I think the info is even more outdated than that. The article is from August 2024 but it cites "a recent survey by Databricks" that from what I can tell isn't linked to, so who knows what data they're referring to.
I was deep into the big data ecosystem in the 2010s. Those numbers feel like they're from 2017 or so. Scala has been on a slide every since.
A text-based tool like this certainly puts a ceiling on presentation quality. Whether that really matters is situational. In most cases, content is more important than style once a certain threshold of "not hideous" is reached.
The same tradeoffs apply to a text-based diagram tool like mermaid.js vs more traditional diagramming tools like Miro.
My coworkers' Miro diagrams are prettier than my mermaid diagrams. But mine are composable and able to be versional controlled. I'm able to create complex diagrams many times faster using a text-based tool.
Ultimately, slides and diagrams are for conveying knowledge. If you're able to convey the same knowledge with significantly less effort, that outweighs the loss of "style points" in most situations (internal knowledge-transfer, meet-ups, etc).
Slight tangent counterpoint; sometimes conveying knowledge requires the prettier / flair of a miro/lucid/figma or even full infographic style solution.
I like md, and I like mermaid, and I like text / simple. But I know to help others, sometimes the visual medium and storytelling justify the alternatives.
Yep. Totally agree. It's situational. IMO, a marginally prettier presentation is rarely worth the opportunity cost of what else I could get done with the time, but sometimes it is.
It feels like banning advertising for gambling would be a sweet spot between harm reduction and maintaining individual liberty.
Sports gambling ads have ruined sports media. State lottery ads are even worse. The government should not spend money to encourage its own citizens to partake in harmful activities.
"Make it legal but very annoying" is an underrated policy option. And banning advertisement is the first resort in this line of regulation.
If there are no ads to tell you, you have to, first, be informed that sports gambling is a thing people do, then decide that it's a thing you want participate in, and then obtain information on how it's done. This adds friction. Friction reduces participation. But if you really want to gamble? You still can.
Taxing they daylights out of the advertising is another option.
That should push the shadier operators out of the limelight, though it would likely leave large-pot gaming (sports, Powerball, etc.) standing, at least for a while.
(I'd very much like to hear criticisms of this approach.)
So this is sort of a gotcha question, but I don't mean it that way.
Is it advertising when the announcer for a game talks about gambling? There's statements that obviously would be advertising, so the interesting thing is where and how to draw the line.
I mean, are they being compensated for saying so? The sports gambling industry did not invent advertising; there are already clear laws that govern this.
Norway does a great job of this with the government-owned alcohol monopoly. The stores are always just a little bit out of the way, with slightly inconvenient hours. You can still get a beer if you want, but it takes a little bit of doing.
USA absolutely does things to reduce alcohol consumption. Most famously our high drinking age, but also high taxes, rules about public consumption, and various local laws.
Most countries will let 18 year olds drink beer in a park.
Until 2004, Massachusetts banned alcohol sales for off-premise consumption on Sundays.
Still in effect is a ban on sales for off-premise consumption after 11:00pm and before 08:00am. Also, the number of stores that can sell alcohol for off-premise consumption is restricted by a quota system.
My own folk etymology of this infelicity is that it started with the mispronunciation, which is actually hard to avoid in rapid speech, and bled over to people simply writing the wrong word.
The OED says that the "house or building..." use of "premise" actually comes from an earlier legal meaning ("The subject of a conveyance or bequest..."). Even for those who (inaccurately) think etymology determines "correctness", this isn't an incorrect use of the word.
You can do that. And, for some percentage of the population who reads your writing, you will appear under-educated in this matter. It will look like you dont know the right word to use. The other part of the population won't notice.
And a very small percentage of the population will need to be right so badly that they point it out on HN. C'mon, I'm super pedantic and even I think you're going a bit far. Also, no need to throw shade when pointing out grammatical and spelling issues.
It varies heavily by state. In some places you can buy alcohol anywhere anytime it's open. On the other end there are limited stores that can only sell just beer or just liquor, and their hours are short and days limited. Some local areas are still "dry" and have no place to get alcohol.
It can be a real pain to get alcohol without planning in these places.
Alternatively: ban the instant-gratification bets. No bets on the outcomes of partial games: one pitch, one at-bat, one inning or quarter or half. If you want to get extreme with it, scorelines only (points, moneyline, over/under).
