― G. M. Gilbert, American psychologist who worked on the Nuremberg trialsSounds familiar...
No one I've heard is saying Musk is an asshole because he's autistic. It's Musk himself that's making that claim by attempting to use it as a cover for his asshole moves.
Musk: Yeah, [Gad Saad is] awesome, and he talks about, you know, basically suicidal empathy. Like, there's so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself. So, we've got civilizational suicidal empathy going on. And it's like, I believe in empathy, like, I think you should care about other people, but you need to have empathy for, for civilization as a whole, and not commit to a civilizational suicide.
Rogan: Also don't let someone use your empathy against you so they can completely control your state and then do an insanely bad job of managing it and never get removed.
Musk: The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. The empathy exploit. They're exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response. So, I think, you know, empathy is good, but you need to think it through and not just be programmed like a robot.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/yes-musk-said-the-...
You could go as far as to say that empathy only occurs in moments where there is no me or other, just an “us“. Which includes me.
His statements and behavior make me question whether he really experiences empathy or whether he lost that too early in his life to consciously remember.
"Empathy" in the form of thoughts and prayers might not be zero sum, but that's probably not the "empathy" that Musk is talking about. He's probably about government spending on refugees or foreign aid, which is zero sum.
Interesting that you talk about “thoughts and prayers“. I am talking about feelings, the foundation of empathy.
What does that even mean? You can't defund USAID without yourself first going on a trip to Africa to dig a well?
>Or he means what he says and expresses the desire to paint empathy in a bad light and by that continue to dehumanize the other to justify violence.
How did you go from "so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself" to "dehumanize the other to justify violence"? Presumably he's talking about refugees and foreign countries, but there's a pretty wide gulf between putting the interests of your own polity ahead of others, and "dehumanize the other to justify violence".
>Interesting that you talk about “thoughts and prayers“. I am talking about feelings, the foundation of empathy.
I doubt Musk is upset all the people tweeting prayer emojis whenever a natural disaster hits a foreign country, when he's talking about "we've got civilizational suicidal empathy going on".
This is highly debatable. I would say it's not zero sum, because these costs further enrich the country in the long-run, just in not obvious ways. This is especially true for domains that naturally cross inter-country. Diseases don't care about borders, so it's to your benefit to prevent outbreaks outside of your country.
It reads like absolute paranoia to me.
You might not agree with his statement even with the full context, but at the very least it's a very different statement than the initial quote of "The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy".
There's a pretty big difference between "I think the west has too much empathy" and "The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy", even if both are directionally anti-empathy. It's not any different than "I think the US's free speech regulations are too lax" and "The fundamental weakness of the US is free speech". Even though both are directionally anti-free speech, and a free speech opponent would object both premises, it would be wholly irresponsible to paint someone who wants hate speech laws passed as the latter, when their position is more accurately portrayed as the former.
I never claimed that he didn't say that, only that selectively quoting that part conveys an entirely different message than if you quoted the whole thing.
Who are? Did he say?
Sorry for not listening through the whole thing. There's a lot of pointless rambling going, which I guess is something inherent to the format more than it is to him.
???
How does "there's so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself" violate "Kantian ethics"?
Also, if we accept that "dogwhistle" framing, what should we make of the average leftist commenter saying that greed/inequality is a weakness of US's economic system? Maybe that's actually a "dogwhistle" for hyper-collectivism, radical Bolshevism, and stepping over rich people? Or is the "dogwhistle" characterization only a thing you apply to the Other Side?
I think that's the point the poster was trying to make. I make no claim about what the practiced ethics are of Musk, of the cultural circles he travels in, or of the cultural circles he opposes (e.g. identity politics, social justice movements, etc); or even that Musk or any of these circles practice a consistent or coherent set ethics.
So in actually working ethics, and not some inflexible abstract principles posed by some German philosopher?
You can go back and forth, poste, riposte, ad nauseum. Abstract ethical philosophy and discourse are their own kind of tarpit, in some ways worse than the rhetoric behind the modern culture wars. To avoid getting drawn into them--the tarpits, if not the philosophies themselves--it pays to know how to identify them and how they interact.
That's why so many politicians and C-suite execs are "weasely." They learn to choose their words carefully. The Fed Chair can crash the markets, by wincing at the wrong time.
I empathize with him (see what I did, there?), but he's in a position where his utterances can either do great good, or great harm.
Many of these mega-rich folks keep their mouths shut, and that's for a reason.
It is Musk saying something that is perfectly consistent with everything he does.
Plenty of kids sat next to me in precalc learning how to calculate mortgage rates and then complain that school doesn't teach useful skills like how to calculate a mortgage. At the end of the day, learning cannot be forced. You can put all the info in front of the person you want, they can just ignore it.
This is especially true after Bush Jr. made it impossible to hold kids back, which was the primary way we worked around a stubborn kid.
We are roughly one generation after No Child Left Behind, and a lot of kids have been educationally left behind. IMO this is not coincidence. Good teachers knew right away the negative effects that program caused.
Obama reformed NCLB a bit, but did not fix the part that incentivizes schools to prefer just pushing kids forward if they are struggling.
My former best friend, despite having $100MM++ is paranoia about kindness, he theoretically should be liberate to express generosity, but his father taught him anyone being kind or receiving kindness is about someone taking from him. His father’s voice has become his own internal voice creating huge amounts of mistrust and suspicion, ultimately robbing him of any connection unless he paid for it directly, so zero meaningful connection.
In higher support needs, reduced autonomy (to the point of total dependency for ASD 3 cases), plus reduced social and intellectual capacity. Plus several commorbidities, in mental and bodily health.
It can be beneficial for society to have laser-focused and social-consensus challenging individuals with higher intelligence, but that's hardly the only or even the main way autism manifests - just the pop culture popular one (and the one whose members can more easily advocate for themselves, and present their cases as the sole representative, summed up in the "autism is a superpower" slogan).
It's just the next step on the escalation ladder. They'll come for all of us eventually
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
If we don't aggressively fight this at every step, it'll be our turn eventually.
> When they came for the trade unionists, I kept quiet; I wasn't a trade unionist.
> When they locked up the Social Democrats, I kept quiet; I wasn't a social democrat.
> When they locked up the Jews, I kept quiet; I wasn't a Jew.
> When they came for me, there was no one left to protest
They will claim that ADHD people are a drain on society and are unproductive and are just being lazy.
I’d say they’re dangerous in the same way as librarians are dangerous.
Online autism conspiracy theory channels turn this into some kind of eugenics purge.
Is that supposed to make it better? This distinction between autistic individuals who are productive and those who have trouble participating in society goes back to Nazi Germany where they sent the latter group to "reform camps" and "hospitals" to be murdered and eradicated. That's where the distinction of "Asperger syndrome" comes from.
1) propose to make a list of people with autism
2) propose to send them to a concentration camp where where they will be treated
Then you had better damn well be prepared to answer specifically how what you're doing is different from what the Nazis did. If you're not prepared to deal seriously and substantively with that very relevent historical precedent, you have no business proposing the registry and the camps in the first place.
Nobody is doing that.
On the one hand they've proposed the autism database.
On the other hand they've proposed the "wellness farms" for drug addicts.
