Diagnosis worshipping

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Couldn't agree more.

Maybe the thread changed after I stopped reading it but I don't remember many people saying that the professionals opinion was definitely correct, but were interested in why the poster was so adamant that it was not correct.

The issue around criteria, severity of defects is complicated. For something to originally be identified as a condition it has to cause severe problems, once a condition is recognised doctors will try and understand the underlying pathology. if once this is understood it is possible to see that more people can share the same underlying pathology even if for some it is milder and wouldnt have manifest strongly enough to have been recognised as the severe condition of the past, should these peoples problems just be considered 'personality traits' even if they are caused by autism just not as severe? I don't think it would apply to everyone on the planet.

To me it focusing on severity of each area of impairment is less important, as long as some impairment in each of the areas has always been present along with other autistic traits, then focusing on the sum impairment is more important. I genuinely think I may have been better off if I was more impaired in some areas, I was social enough to get by and my problems weren't recognised, led to 30 years of misery, confusion and anxiety with no support or self understanding. So I would be very touchy if someone said my 'not impaired enough' social skills meant I wasn't autistic

I'd agree about the talk of integrity, honesty etc are irrelevant, people seem to gloss over the negativism, possible insensitivity and other less positive stuff.

You are correct that loosely throwing about personality traits is using generalization and cannot itself be directly used as a control criteria for scientific assessment. However many generalizations have some basis in fact, especially if you reverse engineer (simplify) the concepts in question down to their real root causes.

Any random person can have a particular personality trait for various reasons, but if start looking deep enough at the patterns of certain trait groupings, and go further in asking the questions as to why exactly someone would tend to have those traits, then you should see ( I would hope ) that the base for these associated sets of traits is a difference in primary perception of reality.

How do we tell the difference between pretend and reality? The brain has certain filters that allow us to both use our imaginations for foresight, and negotiate the real world without confusing the two. The functioning of these filters within the larger system of the brain is where I think the division is between autistic and non-autistic.

I think that the conscious thought of NTs over-rides the filtering system, thus allowing them to experience concept as being real. I think this is natural for them.

Autistics can do this same thing, which greatly clouds the issue. The difference being that autistics learn to simulate the thinking modes used by NTs due to many factors such as psychological pressures, conditioning, and environment dominated by NT type thinking.
That many autistics can simulate this is not the question. The question is if this is their primary reality (natural for them).
I think most of us know the answer to this is no.
If we perceived reality the same, then we probably would not be on this forum.

That said, things like deception, greed, money, etc... are based in concept in that they specifically serve a larger concept of social status hierarchies. It would stand to reason that conceptually driven traits that serve similar functions would get generalized together when differentiating between the two neurotypes.

==>
oops forgot to add.
If it wasn't obvious I wanted to state that those with ASD have GREAT pressures to adopt NT characteristics, but the reverse is not true.
That would suggest a much higher percentage of ASD folks who have been pretending to be NT than the number of NT folks pretending to be ASD.
Naturally there are going to be exceptions to this, but there always will be.

I wish you had went further in your listing.
When I reverse engineer things like negativism and insensitivity, I find that they represent a deficit in adherence to NT social rules.

The NTs describe almost anything that doesn't blatantly serve ego or identity as being a negative, just because it lacks what they call a positive assumption. Simply pointing out the other side of an issue, or considering possibilities that are not most hoped for is labeled as negative. If it doesn't make someone feel better about themselves it is labeled as negative. It is thinking in dichotomies so that things can be sorted into hierarchies. That is identity based thinking. If you don't serve someone's identity, then you have a negative attitude. It is 100% conceptual.

Insensitivity is most often a deficit in over-emoting, and is pointed out when someone's identity feels hurt by your failure to recognize or serve it. Anyone who doesn't serve identity is a threat to identity.

Now do you see that judgments are being made here, not objectively, but mostly within the rules of NT conceptual thinking and expectations?

Keep in mind that they are the rules based on majority in numbers, and not based on real things.

Yes, there is a big bias towards autism diagnosis on WP, both in general discussion and parents discussion.

I agree, as well as glorification/romanticism of autism (I know it's a support forum, but come on, don't make stuff up because it sounds good) and immense disgrace towards NTs.

I don't know how you can asses 'bias' in this situation. It seems logical to me that if someone is diagnosed then it is more likely than not that they are autistic, and if they are it is going to be reflected in the information they give, and will explain why more often people think the diagnoses is valid.

