I'm not sure if you're tied into "internet culture"? It's become very very trendy to self diagnose yourself with autism/anxiety/ADHD and other illnesses. On social media sites like Imgur (a downscale Reddit), perhaps 20% of top-level posts contain references to the poster's self diagnoses. 10 years ago almost no Imgur posts contained self diagnoses.
Think about the headline. Half of Britons consider themselves mentally ill. Picture a packed football stadium. Tell every audience member who is genuinely mentally ill to sit on one side of the stadium. Now remove every person who is not mentally ill. Does it seem realistic to you that an entire half of the stadium is still full? Like does that seem reasonable to you?
You mentioned that you're picturing care centers. Commenters here aren't making fun of people in care centers. They're making fun of fully healthy, totally normal people who self diagnose themselves with vague, trendy illnesses.
More along the lines of people not wanted to admit to being mildly retarded. The fancy medical term somehow legitimises personal weaknesses as something that is suffered rather than something one has to take responsibility for (even if that is only one's genetic inheritance or just an unlucky mix of parental genes).
Everybody is a sufferer yet nobody fails-just don't let them near heavy machinery
Sadly (for me) having somehow written 'wanted' rather than 'wanting', I prove myself to be a fellow traveler. Oh well, at least when the great welfare cargo is equitably distributed I will be able to apply for my share.
Me neither. Perhaps it's the new fibromyalgia. My late step-monster would have jumped right onto it. Her Munchausen's made her take so many pills and treatments, she ruined her colon and health and died at 67 of an embolism, to everyone's relief (she was also a narcissist and spendthrift).
She'd be so thrilled she can still rile me up 12 years after her death. I left her entirely out of my dad's obituary last year (they'd been married 24 long years). I asked the funeral parlor if they could dig her up and burn her, just to be sure.
Steves comment in the Marginal Revolution article commentary:
"The triumph of minoritarianism (the focus on the greatest good for the smallest number) inevitably leads to minorities becoming the majority."
The greatest good for the smallest minority is actually the lowest tax the Rich and Wealthy elites can pay while still feeling themselves to be good people.
Excessive inequality - But I am kind to one legged LGB single mothers.
Makes me feel good - costs me almost nothing and barely challenges the careers of my rich privileged kids.
Faux Philanthropy.
We don't need 70% tax, there are tiny sub-groups we can promote to feel good about ourselves.
(maybe that is why the billionaires support Israel, much less effort than supporting the victims.. I give $100mn to Trump (or Biden), and the US government gives $100 bn to Israel. Supporting Palestinians would cost me a lot more.)
My younger daughter, who was born in San Francisco around 2000, always claimed to be bi. In college she was on the Rugby team yet never dated one of her teammates. Instead she usually had a boyfriend. Finally, I called her out on it and she did admit that although theoretically she would date a woman, realistically she was a heterosexual.
Perhaps it would be wiser to simply admit that the normal range of variation is a good bit higher than assumed? It has always seemed to me that the 'Aspies' largely fell into the INT? categorization under Briggs-Myers, and they have always tended to constitute a significant fraction is not majority of the harder / more abstract STEM fields, going back generations. So when my (now engineer) daughter (she was in 2d grade at the time) and I were diagnosed as Aspies 20 years ago my reply was that the psychologists were wrong, our personality type was entirely normal - in Physics, Engineering, and Math.
Creating a name or label does not solve a problem, at best it lets you publish a paper.
As for dyspraxia - clumsy, incompetent at 'foo', .... I have a terrible singing voice - so what.
RFK Jr has promised to "get to the bottom" of autism. I don't know and don't care if it's a heavy duty vaccine schedule, fluoride, whatever. Please just follow the data where it leads. But I suspect it's the very pedestrian problem of overdiagnosis and secondary gain. And I have a sinking feeling that if we don't get this right we're probably not going to get anything right--autoimmune disorders, sociopathy, metastatic cancer, obesity, gender dysphoria, global warming, human biodiversity--ever again. Everything has just become too politically fraught.
Did you see Curle's theory at the Unz iSteve remnant today that interracial mating may be causing the autism explosion in California? Something about incompatible Neanderthal genes. I didn't realize kids take so many vaccines these days. No wonder some blame them.
