Genetics is complicated enough that both things can be true without circular reasoning.

I've studied genotype to phenotype mechanisms for a very long time (but from the lens of molecular biology, biochemistry, and biophysics, rather than genetics). The language of genetics- especially in the popular press- is extremely loose and ambiguous, and people trying to understand the genetics of autism using the popular press (or even 8th grade biology genetics) are going to be very confused.

Basically in medicine and biology in general it's best to be flexible- avoid using logical reasoning, instead adopt probabilistic mindset, and assume that the entities you're reasoning about are extremely complex and you only have a small amount of noisy, partial information that is in a highly encoded feature space. You can often measure relationships or statistical linkages that appear significant (even after multiple test correction) but rarely discern the true causal relationship between the feature vector (genome) and the outcome (autism).

One of the biggest surprises in modern genetics is that many phenotypes are determined by the sum of effects of many gene products, including many complex interactions between those gene products. Some phenotypes are linked to 1000+ genes, and there are "only" ~25K genes in the human genome. The whole thing is just crazy and our ability to test for complex phenotypes continues to be very limited.

I understand that they found strong enough evidence that it's a genetic condition, but at the same time it's not one single gene, it's a combination of many that combine to create the full spectrum, hence no easy genetic test. They'll get there in time as technology and research evolve. I don't see any circular reasoning.

EDIT: they have a FAQ about it: https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/about-autism/w...

Height has a strong genetic component, but there's no test for height.

If your C code causes a segfault, is it fair to reason that there's a memory management error in the code? Does that make it practical to find where, so that you can just add a check for it?

That seems like a pointedly naive viewpoint. You can have clearly predictive population level statistics about prevalence in family groups without clearly understanding the (very messy and unbelievably complicated) way that genetics shapes brain development.

Some of what you've quoted highlights my own belief on some of this:

Autism is also multiple things.

That may provide some insight about how there is not a "single `autism gene'" and how they hedged a bunch of these statements with "most" or "usually".

Maybe some day when we as a species understand brains better, some people will get a more precise label than "on the autism spectrum".

I would expect it's not caused by genes themselves, but by control DNA. That's where a lot of the subtle structural stuff happens. But that's also hard to test for. It's like how you can't test how tall someone is going to be.

I've also read ages ago in Scientific American that the difference between our brains and chimp brains is almost entirely in control DNA, not in genes. It matters a lot, but is often overlooked. (It used to be called "junk DNA", before people realised how important it was.)

can't wait until large scale datasets and LLM powered studies either debunk or confirm and quantify the effects objectively.

My understanding is that having certain genes makes conditions like Autism more probabilistic than deterministic.

Opened this link to quote that. The level of reasoning is "trust me bro". Even if some things must be simplified for uneducated reader, the quote from above should be embarassing for author to write

Knowing something you’ve learned to live with for life has a name and by learning that name thus recognizing your ordeal can be very helpful. Neurodiversity is real and learning that you are perhaps somewhat special (not wired like others; perhaps prone to using social tricks as a mask) can help. My personal learning of the last few years. For me the tricks and masks didn’t hurt me, but recognizing how I am and even a bit of sharing that with closest relations helped me massively.

Unconsciously masking is still tiring, and masking doesn't generalise well to unfamiliar situations.

That sounds too much like people saying 'just don't be depressed' to me.

And constantly masking (whether or not it's consciously done) is taking its toll too. Because you spend a lot of 'brainpower' second-guessing yourself.

For me it was really liberating finding people that accept me as I am so I don't have to worry all the time. And I became more successful at work when I stopped pretending to be someone I'm not.

And I definitely don't want to 'seem normal' to not attract the ire of the anti-vaxxers anti-neurodivergent crowd. They're my enemies so they deserve no such adaptation.

They are still autistic.

> who learned to "stop being autistic" from an outside POV

Sorry but what exactly does this mean?

