Counter example
In 2019, a large international cultural anthropology study analyzed 219 street disputes and confrontations that were recorded by security cameras in three cities in different countries—Lancaster, Amsterdam, and Cape Town. Contrary to bystander theory, the study found that bystanders intervened in almost every case, and the chance of intervention went up with the number of bystanders; "a highly radical discovery and a completely different outcome than theory predicts."[68]
This study is the first large-scale test of the bystander effect in real-life. Up until now, this effect was mainly studied in the lab by asking study subjects how they would respond in a particular situation. Another striking aspect of this study is that the observations come from three different countries including the violent country of South Africa where intervening in a street dispute is not without risk ... Nevertheless, peacemakers do draw a line according to a follow-up study ... In the case of armed robberies, bystanders intervene far less.[68]
If I'm reading the statistics in the study correctly [0], most of these 80 incidents (70%) were pulled from CCTV footage at a "night time drinking setting." Groups of 18 people on average standing around bars, presumably outside. In 20% of cases someone de-escalated, 5% of the time a bystander joined in to escalate the violent encounter, and 4% it was a mix of escalation/de-escalation. Presumably the rest of the time no one intervened.
This is not an ideal setting to analyze the bystander effect. People are drunk. People know each other. People may have just met but started bonding over alcohol (and cigarettes, if we are outside the bar). Seems more like a study of the behavior of drunk people than anything else.
Fair warning, I'm not great at interpreting statistics nor reading sociological studies, I prefer to read about medicine. I'm open to being corrected.
I'm inclined to agree simply because humans are way too complex to be defined in that way.
But I have a story of a pretty horrible case of bystaderism that I saw 10+ years ago. A man suddenly had an epileptic fit, or something of that effect, in the street. I was about 30 meters away and saw hos this man just fell to the ground suddenly. On a busy downtown street in Sweden's 4th largest city. People who were walking behind him literally stepped over him and kept walking while I ran towards him to see what was wrong.
But I wasn't the only one who ran to him. The stand out thing was specifically a couple who were walking at his pace behind him and just stepped over him and kept walking, a young couple too in their 20s. Very strange and forever stuck in my head.
But both me and several others rushed to his aide and stayed with him, held him in the side position, until he regained consciousness.
Anyways, about 10 years later I find out I have mild autism.
The wikipedia page seems slightly one-sided, not mentioning recent high profile cases where people who intervened in public violence or threats of it were severely punished. The perception that this rate might be changing surely contributes to the actions of everyday people.
Quite oddly, the bystander effect is biggest in countries that celebrate collective action, and the smallest in countries with strong individualist bents.
the narrative about the bystander effect is not real either. two of Kitty Genovese's neighbors helped her, one even confronting her attacker. there were also several calls to the police.
Maybe the knowledge of the bystander effect makes people consciously avoid it. Plus all those set-up shows where they get people to do "off" shit and see how people react.
Anecdotal evidence: around me, several kids are on the autistic spectrum. It's hard to prevent them from intervening when they notice what they feel is an injustice, towards them or others.
At some point, this included one of them regularly attempting to rescue babies from baby trolleys, which they considered a prison. Fortunately, the would-be rescuer was only aged 3 at the time.
Hi, I posted this study because I have Asperger’s and this is what was always said about my behavior.
Yesterday I literally had to stop myself from sending photographs to the police of a guy walking his dog off leash in a park that has signs forbidding it. And my reason for wanting to call the police is because of my compassion for the dog or for anyone the dog to hurt. Not so much that it was only that the man was doing something wrong. And I think that’s what gets missed in those of us with ASD, there is still a strong, empathy and compassion that motivates us.
I've often remarked (informally) that autistic people seem to operate under the assumption that the explicitly-stated rules are the actual rules. "Help others in need" would be the go-to example of how this confusion(?) can lead to a positive outcome.
I don’t think that concern for injustice is something universal or even necessarily widespread among autistic people. That is, I believe that there are plenty of autistic people who do not give a fuck, eschew social causes completely, feel misanthropic, etc. Rather, I think that the examples you encountered represent that segment of autistic people who do care, and due to the difficulty that autistic people have with understanding social roles and social boundaries, they felt a need to act and did so, when normies might not have felt a need or would have held back.
