

Jeff Atwood Doesn't Know What Autism Is - WrongBot
http://wrongbot.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6:jeff-atwood-doesnt-know-what-autism-is&catid=10:uncategorized&Itemid=8

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btilly
Psychology is prone to having fad diagnoses that lots of people could fit
into. For a while everyone is astonished that so many people could be X. And
then the popularity of the diagnosis fades, and eventually a lot of the X's
turned out to be something else. In extreme cases the X can even cause or turn
out to be the result of bad therapy. (For 3 nasty examples read the history of
frontal lobotomies, electroshock therapy, and false memory syndrome.)

When the dust settles I am firmly convinced that Aspberger's Syndrome is going
to turn out to be one of those fads. Yes, it is a real disorder on the
autistic spectrum. Yes, a lot of healthy people are somewhere on this spectrum
and feel that the diagnosis fits. Yes, a high proportion of those people are
geeks. But there are a lot of people walking around today diagnosed by
themselves or others as having Aspberger's who wouldn't have been so diagnosed
20 years ago, and who 20 years from now won't be considered to have a
significant handicap that is worth worrying about.

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BobbyH
Jeff clearly knows what autism is, as he demonstrated in a previous post
written about autism and Asperger's here:
<http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000490.html>

His use of "borderline autism" in his Xanadu post may be inaccurate, but I
don't think he should be pilloried for hating on people on the autistic
spectrum when he clearly respects them.

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baddox
The author of this article is doing exactly what he's accusing Jeff of doing:
using a phrase to convey an idea while knowing the phrase is technically not
accurate. The first few lines of this article are spent admitting that the
article's title itself is purposefully inaccurate.

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swombat
_"I don't want to sound like I care overmuch about political correctness"_

"... But... I do want to write a blog post calling out Jeff Atwood, because it
makes for great linkbait."

Describing someone as borderline autistic is, as others have said, an idiom, a
throwaway expression, not one meant to make a reference to real autism. It
might be slightly un-PC to some, but that's a question that you claim you
don't want to address.

I think this is a decent article, but a slightly dishonest starting point. You
write well, you can do better.

Edit: I'm willing to accept that perhaps you honestly misunderstood the
expression. In that case, I withdraw my accusation of dishonesty.

~~~
WrongBot
If it's an idiom that isn't meant to have anything to do with real autism,
then I genuinely missed that memo.

And the title wasn't really intended as linkbait; I was annoyed with Atwood
after seeing that phrase because I genuinely like his writing and expect
better from him. After seeing his post about autism that someone linked above,
though, I do regret the title, and if I'd seen that before (which I should
have), I would have gone with something a lot less inflamatory.

~~~
swombat
If everyone understood everyone else all the time, we wouldn't have wars,
politics, crime, etc. :-)

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jrockway
English has idioms. Not every sentence means exactly what it says.

~~~
shermans
This is a symptom of autism:"complete inability to understand metaphor."

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goodside
Clinical depression is a serious, debilitating, and often fatal disease, but
you know exactly what I mean when I say I'm depressed because my hard drive
died.

These shifts happen all the time; linguists call them euphemistic (or
dysphemistic) treadmills. There's a nonprofit advocacy group for the rights of
the mentally handicapped called "Friends of the Retarded". At the time it was
founded, that was the most euphemistic and inoffensive name that came to mind.
"Slow" was too insulting, so they had to replace it with a Latin-derived
synonym. Now anyone that makes a bad move while playing blindfolded chess is
instantly a retard. Similarly, "idiot", "moron", and "imbecile" were once
scientific terms to describe different severities of retardation.

"Autistic" is especially justified, because the connotation of "geek" has
shifted from a definite negative to a mild positive. People like to be thought
of as geeky, and so now everyone is, which weakens the term. If you refer to
your vacuum-cleaner-collecting friend as "really geeky" people will just think
he reads Slashdot or something.

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nkassis
I don't think Attwood really meant that Ted Nelson had autism he was just
trying to describe him in a way that people who don't know him might be able
to understand what he is like.

Maybe I don't get what the author is trying to say. I know there a lot of
people talking about how Asperger's could explain geekish behavior but I think
it's a very small minority of geeks so it doesn't make sense. But saying
someone displays autistic behavior doesn't say he's autistic.

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kscaldef
I think the author is trying to say that "not good with people" is rather
different than "autistic". Yes, as a consequence of their disability, autistic
people often do have trouble interacting with other people, but there's a
specific pattern to their difficulties which is not shared by your typical
"not good with people" geek.

> But saying someone displays autistic behavior doesn't say he's autistic.

Actually, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism#Diagnosis>

"Diagnosis is based on behavior, not cause or mechanism".

I.e., autism is defined by exhibiting autistic behavior. (Although, I grant
that in this case the person labeling the behavior as autistic is not a doctor
and not qualified to make just a diagnosis.)

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blasdel
Correction: Jeff Atwood doesn't know what _anything_ is.

Despite his enthusiasm, the man is constitutionally incapable of Reading
Comprehension. If you're lucky he'll get a glimse of the truth in his final
paragraph, contradicting the rest of the post and telegraphing that the the
whole thing was a waste of time for both of you. I used to think he was
intentionally trolling his audience, but he's really just dull-witted.

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damienkatz
I'm sorry, but you are just wrong.

He's an extremely talented writer and pretty good developer. He blogs about
stuff that interests him, he often presents the newcomers point of view, he
rarely claims to be an expert on the topics he's writing about. And sometimes
he gets it wrong, but he sparks lots of discussion and more people are
enlightened.

I honestly don't understand the why people think it's cool to dump on Jeff
Atwood.

~~~
jeremymcanally
Because he (and to an extent, Spolsky) get a rather large contingency of
things wrong. And then I hear people repeat those things, a lot. Even if it
totally contradicts their actual experience. "I must be doing it wrong because
this guy who has no real experience or projects to recommend him said so."
It's dumb.

He's like the Paris Hilton of programming bloggers: he's famous for being
famous.

Outside of that, he seems like a nice guy. And Stack Overflow is a tremendous
project. I just think his blog is a dangerous cesspool of ignorance sometimes.

