While moderate to severe autism is bad, for sure, I'll admit that I simply prefer people with mild autism to normal people. One little anecdote that I reflect on often: one of our sons was delayed in language, and to get him Speech and Language Therapy, we had to go see a Childhood Development *Expert*. She spent the entire time looking for symptoms of autism. Gems included that he knows the names of too many colours, and he likes looking at the wheels of cars turn. But what really got me is that when she gave him an (easy) shape-sorter, he did it and tried to get another one instead of looking at her for 'approval'. That was when the sperg began to hate.
The autistic gf stuff is people who want an innocent, dependent, perhaps even childlike girl, but conceal it in the disguise of gassing up Autists. They don't actually know what it's like to endure life with autists. In real life, Autistic girls are not only going to make your life miserable with their inconsiderate mentality, their neuroticism, and their social retardation, but they are also not attractive! "Autism face" is real and is not attractive, and furthermore Autists across the board have "mannish" features from childhood onwards. There are some cute ones, but overall they are an uglier and more facially masculinized group. They're also usually fat, in my experience, which is strange because I don't notice this trend in Autistic men.
I think it's more that they want a girl who likes the same nerdy things they do. It's really just the desire for a compatible partner most people have.
Autists pay less attention to social interactions, so of course they are going to spend less time making themselves look good. You notice it more in women because you're not attracted to men and the baseline level of investment in personal appearance is higher in women.
Depends what you mean by "autistic", but there are plenty of conventionally attractive aspie women. They just aren't obvious until you get into a 30-minute conversation with them, as opposed to aspie men where you can often tell from one-minute interactions.
I very much thank you for writing this, Seb. As someone himself afflicted, people who pretend that ASD is anything other than a tremendous misfortune, to both the afflicted as well everyone in their intimate circle, are exceptionally irritating when not outright disgusting. Sensory impairment certainly can and does lead to increased invention, as was the case with the compositions of Beethoven once he lost his hearing. But this by no means was worth it for Beethoven himself. His deafness brought him both great physical discomfort and robbed him of most of his professional and artistic opportunities. He died deeply lonely and unhappy, of cirrhosis. He would've done anything to be relieved of his deafness.
Autism is no different. It is a moral obligation to seek treatment and a cure. Sleeplessness, gastrointestinal distress, motor-co-ordination impairment, communication impairment, fucking epilepsy, and whatever the rest of the grab bag of horrors that come with the condition, are not worthwhile tradeoffs to anything. Not even at the highest level of functioning. Nor is this a problem which is even partially alleviated by "raising awareness" and "increased acceptance", since neither is even remotely a serious problem for those with ASD.
> Sensory impairment certainly can and does lead to increased invention
You're contradicting yourself. In another comment, you said that autism is "entirely negative in even its milder forms". And here, you just said a statement which suggests the negation of your other statement.
If the disadvandages are at least an order of magnitude larger than the advantages I see no reason not to say something is entirely negative, and we should seek to rid ourselves of it. Especially given that we ourselves are not the ones bearing the greatest misfortune. The countless autists left of the Bell Curve lead much harsher and lonelier lives than ourselves. Many literally cannot even speak for themselves, and live as wards to exhausted caretakers. We owe it to them to find more effective treatments, and someday a cure.
Not to mention that misfortune leading to the creation of great works is not remotely a reason we shouldn't seek to remove or even alleviate it to the best of our abilities. Art Spiegelman would rather his ghostbrother survived to adulthood and his mother hadn't committee suicide than to have created Maus. Beethoven drank himself to death because deafness made his life so lonely and limited, and he certainly would've rather had his hearing back, regardless of what it meant for him as a composer.
Self-hating spergs like you are exceptionally irritating and outright disgusting. Just cuz you’re a “tremendous misfortune”, doesn’t mean we all are. Buddy, everyone in my intimate circle is on the spectrum too, and contrary to the narrative you’re projecting it allows us to connect in beautiful ways.
Your last sentence is stupidly wrong as well. Yes, awareness and acceptance are very serious problems for those with ASD. For one, it would stop pseudoscientific drivel like this from being published lmao. But fr, most of the issues with high functioning autism absolutely come from the way society treats us. Bullying, exclusion, isolation, general poor mental health are the most obvious issues, and it’s pretty clear how *acceptance* would alleviate them all. And because social interactions/interpersonal relationships are so important in life, the social-communication struggles bleed over to everything else.
This is undeniably a large part of why the employment rate for autistic adults is so abysmal. We’re not wired for playing the office politics and the interview icebreakers definitely gatekeep many qualified, competent autists bc of arbitrary shit like eye contact. This has deffo happened to me, and it’s why I’m currently on disability services to help me find a job. Just imagine how much better the world would be for *everyone* with more autism awareness, acceptance, and accommodation. I know plenty of smart, talented, driven, creative, passionate autists (and other NDs) who could contribute great gifts to the world, but they’re blocked from reaching their full potential by these retarded neurotypical norms. I stg, I’ll just be an entrepreneur.
I think I’ve made my point. Brother, speak for yourself. Maybe it’s a moral obligation to seek treatment and a cure for the ones living in group homes all their lives, and I don’t deny that even the high functioning “Hollywood autism” comes with a lot of L’s. But it is a worthwhile tradeoff for a lot of us, your self-loathing is far from universal my guy.
>Just cuz you’re a “tremendous misfortune”, doesn’t mean we all are. Buddy, everyone in my intimate circle is on the spectrum too, and contrary to the narrative you’re projecting it allows us to connect in beautiful ways.
You literally admit to being unemployed and on disability in this very post. A post which is exceptionally bitter in content. The difference is that you blame everybody else for their response to your affliction as the source of your misfortune, as opposed to me, who just blames the affliction itself. My plan requires alleviating, and ideally eliminating the affliction. Yours requires reprogramming everyone else to fight against the instincts they were born with because you don't have them for yourself, so therefore nobody else should have a right to it.
>But fr, most of the issues with high functioning autism absolutely come from the way society treats us.
Is the high-functioning qualifier so you don't have to tell the Holguin Family it was society's fault that their six-year-old nonverbal child got flattened by a Nissan Altima because he didn't know that traffic was supposed to be something he should avoid?
Because you're still wrong, but you'd figure having to disqualify the most impacted of our cohort just to make your point would cause you to ponder that your idea is in fact dumb.
>Just imagine how much better the world would be for *everyone* with more autism awareness, acceptance, and accommodation.
I can imagine something better: a world without autism!
“You literally admit to…” what’s this fallacy called, a red herring or non sequitur? I said I connect well with a cool social circle and you leaped to my unemployment. Neither precludes the other.
My post is only bitter because your comment was exceptionally bitter in content. The actual *difference* is that you’re wasting your time hating yourself and trying to tear everyone down with you, whereas, as you can see, I’m attempting to work with what God gave me. And working within the system doesn’t preclude simultaneously advocating to change it.
YOU’RE the one with the affliction my good guy, not me, I said to stop projecting your self-hatred. Yes, I do “blame everybody else” because everybody else is to blame for their prejudice, *I* didn’t do a thing but be born. You may as well call my skin color an “affliction” as well, since I also get discriminated against due to that. But, as you can see, I refuse to lay down and rot over life being unfair.
Please do explain to me what “reprogramming” I advocated for, which “instincts” I’m fighting against, and what I’m denying people a “right” to, or better yet, stop putting words in my fucking mouth. The most you could glean from my comment is endorsing hiring people based on their actual skill at the job, as opposed to how well they play a popularity contest. I thought a blind meritocracy was supposed to be what we’re striving towards? Clearly, you believe that autists don’t have a right to self-love just cuz you don’t have it for *yourself* 🤷🏾♀️.
Yes, the high functioning qualifier is for me to speak on two different things, because, surprise surprise, they’re not the fucking same and no sweeping generalizations apply to the entire spectrum. This is exactly why the separate diagnosis “Asperger’s Syndrome” used to exist. Idk why you’re trying to guilt(?) me, this entire paragraph of yours is so stupid and pointless.
Are you trying to say that high functioning can’t be distinguished or that we have to be treated the same all over the spectrum 🙄? I wouldn’t want a low-functioning child myself precisely because I’m aware that the low end of the spectrum is just plain bad with no benefit. Meanwhile, me and my friends at least get cool shit like creativity, higher than average IQ, spacial intelligence, math skills, free(r) thinking/resistance to groupthink, STEM aptitude, artistic ability, hyperfocus, photographic memory, etc, as compensation for our social-emotional struggles.
YOU’RE still wrong and your idea is dumb, what’s dumb and wrong is lumping us all in the same basket as if autism affects us all the same. No shit my homie who’s paying her own way as a network engineer is not in need of your “”treatment”” like an incapacitated nonverbal kid stuck in a group home forever, why are you so desperate to put words in my mouth and pretend they are? You wanted to lump us all together so no shit I’m just speaking on what applies to me. Unlike you, I’m not tryna speak for the entire spectrum.
I can imagine something even better! A world without self-loathing and sweeping generalizations. If YOU wanna be “cured” of your autism and assimilate into neurotypical hegemony, I support your right 100%. Just, again, stop fucking projecting your self hatred onto every sperg who’s ever sperged, what you have no right to do is make that judgement for all of us.
>The most you could glean from my comment is endorsing hiring people based on their actual skill at the job, as opposed to how well they play a popularity contest. I thought a blind meritocracy was supposed to be what we’re striving towards?
Hiring people based on meritocratic standardized testing would be a much better way to do things! But existing civil rights law prevents this because it leads to inequality of outcome between groups at the rate to which they are hired. I don't mind this personally, because I actually value freedom of association.
And social impairment doesn't just cause problems in the application process. It causes problems any time social interaction is part of the job. This is less of a problem in some places than others, but there's no job in which a lack of social lubrication is a net benefit. It comes to bite every time you have to interact with coworkers, supervisors, bosses, underlings, or customers.
>Yes, the high functioning qualifier is for me to speak on two different things, because, surprise surprise, they’re not the fucking same and no sweeping generalizations apply to the entire spectrum.
They are, in fact, the same! One's just a more severe version of the other. Hence why they were merged into the same diagnosis with greater levels of severity. It's not like they merged unrelated conditions together, like Alphabet People did with autogynephilia and homosexual transexuality.
>Meanwhile, me and my friends at least get cool shit like creativity, higher than average IQ, spacial intelligence, math skills, free(r) thinking/resistance to groupthink, STEM aptitude, artistic ability, hyperfocus, photographic memory, etc, as compensation for our social-emotional struggles.
