Hacker News Reader

Comment by shazbotter | Hacker News Reader

> People with WS are empathetic, social, friendly and endearing but they tend to have a low IQ, making tasks such as counting money difficult.

> They can feel anxious over stimuli such as the buzzing of a bee, or the texture of food.

Plenty of autistic folks are empathetic, social, and friendly. And many experience stimuli that cause anxiety.

The whole "it's the opposite of autism" doesn't actually help anyone understand and, IMO, reinforces the incorrect idea that autistic people are asocial, emotionless automata.

View on HN

From what I've read there's been a history of people not fitting the strict "Asperger's boy" type traits being excluded from autism diagnoses, so we end up with a narrow, wrong stereotype. Plenty of autistic people who outwardly appear antisocial and plenty who appear quite social. Also worth remembering that autism occurence significantly overlaps with other conditions like ADHD, which may mold the presentation of the traits.

Having worked with some brilliant people with autism, I argue that deficits in cognitive empathy/ inability understand intuitively what other people are thiking in real time is the hallmark of autism.

Moreso than anything about emotions, body language, social skills etc this is the most common trait. It pops up in odd places no matter how much you mask or learn the visible skills.

I think the actual hallmark is one layer deeper: the brain's "input filter" is different and doesn't assign "important" versus "not important" distinctions in the same way as a "neurotypical" brain might. (In fact, the brain just might not be very good at input filtering, period.)

This shows up in a lot of ways: sensory (can't just filter out the tag on the back of your shirt), interests (can't recognize that you're spending just a liiiitle too much time on that model train), food (don't categorize trying new foods as interesting, so you don't), etc. But human socialization is incredibly complex, and while many of us can do decently well at learning it, imagine trying to get a grip on social cues without being able to tell what's relevant and what's not. Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it?

It also is a working theory that well matches my experience with the autistic people in my life. "Deficits in cognitive empathy/ inability understand intuitively what other people are thinking", aka "theory of mind", is a really good description of how things are often difficult, and I think "different stimulus input filter" is a pretty good hypothesis for how it might arise.

As an autistic person, what you say is correct to my experience. I have all sorts of sensory processing issues that all basically are variations on "I can't ignore signals".

Well, autism is sensory integration problem, that's the core thing.

It's the other way round - let's say you have a thousand inputs, and those contain 1 bit/s in a way that you can't pick one or a few inputs that allow you to correctly decode that one bit of information.

Or let's say you have a million inputs, or pixels, and you need to determine if there is a cat in the picture. Selective attention won't work for that either. You can't pick six pixels that allow you to reliably answer this question.

You need dimensionality reduction, that will reduce the data into a manageable amount of abstract features, from which you can pick what features matter to you.

Neurotypical people lack (or only have remnants of) this second filter.

To be clear, I'm not proposing any specific mechanism for or details of the difference in input filtering, just that this seems to be central to the impact of autism. (And, of course, it seems very likely that there is no "one true mechanism" here, just as autism has no "one true presentation".)

> Neurotypical people lack (or only have remnants of) this second filter.

This statement didn't scan for me, did you mean "autistic" instead of "neurotypical"? (And "neurodivergent" doesn't fit, there are many more neurodivergences than just autism.) Everything I know about neurotypicality does indicate something like that "second filter" is present (if possibly distributed).

Both have the selective attention filter. Autistic people also have another, dimensionality reduction filter.

So in autistic people it goes (raw sensory data) --> [dimensionality reduction] --> (latent space of abstract features) --> [selective attention] --> (higher thinking)

While for neurotypical people it goes (raw sensory data) --> [selective attention] --> (higher thinking).

Positing the emergence of an entirely distinct layer of processing is a pretty extreme divergence. It goes counter to a lot of established theory and, in general, seems like too big of a difference. Abstract feature determination hardly seems to be unique to neurodivergence.

I think any common neurodivergences that still result in more-or-less functioning adult brains are going to appear as different weightings or emphases, not entirely different effective structures.

One possible contribution to the behavior you are seeing is that sometimes brain behavior that is missing or ineffective gets lifted to the cognitive (conscious or semiconscious) layer. The cognitive layer of the brain can do, essentially, anything. But it has to work a lot harder than the lower layers, so you notice it a lot more. This can result in "squeaky wheel" syndrome, where one counterintuitively notices only the things that aren't working as well as they could be.