In terms of the boards opinion on the 'am I autistic' threads, again I don't think bias can be assessed. If the board was presented with an equal number of 'am I autistic?' threads from people who are and people who are not, and the general response was always in favour of 'you are' then it would be possible to say there is bias. As peoples true conditions are unknowable, people can only respond based on the information in a case by case basis.

Given that for someone to have got to the point where they think they are autistic there is going to be a strong likelihood that they are (I can't back this up with figures but it seems a logical assumption to me), and if they are then it is going to be reflected in the information given in which people use to base their judgement on, it doesn't seem bias to me.

Also I don't think people making a case against it is helpful. If a person comes here with their reasons and are told they are all things 'normal' people do, it is not helpful. So many symptoms of aspergers are traits that normal people can have, to dismiss them on that basis is not a good thing to do in my opinion, it is about trying to see whether there is a pattern, what problems the person has, whether there is a pattern, whether there is a history, whether there are other associated traits the person may not have even known were often seen in autism. I remember my parents being quite dismissive, every single thing I brought up they tried to explain away with 'lots of people do that', it was so frustrating because it is true and I had to defend every single point one after another,they couldn't seem to grasp that it wasn't about any one individual trait but that it would be incredibly coincidental if I just happened to have these problems matching aspergers, mannerism and quirks that matched aspergers, a profile of strengths and weaknesses matching aspergers, the sensory oversensitivity etc.

And thats what I generally see here, people taking other people at face value and saying agreeing it is a possibility, but asking for more information and trying to establish whether that pattern and profile are there. It is about helping people explore the possibility. To me that seems a lot more helpful than dismissing the possibility, or worse still cyncially assuming people are faking it and trying to be trendy.

Well, speaking for myself, I don't know if I'm on the spectrum somewhere, but I do know that I can relate to many of the things people who have been diagnosed say and do. I wouldn't say it's attention-seeking behaviour, it's more of a haven, for the same reasons aspies and autists post on this forum.

In am I autistic threads, people often list some mild traits that are within normal variation, say that they don't have some key traits like they know what people feel during interactions, or say that they didn't have autistic traits in childhood, and often the replies dismiss these important factors against the person having autism while using the one person with autism thing.

Yes, and it is extremely unhelpful in that it confuses those with a small ASD knowledge base.

The saying 'you've only met one autistic' does not apply when core criteria are not met.

I think we need to give each other a little grace on this issue.

Finding out you are (or may be) on the spectrum will prompt a spectrum of reactions. Some will be glad to find out, others will be disturbed by it. One human trait we all have is some level of needing to belong, and I suspect WP helps us feel that sense of belonging.

I prefer to take people at their word until proven different, and I haven't had any reason to modify that here.

I hope I am, wrong but I think the backlash is far from over. The questions revolve around how far back to 1960s way of thinking about autism we get before it stops, how and if we can limit the damage

Uhh its not impossible for people with autism to know what people feel during an interaction, we can have trouble with that and reading body language or subtle cues....but I have had plenty of instances where I have an understanding of how the other person in an interaction feels, sometimes people will even say how they feel.

So not sure how that would disqualify someone from being on the spectrum....also a lot of times when someone isn't even that specific about how severe a certain thing is people just assume it must be in the normal range, if that where the case though why would the person be concerned they have autism? I just don't think diagnoses can be made over the internet anymore than they could be revoked....end of story, even experts who diagnose autism can't do it with any certainty over the internet.

Is it possible to think you know what people are feeling when you are in fact wrong about it? Wouldn't that be a sign of autism? Someone on the spectrum wouldn't know this. How do you know you are right about how people are feeling?

I'd say there have been interactions where I have an idea of what the other person is feeling, then it turns out I was right as they express feeling how I thought they did. However It's not body language or anything like that which clues me in, its like I can sort of sense it...trouble is sometimes I have for instance sensed anger and thought it was directed at me when it wasn't...so yeah I have gotten it 'wrong' lots of times. But there are times I am right about it and don't automatically assume its about me.

I think neurotypicals can read other neurotypicals wrong too....so yeah I don't think 'never knowing what the other person might think/feel in an interaction' is a diagnostic criteria, don't remember it being in the DSM.

I think it is more a matter of not thinking about or considering what people are feeling when interacting. That has to do with ToM.
Then there is also not being able to read social cues. It sounds to me like two different issues that can have the same consequence or be present together.
Maybe it's all just not being able to process too much incoming information at the same time.

At any rate, it's not something that people could judge accurately on the internet, especially since people have different ways of describing their experience.