There's definitely been a move to demand individuals be good at everything... old stereotypes of the nerd brought a lot of negatives, but they were also apologetic, acknowledging the trade off, that paying attention deeply to one thing does lead to being worse at other things.
The exact stereotype differed by domain... the performer who is a diva, the self destructive author, the manic artist... each with a hint of nobility but also quite off-putting.
The author wanting to combine Weird Nerd with autistic is very incorrect IMHO... I've known a lot of weird nerds, am one myself, and there's lots of different flavors, most of them not autistic.
So much of talent is just really caring about something specific. Caring about it above other things. Specifically above external motivation and incentives. Do that and the weirdness grows naturally, neurodivergence isn't even necessary (though it might help)
I duno on some of that. Until I was about 39 I was a "weird nerd" and then my wife (Dr of special education) finally convinced me to talk to a Dr and get get tested for autism. Turns out I'm ASD 1, would have been Asperger's in the past. Autism has a very wide range of ways it shows itself.
Well, to me your comment also speaks to the increasing degree to which we medicalize personality traits.
I'm sure your diagnosis is legitimate, but also I'm inferring from your comment that you are married and gainfully employed; so it sounds like you're able to build and maintain relationships, as well hold conversations with strangers or non-close acquaintances when necessary.
In years past would any professional have bothered to test someone like you for a disorder?
Being married and gainfully employed and able to build and maintain relationships as well as hold conversations with strangers when necessary can come at an exceptionally high cost for neurodivergent people in the form of masking (like a kind of mental tech debt). Instead of overt social difficulty, this might present itself as anxiety, depression, and suicidality—those conditions are worthy of medicalization IMO.
I agree with what you're saying, but also - everyone has problems. Is anyone truly normal or neurotypical? Why do some people's problems get the validation of the medical system and others don't?
(These are non-rhetorical questions, I'm really not sure about the answers to them myself)
Why do some people's problems get the validation of the medical system and others don't?
Very roughly, because some people can't function without intervention (for loose definitions of "function"). And some treatment (therapy, drugs, whatever) can help them function.
Autism 1/Aspergers is sometimes kind of borderline - some people can function with it, but it can exact a heavy tool on them as a sibling comment noted. Depress and suicide are relatively more common. Why go through life miserable if it's not necessary?
People without autism or other diagnosable issues are generally more resilient. a bad week, one-off negative occurrence, etc won't send them into a tailspin. That's a very real concern with some neurodivergent individuals.
And you do have to remember, it's all a spectrum. And as observers, we don't know what a person is feeling/thinking internally and not expressing.
I asked this elsewhere but will ask this here - does calling people autistic and medicalising actually prevent misery, depression, and suicide?
This whole thought that autistic people who appear to have no problems are all secretly on the verge of not just burnout, but AUTISTIC burnout and will tailspin into the nether at any moment is a recent idea I have yet to see any actual evidence of other than self-report. The entire idea smacks of non-falsifiability to me.
There is survivorship bias at play as well.
Theres people who go in and DONT get diagnosed with ASD, but get found out to be having other issues, ranging from endocrine to trauma.
The evidence for treatment is the improvement in quality of life for people who do manage to get help.
The control would be people whose challenges make their lives, and the lives of those around them, harder.
The literal survivorship bias is from those who've managed to not commit suicide.
Non-falsifiability on account of self-report is a pervasive problem in mental health. But just because something isn't falsifiable doesn't mean it isn't true.
If I told you I had to consciously monitor my tone of voice, and mannerisms, and level of eye contact to pass for normal, and had to silently drill these things in my mind before starting or joining a conversation, that I basically had to be like a method actor and get into character before speaking, what would you propose as a way to falsify or verify my claim?
You're right: it's non-falsifiable. And you'd be right to raise an eyebrow about the idea that keeping it up would lead to clinical depression. Doesn't mean it isn't true.
I don’t think anybody has said AUTISTIC burnout is a thing. Certainly, I never did.
And having raised a “high functioning” autistic son, I definitely saw when interventions helped. And I also saw the struggles my son had that his coworkers would have just written off as “quirky”. Sadly, he stopped treatment, was overcome by those struggles, and took his own life, so at least for this sample of one, yes, the interventions help. Right up until they don’t any more.
Because there are effective forms of treatment available, but are gated by diagnosis because of $reasons. Validation of the medical system enables one to access those treatments, perhaps most important of which is being able to tell yourself, as well as others, that you're having an actual problem and are not "just lazy" or need to "just get yourself together", etc.
I want a diagnosis of ADHD so I get free speed :)
I'm pretty sure that I would get a diagnosis of ADHD, because of my experience (in my youth) with amphetamines. Everyone else would be off their heads and I felt really focused and together (and could sleep!).
I don't think it's ever free anywhere in the world?
What forms of treatment are there for autism?
Yes. I get that your questions appear to be sincere and genuine, but, yes. Relative to the actual, demonstrable, neurological differences in connectivity and so forth in the “neurodivergent” brain, the overwhelming majority of people are “normal”. Relative to the actual lived experience of “neurodivergents”, the overwhelming majority of people are “normal”.
These kinds of questions are asked by people who simply don’t understand the enormity of the difference.
Much like people who don’t have aphantasia speaking to people who do. And so forth.
I'm pretty sure the majority of people on the internet who claim to be "neurodivergent" and/or have a diagnosis for some sort of ASD or ADHD do not show "actual, neurological differences in connectivity" though. For my little brothers it seemed like half the school suddenly had ADHD, mostly the kids who would in the past have been described as lazy, which I find hard to believe to be based on actual neurological differences.
ADHD is simultaneously overdiagnosed and underdiagnosed; the case of your brothers' school could be the former, or correction of the latter (or both).
ADHD manifests as laziness to observers making snap judgements, so this actually tracks - turns out, some of the specific symptoms that, in the past, would make someone branded as lazy, are actually a disorder.
The problem with calling people lazy is that it's a moral judgement, which sometimes may be helpful as a form of corrective social pressure, but absolutely does not help when "laziness" is a result of a disorder like ADHD; it only makes them suffer that much more.
Much like people who don’t have aphantasia speaking to people who do. And so forth.
Aphantasia is one that I find extremely hard to wrap my head around. The notion that somebody who’s otherwise normal can’t visualize things is really interesting. I have a friend who has it. The only outward symptom is his dislike of fiction and most TV/movies (and you’d only notice that if you knew him fairly well).
They certainly do. And I don't think we can make meaningful comparisons between individuals in terms of their problems, how they struggle or suffer, etc. For me personally, I don't assume to have it any worse than anyone else, and I always assume that others have deep challenges that I won't ever know about.
Again, these concepts become strained when applied to individuals. It's like the family who has 1.5 children: they don't exist. These are ever-changing labels that we make use of within an extremely nebulous social process. I try to apply them only in well-defined contexts and then throw up my hands in the general case.
I have no idea; in my mind this question is trying to peer closely into the nebula.
I'm going to give a pretty out-there answer for this: because they piss us off.
A problem is medicalized when the people who have that problem can no longer be ignored, either because the effects are so severe that their demands for treatment become loud on a societal level, or because the effects naturally bother other people.
We started treating HIV/AIDS only after years of the affected communities refusing to shut up about it.
We medicalize mental health issues because the people with them cause problems for the people without them. It is notable that many mental health conditions have names describing the experience of being around them rather than the experience of having them. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder feels like neither, but people around someone with ADHD get annoyed that they don't pay attention and move around a lot.
For another example, we still diagnose some children with "Oppositional Defiant Disorder".
Good thing I see no to negative evidence that autistic men actually mask. Autistic women I see more evidence for.
Also, saying "this deserves medicalisation" and throwing a label on people doesn't mean you're actually helping. Lets say somebody was masking - how would medicine help them?
Did you ask autistic men or how did you come to that weird conclusion? They likely mask just as much as women, even if you may not notice from the outside (which is the point of masking).
I agree about medicine not really being the solution, though. If an environment requires masking all meds can do is suppress symptoms, at best.
CAT-Q survey results mostly, a screening tool designed to detect masking, and autistic men report masking a statistically insignificant less than neurotypical men. Autistic women report masking a statistically insignificant more than neurotypical women. But the women did report masking a significant amount more than the men.
Not strong evidence but what exactly is the evidence that autistics are going around masking far more than the average bear? Low social motivation is an old theory for the cause of autistic social behaviours which is a theory which would indicate less masking. I’ve heard all this mask mask mask talk over the last few years, but I haven’t seen any persuasive science.
I should also be clear - I’m not saying autistic men don’t mask, or don’t struggle with masking, I’m saying I can find no convincing evidence that autistic men as a group mask an unusual amount. The diagnostic criteria does not indicate masking as a symptom, just as a potential risk that may confuse diagnosis especially in women by making actual social deficits which actually get you diagnosed harder to detect but not impossible.