ASD does NOT cause increased intelligence, in any form. It's only ever been shown to correlate with below-average intelligence relative to neurotypicals, and even relative to the autist's neurotypical family members:
You would be smarter with neurotypical brain architecture. As would I, and everyone else with ASD. The cool things you listed all exist in neurotypicals, particularly at the right end of the Bell Curve.
>I can imagine something even better! A world without self-loathing and sweeping generalizations.
Such a world could never exist. People will always have reasons, legitimate or otherwise, to hate themselves. And generalizations are also good things because they're what allow people to make sense of far more of the world than could be made sense of otherwise. Indeed, the resistance to making generalizations, which autism exacerbates, is in fact also a bad thing and a big part of the problem of modern society. Stereotype accuracy is in fact one of the most replicable findings in the social sciences, so not being able to pick up on them more easily is a sign of intellectual impairment:
So are you going to take your L and admit to wrongly putting words in my mouth? Or are you gonna explain to me what “reprogramming” I’m forcing and which “rights” I’m tryna deny to people?
I don’t support that part of civil rights law, in case you’re trying a gotcha. I despise credentialism, arbitrary gatekeeping, and DEI.
Hmm, so you didn’t understand that I was *comparing* a loan to an investment, but you can equate two disparate things when it suits you. NO, they are NOT the same, and you’re contradicting yourself within two sentences. If one’s “just more severe”, then by definition they can’t be the same. This is like equating a kid’s pickup basketball game to the NBA. The difference in degree is what makes all of the difference. No, it’s not the same, which is precisely why it’s the autism *spectrum*, none of my friends need around-the-clock care, so high and low functioning are not the fucking same if we’re living completely different lives. I see you’re desperate to make false equivalencies, but even Stevie Wonder could see through it.
Here’s some more research for you, you’re being misleading in measuring “intelligence”:
> A suite of recent studies has reported positive genetic correlations between autism risk and measures of mental ability. These findings indicate that alleles for autism overlap broadly with alleles for high intelligence, which appears paradoxical given that autism is characterized, overall, by below-average IQ. This paradox can be resolved under the hypothesis that autism etiology commonly involves enhanced, but imbalanced, components of intelligence. This hypothesis is supported by convergent evidence showing that autism and high IQ share a diverse set of convergent correlates, including large brain size, fast brain growth, increased sensory and visual-spatial abilities, enhanced synaptic functions, increased attentional focus, high socioeconomic status, more deliberative decision-making, profession and occupational interests in engineering and physical sciences, and high levels of positive assortative mating.
Autism absolutely does correlate with the buffet I cooked. Autists are over represented in STEM for a reason. Why isn’t every spergy software engineer outcompeted and replaced by a high IQ NT then? And if you’re gonna apply this logic to “the cool things”, then I can also say that the downsides you listed all exist in neurotypicals, particularly at the left end of the Bell Curve. Ik you wanna desperately pull us all down into your pity party with you, but you can’t just scapegoat autism for everything bad in your life while simultaneously trying to separate it from the good, that’s illogical and inconsistent.
And likewise, autists will always exist, so you’d better learn to cope. 🤷🏾♀️
Buddy, the problem with your generalizations is that they’re not even true or backed by science, it’s clear as day that you as well as the writer of this article are simply broadcasting your own personal grievances dressed up as something serious. Being inaccurate is a way bigger sin than being offensive, and I never said or implied otherwise. “They are, in fact, the same!” when talking about engineers and group home residents is objectively incorrect, and only serves your selfish self-pity.
Buddy literally none of this is objective, it's just your own self loathing combined with "well that's just the way society is so to alleviate suffering autists should go quietly into the night" you could say that about ANY minority group but it would be pretty fucked up no? The way to alleviate suffering isn't to eradicate the smaller group unless you're some sort of eugenicist, and if you are that's a pretty shit worldview.
People with disabilities are not a race. That's a psychotic faculty-lounge brainworm that no serious person should regard with anything but contempt. If a disability can be alleviated, or ideally eliminated, humanely, we're under no moral obligation to keep it around out of some nauseating intersectional sentimentality. We're closer to that point than you think with the rise of technologies such as sperm editing, gene therapy, and other such proactive measures to help bring an end to ASD, Tay-Sachs, sickle cell,* and all sorts of other hereditary illnesses and disabilities we can save the next generation from worrying themselves over. We have no reason not to be thankful of our good fortune and take advantage.
* Especially sickle cell, which has seen tremendous progress:
I think it's largely due to a combination of the fanatical sensitivity we've cultivated in our society, as well the fact that the real Hitler receives far less attention than the iconic Hitler. To any of those who actually study Hitler the man, particularly his pre-celebrity life, his eating habits, his inability to get a real job or secure a career before joining the army, his downright comical ineptitude with the opposite sex (he didn't have anything so much as resembling a girlfriend until the age of thirty-seven, years after he'd become one of the most famous men in Weimar Germany), descriptions of his behaviors from friends and family, I legitimately don't know how anyone with knowledge of ASD wouldn't see their sperg sensors flare up.
I also think it's a matter of many of the people who know best not wanting to see themselves in some of the most horrible people to ever live. An understandable impulse, but also not one worthy of respect. We must not run from the truth. Especially since, should we develop better treatments, or even a cure, we might just prevent the next Hitler, the next Adam Lanza, or even the next Christian Weston Chandler from committing whatever horrible, sexual-frustrationally-motivated crimes they'd be much less likely to committ had they greater neurotypicality.
I can't imagine Hitler being nearly as bad had he enough executive functionship to land himself a wife and a real job in his twenties or thirties like normal men of his age managed to do just fine. He may not have even pursued politics at all. He certainly wouldn't have chosen national suicide purely because his brainrotter ideology told him endless racewar was just the way the ecosystem worked, and the Russians just happened to have won this particular racewar with the Germans, so he might as well accept total defeat rather than postpone the inevitable. For that reason alone, we owe it to ourselves to pursue a cure.
In his final days, you really get the sense that Hitler acted like a school shooter. There was no human being he had a genuine connection to, and he must have known well what a failure he had been in his early life. Not even being the Fuhrer can fill this void, so you might as well burn the whole country down and declare that Germans are an inferior race after all.
Autism and political views: It may well be right that we lean left on average. However this could be due to demographic factors - autistic people tend to be younger, poorer, less likely to be employed particularly in a well-paying job, less likely to be married, etc - all correlates with left-wing voting patterns. Now among young men especially there are right-wing counternarratives to all this, for example the Manosphere, but for autistics we are what could be classified as a minority or "marginalised" group in society and as such there's always the attractive left-wing narrative that all our problems are due to neurotypical "oppression".
Rather than tending towards either left or right, my observations are that we autistics veer towards the extremes in general. I've been terminally online for almost 20 years now and pretty much every political extremist movement (implying judgement in some cases, but generally just movements comfortably outside the Overton window), whether Tankies, neo-Nazis, libertarians, HBDers, and more tend to have a very disproportionate amount of us in their ranks. Not just my observation but it's a well known meme within their movements aswell.
Related to that, on the point about propaganda, the reasoning on this one seems a bit weak to me. I wouldn't strongly say its untrue, I'd need stronger hard evidence either way, but it feels easy to make an opposing argument that, say, autistic people are less susceptible to propaganda because we tend to be oblivious to social cues (propaganda will ofcourse be targeted at the neurotypical majority) and are known for 'thinking outside the box'.
Autism and genius: No doubt IQ as an independent variable is very important here, but as a matter of sampling studies of IQ and success in life are going to be looking at outcomes of more or less "normal people" - not sampling the very few genius scientists, innovators, political or business leaders that make outsized impacts.
Just to take the example of Elon, based on the biographies and accounts I've read of him he's certainly in the top few % for intelligence, but he doesn't strike me as an absolute prodigy in any particular field. He likely has people working for him who are smarter in that respect than he is. No, what makes Elon so different is his pretty good intelligence *combined with* more autism-specific traits like his obsessive focus on special interests (such as his lifelong obsession with space), out of the box thinking ("First principles" approach as he calls it), lack of empathy for his subordinates in preference for the bigger picture of helping humanity, and near-total disregard for public opinion and conventional wisdom. These traits are especially important with regards to technological innovation, since as both history and current events show people are default sceptical of the capacity for progress in such areas (after all, for almost all of human history technology either didn't change, or changed so slowly that you wouldn't notice major change within a single lifetime).
Is autism bad? I think there's a massive distinction between low-functioning autism and high-fuctioning, especially Aspergers, here. Low-functioning -- yeah it's pretty clearly a net negative both for the person themselves and family/wider society. Aspergers is much more mixed, though I do feel it's something of a Pareto 20/80 split.
Fellow sperg here, I absolutely agree with you. Don’t forget this guy’s demonstrably false claim of the double empathy theory being “cope” when it’s empirically validated by several studies. He didn’t even attempt to cite data or evidence for this one, he just talked from his ass. It really looks like he just has some personal gripe with autists that he’s desperate to dress up as reality.
autism IS bad. no one who really suffers from the disorder would crave it. no one who really understands the inherent overwhelm would clamor to label their kid with it.
Run Aella's survey with "Asperger's" and your results will flip
And the idea that propaganda spotting is a social skill needs explanation. To me, propaganda relies primarily on social signalling to do the convincing. It's implications, halo effects, and poor systems thinking all the way down. Autistic folks are less vulnerable to that bag of tricks, if only because the propagandists are targeting neurotypical folks .
Even if autism is a risk factor for terrorism, that doesn't say anything about their vulnerability to propaganda. Some people naturally gravitate towards extreme views and don't need to be exposed to propaganda to adopt them. Ted Kaczynski wasn't propagandized into the ideology that he adopted, like the average true believer in communism or egalitarianism typically is. Rather, he personally invented that ideology based on his own individual preferences. Autistic school shooters and people like Elliot Rodgers are typically motivated by narcissism, disagreeableness, low social status, and sexual frustration, rather than being brainwashed by propaganda.
Autists are almost certainly less susceptible to corporate propaganda than regular people. They're not going to think less of you if you don't wear branded clothes. They're not going to dislike you if you refuse to smoke cigarettes in an environment like 1920s America where it's being heavily propagandized and all the popular people are doing it.
Most terrorists are nothing like Ted Kaczynski. He was an actual lone wolf who came up with his own ideas as to who to target and kill, and was smart and withdrawn enough to get away with it for almost two decades. He only got exposed because he had a brother who both put it together and was willing to rat him out.
"Autistic school shooters and people like Elliot Rodgers are typically motivated by narcissism, disagreeableness, low social status, and sexual frustration, rather than being brainwashed by propaganda."
