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When left-handedness became acceptable the number of left handed people was far higher than experts had predicted.
I’m out of the loop here. Could someone ad some context for me? What’s this about?
There is an incorrect belief that autism is on the rise and that it must be caused by something, but in reality we are just getting better at identifying it and diagnosing people correctly. So it’s not that there is an autism epidemic, we’re just discovering that it’s less rare of a condition than previously assumed.
So… someone went through a great deal of trouble to share this. Why? I’m confused. What is the message and the audience? Is there something I am supposed to do?
The message is correcting a misconception utilizing a concept most people would understand better. It isn’t a call to action, just informational.
I’m going to take another ration of downvotes, but I confess: this shit is not my business.
One example is anti-vaxxers claiming vaccines are causing the increase in autism. When challenged, one possible response they parrot is “well then what is the cause?”. The message is that there isn’t a cause because there isn’t an increase in the first place
Between Trump, Palestine, Russia, Ukraine… I just ain’t got time for one other thing. Not this. If there’s nothing I can even imagine doing about this, why is it my business?
Why is what your business? What do you think anyone is asking of you?
You’re the one who asked for an explanation of the post.
Conversations evolve.
Autism
Something I noticed recently
The same people who quickly bemoan “everyone wants a label now” seen to be the same people who say “all kids do this like that”.
Just as easily applies to queerness and gender expression too. My favourite part on the these specific issues is the ignorance in the west, acting like being trans and queer is uniquely American and new.
Meanwhile South East Asia is right there…
It’s them upgrading the graphics card to our simulation.
I figured it out.
Autism causes Nvidia/AMD which causes exoplanets.
… so what you’re saying is that exoplanets cause autism!
Time to blown up Pluto.
No. It’s obviously the space telescopes.
Are Smelloscopes ok?
You already asked that last year!
isn’t this also, like, a tweet about queer people?
It’s the same about depression. I doubt people got “more depressed”, society have just ignored depression for almost the entirety of human history. My mother still tells me to “just be happy” like I can control brain chemicals. Literally nothing makes me happy. Petting my cat only slightly lessens my suffering. Ugh 😓
I don’t think I agree with this one. There’s so much about lives lived in first world countries, with all the signals and information they are bombarded with, that is almost anti-thetical to our biology. I’m certain we are more mentally unwell than people living simply, especially in the past.
While I’m sure most of it has always been here, I would be surprised if modern technology hasn’t contributed to a spike in depression. I have more content and information than I could ever need in the palm of my hands, and yet everything I read seems to make me hate people.
Yeah in 1940 you knew wealthier people had it better but you really never saw how much better.
If depression wasn’t common someone needs to explain how we have seen so much more of it as fewer people are drinking as much as they had in the past.
Marx’s Capital mentions at one point that the working class in Manchester were reliant on drugs like opium to cope with their insane working conditions and poor life/housing conditions.
It’s not a new thing at all.
Not about ADHD, nice. I probably have both. So many new MH illness to discover. We’re charting new territory…woooo…fuck me
Sailling the ND seas…
I will argue that the mild part of the autism spectrum, what we call functional autism, is not a mental illness, not a disorder.
It’s like being left handed, not the most common thing, it can cause troubles in a world made for right handed people, specially if being left handed is not accepted. But by itself is just another way of being just as “healthy” and “normal” as being right handed.
I think this is an open debate. Some folks prefer it being considered an illness because they want diagnosis and treatment. Others, like me, just love to be this way, and there’s nothing I think is wrong with me. The only problem is that the world is not accommodated for people like me, just like it wasn’t accommodated for left-handed people not so long ago. But as soon as it’s 100% accepted as something normal I don’t see it causing any trouble, so if there’s no harm there’s no illness we can talk about.
Absolutely! In fact, I’d argue that this is true for many conditions that we treat as disabilities, like dyslexia (which is rarely disabling) and the aforementioned autism. Both of these conditions have disadvantages and advantages. The situation is not black and white; simply because society was designed one way, does not mean that everyone who does not perfectly fit in is disabled or has a illness.
