes it much harder to address individual points. I really don't think this is getting anywhere, certainly I haven't gotten anything out of it, so let's both stop wasting our time.
Do they? The one example you provide doesn’t in fact do this.
> That is straight up a counterproductive response, and it leads to people developing bad coping techniques that worsen their situation in the long run.
You say this but don’t have evidence for it. You are claiming that these discussions lead to bad outcomes, but there is nothing indicating that this causality is true.
> What I have repeatedly wrote is that those types of responses, which permeate the neurodiversity movement, are bad.
Agreed.
> I never said that the solution was for people to instead write generic comments telling the person they should socialize.
You might not be saying other people should write such comments, but you did yourself say that people should compromise with their friends, and socialize with their families.
> You are again painting this as a false choice between two extremes when it is not.
No - as far as I can see you are the one doing that. You are saying your advice is the only correct advice, and that what people are discussing on the message boards is bad.
I claim you are wrong and that although your suggestions may be helpful for some people, so are the discussions on the message boards.
> People should be encouraged to seek help which will likely end up involving more socializing, but that is not the same thing as suggesting people should be aimlessly told to socialize.
You don’t just claim they should be encouraged to seek help. You also claim that encouraging people not to socialize when they don’t want to is harmful.
> I even repeatedly said that it is not about overwhelming the person right off the bat or forcing them into every social situation. Because again we shouldn't be talking about two extremes here. Building up these skills is a process, but it requires acknowledging the deficit before the process can begin.
This is a view that applies to some people.
> Neurodiversity movement is often found denying there is a deficit at all,
Not just the neurodiversity movement. Many scientists who study autism reject the deficit model.
There is certainly no scientific consensus that autism itself is a deficit. Obviously some people on the spectrum are very disabled, but these are not contradictory ideas.
> and for ASD people in particular suggesting they should socially withdraw as much as they'd like.
For some people this is appropriate.
> That is not the way to build the close relationships you describe. Every relationship short of your immediate family begins with pleasantries.
Of course, but nobody needs to be constantly starting new relationships. Have you considered that not all autistic people need more relationships?
> I am not advising anyone with ASD to do anything at all besides seek professional help for anything they are struggling with, if it is at all possible. Different treatment plans will obviously be used for different people, and I have no idea where you got the idea that I said there are only a few things that can help.
Treatment for autism generally doesn’t have great outcomes. It would be great if it did.
> Exercise can help some people!
And it can harm some people!
> By the way, not eating any food is also harmful dude, so your comment about obesity falls pretty flat.
This opposite is true. This just shows how poor the analogy is.
> I'm not sure why you think that because there theoretically could be too much socialization that it's okay to tell people they don't have a problem and they should carry on with their shitty defense mechanisms.
That seems like a dishonest representation of what I said. If you can show me a quote where I said something like that, I owe you an apology, but I am fairly certain I did not.
> Because that's exactly what happens when social withdrawal is treated as a perpetually good thing, which is exactly what you will find among the "neurodivergent" preachers.
I have never seen anyone say social withdrawal is perpetually good. Are you sure this is an accurate representation of anyones claims.
> Since it seems I have to reiterate: Discouraging people from addressing their symptoms is actively harmful.
What symptoms is anyone discouraging people from addressing? This is the first time anyone has mentioned discouraging people from addressing symptoms as far as I can tell.
> Telling ASD people that it's okay if they avoid socializing as much as they'd like is one such example.
How does that relate to symptoms?
> That's it. I will happily provide you dozens of links showing that lack of socialization correlates with numerous bad outcomes in both the general population and ASD folks.
Lack of socialization, and being free to socialize as much or as little as one wants at a given time are two entirely different things.
> As I've already discussed socialization-based therapies have been shown to improve outcomes in numerous studies. It would be unethical for a clinician to advise people to not socialize,
It would be unethical for a clinician to advise an entire population to do anything. Clinicians give advice to individuals based on their specific presentation.
There are certainly cases where it would be unethical for a clinician not to advise certain individuals to avoid socializing for at least some period.