The filter is obviously supposed to be there, it's "neurotypical" people who have a problem.

It means you need to use your higher thinking to do sensory processing. It's like if your GPU had burned out. So you had to find a way to do everything on the CPU. It sucks, and you don't have much capacity left for the actual thinking.

>lack (or only have remnants of)

I'd say have been successfully precluded from developing that.

Instead, they've learned to substitute its functionality with the quasi-religious faith that they are actually any good at inferring what others think. (Take that precept away and see em flail, it's disturbing.)

At population scale, this resolves to either mass violent panic or a society living under the constant self-fulfilling prophecy that fewer things are thinkable than those which are possible, while screaming that it's the other way around. (Instead of, you know, aiming for the parity between interpretation and reality which is necessary to accomplish anything at all.)

The main neurotypical trait is lack of inherent revulsion to delusion.

> delusion

I hope you see the irony some day.

Why, how would that help you?

Because I have empathy for other people (on top of an innate sense of smugness)

Empathy is so where it's at. Especially after a few decades of rats in boxes taught the corporate parrots to bring themselves to say the word.

So, then: when was the last time you expressed empathy, and whom did it help?

And also: when was the last time you expressed empathy for someone you were told you should have no empathy for?

Cmon, give us that sweet, sweet emotional vulnerability. Because, surprise for whoever's not looking: insisting that a legitimate society can be built on the magical belief that performing an emotional emulation somehow equates to giving a damn about someone's actual well-being - that kind of thing is a big part of what's wrong with you guys.

Those are some pretty extreme views. I hope you find a place in this world where you fit in. And I also hope that I am very, very far from that place. It doesn't sound like it would make for a society that matches my values.

This is an extremely typical reaction.

Hey, I understand if what I'm saying is making you upset. Not necessarily why, but let's say I can imagine.

Your countersignal references "a place in the world to fit in", this presumes a strong belief that the world fits together, right?

You're pretty invested in the view that social consensus is essentially fair, and does not, for example, hinge on tragicomical amounts of epistemic sleight-of-hand, or anything like that?

You'd find living with that sort of awareness kinda depressing, over the long run prone to lead you to what they call them bad places?

Yeah, well.

In any case. What it would be helpful of you to be aware of. And I don't usually mean things in that sort of sense anymore - but this time I do mean it in the sense of "do this to make the world a better place" helpful: please remain mindful that the world that gave my "views", if they can even be called that, is the same one that gave you yours. There's no essential difference, beyond the paths we've walked through it (which I'm happy to confirm are different enough that you're completely safe from any harmfulness that you've been so kind as to proactively ascribe to me, thank you very much, jfc)

I don't think our views of the world are similar enough to have any sort of meaningful discussion. Good luck (sincerely).

Our views of acceptable utterances differ, which is basically the same thing, right? All the best to you as well :-)

slowpoke edit: s/expressed/experienced/

Unthinking the unthinkable is typical delusion elision.

No, the core difference is the level of abstraction, and the inability to communicate between people with different levels of abstraction.

The opposite of autism is schizophrenia, where abstract thinking fails completely, and the person is unable to find correct answers to everyday problems.

Neurotypicality is merely a socially acceptable level of schizophrenia.

Autism results when the level of abstraction is significantly higher than the surrounding society:

You can't automatically understand the concrete speech, and you especially can't understand the "implications" that rely on the concrete magical thinking.

People can't understand you, because their level of abstraction isn't sufficient to understand the actual meaning, so they assume you talk about something random.

People overread the gaze of more abstract thinkers, and underread the gaze of less abstract thinkers, due to the difference in the field of view.

Compare Taylor Swift (ultra concrete, easily understood by neurotypical people) vs Rihanna (very abstract)

> The opposite of autism is schizophrenia, where abstract thinking fails completely, and the person is unable to find correct answers to everyday problems.

I've heard this one before, but expressed in causal fallacy terms.

Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it's often right to assume a causal relationship even though you are unaware of the underlying mechanism.

