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Comment by blueflow | Hacker News Reader

> Also this “Having sensory processing issues doesn’t make you “a little autistic.” It makes you someone with sensory processing problems.

This filing-people-into-groups thinking is something that i see so often here on HN and I'm so bothered by it.

For me, i do what i feel i want to do, and make up names and concept for it afterwards if it seems necessary. Sometimes i don't have words for what i am doing. Its a lot of improvisation.

For some people, this process seems to be reversed... Like as if they need to be "validated" by external concepts, otherwise they don't do some things. And they feel relieved when they have a diagnosis like "autism". Not having a name/explanation for it seems like a barrier to them.

I don't know what i am observing here, but I'd like to know. Maybe this is like the inner-monologue thing, where humans vastly differ in some regard but are unaware of it.

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Similar. I think because I've always been "kind of weird", and eternally baffled at so-called "normal" people expecting everybody to be like them. Like, we're allowed to be different, right? In practice you'll be ostracized. Unless you get an official diagnosis. Then you're allowed to be weird. Thanks for "accommodating" me, society. But how about we just don't structure it in such a stupid way in the first place? "No, you weirdo, stop being unreasonable. Go back to watching football."

That said, labels can be useful. If other people that are similarly weird have found some tactic (or substance) useful, you might also find it useful. For me, "aha, it's ADHD!" was a huge breakthrough, because it gave me a general direction to search for answers (and meds).

So, uh, to summarize: labels can be useful, but I wish society was not structured in such a neurotypical-centric way. Just let people be different. e.g. If someone says "I don't work well in an open-plan office", just believe them. They shouldn't need a doctor's note.

That problem could be attributed to the tragedy of the Commons.

Claiming you don't work well in an open plan office and being taken at face value would lead to literally everyone saying that, because surprise, most people don't work well in open plan offices (I'm very neurotupical and I hate it).

Another way to look at it is that we've evolved as a society to go out of our way to try to accomodate people with different needs when necessary. Being given an office if you have ADHD is great. Try to go back 100 years and you'd be fired from the factory instead for not being a perfect cog in the machine.

So it's actually beautiful we are able and willing to accomodate others, when for most of history that wasn't the case at all.

>Like as if they need to be "validated" by external concepts, otherwise they don't do some things.

I don't know, I could imagine struggling with their life and blaming themselves for it. A diagnosis might well provide some relief from that.

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