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I blame mcdonalds chicken nuggets.
Surely it’s the tendies that are to blame
That’s about as valid as any of the other claims.
I have to say that modem society seems to be tailored to neurotypicals, but somehow breeds neurodivergents.
From how many people I know who are neurodivergent, I’m not sure if I’m suffering a sampling bias, or whether there’s just a lot of neurodivergents.
I’m ADHD, my brother is too. Two of my long term friends are on the spectrum. I can definitely go on. I know I don’t generally keep neurotypical friends as well as I maybe should, but it seems like there’s a lot more of us than they would like to believe.
I’m fairly convinced that most people are just walking around undiagnosed, blaming themselves for being “weird” or “awkward” or “shy” when they’re just wired differently.
Modern society is increasingly more tailored to neurotypicals, exposing more and more neurodivergent people who used to pass as normal in past cultures.
Its a simple cause and effect and also a demonstration of how disabilities are often purely contextual to the norma and culture of those you live with.
It’s partially the internet’s fault. It can be addictive to the neurodivergent brain chemistry and in fact, encourages the development of certain behavioral addictions that mimic things like ADHD.
It also causes masking to become harder as the NDs may spend less time learning the rules of their social circles in person and instead opt for purely online social groups or parasocial relationships.
You know, I’ve seen arguments that we’ve just gotten better at testing, and that clearly our environment is causing autism…
But I haven’t seen the argument that the world has gotten better at connecting people with autism. Like, maybe dating apps, online message boards, and video games help people who don’t connect socially… connect socially. So what was previously a detriment to pass your DNA now has a crutch to help it happen.
The increase in diagnosis has happened in less than one generation. Genetic drift from altered reproductive behavior would take multiple generations. The speed of the diagnosis shift rules out social changes to mate selection and childbearing rates.
Normal with a bit off 'planning is what is going to happen / a small piece off : candles flowers picks … have there own place X social clues ??? / smart but no clue about other stuff / i start a lot but never seem to finish it right / never start something in time / hate myself for not being successful / …
Autism As a Disorder of High Intelligence
A suite of recent studies has reported positive genetic correlations between autism risk and measures of mental ability. These findings indicate that alleles for autism overlap broadly with alleles for high intelligence, which appears paradoxical given that autism is characterized, overall, by below-average IQ. This paradox can be resolved under the hypothesis that autism etiology commonly involves enhanced, but imbalanced, components of intelligence. This hypothesis is supported by convergent evidence showing that autism and high IQ share a diverse set of convergent correlates, including large brain size, fast brain growth, increased sensory and visual-spatial abilities, enhanced synaptic functions, increased attentional focus, high socioeconomic status, more deliberative decision-making, profession and occupational interests in engineering and physical sciences, and high levels of positive assortative mating. These findings help to provide an evolutionary basis to understanding autism risk as underlain in part by dysregulation of intelligence, a core human-specific adaptation.
I’m not fond of the “Republicans just want to make Americans dumber, because dumb people are <whatever it is that people think correlate with being Republican>”.
But there’s a special irony in Conservatives fixating on autism as a public health crisis, given that it is literally boiling down to “too many smart people are fucking”, a thing their eugenics-loving elites think we need more of.
The end goal of these policies will have to be - intentionally or otherwise - to dumb down the average American. I guess malnutrition, early childhood disease, and mass management of toxic waste could achieve these ends.
So, uh… yay?
“Too many poor smart people are fucking, and that means the populace is harder to control” is what eugenics boils down to.
Non-conformity is a threat.
These findings indicate that alleles for autism overlap broadly with alleles for high intelligence
I call that a real life bit overflow
I can attest, autism runs on my mother’s side of the family. I have two uncles who are low functioning.
One’s practically a child mentally with an obsessive recall for music charts over the years, and absolute statistical knowledge of the NY Giants history. He’s brilliant, with essentially encyclopedic knowledge within his extremely narrow interests, but can barely take care of himself otherwise. The other is a somewhat independent and capable of dealing with life, but… just inept and weird, and not smart at all.
I’m also mildly autistic (Asperger’s, on the old system I guess) and smart. Not a genius, but fine. It’s been pretty easy for me to pick up on complex concepts and tasks in life, so long as it’s not too math heavy. I’m working in IT automation/cloud/etc. and generally doing well in life. A little socially awkward and introverted, but happily married and successful overall, more so than average in my age/peer group.