> so there is no way to do a causal experiment that shows that discouraging socialization is bad, but there are many reasons to believe so.
Not really.
> and even further claimed that ERP has no evidence in ASD people.
This isn’t true. I indicated that the evidence isn’t conclusive enough to make a blanket recommendation, not that there is no evidence.
> It seems much of your info is outdated.
You write a lot about how things ‘seem’, where you respond to what you have read into them rather than what is actually presented.
> You also seem to not have a good grasp on what kinds of things get posted in these neurodiverse "support" groups.
Perhaps I just understand them differently from you. You are assuming that not agreeing with you means I don’t have a good grasp. That’s one possibility.
> It is not about advice to withdraw from a particularly distressing situation, it is literally a blanket cultural value.
Is it? The example you provide doesn’t support such a claim.
> People will get likes for posting shit like "I try to avoid neurotypicals as much as possible".
This is not an example of discouraging people from socializing, and yet it is the only example you have provided.
> I'm not saying that person should be lambasted for the post, I'm sure there are very legitimate reasons they came to that defense mechanism.
> But it's straight up an unhealthy attitude and it is a sign the person needs help.
Is it?
> Not something to encourage and joke about.
Why not? The ability to view one’s predicament through a humorous lens is generally considered psychologically healthy.
The idea that a support community must remain serious and grave at all times is odd, as is the idea that you can say what autistic people should or should not joke about.
> And believe me there are people that really feel this way, it is not simply people being edgy on the internet. IMO it is a much broader, worrying cultural trend, that has happened to also affect the way some ASD communities interact.
Feel what way? Autistic people who prefer autistic company? Is that all this is about? That’s not some secret.
It’s widely discussed in the literature.
Autistic relationships with other autistic people are widely recognized to be more successful.
> I'm also not sure why you keep writing half responses and then editing lol,
Responding from my phone and needing to copy and paste so that I quote you accurately.
> I really don't think this is getting anywhere, certainly I haven't gotten anything out of it, so let's both stop wasting our time.
I encourage you to withdraw from this social interaction and any other that you aren’t getting anything out of. Look after yourself. There is no need for you to apologize or compromise.
Everything about you will be commodified and sold to you as a pre-packaged identity, a very complete offer including lifestyle, medias, community and political opinions. You're not you anymore and you don't need to be, you're your culture, skin color, sexual orientation, gender identity, disabilities, etc. You get your own little bubble, very safe, very inclusive. You just have to play by the rules and keep producing and consuming.
I have ADHD too, I have to realize that I'm not a mentally ill individual with a brain largely unfit to live in this world if you don't pump me full of Ritalin. I don't have neurological issues, I'm just different! The world should accomodate to my existence instead of sending me to a psychiatrist who will try to "fix" me and my brain! (That was sarcasm for all you neurodivergents that don't get it.)
ADHD has a direct impact on abilities like emotion regulation and impulse control, it makes much more sense to classify it as a mental disorder than a learning disorder (or whatever other misconceptions used to exist).
They are also references for the diagnosis of neurological disorders. ADHD may be a neurological disorder but that doesn’t make it a mental illness.
All psychiatric diseases will likely fall under neurology some day, probably split into many more different disorders. Although you could make a case they should already be considered neurology, I think that needs to be an all or nothing decision. People that try to split out a handful of the psychiatric disorders are just perpetuating stigma. At this very moment there is more scientific evidence linking Schizophrenia to brain abnormalities than there is for ADHD (mostly as a result of more Schizophrenia neuro research occuring), yet I don't see anyone trying to call Schizophrenia neurological and ADHD not. I wonder why...
So if you think they are all neurological disorders fine, but ADHD is absolutely more similar to the disorders we would cluster under psychiatry than the disorders we would cluster under neurology. It is diagnosed purely via behavioral assessment, not biomarkers or brain scans. It directly impacts motivation levels, self control, and emotion regulation. If that's not mental I'm not sure what is.