Nah the sweet spot is to make the gambling companies pay for the treatment and recovery of the people addicted to their products, up to whatever amount they gave the gambling company.
I wonder could this be expanded to other areas. Say you run a ski-resort. Any broken bones and other issues are fully on you. To unlimited liability, piercing any corporate setup. Could really work for any sports too.
Food, tobacco, alcohol get more interesting... As there is bit harder time to assign blame of each meal. Maybe in those cases the claimants should be able to fully list everything they have ingested over say past 10 years. So that liability can be fairly and exactly distributed.
Ski resorts do not try to break legs of skiers on purpose. They already have enough incentives to remove danger.
Betting companies employ all the tricks to make you a gambler. The more you loose, the more they target you. And if the gambler atops playing they literally go put of their way to nake them relapse.
Look at regulated advertising / marketing on tobacco products as examples.
No ads on TV/Radio. Mandated warnings. In some countries, packaging must carry prominent health warnings, in some cases excluding virtually all branding (Australia, for example).
That along with high taxation, smoking cessation programs, legal proceedings against tobacco companies, restrictions on retailling, etc., have drastically reduced smoking rates in many countries.
I imagine outright banning would create a fairly large grey market. The objective should be harm reduction, as eradication would be basically impossible.
If someone shows the regulator an ad for fanduel that shouldn't exist, they pull their permit to operate.
We have already seen that you can ban ads pretty effectively. I can't remember the last time I saw a cigarette ad, hell, where I live you can't even display them openly in stores, I can't even recall the last time I saw a cigarette logo.
I have yet to see any 'grey market' cigarette ads.
There is big difference in signaling of social acceptability with advertising existing e.g. as main sponsor of the superbowl vs. existing as Stake logos on social media videos.
Prior to the 1830s, advertising was apparently very heavily taxed in the UK, though I know very few details about this, the reasons why, or what occurred to change this.
I'd argue sports ruined their own product with ad insertion at every available opportunity (and even creating new opportunities to shove ads at you). If gambling ads were banned, it'd just be something else crammed down our faces.
>
I'd argue sports ruined their own product with ad insertion at every available opportunity (and even creating new opportunities to shove ads at you).
Side remark: I love to ridicule that of all things producers of very unhealthy food and beverages (or to put it more directly: producers of foods and drinks that make you fat and thus unathletic) love to sponsor sports events. :-)
I'm fairly pro-market, but I agree with this. I think people should do what they want if they don't harm themselves or others. Advertising these things are different...
I don't have a problem with people smoking or drinking, but I agree we shouldn't allow advertising. However, they should be able to advertise in adult only outlets.
ex: Does Playboy still have Cigarette and Liqour advertisements?
> I'm fairly pro-market, but I agree with this. I think people should do what they want if they don't harm themselves or others.
Is this still pro-market though? I have the same opinion and I often labeled as "anti-market" when I call regulations for gambling, social media, AI, etc.
Is it pro- or anti-market if you think people should be forced to participate in a market against their will? Attention is a market and there is not always a way to avoid giving your attention to advertising.
I think it’s over simplifying a position to say if it’s “pro market” or “anti market”. I would be in favor of more markets existing if there were strict advertising limitations. Of course not advertising limits the growth of those markets.
May I suggest just requiring people to register what how much they want to gamble and then be locked into that. If you want to gamble for 100 usd per month, then you can't bet more than that. You should be able to set your own amount, but any changes should only be active from the next month.
This has minimum impact on personal liberty, and will almost eliminate problem gambling.
Perhaps the important question to study is whether that scheme would prevent people from crossing into the "problem" category when they aren't already.
It's one thing to put a slightly higher number and the number box each time, it's another to do identity theft or coaxing your spouse into letting you play as them.
>> It feels like banning advertising for gambling would be a sweet spot between harm reduction and maintaining individual liberty
No.
If you want restrictions on gambling, on advertising it, on participating in it, on making money from it, you want to restrict individual liberty.
I want to restrict individual liberty, I have voted against gambling when it has come up for a vote in my state over and over.
You want to appear to be the type of person who wants to maintain individual liberty, but you in fact are not. You want to restrict individual liberty in the area of gambling.
I would also like to appear to be the type of person who wants to maintain individual liberty, and I will vote against gambling every single time it comes up.
"If you want restrictions on gambling, on advertising it, on participating in it, on making money from it, you want to restrict individual liberty."
