do you consider autism to be a disorder or a mere neurotype?

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Looking back at my relatives, I would say my dad and his sister were very likely to have been autistic.

I recently 'met' some long lost relatives in America, I mean we met via email. My cousin said he and his family were all loners, that's the side of the family we share. He was very clear on that- our side of the family are loners without many friends or social lives. From his comments, attitude and behaviour, he definitely sounds autistic. So I think with my family it's genetic.

We're in Darwinian competition. Anything that reliably 'loses', no matter why, could be classified as a disability or disorder. I heard that in China if some people are tone deaf they aren't able to fully use the language and so tone deafness would be a disability in China whereas other places it would just be a missed opportunity with music.

I do not have typical form of ASD, but I received AS (PDD) diagnosis from ICD-10 many times and my childhood-onset disorder is for me obviously a disability, definitely not just a difference. I can't lead normal life and I don't feel the need of being "normal", I am "childish", "infantile", something unwillingly very annoying to others. "I don't have "adult" skills in areas like religion, having job and earning money, working, socialization". But I am not as disabled as someone who can't see and walk, I have "just" moderate level of disability, not severe. I have social pension, care allowance and ruling of disability. I behave and somwhat look like, impolitely and offensively speaking, a "ret*d" (this word better fits to the "impression" than somewhat "milder" words like "stupid" or "silly").

That sounds like what is happening. And now there are so many humans, anyone who is remotely useless is sidelined.

Both.


We can't start saying it's just a neurotype, or else the people who provide PIP and disabilities support are going to brush us off even more than they do now. The world isn't set up for our neurotype, so we are disabled by our environments.

What I'd love to know, particularly with large 'empire cultures' like Rome or the British Empire before, if things always sync to one monocultural game. If it's like that there really isn't a lot that can be done because the natural attractors wouldn't be there.

I think the only thing we could do, if we wanted to improve diversity in network dynamics or increase the number and variety of pyramids people can climb and achieve success, is by being able to (mathematically or otherwise) figure out where there are already strong prosocial attractors that are just getting blocked or deflected by certain dynamics and look to remove to blockage to reopen the pull of the more positive attractors.

I'm increasingly getting to where I think Markov chains, kernals, and even (thanks to Karl Friston) 'blankets' are the real language of nature. The iterative nature of ecosystems seems to map really well to matrices, especially when the more you run them with various weights to different nodes / kernels it seems to approach an almost static equilibrium between the kernels the more iterations you run.

Exactly.
For practical day to day purposes its ...handicap, or a disability.
If you to call it "a different neurotype" then you will have to move to Never Never Land so you can live in that setting where you get rewarded for having this "different neurotype". And as you said - be prepared to do without disability supports from the powers that be.

There is some reason for distant hope. In some industries employers are exploring ways to be more autistic friendly, in order to capitalize on talents autistic folks may have. So we maybe modeslty slowly moving ...in the direction of a distant future Neuro Pluralistic Utopia (for lack of better word). But in the meantime its still just a handicap, or a disability.

If your looking for proof that autism is a disorder it can be found zooming in at the micro genetic level.

Many individual genes associated with autism are mutated which means they dont function the way they should do.

Maybe this means some signal doesnt get through or hormone created all causing or contributing to disabling symptoms that you can see if you zoom out again.

Well presumably you all know that they've discovered 4 Subtypes of Autism now by doing brain scans on people, so it's definitely a brain difference.

People use the word "difference" as semantics designed to decieve or cloak the wider meaning.

What does difference mean?

Every disorder is a difference, everybody is by definition different. Being dead is different to being alive

These people are trying to imply autism is not a disorder which is absurd when seeing those with profound autism and many more further up the spectrum.

Like i say previously the disorder can be seen at the micro scale if a gene mutuation causes something that was created by nature to work doesnt work like something to transmit a signal or regulate an amino acid etc..

Its like a car with a fault somewhere. The car may still run and the engine will turnover but the mini fault causes a problem with the acceleration or steering etc..

Its not always a binnary outcome car starts doesnt start or person alive person dead.

Just like a faulty car a person can have mini faults which dont stop basic life functions but many others that come after.

Realistically, for me it is a disorder and not simply some mere neurotype. I'm not some high functioning person here. I might regard it differently if it didn't impact my life the way it does. But that's not my reality.

I think Autism is a spectrum with a wide range underlying causes and severities and that confuses this issue.

I'm down at the mild end. There are some ways I am different from NTs. Their Operating Systems have some features mine doesn't...and vice versa. But, I think I would be laughed out of court if I tried to convince a judge I was "disabled" just as minor problems don't make a car a junker or a house a ruin.

And I don't think the genetic angle of Autism changes that. We do not all have exactly the same genes. There is variety. Some varieties are more common than others, some create issues.

Yes, absolutely, some people are "disabled" by Autism. But others aren't, they have some impairments but surely having a function impaired doesn't necessarily mean the person is disabled.

Heck, I have a genetic change that makes me dislike the taste and smell of cilantro. That is abnormal. I've been in restaurants where just about all of the food was offensive to me because they used cilantro in just about everything. Am I disabled because of that?

I think it really depends on the individual. Personally, I don't really see myself as disabled (unless being mentally ill and having probable dyscalculia counts, though I don't see my autism itself as a disability compared to my other issues).

I consider it to be both, it is a neurotype but also a disorder.

I have that too. My son put cilantro in my wrap last night and I was afraid to even sniff it. It smells and tastes like soap to me. Thank goodness the wrap was so spicy and full of other stuff I didn't even notice it, but normally I can't even be in the same room.

Yeah. Once my bride was doing something in the kitchen with lots of cilantro (which she loves ) and I was on the floor above and there was a strong, strong odor coming up the steps. I yelled down the steps "Are you scrubbing the kitchen?!" (I thought she was using far too much soap!)

Apparently some of us can smell and taste the aldehydes in cilantro and other people cannot. Personally I think the folk who don't notice the aldehydes are the defective ones...how can you not notice that your food has an ingredient that is closely related to formaldehyde?!