So, I have stumbled across a lovely test for autism, which … well, I’ve now lost count. But so far, I have never once gotten a confirmed-false-positive from it, and I’ve confirmed well over half a dozen positives.
Test methodology: I talk to people. Mostly, I eventually get this sort of hard to qualify sense of annoyance. If I don’t, after a few minutes, I suspect they are autistic. Quite a few have been already-diagnosed, and I’m somewhere over half a dozen cases of people for whom this diagnostic led me to suggest that they talk to a specialist, and they have since had a properly qualified professional diagnose them. In one case, it’s not a “formal” diagnosis with all the fancy tests, for budget reasons, but nonetheless a qualified, licensed, psychologist considers the evidence good enough to justify using that as a basis for treatment.
This really seems like a wonderful example of a thing which, even if true, is completely irrelevant on any kind of large scale. I don’t think I could teach anyone how I do it. I couldn’t do it enough to really save that much time or money or anything. And yet. For six or ten or however many people, it has made a difference, so I guess that’s a thing.
Comments [archived]
From: Yahzi
Date: 2014-08-14 00:15:01 -0500
Wait – how do you tell the difference between talking to an autistic and a Republican?
:D