There's an issue here that people are simultaneously treating autism as a waste basket category (throwing anything that remotely looks like difficulties with socializing, sensory issues, etc) and wanting it to be a Real Thing. It can be one or the other, that's fine! We can decide that "autism" just refers to a list of symptoms that can be caused by any old thing--autism due to brain cancer. Autism due to being kicked by a mule. Autism due to anemia. Schizophrenia with autistic symptoms. OCD with autistic symptoms. Etc.--or we can decide that autism is a specific set of impairments with a particular cause, like Down's or the flu. What it CAN'T be is BOTH, and that's what trying to redefine WS as autism in order to save the autism/schiz dichotomy is trying to do.
Most likely it's not *quite* either of those -- no one's found a unitary cause, certainly, and it's not for a lack of trying -- but yeah, the WS about-face in the diametric model is...telling.
It's particularly eyebrow-raising because what I *do* respect Crespi for is that he tends to be quite a bit better than the average autism researcher at not falling headfirst into wastebasket-ism. Which tells you what a lot of the rest are doing! The motte in motte-and-bailey for the diametric model is that it's presenting a specific-thing-with-a-unitary-cause model of autism, but because everything in real life constantly disproves the proposed unitary-cause, it gets twisted into knots.
This contradictory "both at once" pops up in a strange number of unitary-cause autism models. Any given single autism model ends up not working, so they suddenly mutate into half-unitary half-wastebasket models.
People trying to better understand autism spectrum should be aware of this hypothesis which should be considered as a possible explanation for a subset of ASD.
(scroll to both places TripleTaco shows on the page)
I don't categorically *rule out* a "real" increase alongside all the other increases (the epicentre for increased diagnosis seems to be the Bay Area in the 1980s, which...yeah), but I'm very skeptical about environmental factors for huge real increases. People *drastically* underestimate diagnostic substitution, in large part because people looking for "overdiagnosis" are mostly looking at mild autism, but in reality severe autism is much more overdiagnosed. A lot of the increase disappears once you remove "intellectual disability rediagnosed as autism".
The study used to support an exceptionally low Amish autism rate is 14 years old. While it's still a gap compared to contemporary ASD prevalence estimates, it's a way smaller one, and it feels dishonest for TT to represent it so straightforwardly. The Amish are a weird genetic isolate in a way TT doesn't take seriously -- it's possible for Amish rates to be unusually low compared to "English" cultures in the Anglosphere, and for the increase in non-Amish diagnosis to mark factors other than genetics (mostly), and for these to be caused by different things.
There's an issue here that people are simultaneously treating autism as a waste basket category (throwing anything that remotely looks like difficulties with socializing, sensory issues, etc) and wanting it to be a Real Thing. It can be one or the other, that's fine! We can decide that "autism" just refers to a list of symptoms that can be caused by any old thing--autism due to brain cancer. Autism due to being kicked by a mule. Autism due to anemia. Schizophrenia with autistic symptoms. OCD with autistic symptoms. Etc.--or we can decide that autism is a specific set of impairments with a particular cause, like Down's or the flu. What it CAN'T be is BOTH, and that's what trying to redefine WS as autism in order to save the autism/schiz dichotomy is trying to do.
Most likely it's not *quite* either of those -- no one's found a unitary cause, certainly, and it's not for a lack of trying -- but yeah, the WS about-face in the diametric model is...telling.
It's particularly eyebrow-raising because what I *do* respect Crespi for is that he tends to be quite a bit better than the average autism researcher at not falling headfirst into wastebasket-ism. Which tells you what a lot of the rest are doing! The motte in motte-and-bailey for the diametric model is that it's presenting a specific-thing-with-a-unitary-cause model of autism, but because everything in real life constantly disproves the proposed unitary-cause, it gets twisted into knots.
This contradictory "both at once" pops up in a strange number of unitary-cause autism models. Any given single autism model ends up not working, so they suddenly mutate into half-unitary half-wastebasket models.
People trying to better understand autism spectrum should be aware of this hypothesis which should be considered as a possible explanation for a subset of ASD.
(scroll to both places TripleTaco shows on the page)
https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2023/09/07/mysteries-contest-winners/
It presents a non-genetic cause which could explain the rise in diagnosis rates.
I don't categorically *rule out* a "real" increase alongside all the other increases (the epicentre for increased diagnosis seems to be the Bay Area in the 1980s, which...yeah), but I'm very skeptical about environmental factors for huge real increases. People *drastically* underestimate diagnostic substitution, in large part because people looking for "overdiagnosis" are mostly looking at mild autism, but in reality severe autism is much more overdiagnosed. A lot of the increase disappears once you remove "intellectual disability rediagnosed as autism".
The study used to support an exceptionally low Amish autism rate is 14 years old. While it's still a gap compared to contemporary ASD prevalence estimates, it's a way smaller one, and it feels dishonest for TT to represent it so straightforwardly. The Amish are a weird genetic isolate in a way TT doesn't take seriously -- it's possible for Amish rates to be unusually low compared to "English" cultures in the Anglosphere, and for the increase in non-Amish diagnosis to mark factors other than genetics (mostly), and for these to be caused by different things.