[thewebguyd]

> especially when it was once suggested that frequent use could imply neurodivergence

Well that explains a lot. Interestingly enough, I've found that I naturally write like an LLM, or rather the LLMs write like I did. I wonder how many other patterns we attribute to LLMs are common in neurodivergent writing just as a result of so much of the training data being areas of the internet where I'd imagine neurodivergence is overrepresented vs. the general population.

[randallsquared]

I think a lot of us who spent some formative years reading and writing on usenet tend to write like an LLM, too. Plain text with lots of intentional presentation was a hallmark of the era.

[LoganDark]

Related, I've seen a lot of misidentification of Aspie writing as being LLM-generated lately. You seem Aspie to me (and parent does as well) so it makes sense that you'd also see the similarity.

[orthogonal_cube]

Ha, well I’m not on the spectrum but ADHD does have some overlap here and there.

[LoganDark]

I wouldn't agree that a lack of autism diagnosis is definitive because that diagnosis is primarily based on need for treatment. (Notice how the diagnostic criteria are exclusively variations of "finds it difficult to be normal".) I only see the tokenized / scratch-blocks writing style with Aspies. (This is likely what comes off as LLM-ish to others.) Non-autistics tend to be very sloppy/imprecise in comparison. ADHD primarily has to do with behavior (misbehavior in fact) and so wouldn't solely be responsible.

I have a few friends who are definitely at other places on the spectrum and yet not diagnosed. The funny thing is Aspies are the most likely to be diagnosed because their early development can be most obvious, but it's still not always caught. (This is supported by recent research identifying the presence of a finite number of distinct genetic phenotypes in the autistic spectrum.)

[orthogonal_cube]

> I wonder how many other patterns we attribute to LLMs are common in neurodivergent writing just as a result of so much of the training data being areas of the internet where I'd imagine neurodivergence is overrepresented vs. the general population.

It’s a very interesting thought experiment and if we had the data to support exploring it I’d love to see what we could find. I’d imagine that some subject-matter experts would probably be discovered as being neurodivergent to the surprise of nobody but themselves.

(They probably wouldn’t appreciate opening Pandora’s box!)