Hell, I’d even go so far as to say it might not be worth a specific categorization, that everyone is a bit different and we don’t need to pigeonhole every state of reasonably normal into little categories. Ever since Asperger’s was popularized, we had a big chunk of people that are not especially far from normal latching onto this.
If it doesn’t need particularly special treatment/accommodation, then it’s not really worth a category. If someone feels like not dealing with people, needing a bit of a break from it, then that shouldn’t need to be correlated to a condition. By the same token, it can’t be an excuse for being unreasonable to others when you are perfectly capable of being reasonable, you just don’t like doing so. If you misread someone’s non-verbal cues, whether or not you have a “condition”, people should understand that’s just a possibility of everyday life.
Wholeheartedly agree with this! IMO our societies have a big problem with people being different.
That’s my opinion, but I attribute this liberalism: when the society’s philosophy is to attribute 5he responsibility of anyone’s success on each self person, it means the responsability to fit in is on the person itself and not on the society. This removes the burden of inclusion from the society, the group, and make it a burden of adaptation on the person. It is a toxic societal environment.
As an argument to this point of view: making it an illness provide a justification for the person to be different, and a responsability for the society to accommodate disabled people. But the need to go to this extreme instead of simply being tolerant and accommodating any difference is both stupid (because it is a burden for both the victims and the society to hold discussions about basic needs) and a inhuman way of treating people.
Another argument to my thesis is that the “epidemic” is coincidental with societal individualism (pushed by liberalism and that rose since the end of ww2) and the decline of social structures like church and government help (because liberalism was about fighting government involvement in people’s lives).
The spectrum of autism isn’t mild to disabling.
It’s a spectrum of presenting symptoms. What “functional autism” is, is a constellation of symptoms that means you can just about navigate the world as expected by neurotypical people. “Non-functioning” autism or “profound” autism are where the constellation of symptoms makes you unable to function in the world. This is more often than not inclusive of non-verbal autisms and poor motor control autisms.
“Functional” autism can be disabling for the individual in certain conditions - they may be completely unable to read social cues, or be severely impacted by certain stimulatory environments.
This exoplanet pandemic is getting out of hand. We’re seeing them everywhere now!
I heard there’s also a galaxy outbreak happening as we speak
Jesus christ, this is so getting out of hand! We need to bother some politicians about this. What will happen to our children!?
Have we tried slapping them out of existence? Or just telling them to think harder and maybe that’ll make them stop existing?
I just want to take the moment to say, nice to have you all around, especially if you are different. Thanks for enjoying the shit that I don’t. And thanks for sharing my love for something for a different reason. Thanks for showing me a different world.
Also If everyone was like me, my girlfriend wouldn’t be who she is, but ignoring that, I would have a lot of competition and it would be really boring for all of us. Wtf do you talk about if we all would be the same? I would hate you all, and consequently myself. Thanks for being different, seriously.
I took one of those autism tests and I can’t remember off the top of my head what the score was but it was very high which both surprises and doesn’t surprise me. I mask extremely well according to most people I meet. Telling me “You seem normal” or even “You aren’t autistic”.
I’ve only had two people tell me “It’s obvious” ever, my mom and a single friend of mine.
But holy hell all the other autism personality/psychological aspects are like cranked up to 100 and I have a love/hate relationship with that. Hyperfocus is a double edged sword for instance. I love that I can get super into something and get really fucking good at it but I don’t love obsessing over the same thing for months to the point of it keeping me awake at night and hurting other aspects of my life because I can’t change mental direction.
It also isn’t good for social anxiety, way too much rumination on single awkward conversations MAKE IT STOP.
I have a childhood friend who was very recently diagnosed with autism. We talked a little while ago and he brought it up. My first thought was “ah, yep, that explains a lot”.
He’s still a great friend. It didn’t change anything about him, rather it helped make sense of his behaviors that we all just saw as “that’s just how [friend] is”.
I already knew I was autistic I got diagnosed like 10 years ago as an adult, but I had never taken the test in question (Cat-Q) and I guess I kinda figured my autism was “light” or something. I think the test’s questions were very effective at breaking through high masking so that’s why I scored so heavily autistic and it kind of struck me so hard it made me cry. Masking is exhausting and at this point I can’t really “stop” its so ingrained.
