What struck me most reading these essays was not that I agreed with every conclusion — I do not — but the simple relief of discovering that I was not alone in questioning the sociopolitical neurodiversity movement.
For several years I have argued that the movement has drifted far beyond compassion, inclusion, and support for genuinely struggling individuals. Increasingly, it has become an ideological framework that treats cognitive outcomes as fixed identities, discourages critical biological discussion, and pathologises vast swathes of normal human variation.
That does not mean ADHD, autism, anxiety, or other conditions are unreal. Clearly many people suffer profoundly and deserve understanding and support. But there is now a cultural reluctance to ask difficult questions:
Why are these diagnoses rising so rapidly?
Why do they cluster so strongly with modern environmental change?
Why are trauma, inflammation, sleep disruption, social media, chronic stress, altered childhoods, and sedentary lifestyles often treated as secondary rather than central?
Why has the language of identity become so dominant?
My concern is that the movement increasingly risks freezing people into diagnostic narratives at precisely the moment they most need agency, development, regulation, and growth.
Compassion matters. Accommodation sometimes matters. But so does plasticity. So does maturation. So does the recognition that cognition is emergent and deeply shaped by environment.
Where I differ from some critics of neurodiversity is that I do not believe this is “just personality” or simply bad behaviour. I believe something real is happening to the cognitive landscape itself. Modern environments may genuinely be altering developmental trajectories during critical periods of brain plasticity.
That possibility carries enormous moral implications.
If the environment shapes cognition, then the question is no longer merely who is neurodivergent. The question becomes:
what kinds of minds is modern society producing — and are those outcomes helping human beings flourish?
I don’t think we disagree much at all. The goal wasn’t to suggest they don’t exist or suggest incidents having increased. The goal was to clear up the noise so we can find actionable signal.
Take Autism. If you have a kid with Autism, you want them ‘fixed.’ However, the current AUDHD type community views it as a ‘superpower’ and identity. How dare we suggest they need to be fixed!!
I agree with your point that we aren’t seeing care / compasion toward those who suffer. We’ve just rebranded it to take the stigma away and then drugged the hell out of them back into compliance.
ADHD is a great example, we were almost, in the early 2000s, able to break out and explore that maybe it’s not a pathology… then it got co-opted and here we are.
I fully believe that much of what we diagnose as pathology is healthy personality demanded to behave against that. I’m one of those. It took me a long time to realize my employers were asking me, a fish, to climb a tree, like all the other code monkeys. That’s not who I was though and I didn’t fit it.
But that’s my healthy personality, not a pathology.
Anyhow, I agree with what you said in the main. I really want to find places for everyone to flourish. Some need to reclaim their personality and some, really do need medical intervention. The problem is we aren’t helping either right now.
You make some excellent points. I have been questioning how the environment is affecting what people call neurodiversity. I live in an area where there is a lot of development going on. I recently have been diagnosed with autism because I have had a strong reaction to loud music, fireworks, construction etc. Is disliking loud noise abnormal? i've always had issues with concentration and did benefit from Ritalin when i was in school. It does seem like every issue becomes some kind of diagnosis.
Exactly. Disliking loud noise is not automatically pathological. The difficult question is when normal sensitivity becomes disabling — and why modern environments are making that threshold easier to cross.
My concern is that we too often diagnose the person while ignoring the environment. Construction noise, sleep disruption, chronic stress, social media, reduced movement, inflammation, and overstimulation may all shift the nervous system into a less flexible state.
That does not make autism or ADHD unreal. But it does mean we should ask whether some diagnoses are describing fixed identities — or adaptive responses to environments humans were never designed to tolerate.
The aim should not be denial. It should be a better signal: who needs medical support, who needs environmental change, and who simply needs permission not to be forced into an unsuitable mould.
This was delicious. I am still working on the article in response to yours about personality and all the seasonings and I’ve gotten so much deeper into the topic that I may end up writing a book about it one day. Lol! For now I am almost done with my the article and it took me to a place I didn’t expect! The need to be different is a “thing” for sure…
What Michael and Kit are doing here is brave. In a culture where almost every personality trait, discomfort, or developmental struggle is rapidly being absorbed into the language of pathology, it takes courage to question the expanding neurodivergence narrative.
They are absolutely right to challenge the idea that every cognitive difference is evidence of a disorder or fixed identity. Human beings have always varied enormously in temperament, focus, sociability, emotional intensity, discipline, creativity, and sensitivity. Much of what is now framed as “neurodivergent” may simply be the broad range of normal human variation interacting with modern environments.
They are also right that identity can become self-reinforcing. Once a label becomes central to a person’s social belonging, accountability and growth can become secondary to protection and accommodation. That is not compassion — it is often entrapment.
However, I think the article becomes weaker in the second half because it risks replacing one oversimplification with another.
The answer is not simply “it’s personality.” The real question is why the cognitive landscape appears to be changing at all.
If cognition is emergent — shaped not only by genes, but by environment, inflammation, trauma, autonomic flexibility, social conditions, dopamine exposure, education systems, sleep, nutrition, and early developmental inputs — then we should expect modern environments to produce different cognitive outcomes.
