I had severe issues as a kid with both my head and brain size (which well, still haunts me today, this big head, hehe), but I never got that autism diagnostic, or actively looked for a doctor for it.
A doctor wanted to operate my brain as a baby, but my mother didn't let it, and in the end, it was the right choice as it had a meaningful chance of my death.
I also struggled with language at first, and I went to many years of speech therapy, but eventually, it got better. My learning rate with languages is definitely not the best, but I still speak three languages after a good amount of effort and can communicate effectively.
It also gave me plenty of advantages; I always scored pretty high on IQ tests and had very good long-term memory.
Because I don't buy this narrative from the article or in medical research that there are two kinds of autism. In my opinion, there's only one, and that one has SEVERE conditions; I had a relative who had autism, and it was complicated for both the person and their parents. To me, this seems like a naming issue like software engineers do, who struggle to name an abstraction correctly, and after three years, that abstraction means everything.
Having a different kind of brain wiring isn't some sort of sickness or anomaly. All brains are very different, just like your toes. When you compare them to others, you'll see quite a few differences.
I think there's a communication issue with regards to how a syndrome is portrayed in non-technical media. And it doesn't get any better when we replace "syndrome" with "condition" or "spectrum disorder" or what have you.
A syndrome is just a description of what a black box looks like to us from the outside. We collect different outward expressions (symptoms) and give some sort of statistical baseline - e.g. a certain collection of symptoms clusters together in 70% of cases. In the case of psychological/neurological syndromes - our most poorly understood black boxes - we then create tests which are effectively subjective surveys, aggrandized Turing Tests. And to complete the picture, we also try to cluster with regard to treatment - assuming that if X modality treats Y cases well, those Y cases are all of the same syndrome.
All this is to say that while there might be one "source insult" that creates most of what we cluster as Autism, it is extremely unlikely. There are probably multiple different insults that create multiple conditions that we crudely cluster under the same Autistic umbrella. It is useless to try and define what is the "true" Autism - we need to understand the underlying mechanism first - maybe then we can give whatever we do understand better its own name.
As to why we are quick to label, I'll just say that in my country, as a child psychiatrist put it to me - before the mid-90s parents were angry with him when he made the autistic diagnosis, a trend that was then abruptly reversed and parents started to demand he label their neurodivergent kids autistic, even if he didn't find the diagnosis to be accurate. What changed? The country started to give disability benefits to parents with autistic children.
> Because I don't buy this narrative from the article or in medical research that there are two kinds of autism.
I'd like to preface this by saying I don't feel strongly about the naming issue in either direction.
Initially I figured the authors were using the word "Autism" as used in DSM-5, where it's a blanket term for a range of conditions. But, their repeated assertion of "two types" of autism doesn't line up with that theory: DSM-5 defines three levels, not two.
They definitely aren't using the DSM-IV definition of Autism (the stricter definition that you prefer), and they also aren't following the taxonomy laid out in DSM-5. Where did their definition of Autism come from?
Was it implied that their two-level model was derived from the results of their tests? If so, I missed that part. They mention a correlation between brain overgrowth and severity of symptoms, but they don't mention a clear separation in the test data that would justify classification into two distinct groups.
I understand that DSM isn't gospel, but if they're going to make up their own taxonomy, they should provide some rationale for it.
> narrative from the article or in medical research that there are two kinds of autism. In my opinion, there's only one, and that one has SEVERE conditions
I'm not sure that's a narrative? In fact quite the opposite, currently anything from the 'different kind of brain wiring' you mention through to the 'SEVERE conditions' that you acknowledge as autism are all seen as varying aspects and varying degrees of the same underlying difference. Once you get more acquainted with the less dramatic forms of autism there are significant commonalities.
That said, however well-founded the reasons for merging Asperger's Syndrome with the umbrella Autism Spectrum Disorder, I do feel we've lost some nuance in the process. There definitely seems to be a qualitative difference between "person who's a bit different and struggles with some aspects of life, but may be exceptional in others" and "person who's severely impaired and will never be able to navigate life on their own (even if exceptional in others)." Having shorthand terms to identify the two independently was useful.
I think this is a really good way to put it. It feels like there's a rush to label and self-diagnose which ultimately results in a ton of pathologization of relatively normal behaviors. That is: "normal" as in we expect to see some diversity of behavior. Maybe less labeling would lead to more acceptance and understanding, which seems after all to be one of the goals...
