Yes, that is in the article.
Anything you wish to add?
Developments since then the article lacks?
It's not that anybody did anything wrong—historical material is welcome here! and it's nice for readers to know roughly what time an article dates from. That's all.
I see, I hope you can understand where I was coming from, seeing the year in the title paired with what looks like a snarky comment devoid of any analysis of said article.
When I got older I began to develop connective tissue disorders and spasticity, which were incapacitating until I found treatment. I was diagnosed with EDS but that may also have been not-quite-correct, since apparently these issues are also common in WS.
Also, it apparently _is_ possible for people with WS to also have higher-than-average IQs. God, life is so frustrating sometimes!
hEDS is far more common than currently thought because the medical diagnostics are not very sensitive, it’s a spectrum and what doctors tend to think of hEDS is the severe form of it.
> Lizzie Hurst, chief executive at the Williams Syndrome Foundation, says: "People [with the disorder] conduct themselves in a way that makes them extremely vulnerable.
> "They don't have the cognitive ability to match their linguistic age.
> "There is a classic autistic profile to which Williams Syndrome is the polar opposite. People can gauge the mood of a crowd and adopt without understanding the nuances of the situation."
The last bit of that is the difference, right? You wouldn't say an autistic person could easily gauge the mood of a crowd and adopt. These are people who are -- compared to neurotypical people! -- social butterflies, linguistically talented, friendly, open, happy-go-lucky, but gullible. This is not the picture of classic autism for sure. It does feel somewhat opposite.
But then I guess one of the interesting things about opposites is that they are within the same plane or category, right? The opposite of a knife is another item of cutlery, not a haddock.
It seems like this syndrome is a genetic deletion, which is not my understanding of autism, but it presumably could have some similar neurological impacts.
Indeed, naïvely it almost seems to me like in Williams Syndrome what is missing is something that causes the brain to keep the mirror neurons in perspective. People with the syndrome rapidly experience a sense of closeness with people they don't actually understand and whose motivations may be harmful.
> They can feel anxious over stimuli such as the buzzing of a bee, or the texture of food.
Plenty of autistic folks are empathetic, social, and friendly. And many experience stimuli that cause anxiety.
The whole "it's the opposite of autism" doesn't actually help anyone understand and, IMO, reinforces the incorrect idea that autistic people are asocial, emotionless automata.
Moreso than anything about emotions, body language, social skills etc this is the most common trait. It pops up in odd places no matter how much you mask or learn the visible skills.
This shows up in a lot of ways: sensory (can't just filter out the tag on the back of your shirt), interests (can't recognize that you're spending just a liiiitle too much time on that model train), food (don't categorize trying new foods as interesting, so you don't), etc. But human socialization is incredibly complex, and while many of us can do decently well at learning it, imagine trying to get a grip on social cues without being able to tell what's relevant and what's not. Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it?
It also is a working theory that well matches my experience with the autistic people in my life. "Deficits in cognitive empathy/ inability understand intuitively what other people are thinking", aka "theory of mind", is a really good description of how things are often difficult, and I think "different stimulus input filter" is a pretty good hypothesis for how it might arise.
Or let's say you have a million inputs, or pixels, and you need to determine if there is a cat in the picture. Selective attention won't work for that either. You can't pick six pixels that allow you to reliably answer this question.
You need dimensionality reduction, that will reduce the data into a manageable amount of abstract features, from which you can pick what features matter to you.
Neurotypical people lack (or only have remnants of) this second filter.
I'd say have been successfully precluded from developing that.
Instead, they've learned to substitute its functionality with the quasi-religious faith that they are actually any good at inferring what others think. (Take that precept away and see em flail, it's disturbing.)
At population scale, this resolves to either mass violent panic or a society living under the constant self-fulfilling prophecy that fewer things are thinkable than those which are possible, while screaming that it's the other way around. (Instead of, you know, aiming for the parity between interpretation and reality which is necessary to accomplish anything at all.)
The main neurotypical trait is lack of inherent revulsion to delusion.
I hope you see the irony some day.
So, then: when was the last time you expressed empathy, and whom did it help?
And also: when was the last time you expressed empathy for someone you were told you should have no empathy for?
Cmon, give us that sweet, sweet emotional vulnerability. Because, surprise for whoever's not looking: insisting that a legitimate society can be built on the magical belief that performing an emotional emulation somehow equates to giving a damn about someone's actual well-being - that kind of thing is a big part of what's wrong with you guys.