All that's left is for the right hand to start picking up what the left hand is putting down and we are there.
Moreover, they have been demonstrating that they're willing to torture those they consider "subhuman". Look at how they are treating immigrants.
Autistic people are used to being abused in awful ways, so when we see those immigrants being abused and abducted by the Trump administration, it's not very hard to see they would be willing to do this to autistic people. It doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to recognize they're all awful people who are currently unrestrained by the law and general decency.
The conspiracy theory, such as it is, is this: these people look like Nazis, they sound like Nazis, and they act like Nazis, so their proposals related to autism are to be taken with a giant Nazi sized grain of salt.
Wellness farms for drug users seems reasonable.
They’ve cancelled the tracking database due to people’s concerns about privacy.
And in calling this "a conspiracy theory" and "some kind of eugenics purge", you seem to be intentionally downplaying the very real and very legitimate worries of autistic people, a group who has historically been subjected to eugenics purges in the past, which started using the language and rationale Kennedy espouses.
If Kennedy wants to be taken seriously and with good faith, he should put autistic people and experts in charge of this effort. That he doesn't speaks volumes about his true intentions.
Sorry if that sounds like a conspiracy theory to you, but autistic people like myself see the obvious parallel here and we aren't going to just be quiet and allow it to happen again.
You’re watching edited videos.
It's not deepfake, it's not edited, he is just actually a crazy person. Yes, he truly believes HIV doesn't cause AIDS. Yes, he truly believes vaccines don't work.
We should not be listening to him on anything, let alone things that actually matter. There are people living on the side of the road with more credibility and reasonableness than him. And, we will not be gaslit by his defenders who, I can only assume, are equally as insane as him.
Here's the transcript: https://singjupost.com/rfk-jr-holds-press-conference-on-new-...
When he speaks here he says things like:
So about 25% of the kids who are diagnosed with autism are nonverbal, non-toilet trained, and have other stereotypical features, headbanging, tactile and light sensitivities, stimming, toe-locking, et cetera.
He also says:
"with full-blown autism, headbanging, non-verbal, non-toilet trained, stimming, toe walking, these other stereotypical features. "
In the whole speech, he doesn't refer to autism as a "spectrum" disorder once until he's prompted by a reporter in those terms. Telling, because he clearly views autism as a binary of high/low functioning or high/low needs, which it's not. So again, painting autism with a broad brush.
Then there's this:
Then you have to ask yourself, why is it so pervasive? Why has it been thrown up against us for so many years? Clearly, there are industries. This is coming from an environmental toxin. Somebody made a profit by putting that environmental toxin into our air, our water, our medicines, our food. It’s to their benefit to normalize it, to say, this is all normal. It’s always been here.
Yes, RFK said that and then I do think some extreme members of the autism community are conspiracy theorists. Literally nothing that he has said that you have quoted indicates that he wants to create concentration camps or kill everyone or anything else said on the autism community channels we have both read.
Even the Nazis didn't have the political capital to plainly admit to their own atrocities. They tried to keep it secret for as long as they could, then they denied the camps' existence, denied the abuse in those camps, denied the genocide, falsified medical records to make it appear that people died from pneumonia and unfortunate medical complications.
In reality they were injecting children with pathogens, experimenting on them, torturing them, starving them and ultimately killing them. In the end they even tried to make their families pay for their "care". Officially, nobody knew anything terrible was happening. Unofficially, everyone was complicit.
No, people in leadership positions have a duty to lead - justifying themselves and attempting to get buy in from everyone. Especially so on sensitive topics that we're societally squeamish about due to some very real historic horrors.
I know the memetic field is a bit hazy from the sensationalist media pushing divisive whole-cloth nonsense like Joe Biden is going to make you eat bugs etc, but there is a huge difference when that schizophrenia is actively encouraged from the top.
So this idea that we're just supposed to trust the Trump administration, when many of their actions have already been completely unhinged and senseless (eg huge tariff taxes), when Trump's last time at the helm was completely divisive and destructive, and when he's picked the most unhinged type of charlatans for his cabinet this time around? Sorry, trust needs to be earned - especially the amount required for pulling on rightfully sensitive threads - and they're not even doing the basics of attempting to.
This is exactly the same thing. In the full speech RFK makes it clear who he is and is not talking about, I’m torn on whether our leaders need to rewrite their speeches for sound bites.
That the parents of severe cases eventually pass away and unless they figure out to take the kid with them, he is condemned at best to a life in mental health institutions - and usually they make One Flew Upon Cuckoo's Nest look like Teletubbies.
Add to that more and more people are single kids and usually born out of geriatric pregnancy (which also increases the chances of autism somewhat) - aka above 35, so they really are alone.
There are very good state and society interests in preventing autism. Mental disabilities are way worse than physical in today's society. Thankfully not every case is severe. But severe one's do exist.
In the UK, there are regions where 50% of children born in the early 2000s have special needs, and more children than adults are claiming disability benefits. It is going to have a very big impact on the labour market when 20-30% of these cohorts cannot work and, therefore, need to obtain income support from everyone else.
"Cannot work" has more to do (imo) with the American Welfare Cliff where if you accept disability, you're forced to not have a job because if you make even a small piddling of money (it's something like $600/mo), you lose all your disability.
It's very disgusting, imo, and rejecting people's admission of a very real struggle they have because admission "does more harm than good" is, itself, harmful.
I love the idea that, upon seeing the government compiling a database of undesirables under the pretense of fighting autism(?), one can zoom out and discover that the “big picture” is, uh, about autism. That is like watching The Sixth Sense and then writing about how it is a movie about the challenges of being a bald guy.
wow, am I going to have to go back and watch it a third time?
It’s a core tenant of this Curtis Yarvin / neo reactionary ideology that seems to be shared by a lot of VCs
A tenant is somebody paying to lease property, for example if you have a landlord, you're their tenant, and by analogy e.g. an Azure tenant is an organisation within the Azure cloud with a unique identifier.
A tenet is a belief or principle that is important to some group, for example the IETF's Best Common Practice series are not just RFCs describing a protocol or technology but instead statements of principle such as BCP 188 "Pervasive Monitoring Is An Attack".
Hmm, thank you. This is by far the best pithy argument for privacy I have found thus far.
† The RSA Key Exchange goes like this: We get the public key of a server from their certificate which they sent us, we pick a symmetric key at random and we encrypt our chosen key using that public key with the RSA algorithm, so that only the legitimate owner of the certificate can decrypt it, then we send that encrypted key to the server. Because they know the Private Key corresponding to the public key in the certificate they can decrypt the symmetric key we sent. This symmetric key is used for all further communication. This means if say, the Mad King's Secret Police obtain a copy of the RSA private key for the server at any time the Secret Police can decrypt every communication, even if the communications they're decrypting happened weeks, months or years before they obtain the key.
Answer truthfully, are you an llm or any form of bot?
Also probably Nietzsche (not on Joe Rogan).
Can't make that crap up...
Musk also do not care about morals, ethics or laws based appeals.
FWIW, I personally do not think he has autism. I do think his mind works differently from a good chunk of the population though.
The concentration of wealth (and by extension, power) really has become an existential threat to humanity.