From the outside, it's very very difficult to tell what the actual motivation is. As a kid on the spectrum, I learned very early to shut up about everything genuine in myself, because peoples' social reactions were so painful. I still have to unlearn that decades later.
I did things similar to what the kids you mention do, and I think it was out of a very strong desire to "make incorrect things correct" rather than "make unjust things just". Both of those urges are out of the mainstream, but if a person acts in a way that matches both, then there's strong social pressure on everyone else to treat it positively.
I have mild autism (not entirely politically correct to describe it that way) without intellectual impairments and I frankly see normal people as disabled.
I remember one time I got off the plane in Italy and I was walking with my girlfriend to customs.
At one point we branched off from all the other passengers and she was like "hey we're going the wrong way, everyone is heading there". And I said nope this is the EU passengers exit, look at the sign.
She couldn't believe it was right because the plane was full of others from our EU country. All those people couldn't be wrong, right? I explained I guessed they were all just dumbly following the herd without looking which wouldn't even occur to me. I don't really have that autopilot herd-following program in me. Even when I'm in a group I'm navigating as if I were alone.
So we got to the end and there were 6 free booths in front of us and all the other passengers were queuing up for the 2 unmanned non-EU passport booths :') a security guard had to let them into the right queue.
This applies to the bystander effect too. I'm not surprised about this conclusion at all.
It appears that people with high-functioning autism and a high IQ have advantages and disadvantages.
According to
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2016.0030..., crystallized intelligence is reduced, verbal skills and comprehension and coding (psychomotor speed, ability to absorb new material, visual motor speed, drive for achievement) are reduced. However, some other factors like image rotation ability, attention to detail and visual search are enhanced. There might be more "deliberative" decision making that tends to reduce biases and errors. According to https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.02.21265802v..., autistic individuals with exceptional ability suffer disproportionately from high anxiety and low self-worth.
It's a mixed bag with tradeoffs and imbalances, but thinking that normies are disabled just shows that you're overvaluing some factors while undervaluing others.
Frankly that superiority complex may be why neurodivergent people with similar ideas about "normal" people have issues getting along with others, no offense.
I have autism as well. I don't see normal people as disabled, just different. I think seeing normal people as disabled is a rather myopic perspective, and I sometimes hear it from the community. I don't like it, personally. Typically I believe because many of the times I hear it, it comes with a need for superiority of some kind, and that gets in the way of other various practical things.
It's the same kind of tradeoff in autism vs neurotypical people as you would have in frequency vs momentum with particles, or resolution vs distance in wavelengths. This is because the autistic brain has much less information filtering coming in, so the brain is less 'biased' towards certain things, but also gets completely overwhelmed with information more easily.
I believe that the reason that many autism traits and cPTSD traits are similar is because they are one and the same -- that they are an emergent result of autism as a result of culture and the world, etc, and are not necessarily inherent to the condition. They just appear that way I believe because the mean/median of our cultures and how they interact with the condition tends to create a fixed point where those symptoms generally tend to arise.
This makes some sense if one considers that in cPTSD, it is many, many accumulated little 't' traumas of sensory overwhelm where tiny bits of the experience 'overflow' and aren't properly encoded in the memory system (EMDR, and misc therapeutic techniques attempt to soften this feeling so that those sensations can be re-integrated).
As far as day to day life goes, I believe I am a superb hard problem solver, but conversely, the day-to-day 'normal' things, I find quite challenging and overwhelming. I can buffer them some with supplements, reducing sensory input (having routines, things with little extra Shannon information, etc), to keep me in that valid range of not hitting information overwhelm. But I find life significantly harder due to my autism, despite the few gifts it provides.
There's not really 'autism without intellectual impairments', really only an inverted U curve of sensitivity to information -- which absolutely is an impairment depending upon the situation. I have a few narrow areas of exceptional gifting, due to my brain's sensitivity to information, and also will be shut down for up to hours from a single screaming baby at a Costco for the same reason.
