[ SECRET POST #5837 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5837 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 07 secrets from Secret Submission Post #835.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

I would like to confirm that as a person who has a degree in philosophy, including having to write a thesis and give an oral defense of said thesis - I know what confirmation bias is. I also know I have autism even though I'm not diagnosed because I understand my own goddamned experience and I'm not an idiot.

[(Anonymous)]

because I understand my own goddamned experience and I'm not an idiot.

This, honestly. I have never understood some people's willful desire to presume other people don't understand their own lived experience. Like, is it possible for a person to be mistaken about themselves? Yes, absolutely. But it makes absolutely no bloody sense to start from the assumption that they don't.

[(Anonymous)]

So you would have no issue with a psychologist explaining your philosophy thesis to you as if they knew better just because they say so right?

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT but you really think that it's impossible for a psychologist to know anything useful or true about philosophy? I mean, that's not even the case being made here - the correct analogy to how self-diagnosis actually works would be whether it's possible for a psychologist to make sense of their own lived experience in philosophically coherent terms, which is an even lower bar to clear. And in both of those cases, the answer is that it's clearly possible for a psychologist to know true things about philosophy. The correct self-diagnostic equivalent to the situation you've set up here for philosophy would be a situation where someone has self-diagnosed with autism but has been examined by a psychologist who has explicitly said that they do not have autism - but that's not remotely relevant to any actual conversation about self-diagnosis because most of the time self-diagnosis does not work like that.

I get why there's pushback to self-diagnosis bc it's inherently more prone to error and confirmation bias and self-selection. But this kind of blanket rejection of the whole concept is just frankly stupid any which way you slice it, whatever analogies you want to use. I mean, even if you think that self-diagnosis is low-accuracy, it's still possible for it to be right some of the times and it's still going to provide useful information some of the time. Just because a methodology is noisy and lossy and imperfect, that doesn't mean it tells you nothing about the true state of affairs. And the fact that there are people who self-diagnosis and later receive a professional diagnosis should be enough in and of itself to dispense with your whole argument.

I mean are you really taking the position that, if someone self-diagnoses as autistic, that means that they are sharply *less* likely to be autistic? Because that's really fucking dumb.

[(Anonymous)]

Of course a psychologist might very likely know things about philosophy but not having studied it, they very likely don't know enough to write a thesis on the subject.

Self-diagnosis is the same thing: You may have learned things and because of some experiences believe you have a certain condition, that's a good first step. But it isn't as valid as getting a proper diagnosis by a professional, nor is it as well-founded because no matter how much you read on the internet and how much you trust your lived experiences, you have not actually studied the subject in depth and you dont know if you're missing something important that might lead to a different diagnosis.

[(Anonymous)]

But it isn't as valid as getting a proper diagnosis by a professional, nor is it as well-founded because no matter how much you read on the internet and how much you trust your lived experiences, you have not actually studied the subject in depth and you dont know if you're missing something important that might lead to a different diagnosis.

Yes, I more or less agree with this.

The problem is that this does not justify the position being taken, which is that self-diagnosis is bad and people who self-diagnose are definitely not autistic. It doesn't justify the position that people who self-diagnose are just awkward and have never met an autistic person. It doesn't justify that self-diagnosis is purely confirmation bias or wishful thinking. It doesn't justify that self-diagnosis is intrinsically wrong in all cases.

What it means is that you should have somewhat less certainty about whether or not you have autism if you're self-diagnosed, and you shouldn't appoint yourself the expert and sole source of knowledge on the autistic condition. But it's still a fairly reasonable and possible to say "OK based on my lived experience and reasonable research on the subject, I think it's fairly likely that I have autism" and it's reasonable in many cases for people to proceed on that basis. And that's before you get into the fact that access to diagnosis is not universal, and that professional understanding and diagnostic procedures are also deeply imperfect in their own right (although I agree that fundamentally professional diagnosis is better, more valid, and desirable; I'm just saying that we're not at a state where professional diagnosis is 100% accuracy rate).

But, yeah, you can make nuanced points about self-diagnosis, but it doesn't justify the total hostility to self-diagnosis that's displayed throughout this thread.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with most of this, I'm not saying all self-dianosis must 100% be wrong. Also yes, the hostility us unnecessary. Though to be fair, a lot of self-diagnosed people (not the majority, but also not a small number)like to try to use their self-diagnosed conditions as a get-out-of-jail-free card when they behave badly, so I kinda get where some of the aversion comes from.