No, you have it 100% backwards. I'm saying Microsoft is incentivized to not allow interference, and this is strengthened by the fact that when a government forced interference, it took steps to strengthen itself against future interference.
So in light of that actual evidence, yes I am calling it conspiracy thinking to suggest that Microsoft has built in some kind of kill switch to make it easier for the government to do things that are against its corporate interest. Because that's literally what it is -- imagining some kind of conspiracy where Microsoft wants to help the US government, instead of its own bottom line.
Explain to me what's problematic about that?
And whatever you think about the arguments on either side, snark is absolutely a problem on HN. We can't have civil, productive discussions with it, and if you say it's "the least problematic thing here", then that's part of the problem too. Let's be better than that, how about?
Also, how about less snark about the "news in my jurisdiction"? Since the first amendment provides more press freedoms than many European countries have.
You are speaking commendably from the point of view of diagnostics but from the point of view of physical operation you absolutely need that specialisation.
The present day meaning describes a continuum. The term could indeed be defined in the anachronistic terms you describe so it is anachronistic, which is a reasonable complaint when something enters common usage. We see terms redefined all the time thusly
UPDATE I have exceeded my grace with HN spam controls
The confusion arises from the direct import of a medical Latin term which means what it means in Latin, into the modern colloquial- this is important information
Well, if one is being pedantic about a loanword one must admit the possibility of the word being loaned twice with different meanings. If one doesn't want to be pedantic, all manner of things are admissible, of course.
DSM-V [1] describes criteria / symptoms in two groups (caps from document, sorry):
> A. PERSISTENT DEFICITS IN SOCIAL COMMUNICATION AND SOCIAL INTERACTION ACROSS CONTEXTS, NOT ACCOUNTED FOR BY GENERAL DEVELOPMENTAL DELAYS
> B. RESTRICTED, REPETITIVE PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOR, INTERESTS, OR ACTIVITIES
For criteria A, severity is more or less measured by how much social impairment is observed --- that's a measure of social acceptability in some fashion.
For criteria B, the severity criteria is about "interference with functioning in contexts" as well as observed distress of the patient. Interference with functioning can be related to the patient resisting the desired function, but it can also be because the patient is socially excluded due to their behavior.
Although, I should point out clinical criteria in general and the DSM in specific are a formalization of arbitrary judgements that describe observable characteristics grouped into a diagnostic category; this can be useful, but it's not really an understanding of the underlying condition(s), it's a handbook of things to look for when a patient comes asking for help and what things to try to help them. If someone has the same underlying conditions but manages to pass as socially acceptable, they may not come in for help, and that's fine too. When multiple underlying conditions result in similar observable criteria, the DSM gets pretty confused; there's not much in the way of attaching traces and getting debug logs for mental processes though, especially out in the world, so this is the best society has, I guess.
If I persistently ask awkward questions, that might "inhibit social interactions". If my community was tolerant and even accepting of this behavior it might not inhibit social interactions quite as much. They are different things for some behaviors but extremely closely related for others.
A specific behavior could qualify as both unaccepted by society and inhibiting social interactions. But that doesn’t mean that being unaccepted by society and having inhibited social interactions is the same measure.
It is not just about societal tolerance. It is also about autistic person having complete emotional meltdown with yelling abusive things or even hitting things because something was not exactly to his/her liking. You can "tolerate" that, but then you are just allowing someone else to be abused.
And even in milder cases, the "does not understand social rules" is sometimes or even frequently euphemism for what would be labeled as abusive or cruel or simply selfish behavior for non autistic person.
> It is also about autistic person having complete emotional meltdown ... because something was not exactly to his/her liking.
This usually happens when the person's needs have been repeatedly ignored, either because the person isn't aware of their needs, and thus isn't able to communicate them; or because the person has tried to communicate their needs but not been understood; or because the person has tried to communicate their needs and had their needs disregarded.
This isn't unique to people with neurodivergence.
> with yelling abusive things or even hitting things
Eventually communication fails and all that's left is violence. History (and the present day) is full of examples of this happening on an individual, national, and planetary scale.
> This usually happens when the person's needs have been repeatedly ignored, either because the person isn't aware of their needs, and thus isn't able to communicate them; or because the person has tried to communicate their needs but not been understood; or because the person has tried to communicate their needs and had their needs disregarded.
