[AllegedAlec]

> Their goal is not to accept autistic people as who they are or try to push for the general public (or perhaps "their agenda being") to accept them as who they are, but to outright eliminate the existence of what we know as Autism as a whole, which can politely be called "curing"

Yes. It's a mental disorder. You can try sweettalking what it is, but mild versions of autism are already insanely disruptive, both to the parents, but also to all other children and people that are forced to interact with them, for example in a classroom setting, where any autistic kid will take more than their fair share of the teacher's attention. But god forbid if you have a child with low-functioning or severe autism. You might as well give up all plans you had for the foreseeable future.

[wizzwizz4]

> for example in a classroom setting, where any autistic kid will take more than their fair share of the teacher's attention.

Ah yes, the classroom environment, where children are not treated like people. Woe betide somebody objects to that!

“Mental disorder” – how is that defined? Saying “mental disorders are bad, autism is a mental disorder, therefore autism is bad” is the non-central fallacy, so obviously you must have a better argument (and I just can't see it). But remember: homosexuality used to be considered a “mental disorder”, as did women wanting the vote (I'm not joking!).

I posit: “mental disorder” is just a word for people who diverge from what society considers typical (or, cynically, acceptable) variation in what people are like. Some of that variation is bad, I won't argue with that. Most of that variation is absolutely fine.

The way society is means that any atypical variation is bad, because society punishes it. If not for that punishment, much variation would be a non-issue.

[AllegedAlec]

> Ah yes, the classroom environment, where children are not treated like people. Woe betide somebody objects to that!

They don't object. They throw tantrums because they didn't get a 2 week advance warning of something happening.

> “Mental disorder” – how is that defined?

DSM-V: a syndrome characterized by *clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior* that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning.

Mental disorders are bad by definition. Psychologists don't put behaviours in their diagnostic manuals for nothing. Autism is in there for a reason. At its mild end it's a hurdle. At its severe end it's absolutely debilitating for the sufferer and their entire network.

> I posit: “mental disorder” is just a word for people who diverge from what society considers typical (or, cynically, acceptable) variation in what people are like. Some of that variation is bad, I won't argue with that. Most of that variation is absolutely fine.

I suggest you go read through the DSM. A major criterium for each mental illness is that the personis hampered in their function by it.

[wizzwizz4]

> They don't object. They throw tantrums because they didn't get a 2 week advance warning of something happening.

“Something happening”… or “adults deciding things while ignoring the needs and desires of the children”? Most of these situations follow a pattern, in my experience:

• Society decides what things may matter and what things may not.

• Adult unilaterally changes things that It Is Unreasonable To Care About.

• Child is not allowed to care about them.

• Child is not allowed to object.

• Child is not allowed to be distracted by the change from What The Child Must Pay Attention To.

• Child must pay attention, immediately, and cease this ridiculous behaviour.

• Child “has a tantrum” (a word that does not distinguish between “deliberate disruption as a protest / spiteful action”, “inability to contain frustration / anger” and “meltdown”).

> Mental disorders are bad by definition. Psychologists don't put behaviours in their diagnostic manuals for nothing.

I never claimed that they did, and you're not addressing what I've said.

> I suggest you go read through the DSM.

I suggest you have a little look at DSM II's “302” section.

> This category is for individuals whose sexual interests are directed primarily toward objects other than people of the opposite sex,

“hampered in their function” requires you to define “function”, and that's usually defined as “ability to fit into society's little box”. While we've made the box a bit bigger (when we don't have to put much effort into it), plenty of benign-of-themselves variations in what people are like are still outside that box, and still punished unnecessarily.

If cyanide was a regular ingredient in food, people with normal levels of mitochondrial rhodanese would be “hampered in their function” – they wouldn't be able to eat even a tenth of the cyanide-containing food a normal person could eat without straight-up dying! You or I would therefore have a disability that just doesn't exist in our society, without any change having occurred to us.

[AllegedAlec]

> “Something happening”… or “adults deciding things while ignoring the needs and desires of the children”? Most of these situations follow a pattern, in my experience:

See my comment towards the other reply. The school thing was an example. Please don't get stuck upon that. You seem to have beef with the entire school system. Fair, maybe, but besides the point.

> If cyanide was a regular ingredient in food, people with normal levels of mitochondrial rhodanese would be “hampered in their function” – they wouldn't be able to eat even a tenth of the cyanide-containing food a normal person could eat without straight-up dying! You or I would therefore have a disability that just doesn't exist in our society, without any change having occurred to us.

So you're argument is "it's not they who don't fit, it's society who doesn't fit them", which may be true, but it extremely unhelpful and a pipe dream. It's all well and good to say "society should change to include people who don't fit", but we've been a social species with complex social interactions for over 20 kiloyears. Asking to change that because of a very small percentage is both inpractical and quite self-centered.

[wizzwizz4]

> You seem to have beef with the entire school system.