I grant that, but I never claimed the contrary. I never suggested that banning advertising reduces ALL harm or preserves ALL individual liberty. I just believe an ad ban is a good compromise position.
I'm a former smoker. I would have been outraged had the government tried to ban cigarettes while I was addicted to nicotine. But there's a difference between allowing people to have their vices and allowing people to spend hundreds of millions in multi-media advertising campaigns convincing others to pick up a new one.
As with many things, the degree matters. It is both an imposition on your liberty to require identification when boarding an airplane and an imposition on your liberty to ban everyone from flying altogether. But one clearly restricts your liberty more than another. I think when choosing between different solutions to a problem, choosing the one that limits your freedom the least is a reasonable rule of thumb.
Gambling vs advertising gambling are two different things.
Equating them as exactly the same doesn't serve your argument justice even if you do have a point with respect to the OP's "have their cake and eat it too" rhetorical flourish.
Banning gambling ads isn’t banning gambling. It’s just stopping corporations from pushing addictive behavior on people who didn’t consent to see it.
We banned cigarette ads for the same reason — harm and addiction.
Limiting corporate ad power protects individual liberty. I can choose to gamble if I want, but I shouldn’t have to fight off brainwashing every time I watch a game.
To ban gambling would be to limit individual liberty (see also: smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol, self-harm, suicide).
To ban advertising of gambling is to limit a liberty too, but the kind that substantially affects others. See also: dumping a bucketful of water on a passer-by, smoking in a crowded subway car, blaring super loud music outside at night time.
That second kind of liberty is and will always be limited in a society, voluntarily most of the time, because people want to be good neighbors, not harm each other.
Another problem here is the addiction. Advertising applesauce is one thing, advertising cocaine is another. For some people, gambling is more like cocaine, hampering their reason and forcing their hand in making choices. The freedom to advertise cocaine (and tobacco, alcohol, etc) inevitably gets limited in a society; if it does not, the society likely unravels.
Serious question, is everything black/white to you?
Extreme example: I don't have individual liberty to murder or take things that aren't mine. So I'm ok with giving up at least 1 or 2 individual liberties. How many is enough, and who decides?
Or do we all just decide and that is the point of voting, not sure what you're trying to say.
One reason for this that often goes unmentioned is the shale gas/fracking boom that made the US the world's #1 energy producer. That macro-level development allows the current administration to act as it does. If gas was less plentiful, more expensive, or primarily sourced from unstable regions, the economic math would be against them already. Western Europe and China do not have large fossil fuel reserves. For them, switching to green energy sources is not just an economic bonus, it's also a national security imperative.
Domestic sources of cheap, plentiful energy helped the US economy grow beyond expectations over the past decade, but it might prove to be a short-term boon that leads to long-term issues if the rest of the world's economy pivots away from fossil fuels.
> more solar means they can sell more gas/oil to everyone else
A glut in supply drives prices down. Oil extraction and refining doesn't have constant costs, as it is heavily dependent on geography as well as the physical characteristics of oil itself.
This is why there was a 3 way gas price war between the US, Saudi Arabia, and Russia in the 2010s.
I understand the sentiment, but there's a reason it's called the autism spectrum.
I work with several software engineers with autism who are as capable as their peers. Sure they may have behavioral quirks, but not significantly more so than the normal variation in human behavior. Their brains don't seem to work in an inferior or problematic way, just different.
On the other hand, I have a close relative with more severe autism who could never read and understand this article, could never type a comment such as yours. She's incapable of holding a job or living on her own without assistance. Her mother passed away young, and her older sister, just 19 at the time, had to take on the responsibility of being her sole caregiver, and she will have that burden for the rest of their lives.
For some it may be a different variation of the human experience, but for cases as severe as my relative's, I find it hard to believe that a cure or prevention for autism wouldn't be a massive quality of life improvement for all involved.
Indeed, my ex wife was incapable of living on her own or holding a job. I have a whole social circle of autistic friends of different abilities. Some still live with their parents. Men in their 40s living with their parents. Women who left home for the first time at 30 only to have to move back within months. My one friend is a sex worker because she can't hold down a real job. She sells her meds and her body to get by.
I lived with my parents last year, at 36, but I moved out and got a 1 bedroom. It was touch and go for a while, I still can't cook for myself, but at least I can take care of my cats.