"I had a childhood health complication that was somewhat similar to this, therefore I am very well suited to comment on something that affected a relative that is not in my immediate family."
I have a son who is on the spectrum, he is often assumed to be neuro-typical by people he doesn't spend a lot of time with. He is "high functioning", but is still vastly different to his peers with issues that I don't think anyone would categorise as "severe", but the impact on him emotionally and our family unit as a whole is severe and pervasive.
To be clear, I am not offended or upset, I just feel that you need to be made aware that you are deeply ignorant on a topic that is only a blip in your world.
After reading the whole thing, I am bit worried about all the logical leaps and this just being a weird mashup of ideas that don't make much sense.
That being said, as a person that is mildly on ASD spectrum I was bit intrigued by the hypothesis of higher lactate orinted energy production in autistics. It would match two of my lifelong problems, having strong exhaustion (food coma) after eating high carbs and having similar reaction to even short (5min) high-intensity workouts. I had to adapt by avoiding large doses of carbs and focusing more on resistance training with large pauses inbetween.
I am baffled how some of my friends can eat a mountain of white rice or workout hard for hour and be completely fine after.
>”Now that Courchesne and Muotri have established that brain overgrowth begins in the womb, they hope to pinpoint its cause, in a bid to develop a therapy that might ease intellectual and social functioning for those with the condition.”
There is a slight difference between “beginning in the womb” snd beginning in some odd organoid derived from blood cells.
Autism research imho tends to be flaky and this type of press release does not help.
They had a neurotypical control group, their effect size is massive, and clearly separates the autistic group from the control group. They reject the null hypothesis that there is no difference between the groups, and argue from literature for an alternative hypothesis. What's the problem?
I don’t understand your complaint. The conclusion of the paper says this: “By embryogenesis, the biological bases of two subtypes of ASD social and brain development—profound autism and mild autism—are already present and measurable and involve dysregulated cell proliferation and accelerated neurogenesis and growth.” It is correct to describe that as “established that brain overgrowth begins in the womb”.
It seems you have an issue with that the researchers reached this conclusion from experiments with what you call “some odd organoid derived from blood cells”. I’m not an expert so I wouldn’t know if that is a valid way to make the conclusion but once they do it seems the summary in the article is correct.
What do you feel is wrong with the article and what do you feel is flaky with the research?
This growth pattern has been documented pretty well? I used to teach it in undergrad courses.
Autism spectrum issues are associated with overgrowth and then deceleration more than normal. This seems like a hyperexperimental version of it. Still interesting and good to see corroborating evidence, also useful as a model for therapies and other things.
Th predominant view in the field has been that there is early cerebral overgrowth followed by either normalization or regression of brain volume in adolescence. However, this conclusion is based on cross-sectional comparisons. This means, they look at different people at different ages, and make inferences on developmental trajectories based on these cross-sectional, age-related patterns. While this is often a starting point, cross-sectional research can suffer from sampling biases.
A huge weakness in autism neuroimaging research is the un-representativeness of
their samples. Nearly a third of individuals with autism have severe intellectual impairments (IQ's < 70) yet represent less than 1% of neuroimaging samples. Individuals with other immense behavioral, sensory and language challenges are also rarely make it through the rigors of imaging protocols.
A rare exception has been imaging research that performed brain imaging in very young children during natural sleep. and thus can hold still enough for quality MRI images to be acquired. This has allowed imaging of autistic children aged 2-6 years to include autism over a whole range of severities, challenges, and intellectual abilities.
This presents a problem though. The research that suggested there is brain overgrowth in early childhood sampled from a wide range of autism phenotypes and severities, while the normalization evidence in adolescents and adults came from autistic participants with normal ranged IQs and less severe challenges, a clear cross-sectional sampling bias that threatens the validity of the overgrowth normalization story.
Moreover, research indicated that disproportionate brain size in autism was associated with slower intellectual improvements with development.
I and my colleagues thus hypothesized that the discrepancy would be removed if we can follow the same children from childhood into adolescence longitudinally. Using a number of behavioral techniques and a lots of care and dedication, our team managed to acquire brain data in a broad spectrum of autism phenotypes and severity levels from early childhood into early adolescence.
Our conclusion: Longitudinal evidence does not support the notion that early brain overgrowth is followed by volumetric regression, at least from early to late childhood.
I used to joke to myself that I was the next step in evolution, home sapiens superior. I was aware enough no to provoke my classmates though ;)
But, I wonder if it is at all related to Neanderthal lineages. They had bigger brains and were basically autists: the species. Since we are a bastard of them and early Sapiens, maybe some of us present with more of their genome than others?
