
Neurodiversity - itamarb
https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27221
======
astrange
Everyone always wants to prevent cures for autism, but no one ever suggests
inventing something that gives people autism.

(It was sort of a plot point in a Vernor Vinge novel. And Brave New World?)

~~~
api
Problem is there is autism like (maybe) Einstein or Tesla and then there is
autism where the child can't communicate or adapt to any form of human social
interaction or contact. The former is neurodiversity, the latter a
debilitating disease.

These are not the same thing and need different terms.

~~~
kosma
The recent developments of DSM-5 and ICD-11 show the opposite: decades of
research failed to show any scientifically valid distinction between
functional and non-functional autism. That's why they are being conflated into
a single "autism spectrum disorder" category.

~~~
bbarn
Those books exist as a method for billing insurance. The DSM only recently
(1983) stopped considering homosexuality a diagnosis.

As a result we're hearing the phrase "somewhere on the spectrum" for any
number of behaviors we don't see fitting the norm, and the reality of autism
is not this "beautiful mind" scenario for many, but instead a crippling
illness like the AP mentions. They are definitely not the same thing to the
people who live with them.

The article is completely centered around the media image that autism creates
geniuses, and that's a dangerous, misleading idea at best. The reality of
living with it is usually much more ugly. Children who often become grown
adults who can't make connections between cause and effect violently lashing
out, throwing feces, biting care givers, screaming, screaming, and more
screaming.

We should absolutely keep looking for ways to prevent and try to treat/cure
it, and not act like everything is fine and great and accept it as diversity,
for the sake of those who can't live normally.

~~~
throwaway876543
As someone who falls in the "Beautiful Mind" end of the spectrum I find it
insulting and abhorrent that people would do anything OTHER than cure us if
they could.

Beneath superficial success and contribution, my life is a nonstop Munchian
scream. I find it less insulting when people say everyone on the spectrum
should be exterminated, than when people say some of us should be allowed to
continue existing because our particular end of the spectrum happens to write
pretty code / invent pretty theorems / etc.

~~~
euyyn
On the other hand, I've met high-functioning autists that feel offended at the
idea that people want to cure them. My cousin is on the "very crippled side"
of the spectrum, so I'd give anything for a cure. So I guess if the person can
understand the concept, it should be their own call.

------
scandox
I think we will start to limit our capability for diversity soon. Population
control, anti-aging and direct genetic control will limit the opportunities
for change. A case of our short term culture conflicting with our long term
biology.

It's a pity because we will be less likely to ever become something we can't
already imagine.

~~~
zer0gravity
>>It's a pity because we will be less likely to ever become something we can't
already imagine.

The desire of mankind to control everything is its greatest strength and its
greatest weakness.

------
scalio
The author has a point. As long as we don't understand how we're built and
functioning, modifying our code is a bad idea. Learning by doing is only
applicable when the thing in question is expendable, which is definitely not
the case with the human genome.

~~~
internaut
Surely we have devised experiments for which the use of the human genome is
indeed expendable? e.g. tissue cultures.

------
cmrdporcupine
I once used the term "neurodiversity" in a meeting with the vice principal and
a resource teacher in the context of the behaviour of one of my children. The
knife-eyes and suspicious looks were amazing.

Lots of _talk_ in the school system about acceptance and anti-bullying, but I
think our society has never been so intolerant of the diversity it claims to
covet.

(We switched schools and things are much better now.)

~~~
walshemj
was that recently? I thought "neurodiversity" was the preferred term for
conditions like dyslexia dyspraxia and so on

------
duckingtest
I don't think it's possible to edit autism out until it's actually understood
on a mechanical level. It's likely that's what's now called 'autism' in
reality are several completely different things with vaguely similar symptoms.

Once it's understood, I don't think it's going to disappear: positive forms of
it (ie. milder Asperger's) are going to become a niche option for parents,
along with high iq edits of course. The 'little Einstein' option on a menu.

~~~
throwaway876543
Hi, I have milder asperger's, and I've been highly successful by most
objective measures (great job in finance, make more money than both my parents
combined, trophy wife, etc.)

If I could go back and start over without the disease, I'd do it in a
heartbeat. Even if it meant sacrificing all that success and being a fry-cook
all my life.

