What are your controversial opinions regarding the autism spectrum?

[velociraptor]

I am not going to give a person false hope

How do you decide who is worthy and who isn't?

 

[Jordy]

How do you decide who is worthy and who isn't?

I think you misunderstood what I said

 

[velociraptor]

I think you misunderstood what I said

In what way?

 

[Kit]

Just because we both share the same diagnosis does not mean you can take your mask off and talk over me and interrupt me and info dump on things I am not interested in. You know being rude and not do turn taking.

Another thing to add is I see people on the spectrum dictate others on it about how they shall feel about themselves how they should describe themselves and telling them what labels to use. This has been made political.

 

[4gottenLoreKali]

An Underground Railroad-style group ought to be set up to kidnap the children and adult children of Karen "autism mommies" and finally grant them the agency their so-called caregivers callously deprive them of 'cause they "wouldn't be able to handle it". When you raise a child forever expecting that they'll have "the mind of an infant", you and you alone are to blame if that condition turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. This network could also target juvenile halls, group homes, inpatient mental hospitals, and residential ABA practices.

 

[Au Naturel]

Personally i believe in the proverb "don't let perfect be the enemy of good", but what i don't believe in is stories and stereotypes. I am not going to give a person false hope by telling them stories of underdogs making it in the world by finding confidence and believing in themselves.

I personally find those Pollyanna proclamations to be extremely annoying. NT's spout them out as if they were some universal truth. They have never been in our shoes.

We tell people those stories because once in a very great while they are true. We don't want people to give up. A lot of people give up very quickly. I think the correct lesson is not to keep trying in an impossible situation but rather to stay sharp and jump on any opportunity that might arise - despite the fact that there is no guarantee it will happen. But that is a much tougher sell.

 

[Shevek]

"All generalizations are worthless, including this one."
- Mark Twain.

When I was struggling with depression, I discovered that I had a large component of "depressive realism." I had a reasonably accurate estimate of the odds of success in a novel situation. Unfortunately, new opportunities quickly fill up, and so the unreasonably optimistic fill all the new positions. Thus we hear "Never look a gift horse in the mouth" (to check its teeth.)

 

[Au Naturel]

"All generalizations are worthless, including this one."
- Mark Twain.

When I was struggling with depression, I discovered that I had a large component of "depressive realism." I had a reasonably accurate estimate of the odds of success in a novel situation. Unfortunately, new opportunities quickly fill up, and so the unreasonably optimistic fill all the new positions. Thus we hear "Never look a gift horse in the mouth" (to check its teeth.)

There is a famous author, Horatio Alger, who wrote a series of novels about virtuous young men who became successful. What people fail to notice is that it wasn't the virtue that made these people successful. Every one of them had a lucky break and took advantage of it. They were all virtuous but virtue isn't what opened the path of success. If was jumping on an opportunity when it presented itself. Without opportunity, they would be virtuous and poor. Without virtue, they'd be amoral and successful.

Of course, being amoral allows more events to be classified as opportunities. OTOH, being virtuous and successful makes one a happier person. And in the 1800s, being amoral wasn't as stylish among the common folk as it is today. Writing about successful amoral people would have been greatly frowned upon.

 

[Shevek]

There is a famous author, Horatio Alger, who wrote a series of novels about virtuous young men who became successful. What people fail to notice is that it wasn't the virtue that made these people successful. Every one of them had a lucky break and took advantage of it. They were all virtuous but virtue isn't what opened the path of success. If was jumping on an opportunity when it presented itself. Without opportunity, they would be virtuous and poor. Without virtue, they'd be amoral and successful.

Of course, being amoral allows more events to be classified as opportunities. OTOH, being virtuous and successful makes one a happier person. And in the 1800s, being amoral wasn't as stylish among the common folk as it is today. Writing about successful amoral people would have been greatly frowned upon.

Immorality does certainly affect one's range of options, and I agree that honesty is on the wane these days, but there are so many opportunities that staying within one range still yields far more than can be pursued, and one can do a finer-grained search by focussing. Honesty and fairness are so rare now that they generate the very best kind of free advertising.
I was once on a crew doing a big house renovation, and as we were nearing completion, I was asked to fix any security issues. I went around to all the windows and doors and made a list of deficits. Then I went to the hardware store, returned, and installed various window and door locks. Finallly, I went outside and was just congratulating myself on how hard it would be to get in when someone else locked the new keys inside. This changed my mindset, and I remembered the weak spot within a second.
If you think there's no opportunity, you are sure to not find one. Another time, someone lied about having made a previously impossible machine, and wondering how they did it revealed a true solution to me.

 

[Jeff T]

Probably not controversial?

That in the future ADHD and ASD will be grouped together under 'Cerebellum/cerebral white matter/frontal lobe neurodevelopmental disorder. A mouthful, maybe shortened to CCFN.

ADHD and ASD seem to have common issues such as oddly routed white matter channels, and a smaller cerebellum. I don't know if autism has the frontal lobe executive function problems that ADHD exhibits, or the non-stop Default Mode problems?