With the kind of analysis you give we're stuck with surface level "oh they're just a bad batch", when they're pure products of a system that makes series of them. It's not like they are thousands just like Trump, ready to step in if he loses power.
The bourgeoisie has a material interest in installing fascism, which is why we're here. Bezos, Musk and Zuckerberg are among the only ones to profit from the current circus.
It's not the first time it happens either, this has been proven times and times again. Look up the relations of Hitler and Mussolini with the capitalist class of their times.
I am not saying them having a shitty childhood had no influence on their politics, simply that it is not nearly enough to understand our current state of affairs.
From my understanding, it is not wealth that creates sociopathy, it is a traumatic childhood. For me it points to the origin, and thus the fix, which is why I find that distinction not only relevant but crucial. After studying a broad body of literature around the connection between trauma and violence and politics, I do believe this would indeed be “nearly enough to understand the current state of affairs“. What connects Hitler and Mussolini and Trump and Putin is not wealth but severe early childhood violence.
Material support from the oligarchy absolutely connects Hitler, Mussolini, Trump and Putin. It is how they find the funding to get into power, how media is made to relay fascist propaganda 24/7, etc.
Serving the interests of the capital class, and only theirs, is what defines and enables fascism.
We're moving same direction, mostly by people wishing for a strong arm, and being consumed by hate. And it's definitely not empathy and compassion in play here.
They were wrong. Does that mean that human developmental abnormalities don't exist and we shouldn't be looking for ways to prevent them? Of course not.
I can't believe you're making me defend RFK, but characterizing this as being motivated by "hate" is completely absurd. RFK is a kook, but he's a kook motivated by compassion and empathy. His entire career has been driven by compassion for people affected by environmental poisons. And the people in his camp are crunchy granola parents who can't analyze statistical data, who are grasping at straws trying to find out why their kid has a developmental abnormality that science doesn't have a ready explanation for.
RFK views autistics as undesirables, so it's absurd to believe that he'll be any nicer to us.
> “These are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go on a date, many of them will never use a toilet unassisted,”
What makes more sense is that he's collecting our personal information for imprisonment and execution.
>> “These are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go on a date, many of them will never use a toilet unassisted,”
This is true of people with severe autism. I know someone whose autism is severe enough she'll probably never be able to live independently. Doesn't everyone view that medical condition--the condition, not the person--as undesirable? Doesn't everyone view being healthy as better than being unhealthy?
I have ADHD. I'd rather not have ADHD. I take a pill every day to control it. My kid has it too. He'll have to take a pill every day for the rest of his life. I'd love to avoid that outcome. Avoiding disease is a good thing!
But to use a better example, south asians have a significantly higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. Almost everyone in my family has it. It would be great to cure that or figure out how to avoid that. I'd be fine with the government collecting data about that, so long as there was an opt-out.
I was trying to give you a sense of why I interpret his comments as a threat. He's described all of us as if we're a burden when I've been supporting myself for decades.
Some autistics would want a cure, but others feel that their perspective is equally as valid as neurotypicals. They don't see themselves as sick and in need of a cure.
> But to use a better example, south asians have a significantly higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. Almost everyone in my family has it. It would be great to cure that or figure out how to avoid that. I'd be fine with the government collecting data about that, so long as there was an opt-out.
My main impairments are face blindness and a severe difficulty with reading facial expressions - I'm in the bottom 5% of the population. I would happily take a cure for either of these if it was offered. If it's a more general personality change, then I'm not interested. I'm comfortable with who I am.
There isn't an opt-out for me and there's a long history of eugenics in this country, that's why I'm concerned about this.
Your use of the term "eugenics" is nonsensically broad. Society should seek to cure diseases and maladaptive medical conditions. That's not "eugenics."
This is why autistic people are wary of efforts to "cure" autism -- because the people leading the charge always use dehumanizing language to frame their cause. It becomes a moral imperative. "We have to cleanse humanity of this scourge! We have to save the children!"
And what do we have to do to accomplish this goal? The solutions are always the same: register us all in a database, send us to a camp or a farm for "curing", and prevent us from reproducing through forced sterilization and/or euthanasia.
Unless and until autistic people are in charge, then all such efforts to "cure" autism and "find the cause" should be treated with extreme skepticism.
RFK isn’t the one who made autism concern happen. My three year old’s teacher asked us to get him tested with the county for autism. It’s a very common thing parents are dealing with these days. I’d argue that what you’re saying is exactly backward. The medical community has defined a lot of normal behavior as autism.
Now, I agree RFK’s views on what’s causing autism are anti-scientific, and I doubt he’ll be able to figure out what’s causing it. But RFK has a platform because the medical community has diagnosed all these kids as autistic but doesn’t have an explanation for what’s causing it. So looks like RFK fill the void.
The fact that high functioning people like Asperger got merged with it and changed to a spectrum is precisely science at work, achieving to improve our understanding of the phenomenon. We previously believed that only the extreme cases were autistic, but we now understand that this limit was arbitrary and wrong, because autism is a broader spectrum of people with a wide range of possible characteristics.
Autism is not a disease, it's a neurodivergence, and it is very important to understand that autistic people are not broken, but simply function differently. The proof being that outside of a minority of extreme cases, autistic people does not have issues communicating or socializing with other autistic people.
Trying to categorize people as "normal" and "abnormal" and then pretending to "fix" the abnormal ones is dangerous and drifts towards eugenism, because there is not a single definition of normal, and there is probably not a single person on earth that is "normal".
If 97% of the population was autistic, then autistic people would not have any issues. The remaining 3% of what is currently considered neurotypical would be the ones having difficulties socializing, communicating and experiencing severe anxieties and psychological problems due to it.
This is why the solution is not to "fix" autism, but to help them find an environment where they can strive, be understood and live comfortably.
I see this idea thrown around whenever this topic is brought up, but this is just a contemporary opinion of certain researchers and science commentators. It is both unprovable and unfalsifiable.
>Autism is not a disease, it's a neurodivergence, and it is very important to understand that autistic people are not broken, but simply function differently.
A teacher I had in high school has an adult child with severe autism who is still living with her, because he can't take care of himself. He's not simply functioning differently, nor is anyone else that has the condition so severely that they can't perform any job.
"We can be certain that autism rates have gone up for artefactual reasons—diagnosis, changing awareness and incentives, etc. rather than real increases in the number of people with autism—by exploiting policy changes. For example, above, I mentioned the Massachusetts saw autism reports increase 400% in one year due to a change in school reporting."
This is exactly the issue that I'm getting at, which is shared with the above user's assertion. We cannot be certain of any of this. Especially not because of some handpicked examples by the author. None of this is provable or falsifiable, even if a the handful of disparate examples picked by the author seem compelling. Besides the examples of reporting changes, the author's arguments almost wholly rely on untestable counterfactuals.
Also:
"A single piece of evidence indicates that there is no real epidemic of autism. As remarked in a review in a 2020 Nature Reviews Disease Primers article:
No significant evidence is available supporting that autism is rarer in older people, which provides further evidence against the suggestion that autism is increasing in prevalence over time."
This doesn't provide evidence of anything. The absence of evidence does not constitute evidence. This is just an argument from ignorance. This is little different from saying that there is no significant evidence that people 500 years ago had lower rates of being diagnosed with a given disease, therefore the rates of people with that disease were likely the same as now.