Also macrocephaly is significantly more common in autistic people than the general population (that is, macrocephaly is a head circumference at the 97th percentile or higher, but ~20% of autistic people have it).
Overgrowth is a normal process in the development of the fetal brain. It is followed by a reorganization, which means the pruning and migration of neurons to the right locations in the brain.
New research? I remember years ago (2019-ish?) a young man in #aspergers asked how he can prune his neurons to cure his aspergers. (The residents however did not appreciate the suggestion that they needed curing.)
They are not similar at all really. Autism is correlated to, "accelerated formation of neurons"(1) and "an increase in the number of neural connections"(2). That partially explains some savant-like traits being connected to autism. Outside of that John Travolta movie where he got the brain tumor and got super smart I don't think people are evolving tumors to increase intelligence.
i'm not a biologist (and so maybe it's table-stakes for modern biological research), but this idea of creating personalized in-vitro synthetic biological models to study disease process in individual living beings seems pretty cool to me!
Autism is a sensory processing disorder in which symptoms are triggered by your brain receiving too much stimulus.
That’s why autistic people like to do repetitive behaviors (it’s easy to predict the outcome), don’t like change, and so on. It’s why autistic people tend to be highly sensitive to certain senses (loud noises, bright lights, touch). And it’s why they struggle in social situations-there is too much complexity to process it and decide what to do.
The research about too large brain size and too many connections seems consistent with this, being a physical explanation for these effects.
I am instantly skeptical of any article that boils down to, "here is one study that may point in one direction but is far from the final world on the matter." The comments are filled with anecdata that reeks of confirmation bias.
In other news, I have a big head and as a kid my older sister would bully me and call me "King Tut." She would also mock me by pointing out my long eyelashes and say, "You know, in ancient Egypt, long eyelashes were a sign of beauty in men." She was 10 or 11? Anyway, we're close now. I just wanted to share what bullying is like in an extremely dorky family.
For those who's instinctive approach to autism (or other flavors of significant neruodivergence) is to treat it as something that has inherent tradeoffs, or as something that "obviously" people would want to manage or choose to not have when given the option: I highly recommend this article [1] and the book written by the same author, to recontextualize autism (in specific) and neurodiversity (in general) not as things to be managed but as forms of diversity in the human expression to be wholly welcomed in wider society.
Put differently: Autism is not something to be managed away.
> I don't think anyone who was somehow given the choice of autism or no autism at birth would choose autism would they?
I test in the statistically-likely range for autism on multiple diagnostic tests, though I don't carry a diagnosis from a psychiatric professional, so grain of salt, etc; but I find this kind of hypothetical offensive and degrading. It rings so much of how we approached queer identities throughout the years: blindly assuming that because wider society has difficulty interacting with autistic or otherwise neurodivergent people that THOSE PEOPLE would prefer to be like those more neurotypical members.
I like my brain. I don't want it to change. I don't want to be different. I don't want to be treated as someone suffering some condition, or like there's "tradeoffs" in my experience of the world that're any more significant or worthy of commentary than anyone else's experience of the world.
I have two severely autistic children who cannot talk and who need lifelong care. That's the REAL autism, the one Leo Kanner identified in 1943. Not the rebranded Aspergers with extra rainbows.
I think your ideas around ‘tradeoffs’ here are very confusing.
Tradeoff is such an intrinsically correct term to use here. People with autism/adhd are worse at some tasks, and better at others. That’s what a tradeoff is.
There are similar discussions around deafness. Deaf people often don’t like to see their deafness as a disability, but as something that defines their culture and experience. That’s still a tradeoff. You can decide to give your child cochlear implants, and integrate them into mainstream schooling - or you can opt out of that, and integrate them into the deaf community. That’s the very definition of a trade off, and it’s a very valid and difficult question.
The issue I have with your take is that its adoption can reduce people’s feelings of agency around their way of life. What works for you isn’t necessarily universal. The idea of a tradeoff is that the same decision can have different meaning to people in varying contexts. You might suggest that people have been conditioned to want to be ‘normal,’ but that is an oversimplification that ignores individuals’ agency, and again, unique contexts.
Same, -ish. I do wish I had this knowledge early in life - it’s been unnecessarily hard. But I think that while “aut-ish” is difficult, severe autism has an entirely different impact and we must protect these people: a “cure” would have a huge positive impact on so many, and in order to have a cure we first need to admit there is a disease. I have no problem being perceived as “queer” (after all, I’ve been “weird” or “odd” for 40 years, and synonyms can’t hurt that much).