In other words, the rise in ADHD, anxiety, ASD traits, emotional dysregulation, and attentional fragmentation may not just be diagnostic inflation. Some of it may reflect genuine shifts in developmental conditions during critical periods of brain plasticity.
This is where I part company with both extremes.
The neurodiversity movement often treats cognitive outcomes as fixed identities to be celebrated uncritically. But the anti-neurodiversity response sometimes dismisses too much as merely personality or lack of discipline.
The truth is likely more uncomfortable:
modern environments may genuinely be reshaping minds.
That does not mean people are broken. It means the Anthropocene has consequences.
The real challenge is not deciding who is “normal” or “divergent.” The challenge is deciding what kinds of cognition modern society is creating — and whether those outcomes help human beings flourish.
> Stick a Dutch person in India, and they’re going to look very autistic. Put an Indian person in Holland or the US, and they’d take on characteristics of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) or Avoidant Personality Disorder. Hell, there's a book that highlights this absurdity titled,
Why did you summon me here: why Indians in Holland become AvPD and Dutch in India people autistic?
> All of this leads to the closed feedback loop. Instead of “what should I do?” it becomes “What do others with this label do?” They’re all self-reinforcing in the group. That means no growth
I've been struggling with naming this Substack like I have, but I will just add an ex- prefix to the labels if I ever fix myself.
My response to that critique is that it feels terrible to waste away, and I'm grasping at straws to find community, and since I can't find it close to me physically by self identifying with a Personality Disorder I am trying to find anyone else that feels similar to me. Ideally I would want that relationship to be one of helping one another and lifting each other up, but I can see how it could become self-deprecating and solidify the label as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Anyway I reach the conclusion that the critique in this article does not apply to me as I don't have a community anyway.
I think the critique still stands because of the process by which you arrived there. However, there is neurodivergence... My point is much claimed as so is personality. Yours may or may not. The problem is, by muddying the water, it's hard to help you find community when it's filled with people who don't need it.
This argument conflates description with explanation. Personality frameworks describe behavioral tendencies — they don't explain the mechanisms underneath them. Neurotype does.
Autism and ADHD have distinct neurobiological signatures that personality models simply can't account for: atypical neural connectivity patterns, differences in neural pruning and neuroplasticity, sensory processing differences rooted in how the nervous system encodes input, and dopamine dysregulation in ADHD that responds to reuptake modulation in predictable, replicable ways across populations. That's not a personality profile — that's the underlying hardware and software that provides a basis for how personality shows up.
The "just personality" framing also quietly positions neurotypical processing as the correct default — which is precisely the deficit model that decades of neurodiversity research has moved us away from.
The steelman here is real: diagnostic criteria are behaviorally defined, which creates surface-level overlap with personality description, and conversations about diagnostic precision are worth having. But dissolving the category isn't the answer to imprecise tools. Refining the science is.
It's also worth noting that posting a link to this argument in response to someone's vulnerable personal disclosure — particularly a clinician with lived experience — isn't engaging in good faith. It's using intellectual framing to dismiss someone's identity. Those are different things.
First: I appreciate the steelman near the bottom. What you did there was the argument and we never got rid of Autism or ADHD. We pointed out that there are very valid diagnosis inflations that better fit under personality. (Ironically, you finished your steelman with a strawman)
Second: You used a lot of words but said nothing because most clinicians aren’t using genetic biomarkers to dianose Autism and ADHD. Hell, I can go online, right now, and land a diagnosis from a Facebook advert. Also, most people claiming it have never been clinically evaluated. Worse, the clinicians aren’t dealing with real autism. Go talk to Sarah, mentioned in the article for that.
Third: the language you used is exactly what Kit talked about in the article so I appreciate this example
Fourth: I will post this, for context on those who reposted Lily’s. She lied, I’m clearing the record.
Finally: Why does everyone from the Nuerodivergent crowd use AI to respond? Where’s that neurospicy? Why use the LLM language of the Nuerotypical and average?
Lol. There is that! All models are wrong, some are useful and they can be gamed. We see that everywhere. But still, your comment perfectly describes the value because now you know why you can game it.
Oh my goodness! This is just some random dude… and lady who hold themselves in high regard as intellectuals mansplaining away documented, verifiable (actual DNA) neurological differences in people. There are MANY different types of neurodivergence and well as yes, levels that they affect the lives of those individuals. Tech companies are actually recruiting people with dyslexia and other neurodivergent traits because of their processing style is completely different.
Much is made about this, but I find that to be overly simplistic. There is diversity (I know, it's a dirty word these days) within men and women just as much as there is within any other group. I'm a T and my husband is an F. That alone makes for interesting dynamics; we spent several years trying to force the other into the "men are logical, women are emotional" box and it didn't work.
Fair. I have been told that “Talking to you is like talking to a man,” which I find amusing on several levels, and exposes the baseline expectation that women are emotional. Since the person who told me that deals with people as their job, it also underlines that women as a rule probably ARE emotional, hence me showing as an outlier.
