Hacker News Reader

Comment by BrokenBuild | Hacker News Reader

I felt this for a long time, but this helps me understand the challenge For instance, Autisim is a wide swath from what I know. Spectrum disorder makes more sense, but people not familiar with this treat Autism as true/false. Its so much more nuanced that that. Same goes for so many things as I get older. I agree with the author, take it easy when someone misuses a term that you hold a specific meaning to.

View on HN

Autism being a spectrum doesn’t mean it is not a true/false. Both can be true. You can either be autistic (somewhere on the spectrum) or not on the spectrum at all.

Can you please elaborate?

To me autism is a spectrum, from statistically non neuro divergent (if there is something like that), to severely disabled (there may be more dimensions)

Neuro Typical is the term you are looking for. And, I agree with you about the spectrum. But people seem to take it more extreme.

Thank you for the term I was missing. What are the "more extreme" elements?

yw. I think people treat is as black/white true/false. Like autisim is mostly the same. Im my experiences, the spectrum is very wide. I heard someone refer to it as flavors which I thought was interesting.

You can be non-autistic, or you can autistic. And if you are autistic, you exist somewhere on the autism spectrum. If you are not autistic, you are nowhere on this spectrum.

From what I learned, a disorder is defined as a condition that significantly impairs a person's daily life. And autism is not always a disorder. That's why "autism spectrum" is considered a better term.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com