I'm never going to have children. I'm never going to have a house. A family like my parents had. My sister as well, well she just got a boy friend so maybe not.
The through line problem here is not autism. Despite the range of (dis)ability, the thing that makes it a problem is how autistic needs are unmet by a society that expects us to be worker bees.
My ability to type this message and read is not a constant. There are times when I am non verbal. There are times when I cannot read because the letters are all jumbled in my head. When I'm able to read and write and speak, society values me. When I'm not, society devalues me. You want to take autism out of the equation so that I can be valuable to society.
What I'm saying is that society needs to be reoriented so that autistic people are valued whether or not they can read or write or speak.
Although I have to say I'm unsettled by you speaking for someone who can't speak, and deciding unilaterally that "curing" them would be a massive quality of life improvement for "all involved". Did you ask them?
> My ability to type this message and read is not a constant. There are times when I am non verbal. There are times when I cannot read because the letters are all jumbled in my head. When I'm able to read and write and speak, society values me. When I'm not, society devalues me. You want to take autism out of the equation so that I can be valuable to society.
> What I'm saying is that society needs to be reoriented so that autistic people are valued whether or not they can read or write or speak.
People like to say stuff like this on social media, but I can never quite figure out what they actually mean. Society emerges from interactions between people. If someone can’t communicate, how exactly are they supposed to participate fully in society? All people deserve love and support and dignity regardless of their ability to contribute economically, but I’m curious what this “reorientation” would actually mean in practice.
> If someone can’t communicate, how exactly are they supposed to participate fully in society?
It's not that autistic people cannot communicate, it's that we communicate differently.
For example, I cannot talk on the phone. I just can't. I could explain all the reasons why, but I feel very dismissed here so I'm not going to be vulnerable anymore, but suffice it to say it's something I cannot do, and a lot of autistic people cannot do.
This means people like us can't have jobs which require a lot of phone communication. Accommodations that would allow autistic people to communicate in their preferred way would lead to greater employment of autistic people, but such accommodations are rarely offered for various reasons.
It's other things too. For some people it's lights. For others it's a uniform. For others its noises. For instance, I can hardly go into grocery stores because they play loud music, there's a lot of noises from beeping registers, and the lights are bright and garish. All retailers are like this, and that's where many entry level jobs are. If I can hardly shop there without wearing sunglasses and headphones, then I could never work there because workers are not allowed to wear noise canceling headphones.
Then there are people who require service dogs. You'd think that would be a solved issue, but my friend was just denied entry to a place because of her legit service dog, not even an emotional support dog. They said she couldn't have one because she didn't look blind. Then what, she has to explain to some putz about her autism, expecting he'll understand? No, she backed off and went home and now she won't go out again. It took her that much just to go outside and she was turned away by some busybody, so it's back to being a recluse for a bit.
And that's another thing, is the world could be a lot more accepting of how ND people identify, that would go a long way too. My friend I just mentioned says that her experience as a transgender person is inextricable from her autism. I'm not sure what she means 100%, but also I do, autistic people have a complicated relationship with gender and sexual identity, and a lot of people are very very against those feelings. Autistic people who are transgender (there are many) have a hard time existing in public life because they are shamed, ridiculed, vilified, beaten, and even murdered for who they are. Do you think it's easy for someone who faces those dangers to be employed? There are many transgender homeless people who suffer as a result.
I could go on and on, but all of these things I've listed are ways in which autistic people are marginalized in society, and they don't necessitate "curing" autism to fix, or even really reorienting society as a whole. It's not because they cannot communicate, it's because they cannot participate fully in public life. The solution is to just let them participate in public life. To make things better for everyone involved, we can just be accepting of people's differences and not force them all to be one way, and support them when those differences mean they need help to survive. We can afford to do that as a society I think, why not, isn't that the point of the whole exercise?
For me personally, I can get to quite high levels of "socialness" depending on mood and practice. I can get to muster up the courage to do calls, interact more socially, flirt with someone etc. It does take an extreme amount of energy though.
Where I think it differs for me, is in that if I don't do this type of "social training" constantly, it completely goes away again. If I didn't call my doctor/the post office/relatives in a few months, the ability to just do it normally is gone again and I start from 0. Everytime.
My psychiatrist helps me get to that point again but over time has realized that "exposure therapy" doesn't really work because every few months we have to start from 0 again.
