> People with WS are empathetic, social, friendly and endearing but they tend to have a low IQ, making tasks such as counting money difficult.
> They can feel anxious over stimuli such as the buzzing of a bee, or the texture of food.
Plenty of autistic folks are empathetic, social, and friendly. And many experience stimuli that cause anxiety.
The whole "it's the opposite of autism" doesn't actually help anyone understand and, IMO, reinforces the incorrect idea that autistic people are asocial, emotionless automata.
From what I've read there's been a history of people not fitting the strict "Asperger's boy" type traits being excluded from autism diagnoses, so we end up with a narrow, wrong stereotype. Plenty of autistic people who outwardly appear antisocial and plenty who appear quite social. Also worth remembering that autism occurence significantly overlaps with other conditions like ADHD, which may mold the presentation of the traits.
Having worked with some brilliant people with autism, I argue that deficits in cognitive empathy/ inability understand intuitively what other people are thiking in real time is the hallmark of autism.
Moreso than anything about emotions, body language, social skills etc this is the most common trait. It pops up in odd places no matter how much you mask or learn the visible skills.
I think the actual hallmark is one layer deeper: the brain's "input filter" is different and doesn't assign "important" versus "not important" distinctions in the same way as a "neurotypical" brain might. (In fact, the brain just might not be very good at input filtering, period.)
This shows up in a lot of ways: sensory (can't just filter out the tag on the back of your shirt), interests (can't recognize that you're spending just a liiiitle too much time on that model train), food (don't categorize trying new foods as interesting, so you don't), etc. But human socialization is incredibly complex, and while many of us can do decently well at learning it, imagine trying to get a grip on social cues without being able to tell what's relevant and what's not. Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it?
It also is a working theory that well matches my experience with the autistic people in my life. "Deficits in cognitive empathy/ inability understand intuitively what other people are thinking", aka "theory of mind", is a really good description of how things are often difficult, and I think "different stimulus input filter" is a pretty good hypothesis for how it might arise.
It's the other way round - let's say you have a thousand inputs, and those contain 1 bit/s in a way that you can't pick one or a few inputs that allow you to correctly decode that one bit of information.
Or let's say you have a million inputs, or pixels, and you need to determine if there is a cat in the picture. Selective attention won't work for that either. You can't pick six pixels that allow you to reliably answer this question.
You need dimensionality reduction, that will reduce the data into a manageable amount of abstract features, from which you can pick what features matter to you.
Neurotypical people lack (or only have remnants of) this second filter.
I'd say have been successfully precluded from developing that.
Instead, they've learned to substitute its functionality with the quasi-religious faith that they are actually any good at inferring what others think. (Take that precept away and see em flail, it's disturbing.)
At population scale, this resolves to either mass violent panic or a society living under the constant self-fulfilling prophecy that fewer things are thinkable than those which are possible, while screaming that it's the other way around. (Instead of, you know, aiming for the parity between interpretation and reality which is necessary to accomplish anything at all.)
The main neurotypical trait is lack of inherent revulsion to delusion.
As an autistic person, what you say is correct to my experience. I have all sorts of sensory processing issues that all basically are variations on "I can't ignore signals".
No, the core difference is the level of abstraction, and the inability to communicate between people with different levels of abstraction.
The opposite of autism is schizophrenia, where abstract thinking fails completely, and the person is unable to find correct answers to everyday problems.
Neurotypicality is merely a socially acceptable level of schizophrenia.
Autism results when the level of abstraction is significantly higher than the surrounding society:
You can't automatically understand the concrete speech, and you especially can't understand the "implications" that rely on the concrete magical thinking.
People can't understand you, because their level of abstraction isn't sufficient to understand the actual meaning, so they assume you talk about something random.
People overread the gaze of more abstract thinkers, and underread the gaze of less abstract thinkers, due to the difference in the field of view.
Compare Taylor Swift (ultra concrete, easily understood by neurotypical people) vs Rihanna (very abstract)
It has just dawned on me that I know someone with Williams Syndrome, and I think this idea of an "opposite" is actually quite valuable.
The title does put 'the opposite of autism' in quotes, to make it clear it's someone's phrasing, not a matter of fact, but the body of the article quotes someone from a foundation for the disease saying:
> "There is a classic autistic profile to which Williams Syndrome is the polar opposite. People can gauge the mood of a crowd and adopt without understanding the nuances of the situation."
