Most people on this forum don't have Asperger's Syndrome

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I find this response fascinating and hard to understand. It's as if you took the language Sethno quoted and Sethno's response in complete isolation from the thread. But the thread is the context that gives those words meaning. This reminds me of what Starkid did in responding to my comments about b9's tentative and partial agreement with the OP: both your objection and Starkid's were to the posts as if they had no context.

The language Sethno quoted was from the OP which went on to say:

Yet you responded to Sethno:
In fact he was saying exactly and specifically that.

Even stranger, you suggest that the DSM diagnostic criteria for autism are a guideline for determining who is an is not on the spectrum, but in the original post Mw99 lists "self awareness" and "empathy" as criteria when these are not to be found in the DSM ASD criteria.

I find the discrepancy between your analysis of Mw99's statements as described by Sethno and the actual content of Mw99's post so great that I can only speculate that you did not consider the context at all, but took Sethno's post at contextless face value.

When I saw the language Sethno quoted, I thought, "this is referring back to the original post." But I think you took it as "this is a reference to the specific language quoted" and I suspect that this is very much the same thing Starkid did when objecting to the logic and fallacy that I discussed in the context of b9's post.

I wonder if that is correct and if those divergent understandings of quotes are a frequent source of misunderstandings on these threads?

Wow. I never realize I do that. Thanks for the insight, Adamantium, and you really might be onto something here about the misunderstandings. I just reply to messages without context of who's posting them or where they've posted - I only look at the content, I never even think about context. Any idea on why I do this?

I agree not reading all the posts thoroughly and also not considering the context contributes to many misunderstandings, nonetheless, and I may have missed it, but I don't think Sethno was personally attacked yet wrote something provocative enough it's almost guaranteed to elicit negative reactions and argument. That's not to say it's necessarily wrong to do that, but a post like that gets people reacting because it seems personal and once that happens people think less and react more and I think this encourages more misunderstandings.

Iliketrees you didn't ask me, but I think you are just taking things you read literally. I take things literally a lot and it can lead to misunderstandings.....or teasing at best because people tend not to expect it. Generally I try to just relax, not be defensive and remind myself I'm confusing other people. Much of the time that's all it is. And I try to take their reaction in the context of how they usually act toward me.

Is there a newer term for Down Syndrome?

It seems like a pretty natural thing to do.

It seems maybe more peculiar that I or someone like Sethno might expect others to see the quote as a pointer to the whole conversation and not take a little time to explain that.

I can think of two ASD related ideas that could have an impact on this.

One would be to think of my expectation that Starkid or you would see the quote as a pointer to the context as an example of a faulty Theory of Mind. I am essentially expecting you to think like me without a valid reason for that assumption.

Alternatively, you could look at your seeing the fragment of conversation outside of it's context as an example of something like Uta Frith's controversial and perhaps somewhat discredited Weak Central Coherence theory--generally not seeing the whole but focusing in on the detail.
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Or maybe it has nothing to do with ASD and is just a different general sense of context and style of dialog.


But Sethno's strong language was in reaction to the first post in the thread which was highly provocative and the person who he was addressing, Mw99, doesn't seem to have returned to WP in over five years. If you took what Sethno wrote as a reaction only to that part of the OP that was quoted, then Sethno's post seems over the top, but in reaction to the whole of Mw99's post, it's kind of mild. At least--that's how it seems from my perspective!

If you are referring to the ex. i think it's short for example.

No, it isn't. I don't even understand what you mean by telling me to look at the OP's and b9's posts; do you take b9's thoughts as an extension of the OPs? They are different people with separate opinions. b9 did claim to agree with the OP, but about what exactly (as the OP expressed multiple opinions) it is not quite clear. Even if b9 shared OPs thoughts exactly and in their entirety, "i do not identify with many people on this forum and they, i guess, do not identify with me" is still not necessarily an implicit argument about anything. It could be a mere observation.

As for your above post about reading posts in context: quoting one user implies a response to that user until and unless you make a transition in your comment to talking about something else. It makes no sense to quote someone and interpret and respond to her post as if it were some sort of amalgam of what other posters have said, and is liable to cause confusion. I most definitely did read b9's post in context of the entire thread, but I know that the meaning you ascribe to what b9 said is only a possibility.

If you don't want to quote that to which you are responding, you can simply state it in your own words.

Evidently, while it is perfectly clear to me, it isn't clear to you. Once again, the difference in thinking between myself and others is amazing to me. I find it hard to imagine how you could possibly not perceive what I was describing.

But since I totally failed to communicate, let me try to clarify:

b9 began his post by stating:
Thus, b9 is specifically linking the content of his post to the content of the OP. I don't see any way to read this and avoid connecting b9's subsequent statements and those in the OP.

