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PaulHoule

It is the so-called "autists" who do that. It's become a vanity diagnosis for the rich and powerful.

Look at the case of Kanye West

https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/sick-people-are-sick

There was this study that found that "autists" have 5 different diseases

https://www.princeton.edu/news/2025/07/09/major-autism-study...

If it wasn't something people were flocking to like neurotypicals that is now a valuable part of their identity they'd just be honest and say that a lot of these people would have to give up their diagnosis. Funny enough, before autism became a fad there were 5 different conditions for it in the DSM...

https://spectrumofhope.com/blog/5-different-types-of-autism/

Now we need an "awareness of everybody who isn't autistic" movement.

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You’re arguing semantics here. You seem to acknowledge there are diagnosable issues, both with the subtype article and older DSM, but because it’s under one umbrella currently you want to throw it out instead of acknowledging the issues?

See

https://www.amazon.com/Autism-Matrix-Gil-Eyal/dp/074564399X

One issue is that special ed has taken all the air out of the room for kids who are not thriving in school but don’t have a diagnosis. I went to a PTA meeting where the superintendent completely dismissed any concerns I had about the school but gushed over how the mother of a “special” kid was a partner in his education. (Other parents and teachers did show some sympathy)

If you want to have some rights as a parent you are practically forced to get your child a diagnosis: if they are in the bottom 25% of readers that have ‘Dyslexia’ which similarly seems to have distinct enough subtypes that an honest definition is ‘bottom 25% of readers’

So autism went from being a disabling condition to something that applies to many people who really ought to have “no apparent distress” in their chart because you can’t be different without some reification of the difference.

> It's become a vanity diagnosis for the rich and powerful.

It hasn't "become" anything and it's completely irrelevant to this discussion, take Kanye's behavior up with him.

> There was this study that found that "autists" have 5 different diseases

> Funny enough, before autism became a fad there were 5 different conditions for it in the DSM...

A few things to unpack:

1. autism isn't a disease, it's a disorder (or a difference from average)

2. they identified 4 *subtypes* of ASD, not distinct disorders

3. these subtypes have nothing in common with the conditions that were removed from the DSM-5

4. these are serious issues that have always had profound effects on people's lives, the only difference is that they used to suffer alone, in silence. Increased awareness doesn't make it a "fad" and your snotty, dismissive attitude towards them doesn't belong here or anywhere else

Whether is is a subtype or a disorder is political, which is true about everything in mental health and developmental disability.

Personally I have been hurt because a condition that I suffer from and that probably about 5% of people suffer from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizotypy

This is something I came to understand at the age of 51 where my ability to benefit from that knowledge is limited. I got a psych eval circa 1978 which I'm told was a good quality eval at the time -- they had no idea what I had but knowing what I know now I can attack it with a highlighter and line it up with Meehl's work that was published in 1962 but failed (and still fails) to be translated into practice.

Given that 5-10% of people have this condition, some will be misdiagnosed as "autistic", others will not be diagnosed at all. Kids with my condition will have to wait another 45 years for answers and I blame the "autism" epidemic.

And don't get me started on the other fashionable neurodivergence by which the children of the rich and powerful can get performance enhancing drugs and extra time on the test.

Oops late to the tussle with identarians.

>Andersen suggests that a tradeoff exists in predictive processing, where giving higher weight to prediction errors prevents the detection of false patterns (i.e. apophenia) at the cost of being unable to detect higher level patterns, and giving lower weight to prediction errors allows for the detection of higher level patterns at the cost of occasionally detecting patterns that don't exist, as in delusions and hallucinations that occur in schizotypy.

Personally: I focus on the anhedonia because ime the other schizotypists* (&, less commonly, diagnosed autists) seem to have it, and, as I might have mentioned before, negative affect in combo with some other traits tends to attract bullies/certain sadists/karens/well just friggin identarians and not fellow autists/schizos whatever :)

(*As far as I'm concerned the founding stoics were simply rationalizing their anhedonia, so they needed rich and powerful patrons to take that practice to the masses. Former-day VC and unis, as it were)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45418765

That’s the point, if you use the hashtag #actuallyautistic you just proved you’re #notactuallyautistic.

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