I very much doubt that theory. The hard STEM fields have been filled with Aspies for generations - probably back as far as the fields go. Far before vaccines and outside of current interracial mating. Certainly when I went to grad school for my Ph.D. 45 years ago they asked for my immunization records. As for the mumps, measles, ... - I replied that I had not had them since I had had the diseases. As for my polio vaccination I got when I was a little tyke, the vaccine batch was defective and I was exposed to full strength virus, so I may have had asymptomatic polio as well. I did get a smallpox vaccination - which people don't get anymore though. I got an antibody test instead to prove immunity. Frankly, I am sure that autism is differnt from aspergers and I expect nothing but garbage justification from Kennedy.
I haven't seen any hard data on if the rate of non-verbal autism has increased or if it's just many more Aspies being diagnosed. The first is like Sailer's dead body count--hard to overlook or miscount. Part of the increase in the latter could be more like gender dysphoria--fashionable and privileged. That they combine the types in the numbers makes me suspicious.
They're trying to eliminate Asperger's, since he was a Nazi. Every diagnosis of it means one more Jew will die in Holocaust 2.0, or something. Wish I was BSing you, but that's happening.
There's (by comparison) enough Autism and Asperger amongst the purely white. If at all, both are now fashionable tags to put on diverse forms of retardation. Even though, there is probably enough genetic contribution to every one of the 3 clusters.
The retagging makes no sense. Ideally, one would try to mask something heritable with something non-hereditary. Masking something hereditary with something other hereditary is not conducive in mate competition.
When the whole autistic spectrum thing started I thought hmmm, that could explain a lot. Then I saw "Love on the Spectrum" and concluded, no, I am not one of them. Completely meaning to sound like a dick, I think more standard d above normal intelligence you are, the more spergie you seem to the normals.
The point of grouping these cases into a 'spectrum' is the presumption of common underlying pathology, causes, and treatment. As we learn more about those the spectrum idea could easily be discarded. or it could be completely validated or could be something in between.
I very much doubt the common underlying cause / pathology. The severe autism cases seem to be a cluster on the low IQ side. The aspies I am familiar with have been very intelligent and the normal social rituals and behaviors probably seem less interesting / rewarding than other things.
The spergs (the preferred medical term) you know may not be genuine autistic spectrum people. As I said and you imply, there might be some similar presentations between very smart people and average intelligence spergs, such as deep interests in things and apparent lack of care for BS social interactions. I still think they are different.
Have you seen love on the spectrum? Those people are not severe cases and don't strike me as smart. Severe autism is like Rain Man or complete communication shutdown.
As for common underlying pathology being unlikely, I agree, given that is how almost all human ailments turn out. The trick is, once we find two different underlying pathologies, we split them into two new disease entities and start again.
The DSM-V calls it "developmental coordination disorder." I asked ChatGPT why there's more awareness of it in the UK and in the US, since no doubt there are really similar amounts of sufferers in the two countries, and it gave two plausible theories:
1) British special-education-needs policies list dyspraxia by name, while in the US DCD falls under "other," and that could easily be an arbitrary bureaucratic quirk that shaped the culture as bureaucratic quirks often do
2) Daniel Radcliffe suffers from dyspraxia, and a story about it once ran in all the breakfast shows
I did not. I have zero qualifications for that debate. Anecdotally I've had parents of kids we used to call "mentally retarded" tell me their kid was "autistic." And the two people I've seen with rigorous "autism" diagnoses did not appear mentally retarded at all. They were appropriately dressed and able to groom, wash and feed themselves with strict supervision. But they were alarmingly uncommunicative, literally unable to communicate in verbal or written form, and exhibited high anxiety.
A favorite on this topic. I seem to have loaned out my hard copy to someone in past and trust it is in good hands (or at least on a good shelf somewhere).
Allan Bloom's 'The Closing of the American Mind'. His insight into the effect of the discipline of Psychology is illuminating. Audio version online:
Doesn't the English government encourage mental illness diagnoses? I thought they handed out perks, giving students more time to take tests and the like. As one student said, "If your parents don't get you an autism/anxiety/ADHD diagnosis [and more time to take tests], then your parents don't love you."
