[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.

[fragmede]

interesting. thank you too.