I think the evidence that they are at least somewhat autistic is substantially stronger than the evidence that they were or are bad at leading companies. It’s a bit sad that ‘autistic’ often comes with derogatory associations, but in this context I don’t think it does, and also I don’t have a great alternative word. And it does actually do a lot of work in the above post.
It seems to me that the autism dimension is pretty important for modeling how people work (in particular highly successful people), and I would be saddened to see any non-diagnosed use of that banned on here. 90%+ of people who are likely at least a standard deviation out on that dimension will of course never get diagnosed, so making a formal diagnosis a requirement for entertaining the hypothesis that someone might be autistic strikes as a very unreasonable standard.
I am open to alternative words for the same dimension though, if there is something that people prefer.
I might be misunderstanding Brian here, but I don’t think the objection was “you shouldn’t call people autistic because being autistic is bad”. Certainly that’s not my view. I also don’t think Brian was calling for a ban on non-diagnosed use, I certainly wasn’t.
Autism isn’t mentioned in the piece, and Alex has already retreated to the “it’s just my impression, I wasn’t actually saying they were” bailey, so I’m still not sure what the point of leaving it in is, other than having succesfully refused to “give in to the mob” (of three people who asked him to consider changing the title), but it looks like it’s staying, so I guess everyone can go home happy the mob was cowed in this case.
One reason many people object to the (fairly common) suggestions that so-and-so celeb who happens to be a bit techy and/or rude in some way is autistic are that those suggestions contribute to and are symptomatic of an extremely poor public understanding of autism, which is not unrelated to the lack of diagnosis mentioned by both you and Nuno.
I’ve sent Nuno a message offering to discuss further offline, as a lot of my thoughts here are informed by strong inside-view things which aren’t public, will potentially write up anything that comes out of that but otherwise am unlikely to engage much further on here.
I think it’s a reasonable impression, based on my current epistemic state. I am not a huge fan of the “claim vs. impression” distinction, so I agree with you that Alex comment justifying the inclusion seems a bit confused, but I think it is fine to claim that there is a good chance the people listed above have pretty outlierish traits in a way that seems pretty correlated to patterns usually detected in individuals formally diagnosed with autism.
I do think it’s pretty plausible that there are problems with the public understanding of autism that are worth pushing back on, and that there might be misunderstandings here that might be furthered by the title. I don’t know of any, but would be happy to hear more.
I do think Brian said pretty straightforwardly that we shouldn’t use the word in the absence of a formal diagnosis?
Yeah but I think there’s still something wrong with hinting that people are “(autistic)”, when they aren’t diagnosed with it, or don’t want to be known as that.
There is also the other case “or don’t want to be known as that”, but that doesn’t strike me as a much better criterion, and I really don’t know whether any of the people above would actually mind being described with the word “autistic”.
It’s possible Brian and I had different concerns, and that I misunderstood him, so I’ll leave it to him to clean up. I actually don’t think we disagree much, I don’t think discussion of autism/ autistic traits is a problem, for example noting that really good mathematicians have higher AQ than average as part of a discussion would be completely fine.
In this case, I don’t think the term added much, as rather than any kind of useful discussion it appeared in the title and nowhere else. A very tl;dr summary of the problems with public understanding is:
Autism, even restricting to high functioning autism, is much more heterogeneous than most people realise/than is typically portrayed.
This contributes to under-diagnosis, especially of those who don’t present in the stereotypical way. This is more often a problem for women, though not limited to them.
It also often causes difficulties for autistic people in terms of how their difficulties are perceived by others, including their faimilies. As one example, even after diagnosis, autistic people who have learned to mask their difficulty with social interaction will frequently have the potentially still profound difficulties they experience in other areas underestimated by people who interact with them and don’t see the rudeness they expect.
Even the more “positive” aspects of stereotypical presentation, about genius or visionary status, can be very difficult to deal with, and cause anxiety around inadequacy and/or imposter syndrome.
