My grandmother told me stories about how she'd get whipped with a stick on the top of her hand if she tried using her left. Coercion never went away: conversion camps, behavioural therapy etc.

just waiting for the us government to criminalize left-handedness

No. It's obviously the space telescopes.

You have the causation wrong here.

Autistic people go into astronomy, and then find more exoplanets. Therefore autism causes exoplanets!

Time to blown up Pluto.

Your uncle sounds awesome.

I would argue that psychiatry and psychology does not make this claim. if anything modern psychiatry and psychology along with autism foundations led the push to educate early childhood development associated caretakers, eg pediatricians, elementary and preschool teachers, etc for signs to look for and led to development and revision of specific screening tools throughout the 1990s that started to greatly increase the number of cases that diagnosed early on when they would’ve otherwise would’ve been considered “socially awkward” and ostracized for much of their lives without any support offered at all

Granted there are certainly professionals that reject this now. The field is diverse and you certainly have varying opinions on things. And one weird phenomenon no one saw coming is that in this day and age staunchly conservative viewpoints would be disproportionately platformed. So sometimes those dumb shitheads get a huge platform because when they soapbox on social media saying “too many kids are getting diagnosed with autism” there are forces behind that realize they can be a useful idiot to legitimize awful views, like limiting health care spending (more people diagnosed with autism means insurance companies spend more) or anti vaccination nonsense (autism always attracts the loonies). And a bit of fame will often easily go to their heads, especially if it means they can now make a decent clip of money from speaking engagements and selling books.

But remember those people don’t define the field. They are a sore on the field. The Jordan Petersons and Lisa Littmans are scum that are propped up by a propaganda network and powerful forces. They are outnumbered. That’s why their research keeps getting retracted (or in petersons case why he simply sticks to podcasts and hasn’t authored a paper since 2007), because there are more people with ethics and integrity that will call them out. At least for now, until our institutions surrounding social science are fully dismantled

People of the land https://youtu.be/hYTQ7__NNDI

The tldr for this is Neurodiversity

Almost all disabilities exist only within the context of a culture. They are a human applied label.

I recon most disabled people can do more advanced complex tasks than any animal/pet. Yet we do don't think of our pets as disabled.

We are all born with a useless appendix, which can potentially burst and kill us. If someone was born without. Would we all have a disability compared to them.

Someone with only one arm is considered disabled, extra fingers? If its not the default it’s considered disabled.

Now imagine a humanoid alien race with only 1 arm and a hand with 6 fingers. And imagine what their keyboards may look like. A normal human in their society would be considered disabled. Not because you cant use the keyboard but because you would struggle using a tool not designed for you.

Now the reason why you still want a diagnosis even when you agree with the above is simple. Society has not evolved this perspective. We can accommodate almost all disabilities but they key to getting that help is by first bureaucratically “registering” yourself as disabled by a medical professional.

I wonder what the coal mines were like

While I'm sure most of it has always been here, I would be surprised if modern technology hasn't contributed to a spike in depression. I have more content and information than I could ever need in the palm of my hands, and yet everything I read seems to make me hate people.

I don't think I agree with this one. There's so much about lives lived in first world countries, with all the signals and information they are bombarded with, that is almost anti-thetical to our biology. I'm certain we are more mentally unwell than people living simply, especially in the past.

I have a childhood friend who was very recently diagnosed with autism. We talked a little while ago and he brought it up. My first thought was "ah, yep, that explains a lot".

He's still a great friend. It didn't change anything about him, rather it helped make sense of his behaviors that we all just saw as "that's just how [friend] is".

well there were lots of places where these things were actively embraced, iirc there were some quite significant muslim places where they fully recognized a third gender and even considered people belonging to it somewhat holy.

I heard there's also a galaxy outbreak happening as we speak

There is an incorrect belief that autism is on the rise and that it must be caused by something, but in reality we are just getting better at identifying it and diagnosing people correctly. So it's not that there is an autism epidemic, we're just discovering that it's less rare of a condition than previously assumed.