Why would anybody need this tech? Are we hunting autistic people? Please stop.
Under Kennedy's HHS? They certainly are.
Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk
241–250 of 273 posts
Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
It hasn't been redefined at all, you just weren't aware of all the intricacies and conflated every possible symptom into one large, uncommon stereotype, while in reality people in the spectrum are more common than you think but show some symptoms more than others and some not at all. John, 38 yo virgin, spending 50% of his income on Gundam figurines while living with his aging mother and having no IRL friends is supp…
Would that not have been called Asperger’s in the past?
It would, depending on some factors. The false belief that there were fewer female aspies was pervasive, for example, and that was troublesome for many girls.
Anyway, I suspect "in the past" is further in the past than you think: the distinction between Asperger's and ASD has been officially ditched by the medical community for 12 years now, at least insofar as the DSM represents consensus.
Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tend to agree, as an autistic person. And a lot of autistic people hold the belief that, "My autism is not a problem, your expectations that I behave like you do are the problem." If I need to move a little differently, or not hold eye contact when I speak, the fact that I get made fun of is the problem. If we just accepted, "hey, some people are like that" more, I think we'd have a lot fewer problems.
The problem is, we are animals, even though we are divine offspring as well. We have an ability to moderate our behavior to a degree, but we are also governed by physiological instinct. Try making inappropriate eye contact with a human male. You'll probably live to make it to the next experiment, even if you do get punched. Now try it with a gorilla or chimp. Sexual cues, hunger, aggression/submission postures and re…
Your point is unclear to me. Are we like chimps, or are we not?
Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would that not have been called Asperger’s in the past?
It would, depending on some factors. The false belief that there were fewer female aspies was pervasive, for example, and that was troublesome for many girls. Anyway, I suspect "in the past" is further in the past than you think: the distinction between Asperger's and ASD has been officially ditched by the medical community for 12 years now, at least insofar as the DSM represents consensus.
I was thinking of the 90’s.
Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I want to walk up to a person and they don't know. That’s usually not cool.
I had an old bike that was fairly noisy. I got a new bike that is remarkably silent. I try to use my bell or my voice but I still end up sneaking up on people all the time and, as you said, they don’t enjoy it.
From my experience even if you have a loud bike and yell “on your left” 3 times many on a shared use trail will be surprised as you pass them.
Then there are the people who for whatever reason need giant over the ear headphones and also need to walk right in the middle of a bidirectional trail.
Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is that forefoot striking is common in any culture where going barefoot is typical. It doesn't feel good to slam your bare heel onto the ground all the time. It's only tolerable if you're wearing shoes. We should really consider heel striking to be the unusual non-default behavior here, the same as how prevalence of chairs means many Westerners have shortened Achilles tendons and lost the ability to…
Tip-toeing around mechanically makes sense when one wants to be quiet. I find walking on concrete is more comfortable when using the whole foot, so just barely tip-toeing rather than my usual heel striking. In general, it's not a good idea to walk on hard surfaces barefoot or in sandals excessively, no matter what the FiveFingers crowd might believe. I discovered plantar fasciitis the hard way [pun not intended].
> In general, it's not a good idea to walk on hard surfaces barefoot or in sandals excessively
I think cultures where going barefoot is the norm also tend to have fewer hard concrete and stone floors. We've engineered a whole alien environment for ourselves that then require augmenting our body to deal with.
Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The fear of over-diagnosis makes no sense. It feels rational to me, especially coming from a society where everything that's considered a syndrome needs to be treated and washed away with medication. Back in the 90s, every boy who laughed or had any sort of fun in my school was recommended to be put in ritalin and other ADHD meds. I was a quiet kid, but like any child, had a moment of goofiness here and there. And…
> If you've got autism and the biggest thing that stands out is the way you walk... I don't think dragging a kid to a doctor to be told they're not normal is really all that beneficial. There are very strict criteria on how people are to be diagnosed. More importantly you are NOT getting diagnosed if you are just happy and don't need any help. You can NOT be diagnosed with autism without any support needs. Same as yo…
> "Everyone else seems to know when to say the right thing at the right time but you don't. You are some weird alien that does not belong. You try to memorize things to say, copy how other people act, it works but the mask often slips. You must be hyper-vigilant in every social situation to not let the real you slip out. It becomes so automatic that you don't even remember who you are anymore. It is exhausting, so exhausting and alienating. You crash and burn from time to time."