It's also directly covered by NIMH funding, so pretty clearly it is considered a mental illness by the medical community, yet your original claim was that it is not - not that it shouldn't be.
Nobody is arguing it’s not mental. I haven’t said it’s not a disorder.
You seem to address everything except the fact that nowhere does the DSM call ADHD a mental illness. That is something you are saying and has nothing to do with the DSM.
If you are determined to call people who have ADHD, “mentally ill”, you are free to do so, but is isn’t supported by the DSM.
I'm also not sure how you can say that it is a disorder and it is mental but somehow it's not a mental disorder? That must require some mental gymnastics to justify.
Also, I literally have ADHD my dude. It's offensive "neurodiversity" garbage to suggest it's not a mental illness. To both people with ADHD and people with other illnesses - "mental illness" is not a dirty word. Maybe we should stop stigmatizing mental illnesses instead of trying to carve out exceptions.
You might want to study a bit more psychiatry before you spew more outdated information on here.
If this was true you’d be able to quote from the DSM where they use the term mental illness.
> I'm also not sure how you can say that it is a disorder and it is mental but somehow it's not a mental disorder? That must require some mental gymnastics to justify.
No, you are just representing what I said dishonestly. If I’m wrong, you will be able to quote where I said it wasn’t a disorder.
> You might want to study a bit more psychiatry before you spew more outdated information on here.
Speak for yourself. There is a reason the DSM doesn’t call ADHD a mental illness, which is that it is not considered one by the psychiatric profession in modern times.
The last time someone grasped in front of my screen about mental illness, the _easy_sollution_ was 'change only one thing in your life,', 'to not overload' and the praised solution came easy as words can sound, 'just try to change "your sourrounding"; your job, food and consume, your home and do sports -to be member in a team- and to make new relationships...'
With other words: 'Some people want to give you a taste in form of a free trial', but that may be their 'business model' -what seems to be life (?!) ^^
...with an algorithmic profile neurosis !? (-;
What problematic behavior do you mean?
Might that be because many people who like their traits don't consider themselves neurodivergent, and don't get called that by others?
The ADHD subreddit actually banned all use of the words "neurodivergent", "neurotypical", etc. awhile back, which I think was an overaction, but they were trying to get the sub back to a place where it could be used for advice to manage ADHD, not a place to play identity politics and tell people they should actually be thankful for their disorder.
You have a good point that high achieving individuals are less likely to be diagnosed, and high intelligence does seem to lead to some of these issues more often than they are seen in an average individual. However, the vast majority of people with these conditions are not part of that very small "gifted" category, and I think you'll be hard pressed to find "gifted" people in the neurodiversity movement. Historically these individuals have been left out of accomodations and wish they had received appropriate help for their impairments.
I don't imagine for a second I'd ever have hacked it as an SWE without it.
Totally agree that much of what we do, what we think, what we believe, both consciously and unconsciously is a product of culture and society -- not just the individual.
BUUUUT -- culture and society are created by brains and experienced by brains. So, I expect that you have in your body physical artifacts that map to your understanding of culture, and your history of experiences in society. Like a lossy shard of the whole.
So to say that we can't understand all of this in terms of neuro, or even chemistry, or even physics is wrong and a false dichotomy.
To say instead that psy- studies provide a different (higher) layer of abstraction that is more expressive for describing and understanding certain behaviours is correct.
If you're teaching someone tennis, you tell them where to put the racquet. You don't enumerate the positions of the atoms in the racquet. In the same way, neuro descriptions should be true. In fact more true than psy descriptions, but psy descriptions should be more useful for understanding large-scale behaviour. Invariably they will be a leaky abstraction and we will often have to go down to the neuro level of detail for greater insight.
The other issue is that I think there's a stigma to psy-sciences because of poor replication, and poor statistical techniques. Neuro is supposedly harder science. You can fool the people, but not the molecules. Whether this is actually true is open to debate, but the the psy-sciences definitely need to up their game.
Since we are not omniscient, we can't understand it in terms of this. Certainly not now, possibly not ever.
