I agree that there is a "there" there. But I'm not confident in the ability of our culture to define it in a mature way, or use the knowledge responsibly. I don't want to see therapy culture continually creeping into the mainstream. I don't want people to start medicalizing the traits of those in their families and social circles.

And since every phenotype exists along a normal distribution, there will always be resemblances and fuzziness, and no clear lines demarcating order from disorder.

But it is also obvious that nonverbal people who are stimming most of the day and can barely tie their own shoelaces exist, and these people need to be cared for and studied by responsible professionals in mature and private settings with their loved ones.

The 19th century was a wild time. Everything was a science back then. That's why communists speak of the "immortal science of Marxist-Leninism." Marx literally said he was performing science, but that wasn't seen as an absurdity because that is how everyone spoke.

It wasn't until the mid-20th century when people started to get more serious about defining science. Philosophers started critiquing it in the early 20th century like the Vienna Circle and Popper, and eventually the definition of what constitutes science was narrowed down to one that was defined as a particular sort of empiricism.

That, too, has its own problems.

I don't think it's any less science, inasmuch as science seeks to explain the natural world. It's just at a higher level of complexity and a different point in the learning curve than more externally observable levels of science.

Would we say that Copernicus was a charlatan or not a scientist because the heliocentric model turned out to be wrong? As you acknowledge, Freud pushed the collective understanding further.

A system with one perspective is a system waiting to fail.

Autistic individuals have systemic changes in their mind and body which let them see life from a different perspective.

People with executive function disorder have issues with rapid thinking, focusing, and other things that can work in their favor often enough to be passed on.

You're assuming people sample unifromly and at random from the population. People connect with similar people, form relationships in similar envioronemnts, so your social group is vastly more specialised than it might seem.

Autism compounds this greatly because of the double empathy problem, so one should expect an autistic person to have mostly autistic friends and to be in environments where the rate of autism is far higher

I agree completely with this comment, though most often I see it for ADHD. It's a level of nuance that people don't seem to be able to handle, though. People want to be on either the "just suck it up, losers" side or the "the duty of society is to make sure nothing is ever hard for anybody" side. It pisses me off to see people take advantage of the accommodations that are needed by some, and saddens me when people who legitimately need accommodation for some things end up depending on it for everything.

It would be nice if there were objective tests that said exactly where someone is, but those are both impossible and would be subverted even if they were possible.

There will always be humans who take advantage of a system, that is not in question.

Believing that "too many" autistic people are using it as an excuse - an entire category of people - is bigotry.

> the label has no value in-itself

Yes. And, as you have eloquently said in your other comments in this thread, the label CAN (not DOES but CAN) readily become value-NEGATIVE, if it becomes in itself an object of fixation that draws time and emotional energy away from the basic, brass-tacks work of living life as best as one can, whatever that has to look like for each individual.

It is an obvious error to pretend that this does not or cannot happen—an error no more and no less obvious than to pretend that it must or always happens.

I too experience many of these things, and I have been called autistic by numerous people independently, but in that tongue-in-cheek manner of our generation that has watered it down a lot. I'm nothing even close to the people on Love on the Spectrum, or the kids in grade school that were essentially in special ed.

I think yeah the language has gotten very ambiguous and the "spectrum" is so wide and ill-defined that we need more and better words, but, I do also feel like it isn't just everyone's shared experience. I do feel like there are a lot of people who don't really experience these things, that aren't stuck in a constant self-conscious hyper-analysis and reflection loop, and are able to just kind of go with the flow a bit more (which is not to say that they don't have troubles or anxieties).

Edit: I will also note that I did have a similar reaction to you to this game. I didn't even go past the intro because I felt like I knew what it was. I would call this something like autism-lite, and it probably is pretty widespread, particularly in HN-like circles. It does feel a little bit confusing and even offensive to compare it to "capital A autism," an actual disability, but that's where our lexicon is right now.

I think that what this game tries to convey is that these challenges, while perhaps universally present, have a distinct and punishing effect for a subset of people. I think that it takes an interesting approach at communicating that even someone who might seem to be functioning “effectively” could be essentially living their life on a knife’s edge of dueling energy/masking mechanics.

If your response to the game is to argue about the usefulness/value of the autism label, and to insinuate that it normalizes some kind of “bandwagon” effect, rather than feeling empathy that a colleague sitting next to you might be in mortal fear of what happens if their “energy bar” dips beyond their control - then perhaps we need more of this type of experience and conversation, rather than less.

I agree that autism has become a label for the "shared experiences of things", and that people often derive their identity from the label to an unhealthy and unproductive degree.

However, I strongly disagree that the only use of the label is for developing personal coping skills. I shared your mindset for most of my life, having seen the negative effects of basing one's identity around it, but in the past couple years I've come to see the utility of the autism label and accept it for myself.