Now having all of that said, for most people these types of interactions and things in life are just... normal. They don't require even a second thought. And that, I would imagine, removes a lot of friction from their lives because these interactions are needed to be a self standing, emancipated, contributing member of society.
Thank you for sharing that. I’m not going to address every example in your comment, and I agree that there are many ways society could be more accommodating. But I also think that not every difference can be accommodated in every situation, even if disability advocates don’t always want to admit it. Some jobs require you to talk on the phone, just like some jobs require you to lift heavy boxes. Not everyone can do that, and that’s ok. I can tell you with absolute certainty that I could not do my job as an engineering executive if I could not talk on the phone or video calls, since so much of my job is about making emotional connections with other people, understanding subtle cues and subtext, and influencing people. I have colleagues who I know are on the spectrum, and I greatly respect them and do try to accommodate them where possible. But some things require a level of social skills they simply don’t have.
Beyond that, I have to be honest: reading about your struggles with communication, lights, noise, etc. it’s frankly hard me to fathom why anyone would not want medication that can alleviate those symptoms. I was diagnosed with ADHD in my 30s, and my whole life suddenly made more sense. Stimulant medication dramatically improved my executive function, attention, concentration, impulsivity, etc. but I am still in every way myself while medicated. I am just more in control of myself. I realize there is no medication like that for autism yet, but if there was, I simply can’t imagine someone not wanting it when my life was improved so dramatically by treating my much-less-severe condition.
> not every difference can be accommodated in every situation, even if disability advocates don’t always want to admit it
That's why labor law generally has the concept of "reasonable accommodations" and core parts of the job. I don't think anyone is seriously saying that every disabled person can do any job.
It's honestly even more subtle than this. I absolutely agree with you about talking on the phone. I avoid doing things when I know it will mean I have to call ahead - and I would much rather go down there in person and get looked at weird for making an appointment in person.
Yet I've worked 4 different call center jobs and had absolutely no issue talking to people on the phone there. (Probably largely because the "small-talk" in such a scenario is absolutely rote and mundane...)
Fast-forward to my current job (IT) and I hate answering the phone (or joining a meeting) again.
The problem is there's no such thing as "Autism". It's a survey and observation of behaviors that "oh you don't quite behave like we see 90%+ of people to behave socially, so you must have a disease. Let's call it autism."
You are talking as if Autism was some sort of virus that you catch and it disables some people a bit, and others a lot.
Some people have hard time, then deal with those people and help them, based on the symptoms, but don't say you have to prevent some made up label to group certain set of behaviors which many are perfectly happy to be with those set of behaviors and perhaps even proud to be thinking differently than most.
Then people should stop conflating the two. This whole "spectrum" nonsense is nonsense. Your coworkers are not autistic - they are weird or whatever other more PC term you might want to use, and that's great - many, if not most, great engineers are!. There is no need to pathologize differences in people. Your relative, by contrast, is. If you have a habit of feeling sleepy at work, it's not like we say you're on the narcolepsy spectrum. It's just a completely dumb concept.
People like your relative, or the kid who sits around flapping his hand and starts freaking out if anybody interacts with him - those people are obviously not just 'weird'. They clearly have severe mental disorders, and if we want to call whatever it is that they have autism - fine. But if we do, then we need to stop calling people like your coworkers, Bill Gates, or whoever else also autistic.
I got my autism diagnosis in my early 20s (from a licensed psychologist, before you ask).
It was a life-changing experience for me. Suddenly I was able to understand and validate my experiences and shortcomings, and to improve myself based on that understanding, instead of resigning myself to the fact that I’ll always just be a ‘weird’ human with ‘weird’ opinions, feelings and experiences.
I suppose though that since a random guy on HN said so, this is actually impossible, and I should just go back to having the entirety of my lived experience dismissed as ‘weird’.
Same here. After a diagnosis, one is able to give in and learn how to cope with it instead of fighting it, struggling and letting it lead to self deprecation.
Strategies and research about it aside, the fact that one can come to "accept" oneself despite that condition is very important for general mental health.
I still wouldn't wish it on anyone but personally I'd always accept my self as a valid human with a valid life despite that.
