BBC In Depth: the ongoing battle to define autism

I am late diagnosed and tbh this while article reads to me as 'woman has opinion'. She's entitled to think and say what she pleases. I really don't understand the whole identity aspect the BBC keeps mentioning. I think the article is ridiculously light on any envidence to substantiate her claims and it just appears to be one of these pointless things the BBC likes to throw out there now and again to get people's backs up. Like that Panorama that time bringing into question the private ADHD diagnosis (in a system where nobody can get an ADHD diag on the NHS etc). I don't know why the BBC feels the need to put these things out there - but they've been doing this nonsense for as long as I can remember. Honestly, the best thing I did, in about 2017, was get so absolutely infuriated with the mainstream media that I literally turned it all off and 'self isolated' from all of it. I normally go out of my way to avoid reading anything like this and on occasions like this (which are very very few and far between, now) when I bump into such articles, I don't regret my 2017 decision at all :) 

I would never have thought of using equality legislation like this. It's a good idea, though and I will use it if I need too. We're lucky that we have a centre ofr the unemployed here that does a lot of advocacy work. I've become very sceptical about CAB though, they seem more an arm of the state than an independent organisation helping ordinary people. Our's has a "triage" system where they assess your problem, that you told them about in a short message or email form and then reach a desicion about whether they're going to help you, which in itself takes about 6 weeks, then you have to wait for an appointment. They only do benefits work now too.

Don't get me wrong I'm not anti tech, and the problems I see with it's increased use are because of the tech itself but the humans who control it and set the parameters for how it will be used. It's those I distrust and as we've not sorted enough of the things that "computer says no" too. The computer seems all powerful and nobody has the power to gainsay it, even when they know its wrong, like when my parents tried to get a credit card with a £500 limit, just for use online, hte computer said no as they had no credit hstory, having paid off thier mortgage and having no outstanding loans. The woman doing the checks said it was crazy as she could seen they had plenty of money to cover a £500 limit, but there was nothing she could do.

What do you propose for those who can't use digital services?

They might be the products of human ingenuity, but humans have a long record of being stupid with their cleverness. I just don't share your views on tech, I don't think it will provide the answers you hope for, and what about those of us who can't do the tech side of it, who don't have the skill or equipment? I feel discriminated against and left out now and I don't see that getting any better in the future. Why does more tech have to be the answer to everything? It won't stop us being desriminated against, it won't make more people or services appear to help us, I think it will increase the narrative that all autistic people are good with tech and we'll get more tech and fewer people.

Sorry to be so long in specifically replying to your message here TheCatWoman.

The way that I see it is that the computers and the programs they run and the output they make are a product of human ingenuity.

My brain does the "what ifs" exactly the same as yours does - ad infinitum.  Though broadly speaking in respect of the questions that you have raised my answer is that "where there is a will there is a way".

In the context of the initial post for this thread, my biggest fear is that the human ingenuity used is biased against autistic people and the damage that bias causes - the human isolation that you describe so powerfully and the wider downplaying of the messages that all the "canaries in the coal mine" autistic people are giving for all of neurodiversity,

I have been wondering about setting up another thread that focuses specifically on how members here experience socio-political issues, such as those that have emerged in this thread on the diagnostic debate, and how they manage them.

I hope that wondering about these issues as we have and what to do about them and continue to do in our conversataions here can and will be shown to make for better outcomes.

Best Wishes

I read the article.

and agree with some of wanderers comments. I just look at what happens asd individuals and those late diagnosed. From my view what I am trying to highlight to every local government panel, stranger on the street and politician is that it is an entirely complicit system. People look the other way at the slightest opportunity ~ even those in once marginalised groups will move along with the general group opinion (even if morally wrong), because it causes too much friction and risk of exclusion and cancellation not to. My earliest memories of the school playground were not being picked for groups and teams. I saw the same patterns at university then at work, loud and vicious people hijacking’s situations as their own. This is ultimately about how people behave (towards each other in a civil way) . I’m so non plused by what the wodltplace actually offers if I wanted to go back to that environment, because it has been overrun by nt psychopaths. I will spend the rest of my life highlighting it though because there is widespread law breaching (nuanced discrimination) happening every day. I do not exaggerate. My observation also is that it is the widespread return of misogyny. These types of people are unlikely to quickly accept neurodiverse differences. It upsets me the fear there is to call it out, it just goes on as a kind of blanketing erasure. It’s all manipulative behaviour.

sorry if I’m off piste…

I think you're right Wanderer, the world is so busy.

One question I'd like to ask, is how do we define neurotypicality? I ask because thinking back some years I remember big debates on mental health, or rather mental illhealth, and nobody really knew what being mentally healthy actually was.

Things have changed a lot in work places too. There is more emphasis on speed and less opportunities to work to our strengths if we are analytical.

