Threads about "Did X have AS/Autism"?

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Can we please stop allowing threads about "Did <idiot who showed clear signs of hatred, narcissism, paranoia, inability to trust people, low empathy> have AS/Autism?" and similar ones?

They do not contribute to anything and just shows that someone who obviously haven't even bothered to read the diagnostic criteria try to attribute AS/Autism to people of good or bad reputation to soothe their eccentric special interests and really does nothing for the community, especially when journalist may be searching these forums and make ill informed opinions.

This is the thread i'm particularly annoyed about, i wish it and similar would go away.
http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=214114

I've heard this argument before from a Swedish SERIAL KILLER that tried to get an AS diagnosis just to get reduced sentence. He obviously do not have it and later on he admitted just pulling it up for fun, though it has nothing to do with the diagnosis at all and just casts a shadow over the Autism community.

Crap like this need to end.

Seconded.

I find retro and celebrity diagnosing very questionable also but I do not think censoring will do any good. It will not make thoughts like this go away and in fact, may backfire and convince people there is something to it. Even if somehow WP would add software that immediately deletes such threads this type of speculation will continue to run rampant outside of WP. The knowledge of autism is higher here so the counter-arguments are better here.

Some seem legitimate to me, for example the threads on scientists who show many known AS criteria, (Paul Dirac is an example of what I think would be a legitimate thread).

Like you, the Hitler stuff is grossly offensive to me, and if there is enough support for that view, then it can be removed.
No-one has reported it to date, as far as I know. Reports like that are discussed by the mods and consensus decisions reached.

I think that the Hitler thread is a sort of parody of the other threads (hence the poll options), making the point that we shouldn't only try to apply the autism label to positive historical figures, but should try to be unbiased in our analysis.

Hitler was retrodiagnosed by child and adolescent psychiatrist Micheal Fitzgerald in his 2004 book "Autism and Creativity" and by his biographer Bengt Liljegren. I had my support group facilitator mention that he thought Hitler was an aspie. As distasteful as it is the notion can't be censored or wished away.

I don't think I read the first post thoroughly enough. I'm not certain banning is the way, but I would like the kind of discussion going on in this post to happen more.

I think there is some merit to wondering whether certain historical figures were autistic, particularly in the cases where there is a lot of information on their childhood and relationships and such. Among likely autistics, Tesla and Turing spring to mind. Otherwise we are pretending that autism is something that magically appeared in the 19th century. People need to hold back on certainety, though.

The Hitler thing is not a great idea though. I partly doubt that an autistic person would rise to such political prominence, and I find the kind of 'retrodiagnosis' mentioned in the above post to be scientifically questionable. There is no scientific consensus on what Hitler might have 'had', although historians agree that both Hitler and Stalin had abusive childhoods - there's your scientific consensus, and it's probably more relevant.

I agree with Ichinin that this kind of thoughtless speculation can be incredibly damaging. I can just see the headlines: 'Autistics identify with Hitler' or some s**t like that, and then every mass shooting where the perpetrator even just looked a bit funny gets pulled into the picture, because scientific rigor doesn't enter into it.

I personally see no problem with "did x have Asperger's/autism?" threads. Obviously we can never know for sure, but we can examine the evidence for and against and discuss it, if we so choose.

I think it would be hypocritical to only say it's okay if it was someone who did something good. We are gonna find ASD people in all walks of life, including among those some people view as a sort of he-who-must-not -be- named.

A similar thing came up here in Norway too after Anders Behring Breivik's terror attacks in Oslo and Utøya. The most common assumed thing seemed to be paranoid schizophrenic but Asperger's was also mentioned (by a pediatrician who hadn't seen him since he was 4 according to the news, which seems very young and early to me, but that is besides the point).

The one Ichinin mentioned was a parody but I chose to answer the thread seriously myself. I see nothing wrong with speculating and discussing the topic. A despot with an ASD will not make other ASD people despotic any more than a genius with an ASD will make other ASD people geniuses. I don't think it should make any difference who "x" is.

Any childish individual who thinks it is funny to insult me and send me personal messages trying to portray me as an idiot who do not know what sarcasm is, will receive a nasty message, regardless of what mods say.

If you act like an ass, you will get what you deserve.

Worth noting that the Hitler thread is five years old.
[quote="Ichinin"]Any childish individual who thinks it is funny to insult me and send me personal messages trying to portray me as an idiot who do not know what sarcasm is, will receive a nasty message, regardless of what mods say.

If you act like an ass, you will get what you deserve.
quote]


Please report any nasty messages so we can take appropriate action.

Ichinin, the PM you sent to that member was reported by the recipient as breaking the rules, which it did. If you received one that you think also broke the rules, then report it too, the mods can't see PMs unless they are reported by recipients.
(nor should they).

Many "Did X have AS/Autism?" threads are about positive figures.

Many (like Lincoln) seem like a bit ridiculous as possible aspies/auties, others (like Newton) seem plausible.

But the point is: do you want to ban both kinds of threads? Or just the ones about villains in history?

I don't like it either when someone launches the periodic "was Hitler an aspie" thread (it happens ever 3 years or so- different individuals on WP will unknowingly post that same suggestion every few years).

Hitler had little to suggest he was an aspie, and even if he were an aspie the distinctive traits that made Hitler infamous were not his aspie traits, but other traits like his sociopathy.

But someone on WP once argued that "we have to take the bad with the good". So if we wanna claim some of history's heroes we also hafta be open to the suggestion that some of history's villians might have been aspie as well. I find it hard to answer that argument. So I guess if you allow the "was Lincoln an aspie?" threads, and even the "was Alfred Wainwright an aspie?" then you hafta allow the "was Hitler an aspie" threads.

It's all too easy to armchair diagnose celebrities and public figures present or past because we are so distanced from them. There are problems that arise from this, however.

-Which people can/can't we armchair diagnose? E.g. what if someone wanted to ask if Hitler or Stalin or Trump or Obama had Autism or Sociopathic tendencies and dedicate a thread to discussions. Wouldn't it full onto bias and partiality to say some of those examples are OK and some aren't? And what about assuming if say child actors had Autism? I think it's all touchy ground personally, a slippery slope.

-How is it any different from criticizing a person on this forum and assuming things about them and their character, which would normally result in a poster breaking the rules?

I see only 2 solutions:
-Allow all threads of this nature as long as they don't pertain to existing or previous members, and members of other forums and non public figures for whom we have no consent to talk about. Moderate the threads as per usual based on ground rules of other subfora.

-Don't allow these threads of any related activity, period.