It's not even clear that you could hypothetically attempt to understand the human mind in terms of physics without invasively doing all sorts of horrific things to human test subjects.
People are so short-sighted. Not you, but the author, and those who write that AI can never to X or similar things.
Do we really believe that if humans or their descendants are still around 10k years from now, able to use tools and exercise creativity, that they won't have figured a lot of this stuff out?
We've only been seriously at this for 400 years, and casually for say 5k years. Why would we make any "never" claims?
A bit ironic, because the only reason you think this is because of the historical development of positivism and the complete ignorance of its shortcomings.
I simply notice that the alternatives don't work, have repeatedly failed to work, and mystical claims are better explained by how human minds work than by some features of the universe, independent of humans.
I could be equally snarky and ask why you weren't able to send me your message with a crystal ball, or through telepathy, or by asking a spirit to tell me. We've tried all of these things, and none of them work. But, weirdly the same culture, world-view, and process that tries to get better explanations than these legacy beliefs has furnished us with computers, smartphones, and a global communication network, which do work.
EDIT> ... and which humans use unironically to try to continue to spread their legacy woo beliefs.
I don't want anyone celebrating my condition, I want you to treat me the same way you'd treat anyone else, including being critical if I behave in a socially unacceptable way. It's a critical feedback loop that's improved my life over time, albeit slowly. I'm now in a committed long-term relationship, work in a management role in tech that is built on relationship-building, and have overcome many of my anxieties. If I'd been coddled this never would have happened, god forbid my oddities had been celebrated.
Autism is a disorder, if there's a cure for it or even anything that's proven to resolve common symptoms, that would be a blessing for the world. The new model of sociology has had deleterious effects on medical research, and we need as much research as possible into misunderstood conditions, not less.
It's going to be brutal for a kid being raised today with the coddling mindset if the real world decides to go back to the unnecessarily harsh old days.
Is this true? Maybe I'm missing some context on this claim.
So at least in the case of this one company, it seems they are selecting not only for neurodivergence, but also for prior inability to get/hold down a job. I think for the companies that are considering hiring, it is a cheaper way to test potential employees than the normal hiring process would be. They get a free trial and can start the person at a lower payscale if promising, so they can benefit if the resourcing company manages to get a couple of the people to a hirable state.
I would suspect there are also neurodivergent people who are more functional hired through the normal process, although maybe that varies by company. Certainly they're relatively common at FAANGs.
Yeah, that can make sense. My company doesn't really hire contractors into employees. They used to, but now they switched the policy.
Basically, I hope our company is doing it for the right reason, but I doubt it based on the trajectory the company has been on lately. It seems in our case it's likely just PR. The company is finance related and I have only noticed a few neurodiverse individuals, and they are usually lower level and aren't promoted. I have heard that finance in general likes specific types to be quants, although I can't say how true that is.
I'd argue high intelligence alone is a neurodiversity, we just don't pathologize it. It has plenty of undesirable side effects too.
We also have situations where 3+ sigma outliers in brain function don't see any benefits at all and need constant support to survive in our environment (natural and societal).
So, no autism isn't the next stage of evolution, but having somebody with 2 sigma deviation from normal cognition existing and contributing to society is probably more of a good thing than a bad one.
I am curious to see how the population changes over time as a result of increased freedoms for women. It's only really been a couple generations so far (and only in some countries), but now that women and men are on more equal footing when choosing a partner (and both sexes are more likely to settle outside their hometown) you end up with a lot more pairings that match career status and to some extent intelligence.
There's definitely going to be (on average) a difference in offspring between an MIT dude that married his secretary and one that married someone also from MIT, and for all we know the former may be healthier, especially as you extend this N generations. Of course that's a drop in the bucket relative to overall population size, but I think the effect could exist across various societal groupings.
[1] I'm thinking of evolutionary-level time frames here. There are certainly problems on a shorter-term, individual level, which most of the comments address.
However, I've definitely had interactions with co-workers or classmates that think they are the most special and the most smart, to the detriment of their ability to work with a team. Not sure if that's 'neurodiverse' or just bad manners.