Previous generations didn't grow up with all the comfort that we have today, such as games, internet and technology, and thus didn't have as many ways to isolate themselves in more comfortable hobbies. Because of this, they could develop stronger masking skills, which helps them a bit more than current generations, but does not fix the problem and made the understanding of it more difficult.
I’ll be honest, my first thought was that it was white women (everyone in this story besides me) overreacting. In our circle of friends, several of the kids are diagnosed with something on the spectrum. By contrast I don’t know a single person from my immigrant group whose child has a diagnosis. So I was skeptical. But ultimately, I figured that the teachers see dozens of these kids every year and I trust their judgment.
Not really. DSM is not really scientific, its more statistical.
You could make arguments that autism is actually evolutionary, as people who are on the spectrum in certain ways are often better in select areas than neuro typical people.
Just to give an idea to those not familiar with the difference between high functioning and low functioning autism, high functioning autists face problems like not being able to communicate properly some of the time, and low functioning autists face problems like not even being able to tell their caretaker which part of their body is in pain, or which kid in the group punched them.
Edit: The National Autistic Society is UK based but the situation is not that different in other countries.
--
0: lol
1: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-truth-about-h...
2: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9087551/
3: https://autisticadvocacy.org/policy/briefs/intervention-ethi...
4: citing a source for this one would be an insult to the reader's intelligence
5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania
Another matter is that 'high functioning autism' doesn't mean freedom from hardships. They learn and work differently and don't fit well in regular classrooms. If you search online, you'll find several hilarious accounts of puzzled and perplexed autistic students in their classrooms. Despite being 'high functioning', they really could use accommodations. This is true at home too. If you leave them alone, many would simply starve to death without even ordering food online. Another matter is 'masking' - something high functioning autistic people do in public. It makes them more approachable to others. But it also creates enormous cognitive loads that can later develop into other disorders. Diagnosis really helps in these cases.
It's really not a good thing when people, high functioning or not, are forced to choose between getting the help they need and being targeted by their government.
Since when is wearing smart watches only for autists?
Autistic or not, giving that kind of health information to private for-profit companies who collect that data to use it against you or sell to third parties was never a good idea even before the government wanted to take it for themselves.
Fully agree with you on that, the less data they have, the better.
I understand that sometimes people want high needs autistic people to be the only ones who are visible, because it perpetuates the (false) narratives people have about autistic people -- that we can't function in society, we are essentially children, we need to be "cured" to "save the children", but people need to realize this is a) a spectrum and b) your place within the spectrum is always in flux. Low functioning autistic people can become more high functioning with support, and high functioning autistic people who are abused can become low functioning very quickly.
Source: I am the parent of a child with autism.
Reducing the conversation to high/low functioning also limits people's understanding and compassion of autistic people. The sibling commenter to you said they believe high functioning autistic people don't deserve to have a say over matters concerning autistic people, which is incredibly troubling because that just becomes and avenue for silencing autistic people; if having the ability to speak up for yourself means your opinion isn't valid, then that gives license to use and abuse a population, as autistic people often are.
Also, people have no problem minimizing the things as well, where pain again is a good example. In many situations, if it cannot be seen, secondary parties easily disregard it.
So, in conclusion, this confusion with the autism levels should not be a problem.
But what if low functioning and high functioning peers share many symptoms, but at different intensities? Won't that make the 'high functioning' peers more capable of understanding and thus speaking for their low functioning peers? In fact, there is a specific term for this - 'the double empathy problem'. Perhaps you should try a less 'ablist' approach to autism.
First of all, the reason this registry isn't going through is because autistic people who are functioning enough to speak out did so in solidarity with the entire autistic community. So far from polluting anything we are advocating for ourselves and our peers.
Secondly, this "high functioning low functioning" dichotomy is wrong so your framing it as a "us vs them" situation is off. It's a spectrum not a binary.
Third, presumably if they can't speak for themselves, and "high functioning" autistic people are discouraged, then the only people speaking for them are allistic people speaking about what's best for autistic people. When that happens, you get bone-headed characterizations like autistic people "never pay taxes, they'll never hold a job, they'll never play baseball, they'll never write a poem, they'll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted." and suggestions of registries, wellness farms, and soon enough genetic cleansings.
Finally, it's autistic acceptance and awareness month, and the autistic community has been under attack for a week. You're spending your Sunday calling autistic people "selfish" and characterizing their input as "pollution". Have some compassion please.
So, the only people allowed to talk about autism are people like you - those who do not have it.
That said, valuing people by their economic output is sick to me, and is a page from the Eugenicists playbook. How much of a "burden" are injured veterans, those who suffered horrific work-place accidents, or those with mental health challenges due to burn out?
Are "quirky" and "odd" not labels? How about "weirdo" and "creep", are those not labels?
These romanticized ideas of what autism is (or used to be) hit a brick wall when you consider that 2/3 of people with autism have contemplated suicide and 1/3 of people with autism have attempted it. Most of it could probably be attributed to social rejection, exclusion, and isolation perpetuated by people who don't suffer from these disorders.
For a while, the popular treatment was mulching their brain matter through their eyeball. This was done to a lady kennedy for being too weird. The doctor who suggested we scramble people's brains if they had certain diseases that were hard to treat in other ways got a Nobel Prize.
No it's not. At minimum this is a horrible invasion of privacy, that I can't believe anyone on HN would defend. At worst this is straight Nazi shit, preparing the ground for extermination.
[1] https://time.com/7002003/donald-trump-disabled-americans-all...
On this site, you can hold pretty much any opinion you like as long as you coach it in the most neutral-sounding "Modest Proposal"-esqe language you can.
I think this is a side-effect of HNs voting rules, what counts as "adding to the conversation", and the limited window for voting down comments and unlimited time to vote up.
Everything that touches to genetics or education is a sight to behold.
I usually only lurk anyway as a physicaly disabled autist but this thread made me have to push thru typing pains.
I'm all for shaking our heads at young high functioning people flaunting it, but nobody gets the labels by having a good time. It's very rarely beneficial to disclose, even if disclosure is a choice.
I suspect the US will become like Germany in the next few decades where the paranoia about handing any data over is justifiably high. I hope this burns the unethical side of the tech industry to the ground. It deserves it.
This poster (published in the NSDAP's Office of Racial Policy's monthly magazine Neues Volk around 1938) urges support for Nazi eugenics to control the public expense of sustaining people with genetic disorders. The poster says: "This person who suffers a hereditary disease has a lifelong cost of 60,000 Reichsmarks to the National Community. Fellow German, that is your money as well."
I suppose he has a point.
I don't agree. Having unbreakable crypto is the absence of a tool. My point is that a democratic government can create the tool with good intentions, but you are only one election and a few months of backsliding away from the tool being used for nefarious purposes. You are right that technical solutions are just band-aids, but if you never create the tool it cannot be abused by a new authoritarian government.
