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What do you think about the whole question of austim rates? I am listening to Trump's press conference from 2024/12/16 and at one point he talks about how he totally supports vaccines like the one against Polio, but he wants to research modern vaccines more thoroughly, and now we have 100 times the autism rates that we did back in the day?
My immediate reaction was to think that this is either false or just an artifact of reporting rates and aspects of modern society that have nothing to do with vaccines. But who knows, maybe there is actually some underlying real issue. I certainly don't believe that there is 100 times more autism now than there was back in the day, but I think it's certainly possible that maybe there's like 2 times more. Not saying there is, necessarily, but I find it credible at least.
My opinion is that most likely, supposed changes in autism rates have much more to do with changing social phenomena than with anything more on the biological level. The more humanity pushes mentally away from its instincts' origins back on the African savannah hundreds of thousands of years ago, the more one will see supposed mental disorder rates go up. The more stress is necessary to turn a human infant into a modern human adult, the more mental trouble is probably likely.
To be fair, this is neither new or necessarily a bad thing. I am not a Christian, but I believe that Christianity did a lot of good in changing human morality from "haha tough shit you're a slave who got crucified, the gods must hate you" to "even the lowest man can talk to God".
And in doing this, Christianity pushed us a bit further from the monkeys. Which maybe added some stress to us, but also helped us a lot... and in any case, the added stress might be made up for by the new morality's tendency to make society less scary than one based on blood feuds, which then in turn might even help unlock creativity and scientific revolutions and economic prosperity and so on.
In any case, not sure how Christianity did it, I like reading about early Christianity but I still have no clear idea how it won against its competitors. Yet it is pretty clear to me that it pushed us further from the monkeys, despite its supposed core being the rather unscientific idea of having faith that a man a while ago rose from the dead.
Did the average Roman of those days think that the Christians were insane? Did he think they were evil? Did he secretly sympathize with them?
But back to autism... what do self-reported autists think about the genesis of autism? My personal opinion is that autism is probably almost entirely determined by genetics and early upbringing, yet there may be cultural factors that make it so early childhoood development is extra stressful, in part because it takes us further away from the monkey. Which would tend to more and more children becoming in some way abnormal, because they face more childhood stresses in being made into a modern human. Which is not to say that is necessarily a bad thing. Mentally so-called abnormal people in the modern West are probably much less violent on average than the typical person back in the Bronze Age
Is there any reason to think that autism is well-defined? If there is, is there any reason to think that autism rates have been rising? And to be fair, if the rates were rising, would that even necessarily be a bad thing? It's hard to say, most self-reported autists whose words I've heard expressed that they would rather not be autistic. So I guess making there be less autism in the world would be a good thing. I don't know, I do know that there is also a very small subset of autists out there who think that autism is more like a new Homo species, similar to the whole X-Men concept of mutant superhumans. I write all this as someone who has very limited experience with autism. I have known autistic people before, but to a very limited degree. Apologies for any offense. My understanding of autism is mostly limited to the 4chan meme idea of "autism", not to the medically-defined phenomenon.
I have come to the conclusion that the term as currently used is indescribably useless. Where once you had a number of conditions (autism, aspergers, PDD-NOS), there is now the one condition that covers an absolutely massive array of people with all sorts of different personalities, capabilities and needs. Yes, we now have levels in their place but they almost never enter discussion. Instead, the only differentiation comes between "high support needs" and "low support needs". In conversation however, this is almost always dropped - everytime someone mentions an autistic person, or autistic people, or themselves, one is usually referring to either of these groups, implicitly disregarding the other.
My view is that is we have a number of neurological differences that are grouped together under a single diagnosis, like a super venn diagram with multiple concentric circles, and a person can potentially appear in multiple places in the diagram. This means that it is possible for two people to technically be diagnosed with autism and have a minimal overlap of symptoms, or indeed any traits in common. This poses a number of problems. Firstly, normies expect the term to describe a specific kind of person and get confused/accuse you of lying when you say that you have that condition. Secondly, what paltry assistance you might receive is not tailored to your traits and so is useless. Thirdly, any spaces that might exist for you on paper in practise contain people who have nothing in common with you whatsoever.
Beyond that however, I think we have also expanded the definition to include borderlines (people who might have had one or two traits to a minimal degree that wouldn't have previously qualified) and the disability is being further co-opted by progressive, terminally online neurotypicals to ascend the progressive stack. In addition, we have massively damaged the development of children through lockdowns, so who knows if their brain is actually wired that way.
Personally, I do not know where my own endlessly entertaining brain disease comes from. I am inclined to think that I am one of those people who has it inflicted on them by GOD, THE VIOLATOR as a joke. The only familial link I have is a great uncle who was diagnosed with a number of learning disabilities in his youth (including dyxlexia) but towards the end of his life at some point received a diagnosis of autism. My mum and dad are both normal, my dad excessively so. My brother is "weird" but for the most part neurotypical, and any weirdness I think he accrued from me while growing up.
I dislike the way we treat mental disorders as if they work like bacteria or viruses. We even call them "mental illnesses." Strep throat presents in similar ways every time it appears because it's caused by a particular group of bacteria with particular traits. Autism isn't a species of microorganism, it's a cluster of behaviours observed in some humans. We can observe that many different people exhibit some or all of these behaviours without acting like they're all infected with a particular disease.
To continue the analogy: autism isn't the common cold, it's the act of coughing.
The word "disease" developed its meaning long before we'd figured out which ones were caused by infectious organisms. Congenital defects like osteogenesis imperfecta ("brittle bone disease") or deficiency syndromes like scurvy are central members of the term. Complaining that there is no microorganism that causes leukemia isn't going to stop people putting it in that group.
More to the point, comparing one single symptom to, as you already noted, a cluster of commonly co-occuring behaviors is a bad analogy. Coughing is one thing, but are you coughing alongside a runny nose, a sore throat, and a headache? (Probably just a cold.) Or are you coughing along with bloody sputum, chest pain, and weight loss? (Very concerning, might be lung cancer.) Similarly, a number of people exhibit a stereotypy - a repetitive movement or utterance - of some sort or another. But is it happening in a young child along with disinterest in social activities, extreme distress about particular sensory experiences, and an inflexible of routine? (Classic autism.) Or is it an older person, who has recently started losing control of their emotions and seems to have some trouble with speech? (Worrying signs of fronto-temporal dementia.)
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