That, it seems to me, could be a defensible point. That is not something you'd ever say an autistic person would be good at; it's antithetical.
But more to the point, not everything is an attack on autistic people. These are people trying to make a case that people should care about and be aware of the welfare needs associated with a poorly-understood disorder (which is maybe a hundred times rarer than autism). It would be fair I think to allow them the room to explain that.
It didn't lose all meaning, it just became more difficult to stereotype. The diagnostic criteria for ASD are about its impact on the individual, not how it superficially presents to other people.
The DSM-V combined together a bunch of old disorders with largely overlapping symptoms and no consistent differentiation at the diagnostic level.
Can you give a definition of what autism means then? Because I struggle with the same thing, I don't know what autism is anymore.
It's my impression that people now use the term autism is for pretty much any sort of neurodiversity (and even for traits within neuronormal, e.g. likes math).
For what it's worth Wikipedia says, ASD is:
> a neurodevelopmental disorder by differences or difficulties in social communication and interaction, a need or strong preference for predictability and routine, sensory processing differences, focused interests, and repetitive behaviors.
Would you say this is stereotyping ASD?
I'm not trying to be combative but genuinely want to understand.
Empathy, hypersensitivity, anxiety, difficulty understanding social nuance, nonstandard eye contact - it actually sounds quite similar to autism, rather than the opposite. (Not the stereotypical autistic traits that most people misunderstand but the actual traits.) The overlap is interesting. I wonder if in the future some related mechanisms/explanations will be discovered.
The specific "opposite" they talk about is clarified further in the article and is interesting:
> Lizzie Hurst, chief executive at the Williams Syndrome Foundation, says: "People [with the disorder] conduct themselves in a way that makes them extremely vulnerable.
> "They don't have the cognitive ability to match their linguistic age.
> "There is a classic autistic profile to which Williams Syndrome is the polar opposite. People can gauge the mood of a crowd and adopt without understanding the nuances of the situation."
The last bit of that is the difference, right? You wouldn't say an autistic person could easily gauge the mood of a crowd and adopt. These are people who are -- compared to neurotypical people! -- social butterflies, linguistically talented, friendly, open, happy-go-lucky, but gullible. This is not the picture of classic autism for sure. It does feel somewhat opposite.
But then I guess one of the interesting things about opposites is that they are within the same plane or category, right? The opposite of a knife is another item of cutlery, not a haddock.
It seems like this syndrome is a genetic deletion, which is not my understanding of autism, but it presumably could have some similar neurological impacts.
In regards to the genetic deletion, yeah that doesn't seem to be the cause of autism, but cells are so complex that their could be related mechanisms downstream from that. E.g. it's not like there's a single "socialising gene" which is either on or off and explains the entire phenotype. I thought of it because we know there's a lot of overlap between other neurodivergent conditions like autism and ADHD. Maybe one day we'll discover a model which explains all these conditions.
Hmmm.... But many pieces of cutlery can still be used to cut... Haddock would be exceedingly hard to cut anything with. IPSO FACTO! HADDOCK IS THE OPPOSITE OF A KNIFE!
Despite having almost all of the prerequisite conditions (heart murmur, lazy eye, left-dominant, hernia, poor motor skills etc.) this was ruled out for me when I was a child due to exhibiting a high-IQ (~130), and I was repeatedly diagnosed with autism, despite being outgoing and high-EQ (and horribly naive!).
When I got older I began to develop connective tissue disorders and spasticity, which were incapacitating until I found treatment. I was diagnosed with EDS but that may also have been not-quite-correct, since apparently these issues are also common in WS.
Also, it apparently _is_ possible for people with WS to also have higher-than-average IQs. God, life is so frustrating sometimes!
All your items on your list for WS is on my list for hEDS, add in the IQ and I’d say likely 2 TNXB SNPs, do a high quality WGS to be sure. Given the hEDS I highly doubt you have WS as well, just hEDS presents in a variety of depending on other co-occurring SNPs and you got a particular combo.
hEDS is far more common than currently thought because the medical diagnostics are not very sensitive, it’s a spectrum and what doctors tend to think of hEDS is the severe form of it.