I don’t expect that, on the margin, this post will change much, but as I’ve said a few times, I think there’s basically 0 cost to making the decision not to contribute to this problem, unless you put high cost on ever admitting to a mistake.
I think I’d just note that the post, in my opinion, helps combat some of these issues. For instance it suggests that autistic people are able to learn how to interact with neurotypical people successfully, given sufficient effort—ie, the “mask”.
Nuno and I discussed this a bit more privately. He thought the bullets above were broadly true, but that the post didn’t really contribute to them. I agreed that the contribution was small, but summarised why I thought it was nonzero as:
Roughly, it’s annoying for (some) non-NT people to read, especially when they don’t have “typical presentation”, and in general unsophisticated discussion embeds the stereotypical ideas.
It just seemed to be a case of small downside and v little upside.
Nuno convinced me that the inclusion had more upside than I had originally thought. This combined with Alex’s note means I’m now fine with the title.
As I wrote in another comment, my view on whether Jobs, Musk, or Page are actually autistic are in flux as I read other’s comments here, like yours, and read more about others’ views on them online. I’m not that familiar with autism/Asperger’s, but initially I thought that at least 2⁄3 of them are not autistic. So it’s interesting for me to learn that a couple other people on this forum like you agree that there’s good evidence of them being autistic / having Asperger’s.
I also agree that in this context the term autistic isn’t used in a derogatory way. I am also not claiming that the use of the word should be banned.
Initially, I thought Guzey should change the article’s title. I’m changing my mind now and would be fine if he kept the title as is, but I would slightly prefer it if he added something like this in the article:
“Jobs, Musk, or Page have never been formally diagnosed as autistic, but my impression is that they exhibited a host of traits typically associated with autism/Asperger’s. This is why I put the title as “(Autistic) visionaries are not natural born leaders”.”
This is just so people reading this would not think that these people have been formally diagnosed as autistic, when in fact they haven’t been.
Great, thanks Guzey! There’s a typo on the first sentence of the update though: “Update on the word “(Autistic)” in the title: I’m now aware of any of the people I discuss in the post being diagnosed with any autism spectrum disorders”. The word “now” is supposed to be “not”. :)
I think the evidence that they are at least somewhat autistic is substantially stronger than the evidence that they were or are bad at leading companies. It’s a bit sad that ‘autistic’ often comes with derogatory associations, but in this context I don’t think it does, and also I don’t have a great alternative word. And it does actually do a lot of work in the above post.
It seems to me that the autism dimension is pretty important for modeling how people work (in particular highly successful people), and I would be saddened to see any non-diagnosed use of that banned on here. 90%+ of people who are likely at least a standard deviation out on that dimension will of course never get diagnosed, so making a formal diagnosis a requirement for entertaining the hypothesis that someone might be autistic strikes as a very unreasonable standard.
I am open to alternative words for the same dimension though, if there is something that people prefer.
I might be misunderstanding Brian here, but I don’t think the objection was “you shouldn’t call people autistic because being autistic is bad”. Certainly that’s not my view. I also don’t think Brian was calling for a ban on non-diagnosed use, I certainly wasn’t.
Autism isn’t mentioned in the piece, and Alex has already retreated to the “it’s just my impression, I wasn’t actually saying they were” bailey, so I’m still not sure what the point of leaving it in is, other than having succesfully refused to “give in to the mob” (of three people who asked him to consider changing the title), but it looks like it’s staying, so I guess everyone can go home happy the mob was cowed in this case.
One reason many people object to the (fairly common) suggestions that so-and-so celeb who happens to be a bit techy and/or rude in some way is autistic are that those suggestions contribute to and are symptomatic of an extremely poor public understanding of autism, which is not unrelated to the lack of diagnosis mentioned by both you and Nuno.
I’ve sent Nuno a message offering to discuss further offline, as a lot of my thoughts here are informed by strong inside-view things which aren’t public, will potentially write up anything that comes out of that but otherwise am unlikely to engage much further on here.
