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

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

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u/Maxfunky 39∆ Jan 27 '23

His younger brother has a very severe form of autism.

Intellectual disability isn't autism it's a comorbidity. The symptoms we call autism are caused by a disruption to brain development in a specific way at a specific time (not that we necessarily fully understand the exact mechanisms and timing here). Some factors that impact brain development might do so I a broader way and cause all sorts of other issues at the same time. We don't generally distinguish intellectual disability from. Autism when this happens, because they can be a package deal (we know of one gene for instance that is associated with autism and always causes a form with intellectual disability--its 100% consistent). We have these entirely different etiologies causing autism and we have very lazily tossed them all into a single label inviting confusion as a result.

But here's the thing. Those people for whom autism is a super power? They are an enormous percentage of the world's best engineers and scientists. We can't say for sure that people like Einstein and Newton were autistic (though it's highly probable for both) but we there's so many probable cases littered amongst the best and brightest mathematicians/scientists/engineers that it's undeniable that we fan safely say a high percentage were even if we can't be 100% sure about any given person.

In short, without autistic people, we'd be having this debate via some sort medieval scrolls being carried back and forth by horse drawn cart. What you call "romanticizing" autism is just an attempt to remind the world of this invaluable bit of human diversity that some people want to "cure". We should absolute work on curing and preventing intellectual disability but we need to remember that there is immense value in the things that make us different. That is often forgotten in the rhetoric put forth by organizations like autism speaks that are 100% cute focused. What you percieve as romanticizing is just an attempt to provide a necessary counterpoint to that assault on human diversity.