It's all a balance, there's always tradeoffs, and one can certainly move up or down that curve a little bit with suppelements depending upon their personal 'sweet spot'. NAC I've found for me suppresses the symptoms some, and aspartame quite strongly magnifies them for a day or two. I use both, oddly enough, though I greatly prefer NAC for a few reasons.
I hope you found this comment informative and interesting. I am happy to discuss further and am willing to answer any questions and/or thoughts. <3 :')))) :')))) <3 Thank you.
I'm not even sure what passes for "autism" these days. Back in the late 90s I helped out at a tiny charity that helped out family's of severely disabled kids. They would be utterly dependent on their parents for everything and needed constant supervision. Almost all were non-verbal. Due to the fact that many of them had genetic conditions, they had a bunch of health problems and also looked different to other kids their age. But I remember one kid, he was about 7, looked "normal" and had no other medical issues, but needed constant supervision and was non-verbal. I asked what was wrong with him. "He's autistic". My understanding of autism is a mix of that kid and Kim Peak (the real person behind the Rain Man movie).
Fast forward to this century. I've had full conversations with successful people, who announce that they're autistic.
Which austism is this article talking about and how exactly is it diagnosed?
Autism exists on a multi-dimensional spectrum. Dimensions include restricted interests, anxiety, social awkwardness, difficulty reading faces, sensory processing issues, unusual motor of verbal behaviour, among many others. You can think of these characteristics among all people as being distributed like bell curves, and we use the word autism to describe people who are on the tail ends of these. This can also be described as "having autistic traits".
These characteristics tend to be correlated, as well as with neurological differences. But it's important to remember that they are blurry distributions, and also that every autistic person will lie in different points along these characteristics. It's even somewhat conceivable for two people to be autistic and share no autistic traits.
Autism is not by itself a pathology. However, if an autistic trait is especially pronounced, it might cause clinically significant impediment to a person's ability to take care of themselves or integrate with society (especially modern society — more on that later). We can then speak of ASD, or Autism Spectrum Disorder, which is a clinically recognised diagnosis. Many people with ASD also have a learning disability, but certainly not all.
While many difficulties autistic people face are intrinsic to autism, a significant proportion also come from stigma. Modern society is conformist, especially in the working world, and the natural needs, behaviours, and mannerisms of autistic people can conflict with expectations of professionalism or convention. So, high-functioning autistic people have a tendency to consciously or unconsciously learn to imitate neurotypical behaviour, sometimes at great expense in terms of energy and self-identity. This is called "masking".
It's a matter of definition whether we use the word "autism" to refer to this cluster of traits or the clinically significant disorder. Indeed, I think the word used to refer exclusively to the disorder, and it remains controversial. Many people, especially carers of people with low-functioning ASD, feel that saying autism is not an illness trivialises the genuine difficulties they experience. I am very sympathetic to this, but ultimately, I think that without this word "autism", many otherwise fully independently functioning people who fall under the umbrella are left with a void to explain their feeling of difference and social exclusion, and it is bad for society as well, as it pushes autistic people to suppress traits that could potentially be extremely valuable. So, I advocate for this autism vs ASD distinction. But reasonable people can disagree.
I hope you found this useful as a primer on autism, or at least of this autistic person's understanding of it!
My son is 7 and nonverbal, as in your example, and I share much the same problem with the widening of the definition of autism. My partner - a successful academic - is also autistic, in the manner of your other examples.
As with any term that has become too wide to be useful, it needs subdividing. There used to be autism and aspergers, high functioning autism and low functioning autism, etc. Each classification had its problems but the general idea wasn't wrong: there has to be a term for people who need support and can't function without it, to differentiate between them and the high flyers (or even just "getting by OK") and to my mind "high needs autism" is the right term.
The definitions of autism as I understand them are.. interesting. The reason a highly successful person can be diagnosed is because the diagnostic criteria - usually the triad of impairments - specify a person must have difficulties but tend not to describe a way of categorising the level of those difficulties.