That being said, I wonder how many people’s natural proclivity has been warped by abuse or other significant trauma, which also leads to the question of whether healing from said experiences would lead them back to their “factory state,” so to speak. I typically argue that you can keep the skills (analysis, room-reading, sensitivity to deception or manipulation etc) while also being able to do it without the accompanying compulsion that comes with trauma-based personality changes.
Agree completely that there is diversity within men and women, it has never been an either or and I am not sure anyone has ever really claimed that it was, I certainly wasn’t.
But there is definite “tends to be”, “generally speaking”, “on average”, that are implied in all forms of taxonomy.
The same is true of Yin and Yang, and Five Elements, but that is a whole other rabbit hole, they are general tendencies/traits/aspects, and whether one or the other, is dependent on their relation to each other.
For example Ice is Yin to Waters Yang, but Water is Yin to Yangs Steam.
In Yin there is both Yin and Yang, and vice versa, as both men and women are both thinking and feeling, the degree varies within the individuals as well as the group as a whole. But the broader tendencies still hold imho.
There is nothing in the Universe is 100% Yin or 100% Yang, and the relationship between which is in greater proportion, ebbs and flows cyclically over time, hour to hour, day to day, month to month, year to year etc.
What I find interesting is that in your situation one is a T and the other an F, because you need both to be complete.😉
Agreed! My unrestrained T is rigid, cold, and black/white. His unrestrained F is wild. :D We balance each other for sure. And truthfully, we each have PIECES of the other side, even if our "generally" part is very much locked in.
Maybe I just struggle with the concept of labels as a rule, because there are so many exceptions to everything. How many exceptions do you need before the model no longer works? (That's a rabbit hole I'm currently in, studying the feminists vs. red pill males. What a hole THAT is. lol)
What you describe are profiles/stereotypes. All models are wrong, some are useful. In actual engineering modeling we have different levels of fidelity known as 6DOF (Degrees of Freedom) which is high fidelity physics and 3DOF (lower fidelity) which are more mission models. A mission model has tons of exceptions but can be useful. A 6DOF model can’t scale up because there are way too many computations to make and no analysis can be done at the macro level.
Stereotypes/profiles/labels do the same thing. What we are talking about are 3DOF models where there will always be exceptions. That’s because we can’t computer all the permutations. They work, until they don’t. Knowing when to stop using one is crucial!
Absolutely correct. If we expect men and women to behave the same we fail at understanding the core differences and how that’s breaking the balance we achieve together.
Another excellent essay. One reservation: Myers-Brigg is appealing and intuitive but there really are serious problems with it: Weak empirical validity, poor test-retest reliability, false dichotomies (trait models have a normal distribution, not “Introvert” or “Extrovert”, lack of falsifiability and theory grounding, and can easily encourage the Barnum/Forer effect. As I understand it, the Big Five system is more empirically grounded although I lack much confidence in psychology generally.
Thanks, and you are correct and I agree that the Big Five is better. I use MBTI for two reasons.
It’s the best known.
It addresses discrete (S) vs. systems (N) thinking which I find to be very important that the Big Five or others do not address.
For all its known limitations, it is actually still a pretty usable model for an initial pass at the conversation. I just follow the mantra that all models are wrong and some are useful. MBTI will inherently break but that’s fine because it’s useful for analysis like we were trying to do.
Just one minor correction is that MBTI is not binary and accounts for the trait distribution. Too often it’s interpreted as binary when it wasn’t intended to be. For example, I fall pretty center on J/P myself.
Excellent post. I can’t believe how prolific you are. AND your material isn’t lightweight. I’m reasonably sure this doesn’t flow effortlessly from the tip of your pen.
I appreciate that. This one has been in draft for two years and needed Kit to pull it across the line. These are also explorations not wisdom. I'm just trying to figure the mess of life out.
Well let’s hope then the Paradox technology will exist. You’ll need several lifetimes for that task.
I was thinking about you and Paradox this week. My ex-boss and mentor, Dr J Craig Venter died. Tragic loss. All that wisdom, humor, knowledge — gone. Sure he wrote papers, inspired others but it’s not the same. I wish he could have been transferred, the world would be richer for it. Time to get your ass in gear Michael!
Oh sheesh. Stay tuned for Kyle Shepard's next podcast with me where we discuss that. But in a different note, I ascribe to a journey of soul maturity. His legacyives in you and others. It's not about saving him. It's about emulating him.
On that note, I'd love to collaborate on an essay because you, Sir, have stories to share that we can all benefit from.
I really appreciate this post. I think people yearn to be “different” somehow and, as you noted, not accept responsibility. Part of knowing whether one is neurodivergent or not, is to better understand why and how we interact with society. Some of us do go about doing and saying things differently and that’s totally ok, but being an asshole about it isn’t.
I’m also wondering if there needs to be a better system of classification. Things seem way to general like “Generalized Anxiety Disorder” is used for people with both getting sweaty in stressful situations AND people who lose bodily autonomy and think they’re gonna die. Both are rough to deal with, but they are also not the same thing.
