It's really unfortunate that one word, Autistic, is supposed to usefully describe someone like Elon Musk and a non-verbal, extremely low-IQ, severely disabled person.
That difference is why, in terms of studies, most of them are useless-to-misleading when it comes to non-disabled people with Autism.
I've long thought that Asperger's, rather than being clinically merged with ASD, should have gone the other way - it should've been even more distinctly separated.
Instead we blurred the lines between two completely disparate sets of people and the kind of support a very high IQ autist needs remains nonexistent. As always the resources go exclusively toward those who are (let's be honest) unlikely to contribute much, when there's no doubt marginalized high-IQ deposits on the other end of the 'spectrum' that could blossom with the right program.
The word, Cancer, describes a multitude of diseases. Some cancers are profoundly debilitating and deadly, while others are much more benign. For example, Pancreatic Cancer and Prostate Cancer present differently with vastly differing (almost divergent) prognosis. However, nobody ever says the word Cancer defines too broad a category.
I get rather annoyed with the "autism is a superpower!" people. Having a few autistic traits, such as an extremely single-minded ability to focus, is probably an advantage in some fields. But having enough autistic traits to merit an actual clinical diagnosis of autism (vs. a TikTok diagnosis based on criteria such as "am awkward in social situations" and "don't like loud places") is absolute NOT an advantage.
My eldest daughter's IQ places her in the gifted range; and she is also autistic. She has always excelled academically, but the non-academic demands of school, college, and grad school were debilitating to her. Social dynamics are baffling and stressful for her; her executive functions are somewhat impaired which makes time management and organization a struggle; and normal things like living in a dorm, having a roommate, and doing clinical practicum rotations that changed every few weeks took an incredible toll on her, resulting in severe anxiety and constant panic attacks. The all-or-nothing black-and-white thinking that autistics are prone to leaves her prone to depression - if she can't do something perfectly, she think she is a complete failure. She has a great therapist, and works hard to manage her mental health, but it is heartbreaking to see her struggle so much with basic life things.
Autism makes her life a lot more difficult; we call it "playing life in hard mode." I think she'd give anything to be less autistic, even if it meant a lower IQ.
The highly-successful autists out there are successful despite their autism, not because of it.
Yeah, we tried that in the past. It improved her digestion but she was still autistic.
She does really well under the right circumstances; but found that the field she thought she wanted to work in (speech language pathology) was just too overstimulating for her and left her in a state of constant burnout.
"For starters, autistic people are probably more vulnerable to propaganda than non-autistic people." That may actually explain a thing or two about Elon.
On the other hand, I do recall that Peter Thiel speculates, in "Zero To One," that so many tech CEOs in particular seem to be autistic because autism makes them less prone to conventionalism (since they lack awareness of what the conventions are in the first place). But maybe that pattern, too, is better explained by this author's notion that "autism is probably a plus when it comes to something that is extremely cognitive . . . or rule-based."
Yeah, he has hollywood autism. People diagnosing themselves or others with autism is the new trend, similar to saying you are LGBT. It's all bullshit. Now people have the idea that autism is a quirky, slighty weird person who often displays savant-like abilities, rather than debilitating disability it actually is.
Quite paradoxical to ask for evidence for Elon having autism when you have none as well to disprove it except repeating the mainstream arguments of ‘autism is not a trend’ without being able to disprove any official medical records of him that you can’t access and so can’t refute besides making spurious assumptions and allegations.
This is not because he looks like the autistic genius stereotype and that autism is trendy that it can disprove in any way he doesn’t have ASD especially when you look at his reported childhood development (which ofc you didn’t).
Also, having an IQ of 150 is a little bit helpful I guess to make autism easier to live that’s why it doesn’t seem that debilitating but if you look at his interviews in which he expressed his mental struggles, especially in childhood you can see it wasn’t that super easy. It’s quite ableist to assume that someone is not autistic because they don't look disabled (even considering that Elon takes it pretty lightly publicly but not necessarily privately when looking at his chaotic family life) as any high IQ autistic go through in the diagnosis process by being discredited for not looking too autistic and being highly functional in society.
Um wtfym? Why would Elon be one to hop on a “woke” bandwagon? Not to defend the man himself, but your attitude is so clearly bullshit. You’re not his psychiatrist or therapist, you’re not his family member, you don’t even know the man personally, it’s not your place to dispute his diagnosis.