I feel almost lucky - sure, life has sucked and I’ve missed out on so much, but I have a few things that really get my juices flowing and I feel bad for those who don’t. One of those things is currently in demand by society, and I am happy to take their money in exchange for software that came from my brain.
Edit: thanks for that link, I’d never heard that term and I like it.
Maybe you can go about daily life and relationships with no major hurdles, but plenty of us have gone though a lifetime of suffering to barely scrape through daily life on our own. Even more cannot live an independent life and require a caretaker forever. Some can't talk, can't feed or dress themselves.
Just be careful with this line of reasoning though please. It's already hard enough for people outside of the USA to access treatment for things like ADHD when they want to, it doesn't help to have a bunch of people walking around saying "it's not actually a disadvantage at all... It's REALLY more of a gift".
Without my ADHD meds, I have ZERO ability to actually leverage the "gift" part...
well said. everything needs to be diagnosed and treated with drugs. it is better to persevere with CBT, meditation, and self discipline than to cop out to some prescriptive drug regimen because neurodivergence is viewed as something a drug company can profit of off.
[+] [-] null_investor|1 year ago|reply
A doctor wanted to operate my brain as a baby, but my mother didn't let it, and in the end, it was the right choice as it had a meaningful chance of my death.
I also struggled with language at first, and I went to many years of speech therapy, but eventually, it got better. My learning rate with languages is definitely not the best, but I still speak three languages after a good amount of effort and can communicate effectively.
It also gave me plenty of advantages; I always scored pretty high on IQ tests and had very good long-term memory.
Because I don't buy this narrative from the article or in medical research that there are two kinds of autism. In my opinion, there's only one, and that one has SEVERE conditions; I had a relative who had autism, and it was complicated for both the person and their parents. To me, this seems like a naming issue like software engineers do, who struggle to name an abstraction correctly, and after three years, that abstraction means everything.
Having a different kind of brain wiring isn't some sort of sickness or anomaly. All brains are very different, just like your toes. When you compare them to others, you'll see quite a few differences.
[+] [-] istultus|1 year ago|reply
All this is to say that while there might be one "source insult" that creates most of what we cluster as Autism, it is extremely unlikely. There are probably multiple different insults that create multiple conditions that we crudely cluster under the same Autistic umbrella. It is useless to try and define what is the "true" Autism - we need to understand the underlying mechanism first - maybe then we can give whatever we do understand better its own name.
As to why we are quick to label, I'll just say that in my country, as a child psychiatrist put it to me - before the mid-90s parents were angry with him when he made the autistic diagnosis, a trend that was then abruptly reversed and parents started to demand he label their neurodivergent kids autistic, even if he didn't find the diagnosis to be accurate. What changed? The country started to give disability benefits to parents with autistic children.
[+] [-] ryukoposting|1 year ago|reply
I'd like to preface this by saying I don't feel strongly about the naming issue in either direction.
Initially I figured the authors were using the word "Autism" as used in DSM-5, where it's a blanket term for a range of conditions. But, their repeated assertion of "two types" of autism doesn't line up with that theory: DSM-5 defines three levels, not two.
They definitely aren't using the DSM-IV definition of Autism (the stricter definition that you prefer), and they also aren't following the taxonomy laid out in DSM-5. Where did their definition of Autism come from?
Was it implied that their two-level model was derived from the results of their tests? If so, I missed that part. They mention a correlation between brain overgrowth and severity of symptoms, but they don't mention a clear separation in the test data that would justify classification into two distinct groups.
I understand that DSM isn't gospel, but if they're going to make up their own taxonomy, they should provide some rationale for it.
[+] [-] taneq|1 year ago|reply
I'm not sure that's a narrative? In fact quite the opposite, currently anything from the 'different kind of brain wiring' you mention through to the 'SEVERE conditions' that you acknowledge as autism are all seen as varying aspects and varying degrees of the same underlying difference. Once you get more acquainted with the less dramatic forms of autism there are significant commonalities.
That said, however well-founded the reasons for merging Asperger's Syndrome with the umbrella Autism Spectrum Disorder, I do feel we've lost some nuance in the process. There definitely seems to be a qualitative difference between "person who's a bit different and struggles with some aspects of life, but may be exceptional in others" and "person who's severely impaired and will never be able to navigate life on their own (even if exceptional in others)." Having shorthand terms to identify the two independently was useful.
