Look, "autism" is not a compliment generally, and autists are not incapable of being absolutely reprehensible people. It isn't so much that there are LARPers masquerading as autists for some kind of social clout or excuse - they are genuinely autistic, but bad people who bemuse themselves in genuinely gross, sociopathic, disruptive, and generally retarded ways.
I grew up having seen a case of A Tale Of Two Autists. In our school we had Steve as "that kid", and he was full-blown autistic. Absolutely socially awkward, prone to bursts of the most absurd behaviors, and of course obsessed with Sonic the Hedgehog, video games, and the normal cadre of autistic interests. While weird and silly Steve was, nonetheless, a good-hearted person who inspired a protective instinct in the good people around him.
One day Steve encountered a different, bizarro-world version of himself named Steven. It was shocking how similar they physically looked and behaved, like they could be cousins despite not knowing one another. Steven was also clearly autistic, but he was an absolute shitheel. Steven was a harasser and creep on girls, prone to vile opinions and phraseology, an inept prankster whose stupid autistic humor was neither funny nor endearing, and worst of all he was horribly annoying in no redeeming ways like good-natured Steve. Everyone came to hate him, and our team of Steve-handlers worked to ward Steve away from Steven lest he pick up any kinds of bad habits.
Steven was clearly, unmistakably autistic, AND a piece of shit. Steve was clearly, unmistakably autistic, AND a good guy. While it may comfort you to believe in a system where the genuinely autistic are just affable, innocently minded sorts and the assholes are some kind of clout-chasing posers, it just isn't true. Many autistic people are jerks and unpleasant weirdos, and their unpleasantness is accentuated by their genuine autism.
Despite what the meme gloats, autists are not immune to propaganda. Autists will use backwards-logic to justify their opinions just like anyone else, they just tend to find the beautiful-system proposition itself to be justifying of their opinion more than merely the average instinctual or aesthetic pulls. Some autists love truth for its mesmerizingly beautiful patterns - others just love trains and anthropomorphic ponies.
In fact, your proposition that True Autists just think like well-intentioned gay gamers is likely a form of well-intentioned projection based on personal experience and being rather than a fully-observational position. Many autists fall in love with a simple clockwork they can fully comprehend when the real clockwork is far too complex for any human to grasp. To contemplate there even being other humans out there that experience and navigate the world in a fundamentally differently way is difficult if not impossible for many people, autistic or not.
The skinsuit-wearers out there who portray themselves as "neurodivergent" in their special snowflake manner do so for personal attention, and we agree that such people are clearly not actually autistic. There are some genuine cases of this, but generally they pick a different mental condition than autism because, frankly, autism is inherently repulsive to most people. It's overwhelmingly weird and disconcerting for normies to encounter, and even many autists find others of their ilk to be unacceptable. Just look at how actual 4chan users treat one another! They embrace their tism and still mercilessly insult one another for being unacceptably autistic. Like a gaggle of Beholders considering themselves the only True Autistic out there based on their particular tastes... And then you have the various fauna-Autists who are better or worse than them. The posers cannot survive long among the genuine tism cesspool.
So the truth of the matter is more complex than just placid tismics versus nasty skinwalkers.
Okay, the ‘gaymer’ read was funny. It’s true that I don’t give much time to autists with comorbid disorders, but in these cases, the tism is an aggravating factor for some other unpleasant quality. What I’m arguing about is cognitive patterns, which of course can glom onto any value system or lack thereof.
This reminds me of the Aspie Supremacist and the Tism Bioleninist
The former tend to be the stereotypically gifted types being kept down by society, while the later tend to be the easily overwhelmed types that can't function doing something very trivial just because of sounds or lights or something
The whining of the former usually goes "I can do things better, why people see me as a threat instead?"
While the later goes "I don't get it what's the purpose of asking 'how are you'? it doesn't make any sense"
The former tends to be Authoritarian, wanting proportional treatment of things and would champion quality for things (Against DEI and pretty right wing)
The later tends to be Egalitarian, wanting equal treatment of things and would champion equity (pro DEI and full of leftist)
The Aspies are also tend to be IQ/race etc realist, their info-dumping actually something that you would say as "sperging-out" while the Tists are very avoidant on such talk, and mostly talk about things revolving depression, anxiety and the typical emotional stuff
I disagree, Autists definitely seek cope and being systematizing doesn't necessarily have anything to do with being unbiased. Autists are obsessive and are resistant to change, they're the exact type of people who would cling to a belief and spend all of their free time looking to justify it. For some people, justifying their religion or their ideology is just their version of spending 5 hours a day on Kanzenshuu debating powerscaling. Autists seek patterns, but that doesn't mean they seek truth. They are often so mentally unstable that they can't even handle the truth, and instead seek lies and escapism.
