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A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans

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Re: A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans

#171
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in a particular human being, to be intelligent as measured by IQ means that you are more likely to be autistic I find this part to be a really strong highlight of our change in perception of autism and what it means to be "autistic" or "on the spectrum." Perhaps due to the broadening of the spectrum or just an odd association with success and spectrum attributes, we now strongly associate intelligence with spectrum…

I still think it's odd how aspergers disappeared as a label. Made more sense than a spectrum with both really smart people and really stupid ones.

It's not very odd. It's all part of the drift of science, where now things are loosely defined and what passes for science is often political propaganda.

The removal of Aspergers label has a lot more do to with politics (not wanting to be associate with nazi) than anything else.

As far I'm concerned, the only hope is from genetics studies, which greatly accelerated thanks to computing. At some point with enough studies, we will know what's what. In the meantime, it is safe to discard most of the bullshit coming from psychological studies...

Re: A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans

#172
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to die to be selected out of the gene pool, you just need to fail to reproduce. If intelligence contributes to wealth and wealth contributes to reproductive success, then there will be evolutionary pressure favouring intelligence (and any other genes that "come along for the ride" with it).

The reality is that wealth is inversely correlated with fertility. As are intelligence, education, secularity, and so on. IQ is a decent proxy for intelligence. What many people don't know is that it's not a raw score, but relative. The mean of a population is always set to 100 and a standard deviation is generally 15 points. So an IQ of 115 means you performed better than 84% of people, one positive standard deviati…

Yes but that's because our current system with the providence state has created "unnatural" pressures where being smarter doesn't correlate that well with wealth past a certain point. In a system where everyone has to be obedient and follow the same solutions as everyone else, you lose agency and that greatly reduces your capacity to make a difference, since those are averaged out on purpose by the system.

In the end what is successful is high-functioning sociopaths, that we can find in all high-power places nowadays. Funnily enough, inequality has increased, and now the wealth of your parents determines your life trajectory much more than even 30 years ago. This is really not surprising, once the exploitative sociopath gets in power, they really don't like fair competition that much.

And this is why both IQ and fertility is going down, it is not a future oriented system. It has a lot to do with the capitalist mindset, where we exploit the earth to the point of making it inhabitable at some point...

Re: A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is that wealth is inversely correlated with fertility. As are intelligence, education, secularity, and so on. IQ is a decent proxy for intelligence. What many people don't know is that it's not a raw score, but relative. The mean of a population is always set to 100 and a standard deviation is generally 15 points. So an IQ of 115 means you performed better than 84% of people, one positive standard deviati…

> This is yet another reason why fertility is, in my opinion, the issue of the century. The world is going to look so absurdly different, and not in a good way, in 50 years, owing to fertility rates alone. Have you ever seen Idiocracy?

It's hilarious but that's kind of what's happening, and that's less funny. If you follow the data to its logical conclusion, we are getting there, the only question is how much time will it take...

Re: A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether is is a subtype or a disorder is political, which is true about everything in mental health and developmental disability. Personally I have been hurt because a condition that I suffer from and that probably about 5% of people suffer from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizotypy This is something I came to understand at the age of 51 where my ability to benefit from that knowledge is limited. I got a psych eva…

Oops late to the tussle with identarians. > Andersen suggests that a tradeoff exists in predictive processing, where giving higher weight to prediction errors prevents the detection of false patterns (i.e. apophenia) at the cost of being unable to detect higher level patterns, and giving lower weight to prediction errors allows for the detection of higher level patterns at the cost of occasionally detecting patterns…

That’s the point, if you use the hashtag #actuallyautistic you just proved you’re #notactuallyautistic.

Re: A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the so-called "autists" who do that. It's become a vanity diagnosis for the rich and powerful. Look at the case of Kanye West https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/sick-people-are-sick There was this study that found that "autists" have 5 different diseases https://www.princeton.edu/news/2025/07/09/major-autism-study... If it wasn't something people were flocking to like neurotypicals that is now a valuable part…

You’re arguing semantics here. You seem to acknowledge there are diagnosable issues, both with the subtype article and older DSM, but because it’s under one umbrella currently you want to throw it out instead of acknowledging the issues?

See

https://www.amazon.com/Autism-Matrix-Gil-Eyal/dp/074564399X

One issue is that special ed has taken all the air out of the room for kids who are not thriving in school but don’t have a diagnosis. I went to a PTA meeting where the superintendent completely dismissed any concerns I had about the school but gushed over how the mother of a “special” kid was a partner in his education. (Other parents and teachers did show some sympathy)

If you want to have some rights as a parent you are practically forced to get your child a diagnosis: if they are in the bottom 25% of readers that have ‘Dyslexia’ which similarly seems to have distinct enough subtypes that an honest definition is ‘bottom 25% of readers’

So autism went from being a disabling condition to something that applies to many people who really ought to have “no apparent distress” in their chart because you can’t be different without some reification of the difference.

Re: A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think boys just present symptoms that are more obvious. Girls with autism are very often much better at masking than boys are.Young girls also tend to fixate on more 'socially acceptable' topics that make that fixation less obvious

Girls are much more likely to be socialized to mask before the parents or children have a clue that's what's happening. Boys are much more likely to be allowed to "express themselves," act out, etc.

Stereotype echo, ok.

Re: A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans

#177
post #5

This makes sense. I do feel like intelligence has hard limits. Maybe knowledge doesn't have limits but intelligence definitely feels like it has limits. If you consider IQ tests, a lot of it is about seeing a sequence and seeing all possible patterns and then figuring out which one is the most certain/obvious based on the limited sample given. One could imagine all sorts of complex patterns beyond the 'correct answer…

It's easy to upgrade the RAM or hard drive on a computer, but it's not possible to upgrade the L2 cache (other than swapping the CPU).

Re: A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a direct result of a push from within the autistic community to stop using eugenicist labels and notions of "more" or "less" autistic. The community is really sensitive to eugenics because of all of the people trying to do eugenics against them and treating them as subhuman. Autism isn't a scalar. One is not more or less autistic than another. It's a multidimensional vector space where each individual has uni…

This happened like 5-10 years ago didn't it? What changed?

I was diagnosed with aspergers just as this happened - basically new information came out showing he'd sent the higher support need autistic kids off for experimentation so they'd leave him alone with his lower support needs autistic kids.
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