Have you never once bothered to study any biographical info of actual terrorists? "Narcissistic, disagreeable, sexually frustrated, and low in social staus" describes just about everyone from Umar Abdulmutallab* to Ted Kaczynski.** The likes of Elliot Rodger, Eric Harris, and Dylan Klebold are exactly the sort of people who join terrorist organizations if such opportunity presents itself. It's just they, being American infidels who weren't interested in socialism, didn't have those outlets from which to vent their homicidality.
* Youngest of his father's sixteen kids. Refused to take advantage of his family position because his father is a banker who charges interest. Father refused to allow him to get married until he attained a masters, which actually matters when you sincerely believe fornication is a sin.
** Extremely high-Q autist from a working-class family with no friends. Never had a girlfriend and possibly died a virgin. Blamed his problems on skipping up grades in school, claiming he was never bullied before such, which is just so self-evidently preposterous and wrong that it almost distracts you from the extreme narcissism of the statement.
I could see skipping grades in school and being bullied being the start of his problems. Of course most people who get bullied don’t become terrorists.
The more likely problem was that he wasn't skipped enough. If he indeee tested 167 at twelve, then his adult-normed IQ would've been in the mid 120s. Meaning he was already noticeably smarter than the average EuroAm college graduate, and should've just gone straight to a local college. Instead, from what I read, he only skipped the sixth grade after taking that test. The average EuroAm seventh grader only has an adult-normed IQ of 85. So rather than place him with intellectual peers, he was placed with a bunch of people who were bigger and more developed than him, as well as being much dumber on average. Ted Kaczynski, being a sincere believer in insane leftist ideology, believed his problems to be the opposite of what they really were.
Now, his adult-tested prison IQ was considerably lower, but still quite high. 137. That's in the top one-percent of intelligence, and assuming it more accurate, meant that by the time he was twelve, his adult-normed IQ was in the mid 110s. That's already smarter than the average EuroAm adult. He still should've skipped much more than a just the sixth grade at twelve.
If you just define autism as a personality which "optimizes too much for accuracy and dimensionality, and not enough for speed and convenience", then of course it will be a negative trait, since the qualification "too much" makes this true by definition.
Yet, as you point out, there are some benefits to this style of thinking. Autism correlates with intelligence. It's not hard to imagine that a cautious and accurate style of information processing is helpful for achieving certain goals.
If you imagine people who are very low in autistic traits, they would probably be overly impatient for novelty and make hasty decisions based on incomplete information. These people probably wouldn't be very successful either.
In general, the people who are best in some field are typically not those who are the most extreme in any one specific trait. For instance, height is very important in basketball, but the best basketball players are not the tallest. This is not just because traits have diminishing or, after a certain point, often negative returns. It is also because, unless the field is very specialized, outstanding success depends on multiple traits, and the correlation between these is always less than one.
> Some autistic people hate confrontation and are two-faced/evasive, while other autistic people are extremely direct and confrontational.
every autistic person i’ve known in the former category has also been borderline or borderline-adjacent, so at least anecdotally it seems to me that directness is the autistic default
Distinctions need to be drawn. Autism is just too broad a term. I never thought I had it because my interests weren't narrow.
At school (adult education) teachers are impressed by my "social skills", which they confuse with being able to talk properly, because they haven't come across a sufficiently intelligent autist before (late diagnosis was probably also helpful in that regard).
I have the suspicion it's being diagnosed rather liberally, does anyone know anything more useful?
I think autism is the main cause of underachievement for people who are cognitively more capable than the average (to a relevant degree). Doesn't mean everyone with autism traits or even a diagnosis is at all useful for anything.
Level 1: Can largely function independently, but the odds are stacked against their doing such disproportionately to theirvintelligence, all the more so in so psychotically behavior-conscience that every damn place that matters is infested with HR ladies. If male, will have extreme difficulty finding or maintaining heterosexual companionship. If female, is highly likely to be a massive hoe, and to as well have difficulty maintaining worthwhile romantic relationships. This is still the only level with anything resembling success in sexual intimacy.
Level 2: Cannot function independently. Has substantial difficulties in communicating with others, with a limited and unusual vocabulary. Sensory issues are sharper and more burdensome. Will have narrow areas of interest and be extremely difficult and burdensome to care for, but still may be capable of learning something useful to do.
Level 3: Will be lucky to learn a few words or phrases of language with targeted, early intervention. All the horrors of Level 2 are at their worst here.
The issue is that the mental-health intelligentsia is resistant to talking about afflictions with frankness and accuracy, because crazy people insist that being truthful about psychoimpairment is "stigmatising". No! Stigmatization isn't even in the top twenty of the worst burdens of autism. People who say otherwise should be whipped in the teeth with a beltbuckle. We shouldn't even be wasting our times with a second of this nonsense.
I said "likely" as in reference to the neurotypical woman's likelihood of being a massive hoe. As in women like Aella, or for that matter any lot of the women who become strippers or porn stars. That's perfectly compatible with their being other such women in the cohort who abandon sex entirely.
It ain’t our fault you have scientific illiteracy and impaired logic 😂
Don’t you know that anecdotes aren’t arguments? Most women, most sex workers, and most autists are not like Aella, which is precisely why she got so much attention for her outlier lifestyle. Then where is your evidence for “any lot of the women” who become str*ppers or 🌽 stars, and what’s your proof this is due to their innate hypersexuality as opposed to confounding factors? For example, autists (and other disabled/ND ppl) having a much harder time holding a regular job definitely makes many of them turn to the sex trade.
What the evidence DOES show, however, is that autistic people in general, especially autistic women, are way more likely to be asexual.
> …autistic males show about 8.25% asexuality (compared to 0.8% in neurotypical males), while autistic females show about 22% asexuality (compared to 1.5% in neurotypical females).
> …the autistic groups also reported higher rates of homosexuality, bisexuality, and pansexuality; and lower rates of heterosexuality. Autistic women also show the greatest variety in sexual orientations in general.
I've seen evidence autistic people are more likely to have incredibly high sex drives or incredibly low ones. That doesn't equate to being non monogamous though so unless you have some data to back this up I'm forced to assume you're making a massive leap.
This is so hilariously incorrect. I'm autistic. My male partner is autistic. We've been together nearly 10 years monogamously, we have kids, he works, we have a house etc. It causes barely any problems and gives advantages. You're describing situations where the autist is in an environment that doesn't favour their skillset. Change that and you'll flourish.
Why would I? My giving the odds of what generally happens doesn't foreclose the possibility of exceptions at the highest level of functioning some people have happy lives. I indeed specifically say independent functioning, and even romantic success, are a possibility at ASD Level 1.
And this is in spite of autism, not because of it. The people with ASD who succeed, personally or professionally, do so because of high I.Q.s, assuming they indeed have high I.Q.s, which most, even at Level 1, don't. ASD is even now correlated with below-average I.Q. Those people are the real face of autism. Not Elon Musk.
You weren’t just “giving the odds of what generally happens” you disingenuous sophist.
Lmfao yesterday you literally just told me that high and low functioning are “the same thing”, and now suddenly “at the highest level of functioning some people have happy lives” — which is it?
Your entire presence in this comment section has been tryna pull us all down and make ALL autists out to be as miserable as you. And then you become speechless at being confronted with living proof otherwise. The thing about making such sweeping generalizations is that it only takes a single example to prove you wrong.
No, Alicia’s success definitely is because of her autism. She wouldn’t be able to connect with her partner in the same way if either of them were neurotypical.
And I linked the evidence showing that, at the exact same time, autism also correlates with many measures of intelligence, do you need to see it again? Lmfao, it’s absolutely RICH that you repeatedly attempt to insult my intellect and literacy while simultaneously demonstrating how stunted you are in yours. Here’s a shorter clip for your baby brain:
> A suite of recent studies has reported positive genetic correlations between autism risk and measures of mental ability. *These findings indicate that alleles for autism overlap broadly with alleles for high intelligence, which appears paradoxical given that autism is characterized, overall, by below-average IQ.* This paradox can be resolved under the hypothesis that autism etiology commonly involves enhanced, but imbalanced, components of intelligence.
I suspect this is connected to the “spikey” skill set that many autists have. But clearly you didn’t get any of that intelligence 🤷🏾♀️ so you cope by telling yourself and others that it’s cuz of your autism as opposed to you just being dropped as a kid.
>You weren’t just “giving the odds of what generally happens” you disingenuous sophist.
Isn't the whole point of "sophistry" supposed to be that it's disingenuous? Why emphasize the adjective with its own synonym?
>Lmfao yesterday you literally just told me that high and low functioning are “the same thing”
They are. One's just more severe than the other. It's like the difference between fevers. Some can be high in severity, some can be low; but it's all different versions of the same symptom, and it's better to just not have the symptom.
>and now suddenly “at the highest level of functioning some people have happy lives” — which is it?
Yeah. In spite of their autism. Not because of it. That still puts those with ASD below those of neurotypicals, who are by every measure, personally or professionally, likelier to have happier lives. Your ostensible point could just as well be made inversely. "Why would you wanna be neurotypical? There's plenty of them that lead miserable, unhappy lives!" This is about average outcomes. When one side has much worse average outcomes than the other, this is not invalidated by these averages own minority outcomes.
>Your entire presence in this comment section has been tryna pull us all down and make ALL autists out to be as miserable as you.
I'm not particularly miserable. I've managed some degree of decent life for myself, and certainly could've been much less fortunate. I'm just not fool enough to think I'm a better person because of an impairment to my ability to communicate with, and understand the communication of, others.
I'm certainly less miserable than you, seeing as how my self worth isn't threatened by there being people who recognize my impediment as a bad thing. To which I must dedicated several lengthy comments to the attempted refutation of.
>And then you become speechless at being confronted with living proof otherwise.
What, yourself? You're unemployed, on disability, and have been arguing for days with a stranger that your inability to get along with others is society's fault, and a matter of a lack of raised awareness and a focus on the wrong things in the professional world. Outcomes like yours are just one of many reasons why ASD is associated with negativity and misfortune by the general public. Because so many end up like you, or worse.
Or maybe your friend Alicia? Hey, if she's actually doing well, and not just pretending to, that's all well and good. But the fact that this is by far the minority outcome, and that for most, the story of ASD is one of loneliness and involuntary celibacy, shows how silly it is to point to the minority outcome as proof of everything being fine. The average outcomes are what matters. And on average, those with ASD does worse on all fronts. What's more, those who don't do poorly succeed because they have high general intelligence, which would've been higher if they hadn't have had ASD. Attributing their success to ASD is like attributing Stevie Wonder's success to his blindness. Blindness still makes being a musician harder. It's just less of an impediment there than it is in many other fields.