Yeah, so many of the lables have been blow out of tolerance of describing anything as to be worthless. I find it interesting that at teh same time we are downplaying personality profiles and dislike the implications we have merely pivoted to a different descriptive framework. Doesn’t change the behaviors it’s describing, just uses different terms.
Isn’t fancy labels exactly the way we humans try to understand things and communicate them to others? I would suggest that Myers-Briggs is merely another collection of fancy labels, part of humanity’s ever-growing toolbox of self-comprehension.
I’m confident that what I’m dealing with is pathological, due to the challenges I face in every day life which have been worked on every which way and resisted all attempts at improvement save the pharmacological, which was a treatment of last resort for my case. Even then, it’s still far from perfect, but it’s the single most effective treatment for whatever it is I’m dealing with - either a forgetful daydreamy personality, or a pathological and neurological maladjustment - and honestly, I feel that once something has reached a point where medication is necessary, then we’re probably well within the pathological realm. Unless of course the world - especially workplaces - is happy to change to accommodate me not being on my meds and all the issues that come with that, which is entirely up to them, but I don’t imagine they’d be keen on it.
You don't have to keep making my point. That your dealing with this means you are neurotyipcal in your generation. Everyone is dealing with this. There's a great book called "Saving Normal"where most medications go to the "worried well" Now, is that necessary or can agency solve more than medication? Put another way, what did your type do before medication and when's history not replete with tales of your type?
I see MBTI and other labels as a shortcut to understanding roughly how an individual operates. It's what we do with that on both sides; how we as individuals further demonstrate our nuance of style to create value, and how we as groups leverage the uniqueness of individuals to fill gaps for robust thinking. When we use labels as the end of the story and for acceptance, we limit our ability to explore who we are authentically pushing for continual growth, instead settling on an overly generic classification as our identity. (From an INTJ 😀)
I have been grappling with this personally for the last few months. I was severely run down (dare I say burnt out) at my previous job. I forced myself to take a break, changed my career path, have had to question, grow and change. I couldn't pretend I was happy in my previous life. And I don't feel like I fit into many typical societal "boxes". I've also been doing therapy. I got an AuDHD diagnosis. I don't think this makes me someone special whom the world should accommodate at all costs. But it has taught me a lot about how I process information, how sitting in the discomfort of social situations is just a part of how my nervous system processes. That I don't need to beat myself up or change the way I react to everything. That I don't have to feel like I'm performing all of my life anymore. I am most decidedly in the exploded Level 1 Autism. But it has given me accommodations for myself. Not an expectation of relentless accommodations from others. But rather a way to explain some of me that may seem abrasive despite a completely different intention. A will to create spaces that feel accommodating to me for others who might feel the same. So I think the vocabulary and associated understanding of self is invaluable. But I also don't think it's fair that it creates an entirely closed loop where no one is willing to grow or change. Anyways, I hope that was a vaguely coherent ramble. Thanks for a piece that got me thinking.
Great points and thanks for the comment. It’s tough. I know several people who say the same thing about understanding who they are. I still think we can get to the same point with descriptions of personality, not diagnoses of pathology. Right now, AuDHD is kind of filling in as a proxy but many people but it just muddies the water a lot.
That said, I’m glad you were able to better understand who you are! That’s the most critical point in maturation. I don’t think that who you are is ‘broken’ I think who you are is part of the rich tapestry of personality.
I agree that you're correct that it is all part of the rich tapestry of personality. And I'm aware that what I'm saying next is not objectively correct. But for me the diagnosis of pathology gave me more permission to believe in it and stand in my own power. And I've done many a personality test over the years to try and untangle and understand myself (INTJ here).
Now I don't think that's what a diagnosis in pathology should (primarily) be doing. But I think it points to some of the difference between the cultural significance of a diagnosis and a personality test. Especially since there has been much chatter in the psychology world that personality tests are a bit psydo-science-y.
So either we need to find something halfway between personality test and pathology. Or maybe personalities need a bit of a "rebrand".
To your point, at one job, I tried to explain that I'm a non-linear systems thinker and that my personality was just different, and that was OK. They looked blankly at me and said, "So what?" Six Months later, I sarcastically stated that this was probably my autism coming out, and suddenly they were all willing to view me as a different kind of thinker, even though I'm not at all autistic (just analytical and structured)
And I see some of that where people absolutely discount personality proclivities but pay attention to diagnoses (which is funny because they're both bracketing a set of behaviors. It's a bloody mess that's for sure!
My favourite expression of this is the quote "You want to be unique, just like everyone else."
Exactly. Followed by “Everyone is unique, just like everyone else.”
What struck me most reading these essays was not that I agreed with every conclusion — I do not — but the simple relief of discovering that I was not alone in questioning the sociopolitical neurodiversity movement.
For several years I have argued that the movement has drifted far beyond compassion, inclusion, and support for genuinely struggling individuals. Increasingly, it has become an ideological framework that treats cognitive outcomes as fixed identities, discourages critical biological discussion, and pathologises vast swathes of normal human variation.
That does not mean ADHD, autism, anxiety, or other conditions are unreal. Clearly many people suffer profoundly and deserve understanding and support. But there is now a cultural reluctance to ask difficult questions:
Why are these diagnoses rising so rapidly?