By way of example, I might have difficulty knowing what to say to a person (social interaction) in an unfamiliar setting (social imagination) which could manifest itself as me awkwardly interacting in a way that isn't called for, but which is recognised as social awkwardness. Some autistic people may freeze - sometimes in terror - and simply stop responding while they try to work out what to do. Imagine how it feels to be lost for words, and then some. To my knowledge, both examples above fulfil the criteria because they're both social difficulties.
I'd recommend reading more about the diagnostic criteria and interrogating the range of problems people can face. To me, the dividing line is independence. I'd suggest starting there in your thinking, but not forgetting that autism can also be a hidden disability insofar AW support needs might be invisible to the people around.
Both autisms are the same autism. They call autism a spectrum disorder, which essentially boils down to quite wide variations in symptoms. For any of the related symptoms in the list any specific autist may have that symptom a lot, a little, or not at all.
The reason you see more "normal" for a lack of a better word people with autism these days is because we've gotten better at diagnosing the less visible issues. Someone who's non-verbal is pretty easy to spot. Someone who's verbal but doesn't show facial expressions "correctly", doesn't understand sarcasm, has a strong sense of justice, and overly detail oriented might be a lot harder to spot at a glance. Indeed most people would just mentally file such a person under "bit of an oddball".
Take me for a more concrete example. I've got autism, but most people are rather surprised when I tell them, even if I've known them for years. I tend to not tell people before they know me very well, because I find it taints their perception of me.
I'm generally fairly successful. I've got a home, a job, and a dog. On the other hand I struggle almost daily with identifying feelings I have. I'll often not even notice if I'm stressed for example, until I start getting random sore muscles because I've been tensing them all day. I'm super nervous in social situations I've not been in before. It feels like being part of a play but having never gotten the script and the audience is ready to laugh at any tiny mistake. I'll often misinterpret open questions, to the point where these days I'll often just refuse to answer without clarification. I'm quite picky with expectations, especially regarding food. I'll often talk over people without noticing. This sometimes upsets people, but if I try not to I just end up never getting a turn in conversation. I never know how long to keep eye contact. Do I look away too much? am I staring? I don't like getting touched unexpectedly. A simple touch on the elbow to get my attention is jarring to me. I'm often unable to ignore repetitive noises, especially if there's no pattern to the noise -- the clanging of the pipes the dishwasher generates is currently the bane of my existence. I try to plan everything into excruciating detail, which generally doesn't work anyways. I need to carefully pace myself to not run out of energy halfway through the day and have all the symptoms get worse for the rest of the day. Rooms with echo or reverb tire me out in a hurry. I'm frequently annoyed by people trying to "interpret" what I say instead of taking it at face value.
I could go on and on, but my point is that it's entirely possible to seem perfectly normal outwardly and yet have a lot of hidden problems. I -- and a lot of other autistic people -- have been trying to fit in with "normal" people all my life, it's hardly surprising I've gotten good at seeming normal.
Well, they've recently identified several brain structural abnormalities which have slightly different symptom patterns, all of which fit within a generalized 'autism' diagnosis. They're hoping this will lead to individualized treatment.
>The study was published this week in the October issue of Autism Research and created with collaborators from the University of Toronto. The research participants -- employed individuals, 33 with autism and 34 neurotypical -- were asked to weigh in on hypothetical scenarios involving everything from inefficiencies to inequalities to quality concerns.
It's a survey of 67 people. Could have been online even. Nothing I'd take seriously.
They also say "Because of the relatively small sample size, we did not make corrections for multiple comparisons.".
I don't think that means this should be dismissed entirely because you accomplish what you can with the data available to you. It's extremely hard to conduct studies of specialized populations and if we waited for the perfect conditions nothing would get done. We should just be careful not to make any strong opinions based on this study alone.
ASD people may be less likely to be affected by any social effect that is mediated by group attention. Even prior to group approval. The Bystander Effect is one example.
Being enamoured by famous individuals is another. Fame being defined by the number of eyeballs that is on the object. Down to the guy who garners attention by singing in the local dive bar band, who lectures seniors on medicare coverage at the local assisted care facility, or who reads scripture at church once per month. A negative example would be famous popular criminals.