In certain online forums there's also a tendency to laud highly intellectual but somewhat antisocial behaviours, and to talk down about 'neurotypicals'.
There literally are though. I have friends that do but if you don't believe me, then [1] and [2] are for you. I'm not sure why you would think there wouldn't be considering the pride movement. The article talks about how the movement started.
1. https://www.zazzle.co.uk/neurodiverse_universe_adult_t_shirt...
2. https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Neurodiversity-by-PrintP...
Claims to neurodiversity are in some sense a play (in some cases somewhat cynically) to take on some protections afforded to disabilities and minorities.
- Phillip K. Dick
Try to envision humanity, not as a carbon copy of the same template, neuralwise, but as a adaptable to circumstances by shifting neuro-sub-group-proportions as a FFT curve mapped to the cycle.
Those that were able to drag the society towards the part of the cycle that is most adapted to their lifestyle, got rewarded. These adaptions to the various stages of the cycle, is what we call mental sickness now - or neuro diversity.
Now riddle me this. The cycle produces a creature, that is optimized for war. No compassion, no obsession but the one for the fight, no love, but for abstract concepts like the group, the country.
How to integrate such a element into a society? If a facist, is just a mental-adaption to a world were the roof comes down every generation, were does it have a place in that city on the hill?
Neuro-diversity is just a placeholder for a problem that is slowly recognized, but in the end, we will have to rewrite ourselves.. its the only way to get rid of lots of baggage.
The schizophrenic living in the cardboard box outside of your office, is optimized for dangerous times, hostile environments, wandering great distances and improvisation. It could be useful if retrained and forced to contribute, but then again, is neuro-diversity a idea, that has a willingness to invest behind it.
The idea of the immutable self is definitely fiction, but it is a useful fiction which we use to prevent people trying to "cure" autism so we can instead be accepting and humane. It shifts the onus of change onto society instead of the individual, and ties in neatly with the social model of disability by doing so.
By tacitly attacking the idea of the immutable self, the author opens the door to "cures" for autism, homosexuality, and a variety of other things which we're currently forced to accept.
It may be the case that all that is solid melts into air but academics like this one accelerate that process instead of slowing it.
(I want an article about what the Prophet Mohammed said about autism, and how we can make a better, more Islamic social movement. ... Actually we can probably find a Catholic analogue of that, if we look.)
They make this clear in the following disingenuous paragraph:
> Historically, both ‘psy’ and neurosciences have been mobilised to justify large-scale social injustices in democratic countries, from confinement to forced sterilisation and hormone treatments to ‘cure’ aberrant sexualities. We must be under no illusions here. However, it doesn’t make sense to denigrate one and eulogise the other. Indeed, often it’s psychologists taking a ‘softer’ approach to human motivation that’s served to ward off more draconian approaches to brain-based difference. For example, when eugenicists such as Carlos Blacker in the UK equated ‘mental deficiency’ with social and economic redundancy after the Second World War in order to advocate for sterilisation, it was psychologists such as Neil O’Connor and Beate Hermelin who argued that psychological and social intervention was always preferable.
It's disingenuous because it says
> it doesn’t make sense to denigrate one and eulogise the other.
but then it immediately goes about setting up associations of badness with the "hard", sciency, "brain" approach (which, y'know, led to eugenics), and of better-ness with the "soft" "psy" approach, which is more "embedded in a historical context".
Let's be clear what this is: It's a power-grab by a humanities person who wants to colonize this new identity-group on behalf of his field.
It's the highbrow left-version of the thing Trump does when he tries to convince "ordinary (white) Americans" that they should go with him, and his ideology. It's a grifter showing up in the hopes of riding you to a career.
The whole article reads like pointless nitpicking to me; there's plenty to criticize about the neurodiversity movement but it's very implausible that most of its advocates wouldn't be very clearly aware of the points OP is trying to make. The overall approach OP is trying to push here seems rather disingenuous, tbh.