Why do they cluster so strongly with modern environmental change?
Why are trauma, inflammation, sleep disruption, social media, chronic stress, altered childhoods, and sedentary lifestyles often treated as secondary rather than central?
Why has the language of identity become so dominant?
My concern is that the movement increasingly risks freezing people into diagnostic narratives at precisely the moment they most need agency, development, regulation, and growth.
Compassion matters. Accommodation sometimes matters. But so does plasticity. So does maturation. So does the recognition that cognition is emergent and deeply shaped by environment.
Where I differ from some critics of neurodiversity is that I do not believe this is “just personality” or simply bad behaviour. I believe something real is happening to the cognitive landscape itself. Modern environments may genuinely be altering developmental trajectories during critical periods of brain plasticity.
That possibility carries enormous moral implications.
If the environment shapes cognition, then the question is no longer merely who is neurodivergent. The question becomes:
what kinds of minds is modern society producing — and are those outcomes helping human beings flourish?
I don’t think we disagree much at all. The goal wasn’t to suggest they don’t exist or suggest incidents having increased. The goal was to clear up the noise so we can find actionable signal.
Take Autism. If you have a kid with Autism, you want them ‘fixed.’ However, the current AUDHD type community views it as a ‘superpower’ and identity. How dare we suggest they need to be fixed!!
I agree with your point that we aren’t seeing care / compasion toward those who suffer. We’ve just rebranded it to take the stigma away and then drugged the hell out of them back into compliance.
ADHD is a great example, we were almost, in the early 2000s, able to break out and explore that maybe it’s not a pathology… then it got co-opted and here we are.
I fully believe that much of what we diagnose as pathology is healthy personality demanded to behave against that. I’m one of those. It took me a long time to realize my employers were asking me, a fish, to climb a tree, like all the other code monkeys. That’s not who I was though and I didn’t fit it.
But that’s my healthy personality, not a pathology.
Anyhow, I agree with what you said in the main. I really want to find places for everyone to flourish. Some need to reclaim their personality and some, really do need medical intervention. The problem is we aren’t helping either right now.
You make some excellent points. I have been questioning how the environment is affecting what people call neurodiversity. I live in an area where there is a lot of development going on. I recently have been diagnosed with autism because I have had a strong reaction to loud music, fireworks, construction etc. Is disliking loud noise abnormal? i've always had issues with concentration and did benefit from Ritalin when i was in school. It does seem like every issue becomes some kind of diagnosis.
Exactly. Disliking loud noise is not automatically pathological. The difficult question is when normal sensitivity becomes disabling — and why modern environments are making that threshold easier to cross.
My concern is that we too often diagnose the person while ignoring the environment. Construction noise, sleep disruption, chronic stress, social media, reduced movement, inflammation, and overstimulation may all shift the nervous system into a less flexible state.
That does not make autism or ADHD unreal. But it does mean we should ask whether some diagnoses are describing fixed identities — or adaptive responses to environments humans were never designed to tolerate.
The aim should not be denial. It should be a better signal: who needs medical support, who needs environmental change, and who simply needs permission not to be forced into an unsuitable mould.
This, right here, sums it all up. Yes. Thank you.
This was delicious. I am still working on the article in response to yours about personality and all the seasonings and I’ve gotten so much deeper into the topic that I may end up writing a book about it one day. Lol! For now I am almost done with my the article and it took me to a place I didn’t expect! The need to be different is a “thing” for sure…
I'm looking forward to that!
What Michael and Kit are doing here is brave. In a culture where almost every personality trait, discomfort, or developmental struggle is rapidly being absorbed into the language of pathology, it takes courage to question the expanding neurodivergence narrative.
They are absolutely right to challenge the idea that every cognitive difference is evidence of a disorder or fixed identity. Human beings have always varied enormously in temperament, focus, sociability, emotional intensity, discipline, creativity, and sensitivity. Much of what is now framed as “neurodivergent” may simply be the broad range of normal human variation interacting with modern environments.
They are also right that identity can become self-reinforcing. Once a label becomes central to a person’s social belonging, accountability and growth can become secondary to protection and accommodation. That is not compassion — it is often entrapment.
However, I think the article becomes weaker in the second half because it risks replacing one oversimplification with another.
The answer is not simply “it’s personality.” The real question is why the cognitive landscape appears to be changing at all.
If cognition is emergent — shaped not only by genes, but by environment, inflammation, trauma, autonomic flexibility, social conditions, dopamine exposure, education systems, sleep, nutrition, and early developmental inputs — then we should expect modern environments to produce different cognitive outcomes.
In other words, the rise in ADHD, anxiety, ASD traits, emotional dysregulation, and attentional fragmentation may not just be diagnostic inflation. Some of it may reflect genuine shifts in developmental conditions during critical periods of brain plasticity.
This is where I part company with both extremes.
The neurodiversity movement often treats cognitive outcomes as fixed identities to be celebrated uncritically. But the anti-neurodiversity response sometimes dismisses too much as merely personality or lack of discipline.
