221–230 of 377 posts
It’s interesting to muse about the larger picture here. What is it that makes autism so dangerous? To me it looks like part of an almost spiritual war against empathy/compassion by traumatized individuals trying to fight their own Jungian Shadow.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Context: Musk: Yeah, [Gad Saad is] awesome, and he talks about, you know, basically suicidal empathy. Like, there's so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself. So, we've got civilizational suicidal empathy going on. And it's like, I believe in empathy, like, I think you should care about other people, but you need to have empathy for, for civilization as a whole, and not commit to a civilizational suicide. Ro…
> They're exploiting a bug in Western civilization, Who are? Did he say? Sorry for not listening through the whole thing. There's a lot of pointless rambling going, which I guess is something inherent to the format more than it is to him.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Actually, it's good they're registering every autistic persons in the country in a national database, under a president who is overtly eugenicist [1]." No it's not. At minimum this is a horrible invasion of privacy, that I can't believe anyone on HN would defend. At worst this is straight Nazi shit, preparing the ground for extermination. [1] https://time.com/7002003/donald-trump-disabled-americans-all...
> I can't believe anyone on HN would defend. On this site, you can hold pretty much any opinion you like as long as you coach it in the most neutral-sounding "Modest Proposal"-esqe language you can.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can't believe anyone on HN would defend. On this site, you can hold pretty much any opinion you like as long as you coach it in the most neutral-sounding "Modest Proposal"-esqe language you can.
To expand on what you said - you can post some grotesque things here as long as you don't provoke flagging or offending the ~90th percentile into down-voting your comment in the first 24 hours, and language plays a big part in this, such as hiding bigotry behind big words and playing into confirmation bias. Low-level down-voting can be countered if you can get I think this is a side-effect of HNs voting rules, what c…
Everything that touches to genetics or education is a sight to behold.
It’s interesting to muse about the larger picture here. What is it that makes autism so dangerous? To me it looks like part of an almost spiritual war against empathy/compassion by traumatized individuals trying to fight their own Jungian Shadow.
Fixing diseases and abnormalities in humans is empathy and compassion.
RFK views autistics as undesirables, so it's absurd to believe that he'll be any nicer to us.
> “These are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go on a date, many of them will never use a toilet unassisted,”
What makes more sense is that he's collecting our personal information for imprisonment and execution.
It’s interesting to muse about the larger picture here. What is it that makes autism so dangerous? To me it looks like part of an almost spiritual war against empathy/compassion by traumatized individuals trying to fight their own Jungian Shadow.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fixing diseases and abnormalities in humans is empathy and compassion.
Are you referring to the Trump government's treatment of trans people? RFK views autistics as undesirables, so it's absurd to believe that he'll be any nicer to us. > “These are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go on a date, many of them will never use a toilet unassisted,” What makes more sense is that he's collecting our…
>> “These are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go on a date, many of them will never use a toilet unassisted,”
This is true of people with severe autism. I know someone whose autism is severe enough she'll probably never be able to live independently. Doesn't everyone view that medical condition--the condition, not the person--as undesirable? Doesn't everyone view being healthy as better than being unhealthy?
I have ADHD. I'd rather not have ADHD. I take a pill every day to control it. My kid has it too. He'll have to take a pill every day for the rest of his life. I'd love to avoid that outcome. Avoiding disease is a good thing!
gift link to a related NYT Opinion piece by an actual (very liberal) parent living this reality that may surprise some people https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/opinion/autism-rfk-parent... As a very liberal parent of a profoundly autistic child, there has never been article I've related to more. The condescension of fellow liberals and advocates for level 1 autism for us, much of which is present in this thread alre…
Why is a comment like this downvoted? I found value in it since I likely wouldn't have come across this information otherwise. The comment is simply sharing an article from someone directly affected. What happened to intellectual curiosity? Diversity of opinion? It's comments like this we need more of on HN , not less of.
Parent- and caregiver-focused approaches are how we've ended up with things like ABA¹ being fairly mainstream, and sympathy for parents pursuing experimental or simply crank treatments to "cure" their children, frequently with extremely harmful results. Support and advocacy groups run by autistic people are absolutely full horrific stories of abuse in this vein.
Which is, I believe, a large part of RFK's interest² in it. I think he wants to make more ad hoc, extreme, and experimental and frankly abusive "treatment" supported for parents of autistic children.
So the comment you're responding to isn't a curious or "diverse opinion", it is basically the standard view of this up until the last 10-15 years or so. Autistic people had to fight very hard to have our own views and experiences taken seriously. RFK's focus here is part of an even-more-recent backlash against that.
¹ Essentially conversation therapy for autism. It can be effective at teaching us how to behave like "normal" people which can be comforting for parents of autistic children. But autistic people overwhelmingly experience it as extremely distressing or worse.
² He has also signaled that he will use it as a justification to ban vaccines. I don't have enough of a read on the guy to reckon which of these is a bigger motivation to him. There's also an understudied but impossible-to-deny correlation between transness and autism. A lot going on here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_behavior_analysis#Crit...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can't believe anyone on HN would defend. On this site, you can hold pretty much any opinion you like as long as you coach it in the most neutral-sounding "Modest Proposal"-esqe language you can.
To expand on what you said - you can post some grotesque things here as long as you don't provoke flagging or offending the ~90th percentile into down-voting your comment in the first 24 hours, and language plays a big part in this, such as hiding bigotry behind big words and playing into confirmation bias. Low-level down-voting can be countered if you can get I think this is a side-effect of HNs voting rules, what c…
I usually only lurk anyway as a physicaly disabled autist but this thread made me have to push thru typing pains.
If they come out with a list of twenty adjustments they're going to make based on the study (things like but not necessary including: banning certain fire retardents, attempt to reduce break/tire pollution, adjusting the timing of (but not eliminating) the vaccine schedule, banning specific food additives, reducing/modifying specific pesticide use) I will believe this is a legitimate and well intentioned effort from…