Also, I think that cognitive empathy is probably the primary trait in feelings towards harmful ideologies. Systematizers found their moral compasses on principles, and are capable of hardening their heart in the face of harm that is warranted under said principles. This should be pretty obvious looking at differences in thought between men and women. Hell, you see it when you interact with spergs. They're not mean, they're just... Inconsiderate.
Autism and Psychopathy are probably connected somehow. Both diseases of mannishness. Both antisocial. I think describing them as inverses is apt. Perhaps certain genes cause two people with a similar mannishness cause one to become an autist, and the other to become a psychopath. Psychopathy is obviously worse, as it leads to criminal tendencies, but Autism is certainly a disease as it is very harmful to ones self, the people around them, and society at large.
Do you have any idea as to why autistic people are more likely to be gay than the average person. Do different types of neurodivergence correlate? Is it causal?
Yes, different types of neurodivergence correlate. Both autism and homosexuality are linked to abnormal prenatal hormone exposure. As for causality, I don’t know.
I believe you fail to understand the motivations and thoughts of the fake autists and are repeating pervasive and dismissive stereotypes about them meant to suppress their ideas and villainize them in the view of the public
Women shouldn’t vote because no one should vote. Non-whites, ipso facto, should not be allowed to immigrate to white countries. Brown people already in our countries are dangerous, so whites should segregate ourselves from the former, ideally through default protection of property values, but failing that, top down segregation would still be a significant improvement.
IQ has nothing to do with it. You asians are smarter, harder working, and better behaved than whites but we don’t wish to surrender supermajority status to you in our countries anymore than you would to us in yours.
Smarter but less able to apply their intelligence toward grand and beautiful purposes because of their obsession with social status. Hence the Chinese make their kids spend most of their childhood studying and build endless Brutalist commie blocks instead of anything that inspires reverance. To be able to immigrate to America Asians should be able to write a cogent and heartfelt essay defending the 2nd Amendment or the value of space exploration or something else that demonstrates they possess a Faustian spirit.
Would you apply this 'defend the 2nd Amendment or you're not American' test to people already here? Say, a fourth-generation descendant of slaves and/or pilgrims—should they be denaturalized for giving the wrong answer?
Probably not, that would be overcomplicated, but their opinions should be discredited and they should be essentially shunned from public life. Tolerating authoritarianism in the name of safety was how we got to the horrible civil abuses of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Good article. Wanted to post the following comment because RH and others are currently dunking and I think it is unwarranted. Slightly off topic:
Programs like PEPFAR only promote a dysfunctional malthusian stasis, allowing it to persist indefinitely.
A broader more enlightened utilitarian perspective, with a moral circle expanded to encompass lives not yet in existence, might disagree with @Bentham's Bulldog 25 billion africans project.
Such an individual could well be a genuinely intellectually curious autist with the capacity for affective empathy, and not a reactionary psychopath larping as an autist.
By seeking to sustain african lifestyles with foreign aid without trying to depress fertility, RH and BB are falling prey to their own form of motivated reasoning emotionalism
If the relation is my link to Bentham's "Some People Are Just Evil" post, yes, I am only referencing his general point. I don't endorse BB's specific view on PEPFAR.
Amos Wollen's "Every Argument Against PEPFAR, Debunked" in the same memeplex also annoyed me because it ignored some of the more sophisticated arguments like yours.
I am curious about how the HIV transmission rates in Africa could look like they do given what we know about the low transmission risk with normal heterosexual sex. I will write a separate post about this, but by then it will probably no longer be a 'hot topic.'
This 'dry sex' practice you mention is one plausible factor but probably not the only one. To test it, we could compare HIV rates between countries where dry sex is commonly practiced, to e.g. Rwanda where locals prefer heavy vaginal lubrication.
My sister is 44, but has the mind, and cognitive capabilities of a 5 year old, if that high. She has no notion of time, doesn't have the motor skills to cut her own steak, and 99% of the time, she is lost in her own world.
To me, that's autism. I feel it is time to find a more proper word for those with neurodevelopmental disorder, and leave real autism alone.
Do you mind linking to the SBC study? It seems a little off to me because IIRC, I recall the differences being more distinct when I went down the rabbit hole a couple years ago. I’m too lazy to find a good meta-analysis but here’s one which I think is more representative of the median in that literature and actually meshes rather well with the admittedly rather oversimplified narrative of the current moment:
What do you mean by 'the differences being more distinct'? There were a few studies mentioned in the book but I think this is the one you might be looking for. https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1811032115
Look, "autism" is not a compliment generally, and autists are not incapable of being absolutely reprehensible people. It isn't so much that there are LARPers masquerading as autists for some kind of social clout or excuse - they are genuinely autistic, but bad people who bemuse themselves in genuinely gross, sociopathic, disruptive, and generally retarded ways.