The key argument for the non-autisitc status of most WP members in the OP was presented in this language:



This breaks down into these propositions:
Self-awareness is inconsistent with Asperger's Syndrome.
Aspergeans lack empathy.
Therefore most people on WP are not Aspegean.

This makes no sense without the implied additional proposition:
Most people on WP are self aware and have empathy.

b9 stated sympathy with some unspecified aspects of the opening post and then went on to provide claims supporting b9's claim to "true aspergers" status before listing a variety of ways in which many posters on WP are not like b9 and rather tentatively concluding "probably most of the people on this site do not have AS."

After reading b9's post carefully, It seemed to me that both b9 and the OP were reaching similar conclusions on the basis of similar logic and that there was a problem in that logic, specifically that it hinges on the questionable assertion "All people with Aspergers are alike," and that is what I tried to explicate in my post.

To me, an analysis of the OP obviously shows that logical structure and analysis of b9's post shows the same structure. To me that is perfectly clear--so much so, that I find it hard to imagine that it is not clear to everyone else. This may be a failure on my part to recognize the diversity of cognitive styles or approaches to logic and parsing of rhetoric among WPs membership.

The difference between the way Mw99 put it and the way b9 put it was that Mw99 spoke in generalities without referring to personal experience while b9 spoke mostly from personal experience in support of the same contention.

I am sorry that my post was not clear and appears to have upset you in content or style. That was not my intention.

no. i was specifically linking the content of my post to the topic title, and that is what i meant when i said "i somewhat agree with the OP". i did not bother reading his post as it did not interest me. i simply posted my perspective pertinent to the title's assertion.

i can not be bothered to rephrase what i said subsequently because i was satisfied with the lucidity of my contribution. your interpretation of it is your prerogative.

i am now going to bed because it is 5:30 am and i have been working on some ideas for many hours and i am tired.

Thank you for the clarifying information about the the OP's content and title in this case, I think it's a distinction with little difference for the reasons already given. There was little substance to the OP beyond the title. So you lost nothing in skipping it.

I don't believe this information alters the analysis of the argument, which I thought you did express with great clarity.

If the ideas you have been working for many hours are something that you share publicly, I look forward to that as I always find your posts interesting and rewarding to read.

The OP was prophetic.

It was consider a fad.

It was eliminated from the DSM, so probably most people on WP don't have AS now.

It won't be a fad in DSM countries anymore, because the new diagnosis of "Autistic Disorder" will associated with intellectual impairment ("mental retardation"). The new diagnosis will function as a badge of dishonor to hide from others because of this association.

The new DSM criteria is that you have functional deficits that need support. If you think, "hey i am just different, nothing wrong with me" then you won't meet the criteria.

If you have the DSM ASD, then you admit to your doctor something is wrong with your brain that needs fixing.

I didn't realize it was 5 years old and I disagree with strong language arguing over a 5 year old post. However, as offensive as I found the original post, it didn't personally insult an individual. The OP was inaccurate, maybe ridiculous, and some people might feel it deserves that kind of slap but not to me, not like that anyway. Reading "you lose" is what really makes me angry.

Yes, you are right. There is really no reason to use that kind of taunting, bullying language.

All the eliminination of the official aspergers diagnosis means is that a consensus of psychologists most if not all of whom are not autistic is that Aspergers does not exist. That is not the same as Aspergers not existing. At one point the "expert" consensus was that the earth was flat. What that means is that while you should respect the expertise you should never take their conclusions as the final conclusion. Since a key criteria of both the old and new diagnosis is signicaficant social communication difficulties it is hideous to conclude fault 100 percent lies with the autistics because lack of communication most often involves fault or plain differences between indidividuals. If groups of non autistics have difficulties communicating depending on the situation it is often accepted the problem lies with both parties or the people are just incompatible. It completely and utterly wrong to accept the idea that all communication difficulties between autistics and the non-autistic is the result of the autistics "impairments"

I've read the premise of the OP and feel it is entirely off base on this. The diagnosis of people with AS has increased due to better diagnostic methods not because it is a "fad". I came of age in the early 70s when someone was not labeled as having AS; they were given a diagnosis of what was known at that time (depression, retardation, manic depressive, schzoid, etc). There were many people from my era who were mis-diagnosed and given false labels they carried around for decades. There is still alot of negative images of someone with AS now as many of you (people who use WP) can attest to and why someone would want this is beyond me. I also see that self-awareness has increased and someone with AS can now say "I am not a defective person, I was born this way and even if others do not accept me, I accept myself"

You have hit the proverbial nail on the head. I would add that it seems to be younger people who bring up this "fad" thing or accuse others of "not being real Aspergers", or try to impose conditions on 'realness'. Some cite the DSM as if it were contents were proven scientific fact, rather than theory married to opinion and culture. Middle-aged and older members don't seem to initiate these of kinds of vaguely hostile and divisive threads; Interpret that as you wish. My interpretation is simply 'when you know better, you do better'.