Readit NewsI’m not even sure why but this sentiment rubs me the wrong way.
Perhaps it’s that what’s resonated most to me about democracy is the premise that it is all “for the people, of the people, by the people.”
There’s something exclusive about that statement.
When I was a kid, my parents' nicknames for me were Spock and Ms. Literal. I was gifted, at the top of my class, and my parents advocated for me every single year so that I received a high-quality education. The school was receptive, and I thrived academically. I struggled socially, but being a girl it demonstrated in a lack of friends rather than behavioral disruption. So in every way I was the ideal student. Today I would easily be diagnosed as autistic, but in the 90s that wasn't in the conversation. Especially given our experience with my cousin. I don't think of myself as autistic, I'm just a person with strengths and weaknesses.
Today for better or worse we live in a society that thrives on labels and categorization. Your kid gets a label and all of a sudden the school is able to give him an IEP and the support he deserves and should have been getting all along. In the cynical perspective, your kid gets a label and that affects the way he sees himself and relates to the world. The label becomes a justification instead of just a descriptor.
From the educational perspective, I want the school to do everything possible to help my child succeed. If that means jumping through hoops to get him support then so be it. But from the identity perspective I want my kid to be unburdened. To learn from the world around him without getting pigeonholed. And if a diagnosis was going to lead down this path I would be very intentional about when and to whom I disclosed this information.
This isn't getting into the world of false positives. In my experience (2 boys similar in age to your own) teachers tend to be good referrers just because of the volume of kids they deal with. So if your teacher recommends this there's a good chance they will fall under some diagnostic criteria at some testing facility. The question is what to do with the information.
Today most of the money and advocacy is for high-performing or moderately-performing people with autism. Not just in relative terms, the amount of funding for people like my cousin has gone down. It makes sense; they are the larger group by volume and are able to advocate better than people like my cousin.
I wish it weren't a zero-sum game, and we recognized that autism is just a word for a broad series of conditions. It would be like if we called everyone with poor eyesight 'blind': yes, your vision is impaired. But the solutions you need are very different than the solutions Stevie Wonder needs.
See also: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/health/autism-spectrum-ne...
I’ve recently learned my 5 year old is exhibiting behavior problems in kindergarten. His teacher has put the notion in his mother’s head that he may have autism and has provided his mother a fast track referral to have him tested/diagnosed. I feel strongly that he does not have autism; aside from being disruptive in class he doesn’t have any other characteristics—-he is very verbal, social, doesn’t avoid eye contact or physical contact. I’ve spoken to his Sunday school teachers, daycare workers, etc and they were incredulous that he potentially has autism.
‘Well if he doesn’t have it what’s the harm in having him tested at a facility that specializes in pediatric autism? If you’re right they’ll easily determine he’s not autistic, right?’ Is the question I can imagine being asked at my reluctance to consent to the testing and diagnostics. Frankly, I’m suspicious of the (potential) conflict of incentives that a clinic specializing in pediatric autism may have; I positive diagnosis is only good for business in the way that a men’s clinic is incentivized to find every patient that walks through their door has low testosterone. Especially considering the subjectivity and ‘spectrum’ that falls under the blanket term ‘autism’.
On a scale from likely to incredibly unlikely, how rooted in reality would you characterize my concerns? Also what harm, if any would come from a false positive diagnosis? Would it outweigh the harm of a person being an undiagnosed, high functioning person with autism?
This is a very common scenario: a sheriffs deputy holds a biased belief against an individual. Said deputy selects and overfits data from systems like this to obtain a warrant against said individual. Individual is arrested and enters the meat grinder that is the justice system where hundreds of experienced indifferent agents and millions of dollars are put to work to support that deputies biased accusation. That original bad actor can now disengage and go about their life. Meanwhile, our Individual must spend a fortune on legal defense to prove their innocence. Individual loses time, money, peace, and reputation pursuing the best case realistic scenario—having charges dismissed (though indefinitely tainting their record). The more realistic scenario is individual is unjustly punished to some degree through plea agreements or trial (if they can afford it) which could easily ruin the rest of their life.
I’m not on the ACAB extreme, I just personally know many law enforcement officers and work in the industry adjacent to the justice system.
Dead Comment
I am of the opinion that automatic gathering of the travel history of a plate should be locked behind judicial approval, and that the data should have a lifetime. But I'm 99.99% confident that the searches are at least logged because we got complaints, like, 1 month in.
Also no Internet because I hadn't gotten that far.
I ran back and forth to Steven's house and searched Altavista for the answers.
Good times.
Would whistleblower protections shield you? Or have you taken this to any reputable journalists?