I grew up having seen a case of A Tale Of Two Autists. In our school we had Steve as "that kid", and he was full-blown autistic. Absolutely socially awkward, prone to bursts of the most absurd behaviors, and of course obsessed with Sonic the Hedgehog, video games, and the normal cadre of autistic interests. While weird and silly Steve was, nonetheless, a good-hearted person who inspired a protective instinct in the good people around him.
One day Steve encountered a different, bizarro-world version of himself named Steven. It was shocking how similar they physically looked and behaved, like they could be cousins despite not knowing one another. Steven was also clearly autistic, but he was an absolute shitheel. Steven was a harasser and creep on girls, prone to vile opinions and phraseology, an inept prankster whose stupid autistic humor was neither funny nor endearing, and worst of all he was horribly annoying in no redeeming ways like good-natured Steve. Everyone came to hate him, and our team of Steve-handlers worked to ward Steve away from Steven lest he pick up any kinds of bad habits.
Steven was clearly, unmistakably autistic, AND a piece of shit. Steve was clearly, unmistakably autistic, AND a good guy. While it may comfort you to believe in a system where the genuinely autistic are just affable, innocently minded sorts and the assholes are some kind of clout-chasing posers, it just isn't true. Many autistic people are jerks and unpleasant weirdos, and their unpleasantness is accentuated by their genuine autism.
Despite what the meme gloats, autists are not immune to propaganda. Autists will use backwards-logic to justify their opinions just like anyone else, they just tend to find the beautiful-system proposition itself to be justifying of their opinion more than merely the average instinctual or aesthetic pulls. Some autists love truth for its mesmerizingly beautiful patterns - others just love trains and anthropomorphic ponies.
In fact, your proposition that True Autists just think like well-intentioned gay gamers is likely a form of well-intentioned projection based on personal experience and being rather than a fully-observational position. Many autists fall in love with a simple clockwork they can fully comprehend when the real clockwork is far too complex for any human to grasp. To contemplate there even being other humans out there that experience and navigate the world in a fundamentally differently way is difficult if not impossible for many people, autistic or not.
The skinsuit-wearers out there who portray themselves as "neurodivergent" in their special snowflake manner do so for personal attention, and we agree that such people are clearly not actually autistic. There are some genuine cases of this, but generally they pick a different mental condition than autism because, frankly, autism is inherently repulsive to most people. It's overwhelmingly weird and disconcerting for normies to encounter, and even many autists find others of their ilk to be unacceptable. Just look at how actual 4chan users treat one another! They embrace their tism and still mercilessly insult one another for being unacceptably autistic. Like a gaggle of Beholders considering themselves the only True Autistic out there based on their particular tastes... And then you have the various fauna-Autists who are better or worse than them. The posers cannot survive long among the genuine tism cesspool.
So the truth of the matter is more complex than just placid tismics versus nasty skinwalkers.
Okay, the ‘gaymer’ read was funny. It’s true that I don’t give much time to autists with comorbid disorders, but in these cases, the tism is an aggravating factor for some other unpleasant quality. What I’m arguing about is cognitive patterns, which of course can glom onto any value system or lack thereof.
This reminds me of the Aspie Supremacist and the Tism Bioleninist
The former tend to be the stereotypically gifted types being kept down by society, while the later tend to be the easily overwhelmed types that can't function doing something very trivial just because of sounds or lights or something
The whining of the former usually goes "I can do things better, why people see me as a threat instead?"
While the later goes "I don't get it what's the purpose of asking 'how are you'? it doesn't make any sense"
The former tends to be Authoritarian, wanting proportional treatment of things and would champion quality for things (Against DEI and pretty right wing)
The later tends to be Egalitarian, wanting equal treatment of things and would champion equity (pro DEI and full of leftist)
The Aspies are also tend to be IQ/race etc realist, their info-dumping actually something that you would say as "sperging-out" while the Tists are very avoidant on such talk, and mostly talk about things revolving depression, anxiety and the typical emotional stuff
Womp womp
I disagree, Autists definitely seek cope and being systematizing doesn't necessarily have anything to do with being unbiased. Autists are obsessive and are resistant to change, they're the exact type of people who would cling to a belief and spend all of their free time looking to justify it. For some people, justifying their religion or their ideology is just their version of spending 5 hours a day on Kanzenshuu debating powerscaling. Autists seek patterns, but that doesn't mean they seek truth. They are often so mentally unstable that they can't even handle the truth, and instead seek lies and escapism.