It's not just the school system. It's the entire way adults treat children (and, to a lesser extent, the way adults treat adults). Ever wondered why autistic adults rarely have “tantrums” in (say) an office environment? There's the “older and more experienced”, sure, but they're allowed to have boundaries – something that most adults deny to most children.

People (usually) afford adults the basic decency they would afford another person, and suddenly the disability is less severe. Funny, that.

> which may be true, but it extremely unhelpful and a pipe dream.

We can change society. We should.

> but we've been a social species with complex social interactions for over 20 kiloyears

That's not what I'm suggesting should change. Rather, we should change some pretty minor aspects of those interactions, if your standard is “having complex social interactions at all”.

This is stuff like making computers have audio-only interfaces, or making it possible for wheelchair-users to get on trains on their own. Small things, all things considered.

[zozbot234]

Temper tantrums are in fact quite common in the office. It's just that most people sensibly regard them as a form of emotional abuse, which is to say a gross violation of any bystanders' boundaries, as well as of basic decency. It's not clear why we should focus on a supposed violation of the kid's boundaries, when the kid's own transgression is so much more readily apparent.

[hnbad]

The funny thing about "classroom environments" is that a good deal of what happens even down to the kindergarten level falls under the exact definition of psychological child abuse. Heck, even a lot of "traditional parenting" does too. I'd say any child is more likely to have some form of emotional trauma or another by the time they come of age than not.

[sidlls]

As opposed to the juvenile delinquents, impoverished kids who don’t have access to tools for basic hygiene like running water or electricity (that was me at various points during my school years), and various other issues taking up “more than their fair share”?

What you’ve identified isn’t the autistic kids’ fault, it’s the miserly taxpayers’, incompetent admins’, and corrupt/spiteful politicians’, who don’t adequately fund or organize our public school systems.

[AllegedAlec]

> As opposed to the juvenile delinquents, impoverished kids who don’t have access to tools for basic hygiene like running water or electricity (that was me at various points during my school years), and various other issues taking up “more than their fair share”?

No, in addition to.

> What you’ve identified isn’t the autistic kids’ fault, it’s the miserly taxpayers’, incompetent admins’, and corrupt/spiteful politicians’, who don’t adequately fund or organize our public school systems.

It is though. Their unique blend of disability makes them inherrently unsuitable to any task that involves a group of other children. That's not to say we should blame them for it, but this is not something you can reasonably fix by throwing money at education.

I'd like to emphasize though that I meant the schooling issue as one of the many examples you could pick where autistic people are both at a disadvantage and are a detriment to the group. Please don't get stuck on this one example.

[wizzwizz4]

> Their unique blend of disability makes them inherrently unsuitable to any task that involves a group of other children.

Within the school system, which forces them to do so in the adults' way. Interesting that this “unsuitability to any task that involves a group of other children” tends to show up when the children aren't allowed to self-organise; in environments where children get to choose their own games, most autistic children are perfectly fine playing with their friends.

The problem comes when you try to force them to do things the way you want them to, and they find that difficult or don't want to. This is not the children's problem; this is adults on power trips.

You know the best teacher I ever had? The Reception and Year One teacher who distinguished between children and adults by whether they went to her school; who made me cross twice (justifiably cross, once); who would have children ask her to resolve disputes when they couldn't resolve them themselves; who gave the Year Sixes a budget and a catalogue and let them order the playground equipment; who talked to me about educational psychology and Game of Thrones when I was ten; whose class always (well, 99%) lined up at the end of playtime within 20 seconds, and patiently waited for an average of several minutes (I counted) for everyone else to line up; who was respected second only to the head teacher (who people were a bit scared of because he was the head teacher); who shouted perhaps four times I'm aware of, and never at her class because they were already paying attention to her; who never had any problems with “disruption” from the autistic kids (only from the biters, and the mute girl who kept hitting people).

Pretty sure she was autistic, too (if I remember one of our conversations right). Funny how that works out.

> I'd like to emphasize though that I meant the schooling issue as one of the many examples you could pick where autistic people are both at a disadvantage and are a detriment to the group.

I'm sorry, I'm not aware of any examples where autistic people are “a detriment to the group”. You'll have to provide them, I'm afraid.

[sidlls]

You’re not even wrong.

[chownie]

It's really disheartening to read stuff like this as an autistic person.

So let's dispense with some of the mythology:

> Yes. It's a mental disorder.

More accurately it's a neurodevelopmental disorder. It's not like OCD or depression which can come on with age and be mediated with therapy, it's more like the albinism of the brain. I recall reading studies that point toward autism being characteristic of over-eager neuron connectivity but I don't know if that's actually accurate or not.

> You can try sweettalking what it is, but mild versions of autism are already insanely disruptive

There is no "mild", "severe" or "low functioning" autism, these labels are not descriptive. Autistic people have a spiky profile, they struggle/excel at different things in the categories of language, perception, executive function, motor control and sensory processing.