Armchair geneticist: So in the group of genes that are deleted in particular LIMK1 stands out. After it is deleted there is only 1 copy behind. The other copy could be less effective as sometimes seen, but Estrogen in particular inactivates LIMK1. So in those with genetics for high estrogen signaling (that they are also known for) are more likely to inactivate the one remaining copy of LIMK1. And then you get the highly verbal, social, poor math & visual-spatial information, outcome. This combo would be more likely to be found in families of HPA Axis issues so anxiety, insomnia, etc I would speculate come along for the ride, more than directly influence that brain development branch. It is always more complicated, but for the curious.
One theory for how wolves became domesticated is that certain of them had a condition like Williams that made them friendly to humans, who became the ancestors of modern dogs. It was mentioned on the Ologies podcast that covered canines I believe.
Williams Syndrome is discussed in the (fantastic!) book by Oliver Sacks, "Musicophelia". It is often associated with hypermusicality, and the chapter on it is super interesting.
I spoke with one person with WS recently, very musically minded. I haven't recognized what the syndrome was at the time, but I remembered that it was some textbook case of genetic disorder. As adults I think they're aware to be gullible and might take "too much precautions" when it comes to crime in a city so they might bother the police a bit too much.
Back when I was in high school I read a book ("the speed of dark" by Elizabeth Moon) which is written from the perspective of an autistic person who works for a pharmaceutical company (I won't add spoilers). It was full of nuggets of wisdom that made me appreciate how many autistic people just think differently, and how the deficit perspective is wrong and conterproductive.
People get upset when I share this anecdote but I think it's enlightening. I talked to a guy whose sister has Williams Syndrome. About her personality, he said "She's like a Golden Retriever who can text." I got the sense that he was referring to her cheerfulness, kindness, and inspiring openness. I also got the sense that he felt very protective of her, as if she were a young woman with a beautiful soul who is nevertheless extremely vulnerable.
It's just a convention. We (moderators) append the year of an article (in parens) when an article is from a previous year. Of course we miss many cases, and commenters often helpfully point those out. In this case colinprince added the year to the title (thanks!) but otherwise we would have.
It's not that anybody did anything wrong—historical material is welcome here! and it's nice for readers to know roughly what time an article dates from. That's all.
> They can feel anxious over stimuli such as the buzzing of a bee, or the texture of food.
Plenty of autistic folks are empathetic, social, and friendly. And many experience stimuli that cause anxiety.
The whole "it's the opposite of autism" doesn't actually help anyone understand and, IMO, reinforces the incorrect idea that autistic people are asocial, emotionless automata.
Moreso than anything about emotions, body language, social skills etc this is the most common trait. It pops up in odd places no matter how much you mask or learn the visible skills.
This shows up in a lot of ways: sensory (can't just filter out the tag on the back of your shirt), interests (can't recognize that you're spending just a liiiitle too much time on that model train), food (don't categorize trying new foods as interesting, so you don't), etc. But human socialization is incredibly complex, and while many of us can do decently well at learning it, imagine trying to get a grip on social cues without being able to tell what's relevant and what's not. Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it?
It also is a working theory that well matches my experience with the autistic people in my life. "Deficits in cognitive empathy/ inability understand intuitively what other people are thinking", aka "theory of mind", is a really good description of how things are often difficult, and I think "different stimulus input filter" is a pretty good hypothesis for how it might arise.
Or let's say you have a million inputs, or pixels, and you need to determine if there is a cat in the picture. Selective attention won't work for that either. You can't pick six pixels that allow you to reliably answer this question.
You need dimensionality reduction, that will reduce the data into a manageable amount of abstract features, from which you can pick what features matter to you.
Neurotypical people lack (or only have remnants of) this second filter.
I'd say have been successfully precluded from developing that.
Instead, they've learned to substitute its functionality with the quasi-religious faith that they are actually any good at inferring what others think. (Take that precept away and see em flail, it's disturbing.)
At population scale, this resolves to either mass violent panic or a society living under the constant self-fulfilling prophecy that fewer things are thinkable than those which are possible, while screaming that it's the other way around. (Instead of, you know, aiming for the parity between interpretation and reality which is necessary to accomplish anything at all.)
The main neurotypical trait is lack of inherent revulsion to delusion.
