I don’t have a problem with you writing that they were all terrible leaders or terrible at running a company. This is because I think there’s enough good evidence showing that Jobs, Musk, and Page were all terrible leaders when they started out, or at least showed examples of bad leadership. And your article cites some of this good evidence.
Meanwhile, you haven’t really cited any evidence of them being autistic, and I don’t think there’s enough good evidence that they are. And yet you hint that all of them have it, without any caveats in the article that this is your impression rather than a proper diagnosis. And from articles I’ve read online, there’s no definitive answer to them being autistic or not.
Also, we need to take special care with words that have been used before in a very discriminative or derogatory way, such as autistic. Here’s an article that talks about how labelling someone with autism or autistic can be derogatory: “Whatever way he meant it, “autistic” is often used as an insult and it’s insensitive to use a term that describes a disability or a condition in this way, says the National Autistic Society.”
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’m autistic, and my problem with the title is that it implies that autistic people are bad leaders, without substantiating the claim about autism (the words “autism” and “autistic” do not appear in the piece other than in the title and hatnote). Autistic people who see this may be discouraged from becoming leaders even if they’d otherwise be competent.
I don’t understand you. Brian writes: “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”
I wrote that the people I wrote about in the post used to be “terrible leaders”. I would guess that they don’t want to be known as terrible leaders, thus satisfying one of Brian’s conditions. Thus, I conclude that Brian and you want me to remove that part of my post as well.
If I wasn’t a fan of your other work I’d have written you off as trolling at the point. The costs from random people on the internet hypothesizing about who’s autistic are not only borne by the people you are hypothesising about, they are also borne by actually autistic people.
I don’t see what the upside is for you, other than not having to admit to a mistake. Neither Brian nor I disliked the article, and the article in no way relies on the claim that the people you are discussing are autistic. We’re just asking you not to throw around pseudodiagnoses about a condition that’s already pretty badly misunderstood.
I’m not trying to troll, sorry if it seems this way. I really don’t understand why you have a problem with “(autistic)” but don’t have a problem with a “terrible leader”. This seems inconsistent to me. As far as I can see all of your arguments apply to both of these. My title still seems justified to me.
This was intended to highlight that caring about harms to “bad leaders” and caring about harms to to autistic people are meaningfully different. I care about the latter, and don’t really care at all about theformer. I’m assuming from the downvotes that this was not clear.
What’s stopping you changing that here? Your article is nothing to do with autism. Changing the title would take less time than you’ve spent arguing in this thread, and improve the article in the eyes of at least two people (probably more judging from the upvotes) who feel strongly enough about it to have spent time engaging with you about it.
I assume you also have a problem with me writing that they were all terrible leaders and terrible at running a company then?
I don’t have a problem with you writing that they were all terrible leaders or terrible at running a company. This is because I think there’s enough good evidence showing that Jobs, Musk, and Page were all terrible leaders when they started out, or at least showed examples of bad leadership. And your article cites some of this good evidence.
Meanwhile, you haven’t really cited any evidence of them being autistic, and I don’t think there’s enough good evidence that they are. And yet you hint that all of them have it, without any caveats in the article that this is your impression rather than a proper diagnosis. And from articles I’ve read online, there’s no definitive answer to them being autistic or not.
Also, we need to take special care with words that have been used before in a very discriminative or derogatory way, such as autistic. Here’s an article that talks about how labelling someone with autism or autistic can be derogatory: “Whatever way he meant it, “autistic” is often used as an insult and it’s insensitive to use a term that describes a disability or a condition in this way, says the National Autistic Society.”
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”. :)
I’m autistic, and my problem with the title is that it implies that autistic people are bad leaders, without substantiating the claim about autism (the words “autism” and “autistic” do not appear in the piece other than in the title and hatnote). Autistic people who see this may be discouraged from becoming leaders even if they’d otherwise be competent.
That isn’t even close to the same thing.
I don’t understand you. Brian writes: “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”
I wrote that the people I wrote about in the post used to be “terrible leaders”. I would guess that they don’t want to be known as terrible leaders, thus satisfying one of Brian’s conditions. Thus, I conclude that Brian and you want me to remove that part of my post as well.
If I wasn’t a fan of your other work I’d have written you off as trolling at the point. The costs from random people on the internet hypothesizing about who’s autistic are not only borne by the people you are hypothesising about, they are also borne by actually autistic people.
I don’t see what the upside is for you, other than not having to admit to a mistake. Neither Brian nor I disliked the article, and the article in no way relies on the claim that the people you are discussing are autistic. We’re just asking you not to throw around pseudodiagnoses about a condition that’s already pretty badly misunderstood.
I’m not trying to troll, sorry if it seems this way. I really don’t understand why you have a problem with “(autistic)” but don’t have a problem with a “terrible leader”. This seems inconsistent to me. As far as I can see all of your arguments apply to both of these. My title still seems justified to me.
I don’t have a problem admitting a mistake and in fact in the past I have changed the title of the post based on people telling me that it wasn’t justified: https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/gn55rx/ignore_any_paper_based_on_selfreported_data/fvcfskr/
It’s a lot easier to learn to be a better leader than it is to learn not to be autistic...
This was intended to highlight that caring about harms to “bad leaders” and caring about harms to to autistic people are meaningfully different. I care about the latter, and don’t really care at all about theformer. I’m assuming from the downvotes that this was not clear.
I’m surprised that you care about harms to autistic people but not to bad leaders. Are people born to be bad leaders somehow more deserving of that?
How is this relevant?......
What’s stopping you changing that here? Your article is nothing to do with autism. Changing the title would take less time than you’ve spent arguing in this thread, and improve the article in the eyes of at least two people (probably more judging from the upvotes) who feel strongly enough about it to have spent time engaging with you about it.
I believe I’m right and I do not believe in giving in to the mob.
Thank you for saying this.