For me I don’t think there is anything intrinsically wrong with me but I think some aspects of it fueled some really stifling early life decisions that kept me from growing (before I learned I was autistic) and now I feel like I’m permanently “behind” socially/developmentally. Part of that also I think might have been how subtly conservative and judgemental a lot of culture I absorbed was as a kid that I ended up assuming everyone thought I was a dorky loser so I avoided people I thought were “cool” to a degree. I still feel like I can’t relate to people my own age and that’s been the case since I was like 8 and its still the case in my 30’s. It makes me sad about what I’ve missed out on and makes me worry about my future.
EDIT: I just retook it, I scored a 149, for context average male non-autistic scores are 96.89, for autistic men the average is 109.64.
I feel you on the “social development” part. I was recently diagnosed with ADHD and it helped explain quite a bit about myself. Most men around my age in my area are the stereotypical “sportsball/golf/hunting/jesus” type, none of which I relate to in the slightest, so it’s difficult for me to make friends. I’m very much a homebody and tinkerer, and have at least 3 different projects going at any given time (cars/motorcycles, computers, guitars, hobby kits, etc). What’s frustrating is that people tend to lose interest very quickly once I start talking and getting into detail… I’m lucky that my wife is supportive as she is - without her I’d have nobody to bounce ideas off of 😅
That, and I was stuck in an abusive marriage for 11 years. I went from hanging out with friends and family all the time to only my highly-possesive and jealous (now ex) wife. Naturally, none of which came out until right after we tied the knot; she changed almost overnight. I’m happily remarried now, but that first marriage stole a lot of my life from me.
The same can be said for many neurodivergent “disorders” like ADHD and OCD and Depression. Though I would point out that many of these disorders could easily be recategorized as traits and everyone has some number of traits regardless of if you are seen as neurotypical or not. I would argue that “treatment” is a modification of traits such that we fit a mold in modern society and not necessarily to make us better for our own sake but for the sake of those around us that don’t understand how our brains work.
I medicate to make myself less of an inconvenience for you. Not necessarily to make my life better for me.
Not the case for all neurodivergents but I know a lot who share the sentiment.
Unlike planets, people with autism have indeed been born in the last few decades and were not always in existence like some shadow beings
But there’s no way to measure if there’s an increase in autism, because in previous generations, it went undiagnosed.
I knew kids who for sure had it, and have a cousin who is severely autistic. That shit was rough back then, especially in a third world country, but I commend my aunt for raising him to live in the hard world he was born into, he’s 40 now and can hold down a job and has an apartment. It was hard for him but he made it. The other side of the coin is people in North America who have autistic kids, and stop pushing them intellectually and just go “he’s autistic, don’t push him or teach him to adjust and live, he’ll never get it ” mentality, or the “yay im autistic, how cool” mentality some young people have.
Autism isn’t Super power it sucks
My son (8 years old, born and raised in the US) was diagnosed last week. I’m hesitating to let the school know because they’ll lower their expectations, when he’s so curious and clever. Not sure how I’ll navigate it yet, but I (born and raised in Jamaica) know I likely have some form of it too.
Yeah, that’s the thing, I’ve seen the gamut (and people will say “of course it’s a spectrum”) and a non-trivial amount are people almost treating it as “trendy”, and self-diagnosing or shopping professionals seeking a diagnosis.
I remember at the time they were announcing removal of Asperger’s from the DSM that there was some thought that the high functioning “condition” did more harm than good. It seems the ship has sailed and anyone who doesn’t feel comfortable in social situations and also wants to use it as evidence of their intelligence will go for an Autistic diagnosis. I’ve dealt with a few people who got mad at their mental health professional for telling them they are within the realm of “normal” and everyone finds a challenge in dealing with other people to an extent.
Meanwhile, the people who would have been diagnosed as autistic whether today or 40 years ago suffer some dilution of accommodation, as it seems everyone asserts they are neourodivergent/spicy/autistic online and it ceases to mean much in the popular perception.