Also believe it or not, TikTok has added to the welfare state's woes. Previously, most handout schemes were buried in obscure documents. The government could expect that only a small percentage of eligible people would use them. However, people now broadcast the schemes on TikTok, comparing which angles squeeze the most money etc. So they're being juiced beyond their designed capacity. E.g. the government may have budgeted the scheme for 5% of eligible users; now it's being used by 20%.
Back on these shores, I've just become aware that a celebrated (though unremarked) autist once elucidated an important truth. Speaking to writer Roger Angell in Omaha in 1980, he said, "Marichal was better than Koufax or me." (The New Yorker, 9/22/80)
Everything Nietzsche said of Christianity is true of the left. And "the left" is basically synonymous with "Western Civilization" these days, after a half century of complete domination by those 60s radicals.
Sacralizing disease and dysfunction is all just part and parcel...
I'm not sure if you're tied into "internet culture"? It's become very very trendy to self diagnose yourself with autism/anxiety/ADHD and other illnesses. On social media sites like Imgur (a downscale Reddit), perhaps 20% of top-level posts contain references to the poster's self diagnoses. 10 years ago almost no Imgur posts contained self diagnoses.
Think about the headline. Half of Britons consider themselves mentally ill. Picture a packed football stadium. Tell every audience member who is genuinely mentally ill to sit on one side of the stadium. Now remove every person who is not mentally ill. Does it seem realistic to you that an entire half of the stadium is still full? Like does that seem reasonable to you?
You mentioned that you're picturing care centers. Commenters here aren't making fun of people in care centers. They're making fun of fully healthy, totally normal people who self diagnose themselves with vague, trendy illnesses.
Neurodivergence is not "mentally ill".
Neurodivergence = neurodevelopmental disorder.
Thank you. Every time I see a slightly eccentric woman on Twitter say "autism is my superpower" or something to that effect, I want to scream at them.
Sounds more respectable than 'eccentric'
I was thinking all this self-diagnosis is the modern equivalent of being haunted by spirits.
More along the lines of people not wanted to admit to being mildly retarded. The fancy medical term somehow legitimises personal weaknesses as something that is suffered rather than something one has to take responsibility for (even if that is only one's genetic inheritance or just an unlucky mix of parental genes).
Everybody is a sufferer yet nobody fails-just don't let them near heavy machinery
"Everybody is a sufferer yet nobody fails" -- that's a keeper; thanks.
Sadly (for me) having somehow written 'wanted' rather than 'wanting', I prove myself to be a fellow traveler. Oh well, at least when the great welfare cargo is equitably distributed I will be able to apply for my share.
You can edit your comment by clicking on the three dots in the upper right.
I think this varies depending on your platform. I can't seem to edit my comments on Steve's stack from my cheap CCP phone.
Have you considered using a computer?
Thanks-although I think my ignorance is just adding greater weight to my ever more apparent neuro-divergency
You can, but you forfeit prior "likes".
Back in my day we took responsibility for our mild retardation, dammit!
"Ideational dyspraxia" definitely sounds more respectable than "dull-witted".
Exactly. Now that everyone has it, it will lose its meaning…and value as a signifier? What follows in its footsteps?
Have to admit that I hadn’t heard of dyspraxia before. Although text autocomplete knows it.
Me neither. Perhaps it's the new fibromyalgia. My late step-monster would have jumped right onto it. Her Munchausen's made her take so many pills and treatments, she ruined her colon and health and died at 67 of an embolism, to everyone's relief (she was also a narcissist and spendthrift).
That sucks!
She'd be so thrilled she can still rile me up 12 years after her death. I left her entirely out of my dad's obituary last year (they'd been married 24 long years). I asked the funeral parlor if they could dig her up and burn her, just to be sure.
Like a vampire, extra treatment may be required to keep such people dead.
Someone with Munchausen's syndrome is a narcissist by definition.
I'd heard of it as a symptom, not a diagnosis. I suspect its popularity depends on where it get's you out of gym. I might have taken a dose myself.
Something like that.
“Flight from normal?” It’s like they think it’s a good thing.
There could also be diagnosis inflation?
Steves comment in the Marginal Revolution article commentary:
"The triumph of minoritarianism (the focus on the greatest good for the smallest number) inevitably leads to minorities becoming the majority."