A pessimistic corollary to this is that intervention is often followed by social punishment if it impinges on anyone else's interests or even just makes the bystanders look bad.
I've considered getting a serious adult test for something spectrumy. On the casual tests I score high on Systematizing but I fail to score low on the Empathaizing, but again, those are the casual tests.
This is another point for me getting some kind of assessment, because I have a very strong anti-bystander effect that seems almost not in my control.
Wow, that's interesting. It's curious how the 2 main demographics of individualists: the eusocial leadership group and people with autistic tendencies. There is obviously some spectrum overlap. It's probably unhelpful to automatically reduce people to stereotypes, but it helps to model and understand tendencies and behaviors.
I wish the paper put more emphasis on understanding the mechanism driving the outcome than the implications of the outcomes. It's great to discuss the practical utility of findings such as organizational and employment practices (because it's easy to dismiss research otherwise), but remarkably little time is spent actually discussing how their data reflects things like diffusion of responsibility brought up in the introduction.
Part of being confused by normal practices is that a lot of practices feel abnormal by default so we don't emphasize those expected actions the same way other people to. When most things feel foreign even obvious stuff takes on that vibe. Why wouldn't I help the bystander? Not because I'm better but because it's just as likely a choice as not. Very little bias there.
Standing up for people who can't is important, but any situation calls ensuring your own safety as well—you can't help anyone if you end up a victim yourself. The worse story in recent memory is of someone who got stabbed to death in a subway because they spoke up against someone else being racist.
There was a similar article postulating that dissidents (for example from Eastern Europe) are often on the spectrum, for that very reason, if they see injustice, they are vocal about it.
My wife recently discovered "Young Sheldon", and one of the most egregious goofs so far is the idea that Sheldon would suffer from stage fright. We both agree that stage fright is something probably only suffered by people who care about the opinions of strangers.
[+] [-] epivosism|2 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect#Counter_examp...
even wikipedia has updated saying
[+] [-] InSteady|2 years ago|reply
This is not an ideal setting to analyze the bystander effect. People are drunk. People know each other. People may have just met but started bonding over alcohol (and cigarettes, if we are outside the bar). Seems more like a study of the behavior of drunk people than anything else.
Fair warning, I'm not great at interpreting statistics nor reading sociological studies, I prefer to read about medicine. I'm open to being corrected.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6790599/
[+] [-] INTPenis|2 years ago|reply
But I have a story of a pretty horrible case of bystaderism that I saw 10+ years ago. A man suddenly had an epileptic fit, or something of that effect, in the street. I was about 30 meters away and saw hos this man just fell to the ground suddenly. On a busy downtown street in Sweden's 4th largest city. People who were walking behind him literally stepped over him and kept walking while I ran towards him to see what was wrong.
But I wasn't the only one who ran to him. The stand out thing was specifically a couple who were walking at his pace behind him and just stepped over him and kept walking, a young couple too in their 20s. Very strange and forever stuck in my head.
But both me and several others rushed to his aide and stayed with him, held him in the side position, until he regained consciousness.
Anyways, about 10 years later I find out I have mild autism.
[+] [-] epivosism|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gamblor956|2 years ago|reply
The Bystander was a huge problem in China as recently as 10 years ago, until Chinese authorities made changes to the law.
It's still an issue in India today. (https://www.outlookindia.com/national/explained-delhi-teen-m...)
Quite oddly, the bystander effect is biggest in countries that celebrate collective action, and the smallest in countries with strong individualist bents.
[+] [-] tessierashpool|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quickthrower2|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Yoric|2 years ago|reply
At some point, this included one of them regularly attempting to rescue babies from baby trolleys, which they considered a prison. Fortunately, the would-be rescuer was only aged 3 at the time.
[+] [-] Podgajski|2 years ago|reply
Yesterday I literally had to stop myself from sending photographs to the police of a guy walking his dog off leash in a park that has signs forbidding it. And my reason for wanting to call the police is because of my compassion for the dog or for anyone the dog to hurt. Not so much that it was only that the man was doing something wrong. And I think that’s what gets missed in those of us with ASD, there is still a strong, empathy and compassion that motivates us.
