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The expression you quoted is completely agreeing with you! It’s a play on the expected idiomatic ending “then you have met everyone with autism”, pointing out t

The expression you quoted is completely agreeing with you! It’s a play on the expected idiomatic ending “then you have met everyone with autism”, pointing out that the diagnosis is broad and everyone is different

greesil 2y ago
Why even have the word autism? It's almost meaningless.
- Spivak 2y ago
  "hot" is still a meaningful word even though 100 F°, 1000 F°, and 1,000,000 F° aren't comparable at all. They're nonetheless still all experiencing heat.
  - blargey 2y ago
    Yes, if we could pin it to a linear scale of Degrees Autistic (Farenheit), that could be estimated with reasonable precision for all day-to-day relevant values by feeling the nearby air on your skin, nobody would complain about "Austism" being too broad.
    - o11c 2y ago
      Usually it's at least 4 scales with no strong correlation (and a couple more that are correlated more). They do have them. Thus, it is incorrect to refer to Autism as a "spectrum". Instead, we should correctly call it a "manifold".
      - greesil 2y ago
        Locally euclidian?
    - Spivak 2y ago
      Am I missing something you can though. That's actually kinda how it is. I detest the phrase "high functioning" but that group is roughly your outside temperatures. You'll notice the difference between 30° and 80° and the same temperature 72° can feel different in the summer, winter, before it rains, when it's humid/dry but is still the same intensity. Then there's 1000° degrees where (and this is someone I know) he stripped naked, ran through downtown, and yelled at random restaurant workers calling them fascists for not lettting him in and then got into a fight with the cops. I think broadly that's what the "spectrum" characterization is meant to convey. And you should expect this, in code there's one happy path and a million different ways to err, some more catastrophic than others.
  - b112 2y ago
    It seems to me that something could be hot enough, that you could vaporize before your nerves signal your brain.
- cogman10 2y ago
  The symptoms cluster together and are related. Someone with sensory issues is also likely to have food aversions, for example. It's also useful for diagnostics and treatment. It means you don't have to fight insurance as much or need rediagnostics to get needed therapies. I don't need to get my child with food aversions, speech delay, and sensory issues a new diagnosis for each just because some people with autism don't have those issues.
  - mindslight 2y ago
    That sounds like a problem with the medical gatekeeping industry rather than anything fundamental. Like a blanket diagnosis of "human" would get you the same thing, but for the middlemen realizing that would completely destroy one of the levers they use to defraud.
    - idiotsecant 2y ago
      So it solves a problem, then? Its useful? Saying a problem would not be a problem if the universe was a little better is not particularly useful.
    - lox 2y ago
      With a prevalence rate of < 2% (at least in Australia) this seems like an incredibly mathematically flawed take. Whilst a broad/blanket diagnosis isn't useful for making generalisations about individuals in that group, it's certainly societally useful.
      - mindslight 2y ago
        All models are wrong, some are useful. Of course it has some utility, otherwise it would drop out of use on its own. The problem with big catchall symptom based diagnoses are what they drive focus towards and away from. I get that the scientific process has to start somewhere, by putting similar things in a bag, before it can tease out mechanisms and groupings. But when such simplistic models remain how doctors communicate with patients, it crowds out more nuanced understanding. Like even the word "spectrum", trying to add some depth to the pop culture model, is really just a fancy word for a single scalar.
- throwawaymaths 2y ago
  Because autism got a shit ton of research funding from scared parents a decade ago
- Frummy 2y ago
  Each seed may land in a unique place, being swept by the wind from the same tree.
- Muromec 2y ago
  So the normies have a way to explain weirdness and go on with their day.
- furyofantares 2y ago
  A characteristic autistic trait is having a narrow and deep tunnel of attention. Perhaps so narrow and deep that you're unable to learn language, because it requires a more holistic processing, and less focus on individual components. Perhaps so narrow and deep that you're overwhelmed by sensation, processing every touch, sound, sight stimulus individually, leaving little energy to put everything together. Or perhaps only so narrow and deep that you are extremely focused on math. Or collecting insects. Or memorizing train routes. I don't know if this is an explanation. But it is extremely plausible for a wide variety of outcomes to be usefully categorized by a singular trait.
- _moof 2y ago
  You may be interested in reading Wittgenstein on trying to define what a "game" is. In short he found that there are no conditions necessary or sufficient to make something a game. Nevertheless, games exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance
  - bugglebeetle 2y ago
    It’s amazing how much Wittgenstein anticipated. You can see here how his philosophy anticipated meaning as being fundamentally a probabilistic superposition of the relationships between words, with no fixed form, predicting today’s model architectures: > for instance the kinds of number form a family in the same way. Why do we call something a "number"? Well, perhaps because it has a direct relationship with several things that have hitherto been called number; and this can be said to give it an indirect relationship to other things we call the same name. And we extend our concept of number as in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre. And the strength of the thread does not reside in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres.

greesil 2y ago

Why even have the word autism? It's almost meaningless.