Nah. Musk is defo aspie. Tesla was probably also. Things didn't end well for him. It's sweet that Musk has memorialised him. I think most brilliant aspies will have been easily exploited by amoral business people stealing ideas and will be invisible to history.
Good clarification, though I think most of your readers know the gap between an Asperger's/ high functioning person( Elon) and diagnosed or non-verbal autism. While the social drawbacks are widely acknowledged, I'd argue that for some mild cases, the focus on "things" and obsessiveness can increase the chances of success in certain fields, and in these lucky cases the mild autism could actually lead to more accomplishment even if it does not directly increase IQ. From recent studies, the increase of autism related genes since the Neolithic would seem to suggest this, as well as the accompanying decline in schizophrenia related genes( which have no benefit in a technological-industrial or complex society).
Interesting comparison of some mental conditions. But I know of no medical or psychological diagnosis or historical record to support Einstein being autistic.
Human empathy is more politically and socially contingent than people acknowledge?
For 2500 years, human empathy has been the core requirement for senior Chinese officials. Not the bleeding heart kind of 'empathy,' but the kind who gives up a comfortable career in town to spend years in poor villages, figuring out how to improve the villagers' lives.
Your comment about narcissists and autists is particularly interesting. And I wonder if it will take some time to refine the discourse between the two—at least in popular culture.
Simon Baron-Cohen, a leading academic in the field, describes in his books, people with Autism, as being extreme systematizers and this explains why more males are Autistic than females.
Did not know about high birth weight so looked it up: "babies born weighing more than 9 lbs 14 oz had a 60% higher risk of autism." My son was 10lbs 11oz with no gestational diabetes & is aspie like me. No idea of my own birth weight but I am half a foot taller than my older sisters.
My experience with autism: life is hard for all of us sometimes but autism means hardly anything will be easy for the autist. It's a constant of being underestimated, misunderstood, and dismissed. The rise in the uni student-to-lecturer ratio makes mentorship incredibly rare and useful support outside of the home doesn't exist. The autism charity sector has been woke captured. Even Simon Baron Cohen has folded to them in an effort to be accepted by the "social model of disablity" woke activists. I told him they would never accept him and he should not even try. He didn't listen. I'm blacklisted by local autism charities for being a study ambassador for Simon's Spectrum 10K study and refusing to fold to them. Simon & the study team had no idea what hit them. I did try to tell them.
Shamefully, they asked me to step down as an ambassador. I refused. I told them to stand up to the bullies. They simply shut down the ambassador role for everyone.
"Deficits in sense of agency." Interesting. "The SoA is the experience of initiating and controlling one’s own action and hence producing desired changes in the world through these actions (Haggard and Tsakiris, 2009). As such, it is a fundamental ability grounding all kinds of efficient self-world interactions, from instrumental actions to social exchanges. The SoA refers to a complex cognitive phenomenon; in everyday life, it is experienced as a “diffuse sense of a coherent, harmonious on-going flow of action processing” (Synofzik et al., 2008, p. 228)."
Now I know why I could never get my assignments finished on time. Especially the boring ones.
A little bit of many conditions is sometimes an advantage. A little depression helps in evaluating risk. A little mania is good in some leadership situations, especially emergencies. A little schizophrenia and body dysmorphia confer no advantage, but anxiety and ADHD work in selected situations. Mild autism works in some situations, but as Cathy Reisenwitz points out, this is unreliable as a whole.
The problem for me is the degree of autism. Severely autistic people have to be constantly attended and cared for. Popular autism to me is more like the inability to pay attention. Or maybe Elon and such just think about things differently. I definitely know they are smarter then I am.
Not a smart ass comment. ADHD would be on the spectrum right.? I am very confused about nomenclature and I almost think it is per the individual. I made my comment because I have a family member who is “autistic “ and went to a support group and over 50% were in the “autistic “ group of severely disabled. He is high functioning. Just like dyslexia, I don’t find autistic very helpful.
No I don’t have ADHD, I have an official autism diagnosis from a psychiatrist I worked with for months.
You can look this up, ADHD and ASD are not the same, but they often overlap. Anecdotally, I would say that like half of my autistic friends and acquaintances also have ADHD.
This seems like semantics but not in my mind because I know they overlap. I think a lot of people self diagnose. This diminishes you and your psychiatrist. My son got a diagnosis of Asperger’s. Initially it was ADD. He did the concerta and didn’t like it. He probably got his diagnosis because he was a boy. He did not want to be labeled, always. He is doing great but still has a lot of problems being social in a personal way.