"Low functioning" is used to deny people agency, "high functioning" is used to deny people support. Neither of these terms tend to be used by autistic people because they aren't at all useful. If you're someone who struggles with sounds and you're in a busy office then people will rate your functioning lower than if you're in a quiet office, environment affects everyone's ability to function it's just more obvious in people who specifically struggle with that stimulus.

> both to the parents, but also to all other children and people that are forced to interact with them

What do you mean by "forced to interact with them"? I can guarantee you have interacted with autistic people throughout your life without knowing some of them are autistic, and without some of them knowing they're autistic too. The very fact that adults get diagnosed with autism kind of flies in the face of this idea you seem to have that we're all severely disabled people that good ol' normal people are "forced to interact with"

What you think of as severe autism is more likely autism in addition to another developmental disability. Autism is diagnosed by behavioural analysis but the conditions for failure arent specific, so any learning disability can potentially be shortcut diagnosed as autism and this is often the case for people who start out incapable of communication.

[zozbot234]

> What you think of as severe autism is more likely autism in addition to another developmental disability.

A reasonable guess, but if that was the case we would expect low functioning autism to be extremely uncommon compared to either "mild" autism or other developmental issues, since very few kids would happen to fall under both conditions.

Unfortunately, low functioning is more common than that, common enough in fact that some people think of it as the typical case of autism itself.

[chownie]

> A reasonable guess, but if that was the case we would expect low functioning autism to be extremely uncommon compared to either "mild" autism or other developmental issues, since very few kids would happen to fall under both conditions.

Diagnosis of autism requires running through a checklist as part of an interview, or a behavioural analysis if younger. If you're completely non-verbal and thus incapable of being interviewed you can still be shortcut diagnosed as autistic, which is actually my entire point, the behavioural checklist is not that stringent. A number of severe learning disabilities can pretty easily be swung into an autism diagnosis, making the spectrum seem more like 20 conditions we can't distinguish rather than 1 condition with vastly differing presentations.

[AllegedAlec]

> It's really disheartening to read stuff like this as an autistic person.

I'm sorry to hear that.

> neurodevelopmental disorder

Fair enough. I didn't delineate the two because we tend not to, because there's fairly little use. Schizoid cluster disorders are also considered personality disorders, in spite having a geneteic component, and all you can do is manage that, not cure it.

> There is no "mild", "severe" or "low functioning" autism, these labels are not descriptive. Autistic people have a spiky profile, they struggle/excel at different things in the categories of language, perception, executive function, motor control and sensory processing.

Psychology disagrees. It classifies autism on three levels, from 1 (high-functioning) where the person needs relatively little support, to level 3, where the person requires very substantial support.

> "Low functioning" is used to deny people agency, "high functioning" is used to deny people support. Neither of these terms tend to be used by autistic people because they aren't at all useful

I disagree. Categorisation is useful maybe not to the guy with autism, but it is to the system that has to provide support, in order to have rough estimates of how much and when.

> If you're someone who struggles with sounds and you're in a busy office then people will rate your functioning lower than if you're in a quiet office, environment affects everyone's ability to function it's just more obvious in people who specifically struggle with that stimulus.

At that point you're already talking about a high functioning autistic person. Labour force participation overall for people with autism is roughly half of that of those without.

> What do you mean by "forced to interact with them"? I can guarantee you have interacted with autistic people throughout your life without knowing some of them are autistic, and without some of them knowing they're autistic too.

Yes. That's high functioning autism. But I've also had people, in my class, at work and in hobby spaces, that were very much not like that. One example that springs to mind is a class grinding to a halt for an hour after an autistic kid started throwing with stuff because the teacher deviated from the regular schedule to have a group discussion about death because someone's mother had passed away.

> The very fact that adults get diagnosed with autism kind of flies in the face of this idea you seem to have that we're all severely disabled people that good ol' normal people are "forced to interact with"

I never said any of that; that's pure projection on your part and I'd rather you didn't.

> What you think of as severe autism is more likely autism in addition to another developmental disability. Autism is diagnosed by behavioural analysis but the conditions for failure arent specific, so any learning disability can potentially be shortcut diagnosed as autism and this is often the case for people who start out incapable of communication.

How do you make a difference between comorbidity and several disabilities melding into another? A third of autistic children also have a severe intellectual disability (IQ < 70). Another 25% is borderline that (above 70, below 85). About a third also has epilepsy, and people with autism are at least 4 times more likely to have schizophrenia.

And don't get me wrong. I don't say we should round all of these people up and take them behind the shed. My point is is that autism is not some way of being that's equal but different to 'neurotypical'. At best, you'll suffer some disadvantage that you'll have to overcome during your lifetime (and if you do: kudos to you).

[s5300]

So is psychopathy, sociopathy, and narcissism, something we find in the CEO's of companies who've done essentially unfixable damage to Earth's ecosystem and killed/severely damaged millions of people along the way with zero recourse.

Should we eradicate these mental disorders from the gene pool as well? I think many think we would be much better off as a species without them...

[AllegedAlec]

> Should we eradicate these mental disorders from the gene pool as well?

I'd put it in a slightly less... Hitlery way, maybe.