The truth is likely more uncomfortable:
modern environments may genuinely be reshaping minds.
That does not mean people are broken. It means the Anthropocene has consequences.
The real challenge is not deciding who is “normal” or “divergent.” The challenge is deciding what kinds of cognition modern society is creating — and whether those outcomes help human beings flourish.
nerodivergent
"nuero" x 3
Lol. I missed that a lot I guess and I was looking for it!!
> Stick a Dutch person in India, and they’re going to look very autistic. Put an Indian person in Holland or the US, and they’d take on characteristics of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) or Avoidant Personality Disorder. Hell, there's a book that highlights this absurdity titled,
Why did you summon me here: why Indians in Holland become AvPD and Dutch in India people autistic?
> All of this leads to the closed feedback loop. Instead of “what should I do?” it becomes “What do others with this label do?” They’re all self-reinforcing in the group. That means no growth
I've been struggling with naming this Substack like I have, but I will just add an ex- prefix to the labels if I ever fix myself.
My response to that critique is that it feels terrible to waste away, and I'm grasping at straws to find community, and since I can't find it close to me physically by self identifying with a Personality Disorder I am trying to find anyone else that feels similar to me. Ideally I would want that relationship to be one of helping one another and lifting each other up, but I can see how it could become self-deprecating and solidify the label as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Anyway I reach the conclusion that the critique in this article does not apply to me as I don't have a community anyway.
I think the critique still stands because of the process by which you arrived there. However, there is neurodivergence... My point is much claimed as so is personality. Yours may or may not. The problem is, by muddying the water, it's hard to help you find community when it's filled with people who don't need it.
This argument conflates description with explanation. Personality frameworks describe behavioral tendencies — they don't explain the mechanisms underneath them. Neurotype does.
Autism and ADHD have distinct neurobiological signatures that personality models simply can't account for: atypical neural connectivity patterns, differences in neural pruning and neuroplasticity, sensory processing differences rooted in how the nervous system encodes input, and dopamine dysregulation in ADHD that responds to reuptake modulation in predictable, replicable ways across populations. That's not a personality profile — that's the underlying hardware and software that provides a basis for how personality shows up.
The "just personality" framing also quietly positions neurotypical processing as the correct default — which is precisely the deficit model that decades of neurodiversity research has moved us away from.
The steelman here is real: diagnostic criteria are behaviorally defined, which creates surface-level overlap with personality description, and conversations about diagnostic precision are worth having. But dissolving the category isn't the answer to imprecise tools. Refining the science is.
It's also worth noting that posting a link to this argument in response to someone's vulnerable personal disclosure — particularly a clinician with lived experience — isn't engaging in good faith. It's using intellectual framing to dismiss someone's identity. Those are different things.
First: I appreciate the steelman near the bottom. What you did there was the argument and we never got rid of Autism or ADHD. We pointed out that there are very valid diagnosis inflations that better fit under personality. (Ironically, you finished your steelman with a strawman)
Second: You used a lot of words but said nothing because most clinicians aren’t using genetic biomarkers to dianose Autism and ADHD. Hell, I can go online, right now, and land a diagnosis from a Facebook advert. Also, most people claiming it have never been clinically evaluated. Worse, the clinicians aren’t dealing with real autism. Go talk to Sarah, mentioned in the article for that.
Third: the language you used is exactly what Kit talked about in the article so I appreciate this example
Fourth: I will post this, for context on those who reposted Lily’s. She lied, I’m clearing the record.
Finally: Why does everyone from the Nuerodivergent crowd use AI to respond? Where’s that neurospicy? Why use the LLM language of the Nuerotypical and average?
I always tested as INTP. But as an INTP I figured out the test so now I'll always test as INTP until I decide to mix it up a little.
Lol. There is that! All models are wrong, some are useful and they can be gamed. We see that everywhere. But still, your comment perfectly describes the value because now you know why you can game it.
Oh my goodness! This is just some random dude… and lady who hold themselves in high regard as intellectuals mansplaining away documented, verifiable (actual DNA) neurological differences in people. There are MANY different types of neurodivergence and well as yes, levels that they affect the lives of those individuals. Tech companies are actually recruiting people with dyslexia and other neurodivergent traits because of their processing style is completely different.
The T/F differences between men and women, is another example of Yin(women) and Yang(Men).
Much is made about this, but I find that to be overly simplistic. There is diversity (I know, it's a dirty word these days) within men and women just as much as there is within any other group. I'm a T and my husband is an F. That alone makes for interesting dynamics; we spent several years trying to force the other into the "men are logical, women are emotional" box and it didn't work.
Interesting point there too. Again, proclivities not absolutes. But how many women are like you?
Fair. I have been told that “Talking to you is like talking to a man,” which I find amusing on several levels, and exposes the baseline expectation that women are emotional. Since the person who told me that deals with people as their job, it also underlines that women as a rule probably ARE emotional, hence me showing as an outlier.
That being said, I wonder how many people’s natural proclivity has been warped by abuse or other significant trauma, which also leads to the question of whether healing from said experiences would lead them back to their “factory state,” so to speak. I typically argue that you can keep the skills (analysis, room-reading, sensitivity to deception or manipulation etc) while also being able to do it without the accompanying compulsion that comes with trauma-based personality changes.