On the empathy question, I recall reading that NPD correlates with low emotional empathy and typical to high cognitive empathy, whereas ASD correlates with low cognitive empathy and typical to high emotional empathy. Nonetheless, this sounds like cope from pop psychologists
"Affective empathy" seems what Simon Baron-Cohen call compassion.
SBC: "Bloom claims that I have claimed that people with Asperger Syndrome have difficulties in both cognitive and affective empathy. In fact, my book specifically argues against this: that people with Asperger Syndrome have impaired cognitive empathy but intact affective empathy. People with Asperger Syndrome frequently stand up for the underdog, against injustice. They may struggle to pick up social nuances, but they do care that others shouldn’t suffer." https://www.bostonreview.net/forum_response/simon-baron-cohen-response-against-empathy-baron-cohen/
Basically, autistics are low empathethic compassionates.
I don't know if either is necessarily higher, or just that the absence of one makes the remainder seem more potent by comparison. But the way I find it works is that having only a sense of emotional empathy means you can feel other people's feelings, but don't know how to react to them. Whereas having only a sense of cognitive empathy means you know how to react to others feelings, but don't feel others feelings for yourself. Only the latter of these impediments can remotely be seen as beneficial to those impacted, as to feel others feelings without knowing how to react to them is worse than having neither sense at all, as those so impeded consistently react to the feelings of others by either retreating from human contact, or by responding with the grossest and most inappropriate of reactions.
To the extent that it's a cope about autistic emotional impairment being better than narcissistic impairment, rather than simply it not being a thing, that I can buy. As well, given that so many autists, both confirmed* and speculated,** have committed the most horrific of crimes, I don't see how the case that it's "better" is remotely defensible. It's emotional chumfeed for desperate, disappointed parents and HR pathocrats to compensate their extreme uselessness at meaningfully treating the impairment. Like giving a kid with no eyes a glass one, only much lengthier, more expensive, less useful (as looking more like a normal person is actually a tangible benefit), and at least nobody pretends the glass eye helps you see any better.
* Adam Lanza, Christian Weston Chandler, the Zizians
Shelving the rest, my hypothesis (as an Asperger’s case) is that autism renders one more vulnerable to propaganda of a certain kind, totalitarian ideology as Arendt describes it. It appeals heavily to systems-based and black-and-white thinkers. I assume there are a lot of autistic conspiracy theorists..
As an autist myself, I enjoyed reading this post more than any other work on autism that I've read. I strongly agree with the neural and behavior description of autism that you wrote, and basically all of it fits like a glove for me, except for autism being correlated with being left-wing. Leftism never made any intuitive sense to me at all.
I also think "What is Autism?" would be a better title than "Autism is bad". It grabs attention better and is probably less likely to turn away some potential readers. Whether autism is bad or not is also still debatable and perspective-dependent.
No it's not. Autism is entirely negative in even its milder forms. To whatever extent benefits exist, that's due to the correlation of autism with high-familial g. Not due to autism itself. It's no more a good thing than blindness or deafness. The fact that we're even having a debate about this rather than just everyone agreeing that autism is bad just illustrates how deeply we've fallen into Clown World.
No, autism is not "entirely negative in even its milder forms". Have you considered how the population of Wikipedia editors (including myself) is disproportionately autistic and neurodivergent compared to the general population? Wikipedia has proven to be one of the most invaluable sources of information in the entire world. Currently, Wikipedia is very left-leaning, but that's more of a problem with academia, not Wikipedia itself, since Wikipedia often defers judgment to academia. I can guarantee that Wikipedia wouldn't be nearly as good as it is if autistic and neurodivergent editors were non-existent. If you're going to credit the quality of Wikipedia purely to higher IQ, then you're just naive. Wikipedia is just one example of how the traits of high IQ autists benefit society.
> To whatever extent benefits exist, that's due to the correlation of autism with high-familial g. Not due to autism itself.
No, it's also due to autism, not just higher g. And I never said that the benefits of autistic genes/traits were due to just autism itself. If the genes that cause autism also cause IQ and vice versa (as was concluded by both Seb and Scott Alexander: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/13/autism-and-intelligence-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/), then the effects of those genes are inseparable from each other. It's not meaningful to separate the different effects of the genes, especially when we don't even fully understand them.
> The fact that we're even having a debate about this rather than just everyone agreeing that autism is bad just illustrates how deeply we've fallen into Clown World.
This is a ridiculously stupid argument in favor of neurodiversity. If the likes of you really made for a better site, they wouldn't have waited till last year to start accepting paid editors. They would've hired the best of you lot as employees ages ago. Instead, they spent it all on left-wing political activism. They're just taking advantage of the empty, jobless, friendless personal lives of online spergs, and have fostered a toxic and unpleasant community worthy of Lowtax Kyanka that repels normal people from its presence.
If anything, that's even more reason we should work on a cure. The Wikipedia jannies might just start making friends in real life, and the site might just end up hiring writers and editors directly to compensate. The Wikipedia community might become downright enjoyable.
Oh no, how dare those Wikipedia editors make friends on the Internet instead of in real life! Their lifestyle sucks because I said so, so they should be forced to live differently.
You haven't presented a single good argument against neurodiversity, retard. On the other hand, he gave examples and links about how neurodivergent people have been able to do things that neurotypical people can't typically do. "Curing" autism could backfire by preventing these wonderful creations.
Another problem with your comment is that you're using one-sided exploitative rhetoric: https://thewaywardaxolotl.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-rhetoric-of-exploitation_21.html. I don't think ZC and most editors choose to edit Wikipedia because they're people taken advantage of. The simpler explanation is that they enjoy editing Wikipedia, hence why they voluntarily choose to contribute. You're so full of shit.
No it isn't. I wouldn't be NT if you paid me. Being autistic gives me specific skills and a way of experiencing the world that is valuable and enjoyable to me. Don't speak for me please.
Sorry you hate yourself so much, but we all don’t have to join in on your self-pity. It’s not your place to tell countless complete strangers that they’re worse off for the way they’re wired. Ironically, you’re falling victim to the black and white thinking we often struggle with, things are rarely ever “entirely bad”.
I’m maybe 95th percentile autist. The downsides are poor social skills and difficulty with group conversations. I love debates on obscure topics that most people find tedious. I wouldn’t say I’m hopeless though, I have several friendships measured in decades now.
Upsides are abilities to spot patterns and even to search for them where no one even thinks they exist. This has been useful professionally although I have to fight my tendencies toward chasing irrelevancies.
I’ve come to notice that my father, his brother and my grandfather were all pretty like this too. High IQ/poor social skills - but the labour and marriage market are pretty welcoming to this phenotype.
I have found adult life significantly easier than childhood as I’ve been able to shape my environment around my quirks.
Being high IQ really helps. I’ve been able to self diagnose and consciously overcome certain traits.
So I wouldn’t adopt the term “autistic” myself even though I’m sure I could swing a diagnosis. I’ve known a non-verbal, self-harming autistic child and he is basically three orders of magnitude what I am.
I don't get why you are calling yourself autistic at all. A good chunk of people have poor social skills and only a tiny slither of them are autistic. Most everyone finds group conversations tedious.
Imagine if we applied the same faulty reasoning to physical disorders. "I have a slight headache. Oh, I must be one of those brain tumories they're talking about!"
That spectrum refers to the degree to which your mental architecture is warped in a highly specific way. Afaik, we don't have a perfectly clear description of that warping as of yet, and psychologists may rely on outside symptoms to asses its severity due to this limitation. But ultimately, the autism itself is not the degree by which it manifests to the outside world.
Autism is not a personality disorder, you can't establish a continuum between normality and pathology, it's not about an over-inflated trait or set of traits, like you have elevated self-consciousness leading into Avoidant personality and the extreme shyness that comes with it. The workings of the mind are themselves qualitatively different with autists.
And keeping with the analogy, headaches vary in intensity as well, a tumor is either there or is not.
About Elon Musk being autistic... I think there is a difference between autism and sociopathy and Elon is on the sociopath spectrum not the autistic spectrum.
"Across all ages, autistic individuals and those with elevated autistic traits but no autistic diagnoses appeared to have increased callous and unemotional traits or psychopathy relative to the general population. Several studies evidenced that although both constructs are associated with empathetic dysfunction, the underlying mechanisms differ.
In adults, psychopathy/psychopathic traits were associated with diminished affective empathy and intact cognitive empathy, whilst the opposite was seen autistic adults and those with elevated autistic traits. In children, those with autistic traits or a diagnosis of autism had diminished cognitive empathy, but not affective empathy, while the relationship between callous and unemotional traits/psychopathy and empathy amongst children was less clear.
The co-occurrence of autism and psychopathy was seen to lead to additional empathic and cognitive impairment, but findings were mixed making it challenging to clearly describe the clinical manifestation."
What about autism and agency? I would expect it to be lower since they are less likely to hold a job and do well in school. I’d guess that they rarely initiate projects as well. A lot of people wrongly equate being fixated on niche (usually male coded) interests with autism.
As for online autism being narcissistic and left wing, it makes sense since mental illness is generally left wing. I’d expect the same for trooning out.
While moderate to severe autism is bad, for sure, I'll admit that I simply prefer people with mild autism to normal people. One little anecdote that I reflect on often: one of our sons was delayed in language, and to get him Speech and Language Therapy, we had to go see a Childhood Development *Expert*. She spent the entire time looking for symptoms of autism. Gems included that he knows the names of too many colours, and he likes looking at the wheels of cars turn. But what really got me is that when she gave him an (easy) shape-sorter, he did it and tried to get another one instead of looking at her for 'approval'. That was when the sperg began to hate.
The autistic gf stuff is people who want an innocent, dependent, perhaps even childlike girl, but conceal it in the disguise of gassing up Autists. They don't actually know what it's like to endure life with autists. In real life, Autistic girls are not only going to make your life miserable with their inconsiderate mentality, their neuroticism, and their social retardation, but they are also not attractive! "Autism face" is real and is not attractive, and furthermore Autists across the board have "mannish" features from childhood onwards. There are some cute ones, but overall they are an uglier and more facially masculinized group. They're also usually fat, in my experience, which is strange because I don't notice this trend in Autistic men.
I think it's more that they want a girl who likes the same nerdy things they do. It's really just the desire for a compatible partner most people have.
Autists pay less attention to social interactions, so of course they are going to spend less time making themselves look good. You notice it more in women because you're not attracted to men and the baseline level of investment in personal appearance is higher in women.
I mean, like, aside from looks. Autistic women have more mannish facial structures even as children. This is true for Autistic men too
Citation needed.