For those who don't fit the conventional paradigm of contributing to the system (working full time or part time as an example, but there is nuance within this as we often take more time off sick or struggle in general), there has to be a "reason" for this difference/deficit. (Unless they are choosing to "drop out"). I'm not saying diagnoses of autism are a reason or excuse to work or not work.  I'm saying in this day and age it might be that rather than the problem being the world at large,  it's put onto the individual instead. And a diagnosis explains deviance away from the norm, rather than it being - we are all humans with a wide variety of needs.

It's hard to explain myself.

I think what I'm trying to say is our culture for diagnoses, plus the effects of the modern world may account for a rise in autism or neurodivergent conditions being diagnosed, and the definition becoming broader. 

I'm putting this post here so as I can answer Peter and Phased.

Sorry the maths stuff went right over my head, I'm not entirely sure what an integer is.

In your vision of AI diagnosing autism, I'm guessing you mean it doing it via some sort of zoom meeting?

What if one dosen't have the tech to do this?

What if one's tech skills are to poor to use it?

What if you're totally paranoid about having your photo taken and avoid looking at cameras? Even if you were sat in front of one, but kept your head down and didn't look at it, I know people do this to humans too, but with autism and eye contact, I imagine this could be another difficulty.

At our GP's they have a system where you register your arrival on a screen and another screen call you when the doctors ready to see you. The screen keeps crashing, screens are often poor at registering finger taps when one wears gloves or has dry skin, the most hilarious bit is listening to the screen try and pronounce peoples names, its a good job they put them in writing too or nobody would understand a thing! It's not just traditional Welsh names it has problems with, but many normal English one too. I tries to pronounce every letter, so names like "John", "Hugh", "Anne" and "Jane" it really struggles with, let alone names like Lloyd or Dafydd, it stutters. If tech thats being rolled out now can't cope with these simple things, how will it cope with more complex things, I do realised that speech is more complicated for a machine than it sounds. But, how will it cope with dialects? Or would it all be done via keyboard or touch screen, how will it cope with visual impairment?

I don't have to imagine something because others already have? Hmmm, would these be the same people who make "intuitive" things like phones? Because they seem anything but intuitive, in the case of phones they maybe intuitive if you've had every model since the first, but if you come in at the middle, it feels like being handed an instrument you've never played before and made to sit in the middle of an orchestra in full swing and told you'll pick it up fine because it's intuitive.

I'm not sure I trust other peoples imaginations.

I think my biggest fear with things like this is "computer says no", we've all had experiences of this sort of insanity and I fear it will only get worse, with fewer overrides from humans, that the AI will go rogue and stop the humans disagreeing wth it.

I'm playing devils advocat here, because I don't understand tech, but I'm on the recieving end of a lot of unintended consequenses from it and probably some of those are from the imaginations of techie people building THEIR ideal world. 

I'm also wary of tech being shoved at autistic people and other with leaning difficulties etc, it can be a great help, but what messages is it sending out? Ones that you're too complicated for humans, that you're not a "proper" human and "they", NT's don't want to have anyting to do with you,so you become more isolated and alone and still wondering why you feel lonely and would like others to talk too, to cuddle, to have a relationship and children with? 

hehe - possibly too much information but you post has just reminded me that I need to visit the loo...

You have every right to be suspicious of "body language experts".  I should know as, in some ways, I made a career out of it.

Somewhat ironic given that I get so engrossed in things that i don't even notice what my own digestive system needs are!

Yeah, that scares the cr*p out of me a bit  I have always been very suspicious of "body language experts" 

Understood  - those AI systems viewing facial and eye movements reminded of the science fiction of "Blade Runner".

W/r/to those "tells" I was especially interested and alluding to this scoping review https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12620671/  there are also individual studies worth looking at -

"digital medicine" is another way of putting a finger on the pulse :-)

Sorry, I can't seem to get the "quote" option to work but the AI response to the turnip question is exactly what I would have expected to a text input query. I was referring more to the logic behind the interface and the programming. The AI can only process what it understands as processable. Something like a nod of the head or a physical reaction to a given question would not play a part in how an AI would process a response because it can't see it. Slight changes in facial expression even previous behaviour that an AI would not be aware of.

In saying that I am also a big science fiction fan so I obviously can't rule out some type of fully autonomous artificial being in the future but I think we are a fair bit away from that at the moment

Please excuse my answering you 2 good people in 1 response -

Unknown said:

5+5=10, 20-4=16 but if it comes to 10+turnip=? What will it do?

I've just run that thro' the AI I use and it has replied:

"Because you cannot mathematically add an integer to a root vegetable, the answer depends entirely on how you want to play it:......... 

you don't have to imagine how an AI could be used because other people already have.

AI can detect the exact same behavioural cues a clinician looks for, but it does so by breaking them down into precise measurable data.

yep- the Ai I use can "see that" by recognising it in a search and says it's a joke too

PS love Dawn French :-)