Originally posted by dadudemon
severities of autism
Autism, yes, does exist on a spectrum. Trust me, anyone diagnosed with autism is of a significant "severity" that interacting on the internet would be difficult, to say the least.
this is some stupid trick dolos is trying to use to call himself a savant
Originally posted by Oliver North
Autism, yes, does exist on a spectrum. Trust me, anyone diagnosed with autism is of a significant "severity" that interacting on the internet would be difficult, to say the least.this is some stupid trick dolos is trying to use to call himself a savant
A local article, back when I was a senior.
I may write coherently now, but in fifth grade I struggled to form real letters when writing, much less write something coherent. However, I had an excellent vocabulary at that time. Both my parents used big words, I was always curious what they meant, and so I'd ask. But I couldn't spell.
Yet in kindergarten my IQ was tested at 110, an average IQ score for my age group. What went wrong. I never believed in the IQ test.
I'm curious why you lost your cool.
I didn't think a few arguments would cause any sort of animosity to be directed at me.
Then again, all my ideas were scrutinized from day one by various members. Symmetric Chaos and Omega Vision to name names.
I recall SC telling me that I'm a smug, conceited preacher in a way. Using the word "Dogmatic".
I fail to see cause for such persecution.
Originally posted by Bardock42
I was under the impression that some autistic people have a much easier time communicating via the Internet
Oh, you don't even know.
I don't have these kinds of conversations offline. And trust me, I've tried to have them, people eventually zone out when I get half way through my assertion. Thus walls of text, some have the desire and inclination to read online at least.
Originally posted by Dolos
Oh, you don't even know.I don't have these kinds of conversations offline. And trust me, I've tried to have them, people eventually zone out when I get half way through my assertion. Thus walls of text, some have the desire and inclination to read online at least.
Is he correct in his assumption about you though? Do you feel like you are a savant? Is that why you posted this thread? Have you found that you having Asperger's has been advantageous, and if so, in what situations?
Originally posted by Bardock42
Have you found that you having Asperger's has been advantageous, and if so, in what situations?
I'm curious, here, as well.
Though I think SC would be a better person to ask as he appears to be higher functioning*.
*That seems a bit rude to say about people, imo. Sounds patronizing. PC Police need to help me.
Originally posted by Dolos
I'm curious why you lost your cool.I didn't think a few arguments would cause any sort of animosity to be directed at me.
Then again, all my ideas were scrutinized from day one by various members. Symmetric Chaos and Omega Vision to name names.
I recall SC telling me that I'm a smug, conceited preacher in a way. Using the word "Dogmatic".
I fail to see cause for such persecution.
Originally posted by Bardock42
I would be interested to hear about inimalist's view on high functioning autism.
ok
Originally posted by Bardock42
I was under the impression that some autistic people
"people with autism"
uhuh
Originally posted by Bardock42
have a much easier time communicating via the Internet, for example.
I don't know the autism literature very well, but for people with different types of social phobias or anxieties, it is found to be beneficial. People who really suffer from it are known to benefit from things like MMOs where they get to socially interact in groups in the same way people do from real world interactions. I can only guess, but for a highly functional person with autism I'd assume there is a lot of anxiety associated with human interaction, not to mention people's prejudices. On the internet one's idiosyncrasies don't come out as prominently, and interaction is entirely voluntary.
Like I said, I don't know about autism specifically, but to the extent that people with the disorder experience anxiety when dealing with people, they would benefit from the internet.
Originally posted by Dolos
I may write coherently now, but in fifth grade I struggled to form real letters when writing, much less write something coherent. However, I had an excellent vocabulary at that time. Both my parents used big words, I was always curious what they meant, and so I'd ask. But I couldn't spell.
so like, some kind of character-apraxia? Was it that you couldn't remember what the letter looked like or that you had trouble executing the movement? I imagine the only diagnosis anyone would have given it was dyslexia, ya?
In grade 5 you are roughly 10. Children's language development varies dramatically across kids, but tends to all equal out at 10-11 years of age, so it might just be you were a little delayed in writing production.