I’ve worked for some time with developmentally disabled young adults, children, and teenagers, generally people under 20, with debilitating autism.
To me, there’s a stark contrast between that stereotypical autism and what the term has turned into today. It almost feels as though any kind of personality quirk now qualifies as autism.
Yes, people behave in accordance with their physiology—we speak through our mouths, see through our eyes, hear through our ears, and so on. Despite these shared functions, there are natural differences among humans. But we cannot just start categorizing every behavior deemed “inappropriate” as autism. There needs to be a sharper line between what is traditionally considered autism and what are simply personality traits or quirks.
At this point, the labeling is becoming preposterous. I even know people in my own life who call themselves autistic simply because they are unsuccessful. That feels like a slippery slope to me.
We went down the slope once people started using it as the next euphemism for “retarded”.
At the same time, to my knowledge autism (and ADHD for that matter) aren’t well enough understood that we can say for certain “all these things we consider autism are caused by the same thing”, it feels more like a grouping of symptoms and as usual you get the diagnosis it if it significantly interferes with your daily functioning.
I can tell you that it very much did (and still sometimes does, though it really helps that most of my peers now think similarly) interferes with my life that people seemingly expect me to know magic to understand what they mean, and inversely their magic that works on everyone else malfunctions on me and gives them completely wrong ideas.
But I am also entirely capable of living life on my own, and fundamentally it does make sense that there needs to be some distinction between someone that needs constant assistance vs someone that is mostly fine if people show some basic attention to not sensorily overload them/can mitigate the issues largely on their own as long as no one prohibits it.
The thing is, it is very much a spectrum and outside of the clear “incapable of surviving on their own in society” and “does fine but people think they’re weird” there’s a ton of “does generally fine but if multiple people start talking at them at once they might shutdown”, “is caused distress by a few basic tasks but can deal with it, it’s just a stress factor” and “needs some active assistance, but is mostly independent” and people (rightfully so) neither want to be told “well your problems aren’t real because you seem fine from the outside” nor “you’re too disabled to live a normal life” when it isn’t abundantly clear that that’s the case. And trying to distinguish between the extremes will necessarily lead to that for a lot of people.
And that’s why their next step is to make sure a couple like this will be as illegal tomorrow as abortion is today.
Edit: As with everything dear President does, Tylenol is 99% a distraction. RELEASE THE TRUMP-EPSTEIN-BARR FILES!
The 1% is making pregnancy just that bit more unreasonable because fuck women.
Yeah I’m literally not having kids because of this administration. I love my partner dearly and in theory the idea of having kids sounds nice, but in this country, fuck that
I need to be able to dip to France if necessary.
Dear God, not everything is an epstein distraction. Can your brain process more than 1 thing?
that’s why their next step is to make sure a couple like this will be as illegal tomorrow as abortion is today.
No… nonono. You’re talking 100% out of your ass. Im sorry, but im not going to explain.
<.< You don’t think Trump and his ilk will try eugenics! Because?
My wife is crazy about drugs and wouldn’t take them or even drink outside a handful of times. I’ve been with her. When she got pregnant, she would just take the pain and never take anything because she was so nervous about all of it. Guess what, 1 of our 2 kids has autism and is clearly not due to any drugs…
Clearly she was talking fistfuls of Tylenol while she was pregnant, behind your back. /s
So your parents all used Tylenol. Whatever.
“Because my husband and I are both mentally ill, obviously thats why our child is mentally ill, not because of “TyLoNaL”, idiot”
… seriously? I can’t even… wow…
Imagine calling autism a mental illness in this day and age.
Wait… im sorry… mental developmental disability… not splitting hairs or anything…
It is a neurological difference.
Lead … its global world wide lead poisoning
It’s in the air, on the ground, on your shirt, in your food, in your car, in your office, in your house, in your sheets, in the water, everywhere … not enough to poison or kill you but in enough amounts to severely affect your life from the moment you are born to the time you die.
So, we would expect ASD diagnosis to be dropping, because while lead is a lot more prevalent than say the 1920s, it’s significantly less prevalent than the 1970s as shown by blood toxicity trends.
… oh look, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Could it be that you’re wrong? Cause last I checked the most likely predictor of ASD is if your relatives have it, implying a strong genetic component, and not lead exposure (in-vitro or otherwise).
