If you had the choice to keep autism spectrum disorder or remove it completely which would you choose? This would change who you are so I have another question that adds on, let’s say this is a reversible method would you see the difference?
I see a lot of wrong in the world caused by people choosing to avoid “making a fuss” by playing along with social games and social authority.
Then people who don’t (!) have special interests that consume their mind and soul that they can dive into for hours on end and forget the world.
Yes, the downsides are real and hard, but I feel light panic at the thought of losing the beauty of immersing myself completely. Or at becoming able to play along dishonestly with people’s wrongs.
The autism I don’t mind so much. It’s all the comorbidities I’d want to do away with and never look back.
Damn, I’d just use the reversible method to give everyone else autism and live in a more peaceful world
Keep, just think about it. People like Linus Torvalds and Albert Einstein both have it.
I would instantly see a difference
I’m happy with who I am, so I would keep it. I’m loyal, caring, moral, and anti-hierarchy. Also, special interests are the best! The most simple things can make me happy 😊
I’m worried about what I might see if I test out neurotypicality as in I might lose some innocence. What if I see how jacked up things really are in the NT world? I want to stay away from their social games, power plays, and conformity.
This reminds me of the book The Wisdom of Psychopaths in which the author uses transcranial magnetic stimulation to temporarily experience psychopathy. He enjoyed aspects of it, but said he prefers his mind the way it is at baseline… To which it returned after a couple hours.
I’d rather fit in and be normal, so yeah. Fix this shit. The benefits gained do not outweigh the negatives that impact my life.
I managed to shore up the weaknesses that mattered most over time and with effort. So I’ve actually become quite able to fit in when necessary while retaining my even more valuable and less common traits. And working on them too, as of course they are much easier to work on.
Most of our “strengths” and “weaknesses” present more as effort multipliers. It can be incredibly inefficient to work on a skill you don’t have the aptitude for, and is thus also quite uncomfortable and requires great expenditures of will power. But I have alot of time and a safety net, so I was in the uncommon position to be able to spend and more importantly recover that will power.
Not everyone is in the position to do so, and thus I can understand a desire to be more “normal”. Not to mention autistic people born with less useful positives and lacking aptitude in much more important aspects. But I personally am very glad to have been born the way I was. If there was a “cure”, I would understand some people wanting it, but I’m not the least bit interested.
I did try dealing with my anxiety through medication, but it just “felt” wrong. Like to me I just seemed reckless on the medication. I’m sure I would have eventually gotten used to it and it would have become my new baseline, but I opted to work on it the hard way instead. With alot of time and effort, I managed to sort of put a barrier between my anxiety and the rest of my brain. I still know exactly what my anxiety is trying to tell me at any given time, but it has less of a vote in how I choose to act. I feel alot better about it this way than just making it disappear. It did usually at least have some valid points, I just wanted it to only be one source of information and not have a controlling share of the votes in my brain, lol.
Changing now, no. If it was changing back in like elementary school then probably yes. I’m too old now to ‘change’. Where would I even start? Shit I’d have to get a job and figure out my life. No thanks it’s more fun being a shut in xD
I think the premise is flawed. There is no non autistic version of myself especially as it’s a developmental disorder. So I couldn’t be allistic so much as I could be killed and and replaced with an allistic double. Similarly there’s no reversible procedure. Or at the very least memories formed by the allistic self would be recalled by and processed by my autistic brain so it would be akin to going into a coma and reading a story about this other person who lived in my skin while I was out. I suppose the real trick to make the question worked would be some sort of duality which I think you can tell I don’t believe in.
Cool thought experiment though. Helped me clarify my thinking, which is appreciated.
I was going to write something very similar but you phrased it much better than I could have.
I would keep it. I love the way I think differently, and I am at a point where I think that if I do not fit somewhere, other people should work more to accommodate things I do differently (because I do work a lot to be sociable).
I wouldn’t be me, so no.
A double answer!:
Hell nah, I like who I am. Autism might be disabling but it also disables living a normal boring life in favor for a an actually interesting one. If normies have a problem with me, that’s a them problem!
I wouldn’t even bother trying if it was reversible. I don’t like that people like Elon think they should make a pill to ‘fix’ autism. I understand helping with the more disabling portions of ASD, but I don’t need to be fixed. I may need help functioning but that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me.
If there was a switch I could turn on and off at will, I’d probably use it. But no I wouldn’t give it up permanently.
keep.
my me and my autism aren’t different things.