Why do you think things like astrology persisted for so long? If not for the Church (which banned astrological prediction as blasphemous contradicting religious belief in self determination), it'd almost certainly still be with us. In fact when founding modern psychology Jung was heavily influenced by astrology. See - astrological psychology. [1] And his earliest work was with schizophrenia, from which the invention of autism would shortly emerge as a form of 'mild schizophrenia.'
It's always the same game with pseudo sciences. It appeals to our biases or desires, which results in enough people turning off their skepticism (because they like or agree with what they hear) to let it perpetuate itself. In astrology no issue or problem was of your own nature or doing, it was merely because the stars were not aligned. That has gradually transitioned to being replaced by because you have this psychological classification, or that.
You are still the exact same weird person you were before the diagnoses, and you always will be. And that's perfectly normal, so to speak. The declining trend of real, and deep relations, in the West seems to have left many people failing to understand something. Everybody is weird. If you think somebody is "normal", that simply means you don't know them well enough. And weak autism diagnoses and treatment in modern times seems increasingly geared towards pushing people towards arguably undesirable traits (such as excessive emotiveness) while doing away with many traits and characteristics (such as singular focus, minimal susceptibility to emotionality, or obsessive attention to detail) that are highly beneficial for leading a productive and successful life.
Yes all people are weird, and autistic people are people, so it's no surprise they are weird. I don't think this is a failing of Western imagination, I'm not sure who gave you this impression.
Autism isn't about being weird or quirky though -- it's a developmental disorder and the behaviors associated with it are disabling in our society. This is characterize as having "significant impact" on ability to function.
Well, no. Many of the behaviors associated with it, even the literal diagnostic criteria, are extremely beneficial in our society. It's not just a weird coincidence that many of the most successful tech, engineering and even business figures could be (and in multiple cases have been) diagnosed with autism of varying degrees, notably post-facto.
If anything I think the rampant over-diagnoses of middling cases is itself extremely harmful. Because it's going to lead otherwise perfectly viable humans to think that things are just out of their control because they have whatever the trending diagnoses in psychology is, and a diagnoses of failure becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Suicide rates among those diagnosed with ASD, while having at least average intelligence, are ridiculously high. [2] Whatever is happening with these diagnoses is not this self affirmation bs people are spewing.
A bit more than a hundred years ago we'd have been having this topic, with the context of phrenology [1]. A nice little quote from that page: "Phrenology has been psychology's great faux pas. — J.C. Flugel (1933)." And so too will autism be. Until soon enough we might start to accept that psychology is not just a pseudo-science, but an exceptionally destructive one at that.
There’s this thing people online tend to do where they’ll take a well-defined word or phrase like autism spectrum disorder and just decide that it actually should mean something else and get mad when everyone else uses the word in the “wrong” way. It consistently derails conversations, and it almost never brings anyone around to a place of greater understanding.
I'm not arguing over the semantics. I am rejecting the entire concept in its overly broad state. Imagine somebody said 'Oh don't worry about your weird coworker. He's just acts that way because he's a Sagittarius.' Obviously you'd look at them pretty cockeyed. I'm not arguing about what a Sagittarius is, but rejecting the idea of it having a well enough defined meaning to ultimately mean anything. Of course millennia of people of all classes, including the founder of analytic psychology (who was quite enamored with astrology) would have strongly disagreed with me.
According to the CDC we're now up to about 3% of kids being "identified" as autistic. [1] In 2010 it was about half as many (per capita). And then in 2004 it was about half as many again. At this rate one can reasonably speak of a majority in the future. Which is quite silly. One of the main differences between a science and a pseudo-science is falsifiability. If an oncologist diagnoses you have a malignant tumor - this is falsifiable. It is either true, or false. You don't need a consensus or an opinion.
But in psychology, there is scarcely such a thing as falsifiability, especially in the overly broad diagnostics. This applies not only to diagnostic/analytical psychology, but even to contemporary research in psychology. Psychology is the butt of the replication crisis with even leading psychological journals seeing replication rates in the twenties. There's something very wrong with this field, and it can be largely explained by considering the fact that it may simply be a pseudo-science.
What you are seeing is the effect of acceptance and awareness, not overly broad diagnostic criteria. It's not reasonable to extrapolate from these rates to half the population.
We are talking about human brains and psyche here, not much is known, and it's hard to conduct falsifiable experiments. If this upsets you, don't concern yourself with such endeavors, who asked you? Not every truth is found through the scientific method. Others are telling you that their diagnosis gave them peace and understand, a foundation on which to build an identity. Why are you here trying to take that away from people? What is your reasoning for making these arguments?