I'm a terrible speller to this day, and my penmanship looks like a child's. This is unrelated to anything other than being a bit embarrassed when I have to fill in forms and applications.
Originally posted by Dolos
Yet in kindergarten my IQ was tested at 110, an average IQ score for my age group. What went wrong. I never believed in the IQ test.
with the exception of things like comprehension and fluency, language ability and IQ aren't related at all. (they are probably correlated, but they are different concepts entirely...)....
errr, ok, not entirely, but a dyslexia is not an intellectual disability, it is a language disability, and even then, you say yours was related to character production. If you had issues with verbal reasoning or grammatical syntax, that would probably impact your IQ score (though it wouldn't mean you were any less intelligent). The only issue for you might have been the time taken if you couldn't produce written answers, but I'd assume you weren't taking a formal written IQ exam in kindergarten.
Originally posted by dadudemon
Though I think SC would be a better person to ask as he appears to be higher functioning*.*That seems a bit rude to say about people, imo. Sounds patronizing. PC Police need to help me.
"High functioning" is the term that some psychologist decided to use, although amusingly a google search suggests it means/meant "not (clinically) retarded," and I don't think its been challenged much. Being classified as Aspergers was something that mattered to me in elementary school, then I was very into autism culture in high-school as well, but since college I haven't really cared.
The thing is there's no obvious way to separate what should be counted as "result" of Aspergers from what isn't. I still do the "little professor" thing but personality theorists could construct that as a defense mechanism. There's an element of Aspie culture that prefers to do away with the medical model but not the classification and characterize Aspergers as a personality or a way of looking at the world.
Originally posted by Oliver North
ok
Good
Originally posted by Oliver North
"people with autism"uhuh
I believe a large, or at least vocal, amount of high-function autistic people prefer identity first terminology. The reasoning being that it is not a disability but an acceptable different identity (allistic being the opposite (compare a homosexual person or heterosexual person). They also often dislike the "people with autism" phrasing, disapproving of the implications that they need to be cured.
Originally posted by Oliver North
I don't know the autism literature very well, but for people with different types of social phobias or anxieties, it is found to be beneficial. People who really suffer from it are known to benefit from things like MMOs where they get to socially interact in groups in the same way people do from real world interactions. I can only guess, but for a highly functional person with autism I'd assume there is a lot of anxiety associated with human interaction, not to mention people's prejudices. On the internet one's idiosyncrasies don't come out as prominently, and interaction is entirely voluntary.Like I said, I don't know about autism specifically, but to the extent that people with the disorder experience anxiety when dealing with people, they would benefit from the internet.
Do you think it is just due to secondary factors then (social anxiety for example) or that there could be something in Internet communication that lends itself to helping with problems autistic people have (for example an inability to read moods)?
Originally posted by Oliver North
is autism an evolutionary adaptive mutation?c'mon ddm, you know why this is nonsense without me talking about autism
EDIT: please note, Dolos thinks that a learning disability he has, which is so non-pervasive he is able to use the internet apparently unassisted and discuss philosophy while being involved in regular education, is akin to autism and he can use this "savant syndrome" to learn anything instantly, akin to a super power. Again, you shouldn't need me to pick this apart at every possible level.
Post is pure lolz
Originally posted by Bardock42
I believe a large, or at least vocal, amount of high-function autistic people prefer identity first terminology. The reasoning being that it is not a disability but an acceptable different identity (allistic being the opposite (compare a homosexual person or heterosexual person).
weird...
from our side of things, it is important to highlight that the people you are dealing with are individuals in need of respect, rather than a condition to be researched.
Its like, a way of preventing researchers from looking at subjects as simply just data points (why we are supposed to call them participants instead of subjects, but I don't see the value in that one).
Originally posted by Bardock42
They also often dislike the "people with autism" phrasing, disapproving of the implications that they need to be cured.
🙄 there are activists for everything
Originally posted by Bardock42
Do you think it is just due to secondary factors then (social anxiety for example) or that there could be something in Internet communication that lends itself to helping with problems autistic people have (for example an inability to read moods)?