The greatest good for the smallest minority is actually the lowest tax the Rich and Wealthy elites can pay while still feeling themselves to be good people.
Excessive inequality - But I am kind to one legged LGB single mothers.
Makes me feel good - costs me almost nothing and barely challenges the careers of my rich privileged kids.
Faux Philanthropy.
We don't need 70% tax, there are tiny sub-groups we can promote to feel good about ourselves.
(maybe that is why the billionaires support Israel, much less effort than supporting the victims.. I give $100mn to Trump (or Biden), and the US government gives $100 bn to Israel. Supporting Palestinians would cost me a lot more.)
My younger daughter, who was born in San Francisco around 2000, always claimed to be bi. In college she was on the Rugby team yet never dated one of her teammates. Instead she usually had a boyfriend. Finally, I called her out on it and she did admit that although theoretically she would date a woman, realistically she was a heterosexual.
This comes up in conversation often in your household?
I raised my kids in San Francisco, so Yes.
(As Tom Snyder) Fair enough, sir
Perhaps it would be wiser to simply admit that the normal range of variation is a good bit higher than assumed? It has always seemed to me that the 'Aspies' largely fell into the INT? categorization under Briggs-Myers, and they have always tended to constitute a significant fraction is not majority of the harder / more abstract STEM fields, going back generations. So when my (now engineer) daughter (she was in 2d grade at the time) and I were diagnosed as Aspies 20 years ago my reply was that the psychologists were wrong, our personality type was entirely normal - in Physics, Engineering, and Math.
Creating a name or label does not solve a problem, at best it lets you publish a paper.
As for dyspraxia - clumsy, incompetent at 'foo', .... I have a terrible singing voice - so what.
RFK Jr has promised to "get to the bottom" of autism. I don't know and don't care if it's a heavy duty vaccine schedule, fluoride, whatever. Please just follow the data where it leads. But I suspect it's the very pedestrian problem of overdiagnosis and secondary gain. And I have a sinking feeling that if we don't get this right we're probably not going to get anything right--autoimmune disorders, sociopathy, metastatic cancer, obesity, gender dysphoria, global warming, human biodiversity--ever again. Everything has just become too politically fraught.
Did you see Curle's theory at the Unz iSteve remnant today that interracial mating may be causing the autism explosion in California? Something about incompatible Neanderthal genes. I didn't realize kids take so many vaccines these days. No wonder some blame them.
I very much doubt that theory. The hard STEM fields have been filled with Aspies for generations - probably back as far as the fields go. Far before vaccines and outside of current interracial mating. Certainly when I went to grad school for my Ph.D. 45 years ago they asked for my immunization records. As for the mumps, measles, ... - I replied that I had not had them since I had had the diseases. As for my polio vaccination I got when I was a little tyke, the vaccine batch was defective and I was exposed to full strength virus, so I may have had asymptomatic polio as well. I did get a smallpox vaccination - which people don't get anymore though. I got an antibody test instead to prove immunity. Frankly, I am sure that autism is differnt from aspergers and I expect nothing but garbage justification from Kennedy.
I haven't seen any hard data on if the rate of non-verbal autism has increased or if it's just many more Aspies being diagnosed. The first is like Sailer's dead body count--hard to overlook or miscount. Part of the increase in the latter could be more like gender dysphoria--fashionable and privileged. That they combine the types in the numbers makes me suspicious.
They're trying to eliminate Asperger's, since he was a Nazi. Every diagnosis of it means one more Jew will die in Holocaust 2.0, or something. Wish I was BSing you, but that's happening.
That hypothesis would be super easy to check.
There's (by comparison) enough Autism and Asperger amongst the purely white. If at all, both are now fashionable tags to put on diverse forms of retardation. Even though, there is probably enough genetic contribution to every one of the 3 clusters.
The retagging makes no sense. Ideally, one would try to mask something heritable with something non-hereditary. Masking something hereditary with something other hereditary is not conducive in mate competition.
> "'get to the bottom' of autism."
It's mostly dilution of diagnostic criteria. Second most, incentives to obtain diagnosis. Third most, increasing non-whites.