~~~
duckingtest
How can you know? The only way to really compare two lives would be to live
them both.

~~~
throwaway876543
I'm completely fucking isolated. Like, a million miles away.

Someone at work invites me to a party. I go, I have fun. I never get invited
again. New person gets hired, pattern repeats. Reliable as a clock.

My wife? I picked her up using techniques from the seduction community, which
I studied like a science and practiced for over a year. I did that because I
was tired of being a virgin, now I hate this relationship and feel powerless
to escape it. BTW, during that seduction community time I spent endless hours
at bars and clubs, surrounded by people having fun and pretending to have fun
myself. I never had any fun there. It was more of a war zone which I tolerated
in pursuit of a goal.

At work I feel like the mythical Cassandra, cursed to see the future but no-
one will believe you. (I'm a programmer, of course.) I wish I could just treat
it like a job that doesn't matter, and that it wouldn't physically pain me
when some idiot can't even follow in-house variable-naming conventions, etc.

Sure, I guess I can't be 100% certain that fry-cooks aren't in their own
screaming hell, just like I can't be 100% sure I'm not living in Plato's cave.
But I think that's pretty fucking academic compared to the above things which
I can be sure of.

~~~
internaut
The adage 'birds of a feather flock together' is a true one. Our ability to
communicate with each other relies most strongly on shared experience esp.
with regard to normative behavior, thoughts.

I would not advise you to act as neurotypical but to seek out your own kind.
That might not be easily found in collected pools of humans but to take a leaf
out of the Major's book: 'The net is vast and infinite.'

How many of us have mentioned an obscure topic in passing on HN, and then been
surprised by an erudite observation? Of course this does not always prevail,
but it happens with enough frequency that I am convinced for each person there
are companions.

To be less academic, if there are conventions for furries, then there are
places in the world for you too!

It is frequently noted that geeks do much better at themed events with a
purpose than at generic social outings. Less night club, more book club. The
more object oriented the activity, the easier geeks get along. If you've been
to a Hackerspace you'll know there is a wide range of interesting people at
such places.

P.S. Every line cook I've known does claim to be in their own screaming hell.

------
Pica_soO
The actual question is- what is or was neuro-diversity useful for? Its a
uncomfortable question, because the answers may insult conservative and
progressive comfort zones.

The publicly condemned sadistic murderer, might be a perfectly adapted model-
citizen for a society that wents savage every second generation.

The schizoid paranoid might be have been a model citizen in society ravaged by
disease and bubonic plague, forming hate-filled sub-communitys, who would
purge outsiders and self-quarantine.

The sexual-deviant might have been a model citizen in a society that had no
real justice system, by being forced to uphold basic social contracts.

Autism would be a attempt of evolution to develop reliable automation and mass
production in a medieval society in need of it.

All of this of course has to be "triggered" somehow, so there would be a
feedback loop of mothers in the making, that create with the society they
perceive, the counter measure of tomorrow. Have strife and stress? Next
generation will have more psychopaths that see your genetic lottery ticket
through that. Have a disease like the anti-baby-pill?

Lots of paranoid schizophrenic that want humanity to retreat into gated
community.

Of course non of this is written in stone, it is always how nature turned out
by supply and demand. What we make of this, is completely open to debate, but
it has to be made upon a foundation of well researched knowledge, not upon a
wishing well.

~~~
sethrin
There is no need to assume a reason for genetic variance or a particular
genetic expression. The idea that evolution is directed, that each change is
somehow purposeful has been fairly conclusively disproven: genetic drift has
been observed nearly universally. As speculative fiction your ideas are
somewhat interesting. I don't know if you've ever tried your hand at a short
story, but it could be a good premise.

------
sugarfactory
Even though my intuition tells me that I should support neurodiversity my
reasoning keeps failing to justify it without introducing "diversity is
unconditionally good" as an axiom. I find it difficult to add it to the list
of axioms I support because it seems like hypocrasy to endorse diversity
considering the history of humans.

Almost every human has the ability to learn and speak language, which is
unique to mankind. (What media often reports as an animal language is not a
language in that it doesn't have recursion -- the ability to handle it is,
Chomsky and his supporters believe, unique to humans)

But shortly after language was born, in the very first stage of evolution of
language, there must have been significant percentage of people who could not
learn language. Where did they go? The answer is: they went extinct, failing
to reproduce. And that's why we all can learn and speak language. The
ancestors of us are those who could speak it. By making it difficult to
reproduce for those who couldn't speak language, through the process of
natural selection, we managed to build society where almost all of the members
can speak it. Having autism in this era is analogous to being non-verbal in
the early stage of humans.

With that said, endorsing diversity seems to be denial of evolution to me,
denial of how we have come this far. It is by putting selection pressure on
those who cannot adapt to society. And the sad reality is, you cannot stop it
from happening. Autistic people will go extinct, even without the gene-editing
technology, just like non-verbal people went extinct.

~~~
scalio
Why do autistic people have to go extinct? Can't we support them in this
wealthy day and age? Couldn't great cognitive tools lie beneath autism and
other supposed illnesses? In my experience, "normal" people are the most
boring because they can't think in (what they would consider) contorted ways.

There's a whole spectrum of people, one end which defines large parts of
society, the plain average. On the other end are people whose minds are so
distorted relative to the norm that it's impossible for them to function in
our society. I would put the blame for that on society not being diverse or
open enough.

It seems to me that evolution works because of diversity: an organism
diversifies through mutations to the point where one type gets an advantage
over the others and survives. Think of it this way: If you limit yourself to
what you already know, you'll be turning in circles, constantly reaching the
same conclusions for the same problems. Let some outside knowledge/factors
mess things up and you'll be able to move on.

------
robg
I live with mental "illness". With respect to the brain, the diversity is our
story. The types and subtypes are challenges on how to live, past and beyond
the diagnosis.

------
nrjdhsbsid
I believe they're right about neurodiversity overall but that doesn't make a
case for preventing gene editing so these people can better function in our
society.

If you think about it, surely out of the counless gene variations possible in
sexual reproduction some of them will most definitely be bad and even fatal.

In fact this happens all the time. The fact is that society is naturally tuned
toward the average case and straying far in either direction usually causes a
bad quality of life.

Humans have a tendency to mark everything as good or bad. Beautiful or ugly,
smart or stupid. In reality everything is on a statistical distribution and
for most traits you want to be in the middle. We shouldn't be breeding humans
to live 20 years or 200, as a social species it's largely better to just
correct the large outliers, even if it means losing our "geniuses"

------
wuhwgiuhguh
It can be a-la-cart. We'll find ways to make it possible to edit our genomes
so that we can have:

* dark skin when we want it (for practical reasons or style)

* stripey zebra skin (just for this week, it's a novelty)

* genetic tattoos (program your skin to make tattoos of your design)

* cuttlefish skin, glowing jellyfish skin (for parties)

* change eye/hair color to match our clothes when going out

* change mental processing style for exams, getting jobs, learning languages (this week I'm autistic)

------
musesum
TL;DR CRISPR will lead to fewer people on autism/spectrum?

A friend mentioned his son is a bit "Aspy" \- he said it with a bit of pride
in his voice. Both father and son are brilliant coders.

Meanwhile, there's Modafinil. Originally intended as a treatment for
narcolepsy, others use it to improve concentration.

I wonder if neuro-configurability will lead to less or more diversity?

~~~
scalio
Less, because the choices you would be offered would be limited compared to
the messy free-for-all that is natural evolution.

------
WhitneyLand
Like it or not Autistic people will be weeded out of society through fetal
genetic testing or other interventions. It will be a net loss for humanity,
but I don't think there's anyway to stop it.

It's a paradox in that it's nearly impossible to appreciate the value of
neurodiversity until you build a close relationship with such a person.

My cousin Tony with Downs's would have most likely been aborted decades ago if
a test were available. What no one knew is that he would become so kind, good
natured, and socialable it would bring incredible joy and love to literally
hundreds of family members and friends. There won't be too many like him from
now on: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/22/downs-syndrome-
pe...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/22/downs-syndrome-people-risk-
extinction-at-the-hands-of-science-fe)

The paradox is that most families with Autistic or Down's children would tell
you their lives have been greatly enriched. To outsiders it sounds like
parents are in denial and blinded to their child's predicament. But it's not
denial or sympathy, the value is beautiful, but invisible until you experience
it.

~~~
throwaway87293
On the other hand I have heard more than once people who do sometimes very
secretly confess they wish their cousin/brother/etc with Down's had been
aborted. They always talk about all the love and joy and positive things too.
But at the end of the day, they say, they think they would have preferred it
the other way. But this is not pretty, and it's not something people like to
talk about. So if you just take what people say in public, you maybe don't get
accurate representation.

Maybe the people I know are not good representation of the population, though!

~~~
WhitneyLand
Sure, there will always be people who don't make the connection. Just like
there are people who scale approval of their children based on accomplishments
in sports, academics, or whatever.

I'm pretty sure that's a minority though. I'm involved in an organization
where I interact with lots of ASD families and anecdotally at least there are
not many regrets.

The best way I know to explain it is this: [http://www.our-
kids.org/Archives/Holland.html](http://www.our-kids.org/Archives/Holland.html)

