SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the superhero-cyborgs-need-a-special-suit,-too dept.
Why I'm turning my son into a cyborg (archive) (alt)
Imagine if everyone spoke a language you don't understand. People have been speaking it around you since the day you were born, but while everyone else picks it up immediately, for you it means nothing. Others become frustrated with you. Friendships and jobs are difficult. Just being "normal" becomes a battle.
For many with autism, this is the language of emotion. For those on the spectrum, fluency in facial expressions doesn't come for free as it does for "neurotypicals." To them, reading facial expressions seems like a superpower.
So when my son was diagnosed, I reacted not just as a mom. I reacted as a mad scientist and built him a superpower.
This isn't the first time I've played mad scientist with my son's biology. When he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, I hacked his insulin pump and built an AI that learned to match his insulin to his emotions and activities. I've also explored neurotechnologies to augment human sight, hearing, memory, creativity, and emotions. Tiger moms might obsess over the "right" prep schools and extracurriculars for their child, but I say why leave their intellect up to chance?
I've chosen to turn my son into a cyborg and change the definition of what it means to be human. But do my son's engineered superpowers make him more human, or less?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @12:35PM (14 children)
Are the rates of autism and diabetes normal or elevated for some reason? It seems like there are far more news stories the last few years about these diseases than usual.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @12:39PM (4 children)
Autism rising: https://www.livescience.com/62415-autism-rate-rises.html [livescience.com]
Diabetes rising: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/278140.php [medicalnewstoday.com]
Drug poisoning rising: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2018/p0329-drug-overdose-deaths.html [cdc.gov]
Yea, how about our health "experts" first work on returning the population to a normal rates of autism, diabetes, and poisonings before any of this cyborg crap.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Friday July 19 2019, @02:17PM (2 children)
First, note this: "Earlier versions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) ... listed autistic disorder, Asperger syndrome and [two other conditions] as separate diagnoses. In the latest edition of the DSM, however, experts combined these conditions into one group called autism spectrum disorder because they all appear to be varying degrees of the same disorder."
Unless one is very careful with the stats, that alone is going to skew them.
More importantly, people seem to want their kids to be diagnosed with something. Autism, Asperger's, ADD, ADHD, whatever - every kid who has the faintest signs of anything is going to get a diagnosis. In earlier decades, this was not true. Kids were kids, they have a range of behaviors, and only the most extreme cases were formally diagnosed. As this trend has increased, so has the percentage of kids carrying diagnoses around.
As an aside: I'm not sure this is helpful for the kids. Seems to me that it gives them an excuse to not fit in, to not along with others, to demand special treatment. Lacking a diagnosis, you just figure out how to make life work. Everybody has their challenges. FWIW, I figure I'm probably somewhere on the spectrum, but I've never been diagnosed, and I hardly see any reason to pursue it. Really, what difference would it make?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Mer on Friday July 19 2019, @04:53PM (1 child)
Whether or not it's helpful for the kid is up to what parents do with that information. As long as autism is mild enough that the kid is not language impaired, you can teach emotion reading explicitly instead of letting the kid pick it up on their own. Even neurotypicals sometimes have a quirk that needs to be corrected because body language skills are rarely perfect and they didn't learn it as they grew up.
Stuff like reminding yourself to blink a bit more than you need to during face to face conversations if you don't blink a lot. Most people even if they blink infrequently will automatically drift to the rythm of their interlocutor.
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 2) by Snospar on Friday July 19 2019, @05:23PM
Just wear hard contact lenses and you'll be blinking in no time! Now if only I could master the "I'm listening; I'm interested" facial expression to go with it
Huge thanks to all the Soylent volunteers without whom this community (and this post) would not be possible.
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Friday July 19 2019, @08:28PM
Rising autism rates, especially in the west, are at least partially a result of people having children later and later in life.
Women under 24 appear to have the lowest chances of having autistic children as per https://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/news/20100208/autism-risk-rises-with-mothers-age#1 [webmd.com]
The article linked appears to discount the idea that this is the case, though the mean age of first-time mothers is already at 26 and climbing https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/01/14/462816458/average-age-of-first-time-moms-keeps-climbing-in-the-u-s [npr.org], in which the rate of autistic children per thousand births is 2.3 per 1000 vs 1.6 per 1000 when 2 years younger.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by epitaxial on Friday July 19 2019, @12:50PM (5 children)
Some say the diagnosis for autism traits has changed over the years. I say it's because children are glued to screens wherever they go. They don't interact with people they just follow their parents around with peripheral vision. Take the screen away and watch the tantrum and crocodile tears flow. If they have trouble "reading" people then maybe they need more practice?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @01:08PM (1 child)
Health of mom's gut a key contributor to autism risk, study suggests. [sciencedaily.com] Since countries with the highest consumption of highly-processed foods are seeing the most impact from autism, there is at least a correlation. Possibly the dietary changes are impacting oxytocin, which is also strongly linked to autism. [nih.gov]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @01:54PM
I say its the sheer number of parents and children on prescription medication. I saw a commercial the other day where they made it seem normal to be filling 5 prescriptions for yourself and 4 for your five year old child.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mer on Friday July 19 2019, @01:59PM (2 children)
Autism is underlying regardless of practice. Practice does make the difference between functioning autists and non-functioning ones.
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday July 19 2019, @03:57PM (1 child)
You oversimplify. There are degrees of autism. For mild degrees of autism you are probably correct, for severe autism practice doesn't suffice, and as it gets worse, becomes essentially impossible.
N.B.: I may also be oversimplifying. It's quite possible that autism is a syndrome rather than a single disease, and different forms respond differently to treatments. This doesn't exactly invalidate what I said, but it may imply that for certain forms of mild autism, practice wouldn't help.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Mer on Friday July 19 2019, @04:40PM
Right, I was oversimplifying. I just wanted to point out that practice wouldn't change anything about autism prevalence.
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday July 19 2019, @02:09PM
There is a major question about autism and whether rates have risen or if it has just become more important to notice autism and increased screening tools are finding more cases. Bear in mind that autism is a spectrum disorder - high functioning or mild symptomology might not have been recognized as such.
Diabetes does seem to be on the rise. Sugar is relatively cheap (relatively!) and so are fats. So if you don't have enough resources you are going to load yourself down with foods that actually produce obesity and help a person develop diabetes. If you have too much resources you might also buy more food, also causing obesity. So it's a double-edged sword - the poor and the rich both engage in behaviors which cause it.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @03:45PM (1 child)
In the old days, autistic children were beaten to death.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @09:33PM
That was due to the lack of vaccines and fluoridated H20.