A lot of the stuff I hear people describing as masking is stuff that a few decades ago would have been called professionalism, or manners, or charm, or empathy.
When I'm meeting with representatives of a client, and one of them makes a suggestion that I know won't work, and I refrain from instantly and publicly shooting down their idea and instead I make a show of considering it, then ask them a probing question or two that let them realise the problem with the idea themselves - am I masking? Or am I merely being professional?
When I see something worthy of a compliment and I rehearse it in my mind to make sure it isn't objectifying or creepy, and that it's personalised to them and shows I paid attention to and understood the thing I'm complimenting - am I masking? Or just being charming?
When I'm socialising with people who are talking about their struggles to lose weight, and I in many years going to the gym have struggled to gain weight or visible muscle, but I keep my mouth shut rather than trying to build rapport about our shared inability to reach our target weight because I've tried it and I know it doesn't work - am I masking? Or just showing a normal level of social skills and empathy?
I think maybe you're misunderstanding what masking is. Masking isn't just not being an asshole. I'll give you some examples.
My face is usually flat, and my tone is usually monotone. Most people modulate their face and their tone naturally and don't have to think about it. When I socialize, I have to think about my face and my tone constantly. Yes everyone is doing this at some level, but for autistic people it takes as much effort as the thing the socializing is meant to accomplish, so that part cannot be enjoyed or suffers as a result of the intentional masking.
Another example is I have echolalia, which means sometimes I have an involuntary urge to repeat things that I heard earlier. I also have various tics where I move my body in wild ways that tend to make people uncomfortable or look at me in strange ways if I do them in public. When I'm socializing, I suppress (mask) all of these urges. I'm sure that most people suppress urges to move their body and make noises in public, but not in a way that autistic people suppress these urges -- again it comes down to it being a conscious effort that causes discomfort. I would compare it to having to sneeze for an entire meeting; all you are going to think about is having to sneeze, and the disruption you will cause if you sneeze and everyone will look at you. But it's not a simple sneeze, it's an action that everyone will talk about and gossip about later, something that will ostracize you.
Another thing I do when masking is more like mirroring. I'm constantly monitoring the situation to figure out how to respond, since I can't use the content of people's words I have to use contextual cues to figure out the appropriate way to respond. For instance I can know a joke is being told by the way someone is telling it, but I might not be able to tell you why it's funny based on the content. Still, I can laugh at the joke but I'm not laughing because I found it humorous, I'm laughing because I discerned the appropriate social place to laugh. And yes people laugh at jokes they don't understand all the time, but for me this extends to everything. I don't know when people are being mean to me, or flirting with me, or scamming me in real time. It takes days, sometimes years of reflection for me to figure out the actual social context of a situation I've been in.
I'm sure all this is true for many people, as I can't imagine socializing is easy for anyone. I do see people who can effortlessly talk with anyone and everyone, and I wonder how they do it, and if they face the same kinds of struggles as me when they go home and decompress. Do they stay awake all night replaying every social interaction from the night before? Do they have to spend days recharging before they can go socialize again? I don't know. But for me it's true to a degree where it makes me never want to go outside again. And that's what makes it a disorder instead of just a quirk or something everyone does.
Thanks for sharing. A lot of this resonated with me.
It seems like a no-brainer to me. Women are more expected than men to exhibit emotional intelligence. To be understanding and supportive toward others and so on. A woman exhibiting autistic traits will be judged more negatively than a man, and so may feel more pressure to conceal them.
For instance, a woman who doesn't react in certain ways to someone's cute baby is some kind of child-hating alien monster.
The man who doesn't react in those ways is assumed to be wanting to do that, but actually masking in the other direction so as not to appear effeminate.
I don't really accept the validity of people who are generally more functional and conventionally successful than average being called "disordered" in the first place. It seems like a weird arbitrary insistence of the medical system to simply pathologize anybody who fits into a certain box.
The disorder is how they affect their social surroundings. Everyone is on the spectrum and the disordered are having social problems.
Out of curiosity, given it is a spectrum, what's at the other end of "really" autisitc (if that's even the right word) or does that just go from 0 being "normal" to 1 being that "really"?
I think another comment said the opposite was schizophrenia.
I have no idea what that comment is talking about, the "opposite" of autism is not schizophrenia -- there's no "opposite" of autism and if there were it wouldn't be schizophrenia, I don't see how that possibly follows.
The were describing connections to the nervous system. Autism was at one end of the quantity of connections and schizophrenia was at the other end. I think it was this thread somewhere.
The problem with this line of labeling is there are multiple possible “spectrums”. I’m not sure what the best visualization would be… Like a starburst, with the center being normal, and all possible disorders going away (except they can be combined, so this isn’t perfect either).
But, if you’re asking about the typical autistic inability to communicate with others, then yeah, 0-1 works as well as any. Just don’t take it as literal or as the only possible set of traits.
simply imagine a person as a unitary data cube (all dimensions between (0,1)) with all personality traits and disorders expressed as dimensions
… the question is, do you have the right embeddings? ;)
(/s, mostly)
Light is a spectrum generated by emitting three colors at varying intensities. Autism might similarly be a spectrum generated by emitting some number of traits at varying intensities.
It’s a spectrum because someone can be incredibly able to understand and relate to people, but completely unable to verbalize and communicate effectively. Conversely someone else can communicate just fine, but has major challenges in ‘modeling’, empathizing, or understanding the behaviors of others.
It sounds like what you are thinking of is a spectrum more in the sense of a range, where one end is "least" and the other "most". There was an interesting article[0] making the rounds a few years ago arguing that it's more like the color spectrum. While there is an underlying linear value to the color spectrum in the wavelength, you don't really talk about red being "more" of a color than blue just because it has longer wavelength. Instead, we talk about combining, and sometimes mixing, colors. The article author argue that the autism spectrum is like that; it's made up of individual traits that make a whole. As I understand it, diagnosis is in part looking at the number of those traits that a person exhibit. Severity would then be a perpendicular axis to the spectrum of traits.
[0] https://neuroclastic.com/its-a-spectrum-doesnt-mean-what-you...
Yeah but we don't call people disordered for lacking the talents of these gainfully employed autistics, so it seems sort of arbitrary to me.
But would it be worse for the world if we could actually understand and identify things - and find treatments for - executive function failures like extreme laziness or trouble with timekeeping?
Or are the people who fail to hold down a job really just morally bad and of low character?
Was it better for people to just be "weird" or "creepy" or "freaks" instead of somewhere on the autism-spectrum?
The judgement of the behavior predated the diagnostic labels.
How has autism diagnosis stopped any of this from happening? People are absolutely unapologetic about calling autistic men creepy in particular.
It hasn't stopped it completely but now you've got a LOT more resources available to use to do something about it. And there are many more who will say something like "hey, you should look into this stuff" instead of just simply shunning and shaming than there were 40 years ago. Especially when spotted in early childhood.
There are no magic bullets. The solution to not being called creepy is, in the end, not acting creepy, same as it ever was. But the diagnostic/psych world can help people find a path to get there. Many of us have been following it for a while now. Do I wish my parents and teachers had known what we know today? Abso-fucking-lutely. Could've started to learn to manage a lot earlier.
Recall the context here of the comparison to those "lacking the talents of these gainfully employed autistics". No shortage of bad names to call them either. Many fewer structured and well-studied support systems.
When I talk to autistic men there's often a huffy entitlement that being called creepy is a form of discrimination, since autism itself is seen as "Creepy" independent of any objectively or intentionally creepy behaviour, and spend their time self-victimising instead of thinking about how they could change to avoid creeping out others.
I see them get despondent that they have a disorder which means they can definitionally are socially impaired and always will be.
As for the parents and teachers causing kids to not be creepy, that mostly consists of them saying stuff like "mastrubrate in your room" and "don't tell strangers you want to have sex with them". There's not actually a competent make autistic people not creepy treatment that's in any way mainstream or widespread (Although if one existed I'd be all ears). If I had to suggest anything, it would be intensive immersion in social situations with neurologically typical people, which doesn't really take a diagnosis.
Like I just keep hearing these theories about how we need to diagnose people with autism to get them resources and treatment but I don't know what these things are. Honestly I see men getting into stuff like looksmaxxing stuff because they're convinced of stuff like their perceived "creepiness" being a result of them being ugly (evidence would support that ugly people are seen as more creepy), and at least something like plastic surgery offers them an evidence-based method to reduce perceived creepiness - which is something the medical system DOES NOT COMPETENTLY OFFER despite the medical system also telling them that they have social deficits. I think the neurosis's being caused by labelling and reification are already doing damage.