Also, I think that cognitive empathy is probably the primary trait in feelings towards harmful ideologies. Systematizers found their moral compasses on principles, and are capable of hardening their heart in the face of harm that is warranted under said principles. This should be pretty obvious looking at differences in thought between men and women. Hell, you see it when you interact with spergs. They're not mean, they're just... Inconsiderate.
Autism and Psychopathy are probably connected somehow. Both diseases of mannishness. Both antisocial. I think describing them as inverses is apt. Perhaps certain genes cause two people with a similar mannishness cause one to become an autist, and the other to become a psychopath. Psychopathy is obviously worse, as it leads to criminal tendencies, but Autism is certainly a disease as it is very harmful to ones self, the people around them, and society at large.
I'm kind of surprised that you aren't aware that Thomas Edison was a self-aggrandizing sociopath who ripped off Nikola Tesla
Edison had his own inventions worthy to admire just fine though
Do you have any idea as to why autistic people are more likely to be gay than the average person. Do different types of neurodivergence correlate? Is it causal?
Yes, different types of neurodivergence correlate. Both autism and homosexuality are linked to abnormal prenatal hormone exposure. As for causality, I don’t know.
I believe you fail to understand the motivations and thoughts of the fake autists and are repeating pervasive and dismissive stereotypes about them meant to suppress their ideas and villainize them in the view of the public
Women shouldn’t vote because no one should vote. Non-whites, ipso facto, should not be allowed to immigrate to white countries. Brown people already in our countries are dangerous, so whites should segregate ourselves from the former, ideally through default protection of property values, but failing that, top down segregation would still be a significant improvement.
IQ has nothing to do with it. You asians are smarter, harder working, and better behaved than whites but we don’t wish to surrender supermajority status to you in our countries anymore than you would to us in yours.
Smarter but less able to apply their intelligence toward grand and beautiful purposes because of their obsession with social status. Hence the Chinese make their kids spend most of their childhood studying and build endless Brutalist commie blocks instead of anything that inspires reverance. To be able to immigrate to America Asians should be able to write a cogent and heartfelt essay defending the 2nd Amendment or the value of space exploration or something else that demonstrates they possess a Faustian spirit.
Would you apply this 'defend the 2nd Amendment or you're not American' test to people already here? Say, a fourth-generation descendant of slaves and/or pilgrims—should they be denaturalized for giving the wrong answer?
Probably not, that would be overcomplicated, but their opinions should be discredited and they should be essentially shunned from public life. Tolerating authoritarianism in the name of safety was how we got to the horrible civil abuses of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Good article. Wanted to post the following comment because RH and others are currently dunking and I think it is unwarranted. Slightly off topic:
Programs like PEPFAR only promote a dysfunctional malthusian stasis, allowing it to persist indefinitely.
A broader more enlightened utilitarian perspective, with a moral circle expanded to encompass lives not yet in existence, might disagree with @Bentham's Bulldog 25 billion africans project.
Such an individual could well be a genuinely intellectually curious autist with the capacity for affective empathy, and not a reactionary psychopath larping as an autist.
By seeking to sustain african lifestyles with foreign aid without trying to depress fertility, RH and BB are falling prey to their own form of motivated reasoning emotionalism
If the relation is my link to Bentham's "Some People Are Just Evil" post, yes, I am only referencing his general point. I don't endorse BB's specific view on PEPFAR.
Amos Wollen's "Every Argument Against PEPFAR, Debunked" in the same memeplex also annoyed me because it ignored some of the more sophisticated arguments like yours.
I am curious about how the HIV transmission rates in Africa could look like they do given what we know about the low transmission risk with normal heterosexual sex. I will write a separate post about this, but by then it will probably no longer be a 'hot topic.'
I have no idea what you’re talking about but is this all about the sand in the vagina tweet?
This 'dry sex' practice you mention is one plausible factor but probably not the only one. To test it, we could compare HIV rates between countries where dry sex is commonly practiced, to e.g. Rwanda where locals prefer heavy vaginal lubrication.
My sister is 44, but has the mind, and cognitive capabilities of a 5 year old, if that high. She has no notion of time, doesn't have the motor skills to cut her own steak, and 99% of the time, she is lost in her own world.
To me, that's autism. I feel it is time to find a more proper word for those with neurodevelopmental disorder, and leave real autism alone.
Do you mind linking to the SBC study? It seems a little off to me because IIRC, I recall the differences being more distinct when I went down the rabbit hole a couple years ago. I’m too lazy to find a good meta-analysis but here’s one which I think is more representative of the median in that literature and actually meshes rather well with the admittedly rather oversimplified narrative of the current moment:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5868797/#:~:text=Male%20students%20in%20the%20Sciences,for%20students%20in%20the%20Humanities.
What do you mean by 'the differences being more distinct'? There were a few studies mentioned in the book but I think this is the one you might be looking for. https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1811032115