Agree completely that there is diversity within men and women, it has never been an either or and I am not sure anyone has ever really claimed that it was, I certainly wasn’t.
But there is definite “tends to be”, “generally speaking”, “on average”, that are implied in all forms of taxonomy.
The same is true of Yin and Yang, and Five Elements, but that is a whole other rabbit hole, they are general tendencies/traits/aspects, and whether one or the other, is dependent on their relation to each other.
For example Ice is Yin to Waters Yang, but Water is Yin to Yangs Steam.
In Yin there is both Yin and Yang, and vice versa, as both men and women are both thinking and feeling, the degree varies within the individuals as well as the group as a whole. But the broader tendencies still hold imho.
There is nothing in the Universe is 100% Yin or 100% Yang, and the relationship between which is in greater proportion, ebbs and flows cyclically over time, hour to hour, day to day, month to month, year to year etc.
What I find interesting is that in your situation one is a T and the other an F, because you need both to be complete.😉
Agreed! My unrestrained T is rigid, cold, and black/white. His unrestrained F is wild. :D We balance each other for sure. And truthfully, we each have PIECES of the other side, even if our "generally" part is very much locked in.
Maybe I just struggle with the concept of labels as a rule, because there are so many exceptions to everything. How many exceptions do you need before the model no longer works? (That's a rabbit hole I'm currently in, studying the feminists vs. red pill males. What a hole THAT is. lol)
What you describe are profiles/stereotypes. All models are wrong, some are useful. In actual engineering modeling we have different levels of fidelity known as 6DOF (Degrees of Freedom) which is high fidelity physics and 3DOF (lower fidelity) which are more mission models. A mission model has tons of exceptions but can be useful. A 6DOF model can’t scale up because there are way too many computations to make and no analysis can be done at the macro level.
Stereotypes/profiles/labels do the same thing. What we are talking about are 3DOF models where there will always be exceptions. That’s because we can’t computer all the permutations. They work, until they don’t. Knowing when to stop using one is crucial!
More on how to stereotype properly here: https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/stereotyping-properly
Oh that ought to be interesting to say the least!😂
Absolutely correct. If we expect men and women to behave the same we fail at understanding the core differences and how that’s breaking the balance we achieve together.
BRILLIANT piece. Thank you for penning this and for illuminating this so beautifully.
Awesome. Great to hear!
Another excellent essay. One reservation: Myers-Brigg is appealing and intuitive but there really are serious problems with it: Weak empirical validity, poor test-retest reliability, false dichotomies (trait models have a normal distribution, not “Introvert” or “Extrovert”, lack of falsifiability and theory grounding, and can easily encourage the Barnum/Forer effect. As I understand it, the Big Five system is more empirically grounded although I lack much confidence in psychology generally.
Thanks, and you are correct and I agree that the Big Five is better. I use MBTI for two reasons.
It’s the best known.
It addresses discrete (S) vs. systems (N) thinking which I find to be very important that the Big Five or others do not address.
For all its known limitations, it is actually still a pretty usable model for an initial pass at the conversation. I just follow the mantra that all models are wrong and some are useful. MBTI will inherently break but that’s fine because it’s useful for analysis like we were trying to do.
Just one minor correction is that MBTI is not binary and accounts for the trait distribution. Too often it’s interpreted as binary when it wasn’t intended to be. For example, I fall pretty center on J/P myself.
Excellent post. I can’t believe how prolific you are. AND your material isn’t lightweight. I’m reasonably sure this doesn’t flow effortlessly from the tip of your pen.
I appreciate that. This one has been in draft for two years and needed Kit to pull it across the line. These are also explorations not wisdom. I'm just trying to figure the mess of life out.
Well let’s hope then the Paradox technology will exist. You’ll need several lifetimes for that task.
I was thinking about you and Paradox this week. My ex-boss and mentor, Dr J Craig Venter died. Tragic loss. All that wisdom, humor, knowledge — gone. Sure he wrote papers, inspired others but it’s not the same. I wish he could have been transferred, the world would be richer for it. Time to get your ass in gear Michael!
Oh sheesh. Stay tuned for Kyle Shepard's next podcast with me where we discuss that. But in a different note, I ascribe to a journey of soul maturity. His legacyives in you and others. It's not about saving him. It's about emulating him.
On that note, I'd love to collaborate on an essay because you, Sir, have stories to share that we can all benefit from.
I really appreciate this post. I think people yearn to be “different” somehow and, as you noted, not accept responsibility. Part of knowing whether one is neurodivergent or not, is to better understand why and how we interact with society. Some of us do go about doing and saying things differently and that’s totally ok, but being an asshole about it isn’t.
I’m also wondering if there needs to be a better system of classification. Things seem way to general like “Generalized Anxiety Disorder” is used for people with both getting sweaty in stressful situations AND people who lose bodily autonomy and think they’re gonna die. Both are rough to deal with, but they are also not the same thing.