People sometimes tend to shutdown comparison of any situation with Nazism using the hideous Godwin's law. Apparently it's a sacrilege towards the Holocaust victims to compare their plight with any emerging threats. But there is no guarantee that the horrors of the past won't repeat in the future. In fact, that is one of the reasons we learn history - to recognize the repeating patterns of similar mistakes. And I think the situation is very perilous already. Perhaps I'm paranoid. But remember that people are arbitrarily getting deported to some foreign detention camp and judges are being arrested within 3 months of this regime coming into power. How long before we find ourselves haunted by the dreadful events of the past?
My life is pretty close to this community and I can verify that all of his comments are 100% accurate.
Parents who insist on traveling separately as a safeguard to ensure one of them is able to care for their adult child in the event of an accident, living with the knowledge that both of them passing away will mean the child moves to a group home most likely.
Others who cannot handle the demands as caregiver and simply get divorced over it. Some who call CPS because they can’t handle the danger that their child poses to their other children. Some who are flight risks that will literally just take off running (usually right to bodies of water) given the chance, putting parents completely on guard.
These are just a few of the issues before getting into “the autism diet” and chronic digestive issues. The fact that somehow a gluten free, casein free diet usually results in significant behavioral improvements leading many people to suspect that what we’re eating environmentally is contributing to the problem.
RFK Jr is giving a voice to parents who are scared, confused and fully aware that nobody is listening to them. If you had any idea the number of parents who are afraid to tell you when the symptoms started because they know you don’t want to believe them, it would shock you.
If you want to know what most people in the community believe is the root cause, it’s aluminum.
I realize that all things associated Trump are destined to get this crazy narrative but RFK Jr has been fighting for these families for at least 20 years. His desire to help people is genuine and not something in question.
He was an environmental lawyer, not a doctor or scientist, so no.
> RFK Jr is giving a voice to parents who are scared, confused and fully aware that nobody is listening to them
It's far more likely (and reasonable to believe) that his brainstorm is an alien entity attempting to weaken the human race for an upcoming invasion, or he's a foreign asset for geopolitical reasons, or he's the biblical Pestilence Horseman of the Apocalypse, than that he's a voice that represents people in the autism community.
Just look at his history. He's caused/causing multiple measles outbreaks. He's already a massmurderer.
Has he? That 'cure' part makes it pretty clear what his background with autism is. He has no clue about it. It's certainly not a disease nor a brain injury that can be cured. And it's too complex to be caused by something like a vaccine. All I see is that he has a particular disdain for autistic people and he wants to use autism to target something else - perhaps vaccines.
> My life is pretty close to this community
Do you have an academic or professional background on the condition? Or are you someone with autism? If so, you may claim some credibility. There are even associations of parents of autistic kids who spout pseudo-scientific nonsense about autism. And they routinely get fact-checked and opposed by associations of autistic people themselves.
> I can verify that all of his comments are 100% accurate.
CDC falls under HHS, right? They published the results about a week ago and it clearly said that the higher incidence of autism is due to improved diagnosis. And then he went on to trash those findings publicly. Why should I believe a career politician over a whole bunch of career medical professionals on this? Considering his past and political stance as well, he has exactly zero credibility on this matter.
> Parents who insist on traveling separately as a safeguard to ensure one of them is able to care for their adult child in the event of an accident, living with the knowledge that both of them passing away will mean the child moves to a group home most likely.
Am I to assume that you're a parent of an autistic kid? If so, let me warn you now. You're doing something more harmful to your kid than what you described. And one more thing. Your view of autism is still very narrow. What you're describing is level 3 autism at best. Some symptoms don't even sound like autism, and could be some other condition. You should perhaps check with a specialist or a level 1 autistic to learn what autism really is and what it feels like (higher level kids often find it hard to communicate their feelings).
> Some who call CPS because they can’t handle the danger that their child poses to their other children.
Very much on point with what I said above. Harmful and hurtful behavior is not an autistic symptom. That sounds more like a cluster-B personality disorder. Not that they can't coexist, but this is a very harmful stereotype. But I'm not surprised.
> These are just a few of the issues before getting into “the autism diet” and chronic digestive issues.
Autism is a neuro-developmental condition. Autistic brains are wired differently, if you will. There are many environmental factors that influence autistic people's behavior - albeit temporarily. Food is one of the less important ones among them. And if you think it is a cure, you are in for big disappointment.
> RFK Jr is giving a voice to parents who are scared, confused and fully aware that nobody is listening to them.
Instead of a politician vying for attention, you should try to understand your kid first. If they have difficulty expressing it, try to talk to a specialist or someone with more verbal autism. They are very common - that's why the 1 in 31 statistics. Then you may get some idea about what to really focus on.
> If you had any idea the number of parents who are afraid to tell you when the symptoms started because they know you don’t want to believe them, it would shock you.
I have investigated various matters throughout my career. That statement has all the symptoms of confirmation bias. The way to get an unbiased result is to do a large-scale, randomized (double-)blind study. You need quantified data, not emotional anecdotes. And if you have something specific in mind and the quantified info to back it up, then we can discuss. Otherwise, those assertions are moot. And for that matter, do you know that these symptoms are extremely hard to identify in infants? The timing of recognition of those symptoms is a rather unreliable indicator for anything.
And remember what I said before - a lot of autistic parents' associations are in the business of spreading misinformation. They're widely opposed and debunked by associations of autistic people themselves.
> If you want to know what most people in the community believe is the root cause, it’s aluminum.
Let me guess. The adjuvant in vaccines? I know where that comes from. If you fancy your own research, try searching up the research papers on that topic. Pay special attention to the authors and the citations. Then check the affiliations of those authors, including funding sources. That will tell you a very enlightening story. To summarize the technical argument, the aluminum used in vaccines don't reach neurotoxic levels even for infants.
> His desire to help people is genuine and not something in question.
His actions at the HHS indicate otherwise. I would rather trust the qualified career medical professionals and researchers he fired. And let's not forget the disastrous way in which he's handling the measles outbreak. I can see how you're emotionally invested in this matter. But please don't assume that the people on the other side aren't.
This is one of the most uplifting thing I have heard in a while! Your children and the autistic kids in your family are very lucky to have such insightful, empathetic and caring adults like you around. Your presence make a huge difference in their lives. And as they grow up, they'll gift you a lot of unexpectedly sweet and proud moments. Good Luck!
> And if he thinks he is going to make them victims, I can assure you he will find myself, my family, and the community at large ready and eager to destroy him.
That's a very heartwarming and empowering statement! Some people argue that high-functioning autistics shouldn't talk for low-functioning autistics. But the autistic and the medical communities doesn't hold that distinction. Only 3 levels of disabilities exist. When I see the 'low-functioning' autistic people, I recognize in them the intense versions of the emotions and feelings that I'm all too painfully familiar with. That's why I decided to make an impassioned stance here. Yes! I'm seriously concerned about the safety and welfare of my peers - the only people I could ever understand.
All this dogma, greed and misinformation threatens the lives of millions of kids, a huge number of very innocent individuals and the very roots of the knowledge and profession we held dear throughout our lives. I don't know why some people hold on to false promises and rhetoric. But the final result of that is recorded very clearly in history. If only they did a bit of research on that too. It's very disturbing that many still can't see the very obvious danger signs. However, the stakes are too high to just watch and worry. Now is the time our voices and actions matter!