I think the thing that bothers me most about autism spectrum disorder is it's seen as a sort of life sentence which involves impairments which by definition are lifetime and you can never overcome, and if you fit these boxes, even if you have no significant problems, you're some successful married computer programmer, you are just fucked for life! Yet when I look at the actual research, I see children going from being clinically diagnosable with a disorder to sub-clinical all the time in followup studies. Yet all we really care about is getting MORE people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, as in, it should be our goal to have MORE people labelled as being impaired instead of LESS people because we did such a good job resolving their impairments and making them independent that they no longer had any significant difficulties or need for support or a "disorder" label anymore. Being disordered has become a fucking identity where the more people who have the identity the more we are saving people.
I think the behavior is called disordered not the person exhibiting them. Many of the disordered behaviors can be transient.
What about someone who needs a wheelchair but is conveniently successful?
Being in a wheelchair is rarely going to be caused by a disorder, also autism is different insofar that the negatives and positives seem to be linked to eachother and are not merely a matter of random circumstance.
But practically, the disorder definition above basically would lump the above poster in with somebody who was struggling to hold down a part time job or any social relationships as having the same level of disability. All therapies, treatments, accomidations, etc will end up calibrated for the more profoundly disabled person while being offered to the above poster. Generally, peoples first impression of the person will understandably be based on that of the average person with autism spectrum disorder if they're told they're autistic which will cause them to be pretty profoundly misunderstood.
That's just my take on this.
Your lack of knowledge about the range of treatment options and support available for autism/asperges does not make it true that all therapies, treatments, etc are the same. Your "take" seems to be very strongly held based on what appears to be a very limited set of anecdotal data points.
If they seemingly successfully have walked around their entire lives - sure. But this seems like a off analogy
I'm glad you aren't a, diagnostician with that bias!
This reads kind of like “my parents hit me when I was younger and I turned out fine” though o highly doubt it’s your intention.
Just because things seemingly turned out OK doesn’t mean the treatment was appropriate. In the same way, just because someone manages to “get by” doesn’t mean they don’t need to be diagnosed. It’s just making their life needlessly more difficult whereas they could yave more resources that reduce the burden they have to live with every day.
Just knowing you have a diagnosis, regardless of whether or not you are treated, can be incredibly empowering and helpful. It isn’t a mystery why other people could sit down and study for three hours when I was in college and I couldn’t. I was diagnosed with ADHD, I knew where my blockers were and what they looked like (and continue to!) It gives me a lot more control and ability to manage myself day to day vs. assuming something is wrong with me. The latter feeling can be incredibly demoralizing and even lead to self-destructive tendencies such as a self-medicating with alcohol and drugs. After all: Why bother trying if you’re convinced you’re truly broken? It’s not something that has a name but that other people share this problem with you and manage is, again, incredibly empowering.
The anti-diagnosis attitude is surprising on a site like this. Everyone could do better with a better understanding of their own mind, whether it meets the criteria of a disorder or not. And with any kind of better understanding we need more and better categorizations.
> The anti-diagnosis attitude is surprising on a site like this.
Did you know, up until the 1970s, homosexuality was considered a mental disorder [1] by the psychiatric profession?
Can you understand why many homosexuals felt that they were just being themselves, and that them being themselves didn't warrant inclusion in a diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders?
With that thought in your mind, can you see how a happy and successful person who wasn't struggling in any way might feel similarly?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_DSM
The good news is that we eventually decided (mostly) that the solution to that "disorder" was not to try to fix the individual, but to fix the society around them.
Many autistic advocates are, in fact, advocating for improving society such that autism is no longer a major barrier to success. Until we have that, autistic people often require medical care.
It is perhaps important to also note the recent pushback against autism's equivalence of conversion therapy (ABA).
I honestly do not think that’s a fair comparison to someone with something like depression.
LGBT people had been persecuted from so many angles for a long time, the tools used against them are incredibly varied. Just because mental health diagnoses were (and still are) used as a cudgel against them doesn’t mean the entire exercise of diagnosing should be called into question any more than somebody using a knife to stab somebody should call into question all of us keeping cutlery in our home.
A lot of people who post here meet the diagnostic criteria, and maybe they aren't ready to confront something new and scary about themselves. That's fine, it's something one needs to do when ready. Easier to say "That doesn't apply to me" if you're not ready to do the work; confronting an ASD diagnosis late in life is not an easy task.
What is "the work"?
Reframing your entire life.
It’s like a book where the main character who thought he was a doctor in the asylum finds out he was actually a patient the whole time. A mental health diagnosis forces you to go back and relive every moment with a different perspective.
Many people go through a prolonged period of skill loss/regression. I lost the ability to code for over a year. Took a long time to get to a mental place where that was possible again.
Human brains are complicated. Many psychological disorders we have little hard science to understand them with. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, and much more importantly, that a diagnosis is useful in improving someone’s situation.
Show me the actual proof of this. For something so at the core of modern clinical practice, the utility of diagnosis itself is taken for granted rather than actually proven.
I don't think you actually understand modern clinical practice. We are surely better than where we were at in the middle ages with leaches and stuff, but there is still a lot of practice and experimentation to see what works and what doesn't, just evidence without hard proof.
Given the topic of autism, I'm not sure if you are trying to be sarcastic or not.
Here's a question for you. When is the last time mental health outcomes improved in a way which could not simply be the result of reporting differences?
I would say the last time was around the year 2000, when suicide and drug addiction were at all time lows. Every single chance since then, on aggregate, has been useless and the entire field of mental health has completely failed to produce any evidence it has advance an inch this millennium which is absolutely fucking scandalous. I don't know how much oncology improved in the same period of time. Also if you include reported mental health data, people report WORSE mental health now than they did in the past.
Given that, I see pretty much zero reason why the status quo today does a lick to improve people mental health better than the status quo back then. I am just dead stupidly sceptical of diagnosis (at least beyond 2000/DSM-IV levels) as being a source of mental health because not only is it not proven people don't even attempt to prove this.
When the DSM-V was released, the director of the NIMH started the RDOC for research which was nominally supposed to do studies based less on categories like "autism" and more on underlying biological phenomenon, trashed the idea of symptom based diagnosis pointing out it has largely been depreciated elsewhere in medicine, and suggested we might have to get rid of the words schizophrenia and depression because they were confusing things. I think about such things occasionally and wonder if the entire diagnostic nosology we have is basically a fatally flawed system.
So my essential objection is, why medicalise people's identities if there's no evidence it's improving people's outcomes?
20 years in a time of massive social changes? Would it really happen all so quickly? There are million things that could be making things worse. Heck, it could be case that without these treatments it'd be even worse. I don't know if that's true or not, but I'm saying consider the wider environment in which this is all happening.
It's impossible to really be sure either way. Maybe it's all garbage, maybe not. but make sure you're at least trying to look at the whole picture.
brains are complicated but so is behavior. maybe the second is more complicated due to unpredictability.
Are you aware that ASD isn't purely psychosocial?
Yes I'm aware that it's understood to be neurological condition.
But it's diagnosed based on behavioral observations, it's not like people get diagnosed with ASD based on brain scans like you would for MS or parkinsons.
This is like saying that you can't have a physical ailment unless you're bedridden.
The traits you are describing here and autism don’t exclude each other. Many autists live well. Some Fortune 500 founders and/or CEOs are autistic. I’m tempted to conclude you are projecting a stereotype, but I might be reading too much into your post.
Can I ask candidly, what did you gain from knowing this? Presumably this didn't have much effect on you, since you seem to be fairly successful - finding a partner and getting married and presumably also having a decent job.
Seems kind of like a vanity validation for your wife rather than a benefit to you.
It can help reframe personal experiences and past struggles for one, but it can also help gain access to support that isn't available if you're just a "weird nerd". It can also serve to legitimize your struggles to people who think you just need to "stop being so lazy" at whatever you genuinely struggle with by being able to point at a diagnosis.
Yeah, the benefits are a mixed bag and subjective but that's why we should normalize self-dx rather than insisting people have to get a medical opinion to be "validated".
As of recently[1], in Australia, an ASD diagnosis is a reportable condition that may affect your driving ability and therefore comes with an AU$9000 fine if you don't disclose it to the authorities. Though I suspect I might be ASD 1, there is now no way I would seek a diagnosis.
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-26/national-fitness-to-d...
Not quite - as of more than a decade ago in Queensland, but nobody noticed until recently, when it became a reportable condition in some other states with a possible $500 fine.
For me it helped change some of the approaches I take with my therapist. I also have sever clinical depression. It's also helped me relate to other people and understand why people have an easier time with seemingly basic things, like speaking to a group of people or just being at a table where multiple people are having conversations and I get overwhelmed and can't follow what's going on.
For instance, I spend a lot of time scripting conversations and I've found if I don't do this it will have a meaningful negative impact on my ability to communicate with people. Almost like if I don't practice setting up the path between a concept and the words, then when I need to talk to other people that connection doesn't exist and I just can't put things to words.
Somewhat off topic - I'm curious if the diagnosis has helped in any way. I'm early 40s and have gone so far as taking an online test for autism where I scored very high.