[+] [-] sfpotter|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ActionHank|1 year ago|reply
I have a son who is on the spectrum, he is often assumed to be neuro-typical by people he doesn't spend a lot of time with. He is "high functioning", but is still vastly different to his peers with issues that I don't think anyone would categorise as "severe", but the impact on him emotionally and our family unit as a whole is severe and pervasive.
To be clear, I am not offended or upset, I just feel that you need to be made aware that you are deeply ignorant on a topic that is only a blip in your world.
[+] [-] zachmu|1 year ago|reply
https://www.tinygnomes.com/qwiki.cgi?mode=previewSynd&uuid=B...
We had already known from autopsies that neural density in certain brain regions is much higher among autists.
[+] [-] willsmith72|1 year ago|reply
This is certainly... something
[+] [-] johny115|1 year ago|reply
That being said, as a person that is mildly on ASD spectrum I was bit intrigued by the hypothesis of higher lactate orinted energy production in autistics. It would match two of my lifelong problems, having strong exhaustion (food coma) after eating high carbs and having similar reaction to even short (5min) high-intensity workouts. I had to adapt by avoiding large doses of carbs and focusing more on resistance training with large pauses inbetween.
I am baffled how some of my friends can eat a mountain of white rice or workout hard for hour and be completely fine after.
[+] [-] moffkalast|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nix0n|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] robwwilliams|1 year ago|reply
>”Now that Courchesne and Muotri have established that brain overgrowth begins in the womb, they hope to pinpoint its cause, in a bid to develop a therapy that might ease intellectual and social functioning for those with the condition.”
There is a slight difference between “beginning in the womb” snd beginning in some odd organoid derived from blood cells.
Autism research imho tends to be flaky and this type of press release does not help.
[+] [-] usgroup|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] krisoft|1 year ago|reply
It seems you have an issue with that the researchers reached this conclusion from experiments with what you call “some odd organoid derived from blood cells”. I’m not an expert so I wouldn’t know if that is a valid way to make the conclusion but once they do it seems the summary in the article is correct.
What do you feel is wrong with the article and what do you feel is flaky with the research?
[+] [-] koolala|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] derbOac|1 year ago|reply
Autism spectrum issues are associated with overgrowth and then deceleration more than normal. This seems like a hyperexperimental version of it. Still interesting and good to see corroborating evidence, also useful as a model for therapies and other things.
[+] [-] SubiculumCode|1 year ago|reply
A huge weakness in autism neuroimaging research is the un-representativeness of their samples. Nearly a third of individuals with autism have severe intellectual impairments (IQ's < 70) yet represent less than 1% of neuroimaging samples. Individuals with other immense behavioral, sensory and language challenges are also rarely make it through the rigors of imaging protocols.
A rare exception has been imaging research that performed brain imaging in very young children during natural sleep. and thus can hold still enough for quality MRI images to be acquired. This has allowed imaging of autistic children aged 2-6 years to include autism over a whole range of severities, challenges, and intellectual abilities.
This presents a problem though. The research that suggested there is brain overgrowth in early childhood sampled from a wide range of autism phenotypes and severities, while the normalization evidence in adolescents and adults came from autistic participants with normal ranged IQs and less severe challenges, a clear cross-sectional sampling bias that threatens the validity of the overgrowth normalization story. Moreover, research indicated that disproportionate brain size in autism was associated with slower intellectual improvements with development.
I and my colleagues thus hypothesized that the discrepancy would be removed if we can follow the same children from childhood into adolescence longitudinally. Using a number of behavioral techniques and a lots of care and dedication, our team managed to acquire brain data in a broad spectrum of autism phenotypes and severity levels from early childhood into early adolescence.
We reported the results of our study in Biological Psychiatry Lee in 2021. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8089123/ (open access).
Our conclusion: Longitudinal evidence does not support the notion that early brain overgrowth is followed by volumetric regression, at least from early to late childhood.
[+] [-] frithsun|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] brnt|1 year ago|reply
But, I wonder if it is at all related to Neanderthal lineages. They had bigger brains and were basically autists: the species. Since we are a bastard of them and early Sapiens, maybe some of us present with more of their genome than others?
[+] [-] soist|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] petercooper|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pieter_mj|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sturza|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] andai|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tezza|1 year ago|reply
This research has a very small sample size (n=31)
Also indicated by the scatter plots too.