I'm bowing out of this debate. I have no illusions of being able to break people out of their artificial realities. But I think I made the point I wanted to - to record a sample of the false information about autism out there and its hollowness. Thank you again for being a decent and awesome human being! I hope we will have more allies like you. Thanks!
If you have investigated then you already understand the biggest challenge to double blind studies here: control groups because of the variety of issues on the spectrum and the difficulty in measuring the severity of each of them. There’s a doctor in Indiana who’s been trying to categorize them all and has it narrowed to about 140 or so. It’s not an easy group to run studies on.
Autism is very much a digestive issue. People who just observe the behaviors without being close to treatment believe it’s purely neurological.
The core issue with everything you’re saying is that we have an information vacuum. With cancer, for example, we as a society are more than comfortable saying almost everything causes cancer. With autism, we’re not allowed to even speculate publicly. If we do it’s a simple “I don’t know what causes it but it’s DEFINITELY not the thing that I don’t want to believe is involved.”
Autism is a spectrum and there are a lot of severe cases. The severe cases often result in exactly what I’m describing above. Therapy helps in most cases but the experience described above is very real. In many cases it’s much less severe and kids are mainstreamed with some social awkwardness. The violent outbursts described in a scenario above, again, aren’t in most situations but they do happen consistently for some certain kids and when they do it’s a nightmare.
It’s not harmful to tell the truth, but it is to ignore it.
The problem with watching this discussion in real time on social media is seeing people who know one or two people who have a child who is autistic and that shapes their entire perspective. The parents who have children who are more severe on the spectrum often have very few people who know them because just the idea of time to socialize with others is often difficult to obtain.
The information vacuum is very real though and until we get a definitive answer on the cause of autism, people are going to speculate. You watch discussion of it be suppressed for over a decade and it creates trust issues.
I think that communication could be improved on both sides.
I have had non-confrontational and earnest discussions with the kinds of people who believe vaccines cause autism. I couldn't escape the conclusion I eventually arrived at - these sorts of people started with a gut feeling or belief and worked backwards to find the justification for it.
This realization is what I feel is missing from a lot of science communication. People who are distrustful of the science aren't going to be swayed by more science unless it dovetails with their underlying gut feelings - so assuming that you can simply out-evidence any concerns is a fools errand.
But by the same token, if critics want a productive conversation, I think it's incumbent on them to be more honest about where their concerns are rooted. What is it about vaccines that makes them predisposed to not want to have them?
Google is certified and runs the biggest medical database with (I believe without googling this) the biggest hospital operator in the USA.
I have a condition which is rare enough that it doesn't get enough funding and data is missing
That doesn't matter _at all_ when the government comes knocking at Google's door - in the best case, they have a subpoena that can at least be appealed afterwards, in the worst case it's DOGE teens backed by a bunch of heavily armed guys in camouflage.
This has become an issue big enough that the US company I work for is actually removing data from US cloud providers to make it harder to get at. The European divisions have started data sovereignty projects because it's now a principal risk.
I'm out of the cloud as well.
Which is evidentially not this lot. Not even remotely.
Having worked directly with autism researchers, I can confidently tell you that RFK is making a wild guess not based in current evidence. All the data we have indicate autism is a multifactorial condition with a genetic/developmental component that may or may not be affected by the environment.
RFK is genuinely a danger to health care in the United States.
> "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair"
I just loooove that our "top health official" has absolutely zero medical or public heathcare education, openly believes and advocates for discredited and fraudulent medical perspectives and more.
> RFK is genuinely a danger to health care in the United States.
I could not agree with you more.
That's an important bit of context whenever RFK Jr. talks about how conditions like Autism and ADHD weren't a thing when he was growing up - his own aunt, who may well have had one of those conditions, was dealt with by giving her a lobotomy and then hiding her away. Those are the supposedly better times he's harkening back to.
https://slowrevealgraphs.com/2021/11/08/rate-of-left-handedn...
The very much same applies here I think.
Not that much.
The difference between now and 50 years ago is that a) we don't just throw them into asylums, b) we actually have accessibility of getting diagnosed, c) employment opportunities suitable for many people with mental disabilities (such as factory line assembly) have gone down the drain.
You're only getting a diagnosis if a) you have access to a psychiatrist and b) you are running into enough issues in your daily life to warrant having it looked into.
Life has gotten a lot more complex over the past few decades, so people run into issues more often - and earlier in life. Someone who would've just been "a bit of a weird guy" 50 years ago is getting an autism diagnosis today, simply because these days they run into issues as a child and are being put in front of a psychiatrist.
Very much so. What we now call Autism Spectrum Disorder was referred to as "childhood schizophrenia" in the DSM-2 [1], things only started moving in the right direction with the DSM-3 [2] when it was finally sort-of recognized as an independent disorder of "infantile autism", but some core elements of ASD like sensory processing differences were only recognized in the DSM-5.
There's a good overview at [3]. It's good that criteria are different today, the criteria from decades ago failed to include majority of ways that autism expresses itself, many of which benefit from support and accommodations even though they're not obviously debilitating.
[1] https://www.madinamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/DSM-...
[2] https://aditpsiquiatriaypsicologia.es/images/CLASIFICACION%2...
> The symptoms do not occur exclusively during the course of a pervasive developmental disorder, schizophrenia, or other psychotic disorders and is not better accounted for by another mental disorder (e.g., mood disorder, anxiety disorder, dissociative disorder, or a personality disorder).
The DSM-V states that they can exist together. In fact something like 28-44% of people with Autism exhibit some form of ADHD. [1]
It just goes to show that we’re still evolving in how we understand things. And then we can get into things like twice exceptionality and Asperger’s…and yeah. Lots to learn.
[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519712/table/ch3.t3/
[1]: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
If expanding the definition is the feature required action should be taken to mitigate the bug. True?
A main thing is that people with autism would just be classified as generally mentally disabled and the rise in autism is highly tied a drop in that general diagnosis. I don't think that covers 100% of the rise but does seem to make up the big majority.
U.S. special-education autism classification was created in 1994 and tied to a big rise in diagnosis.
https://news.wisc.edu/data-provides-misleading-picture-of-au...
Are you saying that there is no direct link but rather understanding of various areas increased due to the stopping of this practice?
Yes, this absolutely. You can't study something after altering it.
The "treatments" for people with any kind of neurodivergence (real, or imagined) in the past were often interventions that destroyed enough of their brain or body to prevent them from exhibiting any neurodivergent symptoms (e.g. lobotomy, EST/ECT, teeth-pulling[1], etc).
[1]: https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/01/henry-cotton-psychiatr...
Olivier Ray wrote a great book about the history of statistics : Quand le monde s’est fait nombre (fr)
https://archive.org/details/OlivierReynombre/
https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/les-chemin....
https://www.fnac.com/a9931250/Olivier-Rey-Quand-le-monde-s-e...
I'm usig Orion (browser) on macOS (Apple Silicon) presently if that helps. With UBlock Origin installed in it.
The third reich response a lot of other commenters are having is interesting. I'm no expert and have not investigated autism, but if the messaging in response to RFK JR is "yeah he says 1 in 36 kids have autism now but actually that's fine and how it always has been and actually autism is good and he's actually Eichmann" you're going to drive a lot of people right to every unsubstantiated thing he says.
