Ok, that makes sense - so ASD is basically that we’ve noticed some prototypical behaviors, which is where the grouping comes from, but it’s possible what we’re seeing is sort of the “carcinization” of mental operating modes - many different pathways into the same output point, which is why the genetic search has been so difficult - that right enough for a non-scientist?

What I know of the brain is that it’s basically a chaos machine - a ton of activity that’s just on the edge of a cascade, a bunch of feedback loops, a bunch of emergent behavior, and it’s kind of impressive we function at all to begin with, so it’s not surprising there’s so many ways to perturb the output behavior.

Is high-level behavior the only criteria for diagnosis?

I think the majority of the public would like to better understand how we came into this position. There's nothing wrong with the topic of autism as research, but it's been a political football for so long that there are many reasonable doubts about methodology, diagnosis, and relevance to everyday healthcare. I understand there may be complications with some patients that require medical diagnosis and intervention, but does that not imply there should be a much more meaningful label on those cases than just the broad umbrella term of "autism"?

On one extreme, we have people thinking they're autistic when they're actually just awkward and inexperienced in life. On the other, we have people with epilepsy who prefer the label "autism" even though they're merely correlated. Something is wrong here. Not with the science, but the discussion.

From what I know of cell biology (read: committed dilettante), the notion that one gene does X is rarely correct. The way to think about genes and the proteins they encode for is less “blue eyes” and more “metric socket wrench #5” - the protein is a tool, and lacking that tool means any operation that requires that tool isn’t going to function as normal, which is why you see such weird disparate effects from mutations and also multiple genetic pathways to the same pathology.

Also nature is absurdly cavalier about using whatever it’s got at hand, so it’s not so much “metric socket wrench #5” as “the pry-bar/hammer/thing we use to hold the hood open” that gets fucky when the genes go wrong.

"Why don't we treat it as many disorders instead of just calling everything autism?"

"we do, autism is everything that isn't ADHD"

...what? I must be stroking out, but I have no idea what point you're making here...?

What a ridiculous take.

But different autistic people struggle with different things, in different ways.

What's even the point of having a general diagnosis umbrella, if the symptoms are different?

I said that if everyone is neurodivergent, then no one is.

Same with IQ, if everyone is 150IQ, then everyone is still 100IQ, as per the definition, so "normal".

Divergence can only be mentioned when talking a base value to diverge from. What if neurotypicals are actually the neurodivergent ones?

I'm not sure if I understand, you're saying that there is no such thing as epigenetic inheritance? In other words you disagree with the phenomenon discussed in this wiki page? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetic_i...

> If I were to include additional biological possibilities, I'd include: a) birth control -> waiting to have children until a later age, more de novo mutations due to age.

Surely it should be easy to collect the data to plot such a hypothesis: incidence rate vs age of father and vs age of mother at conception, and at birth.

@SubiculumCode - replying as you are a researcher in this field. There is an increase in profound autism globally (I think this is the new naming to differentiate severe autism) which isn’t explained by sensitive instruments or inclusion criteria. You just don’t need them to identify profound autism, it is that obvious. Affected people need caregivers for life also causing severe mental and financial stress. It will only help your research to investigate this increase which perhaps will lead to medical breakthroughs.

Severe autism is on raise as well, and that has stable diagnoses over several years. Plus general cognitive decline in last a few decades is also documented.

Is it politically correct to write about later stage pregnancies? It would be insta ban only a few years ago.

Perhaps soon we will be able to openly discus something else, that may cause endocrine disruption, not just plastics!

Quick and cheap explanation many use, but not the case. Severe autism is also on the rise, and that doesn't need special telescopes, it's just evident.

A) There are more autistic people because something noxious causes autism.

B) Nope. There are more autistic people because tests improved.

This common discourse annoys me a little, frankly. The problem is that "B" does not imply "not A". Both explanations can be true at the same time.

But people people will automatically discard "A" because "A is problematic". It implies a cause, and we may not like it, so is removed from the discussion ASAP.

The same kind of "problematic" that was to observe in 1960's that "smokers develop lung cancer frequently, maybe tobacco causes cancer". Companies will fight teeth and nails to dismiss it and say "look at the cute squirrel over there".

But is true that we started to notice much more autistic people after the use of some particular pesticide became widespread in the entire planet. May be related. May be not. May be a common result triggered by many causes, but we should not jump to bring home the "nice" B just because is nice (and politically convenient)

Is there an understanding of the relative prevalence of each type in modern society? Thinking about changing rates of diagnosis, with common circulating variants, it seems like changes to detection and classification would be the only explanation for rate change.