If your criteria for assuming causality are too lax, you are schizophrenic (seeing relationships that aren't there), if they are too strict, you are autistic (missing the obvious).

This is correct, except the last paragraph.

Indeed, corellation equals causation for the schizophrenic.

Which is why you often don't get neurotypical people - when they say A, they often mean to imply B, because they correlate.

You are not too strict when you're autistic, you simply hallucinate less.

Having worked with some brilliant people who don't have autism, I'd argue that their hallmark is deficits in cognitive empathy / inability to understand intuitively what autistic people are thinking in real time.

Not even my theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_empathy_problem

I'm not sure how to describe this phenomenon where one person says $CLASS has $DEFICIENCY and they are respected and understood. Then someone else uses the same phrasing to reframe the statement to mean the same thing from a different perspective and that idea is rejected without explanation as to why.

Allistic people do fail to empathize with autistic people everyday. To suggest otherwise only ignorantly refutes my lived experience. Only gaslighting will convince autistic folk that they should disregard that. (And that happens everyday, sadly.)

But as someone with Asperger’s I can tell you we have a lot of emotional empathy. In fact, we have too much.

Yep. Too much empathy can be a diagnostic signal for folks with autism. (These days Asperger's is now diagnosed as autism and not a separate diagnosis.)

As they saying goes. If you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism.

I feel terrible for wondering this but... is the same true for Down's Syndrome? Because from the outside you wouldn't think so...

Are you asking if people with Down's syndrome are unique people with unique experiences and personalities? Because I hope you'd pretty quickly arrive at "yes, of course people with Down's syndrome are unique people with unique experiences".

I think a more generous reading of their comment would be: do people with Down's syndrome vary significantly in terms of their Down's syndrome symptoms? Or: do they vary significantly in how they experience their symptoms? I don't have enough experience with Down's syndrome to answer either – I've only met a few such people in passing – but would be interested in knowing the answer.

Edit: I feel I should note that, given the phrasing of the comment, I think your interpretation is closer to the original intent – or at least, a clearer reading of what was said – but I wanted to add this in the interest of taking the strongest interpretation of their comment (and to satisfy my personal curiosity).

I was just making a joke in bad taste, since they all physically resemble one another. My assumption is yes, they're all different.

It has just dawned on me that I know someone with Williams Syndrome, and I think this idea of an "opposite" is actually quite valuable.

The title does put 'the opposite of autism' in quotes, to make it clear it's someone's phrasing, not a matter of fact, but the body of the article quotes someone from a foundation for the disease saying:

> "There is a classic autistic profile to which Williams Syndrome is the polar opposite. People can gauge the mood of a crowd and adopt without understanding the nuances of the situation."

That, it seems to me, could be a defensible point. That is not something you'd ever say an autistic person would be good at; it's antithetical.

But more to the point, not everything is an attack on autistic people. These are people trying to make a case that people should care about and be aware of the welfare needs associated with a poorly-understood disorder (which is maybe a hundred times rarer than autism). It would be fair I think to allow them the room to explain that.

An autistic person can absolutely be good at that. It might not be intuitive, but that doesn't mean they can't be good at it.

> But more to the point, not everything is an attack on autistic people

No one said it was. I said it perpetuates a stereotype. I think that's different than an attack, personally. It's careless, not malicious.

But careless can still be irritating.

Yes, an autistic person can train such, and learn to mask (autistic women are especially trained to mask). I suspect that is what happened here with Williams Syndrome, but that is merely my hypothesis. Are there brain scans such as MRI available of people with Williams Syndrone? Those might be interesting to compare.

They are not masking and pretending to be loveable and huggable -- it is very obviously different.

These two videos are by an interviewer who works with special needs kids/adults:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxZ7aZMFHPE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjlwtKAO6yw

As you can see it's also a physical development disorder, and it may bring to mind Downs syndrome more than autism (indeed, the young woman in the first video makes this comparison and understands the difference).

The thing it makes me want to ask a scientist is to what extent does Williams Syndrome change the mirror neurons or their processing.

That’s the opposite of an incorrect stereotype. The idea that autistic people don’t have empathy is false. I’m autistic. Of all the other autistic people I know (about a dozen) all are highly empathetic. To neurotypical people we often don’t appear empathetic but that’s very different.