Hey, I understand if what I'm saying is making you upset. Not necessarily why, but let's say I can imagine.
Your countersignal references "a place in the world to fit in", this presumes a strong belief that the world fits together, right?
You're pretty invested in the view that social consensus is essentially fair, and does not, for example, hinge on tragicomical amounts of epistemic sleight-of-hand, or anything like that?
You'd find living with that sort of awareness kinda depressing, over the long run prone to lead you to what they call them bad places?
Yeah, well.
In any case. What it would be helpful of you to be aware of. And I don't usually mean things in that sort of sense anymore - but this time I do mean it in the sense of "do this to make the world a better place" helpful: please remain mindful that the world that gave my "views", if they can even be called that, is the same one that gave you yours. There's no essential difference, beyond the paths we've walked through it (which I'm happy to confirm are different enough that you're completely safe from any harmfulness that you've been so kind as to proactively ascribe to me, thank you very much, jfc)
> Neurotypical people lack (or only have remnants of) this second filter.
This statement didn't scan for me, did you mean "autistic" instead of "neurotypical"? (And "neurodivergent" doesn't fit, there are many more neurodivergences than just autism.) Everything I know about neurotypicality does indicate something like that "second filter" is present (if possibly distributed).
So in autistic people it goes (raw sensory data) --> [dimensionality reduction] --> (latent space of abstract features) --> [selective attention] --> (higher thinking)
While for neurotypical people it goes (raw sensory data) --> [selective attention] --> (higher thinking).
I think any common neurodivergences that still result in more-or-less functioning adult brains are going to appear as different weightings or emphases, not entirely different effective structures.
One possible contribution to the behavior you are seeing is that sometimes brain behavior that is missing or ineffective gets lifted to the cognitive (conscious or semiconscious) layer. The cognitive layer of the brain can do, essentially, anything. But it has to work a lot harder than the lower layers, so you notice it a lot more. This can result in "squeaky wheel" syndrome, where one counterintuitively notices only the things that aren't working as well as they could be.
It means you need to use your higher thinking to do sensory processing. It's like if your GPU had burned out. So you had to find a way to do everything on the CPU. It sucks, and you don't have much capacity left for the actual thinking.
The opposite of autism is schizophrenia, where abstract thinking fails completely, and the person is unable to find correct answers to everyday problems.
Neurotypicality is merely a socially acceptable level of schizophrenia.
Autism results when the level of abstraction is significantly higher than the surrounding society:
You can't automatically understand the concrete speech, and you especially can't understand the "implications" that rely on the concrete magical thinking.
People can't understand you, because their level of abstraction isn't sufficient to understand the actual meaning, so they assume you talk about something random.
People overread the gaze of more abstract thinkers, and underread the gaze of less abstract thinkers, due to the difference in the field of view.
Compare Taylor Swift (ultra concrete, easily understood by neurotypical people) vs Rihanna (very abstract)
I've heard this one before, but expressed in causal fallacy terms.
Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it's often right to assume a causal relationship even though you are unaware of the underlying mechanism.
If your criteria for assuming causality are too lax, you are schizophrenic (seeing relationships that aren't there), if they are too strict, you are autistic (missing the obvious).
Indeed, corellation equals causation for the schizophrenic.
Which is why you often don't get neurotypical people - when they say A, they often mean to imply B, because they correlate.
You are not too strict when you're autistic, you simply hallucinate less.
Allistic people do fail to empathize with autistic people everyday. To suggest otherwise only ignorantly refutes my lived experience. Only gaslighting will convince autistic folk that they should disregard that. (And that happens everyday, sadly.)
Edit: I feel I should note that, given the phrasing of the comment, I think your interpretation is closer to the original intent – or at least, a clearer reading of what was said – but I wanted to add this in the interest of taking the strongest interpretation of their comment (and to satisfy my personal curiosity).
The DSM-V combined together a bunch of old disorders with largely overlapping symptoms and no consistent differentiation at the diagnostic level.
It's my impression that people now use the term autism is for pretty much any sort of neurodiversity (and even for traits within neuronormal, e.g. likes math).
For what it's worth Wikipedia says, ASD is:
> a neurodevelopmental disorder by differences or difficulties in social communication and interaction, a need or strong preference for predictability and routine, sensory processing differences, focused interests, and repetitive behaviors.