Depends what you mean by "autistic", but there are plenty of conventionally attractive aspie women. They just aren't obvious until you get into a 30-minute conversation with them, as opposed to aspie men where you can often tell from one-minute interactions.
There are conventionally attractive aspie women, yes, but less prevalent than in the general population
I very much thank you for writing this, Seb. As someone himself afflicted, people who pretend that ASD is anything other than a tremendous misfortune, to both the afflicted as well everyone in their intimate circle, are exceptionally irritating when not outright disgusting. Sensory impairment certainly can and does lead to increased invention, as was the case with the compositions of Beethoven once he lost his hearing. But this by no means was worth it for Beethoven himself. His deafness brought him both great physical discomfort and robbed him of most of his professional and artistic opportunities. He died deeply lonely and unhappy, of cirrhosis. He would've done anything to be relieved of his deafness.
Autism is no different. It is a moral obligation to seek treatment and a cure. Sleeplessness, gastrointestinal distress, motor-co-ordination impairment, communication impairment, fucking epilepsy, and whatever the rest of the grab bag of horrors that come with the condition, are not worthwhile tradeoffs to anything. Not even at the highest level of functioning. Nor is this a problem which is even partially alleviated by "raising awareness" and "increased acceptance", since neither is even remotely a serious problem for those with ASD.
> Sensory impairment certainly can and does lead to increased invention
You're contradicting yourself. In another comment, you said that autism is "entirely negative in even its milder forms". And here, you just said a statement which suggests the negation of your other statement.
If the disadvandages are at least an order of magnitude larger than the advantages I see no reason not to say something is entirely negative, and we should seek to rid ourselves of it. Especially given that we ourselves are not the ones bearing the greatest misfortune. The countless autists left of the Bell Curve lead much harsher and lonelier lives than ourselves. Many literally cannot even speak for themselves, and live as wards to exhausted caretakers. We owe it to them to find more effective treatments, and someday a cure.
Not to mention that misfortune leading to the creation of great works is not remotely a reason we shouldn't seek to remove or even alleviate it to the best of our abilities. Art Spiegelman would rather his ghostbrother survived to adulthood and his mother hadn't committee suicide than to have created Maus. Beethoven drank himself to death because deafness made his life so lonely and limited, and he certainly would've rather had his hearing back, regardless of what it meant for him as a composer.
Self-hating spergs like you are exceptionally irritating and outright disgusting. Just cuz you’re a “tremendous misfortune”, doesn’t mean we all are. Buddy, everyone in my intimate circle is on the spectrum too, and contrary to the narrative you’re projecting it allows us to connect in beautiful ways.
Your last sentence is stupidly wrong as well. Yes, awareness and acceptance are very serious problems for those with ASD. For one, it would stop pseudoscientific drivel like this from being published lmao. But fr, most of the issues with high functioning autism absolutely come from the way society treats us. Bullying, exclusion, isolation, general poor mental health are the most obvious issues, and it’s pretty clear how *acceptance* would alleviate them all. And because social interactions/interpersonal relationships are so important in life, the social-communication struggles bleed over to everything else.
This is undeniably a large part of why the employment rate for autistic adults is so abysmal. We’re not wired for playing the office politics and the interview icebreakers definitely gatekeep many qualified, competent autists bc of arbitrary shit like eye contact. This has deffo happened to me, and it’s why I’m currently on disability services to help me find a job. Just imagine how much better the world would be for *everyone* with more autism awareness, acceptance, and accommodation. I know plenty of smart, talented, driven, creative, passionate autists (and other NDs) who could contribute great gifts to the world, but they’re blocked from reaching their full potential by these retarded neurotypical norms. I stg, I’ll just be an entrepreneur.
I think I’ve made my point. Brother, speak for yourself. Maybe it’s a moral obligation to seek treatment and a cure for the ones living in group homes all their lives, and I don’t deny that even the high functioning “Hollywood autism” comes with a lot of L’s. But it is a worthwhile tradeoff for a lot of us, your self-loathing is far from universal my guy.
>Just cuz you’re a “tremendous misfortune”, doesn’t mean we all are. Buddy, everyone in my intimate circle is on the spectrum too, and contrary to the narrative you’re projecting it allows us to connect in beautiful ways.
You literally admit to being unemployed and on disability in this very post. A post which is exceptionally bitter in content. The difference is that you blame everybody else for their response to your affliction as the source of your misfortune, as opposed to me, who just blames the affliction itself. My plan requires alleviating, and ideally eliminating the affliction. Yours requires reprogramming everyone else to fight against the instincts they were born with because you don't have them for yourself, so therefore nobody else should have a right to it.
>But fr, most of the issues with high functioning autism absolutely come from the way society treats us.
Is the high-functioning qualifier so you don't have to tell the Holguin Family it was society's fault that their six-year-old nonverbal child got flattened by a Nissan Altima because he didn't know that traffic was supposed to be something he should avoid?
Because you're still wrong, but you'd figure having to disqualify the most impacted of our cohort just to make your point would cause you to ponder that your idea is in fact dumb.
>Just imagine how much better the world would be for *everyone* with more autism awareness, acceptance, and accommodation.
I can imagine something better: a world without autism!
“You literally admit to…” what’s this fallacy called, a red herring or non sequitur? I said I connect well with a cool social circle and you leaped to my unemployment. Neither precludes the other.
My post is only bitter because your comment was exceptionally bitter in content. The actual *difference* is that you’re wasting your time hating yourself and trying to tear everyone down with you, whereas, as you can see, I’m attempting to work with what God gave me. And working within the system doesn’t preclude simultaneously advocating to change it.
YOU’RE the one with the affliction my good guy, not me, I said to stop projecting your self-hatred. Yes, I do “blame everybody else” because everybody else is to blame for their prejudice, *I* didn’t do a thing but be born. You may as well call my skin color an “affliction” as well, since I also get discriminated against due to that. But, as you can see, I refuse to lay down and rot over life being unfair.
Please do explain to me what “reprogramming” I advocated for, which “instincts” I’m fighting against, and what I’m denying people a “right” to, or better yet, stop putting words in my fucking mouth. The most you could glean from my comment is endorsing hiring people based on their actual skill at the job, as opposed to how well they play a popularity contest. I thought a blind meritocracy was supposed to be what we’re striving towards? Clearly, you believe that autists don’t have a right to self-love just cuz you don’t have it for *yourself* 🤷🏾♀️.
Yes, the high functioning qualifier is for me to speak on two different things, because, surprise surprise, they’re not the fucking same and no sweeping generalizations apply to the entire spectrum. This is exactly why the separate diagnosis “Asperger’s Syndrome” used to exist. Idk why you’re trying to guilt(?) me, this entire paragraph of yours is so stupid and pointless.
Are you trying to say that high functioning can’t be distinguished or that we have to be treated the same all over the spectrum 🙄? I wouldn’t want a low-functioning child myself precisely because I’m aware that the low end of the spectrum is just plain bad with no benefit. Meanwhile, me and my friends at least get cool shit like creativity, higher than average IQ, spacial intelligence, math skills, free(r) thinking/resistance to groupthink, STEM aptitude, artistic ability, hyperfocus, photographic memory, etc, as compensation for our social-emotional struggles.
YOU’RE still wrong and your idea is dumb, what’s dumb and wrong is lumping us all in the same basket as if autism affects us all the same. No shit my homie who’s paying her own way as a network engineer is not in need of your “”treatment”” like an incapacitated nonverbal kid stuck in a group home forever, why are you so desperate to put words in my mouth and pretend they are? You wanted to lump us all together so no shit I’m just speaking on what applies to me. Unlike you, I’m not tryna speak for the entire spectrum.
I can imagine something even better! A world without self-loathing and sweeping generalizations. If YOU wanna be “cured” of your autism and assimilate into neurotypical hegemony, I support your right 100%. Just, again, stop fucking projecting your self hatred onto every sperg who’s ever sperged, what you have no right to do is make that judgement for all of us.
>The most you could glean from my comment is endorsing hiring people based on their actual skill at the job, as opposed to how well they play a popularity contest. I thought a blind meritocracy was supposed to be what we’re striving towards?
Hiring people based on meritocratic standardized testing would be a much better way to do things! But existing civil rights law prevents this because it leads to inequality of outcome between groups at the rate to which they are hired. I don't mind this personally, because I actually value freedom of association.
And social impairment doesn't just cause problems in the application process. It causes problems any time social interaction is part of the job. This is less of a problem in some places than others, but there's no job in which a lack of social lubrication is a net benefit. It comes to bite every time you have to interact with coworkers, supervisors, bosses, underlings, or customers.
>Yes, the high functioning qualifier is for me to speak on two different things, because, surprise surprise, they’re not the fucking same and no sweeping generalizations apply to the entire spectrum.
They are, in fact, the same! One's just a more severe version of the other. Hence why they were merged into the same diagnosis with greater levels of severity. It's not like they merged unrelated conditions together, like Alphabet People did with autogynephilia and homosexual transexuality.
>Meanwhile, me and my friends at least get cool shit like creativity, higher than average IQ, spacial intelligence, math skills, free(r) thinking/resistance to groupthink, STEM aptitude, artistic ability, hyperfocus, photographic memory, etc, as compensation for our social-emotional struggles.
ASD does NOT cause increased intelligence, in any form. It's only ever been shown to correlate with below-average intelligence relative to neurotypicals, and even relative to the autist's neurotypical family members:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Q8zqoBWBBHD2RjDuS/autism-and-intelligence-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know
You would be smarter with neurotypical brain architecture. As would I, and everyone else with ASD. The cool things you listed all exist in neurotypicals, particularly at the right end of the Bell Curve.
>I can imagine something even better! A world without self-loathing and sweeping generalizations.
Such a world could never exist. People will always have reasons, legitimate or otherwise, to hate themselves. And generalizations are also good things because they're what allow people to make sense of far more of the world than could be made sense of otherwise. Indeed, the resistance to making generalizations, which autism exacerbates, is in fact also a bad thing and a big part of the problem of modern society. Stereotype accuracy is in fact one of the most replicable findings in the social sciences, so not being able to pick up on them more easily is a sign of intellectual impairment:
https://spsp.org/news-center/character-context-blog/stereotype-accuracy-one-largest-and-most-replicable-effects-all
So are you going to take your L and admit to wrongly putting words in my mouth? Or are you gonna explain to me what “reprogramming” I’m forcing and which “rights” I’m tryna deny to people?
I don’t support that part of civil rights law, in case you’re trying a gotcha. I despise credentialism, arbitrary gatekeeping, and DEI.