We know, with utter certainty, that the conclusion of this farce will be completely unproven lazy correlations that are so common in the scammer industry. Maybe it's seed oils, or HFCS, or the chemicals, etc. There is no outcome of RFK Jrs farce that won't be an absolute joke.
>The third reich response
Anyone who doesn't see incredible parallels with the rise of Hitler's heinous crimes is not paying attention. Oh look, they're going after the press and judges now, but don't worry until they're not suffixing the Hitler salutes with "my heart to yours" or something it surely can't be real. Further, the "they're going to make me believe this garbage person" argument is always laughable. No one buys it. People who like these creeps should just be honest about it and save the tired "you made me" bit that positively no one believes.
But sure, the only thing I can agree with you on is that the "autism is actually great" fringe is not helpful. Autism is not good, and most people with autism, even the ones who don't need around the clock care, would rather they didn't. ASD is likely basically a manifestation of evolution, and is biology playing random variations to test survivability, as it has done through human history. It gives us some super-intellectually focused individuals that contribute massively to humanity, but it also gives us a lot of very sad people who can't connect and sometimes need enormous levels of care.
Indeed, genetics are widely considered the prevalent "cause" of ASD. It's possible that autism really has become more common -- if it actually has and it isn't simply increased or more inclusive diagnoses -- because our information/engineering age has given people who carry ASD genetics more, errr, marketability on the reproduction market. Instead of being outcasts, what we used to call "Aspergers" sufferers, such as myself, suddenly make lots of money and get to be high status. But that's a lazy guess at most. But we do know that people on the ASD spectrum, including the most successful ones who found ways to make it work, are much more likely to have children on the spectrum, no outside environmental cause being necessary.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/opinion/autism-rfk-parent...
As a very liberal parent of a profoundly autistic child, there has never been article I've related to more. The condescension of fellow liberals and advocates for level 1 autism for us, much of which is present in this thread already, is incredibly frustrating and in many ways harder to stomach than RFK Jr.
RFK Jr is at a minimum a misguided nutjob - but he's also the only one to ever recognize our plight on a national stage.
<< Autism has become an identity, a different way of thinking and existing.
I think, this sentence, more than anything else in that article aggravates me the most and I am not entirely certain why. It is not some sort of rhetorical question. I simply struggle to understand the obsession US denizens have with identity. Everyone is 2% cherokee indian, 2/5 italian and maybe a little dutch on non-pagan holidays. And this does not spare the parents. They are X parents. Puppy parents. Teenager parents. Autist parents. All in an attempt to establish some sort of identity that can be displayed to the society at large.
<< Children with autism have a right to an appropriate education, to accommodations, changes in the classroom to help them succeed; we have sensory-friendly days at the zoo.
Sure, but at the expense of the non-autistic kids? What does that statement actually mean?
<< I don’t care if my child ever pays taxes
In case there is any kind of doubt, the society does. If the registry is not intended as an intentionally bad thing(tm) by RFK jr himself, you can rest assured it is absolutely seen as a way to ensure that more taxpayers exist ( and this is the charitable parsing of that registry ).
<< She did not destroy my family,
This is an interesting one. There are people who do derive meaning from service such as this, but they do not strike me as a majority of the population. At best, it puts a heavy strain on the familial ties.. and for a very obvious reason.. it is not a light cross to bear. And we do like easy mode. But to actively deny that it is a strain is silly.. because while it did not break the author, the same issue definitely took some families down.
<< I want to know why regressive autism happens
I think most of us on this forum can agree that knowledge can be useful.
The comment is simply sharing an article from someone directly affected. What happened to intellectual curiosity? Diversity of opinion? It's comments like this we need more of on HN, not less of.
Parent- and caregiver-focused approaches are how we've ended up with things like ABA¹ being fairly mainstream, and sympathy for parents pursuing experimental or simply crank treatments to "cure" their children, frequently with extremely harmful results. Support and advocacy groups run by autistic people are absolutely full horrific stories of abuse in this vein.
Which is, I believe, a large part of RFK's interest² in it. I think he wants to make more ad hoc, extreme, and experimental and frankly abusive "treatment" supported for parents of autistic children.
So the comment you're responding to isn't a curious or "diverse opinion", it is basically the standard view of this up until the last 10-15 years or so. Autistic people had to fight very hard to have our own views and experiences taken seriously. RFK's focus here is part of an even-more-recent backlash against that.
¹ Essentially conversation therapy for autism. It can be effective at teaching us how to behave like "normal" people which can be comforting for parents of autistic children. But autistic people overwhelmingly experience it as extremely distressing or worse.
² He has also signaled that he will use it as a justification to ban vaccines. I don't have enough of a read on the guy to reckon which of these is a bigger motivation to him. There's also an understudied but impossible-to-deny correlation between transness and autism. A lot going on here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_behavior_analysis#Crit...
Here are a few examples of positive social credit:
Do you serve your nation in the military?
Do you bear and raise children? Are you a caregiver for other types of dependents (parents, disabled)?
Are you able-bodied and employed or at least employable? How stable is your job?
Are you currently enrolled as a student, seeking a degree or graduation?
Are you in stable housing; can you meet your personal needs daily without difficulty?
Are you free of mental illness, and medications thereof?
Have you got a criminal record, imprisonment or legal troubles in your past?
So you can see that autistic people will typically start with poor social credit, and it will not be possible for them to get on top of that.
Now a wealthy nation in peacetime can afford to do the "Welfare State" thing and support people with negative social credit, due to pro-life values and the fact that you can indeed exploit the poor and infirm for Medicaid and SNAP bucks, no matter what (RFK's claim that "they don't pay taxes" is specious if they're consumers).
But I think the USA can no longer claim to be "wealthy" and our claim on peace is tenuous at best. When those two run out then what is left? Nothing but a little Aktion T4. Difficult decisions will need to be made and this is why people with "poor social credit" are going to be under the microscope.
Combine this with the overzealous focus on transvestites and the so called "illegal aliens" you should see a pattern with where the Nazis began.
The focus seems to lie on transgender people, not cross dressers.
So let's keep the words we use sensible and devoid from (intended or unintended) bigotry.
Besides, drag queens and kings usually are not transgender¹. It is a type of performance featuring a carefully crafted, over-the-top persona, not a full-time endeavour, and it is, crucially, an act. A transgender person isn't acting.
1: I would guess not more so than other groups of people.
There is a reason the constitution was set up the way it was in the light of not having a King and not being unfairly treated.
Not in camps like divided by opinion.
But when it comes to policy actions taken by bigots they pretty narrowly target transgender people. If for no other reason than trying to legislate dress is going to (and has) run into 1A issues for anything not extremely narrowly scoped. Project 2025, arguably the comprehensive policy manifesto for the new GOP only really outlines policy targeting transgender persons.
But hey, considering what happened the last few months maybe Americans have a point for their case. In most of the Europe governments collapse and streets burn for much less all the time, in US they don't appear to have a recourse for at least 4 years.
