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by meruru 2449 days ago
Found a few passages in Free as in Freedom (https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/faif-2.0.pdf):

>A December, 2001, Wired magazine article titled “The Geek Syndrome” paints the portrait of several scientifically gifted children diagnosed with high-functioning autism or Asperger Syndrome. In many ways, the parental recollections recorded in the Wired article are eerily similar to the ones offered by Lippman. Stallman also speculates about this. In the interview for a 2000 profile for the TorontoStar, Stallman said he wondered if he were “borderline autistic.”

>In recent years, Lippman says she has taken to reading books about autism and believes that such episodes were more than coincidental. “I do feel that Richard had some of the qualities of an autistic child,” she says. “I regret that so little was known about autism back then. ”Over time, however, Lippman says her son learned to adjust. By age seven, she says, her son had become fond of standing at the front window of subway trains, mapping out and memorizing the labyrinthian system of railroad tracks underneath the city.

>Watch the Stallman gaze for an extended period of time, and you will begin to notice a subtle change. What appears at first to be an attempt to intimidate or hypnotize reveals itself upon second and third viewing as a frustrated attempt to build and main-tain contact. If his personality has a touch or “shadow” of autism or Asperger’s Syndrome, a possibility that Stallman has entertained from time to time, his eyes certainly confirm the diagnosis. Even at their most high-beam level of intensity, they have a tendency to grow cloudy and distant, like the eyes of a wounded animal preparing to give up the ghost. My own first encounter

1 comments

Twice exceptional individuals have especially frustrating lives. Their high intelligence masks their difficulties and then other people claim they are making excuses and not trying hard enough.

No one wants to cut any slack for a smart person with disabilities. They just want to double down on "Smart people are lazy, arrogant, over entitled asshats and you need to behave better!"

There are generally too few resources available for such people. Most resources help with one issue or the other (giftedness or disability), not both at the same time. Such resources are a poor fit for the needs of 2e people.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_exceptional