I think it’s a reasonable impression, based on my current epistemic state. I am not a huge fan of the “claim vs. impression” distinction, so I agree with you that Alex comment justifying the inclusion seems a bit confused, but I think it is fine to claim that there is a good chance the people listed above have pretty outlierish traits in a way that seems pretty correlated to patterns usually detected in individuals formally diagnosed with autism.
I do think it’s pretty plausible that there are problems with the public understanding of autism that are worth pushing back on, and that there might be misunderstandings here that might be furthered by the title. I don’t know of any, but would be happy to hear more.
I do think Brian said pretty straightforwardly that we shouldn’t use the word in the absence of a formal diagnosis?
There is also the other case “or don’t want to be known as that”, but that doesn’t strike me as a much better criterion, and I really don’t know whether any of the people above would actually mind being described with the word “autistic”.
It’s possible Brian and I had different concerns, and that I misunderstood him, so I’ll leave it to him to clean up. I actually don’t think we disagree much, I don’t think discussion of autism/ autistic traits is a problem, for example noting that really good mathematicians have higher AQ than average as part of a discussion would be completely fine.
In this case, I don’t think the term added much, as rather than any kind of useful discussion it appeared in the title and nowhere else. A very tl;dr summary of the problems with public understanding is:
Autism, even restricting to high functioning autism, is much more heterogeneous than most people realise/than is typically portrayed.
This contributes to under-diagnosis, especially of those who don’t present in the stereotypical way. This is more often a problem for women, though not limited to them.
It also often causes difficulties for autistic people in terms of how their difficulties are perceived by others, including their faimilies. As one example, even after diagnosis, autistic people who have learned to mask their difficulty with social interaction will frequently have the potentially still profound difficulties they experience in other areas underestimated by people who interact with them and don’t see the rudeness they expect.
Even the more “positive” aspects of stereotypical presentation, about genius or visionary status, can be very difficult to deal with, and cause anxiety around inadequacy and/or imposter syndrome.
I don’t expect that, on the margin, this post will change much, but as I’ve said a few times, I think there’s basically 0 cost to making the decision not to contribute to this problem, unless you put high cost on ever admitting to a mistake.
I think I’d just note that the post, in my opinion, helps combat some of these issues. For instance it suggests that autistic people are able to learn how to interact with neurotypical people successfully, given sufficient effort—ie, the “mask”.
Nuno and I discussed this a bit more privately. He thought the bullets above were broadly true, but that the post didn’t really contribute to them. I agreed that the contribution was small, but summarised why I thought it was nonzero as:
Nuno convinced me that the inclusion had more upside than I had originally thought. This combined with Alex’s note means I’m now fine with the title.
As I wrote in another comment, my view on whether Jobs, Musk, or Page are actually autistic are in flux as I read other’s comments here, like yours, and read more about others’ views on them online. I’m not that familiar with autism/Asperger’s, but initially I thought that at least 2⁄3 of them are not autistic. So it’s interesting for me to learn that a couple other people on this forum like you agree that there’s good evidence of them being autistic / having Asperger’s.
I also agree that in this context the term autistic isn’t used in a derogatory way. I am also not claiming that the use of the word should be banned.
Initially, I thought Guzey should change the article’s title. I’m changing my mind now and would be fine if he kept the title as is, but I would slightly prefer it if he added something like this in the article:
“Jobs, Musk, or Page have never been formally diagnosed as autistic, but my impression is that they exhibited a host of traits typically associated with autism/Asperger’s. This is why I put the title as “(Autistic) visionaries are not natural born leaders”.”
This is just so people reading this would not think that these people have been formally diagnosed as autistic, when in fact they haven’t been.
Great, then I think we basically agree! I also think that adding that paragraph would be good.
And now the post has been updated! Thanks guzey!
Great, thanks Guzey! There’s a typo on the first sentence of the update though: “Update on the word “(Autistic)” in the title: I’m now aware of any of the people I discuss in the post being diagnosed with any autism spectrum disorders”. The word “now” is supposed to be “not”. :)