Would you say this is stereotyping ASD?
I'm not trying to be combative but genuinely want to understand.
For example I don't have a very strong preference for routine (but it wasn't nice when my parents rearanged furniture in the kids room), I only am overwhelmed by wearing socks a little and sound a lot, like when I was at a hospital and 3 people started playing music from their phones at the same time I had to run away from the room and
I have a wierd body language but I'm very social, though have trouble keeping in touch with people (can be managed using a calendar reminders but it still feels like a chore).
With age you learn to cope with them (some don't do it), like I learned to compensate for my death stare (consiously managing where I look), it is still wierd but less intense. This causes anxiety.
It seems almost like you confirm that autism has become to mean neurodiversity (even in the mildest form). Maybe I should phrase the question different, how do we distinguish between autism and other forms of neurodiversity?
In my understanding the most definig thing is that you don't get body language support "in hardware" but can manage it "in software" (just you write the software youself with no spec and no way to validate the results).
Friend of the family was the same. One day they were very late for the a opera, and for once his wife managed to convince him he didn't need to check so they didn't get even more delayed.
Once out of the opera, he sees countless missed calls. Turned out they had left the stove on with a pot on it, and the massive amounts of smoke had triggered the alarm. The alarm company had alerted the fire brigade which had resolved it.
According to the firemen their house was saved by the fact that lid was on. Otherwise the flames would have gotten to the fat in the range hood and since their home was mostly made of wood that would have been real bad.
So, the one time he skips his check, their house almost burns down. Guess what he kept on doing...
You cant' fix it anyway, so what's the point.
You cannot fix the root cause, nor should you seek to, but you can support people in making their experience easier.
The difference between an idiosyncrasy and a disability is the degree to which it impairs your life.
My need for routines causes anxiety and meltdowns, even at an advanced age. Hearing people chew causes a flight or fight response. I cannot hold conversations in noisy environments. I need support to deal with those things or else I cannot effectively participate in society. I have a disability.
I have a friend who prefers to never use contractions. She can still function just fine even when she must use "can't". She has an idiosyncrasy.
Indeed, the DSM has three levels got two categories of autism. The three levels represent the different support needed to function. "Requires support", "requires substantial support", and "requires very substantial support".
This is an indicator or autism? Because almost everyone would have this reaction. I can't even stand when one person plays music from their phone.
If you feel a fight or flight response to someone playing music, then you might be autistic, but that's certainly not the reaction everyone has.
I think it's becoming more and more clear that the thing we talk about as Autism doesn't exist as a specific condition, but rather what we currently talk about as Autism is probably a syndrome.
I suspect eventually we'll home in on the various underlying genetic, environmental, and social causes and end up being able to categorise individuals as presenting with Autistic traits/Autism syndrome due to x/y/z rather than somebody being classed as Autistic.
At a core, it's a sensory integration disorder that makes your life difficult. "Thousands of tabs open in my browser and I don't know which one the sound is coming from".
The ways it manifests itself are many, but usually it's something around not reading social clues that are obvious for normies, taking things literally, not liking specific textures, foods, clothes materials, loud noises, too much unstructured noise and too many people present, either hearing lyrics or the music in the song, that kind of things.
The mixer is broken and when you need to switch the channel or listen to two at the same time you fail at the task at hand.
Wikipedia's definition is fine; it's describing the real diagnostic criteria, not a stereotype. The crucial thing is that to a third party, those traits won't always be obvious.
One of the axes upon which autistic people vary is their ability to mask those traits. The stereotype is a person with obvious symptoms who cannot (or at least does not) mask them socially. Presentations of autism frequently include some aspect of masking and some ability to "pass" as non-autistic, but with substantial cost and effort to the individual.
> It's my impression that people now use the term autism is for pretty much any sort of neurodiversity (and even for traits within neuronormal, e.g. likes math).
That may be so, but there are also plenty of people with actual diagnoses (and many others who meet the criteria) who don't fit the traditional image of an autistic person.
That's why I object to the claim that the term "autistic" has "lost all meaning." What's been lost is the ability to tell at a glance who is autistic, because the diagnostic manual now applies the criteria consistently regardless of whether their impact is immediately obvious to a stranger.