This is like asking where to draw the line when somebody is bald. Are you bald if you have 1 hair? Yes. 2? 3? 137? There's of course reasonable room for discretion in saying what is or isn't bald. But it isn't reasonable to say somebody with a full-on afro is on the spectrum of being bald.
Literally some of the most high functioning and successful individuals are being diagnosed as "on the spectrum" of what is, in its "real" form, a completely crippling and disabling condition that yields individuals who would have simply been classified as mentally retarded in the past. This is just completely nonsensical.
What you call "real" form is just a strong form, and there is no clear line to draw between real and not real autism, or between "completely crippling" and "not completely crippling", etc.
Because pathologizing and aiming to "treat" behavioral characteristics that are not only not harmful, but actively beneficial in many cases, is completely and utterly absurd. It'd be akin to something like, 'Oh you seem to be oddly content with your life. Have you gotten yourself screened for stoicitis? I hear there's some treatments available.' It's just nonsensical.
The reason behavioral characteristics are pathologized is because they near invariably result in "meaningful" harm to an individual or to others. And "meaningful" isn't a guy saying mean things because he doesn't care about your emotions, but rather a schizophrenic deciding to go start killing people because the voices in his head told him to.
I do not presume to know your dietary habits, but I find it interesting that only ~4% of US beef production is "grass fed" yet everyone claims to be only eating beef grazed on semi-arable land using regenerative agriculture.
"they graze on semi-arable areas where crops can't be grown"
That may or may not be where your steak comes from, but it is not, as a rule, where most steak comes from. Most steaks come from cattle started on grass and finished on corn, and an increasing amount come from cattle who graze on Brazilian rainforest land clear-cut just for that purpose.
Your numbers and definitions are apparently based on cooked google search results and are wrong. You should read more about how cows are fed and raised before forming opinions.
93% of cattle's caloric intake (whether grass or grain finished) does not compete with human suitable food sources.
Also, all cattle are grass-fed for some of their lives:
>While the diet provided to finishing cattle in feedlots relies on some human-edible inputs (i.e., corn grain), the forages and byproducts fed to cattle throughout their lives are largely inedible to humans. For example, once the entire lifetime feed intake of cattle is accounted for (meaning all the feed they consume from birth to harvest), corn accounts for only approximately 7 percent of the animal’s diet. The other 93 percent of the animal’s lifetime diet will consist largely of feed that is inedible to humans, thus not in direct competition with the human food supply.
You say "You should read more about how cows are fed and raised before forming opinions." And you shouldn't assume you know everything about strangers on the internet. I'm no rancher, but I'm quite familiar with cattle production. Growing up in rural Missouri I took part in most aspects of it.
You seem to be arguing against something other than my comment. "Also, all cattle are grass-fed for some of their lives"...yes...as I stated "Most steaks come from cattle started on grass and finished on corn"
There are certainly large swaths of the world where cattle production can be regenerative to the ecosystem, but not enough to support the demand. Meeting the world's increasing appetite for beef as developing nations adopt the dietary habits of wealthier nations is turning into an environmental catastrophe.
>The other 93 percent of the animal’s lifetime diet will consist largely of feed that is inedible to humans, thus not in direct competition with the human food supply.
Just because feed is inedible to humans does not mean it doesn't compete with the human food supply or lead to environmental and resource problems. Take alfalfa, which is one of the most popular feed crops for cattle:
>How much of California's water goes to alfalfa?
About 1,000,000 acres of alfalfa are irrigated in California. This large acreage coupled with a long growing season make alfalfa the largest agricultural user of water, with annual water applications of 4,000,000 to 5,500,000 acre-feet.
No, it doesn't compete with human suitable food or land used for growing human suitable food.
Without livestock agriculture, most of our farmland in the US would not be farmable. Also, most of the "grain" we feed cows is waste from ethanol production, not corn humans eat.
If you run into these people in person, ask them specifically where they get their beef. The facade of extreme scrutiny and knowledge over where their beef comes from falls apart immediately.
I drove through some when visiting Aruba (Netherlands overseas province) and loved them. They seemed even safer than typical roundabouts and super intuitive
Parents fear kidnappers more than car accidents. The elderly fear whatever the news is telling them to fear more than heart disease or falling.