yeah, autism is very much an "umbrella term". we define it by the effects, not by any identifiable causes. there are still broad "less impacted" and "more impacted" cases, arguably a spectrum, but it's very very much not linear.

cystic fibrosis used to be under the (all-encompassing) umbrella "chronic fatigue" because, well, they were chronically fatigued. when its niche finally gained enough data to escape the umbrella, diagnosis and treatment greatly accelerated. of course, you'd expect that once a cause is identified, but umbrellas tend to contain many totally unrelated sub-causes with wildly different subtleties that just happen to fit a vague description that matches others.

Weren't they just saying that the spectrum isn't a measure of severity, not that one can't talk about severity separately.

The article also argues that severity of autism doesn't really make sense.

Well, if it leaves one unable to function effectively in society, or seriously hampered in that, it does make sense to differentiate from a less strong case.

That is a problem with society being severe, rather than the autistic individual

Well, the society is what it is.

If a person can't e.g. talk to someone to buy food, and the huge majority of people can, then they have a problem. That's not severe - it might be not perfectly accomondating, but it's reasonable. And of cource society does try to help in many ways (consulting, people being understanding, parents, school experts, medicine, etc)

Alright, well I can't agree to that part. It all depends on your goals and some people are less able to accomplish their own goals than others due to those traits from the spectrum. There's no need for conceiving of utility to others to speak of grades of functionality.

Sure, but the point is that the thing that is ‘severe’ isn’t ‘autism’. An autistic person can be severely disabled, but the disability is itself a trait they only some autistic people have, so it doesn’t make sense to call the disability ‘autism’.

That doesn't seem like a useful place to draw the distinction. If someone has more autistic traits, they can be considered to be more autistic but not necessarily more disabled.

It’s not clear why you are disagreeing with me.

More autistic isn’t the same a ‘severe’.

well you can have a benign tumor or one that is killing you, by that theory we should say the one that is killing you shouldn't really be called a tumor.

No. You presuppose autism to be a disease, like a tumor.

I think you are showing bias, there is nothing in that comment to suggest the point of the comment is calling autism a disease. I see it as juxtaposing the same condition to different outcomes.

The commenter uses cancer as an analog for autism. That implies disease. It’s not a neutral comparison, and it’s not my bias that introduced the concept of disease.

If you think it’s possible to make the same point without reference to a disease, then by all means do so.

oh darn, another pillar of moral rectitude is going after me, another day another HN comment as it were - very well then these are scooters https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71h6t5-7v7L._AC_SL1500_.... and so is this https://cdn.thewirecutter.com/wp-content/media/2021/12/elect... they both fall into the category of scooters although they perform at far different levels to where you can say the experience of them is far removed from each other.

The difference of course between our two analogies, is that a tumor like autism is something that has been observed by people and not constructed by them, and we do not know much the reason why some tumors are benign and some not and we do not know much the reason why some people with autism are severely disabled and some not. But we do know why some scooters have electric motors and some do not.

In fact it may be that at some point in the future the autism spectrum will be broken up and be identified as several different disabilities, lets say Preboscot's behavioral pattern for those with a range of light autistic behaviors and Ternobyni's syndrome for those with what we would describe as heavy autism today and in that imagined future these different disabilities do not have any actual connection to each other but just manifest in some similar symptoms, the same way that diamonds and clear quartz might have some similarities in appearance.

But until that imagined future comes to pass we live in a present where the the extremes of the autism spectrum are still defined as autism.

I hope that my explanation is acceptable to you, and if you feel a need to morally elevate yourself over others via the sport of internet commenting you pick another target as the night has just started where I am, and my severely disabled autistic child sometimes only lets me have a few hours of sleep as it is, I would at least like to spend the time before he wakes up and wants to jump about relaxing instead of in meaningless argumentation.

It seems like you are simply agreeing that only some autistic people are disabled, and so autism isn’t a disability or disease.

You say people at the “extremes” are disabled, but that’s not true, because there are “extreme” savants who are not disabled.

Nobody is disputing that there are autistic people who are disabled, the claim is simply that autism doesn’t always mean disability.

I remember when that article was trening on HN. I wonder how supported by data that article is, because if it is scientific it would be a wonderful quick and easy reply to people using autism and the spectrum for various arguments.

Higher resolution (of concepts) is better.