Hmm, so you didn’t understand that I was *comparing* a loan to an investment, but you can equate two disparate things when it suits you. NO, they are NOT the same, and you’re contradicting yourself within two sentences. If one’s “just more severe”, then by definition they can’t be the same. This is like equating a kid’s pickup basketball game to the NBA. The difference in degree is what makes all of the difference. No, it’s not the same, which is precisely why it’s the autism *spectrum*, none of my friends need around-the-clock care, so high and low functioning are not the fucking same if we’re living completely different lives. I see you’re desperate to make false equivalencies, but even Stevie Wonder could see through it.
Here’s some more research for you, you’re being misleading in measuring “intelligence”:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4927579/
> A suite of recent studies has reported positive genetic correlations between autism risk and measures of mental ability. These findings indicate that alleles for autism overlap broadly with alleles for high intelligence, which appears paradoxical given that autism is characterized, overall, by below-average IQ. This paradox can be resolved under the hypothesis that autism etiology commonly involves enhanced, but imbalanced, components of intelligence. This hypothesis is supported by convergent evidence showing that autism and high IQ share a diverse set of convergent correlates, including large brain size, fast brain growth, increased sensory and visual-spatial abilities, enhanced synaptic functions, increased attentional focus, high socioeconomic status, more deliberative decision-making, profession and occupational interests in engineering and physical sciences, and high levels of positive assortative mating.
Autism absolutely does correlate with the buffet I cooked. Autists are over represented in STEM for a reason. Why isn’t every spergy software engineer outcompeted and replaced by a high IQ NT then? And if you’re gonna apply this logic to “the cool things”, then I can also say that the downsides you listed all exist in neurotypicals, particularly at the left end of the Bell Curve. Ik you wanna desperately pull us all down into your pity party with you, but you can’t just scapegoat autism for everything bad in your life while simultaneously trying to separate it from the good, that’s illogical and inconsistent.
And likewise, autists will always exist, so you’d better learn to cope. 🤷🏾♀️
Buddy, the problem with your generalizations is that they’re not even true or backed by science, it’s clear as day that you as well as the writer of this article are simply broadcasting your own personal grievances dressed up as something serious. Being inaccurate is a way bigger sin than being offensive, and I never said or implied otherwise. “They are, in fact, the same!” when talking about engineers and group home residents is objectively incorrect, and only serves your selfish self-pity.
Buddy literally none of this is objective, it's just your own self loathing combined with "well that's just the way society is so to alleviate suffering autists should go quietly into the night" you could say that about ANY minority group but it would be pretty fucked up no? The way to alleviate suffering isn't to eradicate the smaller group unless you're some sort of eugenicist, and if you are that's a pretty shit worldview.
People with disabilities are not a race. That's a psychotic faculty-lounge brainworm that no serious person should regard with anything but contempt. If a disability can be alleviated, or ideally eliminated, humanely, we're under no moral obligation to keep it around out of some nauseating intersectional sentimentality. We're closer to that point than you think with the rise of technologies such as sperm editing, gene therapy, and other such proactive measures to help bring an end to ASD, Tay-Sachs, sickle cell,* and all sorts of other hereditary illnesses and disabilities we can save the next generation from worrying themselves over. We have no reason not to be thankful of our good fortune and take advantage.
* Especially sickle cell, which has seen tremendous progress:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/new-sickle-cell-treatment-cures-disease-at-lower-cost-than-gene-therapies/ar-AA1zP0Cu
Gastrointestinal distress and epilepsy are likely a function of mercury exposure, mainly vapor from non-gamma-2 dental amalgams.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323837706_A_suppressed_report_of_millions_of_mainly_non-autistic_victims
Why on Earth would thus be the case when autists aren't remotely more exposed to heavy metals than the population average?
Not is the connection between ASD and GI problems only something observed today. It was observed by those who had it in past times as well:
https://www.neatorama.com/2014/03/24/Der-Fartenfhrer-The-Story-of-Hitlers-Health/
It's strange how Hitler's autism is a fringe theory, as it explains many of his strange behaviours.
I think it's largely due to a combination of the fanatical sensitivity we've cultivated in our society, as well the fact that the real Hitler receives far less attention than the iconic Hitler. To any of those who actually study Hitler the man, particularly his pre-celebrity life, his eating habits, his inability to get a real job or secure a career before joining the army, his downright comical ineptitude with the opposite sex (he didn't have anything so much as resembling a girlfriend until the age of thirty-seven, years after he'd become one of the most famous men in Weimar Germany), descriptions of his behaviors from friends and family, I legitimately don't know how anyone with knowledge of ASD wouldn't see their sperg sensors flare up.
I also think it's a matter of many of the people who know best not wanting to see themselves in some of the most horrible people to ever live. An understandable impulse, but also not one worthy of respect. We must not run from the truth. Especially since, should we develop better treatments, or even a cure, we might just prevent the next Hitler, the next Adam Lanza, or even the next Christian Weston Chandler from committing whatever horrible, sexual-frustrationally-motivated crimes they'd be much less likely to committ had they greater neurotypicality.
I can't imagine Hitler being nearly as bad had he enough executive functionship to land himself a wife and a real job in his twenties or thirties like normal men of his age managed to do just fine. He may not have even pursued politics at all. He certainly wouldn't have chosen national suicide purely because his brainrotter ideology told him endless racewar was just the way the ecosystem worked, and the Russians just happened to have won this particular racewar with the Germans, so he might as well accept total defeat rather than postpone the inevitable. For that reason alone, we owe it to ourselves to pursue a cure.
In his final days, you really get the sense that Hitler acted like a school shooter. There was no human being he had a genuine connection to, and he must have known well what a failure he had been in his early life. Not even being the Fuhrer can fill this void, so you might as well burn the whole country down and declare that Germans are an inferior race after all.
Autistic person here, some points I disagree on:
Autism and political views: It may well be right that we lean left on average. However this could be due to demographic factors - autistic people tend to be younger, poorer, less likely to be employed particularly in a well-paying job, less likely to be married, etc - all correlates with left-wing voting patterns. Now among young men especially there are right-wing counternarratives to all this, for example the Manosphere, but for autistics we are what could be classified as a minority or "marginalised" group in society and as such there's always the attractive left-wing narrative that all our problems are due to neurotypical "oppression".
Rather than tending towards either left or right, my observations are that we autistics veer towards the extremes in general. I've been terminally online for almost 20 years now and pretty much every political extremist movement (implying judgement in some cases, but generally just movements comfortably outside the Overton window), whether Tankies, neo-Nazis, libertarians, HBDers, and more tend to have a very disproportionate amount of us in their ranks. Not just my observation but it's a well known meme within their movements aswell.
Related to that, on the point about propaganda, the reasoning on this one seems a bit weak to me. I wouldn't strongly say its untrue, I'd need stronger hard evidence either way, but it feels easy to make an opposing argument that, say, autistic people are less susceptible to propaganda because we tend to be oblivious to social cues (propaganda will ofcourse be targeted at the neurotypical majority) and are known for 'thinking outside the box'.
Autism and genius: No doubt IQ as an independent variable is very important here, but as a matter of sampling studies of IQ and success in life are going to be looking at outcomes of more or less "normal people" - not sampling the very few genius scientists, innovators, political or business leaders that make outsized impacts.
Just to take the example of Elon, based on the biographies and accounts I've read of him he's certainly in the top few % for intelligence, but he doesn't strike me as an absolute prodigy in any particular field. He likely has people working for him who are smarter in that respect than he is. No, what makes Elon so different is his pretty good intelligence *combined with* more autism-specific traits like his obsessive focus on special interests (such as his lifelong obsession with space), out of the box thinking ("First principles" approach as he calls it), lack of empathy for his subordinates in preference for the bigger picture of helping humanity, and near-total disregard for public opinion and conventional wisdom. These traits are especially important with regards to technological innovation, since as both history and current events show people are default sceptical of the capacity for progress in such areas (after all, for almost all of human history technology either didn't change, or changed so slowly that you wouldn't notice major change within a single lifetime).
Is autism bad? I think there's a massive distinction between low-functioning autism and high-fuctioning, especially Aspergers, here. Low-functioning -- yeah it's pretty clearly a net negative both for the person themselves and family/wider society. Aspergers is much more mixed, though I do feel it's something of a Pareto 20/80 split.
Fellow sperg here, I absolutely agree with you. Don’t forget this guy’s demonstrably false claim of the double empathy theory being “cope” when it’s empirically validated by several studies. He didn’t even attempt to cite data or evidence for this one, he just talked from his ass. It really looks like he just has some personal gripe with autists that he’s desperate to dress up as reality.
autism IS bad. no one who really suffers from the disorder would crave it. no one who really understands the inherent overwhelm would clamor to label their kid with it.
It’s defintiely not good. Life is hard; it makes life much, much harder.
Run Aella's survey with "Asperger's" and your results will flip
And the idea that propaganda spotting is a social skill needs explanation. To me, propaganda relies primarily on social signalling to do the convincing. It's implications, halo effects, and poor systems thinking all the way down. Autistic folks are less vulnerable to that bag of tricks, if only because the propagandists are targeting neurotypical folks .
Autists are extremely believing of propaganda. That's why so many become terrorists.
Even if autism is a risk factor for terrorism, that doesn't say anything about their vulnerability to propaganda. Some people naturally gravitate towards extreme views and don't need to be exposed to propaganda to adopt them. Ted Kaczynski wasn't propagandized into the ideology that he adopted, like the average true believer in communism or egalitarianism typically is. Rather, he personally invented that ideology based on his own individual preferences. Autistic school shooters and people like Elliot Rodgers are typically motivated by narcissism, disagreeableness, low social status, and sexual frustration, rather than being brainwashed by propaganda.
Autists are almost certainly less susceptible to corporate propaganda than regular people. They're not going to think less of you if you don't wear branded clothes. They're not going to dislike you if you refuse to smoke cigarettes in an environment like 1920s America where it's being heavily propagandized and all the popular people are doing it.
Most terrorists are nothing like Ted Kaczynski. He was an actual lone wolf who came up with his own ideas as to who to target and kill, and was smart and withdrawn enough to get away with it for almost two decades. He only got exposed because he had a brother who both put it together and was willing to rat him out.
"Autistic school shooters and people like Elliot Rodgers are typically motivated by narcissism, disagreeableness, low social status, and sexual frustration, rather than being brainwashed by propaganda."
Have you never once bothered to study any biographical info of actual terrorists? "Narcissistic, disagreeable, sexually frustrated, and low in social staus" describes just about everyone from Umar Abdulmutallab* to Ted Kaczynski.** The likes of Elliot Rodger, Eric Harris, and Dylan Klebold are exactly the sort of people who join terrorist organizations if such opportunity presents itself. It's just they, being American infidels who weren't interested in socialism, didn't have those outlets from which to vent their homicidality.
