Autism has a history of being wildly oversimplified. It is completely reasonable to propose the opposite to many of the often ill-founded theories that have dominated the history of this diagnostic category.

Meanwhile, I don’t see a lot wrong in people saying things based on how things seem to be from their perspectives as autistic people. As an autistic person I have long observed things about how I see the world that are different from how other peoples say they see the world. Many of those things, according to scientist friends, were later figured out by science. If autistic people had waited for science to start going in that direction before voicing our opinions on the matter, science may never have gone in that direction, or only much later than it did. So I see no harm in saying how I see autism to be, I could be wrong but just because I don’t state the evidence doesn’t mean it’s not there. I don’t go in for beliefs pre-packaged in boxes.

If you’re looking for dogma to complain about though, you probably ought to go somewhere else. I don’t have any kind of claim on absolute truth, I just have opinions, which obviously you do to. That’s what makes it hard to talk to you, you’re assuming too much about how I form my opinions, and it’s difficult to have a conversation with a set of inaccurate assumptions.

If you have difficulty with understanding, this is the same thing, in simpler terms:

Pretending there is a fundamentally different wiring in autistics versus non-autistics is nothing else than a ideological dogma without scientific backing whatsoever.

I do not mean there isn’t any difference in the brain between the two. I say that it is not understood in what consists that difference and how pervasive it is.

It may be a chemical inbalance, it may be an excess of neurons, it may be a deficit of neurons, it may be a defect in some particular part of the brain, or it may be the effect of the environment upon susceptible people – it is not known for sure.

And yet, despite this confusion which dominates upon the scientific community, lots of people are so eager to postulate a lot of “truths” about what autism is.

Beyond expressing their own experiences, their testimonies bare little value concerning the neural workings of this brain disorder.

The name calling and the impolite considerations about how I manage my life that I receive from you guys in the stead of meaningful sentences, I shall not discuss.

That’s the optimistic view, which could only happen if it left any personality, memories, or skills at all, since all those things were acquired and modified by someone using an Autism operating system. I think it’d be much like trying to run a Windows program on a Mac… it just wouldn’t work. You’d have to format the whole thing and start over.

You emit sentences as if you’ve seen how the neurons are wired in the brain with your own eyes.

You seem to enjoy postulating things: that the brain of an autistic person is wired differently, that autistics differ from neurotypicals as cats differ from dogs, and so on.

Not even the scientists dare to make so many clear-cut statements about autistics vs. non-autistics yet you do it as if you talk about vanilla ice cream vs. strawberry cake.

It is amazing to me that the world knows so little yet you claim to know so much.

it’s kind of confusing…..

and I don’t want to even think about the invasiveness of changing someone from autistic to non-autistic.

Eurgh. Nuff said.

Ivan