I've thought of being tested by a doctor but always think "What's the point? How is it going to help knowing?" so I'm curious as someone also well into adulthood if you've had any impact from knowing.
I'm also married and am able to keep a job and function relatively well even though I'm not the most sociable person.
I was never under any presupposition the problem was mine. Even when I act as normal as possible I still get rejection. It was always others. Fortunately I occupy a financial situation where that does not matter anymore. Embracing the weird nerd is better than trying to conform and not succeeding or being inauthentic.
The article literally reads:
These are the same thing. The author recognizes that. Everyone recognizes that.
They are not the same thing. Not all weird nerds have autism, and not all people with autism are weird nerds.
Do you think that receiving this diagnosis increased or decreased your happiness?
I'm very weird, but whatever I am is rare (or harmless) enough to not be commonly discussed or have a well known group identity the way autism does — I've done online tests for a bunch of psychological conditions, including autism, and all of them rate me as absolutely normal.
But I draw my ingroup/outgroup boundary broadly enough to include all non-sociopathic humans and several other species; I have zero motivation towards spectator sport; music only holds my interest for a few plays and then bores me; I can "visualise" my sense of balance strongly enough to completely override my actual sense of which way is down; my body self-image is almost entirely under conscious control (as in: I can't be body-dysmorphic because I don't have a consistent morph to dis).
The line you draw between "weirdness" and "neurodivergence" is interesting.
Would neurodivergence have to be native (so, not grown "naturally") and at which point does weirdness fit on the spectrum ?
Recently I think people are more receptive to lower degrees of neurodivergence. I see it the same way people understand that you have a gradation between having difficulties climbing stairs and not being able to walk. We could probably have it more in the open that many are not full blown clinically diagnosed ASD patients, and I wouldn't see it as an issue to have "false positives" of diversity lumped into neurodivergence if it was destigmatized.
At some point the question is “why?”. We can keep atomizing human variability into smaller, more graduated buckets of neurodivergence, but what’s the point, esp. for those that don’t really suffer negative impacts, and for which there isn’t really any remedy besides acceptance?
Just a guess here - but to make diagnosed people feel more included and part of a group, the more people get diagnosed even if it's 0.01%, the more safe the others feel because they're not alone, it stops being a stigma
I've worked with younger people in tech. I'm seeing a mix of effects, positive and negative, from increased diagnosis rates.
On the plus side, some people are using their diagnoses to find helpful support material, techniques, and advice.
On the negative side, some people get a diagnosis and then try to use it as an excuse for every personality trait they can fit under the umbrella of that diagnosis.
It's really difficult as a mentor to have to explain to someone that their diagnosis of anxiety or ADHD or autism doesn't give them a free pass in society for all of the things they struggle with.
I've had to explain to numerous people that having an ADHD diagnosis doesn't, for example, exempt them from the same performance review standards as their peers at work. This can be difficult to acceptance for someone who was given extra time on tests and possibly more leniency on assignments throughout high school and college due to their diagnosis. The educational institutions meant well, but the students took the wrong message from their accommodations and assumed it was always the world's responsibility to bend to their personal quirks rather than the other way around. Teaching people that their diagnosis is, to be blunt, not other people's problem is a difficult hurdle to clear for some. Many others get it right away, of course, but the internet rhetoric about neurodivergence leads a lot of people in the wrong direction.
I can’t speak for you, but that isn’t at all accurate as far as I know. I myself would not say these kinds of things to a coworker, and definitely not to a subordinate one or one that reports to me, as I don’t work in HR or legal department, and I’m not intimately familiar with actual existing accommodations for ADHD and other conditions under the FMLA and other disability discrimination laws and regulations in the US or other countries.
This is a legal minefield and accident waiting to happen. Tread lightly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_o...
Why are you saying it's inaccurate if you don't understand the laws and regulations?
The FMLA that you cited and linked is for emergency medical leave, not for ADHD accommodations.
You're also making a mistake that I see a lot: Getting an ADHD diagnosis is not the same as having a disability. It is possible to qualify as having a disability due to an ADHD diagnosis, but it's a substantially more difficult standard to achieve and prove. The average ADHD patient will not and cannot qualify as being disabled due to ADHD.
This is exactly what I was talking about: There has been an explosion of over-confident opinions about how ADHD and other mental health conditions intersect the workplace that have no basis in reality. The amount of incorrect ADHD information circulating on places like Reddit and TikTok is leading people in the wrong direction in large numbers.
I didn’t say I wasn’t familiar with them, I said I wasn’t intimately familiar with them.
It’s about more than that, but that’s neither here nor there.
Needing to take time off regularly, irregularly, as needed, or working less than full-time at an ostensibly full-time job due to a medical condition that may or may not be a disability are accommodations that would fall under FMLA, and it would be a factor in someone being unable to meet otherwise-reasonable standards or expectations. The FMLA applies even if your medical condition isn’t considered a disability, for that matter.
That’s specifically why I said that I’m not speaking for you, because I don’t know what you know or don’t know, nor do I know what jurisdiction you operate in, but I know enough to not advise others about how to speak about coworkers’ medical issues - I just don’t do it! I don’t speak about coworkers’ medical issues, because it’s none of my business, and it’s a poor use of my time, their time, and the company’s time. It’s also not in my job description to comment on my coworkers’ medical issues.
I’d be happy to discuss this further and read any resources you may have on this subject, though. I don’t claim to be an expert, and I am amenable to reason.
If anything, I'd suggest reading up on the details of FMLA.
FMLA is not, for example, a free pass to take time off as needed, or regularly.
The wording of FMLA is more about recovering from an illness. Someone who routinely becomes overwhelmed with work and needs extra time off is going to have a hard time arguing that it's actually FMLA protected leave.. FMLA will specifically exclude things like taking time off for routine medical care, because it's specifically not for those purposes.
I am going to have to disagree with you there: continuing care and mental health days are covered under the FMLA as I read it.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/28o-mental-heal...
This is kind of a toxic perspective and could be why you have so many problems with your neurodiverse coworkers. If you believe they should never require accommodations and are always expected to conform to the rest of society, then you don't understand what that experience is like and how further debilitating it can actually be.
I’m sorry, no one is going to bend their whole life to fit whatever accommodation you require. If you have a covered disability and a company legally must provide some minimal accommodation, then sure. If you are a weirdo who needs their emotional support stuffed animals surrounding the office or you break into a panic attack, you will discover life isn’t fair pretty quick.
That's not what I said. The amount of toxic projection happening underneath these comments is wild.
Anyway, I did not say they shouldn't get accommodations. I said those accommodations do not exempt them from having to do the job.
The mistake being made is to confuse accommodations that help people do their job with "accommodations" that exempt the person from having to do the job.
Two different things! You can expect the first in the workplace. You cannot expect the second.
How is this stance different from one that says the same thing about your race or being deaf or requiring regular injections? Seems to me this is saying that some forms of bigotry are OK and the victims of it just need to deal with it. That neural disorders aren't as real or important because you can't see them and that makes it easier for some people who have them, but at a functional level, try to make more of it than they should. Because of this everyone with any level of these conditions should just suck it up where it doesn't jive well with our common hierarchical workplace organization.
I never suggested discrimination based on mental health conditions is okay or encouraged. I'm just pointing out that you shouldn't put it on your resume and you can't expect it to exempt you from having to do your job. It's simple.
I don't understand your analogy to race because that doesn't make any sense and certainly isn't relevant to what I said.
As for your example of being deaf: The reality is that any disability that prevents someone from doing a job, in a way that that cannot be reasonably accommodated, means that an employer doesn't have to hire that person for the job. This makes people angry in the general sense, but the truth is that there are jobs that require certain abilities to perform. If someone was, for example, confined to a wheelchair then they would not be considered for a job loading trucks. That's "discrimination" in the general sense of the word, but it's certainly not bigotry.
I think you've either misunderstood what I was saying, or you're upset that the world isn't as idealistic as you want. The reality is that if a condition prevents someone from doing a job and it can't be reasonably accommodated, the employer isn't forced to keep paying that person and ignore their inability to do the job.
Having ADHD is a hurdle, but not something that prevents most people from doing jobs. It makes them more difficult, yes, but not impossible. If the condition is so bad that it becomes disabling (legal definition) then that's a different story, but again you're not required to employ people who have disabilities that prevent them from doing the job.
The analogy to race was due to DEI training at work. They equate all things people have biases against as things you should work to overcome. Race is one of these as is sex, handicaps, etc.
The deaf example is actually quite good. People who suffer from neurological disorders have a disability (in the legal sense) that sometimes can't be accommodated in a very similar way. But they aren't considered to be disabled in the same sense and people don't recognize it. They instead just think the people have bad social skills and should try harder (my last employer's DEI training said exactly this). If you had a deaf or wheelchair bound person and people just generally decided that those are excuses for doing things that everyone else can do then it'd be comparable (I mean things that they can do, but can't do as others expect because, say, they can't hear the instructions from their boss).