How does any of this contradict what is written in the article? It already mentions eg Rubella infection during pregnancy as a causative agent, which would be an example of it not being directly inherited

I am pretty sure neuro prevalent type is the disruptive one

I wouldn't characterize it as "disrupted" genetics. Autism makes the world go round, if there were no autism we'd lack most of the innovations we take for granted today. There are other differences that can co-occur with autism to cause issues, but autism itself feels like a normal and beneficial genetic variation.

TLDR of the article is that it's yet another person confusing "heritable" with "genetic". Genes aren't the only thing we inherit from out parents - and in fact there's strong preliminary evidence that the gut microbiome plays a major role in autism.

For example, 45% reduction in symptoms from fecal transplant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48158494

> Prior to the study, 83% of participants had "severe" autism. Two years later, only 17% were rated as severe, 39% as mild or moderate, and incredibly, 44% were below the cut-off for mild ASD.

Incredible! Sure, there could be a genetic component to what flourishes, or ever seeded, in one's microflora, but there's definitely some external complexities involved here.

Not onset, that makes no sense.

Environment makes certain traits visible - eg noise and smell sensory issues, even social settings. Put me in a forest and i will be indistinguishable from a neuro-prevalent - no social pressure, no noise, no smells. Actually the neuro-prevalent might be suffering for the lack of those i suppose

The writeup is a summary of having done a meta analysis of actual research. It also covers environmental factors already

Wouldn’t susceptibility to those environmental factors be dictated by your genetics?

They specifically said there are environmental factors, and not all of them are known. A few are known though: older parents for example.

Yeah, even if some people are genetically favored to get it, it doesnt mean the enviornment doesnt increase the chance it will happen, how strong it will be.

I don't like the direction some research is pushing it, like its just genetics there's nothing we can do here.

Even if it is genetic, do we know what causes truly original cases ? What causes the first genetic case, over and over?

You gotta provide some sources for your Twitter bro science take.

AI certainly makes it easier for me with ADHD (and probably Autism too, they often go together).

It helps me do planning and research which are the boring parts of a project for me and I abhor them so I tend to procrastinate so long that the project is no longer relevant. AI helps me get through this phase much more easily.

I cannot see why this litmus test is either necessary nor sufficient for evaluating the success of LLMs.

One low hanging fruit is that it can file their taxes. Boom, that'll save a few hours and like $100 a person. After that, it's just a matter of your creativity.

It has infinite patience as a teacher in an infinitesimal number of detail oriented specific areas where others would fail. It can maintain perspective on longer term goals and repetition and such through proven autism treatment pathways like CBT/speech therapies where humans be prohibitively expensive or would tire. That's surely something? It can reinforce bringing detail out to generalities. That helps for some. I'd say pedagogy and communications therapy are therefore both clear areas of promise.

These are viable for the population as a whole, not just people with autism or identified learning difficulties.

> make life easier for autistic people

Where life does not come with an instruction manual, I've found it useful to ask AI, "hey, I got kicked out of a social group (again), what happened?", and AI is able to tell me what it is I did wrong and what to do differently next time. There is a danger of AI psychosis, and autistic people I've discussed this with have had varying levels of luck with this strategy, depending on how honest they are able to be with themselves and the machine, but AI has helped facilitate difficult conversations for me. Eg Say I want to tell someone they "fucking suck and to go kill themselves". Obviously that's not very nice. My caregivers don't deserve to be told that. AI is able to help me find the words that aren't that, while helping me figure out the words I need to communicate the underlying issue. My human therapist is only available one hour a week and doesn't come cheap. Friends only have so much patience. AI is available 24/7 and is much more affordable.

The neurodivergent community thoroughly and resoundingly rejects AI and for damn good reason.

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It's advantageous in rules-based systems, but many aspects of life, particularly interpersonal, are not rules-based.

Systems thinking pays well, which is advantageous, but this might be short lived, now that LLMs can mediate interfacing with rules-based systems.

Apart from when uta frith, a major player in including Asperger's into autism, says people are being over diagnosed.... then screw the science, what do they know?

These people are not liars. It’s anti-vax conspiracies that willfully mislead people and for what? The scientist who claimed a link between autism and vaccine was a fraud who misrepresented research data. Why do intelligent people perpetuate conspiracy theories?

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