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The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

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Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#291

Post by koolala »

koolala wrote: post #51
Yossarrian22 wrote: post #5

The author is missing a crucial pressure that pushes against weird nerds, the people that have to work underneath them. I’ve had to answer to a Weird Nerd when I was starting out in my field, it was the worst fucking experience of my life, and I’ve spent the years since warning people away from that person, their career and their contributions to their field have stagnated due to all the people like me that they burn…

i had to be in a confinement center designed by a nerd who put a computer where it shouldn't belong, im sorry thank you for sharing your story

im sorry

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#295

Post by faeriechangling »

majormajor wrote: post #284
faeriechangling wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but we don't call people disordered for lacking the talents of these gainfully employed autistics, so it seems sort of arbitrary to me.

But would it be worse for the world if we could actually understand and identify things - and find treatments for - executive function failures like extreme laziness or trouble with timekeeping? Or are the people who fail to hold down a job really just morally bad and of low character? Was it better for people to just be "weird" or "creepy" or "freaks" instead of somewhere on the autism-spectrum? The judgement of the…

>Was it better for people to just be "weird" or "creepy" or "freaks" instead of somewhere on the autism-spectrum?

How has autism diagnosis stopped any of this from happening? People are absolutely unapologetic about calling autistic men creepy in particular.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#296

Post by faeriechangling »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #162
sneed_chucker wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to me your comment also speaks to the increasing degree to which we medicalize personality traits. I'm sure your diagnosis is legitimate, but also I'm inferring from your comment that you are married and gainfully employed; so it sounds like you're able to build and maintain relationships, as well hold conversations with strangers or non-close acquaintances when necessary. In years past would any professional h…

Human brains are complicated. Many psychological disorders we have little hard science to understand them with. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, and much more importantly, that a diagnosis is useful in improving someone’s situation.

>That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, and much more importantly, that a diagnosis is useful in improving someone’s situation.

Show me the actual proof of this. For something so at the core of modern clinical practice, the utility of diagnosis itself is taken for granted rather than actually proven.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#297

Post by alpaca128 »

faeriechangling wrote: post #289
sctb wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being married and gainfully employed and able to build and maintain relationships as well as hold conversations with strangers when necessary can come at an exceptionally high cost for neurodivergent people in the form of masking (like a kind of mental tech debt). Instead of overt social difficulty, this might present itself as anxiety, depression, and suicidality—those conditions are worthy of medicalization IMO.

Good thing I see no to negative evidence that autistic men actually mask. Autistic women I see more evidence for. Also, saying "this deserves medicalisation" and throwing a label on people doesn't mean you're actually helping. Lets say somebody was masking - how would medicine help them?

Did you ask autistic men or how did you come to that weird conclusion? They likely mask just as much as women, even if you may not notice from the outside (which is the point of masking).

I agree about medicine not really being the solution, though. If an environment requires masking all meds can do is suppress symptoms, at best.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#298

Post by faeriechangling »

makeitdouble wrote: post #288
parineum wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't use this word specifically but this whole conversation has the underlying prior of the "everything is a spectrum" mindset. In that context, everyone is neurodivergence because, afterall it's a spectrum we're all on and nobody is going to be deadest average. At some point we have to define at what point these spectrums become clinical. The kind of language you see in the DSM for stuff like this is "does it…

> At some point we have to define at what point these spectrums become clinical Thing is, I'm not a psychiatrist, the author probably isn't, most of us aren't. The question of whether it becomes clinical is IMHO irrelevant to most of us. We won't be standing in front of someone pondering whether they can apply for disability, the better question will be how comfortable they are at keeping eye contact for instance.

It's a philosophical question not a psychological question, so I see no reason to appeal to the authority of psychologists here, who are pretty throughly unqualified to determine this.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#299

Post by majormajor »

faeriechangling wrote: post #295
majormajor wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But would it be worse for the world if we could actually understand and identify things - and find treatments for - executive function failures like extreme laziness or trouble with timekeeping? Or are the people who fail to hold down a job really just morally bad and of low character? Was it better for people to just be "weird" or "creepy" or "freaks" instead of somewhere on the autism-spectrum? The judgement of the…

>Was it better for people to just be "weird" or "creepy" or "freaks" instead of somewhere on the autism-spectrum? How has autism diagnosis stopped any of this from happening? People are absolutely unapologetic about calling autistic men creepy in particular.

> How has autism diagnosis stopped any of this from happening? People are absolutely unapologetic about calling autistic men creepy in particular.

It hasn't stopped it completely but now you've got a LOT more resources available to use to do something about it. And there are many more who will say something like "hey, you should look into this stuff" instead of just simply shunning and shaming than there were 40 years ago. Especially when spotted in early childhood.

There are no magic bullets. The solution to not being called creepy is, in the end, not acting creepy, same as it ever was. But the diagnostic/psych world can help people find a path to get there. Many of us have been following it for a while now. Do I wish my parents and teachers had known what we know today? Abso-fucking-lutely. Could've started to learn to manage a lot earlier.

Recall the context here of the comparison to those "lacking the talents of these gainfully employed autistics". No shortage of bad names to call them either. Many fewer structured and well-studied support systems.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#300

Post by seanmcdirmid »

faeriechangling wrote: post #296
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human brains are complicated. Many psychological disorders we have little hard science to understand them with. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, and much more importantly, that a diagnosis is useful in improving someone’s situation.

>That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, and much more importantly, that a diagnosis is useful in improving someone’s situation. Show me the actual proof of this. For something so at the core of modern clinical practice, the utility of diagnosis itself is taken for granted rather than actually proven.

I don't think you actually understand modern clinical practice. We are surely better than where we were at in the middle ages with leaches and stuff, but there is still a lot of practice and experimentation to see what works and what doesn't, just evidence without hard proof.

> the utility of diagnosis itself is taken for granted rather than actually proven.

Given the topic of autism, I'm not sure if you are trying to be sarcastic or not.

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