The opposite of autism is schizophrenia, where abstract thinking fails completely, and the person is unable to find correct answers to everyday problems.
Neurotypicality is merely a socially acceptable level of schizophrenia.
Autism results when the level of abstraction is significantly higher than the surrounding society:
You can't automatically understand the concrete speech, and you especially can't understand the "implications" that rely on the concrete magical thinking.
People can't understand you, because their level of abstraction isn't sufficient to understand the actual meaning, so they assume you talk about something random.
People overread the gaze of more abstract thinkers, and underread the gaze of less abstract thinkers, due to the difference in the field of view.
Compare Taylor Swift (ultra concrete, easily understood by neurotypical people) vs Rihanna (very abstract)
The title does put 'the opposite of autism' in quotes, to make it clear it's someone's phrasing, not a matter of fact, but the body of the article quotes someone from a foundation for the disease saying:
> "There is a classic autistic profile to which Williams Syndrome is the polar opposite. People can gauge the mood of a crowd and adopt without understanding the nuances of the situation."
That, it seems to me, could be a defensible point. That is not something you'd ever say an autistic person would be good at; it's antithetical.
But more to the point, not everything is an attack on autistic people. These are people trying to make a case that people should care about and be aware of the welfare needs associated with a poorly-understood disorder (which is maybe a hundred times rarer than autism). It would be fair I think to allow them the room to explain that.
> But more to the point, not everything is an attack on autistic people
No one said it was. I said it perpetuates a stereotype. I think that's different than an attack, personally. It's careless, not malicious.
But careless can still be irritating.
The DSM-V combined together a bunch of old disorders with largely overlapping symptoms and no consistent differentiation at the diagnostic level.
It's my impression that people now use the term autism is for pretty much any sort of neurodiversity (and even for traits within neuronormal, e.g. likes math).
For what it's worth Wikipedia says, ASD is:
> a neurodevelopmental disorder by differences or difficulties in social communication and interaction, a need or strong preference for predictability and routine, sensory processing differences, focused interests, and repetitive behaviors.
Would you say this is stereotyping ASD?
I'm not trying to be combative but genuinely want to understand.
> Lizzie Hurst, chief executive at the Williams Syndrome Foundation, says: "People [with the disorder] conduct themselves in a way that makes them extremely vulnerable.
> "They don't have the cognitive ability to match their linguistic age.
> "There is a classic autistic profile to which Williams Syndrome is the polar opposite. People can gauge the mood of a crowd and adopt without understanding the nuances of the situation."
The last bit of that is the difference, right? You wouldn't say an autistic person could easily gauge the mood of a crowd and adopt. These are people who are -- compared to neurotypical people! -- social butterflies, linguistically talented, friendly, open, happy-go-lucky, but gullible. This is not the picture of classic autism for sure. It does feel somewhat opposite.
But then I guess one of the interesting things about opposites is that they are within the same plane or category, right? The opposite of a knife is another item of cutlery, not a haddock.
It seems like this syndrome is a genetic deletion, which is not my understanding of autism, but it presumably could have some similar neurological impacts.
When I got older I began to develop connective tissue disorders and spasticity, which were incapacitating until I found treatment. I was diagnosed with EDS but that may also have been not-quite-correct, since apparently these issues are also common in WS.
Also, it apparently _is_ possible for people with WS to also have higher-than-average IQs. God, life is so frustrating sometimes!
hEDS is far more common than currently thought because the medical diagnostics are not very sensitive, it’s a spectrum and what doctors tend to think of hEDS is the severe form of it.
Edit: lol no need to actually poke around just see wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_syndrome#Cause
Williams Syndrome: The people who are too friendly - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44011380 - May 2025 (2 comments)
Williams Syndrome - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24536693 - Sept 2020 (2 comments)
Williams syndrome - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22082839 - Jan 2020 (7 comments)
Williams Syndrome: What World’s Most Sociable People Reveal About Friendliness - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20093646 - June 2019 (5 comments)
Living with Williams Syndrome, the 'opposite of autism' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7583121 - April 2014 (65 comments)
Yes, that is in the article.
Anything you wish to add?
Developments since then the article lacks?
It's not that anybody did anything wrong—historical material is welcome here! and it's nice for readers to know roughly what time an article dates from. That's all.
I just can't sorry