Am I German or Autistic? • Hacker News Board

Re: Am I German or Autistic?

#201

Post by 7bit » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 5:42 PM UTC

chronogram wrote: post #157

juancn wrote: post #137

Posting my result here in case you want to see the different results without redoing the test: German 47% - Autistic 47% Wittgenstein was Austrian, which is close enough. He was also, by most accounts, someone whose relationship to social convention was at best functional and at worst a source of significant suffering to himself and everyone around him. He rewrote philosophy twice. The first time by establishing what…

I got the very same 47/47. What if it's always giving that?

It would be factually incorrect.

Re: Am I German or Autistic?

#202

Post by dartharva » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 5:42 PM UTC

Result: Both. The Wittgenstein Result.

I somehow got a perfect 40%/40% balance, don't know if that's the most rare or the most common

Re: Am I German or Autistic?

#203

Post by pfannkuchen » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

GTP wrote: post #88

blensor wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

58% German / 27% Autistic As an Austrian I am not sure how to feel about that

Makes sense to me. As an Italian currently in Austria, you are close to being German, without being one fully.

Isn’t Austria culturally basically German?

My understanding is that Austria was the Germans who ended up running a multi ethnic empire ruling over Slavs also, while Germany was the Germans who didn’t do that.

Then once the Austrian empire fell apart only the German part was left in “Austria” and it basically has no reason to be separate from Germany anymore because the Slavs are no longer part of the same territory and there is no “top of the caste system” benefit anymore to the Germans there.

Feel free to chime in if I’m wrong. I’ve found topics related to Germany to be hard to actually figure out due to a lot of morality noise that gets injected into those topics (the Nazis wanted to unify and Nazis bad etc stuff like that).

Re: Am I German or Autistic?

#204

Post by jgwil2 » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 6:11 PM UTC

jancsika wrote: post #95

injidup wrote: post #55

The test doesn't follow the correct procedures for diagnosing autism and after a thorough reading of the DSM-5-TR I could find no mention of German a mental illness being and I challenge anyone to me wrong prove.

> German a mental illness being If your comment is an attempt to run the game directly in the HN comments, I'm going to guess "German" by the placement of your verb here. :)

Hah, nice catch. I found that my brain actually corrected this as I was reading and I had to look back again to see the error.

Re: Am I German or Autistic?

#205

Post by maxnoe » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 6:24 PM UTC

gostsamo wrote: post #119

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Been once to Germany, maybe twice. Being German isn't communicable, you won't catch it on a business trip or holiday.

Not sure, there was this nature + nurture thingie.

Or as Stephen Fry put it: "Nature, Nurture and Nietzsche", very fitting here.

Re: Am I German or Autistic?

#206

Post by Garlef » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 6:37 PM UTC

Idk: Assuming you're just partially knowledgeable about psychology and the nature of human interaction (and don't consider yourself infallible) - How can you approach these kinds of questions even remotely genuine?

To express it conversely: Unless you're totally oblivious wrt social interaction some of these answers seem rather stupid.

So: This does not really test anything but knowledge.

I chuckled twice, though.

Re: Am I German or Autistic?

#207

Post by RunningDroid » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 6:41 PM UTC

arkensaw wrote: post #73

I am German, not autistic. This confuses me as I have never been to Germany and do not speak German. But rules are rules.

Do you have German heritage or live in an area that had a large number of German immigrants at one point?

Re: Am I German or Autistic?

#208

Post by amai » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 6:56 PM UTC

Result: Both. The Wittgenstein Result. I don't know whether to be proud or concerned.

Re: Am I German or Autistic?

#209

Post by jjtwixman » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 7:13 PM UTC

pfannkuchen wrote: post #203

GTP wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense to me. As an Italian currently in Austria, you are close to being German, without being one fully.

Isn’t Austria culturally basically German? My understanding is that Austria was the Germans who ended up running a multi ethnic empire ruling over Slavs also, while Germany was the Germans who didn’t do that. Then once the Austrian empire fell apart only the German part was left in “Austria” and it basically has no reason to be separate from Germany anymore because the Slavs are no longer part of the same territory a…

Both Prussia and Austria made their names outside of the historically German lands and ruled over non-Germans. It was in the end Prussia that unified Germany in 1871 having previously defeated Austria. Both settlements following WWs 1 and 2 forbade Germany from unifying with Austria. And now in any case there is no appetite for it regardless of legality.

Re: Am I German or Autistic?

#210

Post by PunchyHamster » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 8:23 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #35

PunchyHamster wrote: post #5

Didn't suspect getting both is an option

I also got both. I'm Norwegian, so culturally half-German seems relatively reasonable. And the autism part I think more than one person who have met me have suspected (no diagnosis, and probably wouldn't get diagnosed now , because I've had a few decades of getting good at masking quite a few things I know would've shown up on an assessment)

I don't think the tests "you care about thing being done well" is good way to diagnose autism...