Maybe its a good idea not to give the data to government affiliated billionaires that can crunch some numbers, feed the data to a machibne and come up with an optimization solutions like "If we can get rid of those suboptimal humans we can pay less income taxes". What are you going to do if the machine tells you that if an autist isn't making x amount of money by the age y it is drain to the society and the formula suggest that a deportation yields better outcomes financially?
- "Kennedy said many autistic children were “fully functional” and “regressed … into autism when they were 2 years old. And these are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”"
- "He also said, “Most cases now are severe. Twenty-five percent of the kids who are diagnosed with autism are nonverbal, non-toilet-trained, and have other stereotypical features.”"
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-robert-f...
The challenges a level 1 autistic person faces are well recognized and good for network TV. finally - finally! - someone is talking about the rest of the population that face far greater challenges.
That's a very strange take considering he's known to spread lies. The very comment you replied to demonstrated that. He says that vaccines cause autism - they don't. He says that "Most cases now are severe." - they aren't.
I wouldn't say his record shows that he is either honest or candid:
https://apnews.com/article/rfk-jr-samoa-measles-kennedy-vacc...
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rfk-jr-disqualified-from-ne...
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/jul/19/robert-f-k...
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/01/politics/rfk-jr-fact-check-co...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/debunking-some-of-rfk-...
It is not a lie, if you believe in it.
> The challenges a level 1 autistic person faces are well recognized and good for network TV.
Those level 2 and 3 people you seem to be so worried about are the ones who are going to suffer the most. At least we know how to mask it in public.
PS. I'm aware what it is.
There is nothing dehumanising about acknowledging the existence of the profoundly autistic.
First of all that is false, because even profoundly autistic people do the things he said they don't do.
Secondly, it's dehumanizing because the reason he lied (yes what he said was a lie) was so that the listener would feel sorry for autistic people, and would thereby support Kennedy to do whatever he wants to them to restore their humanity, whether that be a registry, concentration camps (or as he calls them, "wellness farms") or whatever else he has planned.
> Kennedy to do whatever he wants to them to restore their humanity, whether that be a registry, concentration camps (or as he calls them, "wellness farms") or whatever else he has planned.
Wild conspiracy theories help nobody, and also harm autistic people.
As long as you define "ability to go to bathroom and pay taxes" as profound autism, that's true. But as I said, autism is a spectrum -- there is no such thing as "profoundly autistic". That's not a thing. You're again trying to make a dichotomy, and this is a misconception both you and Kennedy share.
> Wild conspiracy theories help nobody, and also harm autistic people.
We are at the point where it's no longer wild. They are literally planning a database, and planning "wellness farms", and using dehumanizing language to talk about the worth of autistic people within society. I'm really glad that for you, these concerns autistic people have about these plans are esoteric and "wild", but for the people they are targeting with registries and camps, we cannot afford to be so flippant.
No one else is going to advocate or look out for autistic people, so we have to do it ourselves, and if that means people think we are overreacting so be it. We're used to being told that anyway.
Yes. That's literally the meaning of profound - has trouble with common functioning. Your position seems to be that a group - profound autistic people - that is defined by it's functional ability is being mischaracterised as having low functional ability. Mine is that that is literally what profoundly autistic' means.
> No one else is going to advocate or look out for autistic people, so we have to do it ourselves, and if that means people think we are overreacting so be it.
Likewise, which is why I support efforts to investigate the causes of something that is currently very ill defined. I do have resevations about RFK, it reminds me of working at Google where people find research to support their pre-drawn conclusions. But conspiracy theories about death camps are not one of my concerns.
No my position is that you've created a tautology, and so the phrase "profoundly autistic" doesn't mean anything. You're profoundly autistic if you can't function, and if you can't function you're profoundly autistic. So what?
How does one measure "functional ability" -- functioning how and where and when? In a capitalist context? Academic context? social context? Where is the line? What's the cut off? Who is doing the assessing? Who is coming up with the criteria?
> But conspiracy theories about death camps are not one of my concerns.
I understand you don't think it's likely and don't care to discuss such matters, but you're not going to convince me these people are looking out for the best interests of autistic people. They're looking to be "right" about vaccines, and they're going to use autistic people however they can to get the answers they want.
That is a definition, not a tautology. Though I suspect the way this conversation will go is that we will argue over the definition of definition.
I’ll bow out, but I do share your concerns about people looking to be right about vaccines. I feel they may be right (and also that they may be wrong), but as I’ve mentioned in another thread, I’m concerned they’re finding research to support their conclusion (mercury and aluminium poisoning) rather than approaching the problem more rigorously.
It’s one thing to shout into a void about some vague disagreement, but it’s entirely different to actually take some form of real action. What should that action comprise?
Many of them mocked anyone saying this would happen. And even now, there are people cheering on the idea of ignoring due process.
2. Continue speaking loudly about the various criminal acts of this administration and continue reinforcing the importance of not tuning it out
3. Find promising candidates and fund their run in 2026 to flip the house and strangle the administration with impeachments over their long list of violations of the Constitution
4. Arm yourselves in general before the GOP finally decides they're okay with preventing certain people from buying firearms (specifically "mentally ill" people who don't like Trump, i.e. https://thehill.com/homenews/5200463-trump-derangement-syndr...)
There's a great deal on an AR-15 at Palmetto State Armory right now — only $400!: https://palmettostatearmory.com/psa-pa15-16-phos-a2-mid-leng...
A lot of libs don't know this, but shooting is also extremely fun and gun people are extremely friendly and welcoming. Get a gun, book a lesson at your local range, and enjoy an afternoon learning how to use it. Guns are also a lot of fun for the gear-junkie types that I'm sure are overrepresented here on HN.
EDIT: I changed the order of these, apologies to the commenter below!
And yes the more general point is obviously gun ownership laws are highly localized. You should look up the requirements in your area and navigate them to acquire your very own check and balance, given that Congress has abdicated its role as such.
It is very dangerous that so much of the right wing thinks that liberals are afraid of (and therefore do not own) firearms. The meme needs to be that liberals are just as armed as anyone else and are a credible backstop on tyranny.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1jc0y...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024%E2%80%93present_Serbian_a...
Be more like the Serbians. Don't just let things happen. You have agency. The government is supposed to be for the people, by the people - democracy doesn't only happen once every four years.
History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.
It would take something very radical to fix the massive imbalance of power in this world. Something I fear Amercians are not ready for. So let it burn, maybe something better will emerge from the ashes.
It should be noted that the Nazis took a lot of US policies from 1920/30s and ran with them just a little bit further. The Nazis were famous for eugenics, but it was quite big in the US as well, see for example:
* https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/03/07/4694780...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell
Their initial treatment/segregation of the Jews wasn't much different than treatment of blacks in the US.
It is worth noting because nowadays the Nazis are treated as evil incarnate, and the Allied side of WW2 the side of justice, but the history of the ideas behind the Nazis does not lie (entirely) with-in Germany. There is darkness in every society (including the US) and certain tendencies, and worth reminding people that these things can take hold anywhere, and not just "over there".
The parent presumably singled out the Gestapo because it is one of the prime examples of a secret police detaining and punishing citizens without due process. The fact that the Gestapo didn't spring out of completely new ideas doesn't seem particularly relevant in this context.
There are more apposite comparisons: The US internment programs of 1942–1945, or McCarthyism and the Red Scare.
