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Comment by forestrywat | Hacker News Reader

"Have a disability" and "broken" are not synonyms.

There's no judgement or moralizing in having a disability. Autism and ADHD like you mentioned are disabilities.

But the people who have them are not broken. Having a disability means some part of your life is more difficult. But that's very very different from you as a person are broken.

For example, if you can fix the environment and the person can now function equally to someone without a disability, then maybe it's the environment that's broken. If you can fix the social expectation and suddenly the person can function equally, then maybe the society is broken. Even if you cannot accommodate the person's needs, insinuating they are broken is not a great framing -- it creates a sense of pity rather than constructively looking at means to support them.

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What is strange about the disability is when neurotypicals attack autists. It takes less then 1 second for the negative bias to trigger.

If you see a person without legs, do you tell him he is a piece of shit because he can't run? So why harass autistic people?

That's just people though, if you walk around with a scar on your head you'll see lots of knee-jerk immediate reactions. Some people are able to mediate those initial reactions and be kind, others just go with it and treat people poorly. Yes - some people are a'holes, and treat those without legs poorly.

The same is true of basically anyone that doesn't fit into what you typically see - there's always some people that will treat them poorly. It's unfortunate, but was probably adaptive during our evolution, and something we just have to deal with today.

> If you see a person without legs, do you tell him he is a piece of shit because he can't run? So why harass autistic people?

If you have not yet realized it, here is a black pill for you: most people are deeply manipulative and bullying basically all the time. For example nearly all social rules that are commonly accepted in society are basically about which kinds of manipulations and bullying of other people are accepted by most people vs not.

With this in mind, the answer to your question

> So why harass autistic people?

is trivial: because it is currently socially mostly accepted.

Yeah I agree. I think autists pretty much live in a dystopia.

They have to hide themselves because it's socially acceptable to harass them.

It's been proven multiple times that neurotypicals refuse to interact with autists automatically https://www.nature.com/articles/srep40700

Their experience of the world is a disorder "to be cured"

If the future is here but not evenly distributed then the dystopia is here but not everyone lives in it. Some maintain it.

You went from "Neurotypical Peers are Less Willing to Interact with Those with Autism based on Thin Slice Judgments" to "refuse to interact with autists".

What exactly are we doing here?

You are right, thats not what I should have written there.

> If you have not yet realized it, here is a black pill for you: most people are deeply manipulative and bullying basically all the time. For example nearly all social rules that are commonly accepted in society are basically about which kinds of manipulations and bullying of other people are accepted by most people vs not.

This is, in fact, not true.

> For example nearly all social rules that are commonly accepted in society are basically about which kinds of manipulations and bullying of other people are accepted by most people vs not.

Can you elaborate on that?

Name a social rule

Unspoken rules have no name, they are learned implicitly

State a social rule

What else but pity should I feel toward non verbal autistic people?

Compassion?

Love? Affection? Friendship? Camaraderie? Care?

All the stuff you feel towards any other human?

> Have a disability" and "broken" are not synonyms

They really are. Like, you can alter the environment all you want but someone who needs glasses to see has broken eyes. Is it super common and do we have a cure? Yes and yes, but it's still, you know, not working. Disabled. Busted. Broken. Whichever word you pick isn't going to change the reality.

"That person is disabled" and "that person is broken" fundamentally are different. You are supposed to fix broken things. We don't fix disabilities. We can support them, treat them, assist them.

Yes, having a disability is hard. But the person is not broken.

> We don't fix disabilities

What? Why not?

Some we can and do. But many are not things that can be.

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