* Youngest of his father's sixteen kids. Refused to take advantage of his family position because his father is a banker who charges interest. Father refused to allow him to get married until he attained a masters, which actually matters when you sincerely believe fornication is a sin.
** Extremely high-Q autist from a working-class family with no friends. Never had a girlfriend and possibly died a virgin. Blamed his problems on skipping up grades in school, claiming he was never bullied before such, which is just so self-evidently preposterous and wrong that it almost distracts you from the extreme narcissism of the statement.
I could see skipping grades in school and being bullied being the start of his problems. Of course most people who get bullied don’t become terrorists.
The more likely problem was that he wasn't skipped enough. If he indeee tested 167 at twelve, then his adult-normed IQ would've been in the mid 120s. Meaning he was already noticeably smarter than the average EuroAm college graduate, and should've just gone straight to a local college. Instead, from what I read, he only skipped the sixth grade after taking that test. The average EuroAm seventh grader only has an adult-normed IQ of 85. So rather than place him with intellectual peers, he was placed with a bunch of people who were bigger and more developed than him, as well as being much dumber on average. Ted Kaczynski, being a sincere believer in insane leftist ideology, believed his problems to be the opposite of what they really were.
Now, his adult-tested prison IQ was considerably lower, but still quite high. 137. That's in the top one-percent of intelligence, and assuming it more accurate, meant that by the time he was twelve, his adult-normed IQ was in the mid 110s. That's already smarter than the average EuroAm adult. He still should've skipped much more than a just the sixth grade at twelve.
If you just define autism as a personality which "optimizes too much for accuracy and dimensionality, and not enough for speed and convenience", then of course it will be a negative trait, since the qualification "too much" makes this true by definition.
Yet, as you point out, there are some benefits to this style of thinking. Autism correlates with intelligence. It's not hard to imagine that a cautious and accurate style of information processing is helpful for achieving certain goals.
If you imagine people who are very low in autistic traits, they would probably be overly impatient for novelty and make hasty decisions based on incomplete information. These people probably wouldn't be very successful either.
In general, the people who are best in some field are typically not those who are the most extreme in any one specific trait. For instance, height is very important in basketball, but the best basketball players are not the tallest. This is not just because traits have diminishing or, after a certain point, often negative returns. It is also because, unless the field is very specialized, outstanding success depends on multiple traits, and the correlation between these is always less than one.
This is expanded on here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dC7mP5nSwvpL65Qu5/why-the-tails-come-apart
> Some autistic people hate confrontation and are two-faced/evasive, while other autistic people are extremely direct and confrontational.
every autistic person i’ve known in the former category has also been borderline or borderline-adjacent, so at least anecdotally it seems to me that directness is the autistic default
Distinctions need to be drawn. Autism is just too broad a term. I never thought I had it because my interests weren't narrow.
At school (adult education) teachers are impressed by my "social skills", which they confuse with being able to talk properly, because they haven't come across a sufficiently intelligent autist before (late diagnosis was probably also helpful in that regard).
I have the suspicion it's being diagnosed rather liberally, does anyone know anything more useful?
I think autism is the main cause of underachievement for people who are cognitively more capable than the average (to a relevant degree). Doesn't mean everyone with autism traits or even a diagnosis is at all useful for anything.
For all the serious flaws of the DSMV, the level terms are a useful corrective:
https://psychcentral.com/autism/levels-of-autism
Level 1: Can largely function independently, but the odds are stacked against their doing such disproportionately to theirvintelligence, all the more so in so psychotically behavior-conscience that every damn place that matters is infested with HR ladies. If male, will have extreme difficulty finding or maintaining heterosexual companionship. If female, is highly likely to be a massive hoe, and to as well have difficulty maintaining worthwhile romantic relationships. This is still the only level with anything resembling success in sexual intimacy.
Level 2: Cannot function independently. Has substantial difficulties in communicating with others, with a limited and unusual vocabulary. Sensory issues are sharper and more burdensome. Will have narrow areas of interest and be extremely difficult and burdensome to care for, but still may be capable of learning something useful to do.
Level 3: Will be lucky to learn a few words or phrases of language with targeted, early intervention. All the horrors of Level 2 are at their worst here.
The issue is that the mental-health intelligentsia is resistant to talking about afflictions with frankness and accuracy, because crazy people insist that being truthful about psychoimpairment is "stigmatising". No! Stigmatization isn't even in the top twenty of the worst burdens of autism. People who say otherwise should be whipped in the teeth with a beltbuckle. We shouldn't even be wasting our times with a second of this nonsense.
lol “is likely to be a massive hoe”… autistic women are more likely to be asexual, stupid ass. If you’re gonna be offensive, at least be accurate.
I said "likely" as in reference to the neurotypical woman's likelihood of being a massive hoe. As in women like Aella, or for that matter any lot of the women who become strippers or porn stars. That's perfectly compatible with their being other such women in the cohort who abandon sex entirely.
Autistic women aren't a monolith.
Yeah. That's what "likely" means. It's not my fault you and your friend have crappy reading comprehension.
It ain’t our fault you have scientific illiteracy and impaired logic 😂
Don’t you know that anecdotes aren’t arguments? Most women, most sex workers, and most autists are not like Aella, which is precisely why she got so much attention for her outlier lifestyle. Then where is your evidence for “any lot of the women” who become str*ppers or 🌽 stars, and what’s your proof this is due to their innate hypersexuality as opposed to confounding factors? For example, autists (and other disabled/ND ppl) having a much harder time holding a regular job definitely makes many of them turn to the sex trade.
What the evidence DOES show, however, is that autistic people in general, especially autistic women, are way more likely to be asexual.
> …autistic males show about 8.25% asexuality (compared to 0.8% in neurotypical males), while autistic females show about 22% asexuality (compared to 1.5% in neurotypical females).
> …the autistic groups also reported higher rates of homosexuality, bisexuality, and pansexuality; and lower rates of heterosexuality. Autistic women also show the greatest variety in sexual orientations in general.
https://embrace-autism.com/autism-and-asexuality/#:~:text=Based%20on%20what%20I've,1.5%25%20in%20neurotypical%20females).
Damn I see why you hate yourself so much, you clearly didn’t get that autistic rationality 🤷🏾♀️
What's your citation for this?
I've seen evidence autistic people are more likely to have incredibly high sex drives or incredibly low ones. That doesn't equate to being non monogamous though so unless you have some data to back this up I'm forced to assume you're making a massive leap.
This is so hilariously incorrect. I'm autistic. My male partner is autistic. We've been together nearly 10 years monogamously, we have kids, he works, we have a house etc. It causes barely any problems and gives advantages. You're describing situations where the autist is in an environment that doesn't favour their skillset. Change that and you'll flourish.
Damn I notice he didn’t respond to you here 💀
Why would I? My giving the odds of what generally happens doesn't foreclose the possibility of exceptions at the highest level of functioning some people have happy lives. I indeed specifically say independent functioning, and even romantic success, are a possibility at ASD Level 1.
And this is in spite of autism, not because of it. The people with ASD who succeed, personally or professionally, do so because of high I.Q.s, assuming they indeed have high I.Q.s, which most, even at Level 1, don't. ASD is even now correlated with below-average I.Q. Those people are the real face of autism. Not Elon Musk.
You weren’t just “giving the odds of what generally happens” you disingenuous sophist.
Lmfao yesterday you literally just told me that high and low functioning are “the same thing”, and now suddenly “at the highest level of functioning some people have happy lives” — which is it?
Your entire presence in this comment section has been tryna pull us all down and make ALL autists out to be as miserable as you. And then you become speechless at being confronted with living proof otherwise. The thing about making such sweeping generalizations is that it only takes a single example to prove you wrong.
No, Alicia’s success definitely is because of her autism. She wouldn’t be able to connect with her partner in the same way if either of them were neurotypical.
And I linked the evidence showing that, at the exact same time, autism also correlates with many measures of intelligence, do you need to see it again? Lmfao, it’s absolutely RICH that you repeatedly attempt to insult my intellect and literacy while simultaneously demonstrating how stunted you are in yours. Here’s a shorter clip for your baby brain:
> A suite of recent studies has reported positive genetic correlations between autism risk and measures of mental ability. *These findings indicate that alleles for autism overlap broadly with alleles for high intelligence, which appears paradoxical given that autism is characterized, overall, by below-average IQ.* This paradox can be resolved under the hypothesis that autism etiology commonly involves enhanced, but imbalanced, components of intelligence.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4927579/
I suspect this is connected to the “spikey” skill set that many autists have. But clearly you didn’t get any of that intelligence 🤷🏾♀️ so you cope by telling yourself and others that it’s cuz of your autism as opposed to you just being dropped as a kid.
>You weren’t just “giving the odds of what generally happens” you disingenuous sophist.
Isn't the whole point of "sophistry" supposed to be that it's disingenuous? Why emphasize the adjective with its own synonym?
>Lmfao yesterday you literally just told me that high and low functioning are “the same thing”
They are. One's just more severe than the other. It's like the difference between fevers. Some can be high in severity, some can be low; but it's all different versions of the same symptom, and it's better to just not have the symptom.
>and now suddenly “at the highest level of functioning some people have happy lives” — which is it?
Yeah. In spite of their autism. Not because of it. That still puts those with ASD below those of neurotypicals, who are by every measure, personally or professionally, likelier to have happier lives. Your ostensible point could just as well be made inversely. "Why would you wanna be neurotypical? There's plenty of them that lead miserable, unhappy lives!" This is about average outcomes. When one side has much worse average outcomes than the other, this is not invalidated by these averages own minority outcomes.
>Your entire presence in this comment section has been tryna pull us all down and make ALL autists out to be as miserable as you.
I'm not particularly miserable. I've managed some degree of decent life for myself, and certainly could've been much less fortunate. I'm just not fool enough to think I'm a better person because of an impairment to my ability to communicate with, and understand the communication of, others.
I'm certainly less miserable than you, seeing as how my self worth isn't threatened by there being people who recognize my impediment as a bad thing. To which I must dedicated several lengthy comments to the attempted refutation of.
>And then you become speechless at being confronted with living proof otherwise.
What, yourself? You're unemployed, on disability, and have been arguing for days with a stranger that your inability to get along with others is society's fault, and a matter of a lack of raised awareness and a focus on the wrong things in the professional world. Outcomes like yours are just one of many reasons why ASD is associated with negativity and misfortune by the general public. Because so many end up like you, or worse.
