Introduction Thread: May 2009

The trouble with disallowing self-diagnosis of high-functioning autism - especially in adults - is that it's possible to conceal outward signs of the atypical thought processes or avoid triggers entirely. I have a (not self-) diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome, but since I've moved away from home, I'm in almost complete control of my surroundings, associating with people of my choosing, and generally not subject to anything that would be likely to make me behave in any unusual way. I doubt I could get a diagnosis if I walked into a psychologist's office today, but this isn't because I no longer freak out in contact with certain offensive textures or because I have learned to read minds. It's because I have created an environment for myself that is free of those textures and have made friends who are able to explain themselves to me, whereas as a child, my parents were not-particularly-accommodating obstacles between me and environmental/social self-determination.

Agreed, in an ideal world self-diagnosing would be simply foolish, for all the reasons you listed. Even in this one, it's not always a good idea.

In my personal case, I already have a diagnosis of being neurologically atypical, which was made when I was very young and specifically re-tested when I was in my late teens, so I'd be able to claim most if not all of the benefits of belonging to the neurodiverse community anyway. Questioning that the correct diagnosis was made is not the same as questioning that there was something diagnosis-worthy going on in the first place. This is a relatively common story, given that the 'high-functioning' variants of autism only became well known about 10 to 15 years ago, and before that time people who were only mild--to-moderately autistic got other labels instead.

In most 'true' self-diagnosis cases that I'm aware of, the person was already very aware that there was something unusual about themselves, and had looked at and rejected one or more other explanations before realizing that autism was the one that fit. Those people generally did seem to also be autistic (the similarities in processing style tend to be pretty obvious when you're interacting with someone in realtime, if you know what to look for) and the few of them that pursued official diagnoses got them easily.

I did run into a few people who did appear to be using the diagnosis for reasons like the ones you suggested; they stuck out like sore thumbs. My general observation about those people is that their general sanity waterline was very low, and that if they hadn't been able to use autism as their attention-getter, they would just have chosen another one. The self-diagnosis appeared to be a symptom, not a cause, of poor rationality in those cases.

By the way, if you're wondering why I haven't gone for a diagnosis myself, it's because a series of very bad experiences with psychiatrists and other mental health workers as a teenager left me with a bit of what appears to be PTSD. I could probably force myself to go into a situation like that, but the chance of my having a panic attack and getting myself into serious trouble would be significant, and the chance of me actually being able to interact with them well enough to get any benefit out of it would be negligible. (I don't consider the diagnosis itself to be a significant benefit, just a prerequisite if I wanted other assistance, which... not goona happen.) (This is, by the way, a good example of that 'quiet emotional system' thing... I'm having a very quiet anxiety attack in the back of my head, which isn't strong enough to interfere with my thinking much. If I were in the real situation mentioned, there would be enough of a feedback loop that the anxiety would go from being quiet to being overwhelming in about 5 to 10 minutes without extensive conscious management.)

I'm sure you already know this, but I think that rather than saying you are almost certainly autistic, you can say that you are on the autistic spectrum. I think psychiatry puts too much emphasis on diagnoses when it's widely understood that many if not most issues with mental health exist on a continuous spectrum.

They're both accurate descriptions, but I think the former is clearer: The latter would likely be taken to imply that I'm nearly NT, which isn't the case at all.

More interestingly, can you discuss your brainbits in much greater deal? I think it would make a great top-level post.

I'll think about it. I expect that the hardest part of that will be figuring out which aspects of it are most interesting to other people.

You're probably one of few people in the world capable of discussing such a topic with the linguistic precision demanded on Less Wrong. I assume by brainbits that you don't mean individual neurons, but some collection of neurons or generalized electrical patterns bouncing around in your brain?

Much of what I can perceive correlates well with identified brain structures. (But not 1:1 - in some cases I have slightly more information, and in some cases I have much less, about a given system or subsystem.) I can also perceive a few things that I believe are specific electrical patterns - extremely minor seizures (rare for me; more common in the population than you might think) and specific kinds of overload - and more general states, like specific kinds of mental fatigue.

Can you make a step-through description of brainbit activation for some basic brain tasks?

With effort, I could. Did you have a particular task in mind?

Can you only perceive conscious actions/problem solving?

This question almost doesn't make sense, but I think the proper answer is no: I can perceive and influence things about how I'm processing information that, according to my neuroscientist friend, are not normally consciously perceivable, and I can also observe the workings of various brainbits that I don't have any direct way of consciously influencing, to various degrees.

How confident are you that your brainbit awareness corresponds with specific neurological actions?

Pretty confident. What I perceive squares well with neuroscience, and on top of that, I do actually make use of my awareness. I've picked up a few tricks that way that work reliably enough to convince me even if the correlation with neuroscience wasn't so strong. The most convincing one is that I can consciously stop a brief memory from forming, if I have warning beforehand - that particular one is rarely useful, but since I can remember having done it, and what general type of information I did it to, without remembering the actual information despite much curiosity, it makes a good proof. (A more useful, but slightly less provable, one, is 'next time I see X, remember Y'. That one is also usefully reliable and has been known to trigger over a year after having been set, but there's an anthropic bias inherent in it: If it fails, I'm unlikely to realize that it has, in many situations.)

Do you think that your awareness forms a model of reality that could be useful for describing brains other than your own?

I suspect so. The correlation with neuroscience implies that my neurodifference is a difference in degree more than a difference in type, and my interactions with other people since I've figured out how to compensate for that have generally supported that theory.

I have a lot more questions I could ask but I'll stop there because there's a good chance I am asking the wrong questions, until I get clarification from you. Feel free to answer the questions I didn't ask rather than the questions that I did ask.

You seem to be on the right track. What else are you curious about?

I was diagnosed as being ADD when I was five, but personal research has led me to the conclusion that I'm almost certainly autistic,

Currently a common story. I've been suspecting the same thing about myself for some time.

I recommend Amanda Baggs' blog as a resource for figuring that out - she's not posting regularly any more, but there's a lot of older posts describing how she experiences various things that are common in autistics. It makes a lot more sense than the 'list of traits' type things that are common - an outsider's view isn't very useful if you're not looking from the outside.

currently working from home on complex Second Life projects.

Sounds like you're living the dream. How do I get in touch with your agent?

Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I can't tell you much about how to break into the industry, as it was almost entirely luck, for me, but getting into SL, getting used to the system, and doing a few projects can't hurt. I was 'discovered' when I did a build for a disability support group that was starting up, that happened to be being sponsored by the owner of the company I now work for.