How do normal people walk? Are people diagnosed as normal? Do autistic people receive a comprehensive list of things they do that are not normal and instructions of how to be normal?
PaulHoule · 4h ago
I think human gaits are unexamined compared to, say, horses, which are very high performance movers that are vulnerable to problems, have to carry extra weight, and for whom the main reason we have them is their walking/trotting/cantering performance.
My impression from people watching 20-year old undergraduate students at my Uni is that a lot of them have gaits that seem markedly abnormal to me, like there is a strong left/right asymmetry or their toes are not pointing in the right direction or something. My impression is that general populations of people in a wider age range seem to have better gaits, I don't know if people improve their form with time or if the people with bad gaits aren't walking in public when they're in an environment where they don't have to or have it damage their mobility.
ninetyninenine · 5h ago
Nowadays it’s fashionable to be autistic and diagnose yourself. This is especially true for people who like to think they’re intelligent. Elon for example.
PaulHoule · 5h ago
Neurotypical flocking at its worst. Kanye West, who has a bipolar diagnosis and behaves like someone with bipolar, says he is autistic. A common theme is finding a reason why it's OK to be lacking into insight into yourself and others.
This study does some quality work that deconstructs "autism"
My impression from people watching 20-year old undergraduate students at my Uni is that a lot of them have gaits that seem markedly abnormal to me, like there is a strong left/right asymmetry or their toes are not pointing in the right direction or something. My impression is that general populations of people in a wider age range seem to have better gaits, I don't know if people improve their form with time or if the people with bad gaits aren't walking in public when they're in an environment where they don't have to or have it damage their mobility.
This study does some quality work that deconstructs "autism"
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-025-02224-z
into several phenotypes which are really different diseases, which might be the beginning of the end of this nightmare.