Its function (in the modern sense) is to be a tag for shared experiences, that's not a side effect. A sizeable portion of the population shares a similar grouping of frustrations with -- and difficulties functioning in -- society at large. It would be great if direct communication, respect for sensory processing issues, acceptance of stimming and other unusual behaviors, etc. etc. were widespread without the need for a special label, but society at large is slow to change; if the label is the catalyst needed for us to be more accepting of those different than us, so be it.

The typical reaction from a non-ND person to seeing [non-disruptive] autistic behaviors is one of fear or light disgust; however, give that same person a box to put those behaviors in and they understand how to look past them, and see you as a human. That's my experience, anyway. The loudest champions of autism often have a different perspective, one more based around identity; I see issues with that for the same reasons you describe, but nonetheless the label as a whole still carries utility on a societal level too.

I have asthma. The last time I had an asthma attack that was severe enough that it could have become fatal was when I was 8 at my friend's house with a few cats(*).

But, everyone gets short of breath some times. Everyone wakes up with the feeling of a congested chest occasionally. Everybody is limited in the exercises they can do by their lung capacity and exercise tolerance.

But because after working very diligently, by your logic, I don't have asthma. Because I can run, and rock climb, and do all the life stuff that I wanna do.

Except that logic is fucking stupid! Because when I got covid a few years back, I was using my rescue inhaler constantly because I could feel my lungs starting to close up, felt just like the asthma attacks I would get when I was younger. But because I learned to use the techniques and habits I built up when growing up, and I made sure it never progressed far enough towards an attack that needed medical intervention. I don't have asthma, right? I should have thrown away my inhaler years ago because I was never using it?

The culture of treating mental health by different rules, from outwardly physical health, is fucking stupid, and I can't wait for that meme to die!

And it's especially egregious when people use that meme to then weaponize it to exclude people from the groups with shared experiences, weaknesses, skills, and needs.

If you really feel the need to be exclusive, and tell other people that their experience is invalid, and demand that they preform their rock bottom for you, before you'll believe them. Might I suggest instead of telling other people that the way they describe their life is wrong, instead try adding the prefix subclinical. As in my asthma (through work and effort), is subclinical.

E.g. instead of being an asshole who says "that doesn't count as austism" you can say "most people who claim to be autistic are lucky subclinical". Then you still get to invalidate the experiences of others, But you do so in a way that's slightly less hostile and gaslighting.

(*): Does the time I was sick count as an attack? Had I ignored those symptoms, would it have gotten worse, would I have needed to visit the hospital? Would you still try to tell me that this is different because I was also sick, so everything else doesn't matter?

Completely agree. On the autism spectrum, I'm almost certainly very low. But going through the simulator felt like... yeah this all sucks but is very much in the realm of things that I experience and feel on any given day. It didn't feel enlightening, it felt deeply familiar.

It's definitely the case that some people have a much larger magnitude of experience or persistence of experience. And for some, it's at levels that do make functioning in society quite difficult or impossible.

And yet, I think the point you are quite rightly making is that many people who are decidedly low on the spectrum are now adopting the identity of autism as a way to explain why life is hard.

I don't know why people feel inclined to adopt the label. I don't care that they do, they can call themselves whatever they want. But I do wonder if there are more productive ways of perceiving yourself, if you are indeed very much capable of functioning in society.

Is this confirmation bias?

Do you think Autistics are a small group so you're finding a way to argue that?

Why do you care if a person you think has minor struggles labels themselves autistic?

Autism is called a spectrum disorder not because it ranges on a smooth continuum from "no autism" to "lots of autism".

It's because there a handful of associated symptoms for autism and different people have a different mixture of them. You don't need an equally large amount of all symptoms in order to be autistic.

Think of it more like a light spectrum where there are different mixtures of hues for the symptoms, but autism still implies some amount of significant overall intensity. In short, it's a spectrum, not a continuum.

If you experience some or all of the symptoms associated with autism but at a level that doesn't significantly impair your overall functioning, then that's not a diagnosis of autism. Just like everyone who gets sad isn't depressed and everyone who worries doesn't have generalized anxiety. That's just normal human variability and life challenges.

> If it's a spectrum, everyone is on it somewhere.

No, because the endpoints of the spectrum are not defined as 0% autistic and 100% autistic.

The spectrum definitionally only includes people diagnosed with autism.

Your approach is like saying "there is a 'how bad is the cancer' spectrum" where 0 is "no cancer" as opposed to something like "cancer but easily curable." No reasonable definition of "cancer suffering spectrum" would include "doesn't even have cancer."

> If it's a spectrum, everyone is on it somewhere.

This is faulty logic. Just because it's a spectrum doesn't mean every single human is on the spectrum.

No, you're just heavily implying it and minimizing it. I'm telling you it's extremely insulting. You can take that for what it is or don't, I don't really care.

Count yourself lucky. It's no fun on the autism train. Everyone has there issues, and I can only comment on my own experience, but it's thus far not been great.