This is not true. Low emotional control is one of symptoms and for many autistic this is just a default response. It is literally part of diagnosis. There is no space for needs or rights of others. This is response to someone putting a cut into drawer wrong way or disobeying one of thousands weird rules the autistic person have for themselves and the world.
This frequently happens as a first response to the situation, before any communication could possibly occur.
> Eventually communication fails and all that's left is violence.
Autistic person being violent is violence as any other. And there was no attempt at communication, because man autistic dont understand why the thing needs to be communicated in the first place. They dont understand other dont see the word the same way.
And even more importantly, it is an emotional meltdown having nothing to do with what went on with communication before or not.
I suspect part of your parent comment's point is that this is an implicit bias in the way the spectrum is defined and thought of, so it wouldn't be clinically defined in those terms explicitly.
In other words, the "spectrum" doesn't exist to capture the variation in the autistic person's own experience - if it did, it would look very different. It's a remnant of a time when autism was seen as just a "problem" for the people around you, and the spectrum measures how much of a problem you are and how weird you are seen by their measure; which does map onto a continuous line in the same way.
That does capture something useful, but only a small part of what autism actually comprises, and is much less useful at capturing the autistic person's own experience of it, and makes it a less useful tool to them than people might assume.
It's not unusual for diagnostic criteria to hinge on the impact the thing is having on your work/family/school life.
Alcoholism, for example - we don't define alcoholism as drinking ≥2 bottles of wine a week, or say that 1 glass of wine a week is part of an alcoholism spectrum.
Instead, we ask whether drinking often interferes with taking care of home and family; or leads to job/school troubles; or has lead to getting arrested.
How much of a problem an alcoholic is for others being roughly equal to how much of a problem alcoholism is for the alcoholic.
> Instead, we ask whether drinking often interferes with taking care of home and family; or leads to job/school troubles; or has lead to getting arrested.
We don't ask just that, and the diagnosis doesn't hinge on those - in fact those account for only 3 (or 4 depending on how you count) of the 11 diagnostic criteria for alcohol use disorder. The others are about the person's own experience with alcohol, the difficulties and psychological problems caused by it to the person themself. And that's for alcohol use, an external behaviour-based problem with a specific narrow scope. Autism is a much wider construct with much more varied impact and experiences, and yet in practice people are placed somewhere on the spectrum based mainly on external interactions and troubles.
Historically this came about because people who were "low-functioning" caused more difficulties to others, whereas "high-functioning" folk didn't - even though they might have comparable amounts of difficulties and psychological anguish internally and in need of similar help too. This simplistic view is changing slowly within the field and with some therapists recognizing it better for what it is, but it's still not nearly as widely recognized as it needs to be.
> It's a remnant of a time when autism was seen as just a "problem" for the people around you
I think it still is the current approach, and is not a bad thing per se:
People can have their own specific conditions, but if they are considered fully functional they will have no business getting clinically diagnosed. It will only be relevant when it reduces social functions, and becomes a problem, so that's the part that will be diagnosed.
To put another way, there is the biological/research part to understand how people work and how they think and behave, and the medical part to "fix" things. The variation of people's experience belongs in the former, the autism spectrum belongs to the latter.
Of course we do this for most conditions: for instance people's voice are all different, if yours is just "weird" but intelligible you won't go get a diagnostic, if half of the people can't understand what you say you might need one, whatever the biological cause is.
As someone who has "successfully" masked for the majority of their adult life, all the while suffering in silence, I can say that this is a problematic take at best.
I am considered a "fully functional" adult from all outward appearances, even to friends and family. I'm lucky enough to be capable (with great internal effort) of typical "normal" things like participating in meaningless smalltalk, holding down a job, and doing all of life's chores just like "everyone else." However, unlike everyone else, I had to practice and endlessly rehearse things in my head to achieve the outcomes I desired. A charitable interpretation of your words would mean that "it's a problem", but who is it a problem for? The folks around me? Certainly not. This is invisible to others. It's akin to running monte carlo simulations of all permutations of outcomes before acting on decisions that others would consider trivial. For years I thought that was what everyone was doing. I eventually learned that "no one" did this, and I trained away all "problematic" characteristics of myself just to keep up the act.