From the research: “total of 10 toddlers with ASD and 6 controls ... In a 2021 batch, we measured BCOs from 10 ASD and 5 controls.“
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/380876463_Embryonic...
[+] [-] im3w1l|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Rhapso|1 year ago|reply
This theory, especially if the outcome is effectively random bias in cognitive development, would fit that.
[+] [-] kylebenzle|1 year ago|reply
[1] Article [2] https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/in-autism-too-many-brain-con...
[+] [-] robwwilliams|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sharpshadow|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] s1artibartfast|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] a-dub|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] zeroonetwothree|1 year ago|reply
That’s why autistic people like to do repetitive behaviors (it’s easy to predict the outcome), don’t like change, and so on. It’s why autistic people tend to be highly sensitive to certain senses (loud noises, bright lights, touch). And it’s why they struggle in social situations-there is too much complexity to process it and decide what to do.
The research about too large brain size and too many connections seems consistent with this, being a physical explanation for these effects.
[+] [-] r_singh|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] SteveNew|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] throw4847285|1 year ago|reply
In other news, I have a big head and as a kid my older sister would bully me and call me "King Tut." She would also mock me by pointing out my long eyelashes and say, "You know, in ancient Egypt, long eyelashes were a sign of beauty in men." She was 10 or 11? Anyway, we're close now. I just wanted to share what bullying is like in an extremely dorky family.
[+] [-] tenacious_tuna|1 year ago|reply
Put differently: Autism is not something to be managed away.
> I don't think anyone who was somehow given the choice of autism or no autism at birth would choose autism would they?
I test in the statistically-likely range for autism on multiple diagnostic tests, though I don't carry a diagnosis from a psychiatric professional, so grain of salt, etc; but I find this kind of hypothetical offensive and degrading. It rings so much of how we approached queer identities throughout the years: blindly assuming that because wider society has difficulty interacting with autistic or otherwise neurodivergent people that THOSE PEOPLE would prefer to be like those more neurotypical members.
I like my brain. I don't want it to change. I don't want to be different. I don't want to be treated as someone suffering some condition, or like there's "tradeoffs" in my experience of the world that're any more significant or worthy of commentary than anyone else's experience of the world.
[1]: https://neuroqueer.com/throw-away-the-masters-tools/
[+] [-] reuben_scratton|1 year ago|reply
I wouldn't wish real autism on my worst enemy.
[+] [-] appletrotter|1 year ago|reply
Tradeoff is such an intrinsically correct term to use here. People with autism/adhd are worse at some tasks, and better at others. That’s what a tradeoff is.
There are similar discussions around deafness. Deaf people often don’t like to see their deafness as a disability, but as something that defines their culture and experience. That’s still a tradeoff. You can decide to give your child cochlear implants, and integrate them into mainstream schooling - or you can opt out of that, and integrate them into the deaf community. That’s the very definition of a trade off, and it’s a very valid and difficult question.
The issue I have with your take is that its adoption can reduce people’s feelings of agency around their way of life. What works for you isn’t necessarily universal. The idea of a tradeoff is that the same decision can have different meaning to people in varying contexts. You might suggest that people have been conditioned to want to be ‘normal,’ but that is an oversimplification that ignores individuals’ agency, and again, unique contexts.
[+] [-] threecheese|1 year ago|reply
I feel almost lucky - sure, life has sucked and I’ve missed out on so much, but I have a few things that really get my juices flowing and I feel bad for those who don’t. One of those things is currently in demand by society, and I am happy to take their money in exchange for software that came from my brain.
Edit: thanks for that link, I’d never heard that term and I like it.
[+] [-] utensil4778|1 year ago|reply
Maybe you can go about daily life and relationships with no major hurdles, but plenty of us have gone though a lifetime of suffering to barely scrape through daily life on our own. Even more cannot live an independent life and require a caretaker forever. Some can't talk, can't feed or dress themselves.
[+] [-] simmerup|1 year ago|reply
As someone with an autistic niece, it seems very much a condition that requires management
[+] [-] o11c|1 year ago|reply
> Put differently: Autism is not something to be managed away.
That's an abominable take. It only makes sense if you're willing to ignore the massive suffering and ongoing trauma.
I'll refrain from explicitly invoking Godwin but the comparison is obvious.
[+] [-] llamaLord|1 year ago|reply
Without my ADHD meds, I have ZERO ability to actually leverage the "gift" part...
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] outside415|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] johnnyAghands|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] hn8305823|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] localfirst|1 year ago|reply