Spivak 2y ago
"hot" is still a meaningful word even though 100 F°, 1000 F°, and 1,000,000 F° aren't comparable at all. They're nonetheless still all experiencing heat.
- blargey 2y ago
  Yes, if we could pin it to a linear scale of Degrees Autistic (Farenheit), that could be estimated with reasonable precision for all day-to-day relevant values by feeling the nearby air on your skin, nobody would complain about "Austism" being too broad.
  - o11c 2y ago
    Usually it's at least 4 scales with no strong correlation (and a couple more that are correlated more). They do have them. Thus, it is incorrect to refer to Autism as a "spectrum". Instead, we should correctly call it a "manifold".
    - greesil 2y ago
      Locally euclidian?
  - Spivak 2y ago
    Am I missing something you can though. That's actually kinda how it is. I detest the phrase "high functioning" but that group is roughly your outside temperatures. You'll notice the difference between 30° and 80° and the same temperature 72° can feel different in the summer, winter, before it rains, when it's humid/dry but is still the same intensity. Then there's 1000° degrees where (and this is someone I know) he stripped naked, ran through downtown, and yelled at random restaurant workers calling them fascists for not lettting him in and then got into a fight with the cops. I think broadly that's what the "spectrum" characterization is meant to convey. And you should expect this, in code there's one happy path and a million different ways to err, some more catastrophic than others.
- b112 2y ago
  It seems to me that something could be hot enough, that you could vaporize before your nerves signal your brain.
cogman10 2y ago
The symptoms cluster together and are related. Someone with sensory issues is also likely to have food aversions, for example. It's also useful for diagnostics and treatment. It means you don't have to fight insurance as much or need rediagnostics to get needed therapies. I don't need to get my child with food aversions, speech delay, and sensory issues a new diagnosis for each just because some people with autism don't have those issues.
- mindslight 2y ago
  That sounds like a problem with the medical gatekeeping industry rather than anything fundamental. Like a blanket diagnosis of "human" would get you the same thing, but for the middlemen realizing that would completely destroy one of the levers they use to defraud.
  - idiotsecant 2y ago
    So it solves a problem, then? Its useful? Saying a problem would not be a problem if the universe was a little better is not particularly useful.
  - lox 2y ago
    With a prevalence rate of < 2% (at least in Australia) this seems like an incredibly mathematically flawed take. Whilst a broad/blanket diagnosis isn't useful for making generalisations about individuals in that group, it's certainly societally useful.
    - mindslight 2y ago
      All models are wrong, some are useful. Of course it has some utility, otherwise it would drop out of use on its own. The problem with big catchall symptom based diagnoses are what they drive focus towards and away from. I get that the scientific process has to start somewhere, by putting similar things in a bag, before it can tease out mechanisms and groupings. But when such simplistic models remain how doctors communicate with patients, it crowds out more nuanced understanding. Like even the word "spectrum", trying to add some depth to the pop culture model, is really just a fancy word for a single scalar.
throwawaymaths 2y ago
Because autism got a shit ton of research funding from scared parents a decade ago
Frummy 2y ago
Each seed may land in a unique place, being swept by the wind from the same tree.
Muromec 2y ago
So the normies have a way to explain weirdness and go on with their day.
furyofantares 2y ago
A characteristic autistic trait is having a narrow and deep tunnel of attention. Perhaps so narrow and deep that you're unable to learn language, because it requires a more holistic processing, and less focus on individual components. Perhaps so narrow and deep that you're overwhelmed by sensation, processing every touch, sound, sight stimulus individually, leaving little energy to put everything together. Or perhaps only so narrow and deep that you are extremely focused on math. Or collecting insects. Or memorizing train routes. I don't know if this is an explanation. But it is extremely plausible for a wide variety of outcomes to be usefully categorized by a singular trait.
_moof 2y ago
You may be interested in reading Wittgenstein on trying to define what a "game" is. In short he found that there are no conditions necessary or sufficient to make something a game. Nevertheless, games exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance
- bugglebeetle 2y ago
  It’s amazing how much Wittgenstein anticipated. You can see here how his philosophy anticipated meaning as being fundamentally a probabilistic superposition of the relationships between words, with no fixed form, predicting today’s model architectures: > for instance the kinds of number form a family in the same way. Why do we call something a "number"? Well, perhaps because it has a direct relationship with several things that have hitherto been called number; and this can be said to give it an indirect relationship to other things we call the same name. And we extend our concept of number as in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre. And the strength of the thread does not reside in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres.