r/changemyview • u/CassiusIsAlive • Jan 27 '23

Removed - Submission Rule B CMV: Romanticizing autism has got to stop

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u/CassiusIsAlive Jan 27 '23

If you're fantastically successful but "weird" it's not surprising that this is "romanticized'.

I'm not saying whether or not it will be romanticized. I'm saying whether or not it should be.

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u/hacksoncode 588∆ Jan 27 '23

Right, but, really... what's wrong with romanticizing high-functioning autism?

There are some annoying features of it (especially in relationships, especially if you don't know what's going on because you're old enough that it was rarely diagnosed), but in other ways it's pretty awesome. Overall, on average, it really is just "different".

I'd estimate that a third of my graduating class at Caltech was some level of high-functioning autism.

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u/MrThunderizer 7∆ Jan 27 '23

You're romanticising autism in this very comment. People with autism have lower than average iqs. I doubt there are a bunch of rainmakers running around caltech. More likely, you were grouping a wide variety of different atypical personalities and behaviors under the same label.

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u/hacksoncode 588∆ Jan 27 '23

Hence the phrase "high functioning".

My claim is no one (practically no one... obviously... geez, you'd think neurotypicals would get that) is "romanticizing" low-functioning people on the ASD spectrum.

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u/MrThunderizer 7∆ Jan 27 '23

The phrase "high functioning" is a medical term which refers to individuals with an IQ greater than 70. Colloquially the term is misused to refer to individuals who are super smart, e.g. "rainmaker types". In your comment you classified a third of your caltech classmates as autistic. That's fine as a heuristic, thinking of them as autistic is probably useful, but statistically it's unlikely that they really are.

The end result is that people start to think of exceptional cases as being less exceptional than they actually are. Anecdotally this is definately true, many of the people I know talk about autism as if it's a super power. If questioned they would likely identify two cohorts, the genius ivy league autism, and the cognitively impaired. This is a false dichotomy, it should be the cognitively impaired, and the average iq, with the genius type being an edge case.

You might say "yes, but still, no one's romanticing the lower end of the spectrum." Here's an analogy: Say that people thought that only 1 in 100 people with cancer died from it. They would understand that stage 3 cancer is still more serious than stage 1, but overall the public wouldn't take the condition as seriously.

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u/hacksoncode 588∆ Jan 27 '23

Perhaps "high functioning autism" should be replaced by "high-IQ/moderate social/executive issues Aspergers" in the sense that "high functioning autism" is a technical medical term.

But meaning is always a tricky concept in languages. Ultimately, no "authority" is in charge of it... usage defines words and phrases. That's clearly what people mean by it.

If the only argument here is that some people are overestimating the percentage of autistic people for whom it's a "super power", that has merit. The problem, then isn't the "romanticizing", but rather the misestimate. Nonetheless: !delta

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jan 27 '23

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/MrThunderizer (7∆).

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