[+] [-] omginternets|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jollofricepeas|2 years ago|reply
But…
I manage several neurodivergent people and to be honest they are the best thing about our company.
They lead in areas that neurotypicals do not which often is being one of the few to speak out when something appears to be wrong or is wrong.
Specifically…
- issues that impact women, ethnic minorities & lgbtqia
- issues that impact healthcare coverage for pay
- issues that impact compensation for themselves and others
we about had a riot when they found out our org was not matching inflation.
[+] [-] OfSanguineFire|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jprete|2 years ago|reply
I did things similar to what the kids you mention do, and I think it was out of a very strong desire to "make incorrect things correct" rather than "make unjust things just". Both of those urges are out of the mainstream, but if a person acts in a way that matches both, then there's strong social pressure on everyone else to treat it positively.
[+] [-] verisimi|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nathan_compton|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wkat4242|2 years ago|reply
I remember one time I got off the plane in Italy and I was walking with my girlfriend to customs.
At one point we branched off from all the other passengers and she was like "hey we're going the wrong way, everyone is heading there". And I said nope this is the EU passengers exit, look at the sign.
She couldn't believe it was right because the plane was full of others from our EU country. All those people couldn't be wrong, right? I explained I guessed they were all just dumbly following the herd without looking which wouldn't even occur to me. I don't really have that autopilot herd-following program in me. Even when I'm in a group I'm navigating as if I were alone.
So we got to the end and there were 6 free booths in front of us and all the other passengers were queuing up for the 2 unmanned non-EU passport booths :') a security guard had to let them into the right queue.
This applies to the bystander effect too. I'm not surprised about this conclusion at all.
[+] [-] zone411|2 years ago|reply
According to https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2016.0030..., crystallized intelligence is reduced, verbal skills and comprehension and coding (psychomotor speed, ability to absorb new material, visual motor speed, drive for achievement) are reduced. However, some other factors like image rotation ability, attention to detail and visual search are enhanced. There might be more "deliberative" decision making that tends to reduce biases and errors. According to https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.02.21265802v..., autistic individuals with exceptional ability suffer disproportionately from high anxiety and low self-worth.
It's a mixed bag with tradeoffs and imbalances, but thinking that normies are disabled just shows that you're overvaluing some factors while undervaluing others.
[+] [-] atleastoptimal|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] solardev|2 years ago|reply
The future is Wall-E...
[+] [-] NeuroCoder|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NoToP|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tysam_and|2 years ago|reply
It's the same kind of tradeoff in autism vs neurotypical people as you would have in frequency vs momentum with particles, or resolution vs distance in wavelengths. This is because the autistic brain has much less information filtering coming in, so the brain is less 'biased' towards certain things, but also gets completely overwhelmed with information more easily.
I believe that the reason that many autism traits and cPTSD traits are similar is because they are one and the same -- that they are an emergent result of autism as a result of culture and the world, etc, and are not necessarily inherent to the condition. They just appear that way I believe because the mean/median of our cultures and how they interact with the condition tends to create a fixed point where those symptoms generally tend to arise.
This makes some sense if one considers that in cPTSD, it is many, many accumulated little 't' traumas of sensory overwhelm where tiny bits of the experience 'overflow' and aren't properly encoded in the memory system (EMDR, and misc therapeutic techniques attempt to soften this feeling so that those sensations can be re-integrated).
As far as day to day life goes, I believe I am a superb hard problem solver, but conversely, the day-to-day 'normal' things, I find quite challenging and overwhelming. I can buffer them some with supplements, reducing sensory input (having routines, things with little extra Shannon information, etc), to keep me in that valid range of not hitting information overwhelm. But I find life significantly harder due to my autism, despite the few gifts it provides.
There's not really 'autism without intellectual impairments', really only an inverted U curve of sensitivity to information -- which absolutely is an impairment depending upon the situation. I have a few narrow areas of exceptional gifting, due to my brain's sensitivity to information, and also will be shut down for up to hours from a single screaming baby at a Costco for the same reason.
