[maxbond]

"Neurotypical" always rubs me the wrong way, because I feel I've never met this person with a typical mind and I'm not sure they exist. I prefer to think of it as a distribution over a very high dimensional space, where the autism spectrum would be one dimension among many. I saw someone make a comment the other day about the average person having "one ovary and one testicle," which is crude but illustrates the point well.

[fragmede]

Maybe not typical, but you must know somebody who doesn't suffer from ADHD levels of distraction or an inability to cope with sensory input from autism. like you said, it's a distribution and it's important to recognize that there exist people that trend towards the typical end of the spectrum and aren't severely afflicted by mental illnesses the way some people are.

given that there are people with one testicle and other people with one ovary, the average is probably less than one for both.

[maxbond]

I don't know anyone that doesn't have something going on some of the time. Consider that a multimodal distribution in a high dimensional space doesn't really have a center, or has many centers, depending on how you want to look at it. It seems unlikely to me that the geometry would be simple.

To strip out the math metaphor in case it's unhelpful, there is no single way to be a normal or typical person, there are many ways. At first approximation you could think of them as being different archetypes (that metaphor ultimately suffers the same problem that I'm describing with "neurotypical", but just to illustrate). They aren't better or worse, just different. The problem isn't that someone is one type or another, but that the differences lead to confusion and miscommunication.

> given that there are people with one testicle and other people with one ovary, the average is probably less than one for both.

What do you think would happen if we rounded fractional values, given we're talking about something quantized?

[fragmede]

you must know people that have less going in those dimensions than others. a friend that never loses their keys, or a friend that's always on time. they don't have to have utterly uneventful and unremarkable lives to be neurotypical, but some people just have less trouble with things than others. Or, you don't have any one who is neurotypical in your life, which is why you question the word. which is entirely valid as well.

as far as the average: I'm just saying the average person has more like .9 ovaries and .9 testicles.

[maxbond]

I don't live in a reality where people have 1.8 gonads, I live in a reality where people an integer >= 0 number of gonads (which may be more or less than the mode of 2), so I feel like we're not quite speaking the same language and aren't quite understanding each other.

How many times do you have to forget your keys to be neurodivergent?

If you lived most of your life always remembering your keys, but when you entered your 40s you started to experience some pretty radical shifts in your personality, and as a result you start forgetting your keys - are you neurodivergent now? Were you always?

Similarly, what if you keep forgetting your keys, and you have a lot more trouble at it than other people, but over time you develop systems and skills that work for you. Did you stop being neurodivergent?

[fragmede]

the world I live in has people with two testicles or two ovaries, generally, and not one of each. if you want to make it a math problem and average it out then it's just numbers and the math says it's a non-integer value.

if you experience a large personality shift when you hit 40 that results in you needing medication to function as you were before, yeah, I'd call that neurodivergence. that implies that for that person there was a state before where things were typical for them. schizophrenia is something that often manifests before hitting 30, and that's definitely a neurodivergent condition. before it manifests the person could be considered neurotypical for the most part.

if you're able to get to a place approximating a neurotypical person with a heroic amount of effort, you don't stop being neurodivergent because you've lived that whole past life where you had those struggles to be neurotypical so even in this neurotypical state, you can't forget your past.

[maxbond]

It seems trivial, but I do actually think the average thing is the core of our disagreement. I suspect our different interpretations of questions like that are at the root of our different viewpoints. I don't think either of us are going to change or mind here, but I appreciate your perspective. Thanks for sharing.

[coldtea]

>"Neurotypical" always rubs me the wrong way, because I feel I've never met this person with a typical mind and I'm not sure they exist.

The variation of "traits over a very high dimensional space" doesn't really prevent the distinction.

"A distribution over a very high dimensional space" can still have clustered groups on one side of the high dimentional space vs the other side, based on a set of X traits.

And neurotypicals are clustered away from neurodivergent people of various types, on the relevant traits.

(Plus, of course, traits that are equally variable within both groups are neutral as far as the classification is concerned).