Yeah, so many of the lables have been blow out of tolerance of describing anything as to be worthless. I find it interesting that at teh same time we are downplaying personality profiles and dislike the implications we have merely pivoted to a different descriptive framework. Doesn’t change the behaviors it’s describing, just uses different terms.
Why take responsibility or try to understand ourselves instead? It’s so much easier to give ourselves a fancy label! 😂
Yep. That’s the problem.
Isn’t fancy labels exactly the way we humans try to understand things and communicate them to others? I would suggest that Myers-Briggs is merely another collection of fancy labels, part of humanity’s ever-growing toolbox of self-comprehension.
That's exactly what I say. But MBTI isn't diagnosis of pathology but definition of diversity. Are you pathological or part of normal diversity?
I’m confident that what I’m dealing with is pathological, due to the challenges I face in every day life which have been worked on every which way and resisted all attempts at improvement save the pharmacological, which was a treatment of last resort for my case. Even then, it’s still far from perfect, but it’s the single most effective treatment for whatever it is I’m dealing with - either a forgetful daydreamy personality, or a pathological and neurological maladjustment - and honestly, I feel that once something has reached a point where medication is necessary, then we’re probably well within the pathological realm. Unless of course the world - especially workplaces - is happy to change to accommodate me not being on my meds and all the issues that come with that, which is entirely up to them, but I don’t imagine they’d be keen on it.
You don't have to keep making my point. That your dealing with this means you are neurotyipcal in your generation. Everyone is dealing with this. There's a great book called "Saving Normal"where most medications go to the "worried well" Now, is that necessary or can agency solve more than medication? Put another way, what did your type do before medication and when's history not replete with tales of your type?
The book you can find here: https://amzn.to/4n6pnPP
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with labels, but they don’t mean much if we don’t use them to actually adapt and thrive as humans.
I see MBTI and other labels as a shortcut to understanding roughly how an individual operates. It's what we do with that on both sides; how we as individuals further demonstrate our nuance of style to create value, and how we as groups leverage the uniqueness of individuals to fill gaps for robust thinking. When we use labels as the end of the story and for acceptance, we limit our ability to explore who we are authentically pushing for continual growth, instead settling on an overly generic classification as our identity. (From an INTJ 😀)
Nice connection there. :D
That’s the entire point of an ADHD diagnosis: to understand it, to treat it, and to thrive.
I'd prefer if treatment didn't require tranquilization.
Nailed it.
Great topic. There’s a typo in the first paragraph maybe?
Fixed! Thanks!
I have been grappling with this personally for the last few months. I was severely run down (dare I say burnt out) at my previous job. I forced myself to take a break, changed my career path, have had to question, grow and change. I couldn't pretend I was happy in my previous life. And I don't feel like I fit into many typical societal "boxes". I've also been doing therapy. I got an AuDHD diagnosis. I don't think this makes me someone special whom the world should accommodate at all costs. But it has taught me a lot about how I process information, how sitting in the discomfort of social situations is just a part of how my nervous system processes. That I don't need to beat myself up or change the way I react to everything. That I don't have to feel like I'm performing all of my life anymore. I am most decidedly in the exploded Level 1 Autism. But it has given me accommodations for myself. Not an expectation of relentless accommodations from others. But rather a way to explain some of me that may seem abrasive despite a completely different intention. A will to create spaces that feel accommodating to me for others who might feel the same. So I think the vocabulary and associated understanding of self is invaluable. But I also don't think it's fair that it creates an entirely closed loop where no one is willing to grow or change. Anyways, I hope that was a vaguely coherent ramble. Thanks for a piece that got me thinking.
Great points and thanks for the comment. It’s tough. I know several people who say the same thing about understanding who they are. I still think we can get to the same point with descriptions of personality, not diagnoses of pathology. Right now, AuDHD is kind of filling in as a proxy but many people but it just muddies the water a lot.
That said, I’m glad you were able to better understand who you are! That’s the most critical point in maturation. I don’t think that who you are is ‘broken’ I think who you are is part of the rich tapestry of personality.
I agree that you're correct that it is all part of the rich tapestry of personality. And I'm aware that what I'm saying next is not objectively correct. But for me the diagnosis of pathology gave me more permission to believe in it and stand in my own power. And I've done many a personality test over the years to try and untangle and understand myself (INTJ here).
Now I don't think that's what a diagnosis in pathology should (primarily) be doing. But I think it points to some of the difference between the cultural significance of a diagnosis and a personality test. Especially since there has been much chatter in the psychology world that personality tests are a bit psydo-science-y.
So either we need to find something halfway between personality test and pathology. Or maybe personalities need a bit of a "rebrand".
To your point, at one job, I tried to explain that I'm a non-linear systems thinker and that my personality was just different, and that was OK. They looked blankly at me and said, "So what?" Six Months later, I sarcastically stated that this was probably my autism coming out, and suddenly they were all willing to view me as a different kind of thinker, even though I'm not at all autistic (just analytical and structured)
And I see some of that where people absolutely discount personality proclivities but pay attention to diagnoses (which is funny because they're both bracketing a set of behaviors. It's a bloody mess that's for sure!