[cogman10]

The symptoms cluster together and are related. Someone with sensory issues is also likely to have food aversions, for example.

It's also useful for diagnostics and treatment. It means you don't have to fight insurance as much or need rediagnostics to get needed therapies. I don't need to get my child with food aversions, speech delay, and sensory issues a new diagnosis for each just because some people with autism don't have those issues.

[zug_zug]

I guess then my thought is that whether it's one disorder or 4 or any number perhaps is best understood as a statistical question.

For example, if a parent exhibit autism symptom X (e.g. trouble understanding emotions), are there kids more likely to inherit symptom X, or ANY autism symptom.

If X is uniquely heritable, then perhaps it's best as multiple disorders. But if X leads equally likely to X, Y, or Z then it's better understood as one disorder.

[mindslight]

That sounds like a problem with the medical gatekeeping industry rather than anything fundamental. Like a blanket diagnosis of "human" would get you the same thing, but for the middlemen realizing that would completely destroy one of the levers they use to defraud.

[lox]

With a prevalence rate of < 2% (at least in Australia) this seems like an incredibly mathematically flawed take. Whilst a broad/blanket diagnosis isn't useful for making generalisations about individuals in that group, it's certainly societally useful.

[mindslight]

All models are wrong, some are useful. Of course it has some utility, otherwise it would drop out of use on its own. The problem with big catchall symptom based diagnoses are what they drive focus towards and away from. I get that the scientific process has to start somewhere, by putting similar things in a bag, before it can tease out mechanisms and groupings. But when such simplistic models remain how doctors communicate with patients, it crowds out more nuanced understanding. Like even the word "spectrum", trying to add some depth to the pop culture model, is really just a fancy word for a single scalar.

[cogman10]

> it crowds out more nuanced understanding. Like even the word "spectrum", trying to add some depth to the pop culture model, is really just a fancy word for a single scalar.

I just disagree with this take.

For people with autism, the broad criteria help to serve as guideposts for common experiences shared by those with autism. When doing treatment, everyone gets into the specifics of what autism means for the individual.

What you are complaining about is similar to someone complaining that cancer is too broad of a term. After all, the word cancer describes a spectrum of mutations and symptoms everywhere in the body.

[mindslight]

How about for people "without autism" that have some of the characteristics (probably everyone), trying to examine their own mental workings (ideally more people) ?

How about for people with "mild autism" that have now been labeled by the medical system as being distinct from people "without autism", even though the main difference was merely passing some arbitrary threshold?

The difference with cancer is that cancer is an unequivocal negative. You can't be just "a little cancerous" and just embrace it. Whereas autism we're seemingly talking about variances in distinct components of what makes up intelligence. So setting some arbitrary threshold below which you're "fine" and above which you have a "problem" is really an artifact of the medical industry and larger economic system rather than actual mechanics.

[seba_dos1]

I think a person is usually capable of figuring out whether some of their traits pose a "problem" in their life or not. And if they're not capable, you're probably able to figure out the answer to that question already without their involvement.

Healthy people usually don't try to find a diagnosis for their mental state.

[lox]

I don’t disagree that pop culture has distilled spectrum down into a magnitude, but that isn’t how the DSM describes it or how professionals diagnose it (or in my experience how they communicate it). The metaphor is supposed to be like the light spectrum not “less autism ranging to more autism”. Severity scale is distinct to interacting traits of social issues and restricted interests and repetitive behaviors (the spectrum bit).

[mindslight]

When I said single scalar, I was referencing the light spectrum - it is literally just less energy ranging to more energy (per photon). We just experience it so vibrantly as different colors (etc) because the difference between specific energies are quite important at the level of our existence. So unless there is a single underlying factor whose magnitude causes all of the different distinct traits of autism, it's a poor analogy.

[ackfoobar]

Your comment would probably be less confusing for non-physicists if you said frequency instead of energy (I know, E=hf).

Two meanings of the word spectrum are used in this discussion, definition quoted from wiktionary:

1. "A range; a continuous, infinite, one-dimensional set, possibly bounded by extremes." "Specifically, a range of colours representing light (electromagnetic radiation) of contiguous frequencies"

2. A plot of energy against frequency, e.g. "[t]he pattern of absorption or emission of radiation produced by a substance", or the output of a Fourier transform.

You were talking about the former, BoiledCabbage the latter.

---

I agree with you that the former makes a terrible analogy of autism; and to be honest I really don't see how the latter can be an analogy of autism.

[BoiledCabbage]

Two beams of light of equal intensity and different frequency contain equal energy not differing amounts of energy.

The actual difference in frequency is the composition of that energy.

If of course you compare a dimmer beam of light with a brighter one the dimmer one will have less energy.

So no less energy is due to lower intensity light, not due to different frequency. You can pretty trivially have 5 flashlights each with a different color of light and all with the same energy.

[idiotsecant]

So it solves a problem, then? Its useful? Saying a problem would not be a problem if the universe was a little better is not particularly useful.