My personal experience, after getting diagnosed in my late 30s, has been observing the significant effort I spent masking — trying to pass as non-autistic — and choosing to use that energy differently. In that sense, I've probably become a little bit more obviously-autistic than before, but in a way which makes my life easier and more comfortable.
Apparently per Hacker News autism is like being left handed. A minor personality quirk that is completely irrelevant in day to day life.
The title does put 'the opposite of autism' in quotes, to make it clear it's someone's phrasing, not a matter of fact, but the body of the article quotes someone from a foundation for the disease saying:
> "There is a classic autistic profile to which Williams Syndrome is the polar opposite. People can gauge the mood of a crowd and adopt without understanding the nuances of the situation."
That, it seems to me, could be a defensible point. That is not something you'd ever say an autistic person would be good at; it's antithetical.
But more to the point, not everything is an attack on autistic people. These are people trying to make a case that people should care about and be aware of the welfare needs associated with a poorly-understood disorder (which is maybe a hundred times rarer than autism). It would be fair I think to allow them the room to explain that.
> But more to the point, not everything is an attack on autistic people
No one said it was. I said it perpetuates a stereotype. I think that's different than an attack, personally. It's careless, not malicious.
But careless can still be irritating.
These two videos are by an interviewer who works with special needs kids/adults:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxZ7aZMFHPE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjlwtKAO6yw
As you can see it's also a physical development disorder, and it may bring to mind Downs syndrome more than autism (indeed, the young woman in the first video makes this comparison and understands the difference).
The thing it makes me want to ask a scientist is to what extent does Williams Syndrome change the mirror neurons or their processing.
This disorder actually sounds somewhat adjacent to autism. Many autistic people have intense affective empathy and get overwhelmed by other’s emotions, especially in groups. But often we just shut down, which appears like nothing is registering and we have no empathy.
Williams Syndrome: The people who are too friendly - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44011380 - May 2025 (2 comments)
Williams Syndrome - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24536693 - Sept 2020 (2 comments)
Williams syndrome - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22082839 - Jan 2020 (7 comments)
Williams Syndrome: What World’s Most Sociable People Reveal About Friendliness - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20093646 - June 2019 (5 comments)
Living with Williams Syndrome, the 'opposite of autism' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7583121 - April 2014 (65 comments)
I just can't sorry
Tamed is a nice read by Alice Roberts, about domestication of various species like potatoes and horses (most of them before written history, so it's a puzzle with pieces being put together with archeological finds). One chapter is about dogs aka domesticated wolves
Edit: lol no need to actually poke around just see wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_syndrome#Cause
The comments here need to be a bit careful with what autism is as it can present itself very differently in people. In part this is because the medical establishment doesn't know a lot yet about what it is. Only quite recently did they find that there's 4 subtypes [1].
It's funny. My wife, non-autistic, tells me I'm one of the most emotionally intelligent men she knows. She keeps saying that. In part, I trained it through meditation (1000 hours in), in part it's just really about paying attention. She hasn't been the only one. I've also met one person at times saying I lack empathy and come across as robotic at times. But I can tell you, in general, I empathize and feel things. I have noticed that I can't always communicate well that I understand what other people mean. When I was younger they went on to explain it to me and it was always really annoying since I understood but people thought I didn't.
I often go against the grain with things because I think things are foolish. If I'd have done otherwise, I'd have definitely been trapped into the toxic masculine culture and drink a lot more alcohol. So often times what I do may not look empathetic or sympathetic but that's because many people don't care that they are toxic themselves and then just put the emotional burden to me.
Related to empathy: ever since I got the autism diagnosis, to the people I've told, I've seen an uptick in them saying I'm not empathetic at times by one person. So sharing your diagnosis does give some people a prejudice over you that shouldn't really be there.
[1] https://www.princeton.edu/news/2025/07/09/major-autism-study...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_processing_sensitivi...
There are different levels of ADHD, and many are judged as stupid in school simply because they're bored and overstimulated at the same time.
The rest of the traits described are pretty common in ADHD from my experience.
And I don’t think being endearing to people is representative of empathy.
FWIW, this describes me (ASD, diagnosed) on XTC.
Symptoms of autism in Williams syndrome: a transdiagnostic approach
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-68089-0
Autism and Williams syndrome: truly mirror conditions in the socio-cognitive domain? https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9351567/
ryandv•5mo ago