This gets really close to talking about what it actually is, in terms of cognitive systems, that makes autism what it is, and I don't have much to offer on that. I wrote a paper on early warning signs in terms of language and attention defects one might see in very young children (my bias is that I see autism as a very early issue with attention), but autism proper is much more about how these attentional deficits impact development, so once we are talking about a reasonably old individual, I know little more than a layman.
so like, is it that in an active conversation the individual can't process the emotional signals they are attending to, is it that, because of issues with development, their attentional system doesn't look for emotional signals in conversation, etc. I'm sure there are studies that look at it, but dividing out what would be a "secondary" factor from a primary one would be daunting and functionally irrelevant.
But ya, secondary or not, it may facilitate it, except internet communication isn't devoid of emotional cues, they are just of a different sort.
There is an Autistic man who took a single helicopter ride over new york and then painted it perfectly upon a wall an hour later. I mean the whole freaking city down to the last building.
Now I am the last person who wants to Agree with Dolos but I understand what he is asking at least!
If people who had no mental or health issues could develop memory and attention prowes as much as this guy has ,Despite being Autistic, we would be much better off as a society.
Originally posted by Oliver North
from our side of things, it is important to highlight that the people you are dealing with are individuals in need of respect, rather than a condition to be researched.
Social theorist are always changing their minds and ultimately no one else cares enough to keep up. The bigger problem is that there is no one single answer, no matter how much social theorists insist that they have now suddenly figured it out. Group by group and person by person there will be differences in how people want to be referred to.
Originally posted by Oliver North
Its like, a way of preventing researchers from looking at subjects as simply just data points (why we are supposed to call them participants instead of subjects, but I don't see the value in that one).
Roediger is being fairly crochety here but I think you'll enjoy it.
http://journal.sjdm.org/roediger.html
"What group favored this change? Were college students writing in en masse saying 'Don't call us subjects any more; we participate!'"
Originally posted by Oliver North
🙄 there are activists for everything
This isn't a new one, though, it's the minority model of disability. Even racists wouldn't refer to "people with Africanness" because that's not how we think of the group. A lot of people, especially in the autism community, dislike the medical viewpoint and prefer to construct autism as a way of being rather than a disease in need of a cure. You can end up with people saying weird stuff due to this (one writer criticized Oliver Sacks individualizing his subjects) but the central point is not totally absurd.
The thing that people especially want to escape that they feel "person with trait" phrasing is the idea that suddenly everything about who they are is credited to the trait. This is a pretty common informal fallacy (cum hoc, ergo propter hoc?).
Temple Grandin is good with animals. Why? A good argument could be made that its related to autism.
Jane Goodall is good with animals. Why? She's not autistic.
Obviously, then, the ability to be good with animals can exist independent of autism.
Is it possible that when we see "autistic" and "good with animals" in describing Temple Grandin we made a jump in connecting them that we tried to justify later. Perhaps Temple Grandin is autistic and good with animals.
This implicit though process is what opposition to the "person with trait" wording is attacking.
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Social theorist are always changing their minds and ultimately no one else cares enough to keep up. The bigger problem is that there is no one single answer, no matter how much social theorists insist that they have now suddenly figured it out. Group by group and person by person there will be differences in how people want to be referred to.
Sure, and it was more of a joke at Bardock in the first place. That being said, I think the criticism that researchers need to remember the humanity of their subjects is apt, especially given the way the mentally handicapped have been treated in the history of the science.
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Roediger is being fairly crochety here but I think you'll enjoy it.
http://journal.sjdm.org/roediger.html"What group favored this change? Were college students writing in en masse saying 'Don't call us subjects any more; we participate!'"
lol, that was awesome 🙂
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
This isn't a new one, though, it's the minority model of disability. Even racists wouldn't refer to "people with Africanness" because that's not how we think of the group. A lot of people, especially in the autism community, dislike the medical viewpoint and prefer to construct autism as a way of being rather than a disease in need of a cure. You can end up with people saying weird stuff due to this (one writer criticized Oliver Sacks individualizing his subjects) but the central point is not totally absurd.
no, it isn't totally absurd at all, and there are very interesting questions about highly functional individuals with mental disabilities and the question of "at what point do we consider X behaviours a disability". My own opinion is that anyone functional enough to entertain such arguments about "medical models" and autism as an issue of identity politics is probably not autistic, or at least not so in a way that I would consider it equivalent to those who are unable to engage in such activities, so it is almost moot. I have, at times, crippling bouts of social anxiety. However, 99% of the time, I can interact with the world, so to take that from the point of "suffers anxiety" to "is a person with an anxiety disorder" is one I would think is unwarranted.