So in lieu of your implications that 'passing' autistics "have no business getting diagnosed", I'd rather propose this instead: seek a diagnosis if your condition is debilitating in any way shape or form and would benefit from treatment, _regardless_ of whether or not your condition is externally visible or even apparent to others. A "fix" should be sought if you are suffering. There is no cure for autism, but there are many programs and medications that can help.
PS That said, it may be unwise to disclose your diagnosis to say your employer, unless you need specific accomodations for your set of symptoms at work. I speak from experience.
I didn't mean to imply masking doesn't come with a disadvantage, and I sympathize with the efforts needed in places where others have no stress.
Still IMHO the bar to treat it as a medical condition is higher than that. To take another example, one can be hyper reactive to dust, and that has surprisingly wide impacts on everyday life. House maintenance becomes critical of course and interior furniture will reflect that (e.g. a long fur carpet and other hard to clean convoluted forms are out of question). It also bars the person from whole categories of shops ans places, old libraries is often a no go, some shops/restaurants using encent or heavier room flagrance will also trigger a reaction. There will be whole categories of jobs that are also not an option.
This kind of predicament will make everyday life a lot tougher and require significant effort, yet IME will not be categorized as a medical condition until something critical happens. Like an asthma crisis that ends at ER for instance.
It is not "fair" in the sense that successfuly dealing with the health/mental issue is kinda taken for granted, but I also understand why we draw a line between conditions the person can deal with alone, and other conditions that require external intervention.
I could "deal with it", until I couldn't. When a seemingly fully functional person with no warning signs suddenly breaks down (often catastrophically), providers scramble and tend to misdiagnose since they're missing key criteria. Without a formal diagnosis, it can look like severe depression or psychosis or a number of other similar conditions that have very different treatment plans. Autistic burnout treatment is something entirely different, although it can present the same. A prior diagnosis would at least point them in the correct direction for treatment.
Has social acceptability in any context ever been defined, beyond say, rules of etiquette? It's a free market and everyone is arguably entitled to test to see what it will bear.
The entire nature of the field of psychology and mental health treatment is relative to pain and dysfunction.
If people fit in well and didn’t have issues (either internal pain/suffering or society interaction pain/suffering), they are not applicable to the field.
GP’s concern is that the quantisation scale is not representative of linear severity. It’s more like classification of disjoint characteristics tagged with colour
> bed frames and box springs are mostly superfluous and a mattress on the ground is more comfortable and cheaper
I was also of this persuasion and did this for many years and for me the main issue was drafts close to the floor.
The key reason I believe though is mattresses can absorb damp so you wana keep that air gap there to lessen this effect and provide ventilation.
> getting up from a squat should not be difficult
Not much use if you’re elderly or infirm.
Other cons: close to the ground so close to dirt and easy access for pests. You also don’t get that extra bit of air gap insulation offered by the extra 6 inches of space and whatever you’ve stashed under there.
Other pros: extra bit of storage space. Easy to roll out to a seated position if you’re feeling tired or unwell
It’s good to talk to people about your crazy ideas and get some sun and air on that head cannon LOL
Futon’s are designed specifically for use case you have described so best to use one of those rather than a mattress which is going to absorb damp from the floor.
A major con of bedframes is annoying squeaks. Joints bear a lot of load and there usually isn't diagonal bracing to speak of, so they get noisy after almost no time at all. Fasteners loosen or wear the frame materials. I have yet to find one that stays quiet more than a few months or a year without retightening things; but I haven't tried a full platform construction with continuous walls which I expect might work better, but also sounds annoyingly expensive and heavy.
Generally manufactures just send things like bolts. Just add your own lock washers or things like teflon washers and these problems tend to go away long term.
Reading this it seems to me that ISPs missed a trick by not offering privacy features. These features were already baked into mobile wireless it probably wouldn’t have been a huge big deal for them to provide it. That’s what happens when you treat your business as a source of rent
GPT’s differentiator is they focused on training for “thinking” while Gemini prioritized instant response. Medium thinking is not the limit of utility
Re: overparameterization specifically Medium and High are also identically parameterized
Medium will also dynamically use even higher thinking than High. High is fixed at a higher level rather than leaving it to be dynamic, though somewhat less than Medium’s upper limit
> Where does this kind of conspiracy thinking come from?
Now you say
> Microsoft pledged not to intervene like that again
You are full of it
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