I'm really not that concerned with a perfect world and I agree with much of what you are saying. I'd best describe my feelings as annoyed and concerned for how much society has doubled down on all DEI biases being unacceptable except for those against people with neurological disorders (both sides of that annoy me, the doubling down and the ignoring).
And I apologize for suggesting, if indirectly, that you were bigoted. I meant that more as a rhetorical statement but don't think I couched it as well as I could have.
This is not my experience at all. Being diagnosed directly led to immense stigma over and over. You are literally giving people the language they need to stereotype you and put you into a bucket by getting diagnosed and telling people your diagnosis. Stigma is literally an iatrogenic consequence of diagnosis itself, never mind diagnosis stopping stigma! I hear "Autistic" thrown around as an insult maybe 10x more than I heard the same 20 years ago.
People feeling safe because they're not alone does not end stigma whatsoever either.
I dont even like it on a personal level. People use these terms to describe themselves in very narrow buckets and stereotypes, and there is no logic to that at all. I saw a post on /r/ADHD for example thst went something like "Does anyone else svoid eye contact during sex" and everyones like "omg thats me too!". I mean...need I say more?
I get how it might be fulfilling to have a label to explain away all your behaviors but it makes no sense to do so and I find it extremely self-limiting
One of the things I try to emphasize with newly diagnosed young people is that they should not make their diagnosis an outward part of their personality.
There's a trend of putting your diagnoses in everything from your LinkedIn profile to your resume lately. I've been helping with resume review in a group and I've been stunned by how many times I've had to tell people that they need to remove their ADHD diagnosis from their resume.
How does sifting people into smaller and smaller buckets work to make people feel more part of a group? Seems more like people who have felt marginalized in the past want others to feel marginalized like they did, and work to place people into smaller and smaller categories to do so.
And for every group there is an anti-group, another set of people for whom the group-included feel justified in feeling resentful towards in some way.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/13/why-were-turni...
This fails the placebo test. People feel more included and part of groups even if the groups are assigned at random.
My guess is to try to improve human relationships. Trying to understand why someone has consistent surprising/inappropriate reactions might help. The flip side is someone who consistently seems to be surprised by how people are reacting to them and wants better connections.
I do know that people do not like me. Don't get me wrong, my coworkers all get along with me and I think most enjoy working with me but in general people outside of work don't want to be around me. Hell I couldn't even keep my wife interested enough to stick with me.
So how could we study what makes me turn off other people and have it make a difference in my life? It is unlikely that I would be able to change myself and there is almost zero chance that whatever it is about me that disgusts others will change their natural reaction.
In addition, I am not sure that this isn't how things are supposed to be. This may be part of social evolution that just makes the world tick.
I would prefer we stop classifying people and just let them be who/what they are without pointing fingers at them.
Highly unlikely, but you didn't rule it out completely. Plus there are others who also might be able to change.
It’s all about realistic introspection. People with a disorder often prefer the disorder to change. I think it is a personal decision. If one feels the need to be closer/understand an individual or is not satisfied with the quality of their human relationships than understanding personalities including one’s own can help.
so that people can identify themselves as being part of a group, and then find others who are also part of that group, just to have a community for support. if I want to find a group of left handed pansexuals who are into Pokemon Go, the Internet facilitates finding your exact flock.
Seems to me like enabling further segregating people would be a negative thing. Eventually groups become so isolated that conflict is inevitable
There is a mean trick to make people stop pushing their own group identity. Refer to them as their group identity instead of by their name.
Acceptance comes from understanding, on both sides.
We have small and graduated buckets for absolutely anything that impacts how we socially interact with someone. Which town they come from, nationality, ethnicity, educational background, religion down to specific cult group, football team, wealth level, parent's profession, family composition etc.
Any of these has potential for negative discrimination, but we also use them for improving the interaction and mitigate confronting issues. The small and graduated buckets do IMHO help avoiding the negative impacts in the first place.
Maybe this will be an unpopular opinion, but hear me out: it is the video platforms like YouTube, TikTok, etc. Before these platforms, it was relatively difficult to find videos of "ordinary" people in everyday situations. Sure there was funniest home videos and other carefully curated channels, but now it is easy. And with consumption of these videos comes the desire for a vocabulary to classify and describe them. Like how food is spicy or sweet and has different ethnic styles, or music has a tangled mess of genres and substyles, the teenagers of today are developing a classification of (videos of) human behavior. And part of this is non-neurotypical behavior - I don't know why, I haven't really investigated this, but it is clear that some (a lot?) of people enjoy watching content from autistic people, ADHD people, etc. For them, or at least the ML algorithms that feed them content, it is a genre like any other, and in the incestuous cycle of hunting for views, whether the origin was man or machine, at this point it has become branding.
What I'm not clear on is whether this translates to better real-world interactions. Certainly, it raises awareness of the conditions, but just watching a video does not necessarily lead to smooth conversation. Generally meetings with famous actors are pretty awkward and it is even less clear to me that someone who watches ADHD videos would necessarily enjoy meeting an ADHD person irl, particularly one that doesn't make engaging videos with millions of views.
You didn't use this word specifically but this whole conversation has the underlying prior of the "everything is a spectrum" mindset.
In that context, everyone is neurodivergence because, afterall it's a spectrum we're all on and nobody is going to be deadest average. At some point we have to define at what point these spectrums become clinical. The kind of language you see in the DSM for stuff like this is "does it affect daily living/relationships/health in a negative way".
Being neurodivergent isn't a disorder, not showering because you're obsessed with programming probably is.
Thing is, I'm not a psychiatrist, the author probably isn't, most of us aren't. The question of whether it becomes clinical is IMHO irrelevant to most of us.
We won't be standing in front of someone pondering whether they can apply for disability, the better question will be how comfortable they are at keeping eye contact for instance.
"We", as a society, are very much concerned with whether or not someone is eligible for various assistance programs.
We're redefining previously binary conditions as spectrums but the programs there to assist still available as a binary.
It's the same for any most conditions leading to assistance programs though.
Whether you're legally blind or not, legally deaf or not is binary, but each person is on a spectrum and when interacting with someone we might want to adjust to their level where it matters. You don't talk the same way to an elderly with only half of their hearing left, even if legally they're not deaf. Or choose your color schemes with color blind people in mind, even if they won't be registered for governement assistance.
That's where I see the distinction between the administrative part of it, which needs binary criteria because of the management nightmare it would be to have gradual scales for everything, and the human/everyday life side of things, where caring about the different shades matters a lot IMHO.
It's a philosophical question not a psychological question, so I see no reason to appeal to the authority of psychologists here, who are pretty throughly unqualified to determine this.
Autism is a result of neurons failing to "trim" or being over-connected. Being "on the spectrum" refers to the degree of above average physical over-connection of neurons. The opposite, when neurons fail to connect or lose too many connections is called schizophrenia.
People that are between the two, the vast majority of people, are not said to be either autistic or schizophrenic (you can't be both at the same time but can go from autistic to schizophrenic with a degenerative disease). Everyone is not "on the spectrum" for autism, again by definition no one that is schizophrenic is "on the spectrum" for autism at all so your comment is nonsensical.
You've really only redefined the spectrum. It's now a single spectrum from Autism to Schizophrenia. You can't be on two spots on the spectrum at once. You've still put everyone on a spectrum and my question still stands.
How far on the spectrum towards schizophrenia have to be before they are clinically schizophrenic?
I don't disagree with the tendency to place things on spectrums but I find that people fail to adress that some people are so far on any spectrum that they become clinical.
I've never heard this before and a quick search can't find any evidence of it.
The "over-connected" suggestion did pull up studies like this[1], but that's one effect of one set of genes sometimes associated with autism, and, of course, it was in mice.
I'd definitely like to learn more, but at first impression, a spectrum with autism and schizophrenia at opposite ends seems way too simple a model for human brains.
[1] https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/in-autism-too-many-brain-con...
ASD has different levels of diagnosis. I've been told by a therapist specializing in ASD that there are a lot of diagnosed and undiagnosed ASD workers in tech. It's very possible the only reason they are "full blown clinically diagnosed" is because they haven't been tested.
At this point we could diagnose basically everyone on the planet with some flavour of neurodivergence. I’m sure there’s one that makes people good at sales, one that makes people ruthless CEOs, one that makes people programmers, etc.
But I just don’t see the point of diagnosing people with things unless it causes some kind of actual disability and dysfunction.
No, you can't diagnose most people. Yes, the diagnosis generally requires there to be disabilities related to it. Otherwise it doesn't meet the criteria.
That's the current medical way, but the author and this thread like to put up the idea that basically all if not all programmers and "weird nerds" are autistic but it's just massively under diagnosed. To which I disagree, if there are essentially no disorders in your life, you shouldn't be diagnosed.
