I know what you mean by "mild autism" but an article [1] that was recently discussed here [2] explains that "mild" vs. (say) "severe" does not quite capture the nuance of the condition. Just pointing it out here because I found it interesting.
yeah, autism is very much an "umbrella term". we define it by the effects, not by any identifiable causes. there are still broad "less impacted" and "more impacted" cases, arguably a spectrum, but it's very very much not linear.
cystic fibrosis used to be under the (all-encompassing) umbrella "chronic fatigue" because, well, they were chronically fatigued. when its niche finally gained enough data to escape the umbrella, diagnosis and treatment greatly accelerated. of course, you'd expect that once a cause is identified, but umbrellas tend to contain many totally unrelated sub-causes with wildly different subtleties that just happen to fit a vague description that matches others.
Well, if it leaves one unable to function effectively in society, or seriously hampered in that, it does make sense to differentiate from a less strong case.
If a person can't e.g. talk to someone to buy food, and the huge majority of people can, then they have a problem. That's not severe - it might be not perfectly accomondating, but it's reasonable. And of cource society does try to help in many ways (consulting, people being understanding, parents, school experts, medicine, etc)
Alright, well I can't agree to that part. It all depends on your goals and some people are less able to accomplish their own goals than others due to those traits from the spectrum. There's no need for conceiving of utility to others to speak of grades of functionality.
Sure, but the point is that the thing that is ‘severe’ isn’t ‘autism’. An autistic person can be severely disabled, but the disability is itself a trait they only some autistic people have, so it doesn’t make sense to call the disability ‘autism’.
That doesn't seem like a useful place to draw the distinction. If someone has more autistic traits, they can be considered to be more autistic but not necessarily more disabled.
well you can have a benign tumor or one that is killing you, by that theory we should say the one that is killing you shouldn't really be called a tumor.
I remember when that article was trening on HN. I wonder how supported by data that article is, because if it is scientific it would be a wonderful quick and easy reply to people using autism and the spectrum for various arguments.
cystic fibrosis used to be under the (all-encompassing) umbrella "chronic fatigue" because, well, they were chronically fatigued. when its niche finally gained enough data to escape the umbrella, diagnosis and treatment greatly accelerated. of course, you'd expect that once a cause is identified, but umbrellas tend to contain many totally unrelated sub-causes with wildly different subtleties that just happen to fit a vague description that matches others.