This is more of an Autism issue, no? I have ADHD, and this could not be further from the truth for me. I am not well-versed in Autism symptoms nor its various presentations, but I tend to excel in most social situations. I'm in my 30s with golden retriever levels of hyperactivity. Though, difficult to contain at times, I often think people are somewhat attracted to my high-energy presentation. I have no evidence to back up my claim, but I am inclined to believe the more ADHD-PI people suffer from those issues rather than the ADHD-C/-PH folks do.
> They can give you the super power to fold your laundry in a single business day, they don't get you high.
Stimulant medication can and absolutely get many people with ADHD high. Now, I am not saying everyone taking their prescribed medication as directed automatically gets high, but I believe there is a lot more abuse/misuse than doctors and researchers might be able to conclude.
> Medication is just one option, you can also learn better coping skills through therapy or coaching.
Everyone is different, but the data surrounding therapy and coaching for ADHD without medication does not really instill confidence in me. For brevity sake, I'll spare you all my opinions on/experiences with therapy.
I've medicated for a decade, and it's better than nothing, but it ain't far off from nothing, in my experiences. Though, I think I am just a poor-responder to medication, which sucks because I am basically fucked in terms of help.
Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had a realisation recently that we’re pretty comfortable with regional dialect borders being an entrenched and normal thing that reach back in history a thousand years or more and that something as specific as how we move our mouths and tongues is strongly correlated geographically. But we don’t often pay attention to other types of physical and behavioural culture being as geographically entrenched as they sometim…
There are some behaviours which are classically regionally identified, but they tend to be the exception to the rule... Italians talking with their hands, the Indian head-wobble, the East-Asian squat, etc.
So these are the really loud behaviours, and not necessarily what I was thinking of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_inattention
So there's a thing which I can't find the name of but it's something like a civil inattention sniff. It's a brief sniff at the moment someone walks past you. I'm not saying this one is cultural or geographical. It's possibly universal, I'm making a reference to the signal vs noise ratio.
If you've never noticed the civil inattention sniff, you may start noticing it now, or noticing yourself do it. I was decades on this earth before I picked up on it. It's a similar amount of signal to feeling the weather change in your knees.
A tiny signal in background noise of input of many physical senses.
I believe and suggest that it's true that there are many of these micro behaviours in many different regional cultures, but I'm not stating as fact or backing that up with science here. This is just an exploratory idea for me that I enjoy speculating on.
Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had an old bike that was fairly noisy. I got a new bike that is remarkably silent. I try to use my bell or my voice but I still end up sneaking up on people all the time and, as you said, they don’t enjoy it.
From my experience even if you have a loud bike and yell “on your left” 3 times many on a shared use trail will be surprised as you pass them. Then there are the people who for whatever reason need giant over the ear headphones and also need to walk right in the middle of a bidirectional trail.
water pistol
Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you've got autism and the biggest thing that stands out is the way you walk... I don't think dragging a kid to a doctor to be told they're not normal is really all that beneficial. There are very strict criteria on how people are to be diagnosed. More importantly you are NOT getting diagnosed if you are just happy and don't need any help. You can NOT be diagnosed with autism without any support needs. Same as yo…
I said in an earlier comment that the general population doesn't understand the special hell that being ADHD is when it comes to just trying to function in society, and I have to say I don't think I've ever seen it explained so clearly to the point where I felt like you were describing my life. Thank you for sharing.
To piggyback on the sentiment a bit -- I think the hardest part about ADHD, at least in my opinion, is that it is one of the handful of disorders in which much of the difficultly and misery originates from outside of the afflicted individual.
In other words, ADHD does not really cause me any direct misery, but rather, my ADHD makes others people miserable, and how I am treated because of that is the source of my misery. Honestly, it sometimes feels as if ADHD is just society's way of saying that I am too annoying, unreliable, and unfit to be a part of them, therefore there is something inherently dysfunctional with me.
Seriously, if I talk too much, who is more negatively affected, others or myself? If I need more time to complete work than others, then who is more negatively affected, my employer or me? Who is more negatively affected by my fidgeting, others or myself?