There have been seismic changes in the understanding of autism (and ADHD) over even the last 10-15 years, let alone 30-40+. Once autism was considered only for people who were largely or totally nonverbal. It was only in the 2010s that the consensus formed that people could have both ADHD and autism. They were previously considered to be exclusive.
I've heard many stories from teachers who, when faced with an autistic pupil, will play a game of sorts to see which parent has undiagnosed autism. With a modern understanding, it tends to be pretty easy to spot.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/s9x1ya/his...
Great, diagnosing people based on casual observations. Wasn’t friendly enough, not great eye contact, said something odd…must be autism.
Our tolerance for weirdos of all kinds seems to have gone both down and up at the same time. Why can’t they just be people who are a little unusual?
If it's done systematically and has predictive power, there's nothing wrong with that.
How else do you propose we diagnose something that doesn't show up in MRIs and bloodwork?
Or we could just as well dismiss any mental issues entirely, and say "if we can't measure it, it doesn't exist".
If I am at a party and I tell my friends “that weird person I just met is pretty autistic,” I am not diagnosing them, I am just saying something speculative behind their back.
It's also clear to anyone who pays attention that there is a genetic link with autism and it doesn't take much to see it.
More deeply, you rcomment reads as a typical neurotypical response (or possibly internalized ableism from someone who isn't diagnozed but probably should be). There is a real safety issue here because autistic people can spot the neurotypical vs neurodivergent difference pretty darn quickly and have come to realize that neurotypical people are a real threat, particularly in the job market.
And if you still don't think neurodivergent people can spot neurotypical people, what about the reaction autistic people get from allistic people? Allistic people tend to instinctively dislike, distrust or even bully autistic people from the moment they meet them. They create conditions where autistic people have a harder time in the workplace, are less likely to get promoted and more likely to be fired or forced to quit.
And you still think it isn't obvious?
The point of TFA is that the mild/borderline diagnosis rate has exploded. So apparently those professionally tasked with diagnosis now see autism where they used to not see it. But now we have self-styled autism spotters out there labeling people definitively based on tweets.
Even in your response you said my response was neurotypical, OR undiagnosed atypical. You don’t see the irony?
Whose founders are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Tabarrok and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler_Cowen
Tabarrok " In 2012, journalist David Brooks called Tabarrok one of the most influential bloggers on the political right, writing that he is among those who "start from broadly libertarian premises but do not apply them in a doctrinaire way."[6] "
Cowen " Cowen’s work spans economics, philosophy, and cultural commentary. He is known for advocating a pragmatic form of libertarianism that emphasizes strong governance, economic dynamism, and technological progress—an approach he terms state capacity libertarianism.[3] In 2011, he was included in Foreign Policy’s list of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers,” and Prospect magazine ranked him among the world’s most influential economists in 2023.[4][5] "
Those people and this blog is not at all a scientific institution, editor, publisher.
And as mentioned in another comment, the person we're invited to read from Crémieux ("Earlier Cremieux showed exactly the same thing based on data from Sweden and earlier CDC data."). " He was a speaker at the 2024 Manifest conference. Eugenicist Jonathan Anomaly was also a speaker.[2] Lasker has spoken out in favor of natalism.[2][14] Early in 2025, Lasker was a speaker at the Natal Conference, which has been criticized for including speakers promoting far-right ideologies such as Raw Egg Nationalist.[2][15] "
---
Those people are not scientists, they cosplay knowledge and scientific process and will use data to serve their narratives.
Yet another example that the info shared here in HN are vastly influenced by some angry teenagers with some kind of libertarian edgelord imperialist agenda. I mean, I'm assuming that's what they imagine they think between two games of League of Legends or wanking to deepfakes
Source: https://youtu.be/bhpd4NeTbCI Timestamp @25m : 20s
https://minnesotareformer.com/2024/06/18/feds-investigating-...
I think one of the paradoxes of our age is that we are overtly more accepting of different lifestyles while being less accepting of personalities faults. Having low EQ has always been a thing and yet in the social media era we've been very comfortable ostracizing those who suffer.
Being less accepting of neurodiverse people being different is directly linked to greater need to diagnosing them as society does not accept their differences.
In some cases there is expert acknowledgement that some differences are not necessarily a bad thing. For example:
> It can be helpful to think of ADHD not just as a deficit or disorder but as a ‘difference’. Some people view some aspects of their ADHD as strengths in certain situations or environments:
https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/mental-illnesses-and...
It's interesting how much the definition of "severe" Autism has changed in common language. Typically, someone with "severe Autism" would not be capable of holding down a complex job like engineering, let alone having a successful career and a family.
The families I know with severely autistic children (now young adults) are still working on basic self-sufficiency without a job or in one case basic verbalizations. So it's strange for me to see someone casually described as having "severe" autism but also having a successful engineering career and a family.
OgsyedIE•2h ago
Lasker has repeatedly falsified results, given some feigned apology or redirection and continued the practice of falsifying results.
gsu2•1h ago
cretinoid•1h ago
b00ty4breakfast•1h ago
oh, wait: https://lmddgtfy.net/?q=Jordan%20Lasker
Aurornis•1h ago
If you go deeper, his old Reddit account under a pseudonym was discovered to be a little more mask-off than his Twitter personality. From Wikipedia:
> between 2014 and 2016 Lasker had made many anti-Semitic and racist posts on Reddit under the pseudonym Faliceer.[7] In 2016, the account Faliceer self-identified as a "Jewish White Supremacist Nazi". He also wished Adolf Hitler a happy birthday, promoted eugenics and attacked interracial relationships.
Aurornis•1h ago
He has become a popular figure in the “rationalist” community which this blog (Marginal Revolution) belongs to, so you won’t find criticisms within this sphere.
Cremieux is the type of poster who posts 90% accurate information to build trust and then slips in 10% agenda-pushing material. If you’re not paying close attention or following people who will debunk him, it all looks equally scientific. He was highly active during the last election with political claims and data that were easily debunked or shown to be taken out of context.
He’s also a big proponent of buying GLP-1 peptides from questionable sources and mixing your own injections, which he advertises broadly but then puts his “guides” behind a paywall as a source of income. Because he profits from subscriptions to his guides, he has a huge conflict of interest when explaining the safety of buying these underground peptides and mixing your own injections, but he’s held up as a source of scientific truth for how completely safe it is by people who don’t recognize his conflict of interest.
tptacek•1h ago
Whatever the deal is, he's probably not wrong about autism.
Aurornis•1h ago
I agree, but it’s worth pointing out that this is kind of his whole schtick: Most of the topics he posts about are probably objectively based and generally accurate. He uses this to build trust before slipping in the bananas claims about immigrants, race/IQ stuff, and other political topics, or when it comes time to sell followers on subscriptions to his GLP-1 guides (which do not contain any information you couldn’t find freely from numerous other sources)
tptacek•1h ago
Lasker won't make you wait long before bringing the racist stuff out!
coldtea•1h ago
And if someone is a prolific poster of them, there's always an agenda.
tptacek•1h ago
ekianjo•1h ago
tptacek•1h ago
coldtea•1h ago
blactuary•1h ago
blactuary•1h ago