The DSM-5 (2013) tightened up the criteria and autism diagnoses fell for the first time ever.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/isteve-open-thread-5/#comment-7111272
When the whole autistic spectrum thing started I thought hmmm, that could explain a lot. Then I saw "Love on the Spectrum" and concluded, no, I am not one of them. Completely meaning to sound like a dick, I think more standard d above normal intelligence you are, the more spergie you seem to the normals.
The point of grouping these cases into a 'spectrum' is the presumption of common underlying pathology, causes, and treatment. As we learn more about those the spectrum idea could easily be discarded. or it could be completely validated or could be something in between.
I very much doubt the common underlying cause / pathology. The severe autism cases seem to be a cluster on the low IQ side. The aspies I am familiar with have been very intelligent and the normal social rituals and behaviors probably seem less interesting / rewarding than other things.
The spergs (the preferred medical term) you know may not be genuine autistic spectrum people. As I said and you imply, there might be some similar presentations between very smart people and average intelligence spergs, such as deep interests in things and apparent lack of care for BS social interactions. I still think they are different.
Have you seen love on the spectrum? Those people are not severe cases and don't strike me as smart. Severe autism is like Rain Man or complete communication shutdown.
As for common underlying pathology being unlikely, I agree, given that is how almost all human ailments turn out. The trick is, once we find two different underlying pathologies, we split them into two new disease entities and start again.
Adults are talking.
Is this a British thing? Dyspraxia doesn't sound very common on our side of the pond.
The DSM-V calls it "developmental coordination disorder." I asked ChatGPT why there's more awareness of it in the UK and in the US, since no doubt there are really similar amounts of sufferers in the two countries, and it gave two plausible theories:
1) British special-education-needs policies list dyspraxia by name, while in the US DCD falls under "other," and that could easily be an arbitrary bureaucratic quirk that shaped the culture as bureaucratic quirks often do
2) Daniel Radcliffe suffers from dyspraxia, and a story about it once ran in all the breakfast shows
Yeah I'm in the UK and we've been hearing about dyspraxia for a few years now. No idea why.
I did not. I have zero qualifications for that debate. Anecdotally I've had parents of kids we used to call "mentally retarded" tell me their kid was "autistic." And the two people I've seen with rigorous "autism" diagnoses did not appear mentally retarded at all. They were appropriately dressed and able to groom, wash and feed themselves with strict supervision. But they were alarmingly uncommunicative, literally unable to communicate in verbal or written form, and exhibited high anxiety.
I thought my sons just sucked at baseball. Apparently it’s dysplaxia.
Dyspracic Spectrum, or coortarded.
A favorite on this topic. I seem to have loaned out my hard copy to someone in past and trust it is in good hands (or at least on a good shelf somewhere).
Allan Bloom's 'The Closing of the American Mind'. His insight into the effect of the discipline of Psychology is illuminating. Audio version online:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjZjxLy55y4
Doesn't the English government encourage mental illness diagnoses? I thought they handed out perks, giving students more time to take tests and the like. As one student said, "If your parents don't get you an autism/anxiety/ADHD diagnosis [and more time to take tests], then your parents don't love you."
Also believe it or not, TikTok has added to the welfare state's woes. Previously, most handout schemes were buried in obscure documents. The government could expect that only a small percentage of eligible people would use them. However, people now broadcast the schemes on TikTok, comparing which angles squeeze the most money etc. So they're being juiced beyond their designed capacity. E.g. the government may have budgeted the scheme for 5% of eligible users; now it's being used by 20%.
Back on these shores, I've just become aware that a celebrated (though unremarked) autist once elucidated an important truth. Speaking to writer Roger Angell in Omaha in 1980, he said, "Marichal was better than Koufax or me." (The New Yorker, 9/22/80)
Bob Gibson? Don Drysdale? Jim Bunning?
Gibson.
Neuroses of various types now just a social accessory for status, the equivalent of a designer handbag.
Perhaps it’s a mark of my age or upbringing, but I despise people that embrace their real or perceived weaknesses.
Everything Nietzsche said of Christianity is true of the left. And "the left" is basically synonymous with "Western Civilization" these days, after a half century of complete domination by those 60s radicals.
Sacralizing disease and dysfunction is all just part and parcel...
If they're now the majority, doesn't that mean that they're neuroconvergent?