> Speaking as someone on the spec, I could never imagine life partnership with an allistic person, nor can I imagine such a person putting up with my deficiencies and quirks. Moreover, quite literally all my friends are also autspec and would never interface with someone who isn't. So I believe ASD is strongly selected for by people with ASD.

I am profoundly grateful I grew up in a situation that didn't cause me to self isolate into a subculture.

I have all sorts of other problems, but I appreciate that one more as I age.

Come now! It is clear that the sarcasm indicator wasn't suggesting that the government didn't really announce that. The sarcasm was in the invocation of governmental authority, which is thereby implied to be ill-founded and not worth listening to.

It's the normies that are missing out.

I live with a child who spends entire days with videos on his tablet. We can't take him anywhere because if the trip differs from what we told him (trip duration or locations), we have to abort the trip to prevent a meltdown. His inflexibility means he can't hold a job or go to school or training. He can't do household chores without prompting and handholding. He will never live alone or have anything resembling a functional life. We have to make plans for how he will live after his mother and father die. We have to make space for his meltdowns that seem to come out of nowhere.

His mother nearly bankrupted herself paying for private school for kids on the spectrum. His parents sued the local school system because they didn't have any teachers who had any skill with autistic children. couldn't protect him from bullying and couldn't or wouldn't follow the IEP. (Note: this is one of those events that ruin retirement plans). The state claims to have resources for my partner and her child, but when they try to get help, the state says it didn't realize she would need that much help.

Then there is the never-ending struggle to get appropriate psychiatric and psychological help for him, and if you think it's hard to find a psychiatrist for ordinary mental illnesses, finding someone who knows how to deal with kids on the spectrum is almost impossible.

His disability has had a negative impact on my relationship with his mother. As she has to make room for her child's emotional outbursts, I make room for my partner's angst about having a child who will never function on his own. There is a big loss of day-to-day intimacy because you never know when you will have to put up an emotional barrier against his behavior.

yea, in my eyes, that counts as broken

Autism is a disability. The function of the brain to normally process social cues is broken. In the same way someone who is blind has broken vision, someone in a wheelchair has broken legs, and someone with ADHD has broken executive function.

This isnt a moral judgement, theres nothing wrong with being disabled, but it remaims a disability that many people struggle due to.

Some autistic people have to wear helmets and spend all day rocking back and forth eating anything they find in the carpet. The are unable to care for themselves and depend fully on others.

These people are not operating within the nominal range of human behavior that might be classified as "functional."

Only 20-30% of adult Autistics can even hold a job. Not a 'good' job, mind you, ANY job.

From the language of the paper, replace the commentor's "broken" with "mutant type" instead of unaffected "wild type"

There a point on the spectrum where someone cannot function without supervised housing and another one where you have non verbal autistic folks.

But I agree broken is not the right word for those poor folks because they were never functional to begin with!

Nobody said they were, but broken in terms of neurotypical circuitry, yes

Autism is a spectrum. Neurodiversity within and outside of autism is both intrinsically valuable and extrinsically valuable to society. However, not all phenotypes of autism should be viewed as neurodiversity, but as harmful. There is only so much that society can do to make severe intellectual impairments less disabling without identifying a cure for the intellectual impairment. The debate between medical versus disability models, neurodiversity versus pathology, inevitably gets pushed by those that want to classify everything into clean essentialist boxes, but that, I do not believe, is a helpful way to view the world. Not every condition is a pathology, nor is every condition benign if only society would do more to make it less disabling.

I mean, it's classified as a disability for a good reason.

I would guess that even if this platform has more autistic people due to being tech focused, autistic tech nerds and programmers are on the extreme end of high-functioning. Many low-functioning autistic people will never be able to have a job or live by themselves.

This is the same issue as high-functioning ADHD'ers saying "ADHD is my superpower", meanwhile people with severe ADHD do significantly worse than the general population in basically any metric, up to having a lower life expectancy.

This isnt to say its morally bad, theres nothing wrong with being autistic or having ADHD, but it is a disability. Just like someone who's deaf can live a totally happy life but still be disabled because they are not able to hear, someone with autism is disabled because they are not able to process social cues at the same speed, even if they are a great person and have a good life.

This isn't /g/ what are you talking about?