The ASD spectrum has become incredibly broad to the point where someone who likes just programming too much is being classified in the same group as someone who can hardly speak, let alone look after themselves.
"The ASD spectrum has become incredibly broad to the point where someone who likes just programming too much is being classified in the same group as someone who can hardly speak, let alone look after themselves."
This isn't true at all. The ASD grading has different levels based on the level of assistance needed. Unless that programming is significantly impacting your abilities in life, you would be told that you display some ASD like behaviors but that you don't actually have ASD.
I know a therapist that specializes in adult ASD and they believe that many people in technology fields do have undiagnosed mild ASD. The strong logical basis to the work and other characteristics of the job may play a role in attracting people whose minds work a certain way. It also seems the few people I know who have been diagnosed later in life tend to be in technical fields. The observations and the theory behind it seem to make sense. But not everyone has it, and there is criteria that need to be met to diagnosis it (disabilities).
The issue IMO is we don't have a non medical but accurate word for "some flavour of neurodivergence".
The author tries to come up the "weird nerd" terminology, but it doesn't feel better to me. Extending the medical term to non problematic behaviours feels like a better tradeoff to me.
We already do that in spades: people can have myopism to varying degrees, and we don't avoid putting them somewhere on the scale until they need coke bottle glasses.
The phrase has sounded weird to me for some time but here it strikes me as especially so: "the spectrum"
Just one spectrum, 2 dimensions? Is that all we get? It's a linguistic short-cut, I get that, but I wonder how useful it is, how much nuance it conceals.
Picture a color wheel instead of a continuum.
Here's an image that shows what I mean: https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.4683716510.9542/raf,360x360,...
Yeah, a Kiviat diagram, or radar graph
https://blog.onepatchdown.net/autism/2023/01/13/autism/
Yes, 2 degrees, because autism is a neural "over-connectedness" in the brain that leads to common physical and mental symptoms like toe walking, double hair whorl, sensitivity to sound, etc.
The spectrum can essentially be thought of has the degree of neural "over-connectedness".
Yeah, "the spectrum" feels like squeezing lots of things into one diagnosis. Kind of the opposite of neurodiversity.
It also feels a bit tech-centric... probably tech is someplace autistic attributes are particularly helpful, but other subjects are probably most compatible with other kinds of neurodivergence.
This bizarre romanticization of autism is frustrating for those who are or have loved ones who are nonverbal, stim all day, etc..
I almost wonder if nerfing autism to the point where it's a fun thing to talk about having on tiktok is a way to demonize effective interventions so insurance companies won't have to pay for them.
It's been a similar pattern with ADHD, it feels like its almost been turned into a trend. Although that being said we've had a number of people at our place been diagnosed with ADHD, Autism and in some cases both, all developers, all within the last 3-5 years, and you know what, they're absolutely correct diagnosis.
It's a mix of romanticization and a change in acceptance and understanding of the two, and they do often go hand in hand as we've seen.
But things like the tiktoks mentioning "My Ausistic brain" or "My ADHD brain" are a bit over the top and are making it feel like it's being treated as a 'cool thing' to have.
For me personally I knew I had some sort of autism or ADHD decades ago. It was only when I started having massive issues focusing on work a couple of years back, combined with stimming and an increase in sensory issues that I decided it was time to investigate and sure enough, diagnosed with both. Out of the ~20 developers at my workplace a good 2/3 of them are either diagnosed with one or the other, or exhibit strong signals that would indicate they've likely got at very least ADHD.
My sister didn't say her first word until she was almost 5 and would bang her head against the wall. Hearing people say that autism "isn't a disability, it's a differentability lol!" or "oh I must be autistic because I'm awkward", or worst of all "don't try to treat people with autism it's cruel!" (aka don't force insurance companies to cover ABA, which is the only reason my sister can even talk now) is really upsetting.
With autism but really any neurological variation in humans, it's often said but seldom fully grasped that most variations exist as spectra. This is hard for people to reason about because thinking in hard-line categories seems like it's more intuitive to most people. Still, I think it's useful to remember that whether you think of it as difference or disorder, there are always degrees
There are two competing pressures in psychopathology that are essentially incompatible with each other. On the one hand, healthcare administration and especially the nightmare that is the privatized and insurance-driven US healthcare system puts pressure on justifying needs. Since insurance really tries its absolute best to never help you if it can get away with it, people with extreme divergences are incentivized to insist that only the most extreme manifestation of something is real, everyone else is faking it, and that makes them bad. If something starts to be "not a disorder" in the public perception, insurance companies will use this to try to weasel out of providing necessary support.
Basically every point on a given spectrum exists in some living person though. I'm close to someone who probably couldn't get diagnosed with autism as he can speak fluently and mostly take care of himself, as well as socialize among some circles of people, but certain kinds of social pressure just completely break his brain, and on top of that he has pretty extreme and disabling reactions to certain kinds of overstimulation, including reverting to hitting his head on walls, a behavior he had to pretty meticulously train himself not to do. I would definitely describe him as autistic. I think he's a less extreme case than people who are nonverbal. People like him might not need or want or benefit from medical intervention or navigating the other insane bureaucratic nightmare of disability benefits, but also might not be able to function in society. Specifically, I think he'd have been screwed if not for finding circles where people are aware of these traits, structure their social norms to not function as a minefield for people who are like that, and treat him with compassion. This comes from recognition that autistic people exist and may not be completely categorically obvious, and people like him have to push back against gatekeeping "real" disorder because doing that means people bicker about that and accuse you of stealing valor and then conclude it's too much effort to try to understand the nuances and who's allowed to call themselves what, and in this situation, most people will just throw up their hands on understanding and do what comes naturally to them: Exclude and ridicule people they find weird
I think we could solve both of these problems if we provided more paths to success for people without strong social skills, didn't exert so many conformity pressures on people in every context, didn't put amoral paperclip maximizing bean counters in charge of crucial services like healthcare, and didn't have the neoliberal dogma that most people who say they need help are faking it and thus we need to torture people with hoops to jump through if they want any hope of getting it
Mental disorders are real. They're also made up. We choose what differences are salient and how to cluster them. We set a threshold of difference that's adequately disabling because the rules say we need one. We try to see what we have in common with people different from us, and try to describe them and empathize with them. When it's apparent someone is "sort of weird in the vague direction of spaciness" it makes sense to both assume this might be what we call ADHD but milder, and even if you don't think that's literally neurologically true or whatever, we often describe things in directions or by analogy.
I think it's impossible to get this right. I still want to make private insurance illegal. I still think we should do less harm to people for not learning to politic well. I still think that the internet made everyone so obsessed with words that they have holy wars about the true meaning of several of them. Rather than get drawn into them, I think we should solve the problems that make them feel like important battles, because words are at the end of the day mostly just attempts to communicate. Besides, we're many of us programmers here. We all know most names are fungible
Great take, fully agree. My wife falls into a similar camp as the person you're close to, although she did end up eventually getting diagnosed with autism. It was only because the topic had become so casual on platforms like TikTok and Instagram that she even considered the possibility - she was only exposed to autistic people who would register between Level 2 and 3, which completely blinded her to the possibility that she could also be autistic.
I fully sympathize with people who worry about this delegitimizing their condition, but I am at the same time endlessly grateful that it allowed my wife some peace and closure in better understanding herself.
Thank you for taking the time to write this.
The biggest problem is that they rolled up the asperger syndrome up with autistic spectrum. So any psychologist is forced classify functional and non-functional together.
Its a disservice to both worlds and I am not sure why was it done.
People with asperger syndrome need guidance to navigate the world, while traditionally autistic people need to be taken care of, why lump both together with a single term
One of the reasons is that autism was recognized to belong to a spectrum. It is not a boolean (you have aspergers or you have not, you have autism or not). It is, to keep with the metaphor, a bunch of stats expressed in floats. To what degree are you unable to filter external stimuli? How can you handle social situations? What about social cues? And so on.
The binary classification came with lots of issues.
Another issue was that Hans Asperger was funded by the Nazi regime, and protected intelligent children, while allowing other children to be "euthanized". So there was pressure to remove the actual name too.
If you still need a binary classification, I believe "high functioning" and "low functioning" are still in use.
I had a very similar experience to yourself.
Didn't investigate and get treatment until it imploded my career...
The people that think it's trendy are young, they often live at home with parents so I think it's a case of their ADHD / austism not yet having serious repercussion's.
Also - ADHD and Autism both appear to be very inheritable, so if someone is at home with their parents chances are they spend all their time around at least one person who is also ADHD/Autistic, and anyone else who is there or coming around is very used to being around ADHD/Autistic people.
So they’re ’normal’ in that environment.