Back to the original ,I think that many of these diagnosises are fit into categories that are not consistent. Like what is the difference between a cerebral palsy(severe) vs severe autism.Whatever that means. I know those severe folks need lifelong help and my “autistic” son does not. He would just be the odd one. Thanks for the conversation.
> What about the “double empathy theory”, which says autistic people can communicate well with each other but not with neurotypicals? That’s cope. Some autistic people hate confrontation and are evasive and two-faced, while other autistic people are extremely direct and confrontational. Something tells me that these two types would not get along. I guess autistic people might have some kind of mutual understanding that certain smells or noises are unpleasant, but the same could be said for two people who share literally any mental disorder. Similar people are better at empathizing with each other.
Wow no statistics or studies to link or cite? This part got me questioning your entire argument now. It looks like you wrote this article just cuz you have some beef or bone to pick with autists, this paragraph looks like a cope.
If you’re going by “something tells me” and “I guess”, then, in my own experience, the double empathy theory is absolutely correct. Autists absolutely gravitate towards each other, accumulating a social life full of neurodivergent people is precisely what nudged me to finally getting an official diagnosis last month.
And, intuitions and anecdotes aside, the same data that shows that neurotypicals like autists less shows that autists like each other more 🫶🏾
> This is exactly what some new studies are showing. Autistic people want to talk to other autistic people, sit next to them, or live near them even more than they want to do these things with non-autistic people [4]. In one study, two unfamiliar adults got to know each other by talking for 5 min [5]. Sometimes the two adults were both non-autistic, sometimes both autistic, and sometimes one of each. You might expect, if autistic people are poor at social interaction, that the conversations between two autistic people would go especially badly. But that is not what the study found. The quality of interactions between two autistic people was just as strong as between two people who were not autistic. Autistic people even shared more information about themselves with other autistic people, suggesting they felt more comfortable with them. This shows that autistic people are like everyone else: they find it easier to connect with, and maybe even form friendships with, people who think and communicate like they do.
So yeah, COPE.
I clicked on this article with an open mind, but now I’m pretty disappointed and disgusted with Aphoria for platforming such unprofessional unscientific drivel. This is beneath y’all. Way worse than being offensive, it’s not even well-researched/substantiated 💀
Part of the problem today is that psychopathy and autism in children have similar superficial symptoms. From an essay I'm drafting:
1. Both autism and personality disorders can manifest through difficulties in social interaction. However, while autism involves a genuine deficit in understanding social cues, Dark Triad traits might involve a lack of empathy or a strategic manipulation of social situations, which can be misread as social ineptitude.
2. The traits associated with personality disorders, especially the Dark Triad, might not become fully evident or severe enough for diagnosis until later in adolescence or adulthood when interpersonal dynamics become more complex or they do something reprehensible. As children grow, what might initially appear as social awkwardness (potentially seen in autism) could evolve into more pronounced manipulative, grandiose, or antisocial behaviors, suggesting a personality disorder.
3. Diagnostic Challenges & criteria: The DSM-5 criteria for autism focus on social communication deficits and restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, which can overlap with behaviors seen in personality disorders when they are in their nascent form. Clinicians might first consider autism because its diagnostic criteria are more commonly associated with early childhood development.
4. Misdiagnosis: Autism is often better recognized and more studied in children due to its neurodevelopmental nature. Therefore, there's a tendency to diagnose autism first when there's any sign of social or behavioral deviation, especially if other signs like sensory issues or communication delays are present.
The piece starts out with a very strong claim about how the "online right" views autism in heroic terms. I think the author may be tilting at windmills. I get that there is talk about how mild Aspergers style autism might be beneficial in some contexts, but this stronger claim at the start of this piece seems to be a hand-wave based on, what, something the author read on twitter?
It's really unfortunate that one word, Autistic, is supposed to usefully describe someone like Elon Musk and a non-verbal, extremely low-IQ, severely disabled person.
That difference is why, in terms of studies, most of them are useless-to-misleading when it comes to non-disabled people with Autism.
I've long thought that Asperger's, rather than being clinically merged with ASD, should have gone the other way - it should've been even more distinctly separated.
Instead we blurred the lines between two completely disparate sets of people and the kind of support a very high IQ autist needs remains nonexistent. As always the resources go exclusively toward those who are (let's be honest) unlikely to contribute much, when there's no doubt marginalized high-IQ deposits on the other end of the 'spectrum' that could blossom with the right program.