This disorder actually sounds somewhat adjacent to autism. Many autistic people have intense affective empathy and get overwhelmed by other’s emotions, especially in groups. But often we just shut down, which appears like nothing is registering and we have no empathy.

the term "autistic" pretty much lost all meaning since its an umbrella term for a bunch of very different traits.

It didn't lose all meaning, it just became more difficult to stereotype. The diagnostic criteria for ASD are about its impact on the individual, not how it superficially presents to other people.

The DSM-V combined together a bunch of old disorders with largely overlapping symptoms and no consistent differentiation at the diagnostic level.

Can you give a definition of what autism means then? Because I struggle with the same thing, I don't know what autism is anymore.

It's my impression that people now use the term autism is for pretty much any sort of neurodiversity (and even for traits within neuronormal, e.g. likes math).

For what it's worth Wikipedia says, ASD is:

> a neurodevelopmental disorder by differences or difficulties in social communication and interaction, a need or strong preference for predictability and routine, sensory processing differences, focused interests, and repetitive behaviors.

Would you say this is stereotyping ASD?

I'm not trying to be combative but genuinely want to understand.

> Can you give a definition of what autism means then?

Wikipedia's definition is fine; it's describing the real diagnostic criteria, not a stereotype. The crucial thing is that to a third party, those traits won't always be obvious.

One of the axes upon which autistic people vary is their ability to mask those traits. The stereotype is a person with obvious symptoms who cannot (or at least does not) mask them socially. Presentations of autism frequently include some aspect of masking and some ability to "pass" as non-autistic, but with substantial cost and effort to the individual.

> It's my impression that people now use the term autism is for pretty much any sort of neurodiversity (and even for traits within neuronormal, e.g. likes math).

That may be so, but there are also plenty of people with actual diagnoses (and many others who meet the criteria) who don't fit the traditional image of an autistic person.

That's why I object to the claim that the term "autistic" has "lost all meaning." What's been lost is the ability to tell at a glance who is autistic, because the diagnostic manual now applies the criteria consistently regardless of whether their impact is immediately obvious to a stranger.

My personal experience, after getting diagnosed in my late 30s, has been observing the significant effort I spent masking — trying to pass as non-autistic — and choosing to use that energy differently. In that sense, I've probably become a little bit more obviously-autistic than before, but in a way which makes my life easier and more comfortable.

Basically it means that when you are born you pick a random amound of traits (with different intensity each) at random from a big bag of autistic traits. Of which the most common are the ones you mentioned. Special interests and different body language are guaranteed.

For example I don't have a very strong preference for routine (but it wasn't nice when my parents rearanged furniture in the kids room), I only am overwhelmed by wearing socks a little and sound a lot, like when I was at a hospital and 3 people started playing music from their phones at the same time I had to run away from the room and

I have a wierd body language but I'm very social, though have trouble keeping in touch with people (can be managed using a calendar reminders but it still feels like a chore).

With age you learn to cope with them (some don't do it), like I learned to compensate for my death stare (consiously managing where I look), it is still wierd but less intense. This causes anxiety.

I still don't get it. What are the autistic traits? And are we talking about a clinical diagnosis of autism? The examples you give don't help me really. Nearly 100% of people I know (including myself) have small idiosyncracies that are comparable, i.e. one friend can't leave the house without checking multiple times that the stove is off (I would consider that a mild case of ocd but not autistic), my facial expression often gives people the impression that I'm bored or angry...

It seems almost like you confirm that autism has become to mean neurodiversity (even in the mildest form). Maybe I should phrase the question different, how do we distinguish between autism and other forms of neurodiversity?

> Nearly 100% of people I know (including myself) have small idiosyncracies that are comparable, i.e. one friend can't leave the house without checking multiple times that the stove is off

The difference between an idiosyncrasy and a disability is the degree to which it impairs your life.

My need for routines causes anxiety and meltdowns, even at an advanced age. Hearing people chew causes a flight or fight response. I cannot hold conversations in noisy environments. I need support to deal with those things or else I cannot effectively participate in society. I have a disability.