So, sure, whatever, "autism" is a way of being (though, so is everything). I still think it is silly for someone to take offense to the clinical study of something that causes pervasive issues for individuals and their families simply because, in their case, it isn't a major issue.
Its like, there are issues in Canada with alcohol on Native reserves. When someone makes the stupid comment about Native people wasting money on booze, the most common response is to have a Native person reply, "well, my home is alcohol free", as if that was the issue. As if that single person was what the conversation was ever about. No booze at your house? well, gee, issue settled, thanks!
It strikes me the same here. If one is cogent enough to be offended by some perception that clinicians are trying to normalize everyone and self identify with one's diagnosis, they aren't the person the medical/research community is really interested in. If you are living a fulfilling life where you have the opportunity to make your own decisions, great... that was never the issue in the first place though.
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
The thing that people especially want to escape that they feel "person with trait" phrasing is the idea that suddenly everything about who they are is credited to the trait. This is a pretty common informal fallacy (cum hoc, ergo propter hoc?).Temple Grandin is good with animals. Why? A good argument could be made that its related to autism.
Jane Goodall is good with animals. Why? She's not autistic.
Obviously, then, the ability to be good with animals can exist independent of autism.Is it possible that when we see "autistic" and "good with animals" in describing Temple Grandin we made a jump in connecting them that we tried to justify later. Perhaps Temple Grandin is autistic and good with animals.
This implicit though process is what opposition to the "person with trait" wording is attacking.
That makes sense, but I think is getting away from what I was saying. This is really just saying, don't confuse correlation and causality. From what I've read, the scientific community is largely skeptical of this "savant" condition in the first place, or at least in terms of its broader implications to autism.
Society is a different story, but they do this type of thing all the time. Missattribution errors are common, and certainly exist for other categories like gender and race.
Originally posted by Oliver North
no, it isn't totally absurd at all, and there are very interesting questions about highly functional individuals with mental disabilities and the question of "at what point do we consider X behaviours a disability".
I suppose "clinically significant stress or anxiety" isn't very detailed. A broader question might be why we're only willing to classify things when they're a disability.
Originally posted by Oliver North
My own opinion is that anyone functional enough to entertain such arguments about "medical models" and autism as an issue of identity politics is probably not autistic, or at least not so in a way that I would consider it equivalent to those who are unable to engage in such activities, so it is almost moot.
Yeah, I've wondered off and on whether it make sense for me to identify as Aspergers anymore.
Originally posted by Oliver North
So, sure, whatever, "autism" is a way of being (though, so is everything).
Ah, but that isn't how we think of mental illness. We think of it as something that impinges on one's proper state of being.
The "person with trait" phrasing is meant to do more than remind you that they're a person (you can do with with "trait people" phrasing) it is also meant to separate the person and the illness. This is why we talk about "people with cancer" or "people with schizophrenia" but not "people with black" or "people with male".
At least that's how social theorists look at it. I don't think exact wording is quite that important. In the case of "person with trait," however, the wording is very deliberate.
Originally posted by Oliver North
I still think it is silly for someone to take offense to the clinical study of something that causes pervasive issues for individuals and their families simply because, in their case, it isn't a major issue.
Absolutely. Was that what Dolos was writing about? I haven't read the start of the thread.
Originally posted by Oliver North
From what I've read, the scientific community is largely skeptical of this "savant" condition in the first place, or at least in terms of its broader implications to autism.
I though savant abilities were pretty well established as a thing that really happens.