 

[JackAdams]

I prefer the Asperger's label to the ASD one. It upsets people.

Correlating Aspergers and ASD directly harms people with Aspergers. It continues the line of thought that it is a disability, and that you have something stopping you from learning social skills.

Autism defined is literally "the effected has brain damage that disrupts their ability to learn social skills". The spectrum is just to what extent your other mental abilities are inhibited by the brain damage that disables your ability to learn social skills.

This is not in anyway the case with Aspergers. I believe [eople who have Aspergers are superior humans and are more K selected than others. They take more resources to grow and take a longer amount of time to grow. This is especially notable in their social skills. Many stop attempting to learn social skills because it seems too hard, even impossible. BUT JUST KEEP TRYING. As long as you keep trying you will eventually get to the point where you not only have sufficient social skills, but extraordinary ones.

My controversial opinion is that Nietzsche should be read by every individual with Aspergers, mainly Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the greatest book every created by mankind.

 

[JackAdams]

Probably not controversial?

That in the future ADHD and ASD will be grouped together under 'Cerebellum/cerebral white matter/frontal lobe neurodevelopmental disorder. A mouthful, maybe shortened to CCFN.

ADHD and ASD seem to have common issues such as oddly routed white matter channels, and a smaller cerebellum. I don't know if autism has the frontal lobe executive function problems that ADHD exhibits, or the non-stop Default Mode problems?

ADHD and ASD are nothing alike. ADHD is the brain properly navigating through a faulty environment ( as these kids with ADHD were meant to have stimulating lives that gave their body plenty of reasons to produce norepinephrine / noradrenaline, which is proven to "cure" ADHD ).

ASD is when you dont have social skills.

Very dissimilar beyond the fact they both involve the brain. You could compare ADHD and Asperger's though, they are both beneficial evolutionary traits that modern slavemasters call mental illness.

 

[velociraptor]

Correlating Aspergers and ASD directly harms people with Aspergers.

Hey, I'm on your side, but I'm surrounded by people who be like YOU CAN'T USE THAT WORD BECAUSE NAZIS!!

I'm not a Nazi. Never have been. I'm actually technically Jewish (it's matrilineal).

I was diagnosed as an Aspie, that's the label that fits me best, and anyone who doesn't like it can cram it somewhere uncomfortable.

 

[JackAdams]

Hey, I'm on your side, but I'm surrounded by people who be like YOU CAN'T USE THAT WORD BECAUSE NAZIS!!

I'm not a Nazi. Never have been. I'm actually technically Jewish (it's matrilineal).

I was diagnosed as an Aspie, that's the label that fits me best, and anyone who doesn't like it can cram it somewhere uncomfortable.

I've never met someone who denied the existence of Asperger's Syndrome because of Nazi's. Those people must be quite unintelligent to take the propaganda regarding AS and Hans Asperger at face value, let alone use it for social brownie points.

 

[velociraptor]

I've never met someone who denied the existence of Asperger's Syndrome because of Nazi's. Those people must be quite unintelligent to take the propaganda regarding AS and Hans Asperger at face value, let alone use it for social brownie points.

They don't like the name and they feel I'm being mean to people on the spectrum by refusing to take my place on the spectrum. "We don't use that term any more." "No, you don't. I do."

I lose interest in them after about thirty seconds and start playing on my phone, to be honest.

 

[Greatshield17]

Mine are:

I have one, but it might be waaaayyy tooo politically incorrect for here…

 

[Au Naturel]

I've never met someone who denied the existence of Asperger's Syndrome because of Nazi's. Those people must be quite unintelligent to take the propaganda regarding AS and Hans Asperger at face value, let alone use it for social brownie points.

Yeah, a couple of people here have posted something similar in implication. It was a while ago.

Just before WWII, Hans Asperger ran a facility in Austria dealing with children with a particular set of traits we would identify as somewhat like high-functioning autism. Nazis from Germany came in and slowly started taking over control. Eventually, Asperger was given the boot from his own institute, forced into the military, and made a field medic on the western front.

Depending on who you listen to, either he was a hero who shielded what children he could for as long as he could or he was a monster who handed them over to the Nazis to experiment on.

After the war, he wrote about those special children, and the traits became known as Asperger Syndrome.

 

[4gottenLoreKali]

Loaded associations with his name aside, I do think axing Asperger's as a diagnostic category was a bad move, as it further removed nuance from our communities already-abysmal optics. These are all just insurance codes anyway.

 

[Gift2humanity]

I like to put my, "obvious-things-not-crossing-my-mind" down to Asperger's, a part of me tells me I am making an excuse for plain old lack of common sense.
I was diagnosed at 54 and believed I was bright but stupid, I hope it autism.
I don't mean all autistics lack common sense or fail to think of the obvious.

 

[4gottenLoreKali]

Someone being a fellow autist does not necessarily make them a guaranteed friend or especially confidant. Rats exist regardless of neurotype.