Comment by nailer
16 hours ago
> As long as you define "ability to go to bathroom and pay taxes" as profound autism, that's true
Yes. That's literally the meaning of profound - has trouble with common functioning. Your position seems to be that a group - profound autistic people - that is defined by it's functional ability is being mischaracterised as having low functional ability. Mine is that that is literally what profoundly autistic' means.
> No one else is going to advocate or look out for autistic people, so we have to do it ourselves, and if that means people think we are overreacting so be it.
Likewise, which is why I support efforts to investigate the causes of something that is currently very ill defined. I do have resevations about RFK, it reminds me of working at Google where people find research to support their pre-drawn conclusions. But conspiracy theories about death camps are not one of my concerns.
> Your position seems to be
No my position is that you've created a tautology, and so the phrase "profoundly autistic" doesn't mean anything. You're profoundly autistic if you can't function, and if you can't function you're profoundly autistic. So what?
How does one measure "functional ability" -- functioning how and where and when? In a capitalist context? Academic context? social context? Where is the line? What's the cut off? Who is doing the assessing? Who is coming up with the criteria?
> But conspiracy theories about death camps are not one of my concerns.
I understand you don't think it's likely and don't care to discuss such matters, but you're not going to convince me these people are looking out for the best interests of autistic people. They're looking to be "right" about vaccines, and they're going to use autistic people however they can to get the answers they want.
> You're profoundly autistic if you can't function, and if you can't function you're profoundly autistic
That is a definition, not a tautology. Though I suspect the way this conversation will go is that we will argue over the definition of definition.
I’ll bow out, but I do share your concerns about people looking to be right about vaccines. I feel they may be right (and also that they may be wrong), but as I’ve mentioned in another thread, I’m concerned they’re finding research to support their conclusion (mercury and aluminium poisoning) rather than approaching the problem more rigorously.