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PaperclipPerfector  16hr ago (text post)   469 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 3, 2026

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"Am I German or Autistic?"

http://german.millermanschool.com/

(I am neither German nor autistic, but it's good to confirm, through a psychometrically validated instrument that I'm a regular dude. Uh, I don't remember my results but I think it was 38% German and like 10% autistic?)

CategoryRating
German47 %
Autistic58 %
OverallWittgenstein

You have, apparently, both the cultural formation that produces systematic people and the neurological substrate that makes systematic thinking feel like breathing. This is either a significant advantage or an explanation for certain recurring difficulties in your life. Probably both.

Schopenhauer also fits here. So does Ramanujan, though he wasn't German. The category isn't German or autistic—it's people for whom the gap between how things are and how they ought to be is not an abstraction but a constant, low-grade irritation.

My mother tells me that I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome at some point, but she doesn't have any of the court files to prove it.

I doubt that I have any German heritage, though my mother does hail from a former Danish colony.

Entirely within my expectations, ngl. I do think Aspergers deserves a place in modern psychiatric taxonomy, when up to 80% of people with autism have learning disabilities, then it at least served as a convenient shorthand for those of normal or above average intelligence. Well, I don't get consulted on either the ICD or the DSM, at least not yet.

I obviously am not an illustrious doctor, but it appears to me that the ICD has more or less retained Asperger's syndrome in its table of diagnoses.

6A02 = autism spectrum disorderFunctional language
Mildly impaired or not impairedImpairedCompletely absent or almost completely absent
Disorder of intellectual developmentAbsent6A02.0 ≈ Asperger's syndrome6A02.2—
Present6A02.16A02.3 ≈ childhood disintegrative disorder6A02.5

In the sense that that it recognizes {no intellectual deficit plus some generic autism traits} as a sub-category? Yes. But Aspergers was handy. We got rid of it without a handy epithet to replace it.

It would be like replacing "mild depression" with "depression without suicidality, severe anhedonia, psychomotor retardation..." You have replaced a convenient and pragmatically helpful diagnosis with a more unwieldy one, with no clear benefit.

I am obviously am not an illustrious doctor

Don't worry, neither am I. At least the illustrious part.

… psychomotor retardation...

That almost sounds like a term for road rage.

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