Or maybe your friend Alicia? Hey, if she's actually doing well, and not just pretending to, that's all well and good. But the fact that this is by far the minority outcome, and that for most, the story of ASD is one of loneliness and involuntary celibacy, shows how silly it is to point to the minority outcome as proof of everything being fine. The average outcomes are what matters. And on average, those with ASD does worse on all fronts. What's more, those who don't do poorly succeed because they have high general intelligence, which would've been higher if they hadn't have had ASD. Attributing their success to ASD is like attributing Stevie Wonder's success to his blindness. Blindness still makes being a musician harder. It's just less of an impediment there than it is in many other fields.
On the empathy question, I recall reading that NPD correlates with low emotional empathy and typical to high cognitive empathy, whereas ASD correlates with low cognitive empathy and typical to high emotional empathy. Nonetheless, this sounds like cope from pop psychologists
"Affective empathy" seems what Simon Baron-Cohen call compassion.
SBC: "Bloom claims that I have claimed that people with Asperger Syndrome have difficulties in both cognitive and affective empathy. In fact, my book specifically argues against this: that people with Asperger Syndrome have impaired cognitive empathy but intact affective empathy. People with Asperger Syndrome frequently stand up for the underdog, against injustice. They may struggle to pick up social nuances, but they do care that others shouldn’t suffer." https://www.bostonreview.net/forum_response/simon-baron-cohen-response-against-empathy-baron-cohen/
Basically, autistics are low empathethic compassionates.
I don't know if either is necessarily higher, or just that the absence of one makes the remainder seem more potent by comparison. But the way I find it works is that having only a sense of emotional empathy means you can feel other people's feelings, but don't know how to react to them. Whereas having only a sense of cognitive empathy means you know how to react to others feelings, but don't feel others feelings for yourself. Only the latter of these impediments can remotely be seen as beneficial to those impacted, as to feel others feelings without knowing how to react to them is worse than having neither sense at all, as those so impeded consistently react to the feelings of others by either retreating from human contact, or by responding with the grossest and most inappropriate of reactions.
To the extent that it's a cope about autistic emotional impairment being better than narcissistic impairment, rather than simply it not being a thing, that I can buy. As well, given that so many autists, both confirmed* and speculated,** have committed the most horrific of crimes, I don't see how the case that it's "better" is remotely defensible. It's emotional chumfeed for desperate, disappointed parents and HR pathocrats to compensate their extreme uselessness at meaningfully treating the impairment. Like giving a kid with no eyes a glass one, only much lengthier, more expensive, less useful (as looking more like a normal person is actually a tangible benefit), and at least nobody pretends the glass eye helps you see any better.
* Adam Lanza, Christian Weston Chandler, the Zizians
* Jeffrey Dahmer, Osama bin Laden, Adolf Hitler
Shelving the rest, my hypothesis (as an Asperger’s case) is that autism renders one more vulnerable to propaganda of a certain kind, totalitarian ideology as Arendt describes it. It appeals heavily to systems-based and black-and-white thinkers. I assume there are a lot of autistic conspiracy theorists..
As an autist myself, I enjoyed reading this post more than any other work on autism that I've read. I strongly agree with the neural and behavior description of autism that you wrote, and basically all of it fits like a glove for me, except for autism being correlated with being left-wing. Leftism never made any intuitive sense to me at all.
I've heard that autism quotient (AQ) tends to be correlated with right-libertarianism, which resonates with me as well since I was right-libertarian for 4 years. https://reason.com/2011/07/20/being-libertarian-may-cause-au/
I also think "What is Autism?" would be a better title than "Autism is bad". It grabs attention better and is probably less likely to turn away some potential readers. Whether autism is bad or not is also still debatable and perspective-dependent.
No it's not. Autism is entirely negative in even its milder forms. To whatever extent benefits exist, that's due to the correlation of autism with high-familial g. Not due to autism itself. It's no more a good thing than blindness or deafness. The fact that we're even having a debate about this rather than just everyone agreeing that autism is bad just illustrates how deeply we've fallen into Clown World.
No, autism is not "entirely negative in even its milder forms". Have you considered how the population of Wikipedia editors (including myself) is disproportionately autistic and neurodivergent compared to the general population? Wikipedia has proven to be one of the most invaluable sources of information in the entire world. Currently, Wikipedia is very left-leaning, but that's more of a problem with academia, not Wikipedia itself, since Wikipedia often defers judgment to academia. I can guarantee that Wikipedia wouldn't be nearly as good as it is if autistic and neurodivergent editors were non-existent. If you're going to credit the quality of Wikipedia purely to higher IQ, then you're just naive. Wikipedia is just one example of how the traits of high IQ autists benefit society.
> To whatever extent benefits exist, that's due to the correlation of autism with high-familial g. Not due to autism itself.
No, it's also due to autism, not just higher g. And I never said that the benefits of autistic genes/traits were due to just autism itself. If the genes that cause autism also cause IQ and vice versa (as was concluded by both Seb and Scott Alexander: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/13/autism-and-intelligence-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/), then the effects of those genes are inseparable from each other. It's not meaningful to separate the different effects of the genes, especially when we don't even fully understand them.
> The fact that we're even having a debate about this rather than just everyone agreeing that autism is bad just illustrates how deeply we've fallen into Clown World.
The fact that we're having this debate demonstrates how poorly people understand neurodiversity, genetics, and eugenics. Every good biologist knows that genetic diversity is a *good* things for populations (https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/eugenics#why-laissez-faire-is-best). Many types of neurodiversity are beneficial for human societies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn_9f5x0f1Q
> It's no more a good thing than blindness or deafness.
That is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard! You are clueless and you don't know what you're talking about.
💯 tell em
This is a ridiculously stupid argument in favor of neurodiversity. If the likes of you really made for a better site, they wouldn't have waited till last year to start accepting paid editors. They would've hired the best of you lot as employees ages ago. Instead, they spent it all on left-wing political activism. They're just taking advantage of the empty, jobless, friendless personal lives of online spergs, and have fostered a toxic and unpleasant community worthy of Lowtax Kyanka that repels normal people from its presence.
If anything, that's even more reason we should work on a cure. The Wikipedia jannies might just start making friends in real life, and the site might just end up hiring writers and editors directly to compensate. The Wikipedia community might become downright enjoyable.
Oh no, how dare those Wikipedia editors make friends on the Internet instead of in real life! Their lifestyle sucks because I said so, so they should be forced to live differently.
You haven't presented a single good argument against neurodiversity, retard. On the other hand, he gave examples and links about how neurodivergent people have been able to do things that neurotypical people can't typically do. "Curing" autism could backfire by preventing these wonderful creations.
Another problem with your comment is that you're using one-sided exploitative rhetoric: https://thewaywardaxolotl.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-rhetoric-of-exploitation_21.html. I don't think ZC and most editors choose to edit Wikipedia because they're people taken advantage of. The simpler explanation is that they enjoy editing Wikipedia, hence why they voluntarily choose to contribute. You're so full of shit.
So your argument is that autism bad becuz… Wikipedia? 🤦🏾♀️
No it isn't. I wouldn't be NT if you paid me. Being autistic gives me specific skills and a way of experiencing the world that is valuable and enjoyable to me. Don't speak for me please.
Sorry you hate yourself so much, but we all don’t have to join in on your self-pity. It’s not your place to tell countless complete strangers that they’re worse off for the way they’re wired. Ironically, you’re falling victim to the black and white thinking we often struggle with, things are rarely ever “entirely bad”.
If autism is entirely bad, then why am I entirely good, especially the autistic parts of me?
I’m maybe 95th percentile autist. The downsides are poor social skills and difficulty with group conversations. I love debates on obscure topics that most people find tedious. I wouldn’t say I’m hopeless though, I have several friendships measured in decades now.
Upsides are abilities to spot patterns and even to search for them where no one even thinks they exist. This has been useful professionally although I have to fight my tendencies toward chasing irrelevancies.
I’ve come to notice that my father, his brother and my grandfather were all pretty like this too. High IQ/poor social skills - but the labour and marriage market are pretty welcoming to this phenotype.
I have found adult life significantly easier than childhood as I’ve been able to shape my environment around my quirks.
Being high IQ really helps. I’ve been able to self diagnose and consciously overcome certain traits.
So I wouldn’t adopt the term “autistic” myself even though I’m sure I could swing a diagnosis. I’ve known a non-verbal, self-harming autistic child and he is basically three orders of magnitude what I am.
I don't get why you are calling yourself autistic at all. A good chunk of people have poor social skills and only a tiny slither of them are autistic. Most everyone finds group conversations tedious.
Imagine if we applied the same faulty reasoning to physical disorders. "I have a slight headache. Oh, I must be one of those brain tumories they're talking about!"
Autism is on a spectrum, having a brain tumour is not.
That spectrum refers to the degree to which your mental architecture is warped in a highly specific way. Afaik, we don't have a perfectly clear description of that warping as of yet, and psychologists may rely on outside symptoms to asses its severity due to this limitation. But ultimately, the autism itself is not the degree by which it manifests to the outside world.
Autism is not a personality disorder, you can't establish a continuum between normality and pathology, it's not about an over-inflated trait or set of traits, like you have elevated self-consciousness leading into Avoidant personality and the extreme shyness that comes with it. The workings of the mind are themselves qualitatively different with autists.
And keeping with the analogy, headaches vary in intensity as well, a tumor is either there or is not.
About Elon Musk being autistic... I think there is a difference between autism and sociopathy and Elon is on the sociopath spectrum not the autistic spectrum.
"Across all ages, autistic individuals and those with elevated autistic traits but no autistic diagnoses appeared to have increased callous and unemotional traits or psychopathy relative to the general population. Several studies evidenced that although both constructs are associated with empathetic dysfunction, the underlying mechanisms differ.
In adults, psychopathy/psychopathic traits were associated with diminished affective empathy and intact cognitive empathy, whilst the opposite was seen autistic adults and those with elevated autistic traits. In children, those with autistic traits or a diagnosis of autism had diminished cognitive empathy, but not affective empathy, while the relationship between callous and unemotional traits/psychopathy and empathy amongst children was less clear.
The co-occurrence of autism and psychopathy was seen to lead to additional empathic and cognitive impairment, but findings were mixed making it challenging to clearly describe the clinical manifestation."
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11004474/
What do you make of this paper finding autists to be less susceptible to various cognitive biases?
sci-hub.ru/10.1016/j.tics.2021.05.004
What about autism and agency? I would expect it to be lower since they are less likely to hold a job and do well in school. I’d guess that they rarely initiate projects as well. A lot of people wrongly equate being fixated on niche (usually male coded) interests with autism.
As for online autism being narcissistic and left wing, it makes sense since mental illness is generally left wing. I’d expect the same for trooning out.