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Autism and Invention Are Connected

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Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#111

Post by novok »

pikelet wrote: post #101
novok wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low end ASD can make dating really hard for men, and their often inflexible nature makes them hard people to live with at times. I think from that perspective alone it's a disability.

For a large part of my life I was somewhat jealous of my brother, who had Asperger's, for his natural wit, and his incredible creativity (in art, in music, in writing). So I can't possibly see it as a disability. It certainly makes some aspects of life more difficult for him, but my experience is that he generally figures things out in the end, even if it's many years later than his peers. On the other hand, some thi…

I'm not quite sure if your brothers ASD [0] is responsible for his IQ and his artistic ability. I knew a kid in high school who had aspergers and he tried to be a witty comedian, but it was just bad and grating. He had a hard time dating, a hunchback, bad hygiene and from my impression, average academics and below average physical ability, I really felt sorry for him. ASD does not give you an IQ boost, maybe at most an obsessiveness which can help you have the will to practice more.

0. I like ASD better because aspergers sounds like ass-burgers TBH and once explained it makes people understand immediately that you have various degrees of it.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#112

Post by novok »

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #67
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too received a probable-diagnosis later in life. (It was part of neuro-psych testing to look for ADD, so they didn't run the specific test battery used for Asperger.) In many ways my life has been just fine: steady well-paying employment, wonderful wife and kids, etc. So as with you, being (probably) somewhere on the spectrum isn't correlated with a crappy life. But... I've also had some unusual personality traits…

can you go into a little more detail about what results allowed them to conclude you were probably aspergers, and what the personality traits that you previously felt guilty for were?

ADHD and mild ASD can sometimes look like one or the other. TBH a good neuropsych will do both if they have any suspicion of ASD if they are also doing ADHD testing.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#113

Post by novok »

PlugTunin wrote: post #91
novok wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low end ASD can make dating really hard for men, and their often inflexible nature makes them hard people to live with at times. I think from that perspective alone it's a disability.

I respect and agree with what you are saying. Even on the "higher-end", my relationships with the opposite sex were often unorthodox, shallow, or outright dysfunctional. And most of them were before my diagnosis. I'm probably guilty of not viewing this as disabling because I'm treating the term too concretely, as if a disability has to be something "physical" that might require special accommodations. But yeah, I sup…

By low-end ASD I mean mild ASD. I think strong ASD is pretty well recognized to be definitely disabling.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#114

Post by novok »

nullsense wrote: post #74
username90 wrote: post #24

I wonder how much this is autism and how much it is people with low trait agreeableness being diagnosed with autism for being "bad with people". Refusing to do rituals without a good explanation makes people think you are autistic, but it could just as well be that they are disagreeable by nature and don't do things just because people tell them to. And refusing to do things the way everyone else does them obviously…

I have trait agreeableness in the bottom 1st percentile. I'm also diagnosed with ADHD which is often co-morbid with ASD. I very much refuse to go along with a looooot of things just for the sake it. Anything steeped in tradition without a whole lot of logic to it gets met with mostly flat rejection. This has steadily increased as I've gotten older. My mum used to be a special needs teacher and she kind of suspected I…

Why not go then. It's good to know for self knowledge alone I would think, especially if you have a tech worker income and health insurance. And if you do, then a bunch of resources and books will be more applicable to you.

"I am acting like this because of my ASD" vs. "I am acting like this because I'm not very agreeable" I think is valuable self knowledge alone.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#115

Post by every »

kylebenzle wrote: post #4
neonate wrote: post #3

https://archive.is/dil8Z

Bless you people. I am amazed at how many pay-walled articles are posted on HN. Are most people here really well off enough that they can afford the dozens of subscriptions that are often linked to here?

I keep trimread[1] bookmarked. I works on most paywalled sites...

[1] https://beta.trimread.com/

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#117

Post by the_cat_kittles »

novok wrote: post #112
the_cat_kittles wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you go into a little more detail about what results allowed them to conclude you were probably aspergers, and what the personality traits that you previously felt guilty for were?

ADHD and mild ASD can sometimes look like one or the other. TBH a good neuropsych will do both if they have any suspicion of ASD if they are also doing ADHD testing.

interesting. i was diagnosed with adhd in my freshman year of high school, but i distinctly remember about a year later my therapist conducted a cognitive performance test that showed i did worse on the meds, which i remember he was surprised and embarrassed about. so, i wonder... i have always had a faint suspicion, but i know im absolutely not qualified or objective enough to make an inferrence

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#118

Post by ravi-delia »

novok wrote: post #32
PlugTunin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. The author of that article, Baron-Cohen, has previously written (debated?) about whether HFA/AS is a disability OR a difference. Speaking for myself, and many who identify as having Asperger's -- and your son, from what it sounds like (who sounds really cool!) -- it is indeed a difference , and by no means a disability.

Low end ASD can make dating really hard for men, and their often inflexible nature makes them hard people to live with at times. I think from that perspective alone it's a disability.

Conversely, that is also true of ugly or inconsiderate people regardless. When the problems are caused entirely by incompatibility with other people, I think its reasonable to say that maybe you aren't working with a disability.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#119

Post by konjin »

ksm1717 wrote: post #14

The first sentence rubs me the wrong way. The claim that you wouldn’t expect autism to be coupled with invention because it is a disability only makes sense because of the semantics of labeling autism necessarily a disability. Not to mention the slight to disabilities as a whole

The idea that it's a disability is as stupid as the idea that being 7 foot tall is a disability.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#120

Post by raducu »

cookiengineer wrote: post #104
PlugTunin wrote: post #21

Interesting read. Minor point of clarification: It's noted that many autistic folks struggle with empathy. There are two dimensions to empathy, cognitive and affective . Cognitive is more about perspective taking, or reading the feelings / intentions of others, while affective is the ability to share/understand the emotions of others, and respond appropriately. Putting aside that the two may overlap, it's often the c…

I was reading this comment dozens of times while trying to understand its implications. When reflecting on myself, I think I have problems with both cognitive and affective empathy. From my perspective it's hard to differ between those because I think a lot of what makes the "reactibility of a person" is intertwined and feels like a really complicated maze that needs exploration to find a potential solution. The prob…

This rings so close to home for me too. I'm 36, I extremely rarely feel any envy(and when I feel it is about someone not "deserving" something because of something in that person) and I am very loose with my money. Because of this I was manipulated a lot, because even though I could see the manipulative behavior I could not figure out the MOTIVE behind it and I always attributed it to some other reasons that I could understand. I still have to second guess it a lot "really, is this abiut money? It can't be, right?"
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