I have a friend who prefers to never use contractions. She can still function just fine even when she must use "can't". She has an idiosyncrasy.

Indeed, the DSM has three levels got two categories of autism. The three levels represent the different support needed to function. "Requires support", "requires substantial support", and "requires very substantial support".

Thanks that does make it clearer!

> one friend can't leave the house without checking multiple times that the stove is off (I would consider that a mild case of ocd but not autistic)

Friend of the family was the same. One day they were very late for the a opera, and for once his wife managed to convince him he didn't need to check so they didn't get even more delayed.

Once out of the opera, he sees countless missed calls. Turned out they had left the stove on with a pot on it, and the massive amounts of smoke had triggered the alarm. The alarm company had alerted the fire brigade which had resolved it.

According to the firemen their house was saved by the fact that lid was on. Otherwise the flames would have gotten to the fat in the range hood and since their home was mostly made of wood that would have been real bad.

So, the one time he skips his check, their house almost burns down. Guess what he kept on doing...

The suggesting therapy for OCD is to let the patient check the relevant fact once and only once, not none.

Heh, even doctors have trouble with it. For example I have both ASD and STPD. You could not have both in ICD 10 and can in ICD 11. And symptoms overlap.

In my understanding the most definig thing is that you don't get body language support "in hardware" but can manage it "in software" (just you write the software youself with no spec and no way to validate the results).

>how do we distinguish between autism and other forms of neurodiversity?

You cant' fix it anyway, so what's the point.

Because certain autistic traits are will supported by certain therapies and medications and supports, while other neurodiversity is supported by other forms of therapy, medication, and supports.

You cannot fix the root cause, nor should you seek to, but you can support people in making their experience easier.

>when I was at a hospital and 3 people started playing music from their phones at the same time I had to run away from the room

This is an indicator or autism? Because almost everyone would have this reaction. I can't even stand when one person plays music from their phone.

I think you may be projecting your experience as the "normal" one, or not understanding the magnitude of "I had to". It's not like, "this is unpleasant" it's like, "I am in a life threatening situation and I must leave to survive".

If you feel a fight or flight response to someone playing music, then you might be autistic, but that's certainly not the reaction everyone has.

>Can you give a definition of what autism means then? Because I struggle with the same thing, I don't know what autism is anymore.

At a core, it's a sensory integration disorder that makes your life difficult. "Thousands of tabs open in my browser and I don't know which one the sound is coming from".

The ways it manifests itself are many, but usually it's something around not reading social clues that are obvious for normies, taking things literally, not liking specific textures, foods, clothes materials, loud noises, too much unstructured noise and too many people present, either hearing lyrics or the music in the song, that kind of things.

The mixer is broken and when you need to switch the channel or listen to two at the same time you fail at the task at hand.

Not who you were replying to, but I think I understand where you're coming from so I just wanted to contribute my point of view.

I think it's becoming more and more clear that the thing we talk about as Autism doesn't exist as a specific condition, but rather what we currently talk about as Autism is probably a syndrome.

I suspect eventually we'll home in on the various underlying genetic, environmental, and social causes and end up being able to categorise individuals as presenting with Autistic traits/Autism syndrome due to x/y/z rather than somebody being classed as Autistic.

More and more it seems like all these specific disorders are really just certain neurodivergent profiles. It's why people struggle with diagnoses; the traits come in a mixed bag that present with different intensity, or even with "contradictory" traits.

Because they are. Autism is a diagnosis of a collection of symptoms, not a diagnosis of a root cause. We don't know what causes autism, and there may be many many things that do.

I’m autistic and I agree with this. Pretty much any time someone says, “autism is…” they’re wrong. So, saying this disorder is the opposite of a poorly defined cluster of traits is just absurd.

I'm also autistic. This Hacker News thread on autism strikes me as so out there that if I suggested autism was a condition that causes social skill problems without disclosing I have autism I have a feeling someone would shame me for spreading stereotypes on the autistic.

Apparently per Hacker News autism is like being left handed. A minor personality quirk that is completely irrelevant in day to day life.

I think I fall under the autistic umbrella (spectrum). I definitely show empathy but "it is not enough", as my wife usually says. I am responding, it might not be enough but that is all my soul gives 100%.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com