It's all a balance, there's always tradeoffs, and one can certainly move up or down that curve a little bit with suppelements depending upon their personal 'sweet spot'. NAC I've found for me suppresses the symptoms some, and aspartame quite strongly magnifies them for a day or two. I use both, oddly enough, though I greatly prefer NAC for a few reasons.
I hope you found this comment informative and interesting. I am happy to discuss further and am willing to answer any questions and/or thoughts. <3 :')))) :')))) <3 Thank you.
[+] [-] renewiltord|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] badrabbit|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raffraffraff|2 years ago|reply
Fast forward to this century. I've had full conversations with successful people, who announce that they're autistic.
Which austism is this article talking about and how exactly is it diagnosed?
[+] [-] movpasd|2 years ago|reply
These characteristics tend to be correlated, as well as with neurological differences. But it's important to remember that they are blurry distributions, and also that every autistic person will lie in different points along these characteristics. It's even somewhat conceivable for two people to be autistic and share no autistic traits.
Autism is not by itself a pathology. However, if an autistic trait is especially pronounced, it might cause clinically significant impediment to a person's ability to take care of themselves or integrate with society (especially modern society — more on that later). We can then speak of ASD, or Autism Spectrum Disorder, which is a clinically recognised diagnosis. Many people with ASD also have a learning disability, but certainly not all.
While many difficulties autistic people face are intrinsic to autism, a significant proportion also come from stigma. Modern society is conformist, especially in the working world, and the natural needs, behaviours, and mannerisms of autistic people can conflict with expectations of professionalism or convention. So, high-functioning autistic people have a tendency to consciously or unconsciously learn to imitate neurotypical behaviour, sometimes at great expense in terms of energy and self-identity. This is called "masking".
It's a matter of definition whether we use the word "autism" to refer to this cluster of traits or the clinically significant disorder. Indeed, I think the word used to refer exclusively to the disorder, and it remains controversial. Many people, especially carers of people with low-functioning ASD, feel that saying autism is not an illness trivialises the genuine difficulties they experience. I am very sympathetic to this, but ultimately, I think that without this word "autism", many otherwise fully independently functioning people who fall under the umbrella are left with a void to explain their feeling of difference and social exclusion, and it is bad for society as well, as it pushes autistic people to suppress traits that could potentially be extremely valuable. So, I advocate for this autism vs ASD distinction. But reasonable people can disagree.
I hope you found this useful as a primer on autism, or at least of this autistic person's understanding of it!
[+] [-] hkt|2 years ago|reply
As with any term that has become too wide to be useful, it needs subdividing. There used to be autism and aspergers, high functioning autism and low functioning autism, etc. Each classification had its problems but the general idea wasn't wrong: there has to be a term for people who need support and can't function without it, to differentiate between them and the high flyers (or even just "getting by OK") and to my mind "high needs autism" is the right term.
The definitions of autism as I understand them are.. interesting. The reason a highly successful person can be diagnosed is because the diagnostic criteria - usually the triad of impairments - specify a person must have difficulties but tend not to describe a way of categorising the level of those difficulties.
By way of example, I might have difficulty knowing what to say to a person (social interaction) in an unfamiliar setting (social imagination) which could manifest itself as me awkwardly interacting in a way that isn't called for, but which is recognised as social awkwardness. Some autistic people may freeze - sometimes in terror - and simply stop responding while they try to work out what to do. Imagine how it feels to be lost for words, and then some. To my knowledge, both examples above fulfil the criteria because they're both social difficulties.
I'd recommend reading more about the diagnostic criteria and interrogating the range of problems people can face. To me, the dividing line is independence. I'd suggest starting there in your thinking, but not forgetting that autism can also be a hidden disability insofar AW support needs might be invisible to the people around.
[+] [-] ddmf|2 years ago|reply
Have a look at the DSM or ICD diagnosis criteria
https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/diagnos...
