61–70 of 108 posts
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could also just be misguided (or even genuine) passion. think the loudmouth is common among the activist types too. e.g. people we sometimes say in retrospect "must have felt like a Cassandra" etc I think the problematic thing here is seeing alone isn't feeling+seeing but making assumptions that it is.
Activism is uncorrelated with expertise.
It is worth noting that difficulties in recognising emotions in faces are by no means unique to ASD; they also occur in ADHD [1], anxiety disorders [2], schizophrenia [3], and probably other psychiatric/neurodevelopmental disorders as well. So, if this technology has value, its value would be a lot broader than only ASD. (As an aside, a lot of people tend to have this narrow focus on just ASD to the exclusion of othe…
It sounds to me like you could do a lot more to just educate the parents. You don't get mad and shout at a young child who has decided to put the silverware away. You talk to them about the process of making and serving dinner. He could have been shown that one way to make the silverware more orderly is set the table for everyone while Mom cooks. That was my response to my then five year old being impatient with dinn…
The point is that autistic people may not possess a theory of mind. They do not understand or anticipate the desires and intentions of others, and may not be aware that other people even have desires and intentions. You can't explain dinner to them if they are unable to comprehend that you intend to make it and that you desire the space and time to do so efficiently.
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Activism is uncorrelated with expertise.
it's correlated with passion. I've never seen an activist who was la-di-da about their work. have you?
Definitely. I once worked in the central office of a well-funded NGO. The activists for this cause had long since burnt out and lost their enthusiasm, but they liked the salary and job security of these office positions, and so they remained with the NGO for decades. Everyone did the bare minimum of activism to get by, without really caring.
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The example is just one example. For some parents, it's this but all the time with different things. ASD* kids don't learn like neurotypical kids and if you treat them the same you will quickly get exhausted. As someone who has had classes on this, you can't "educate" the kid out of being autistic, and many have tried. This technology is just an adaptive tool, and a great one if it works.
Yes. I'm aware. BTDT, got the t-shirt -- as noted in my two other comments in this very discussion.
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it's correlated with passion. I've never seen an activist who was la-di-da about their work. have you?
> I've never seen an activist who was la-di-da about their work. have you? Definitely. I once worked in the central office of a well-funded NGO. The activists for this cause had long since burnt out and lost their enthusiasm, but they liked the salary and job security of these office positions, and so they remained with the NGO for decades. Everyone did the bare minimum of activism to get by, without really caring.
that's just word games with 'activist' at that point. They were salary-people who worked for an NGO; Activists can work for NGOs, but that doesn't make one an activist -- personal ethos and actions produces an activist.
I wonder what effect this will have on our culture long term. It would be unfortunate if Glass' determination ends being seen as the ground truth. I have noticed a certain phenomenon where people who are bad at something read books about it to compensate, and then having read books on the subjects start considering themselves experts on it and preach to others, closing the loop from descriptive to prescriptive. Edite…
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Yes. I'm aware. BTDT, got the t-shirt -- as noted in my two other comments in this very discussion.
You say that, but "somewhat confirmed" is not a diagnosis.
I'm quite familiar with how crazy making special-needs kids can be. I didn't need a formal diagnosis because I was homeschooling, so I didn't need to justify getting accommodation. I was their teacher. I could decide to just accommodate them, without an IEP.
Some things they did get formally identified:
Gifted
Dysgraphia (in the IEP when they were in school)
A serious medical condition
Eyesight issues
ADHD was ruled out for my oldest.
Probably other things I'm not recalling. It's been a lot of years.
Things I learned about because they seemed relevant to our needs, though I had no official diagnosis:
ASD
Dyscalculia
Face blindness
Sensory issues of various sorts
My younger son, the one I found easy to deal with, was one of the kids that qualified his small kindergarten class for additional part-time help. Another student had a formal diagnosis of ADHD or similar. Another was in a wheelchair, having lost both legs to a serious and life threatening infection when he was younger.
I would visit his class and it was obvious he wasn't like the other kids. He was the only child in the room who couldn't keep his butt in his desk chair.
I hadn't noticed what a hyper and aggravating mess he was until I saw him in a classroom of other five year olds because, at home, he was the (relatively) quiet child that didn't drive me batty.
I don't need a formal diagnosis to say "Yes, I dealt with a child doing things like that all day, every day, like you described."
I also took classes and what not. Dealing with my crazy making children was my full-time job for a lot of years. I took it seriously and did a lot of reading and took classes, etc.
Superpower glass … really?
As background I work in public research and have no background in Autism research. Yet, due to a mutual friend, I was lucky to meet Kelly Hunter, and attend one of her workshops (together with several other researchers working on helping autistic children). I knew the Stanford project, mentioned it and got just strange looks: “This does not really solve any of the problems we are facing” It seems detecting facial emotions are not the main problems of the autistic children they are dealing with ...
https://flutetheatre.co.uk/changing-lives-of-people-with-aut...
Here’s work from a friend on the topic: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/grand-challenges/sites/grand-challenge...
The system itself can just help children with very mild symptoms. One colleague who works on wearable sensing for them mentioned that even head bands and wrist watches cannot be used as children commonly take them off and throw them around.
Kelly also runs a fundraiser right now in case somebody wants to help out. In my personal opinion much more useful than the solution described in the ieee article: https://www.facebook.com/donate/574661226469627/101582037614...