The word, Cancer, describes a multitude of diseases. Some cancers are profoundly debilitating and deadly, while others are much more benign. For example, Pancreatic Cancer and Prostate Cancer present differently with vastly differing (almost divergent) prognosis. However, nobody ever says the word Cancer defines too broad a category.
I get rather annoyed with the "autism is a superpower!" people. Having a few autistic traits, such as an extremely single-minded ability to focus, is probably an advantage in some fields. But having enough autistic traits to merit an actual clinical diagnosis of autism (vs. a TikTok diagnosis based on criteria such as "am awkward in social situations" and "don't like loud places") is absolute NOT an advantage.
My eldest daughter's IQ places her in the gifted range; and she is also autistic. She has always excelled academically, but the non-academic demands of school, college, and grad school were debilitating to her. Social dynamics are baffling and stressful for her; her executive functions are somewhat impaired which makes time management and organization a struggle; and normal things like living in a dorm, having a roommate, and doing clinical practicum rotations that changed every few weeks took an incredible toll on her, resulting in severe anxiety and constant panic attacks. The all-or-nothing black-and-white thinking that autistics are prone to leaves her prone to depression - if she can't do something perfectly, she think she is a complete failure. She has a great therapist, and works hard to manage her mental health, but it is heartbreaking to see her struggle so much with basic life things.
Autism makes her life a lot more difficult; we call it "playing life in hard mode." I think she'd give anything to be less autistic, even if it meant a lower IQ.
The highly-successful autists out there are successful despite their autism, not because of it.
.
Holy shit she’s just like me fr
Your daughter could try a version of the GAPS diet, which is related to keto and paleo. There are strict and moderate versions.
It was developed by a neurosurgeon who went on to do a postgrad in nutrition after her son was diagnosed with autism. She cured her son.
If you're interested, she has been interviewed on podcasts such as Mikhaila Peterson, Nutrition with Judy, and Food Lies.
I do this diet but my son is a Hindu & veggie so...
That's a shame.
Yeah, we tried that in the past. It improved her digestion but she was still autistic.
She does really well under the right circumstances; but found that the field she thought she wanted to work in (speech language pathology) was just too overstimulating for her and left her in a state of constant burnout.
You are describing a couple of my college girlfriends. Lovely, smart people who were unable to sustain interactions under any stress.
"For starters, autistic people are probably more vulnerable to propaganda than non-autistic people." That may actually explain a thing or two about Elon.
On the other hand, I do recall that Peter Thiel speculates, in "Zero To One," that so many tech CEOs in particular seem to be autistic because autism makes them less prone to conventionalism (since they lack awareness of what the conventions are in the first place). But maybe that pattern, too, is better explained by this author's notion that "autism is probably a plus when it comes to something that is extremely cognitive . . . or rule-based."
Where's the evidence that Elon, Albert einstein and others have autism? that's bullshit
Elon clearly said it publicly though and even her sister and parents reported autistic behaviour in his childhood
Yeah, he has hollywood autism. People diagnosing themselves or others with autism is the new trend, similar to saying you are LGBT. It's all bullshit. Now people have the idea that autism is a quirky, slighty weird person who often displays savant-like abilities, rather than debilitating disability it actually is.
Quite paradoxical to ask for evidence for Elon having autism when you have none as well to disprove it except repeating the mainstream arguments of ‘autism is not a trend’ without being able to disprove any official medical records of him that you can’t access and so can’t refute besides making spurious assumptions and allegations.
This is not because he looks like the autistic genius stereotype and that autism is trendy that it can disprove in any way he doesn’t have ASD especially when you look at his reported childhood development (which ofc you didn’t).
Also, having an IQ of 150 is a little bit helpful I guess to make autism easier to live that’s why it doesn’t seem that debilitating but if you look at his interviews in which he expressed his mental struggles, especially in childhood you can see it wasn’t that super easy. It’s quite ableist to assume that someone is not autistic because they don't look disabled (even considering that Elon takes it pretty lightly publicly but not necessarily privately when looking at his chaotic family life) as any high IQ autistic go through in the diagnosis process by being discredited for not looking too autistic and being highly functional in society.
Yup, exactly.
Um wtfym? Why would Elon be one to hop on a “woke” bandwagon? Not to defend the man himself, but your attitude is so clearly bullshit. You’re not his psychiatrist or therapist, you’re not his family member, you don’t even know the man personally, it’s not your place to dispute his diagnosis.