[+] [-] Doxin|2 years ago|reply
The reason you see more "normal" for a lack of a better word people with autism these days is because we've gotten better at diagnosing the less visible issues. Someone who's non-verbal is pretty easy to spot. Someone who's verbal but doesn't show facial expressions "correctly", doesn't understand sarcasm, has a strong sense of justice, and overly detail oriented might be a lot harder to spot at a glance. Indeed most people would just mentally file such a person under "bit of an oddball".
Take me for a more concrete example. I've got autism, but most people are rather surprised when I tell them, even if I've known them for years. I tend to not tell people before they know me very well, because I find it taints their perception of me.
I'm generally fairly successful. I've got a home, a job, and a dog. On the other hand I struggle almost daily with identifying feelings I have. I'll often not even notice if I'm stressed for example, until I start getting random sore muscles because I've been tensing them all day. I'm super nervous in social situations I've not been in before. It feels like being part of a play but having never gotten the script and the audience is ready to laugh at any tiny mistake. I'll often misinterpret open questions, to the point where these days I'll often just refuse to answer without clarification. I'm quite picky with expectations, especially regarding food. I'll often talk over people without noticing. This sometimes upsets people, but if I try not to I just end up never getting a turn in conversation. I never know how long to keep eye contact. Do I look away too much? am I staring? I don't like getting touched unexpectedly. A simple touch on the elbow to get my attention is jarring to me. I'm often unable to ignore repetitive noises, especially if there's no pattern to the noise -- the clanging of the pipes the dishwasher generates is currently the bane of my existence. I try to plan everything into excruciating detail, which generally doesn't work anyways. I need to carefully pace myself to not run out of energy halfway through the day and have all the symptoms get worse for the rest of the day. Rooms with echo or reverb tire me out in a hurry. I'm frequently annoyed by people trying to "interpret" what I say instead of taking it at face value.
I could go on and on, but my point is that it's entirely possible to seem perfectly normal outwardly and yet have a lot of hidden problems. I -- and a lot of other autistic people -- have been trying to fit in with "normal" people all my life, it's hardly surprising I've gotten good at seeming normal.
[+] [-] Kiuhrly1|2 years ago|reply
People often change a lot over the years. I know people who had serious difficulties as a child who now function "normally" within society.
[+] [-] ahazred8ta|2 years ago|reply
https://news.weill.cornell.edu/news/2023/04/four-different-a...
[+] [-] GoblinSlayer|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graphe|2 years ago|reply
It's a survey of 67 people. Could have been online even. Nothing I'd take seriously.
[+] [-] isaacfrond|2 years ago|reply
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/aur.3012
I'll save you the read, in light of the replication crisis, this is the important bit: 33 autistic participants
[+] [-] NeuroCoder|2 years ago|reply
I don't think that means this should be dismissed entirely because you accomplish what you can with the data available to you. It's extremely hard to conduct studies of specialized populations and if we waited for the perfect conditions nothing would get done. We should just be careful not to make any strong opinions based on this study alone.
[+] [-] mrangle|2 years ago|reply
Being enamoured by famous individuals is another. Fame being defined by the number of eyeballs that is on the object. Down to the guy who garners attention by singing in the local dive bar band, who lectures seniors on medicare coverage at the local assisted care facility, or who reads scripture at church once per month. A negative example would be famous popular criminals.
This carries over to social causes and more.
[+] [-] cubefox|2 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformity
There are interesting other connections as well, for example, men have been found to exhibit less conformity than women.
[+] [-] anigbrowl|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] at_a_remove|2 years ago|reply
This is another point for me getting some kind of assessment, because I have a very strong anti-bystander effect that seems almost not in my control.
[+] [-] tysam_and|2 years ago|reply
Good re-testability, and they're part of what they use for a formal diagnosis.
[+] [-] 1letterunixname|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|2 years ago|reply
Autism and responding to authority (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38072756
[+] [-] NeuroCoder|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhaenchen|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lusus_naturae|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RHSman2|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] js8|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] honeybadger1|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] incomingpain|2 years ago|reply
I'll definitely render help as long as I find it possible.
[+] [-] 082349872349872|2 years ago|reply