This is the simulated reality we live in. We're all overworked by our capitalist masters and the only way we can even remotely get by is by relying on overloaded catch-all terms that let us dehumanize anyone who falls off their hamster wheel.
Same is true of ADHD. And depression. And anxiety. All just mental shortcuts, saving time and corporate margins by seeing each other more like cattle than real people so we can justify pumping people with amphetamines and mood stabilizers until they fall into line and start turning the wheels of the capitalist machine.
Instead of asking, "What's wrong with the way we built this world that is leading people to feel this way?" we just say, "Something's wrong with you."
Like myocarditis or auto immune diseases.
Look, I get it and somewhat agree. However, the reason for the diagnosis (and any diagnosis) is treatment.
Maybe there are two different conditions that require speech, occupational, and behavior therapy to different degrees, however, in terms of convincing insurance companies in the US to cover those having a single diagnosis makes everything easier.
It's not as if a separate diagnosis would change how a speech therapist interacts with a child.
I applaud efforts to figure out what is going on and to categorize. But I also think that practically the ragbag diagnosis makes treatment a lot easier to access for patients.
Today most of the money and advocacy is for high-performing or moderately-performing people with autism. Not just in relative terms, the amount of funding for people like my cousin has gone down. It makes sense; they are the larger group by volume and are able to advocate better than people like my cousin.
I wish it weren't a zero-sum game, and we recognized that autism is just a word for a broad series of conditions. It would be like if we called everyone with poor eyesight 'blind': yes, your vision is impaired. But the solutions you need are very different than the solutions Stevie Wonder needs.
See also: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/health/autism-spectrum-ne...
Is this true? I think it's important to distinguish between social media (and other sorts of) discourse and where money is actually flowing.
bhaak•43m ago
In what reality would we be living if we listened to knowledgeable people?
Der_Einzige•42m ago
Edit, since I can't make a post right now since HN thinks I've posted too much, here's some examples of technoracies:
"The former government of the Soviet Union has been referred to as a technocracy.[20] Soviet leaders like Leonid Brezhnev often had a technical background. In 1986, 89% of Politburo members were engineers.[20] "
"Many previous leaders of the Chinese Communist Party had backgrounds in engineering and practical sciences. According to surveys of municipal governments of cities with a population of 1 million or more in China, it has been found that over 80% of government personnel had a technical education"
"Since the 1990s, Italy has had several such governments (in Italian, governo tecnico) in times of economic or political crisis,[27][28] including the formation in which economist Mario Monti presided over a cabinet of unelected professionals."
"The term 'technocratic' has been applied to governments where a cabinet of elected professional politicians is led by an unelected prime minister, such as in the cases of the 2011-2012 Greek government led by economist Lucas Papademos and the Czech Republic's 2009–2010 caretaker government presided over by the state's chief statistician, Jan Fischer.[3][31] In December 2013, in the framework of the national dialogue facilitated by the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, political parties in Tunisia agreed to install a technocratic government led by Mehdi Jomaa."
"The Syrian Salvation Government, the predecessor to the Syrian transitional government,[33] was characterized by observers as an authoritarian technocracy"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy
justinrubek•28m ago
jajuuka•16m ago
9rx•8m ago
Of course, it is always easy for a backwater to play catchup after someone else has already figured out how to advance. It is difficult to attribute that success to technocracy, and it is likely that any system could have allowed the same forward momentum, but the correlated track record is quite good regardless.
The USA flirted with the idea of technocracy around the time of the Great Depression. That is, perhaps, where the "bad record" idea has come from, but that's a pretty big leap.
breppp•25m ago
JumpCrisscross•9m ago
owenpalmer•17m ago
Can you provide any examples?