It just seems to be the way of things. There's an inherent value in being yourself without feeling the need to hide, and via the process of de-stigmatization, more people are comfortable coming out and expressing that they are what they are, and because of the de-stigmatization effort, those people are uplifted. And in turn, other people who want to feel special and want more social capital will either imitate it or try to get diagnosed themselves.
The "my ADHD brain" stuff isn't my thing, though I am pretty sure I have an ADHD thing that's so mild it doesn't quite qualify for the second D, but I have a heavily ADHD spouse, and she likes them. I think it makes her feel less crazy/dumb for doing the admittedly sometimes amusingly boneheaded things she does, like bashing her arms and legs into things or making tea and forgetting it a moment later. But also she has grappled with how that content flattens ADHD into, her words, "quirky ditz syndrome" and much rarely goes into the darker aspects she struggles with, like being completely unable to accomplish a basic task for hours on end and getting increasingly frustrated with herself, or her "zombie hours" when she gets absolutely stuck in her phone (I eventually helped her setup parental controls on iOS to boot her off after awhile, but even that being couched in things called "parental controls" is humiliating for her).
Almost? I constantly see (at least couple weeks back) videos about how they behave a certain way because they have ADHD, or what ADHD people prefer to do in certain situations. Most of them are populistic and factually complete bullshit. They do people with ADHD a disserviceall Uhr Maisinformation they spread. And why? Because somehow it's hip zo say zo have ADHD.
Look at every thread about the subject on these boards: it's filled with people claiming to be "on the spectrum" (aren't we all?).
What a bizarre conspiracy. Are treatments even expensive?
In some cases yes, they are expensive - years of person on person specialized therapy, and specialized environment/education. Depending on how much difficulty they have functioning.
It’s much easier to pretend it’s all a scam and not do anything, or penalize/force people to ‘act normal’. At least for insurance companies, teachers, employers, and often parents.
Which is why a lot of folks with ‘actual’ ADHD/Autism have a lot of PTSD from their childhoods. (And no, not a joke.) Severe, triggering, legit PTSD. Objective, causes the same physiological symptoms as those in war zones type PTSD. Except for it being around ‘weird’ things like school, childcare, interactions with their parents, teachers, peers, instead of when their buddy got blown up by an IED.
To make things even more complicated, persistent and repeated traumatic events that a person is powerless to prevent (usually in childhood, but not required) tends to cause Complex PTSD - which has a lot of overlap with ADHD and Autistic symptoms. Like 80-90% depending on which set of definitions one uses.
A really good way (in my experience) to get Complex PTSD is to be around someone like a parent/caregiver/partner with Antisocial Personality Disorder/NPD/BPD and suffer repeated adverse events because of it that they can’t escape. Something that if it’s a Mother doing it, Society will actively prevent someone from escaping.
Fun times, eh?
As to how to stop or get out of this? Who knows. A big underlying problem (and why society defers to the Mother in most cases here) is that there is no chance there will ever be enough resources to actually figure out the underlying truth for most of these situations.
That is because the real problem cases fundamentally work via manipulation and hiding abuses, so good luck. It would require an objective, unbiased expert (if such a thing is even possible) to follow the kid around 24/7 to see what is actually occurring. For months, or even years. And frankly, in my experience a large portion of scientists, engineers, medical doctors, nurses, police, special forces, and firefighters have backgrounds like this. So maybe this kind of thing is actually essential for society to function.
And regardless, solving this may be like solving the obesity crisis by getting everyone to run on treadmills and get fit or the like. That just ain’t happening.
I think that there's a big difference between high functioning and low functioning autism. It's not surprising that people with high functioning autism want it romanticized in order to help protect themselves against discrimination or being thrown away for not being useful.
For sure there is a significant difference between what is referred to as "high functioning autism" and traditional ("low functioning" autism). But I feel that if those folks want to differentiate then it would be much smarter to come up with a different term and romanticize that.
The only reason to appropriate the term "autism" and associate with that condition is to medicalize one's psychology and obtain funding and services that previously were reserved to "low functioning" autistics (before that term was even necessary).
(edited to clarify)
My relative has an autistic daughter.
At 7 years old, she has mental capacity of 2 year old.
With the right help, she can be somehow functioning, but surely won't get into STEM. Being "weird nerd" is pretty orthogonal to being actually autistic.
For many autistic people, they prefer it this way. Eg avoiding person-first language and being out on social media and also part of this "romanticization", right?
It is a complicated topic. But I rather see people relaxed with the topic, than freaking out. There was a case of a australian immigrant doctor, who was denied immigration, because his child had autism.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/23/outcr...
(after the outcry, the decision was reversed)
But yes, it is a serious condition and feeling awkward is not in the same basket.
Well then let us undo the work of Hans Asperger.
Caring about something deeply above external motivations, especially external validation is by itself neurodivergent. At the very least, you have to be highly introverted, which is rare.
I'm understanding your statement to mean that caring about something because of itself, without external motivation (like validation or money), is neurodivergent. So neurotypical would be to only care about something if you profit from you caring about it? Is that reading correct?
If so, I have to disagree vehemently. That is not my experience at all and feels extremely homo economicus and - to be honest - depressing. I want to care about things I like and that bring me joy, even if no-one pays me for that or validates my choice.
It sounds to me like you probably are introverted, but might not be familiar with exactly what that means, or how neurodivergent is really is from much more common extroverted people.
Most extroverts aren't ruthless machivellian self interested people like you are worrying I am claiming, but they are focused primarily on fitting in and being accepted by others- and do choose their activities and behaviors mostly based on that. Their interests are genuine, but the biggest factor in them is usually who it connects them with, and how it makes them appear to others. What do your hobbies, car, clothing, etc. say about you and how will that affect how others see and treat you?
Introverts are, as the name implies, more inwardly focused- and although they enjoy social connection and acceptance also, it can be exhausting and therefore less motivating, and generally takes a back seat to more inwardly generated concerns. It is often wrongly confused with being socially awkward or shy, which isn't the same at all.
I hate this extrovert vs introvert thing too. People don't fit simiply into these buckets.
It's not a bucket you fit people into, it is one aspect of a persons personality, out of an almost infinite number, and is also a continuum.
The idea originally comes from Carl Jung, and his point in coming up with it was for people that personally identify themselves as fitting into a particular bucket, to realize this, and be able to consciously explore the part of yourself that doesn't fit into it, that you might have ignored or rejected in the past.
For example, if you see yourself as an introverted person, and dislike extroverted qualities in others, it can be useful, for personal growth, to explore and accept your own extroverted qualities as well. I would argue that is nearly the opposite of "simply fitting people into buckets" - it is a tool that gives a perspective to do the opposite of that. To understand the complexity and diversity of yourself, and of others.
How does saying "Im an introvert" not put yourself into a bucket? Youre quite literally using someone elses made up categorization to define who you are, and people tend to speak of this as an innate and overcompassing trait, and moreover using these made up categorizations as a cause of other behaviors. I dont like making small talk with cashiers at this point in my life" essentially becomes "I am an introvert, so I dont like making small talk with strangers and its is never likely to be my thing".
I am perfectly fine describing myself with the actual details of my experiences. Its much richer and nuanced that way rather than simply saying Im not some way because Im an introvert. What Ive seen is the complete opposite of ehst you are saying. People label themselves as something and believe anything thst doesnt fit the label is not them, out of reach, a monumental step for them to do. Talking to a cashier all of a sudden isnt just muttering some words, its a foundational shift from being introverted to extroverted.
I think all of modern psychology/psychaitry suffers in this way: Making up categorizations with the belief that making things easier to conceptualize and making it easier to associate things is scientific and valuable insight. I think its the opposite. Youre losing precious detail and artificially killing complexity and getting simplified, untrue beliefs.
I dont need these labels to explore "my more extroverted qualities". Having never labeled myself this way, I had no issues being the complete "opposite"
The point is people are already unconsciously putting themselves in buckets- being conscious of it is the first step towards actually moving past it. By being conscious of exactly how you are doing this, you can also begin to explore and accept the parts of yourself that don't fit into those buckets (what Carl Jung calls the shadow).
The "buckets" themselves (archetypes) are simply explaining different aspects of human experience and personalities, but absolutely nobody fits into them neatly, and they are limitless- you could probably come up with hundreds of them if you wanted to. Which you think are important and worth talking about is really a matter of opinion or personal values and goals.
These ideas are widely misunderstood and misused in both popular culture and the social sciences, but that isn't the fault of the concepts themselves. For example, the categories in the popular Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) are from Carl Jung's archetypes, but people use them exactly like you said- to essentially justify their own behaviors, when the point is to explore the parts of yourself that are the opposite of that. This idea often horrifies people that are fans of MBTI and use it like you are implying.
I'm sure you would agree that people already have different personalities, and see themselves a certain way, and often dislike traits in themselves and others that are somewhat opposite traits to those. For example a person might see themselves as an analytical logical person, and look down on people who seem to be guided mostly by emotions. It can be hugely valuable for a person like this to start to understand and accept the emotional part of themselves and others, but that likely won't change the fact that they are still a person that prioritizes "thinking" over "feeling."