Nah. Musk is defo aspie. Tesla was probably also. Things didn't end well for him. It's sweet that Musk has memorialised him. I think most brilliant aspies will have been easily exploited by amoral business people stealing ideas and will be invisible to history.
Good clarification, though I think most of your readers know the gap between an Asperger's/ high functioning person( Elon) and diagnosed or non-verbal autism. While the social drawbacks are widely acknowledged, I'd argue that for some mild cases, the focus on "things" and obsessiveness can increase the chances of success in certain fields, and in these lucky cases the mild autism could actually lead to more accomplishment even if it does not directly increase IQ. From recent studies, the increase of autism related genes since the Neolithic would seem to suggest this, as well as the accompanying decline in schizophrenia related genes( which have no benefit in a technological-industrial or complex society).
Interesting comparison of some mental conditions. But I know of no medical or psychological diagnosis or historical record to support Einstein being autistic.
Human empathy is more politically and socially contingent than people acknowledge?
For 2500 years, human empathy has been the core requirement for senior Chinese officials. Not the bleeding heart kind of 'empathy,' but the kind who gives up a comfortable career in town to spend years in poor villages, figuring out how to improve the villagers' lives.
That's still the assignment. Nothing has changed.
Your comment about narcissists and autists is particularly interesting. And I wonder if it will take some time to refine the discourse between the two—at least in popular culture.
see https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/autism-is-bad/comment/96304639
Simon Baron-Cohen, a leading academic in the field, describes in his books, people with Autism, as being extreme systematizers and this explains why more males are Autistic than females.
We live in a uniquely stupid era...
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/disease-is-bad
Did not know about high birth weight so looked it up: "babies born weighing more than 9 lbs 14 oz had a 60% higher risk of autism." My son was 10lbs 11oz with no gestational diabetes & is aspie like me. No idea of my own birth weight but I am half a foot taller than my older sisters.
My experience with autism: life is hard for all of us sometimes but autism means hardly anything will be easy for the autist. It's a constant of being underestimated, misunderstood, and dismissed. The rise in the uni student-to-lecturer ratio makes mentorship incredibly rare and useful support outside of the home doesn't exist. The autism charity sector has been woke captured. Even Simon Baron Cohen has folded to them in an effort to be accepted by the "social model of disablity" woke activists. I told him they would never accept him and he should not even try. He didn't listen. I'm blacklisted by local autism charities for being a study ambassador for Simon's Spectrum 10K study and refusing to fold to them. Simon & the study team had no idea what hit them. I did try to tell them.
Shamefully, they asked me to step down as an ambassador. I refused. I told them to stand up to the bullies. They simply shut down the ambassador role for everyone.
"Deficits in sense of agency." Interesting. "The SoA is the experience of initiating and controlling one’s own action and hence producing desired changes in the world through these actions (Haggard and Tsakiris, 2009). As such, it is a fundamental ability grounding all kinds of efficient self-world interactions, from instrumental actions to social exchanges. The SoA refers to a complex cognitive phenomenon; in everyday life, it is experienced as a “diffuse sense of a coherent, harmonious on-going flow of action processing” (Synofzik et al., 2008, p. 228)."
Now I know why I could never get my assignments finished on time. Especially the boring ones.
A little bit of many conditions is sometimes an advantage. A little depression helps in evaluating risk. A little mania is good in some leadership situations, especially emergencies. A little schizophrenia and body dysmorphia confer no advantage, but anxiety and ADHD work in selected situations. Mild autism works in some situations, but as Cathy Reisenwitz points out, this is unreliable as a whole.
The problem for me is the degree of autism. Severely autistic people have to be constantly attended and cared for. Popular autism to me is more like the inability to pay attention. Or maybe Elon and such just think about things differently. I definitely know they are smarter then I am.
There condition used to be an eccentricity.
Inability to pay attention? You must be thinking of ADHD.
Not a smart ass comment. ADHD would be on the spectrum right.? I am very confused about nomenclature and I almost think it is per the individual. I made my comment because I have a family member who is “autistic “ and went to a support group and over 50% were in the “autistic “ group of severely disabled. He is high functioning. Just like dyslexia, I don’t find autistic very helpful.
ADHD is a different diagnosis that often overlaps with autism, just having ADHD itself doesn’t place one “on the spectrum”.
A personal question that you can answer if you want. Do you have ADHD? Diagnosed by a dr? And how? Not anecdotally?
