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.
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.