People often mistakenly call this Carl Jung stuff "pseudoscience" because they are misunderstanding it as trying to be science. It is not- it is a tool or technology for personal growth, and is not attempting to be a literal explanation for how the human brain works or anything like that. It would be more accurate to relate it to religious or spiritual practices like meditation.
The fact is that introverted people are quite rare compared to extroverted people, and extroverted people do tend to see it as a bad thing and want to do things like "help teach introverts to be less extroverted" but may be horrified by the idea of the opposite- learning about and accepting their own introverted aspects.
Do you mean to say that neurodivergence is more common among extroverted people? If so, do you have sources for that? I have not yet heard of any relation between extra- (or intraversion) and neurodiversity.
No, there is a typo in there, but my point is that being introverted is a type of neurodiversity.
I feel like people are usually just using the word to mean autistic, but there are many types of neurodivergence.
I want to check that I’m parsing this correctly.
Caring about something beyond a typical amount for intrinsic reasons is a neurodivergent marker?
Is this really the HN I grew up with?
There are many types of neurodiversity. I am arguing that being very introverted is itself fairly rare, and a type of neurodiversity- however not at all rare among the HN crowd. I would think it goes without saying that the HN crowd is a lot more neurodivergent than the general population.
I'm not sure why people are so upset about this suggestion... I'm not sure if they just disagree, or if they don't like being labeled neurodivergent.
Different types of neurodivergence are highly correlated- a quick google search suggests introversion, left handedness, autism, dyslexia, and ADHD are all highly correlated. Left handedness is also a type of neurodivergence that goes a lot deeper than which hand you write with.
It's not about neurodivergence.
Being interested in something for its own sake beyond an "average" interest is extremely typical.
Our brains are wired to incentivize this interest via the delivery of pleasurable feelings, determination, and motivation. These experiences shape our personality and inform future higher-than-average interests. This is a good feedback cycle, and not something to be lumped together with other facets of personality.
Implying otherwise suggests that people are weird for liking things that they like.
Obviously everyone is interested in things, but it is a matter of degree. Being extremely deeply passionate about something, especially if it is something really unpopular and obscure but complex and time consuming that has no real social or other benefits, is not common among neurotypical people. However, for example, I have ADHD and hyperfocus on niche hobbies and interests where I can barely think about anything else, sometimes for months.
From my observations, most extroverted and otherwise neurotypical people don't have obsessive interests they pursue deeply entirely on their own. When they have hobbies they enjoy a lot it is often the social community around the hobby as much as anything else that is motivating them to stick with the hobby.
Mental illness is somewhat linked to creative productivity, sadly. Bipolar disorder is somewhat overrepresented in highly-accomplished musicians, artists, and writers (with the trend going as far back as the 1800s).
It would not surprise me if ASD is overrepresented in scientists and engineers.
However, people also imitate their tribe, and seeing "weird nerds" with mental illness may get other nerds to emulate that behavior without actually being mentally ill.
Or plain just getting away with shitty behavior. Uncle Rick's a raging asshole and we still accept him as part of the family, which means so can I.
Usually people with an uncle Rick don’t want to become like him and are actually more self aware.
People suffering uncle Rick, of course.
But when it's some famous "difficult" person like Jobs or Gates, or in fiction like Doctor House, the version of them that we see is idealized.
Actually this is the exact counterpoint of TFA: using the inexistent genius as an excuse for the trade-off. Imitating the genius is more difficult than just being a jerk.
Kerr Avon was always more popular than Roj Blake on the BBC show Blake's 7, so I guess there is a point to that.
House is an interesting example. He wasn't an asshole because of his genius. He was like that because of chronic pain. And I actually have experienced that myself due to degenerative disc disorder. It is definitely not something you want to emulate. It is actually pretty terrible feeling like your emotions happen only in extremes due to reasons you can't do anything about, being able to step outside of yourself after the fact and see that you are needlessly hurting people you care about, but even knowing that, you can't stop it from happening in the moment.
Except (young?) people are idiots and mistakenly think the bad behavior is the source of the genius rather than just hitching a ride.
Except when it is, which was the actual point here (or maybe stating it more directly). Or maybe it's the other way around (see, e.g. uncle Rick); either way, there seems to be some correlation there.
I imagine that every asshole genius will have plenty of sharp edges in their behavior that they could round off very easily, making it a near-free win for their relationships (and overall success in life). Beyond that, however, it feels likely to me that making them focus - intellectually, emotionally, or both - on being more socially acceptable, eats directly into the focus they have for the things they're genius at, and disproportionally so.
Genius and asshole tend to go together because to be noticed as a genius you can’t just be doing what everyone around you is doing. People with a high IQ who just go with the flow do not stand out as genius. The noteworthy part of genius is the things they do that are different. Being different means rejecting what everyone around you is doing. Having a personality where you reject what everyone around you is doing usually earns you the label of… asshole.
"Performer who is a diva" is not directly about focusing on one thing at the expense of another. Performers are trained to be divas by having no real friends willing to confront them, and by being infantilized by the people around them who lie about their faults, are excessively accommodating of bullshit, and don't ever make them take responsibility for mistakes or reflect on their impact on other people. The result is often the same for people in positions of authority, such as CEOs. Cf. Elon Musk.
I somewhat agree, but I think there's more to it than that. To be a great performer, you have to care about delivering your own "message" as authentically or at least "in totality" more than anything else. Critique may be useful in understanding how your vision is being received, but actually delivering the vision requires believing in your own vision more than the visions of others. The same could be said of CEOs. It's not just that there are adoring fans / sycophants, it's that to be a great success in these areas you need to be able to disregard the criticisms of others when the criticism doesn't really connect with what you are trying to achieve.
The "diva" stereotype, starting with opera prima donnas, has plenty of real-world examples. These are people who were constantly pampered by support staff who treated them as royalty, and then ended up being huge jerks to anyone who even looked at them the wrong way. Lack of empathy and basic respect is not just about iconoclasm or compartmentalizing criticism or whatever.
I don’t think Klaus Kinski was particularly pampered, he was still a legendary jerk and actor.
This is a really nice statement. Definitely agree with it. I've often seen so many fast-starters in many fields who just taper away, because the subject just isn't interesting to them, and it was the peeps who stayed in the field that ended up becoming really good at it. Definitely holds up the old "Average intelligence and persistence has accomplished much more than genius" quote
You have to be good, and also care, which is like effort. a lot of young people care or put effort into playing sports but most do not have the talent to make a living at it.
"Average intelligence and persistence has accomplished much more than genius"
For hard problems, high IQ is necessary but still insufficient. You are not going to solve a hard math problem with average IQ no matter how much persistence you throw at it.
I'm inclined to disagree, but there's an important piece here that I've found when solving problems that were at least hard for me: sometimes I can get hung up on making a particular approach work when it's not going to and what I need to do is back up and find a different angle of attack.
For example if you're solving a hard math problem with little math knowledge and average IQ, if you're really passionate and persistent about it, then you'd realize you first need to learn more math to build your understanding of the domain. IQ/persistence in this case is not really about the problem itself, but more about the problem-solving process itself.
Passion and ambition are just not neuro-vanilla traits. I think that's what you're picking up on.
Some people these days who are anything but call themselves autistic, ADHD, etc because they don't have a defensible banner anymore under which they can be passionate or ambitious without some reason behind the reason for it.
The only way out is empathy - true empathy, a willingness to accept sometimes (often) people do things for the sheer joy of doing them.
Hard disagree, which I think is your point. I see this as an offshoot of anti-intellectualism: distaste for / absence of passion and ambition is cultural, not biological, and culture becomes self-sustaining.
Strong agree, and it's wild to me that this has indeed become a radical idea.
MBAs wanna justify less staff so everyone has to be good at and do more things now. :D Be a dev and tech support and business relations and...
I think part of the problem with "autistic" is that, although there is an official diagnostic protocol for it, it's far from clear whether that cleaves reality at the joints, as the philosophers say. It's also still mostly an open question if and how autism in women might present differently from in men.
I suspect most of us here are... At least in some degree.
That makes one of us - no consensus required.
Monotrope? AuDHD? Brenner's Lacanian "Way of Being"?
Forensic accounting of which spectrum owns which symptoms is the new ultra-sport - winner take all. The thought that we wind up with yet another control vs. uncontrollable dichotomy of Stoicism worries me, at least in the West.
Walk around an Amazon warehouse unannounced for an afternoon observing its transformation of surveillance capitalism into a set of funhouse mirrors where the observer cannot discern between observer and observed - an infinitely extensible Heisenbug. It's as if you took a page from the 1980's PC design playbook and decided that delightful beige was the architecture of the future - a kind of inorganic revenge of the techno-typicals.