No I don’t have ADHD, I have an official autism diagnosis from a psychiatrist I worked with for months.
You can look this up, ADHD and ASD are not the same, but they often overlap. Anecdotally, I would say that like half of my autistic friends and acquaintances also have ADHD.
This seems like semantics but not in my mind because I know they overlap. I think a lot of people self diagnose. This diminishes you and your psychiatrist. My son got a diagnosis of Asperger’s. Initially it was ADD. He did the concerta and didn’t like it. He probably got his diagnosis because he was a boy. He did not want to be labeled, always. He is doing great but still has a lot of problems being social in a personal way.
Back to the original ,I think that many of these diagnosises are fit into categories that are not consistent. Like what is the difference between a cerebral palsy(severe) vs severe autism.Whatever that means. I know those severe folks need lifelong help and my “autistic” son does not. He would just be the odd one. Thanks for the conversation.
> What about the “double empathy theory”, which says autistic people can communicate well with each other but not with neurotypicals? That’s cope. Some autistic people hate confrontation and are evasive and two-faced, while other autistic people are extremely direct and confrontational. Something tells me that these two types would not get along. I guess autistic people might have some kind of mutual understanding that certain smells or noises are unpleasant, but the same could be said for two people who share literally any mental disorder. Similar people are better at empathizing with each other.
Wow no statistics or studies to link or cite? This part got me questioning your entire argument now. It looks like you wrote this article just cuz you have some beef or bone to pick with autists, this paragraph looks like a cope.
If you’re going by “something tells me” and “I guess”, then, in my own experience, the double empathy theory is absolutely correct. Autists absolutely gravitate towards each other, accumulating a social life full of neurodivergent people is precisely what nudged me to finally getting an official diagnosis last month.
And, intuitions and anecdotes aside, the same data that shows that neurotypicals like autists less shows that autists like each other more 🫶🏾
https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2021.554875
> This is exactly what some new studies are showing. Autistic people want to talk to other autistic people, sit next to them, or live near them even more than they want to do these things with non-autistic people [4]. In one study, two unfamiliar adults got to know each other by talking for 5 min [5]. Sometimes the two adults were both non-autistic, sometimes both autistic, and sometimes one of each. You might expect, if autistic people are poor at social interaction, that the conversations between two autistic people would go especially badly. But that is not what the study found. The quality of interactions between two autistic people was just as strong as between two people who were not autistic. Autistic people even shared more information about themselves with other autistic people, suggesting they felt more comfortable with them. This shows that autistic people are like everyone else: they find it easier to connect with, and maybe even form friendships with, people who think and communicate like they do.
So yeah, COPE.
I clicked on this article with an open mind, but now I’m pretty disappointed and disgusted with Aphoria for platforming such unprofessional unscientific drivel. This is beneath y’all. Way worse than being offensive, it’s not even well-researched/substantiated 💀
Part of the problem today is that psychopathy and autism in children have similar superficial symptoms. From an essay I'm drafting:
1. Both autism and personality disorders can manifest through difficulties in social interaction. However, while autism involves a genuine deficit in understanding social cues, Dark Triad traits might involve a lack of empathy or a strategic manipulation of social situations, which can be misread as social ineptitude.
2. The traits associated with personality disorders, especially the Dark Triad, might not become fully evident or severe enough for diagnosis until later in adolescence or adulthood when interpersonal dynamics become more complex or they do something reprehensible. As children grow, what might initially appear as social awkwardness (potentially seen in autism) could evolve into more pronounced manipulative, grandiose, or antisocial behaviors, suggesting a personality disorder.
3. Diagnostic Challenges & criteria: The DSM-5 criteria for autism focus on social communication deficits and restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, which can overlap with behaviors seen in personality disorders when they are in their nascent form. Clinicians might first consider autism because its diagnostic criteria are more commonly associated with early childhood development.
4. Misdiagnosis: Autism is often better recognized and more studied in children due to its neurodevelopmental nature. Therefore, there's a tendency to diagnose autism first when there's any sign of social or behavioral deviation, especially if other signs like sensory issues or communication delays are present.
That's my take.
The piece starts out with a very strong claim about how the "online right" views autism in heroic terms. I think the author may be tilting at windmills. I get that there is talk about how mild Aspergers style autism might be beneficial in some contexts, but this stronger claim at the start of this piece seems to be a hand-wave based on, what, something the author read on twitter?
lol deadass