Would the world be better off if it was run by autistics?

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Autistics are the superhumans.

No, it circulates around things you don't value, but a lot of what we see is very valued to the people within society. So, restaurants for people to eat at are valuable. TV shows for people to watch are valuable.

Technically the adverts are the justification for the TV in the first place, and they allow for a functioning model to discriminate between what viewers will and will not watch without forcing anybody to pay for the service. I mean, maybe this isn't the most socially efficient model, but it's not a terrible model either, and there are ways around having to watch advertisements if you don't want to see them.


Well, honestly, I'm not sure you've really put a lot of thought into how a society ends up working. The biggest issues are incentive structures, and short-term feedback based upon personal gain is very very easy to give, so we can get some very good results using it when applicable.

Now, for tragedy of the commons situations like the environment, good incentive structures are actually really hard to create, and a tendency to forget the future for the struggles of the present is actually very common human behavior, especially since the feedback structures we create usually seek to be responsive to present demands, and present power issues. And power issues probably likely even if autistics had power, simply because autistics will have different visions for how to implement their ideas.

I'm not sure autistics will create the incentive structures right though, and the only way we're likely to is by scrapping the current society and building a new one. This, however, is probably not a great idea, as it creates significant political, social, and economic instability, for gains that may or may not be enacted by switching(creating new systems is very unstable and can result in very problematic outcomes, and usually does, and the desired incentives are particularly hard to set), and that I think the potential gains are probably being overstated to some degree. I don't think mankind is going to kill itself due to our poor attention to the environment. Our biggest threat is probably running out of energy, and everything else is probably manageable because mankind can do a lot of clever things for it's agricultural needs. And I'm not really convinced that we're

Probably not. Autistics are people. Many of them are more inclined than average to have strengths that NTs are less inclined towards. However, they are not superior in all metrics. The areas where they tend to be superior, may not encompass all relevant things. So, I don't think this is a reasonable conclusion. There are many NTs worth admiring, and who many autistics can learn from and be mentored by, but this isn't reasonable if autistics are superhumans.

Only superhuman autistics are superhuman.

ruveyn

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Last edited by SpiritBlooms on 04 Dec 2012, 2:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Its difficult for me to get this ASvNT paradigm out of my head, really hard.

Especially when i look at my facebook wall or TV and there are hundreds of 'normal' people screaming at X factor or American Idol like laboratory rats clawing the side of their cage for a treat.

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Last edited by SpiritBlooms on 04 Dec 2012, 2:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Society functions because of relationships between people.

Autistic people suck at relationships. We're not even good at relationships with each other. Even an all-Aspie society where most communication is based around emails would probably fail.

The geneticist Steve Jones of UCL wrote about an all-autistic society in his book Darwin's Island. He concluded we'd fail drastically because we wouldn't we able to communicate. I reckon we'd work around the communication barrier and do some things better (as said above, the Aspie politicians would be better thought of, and we'd also probably give science more consideration than the general population), but we would struggle to an extent. I don't think we'd be any better.

Such a world would be ravaged by traffic accidents. Given how literal minded Aspies are what do you think will happen at intersections with the following sign:

No, U turn here.

ruveyn

We are communicating with each other now arent we? What else is needed for a functioning society.

If anything I think we beat ourselves up too much because we feel compelled to follow NT social conventions and inevitably fail at them. Theres no right or wrong way in that particular sense, just difference. On the whole though i think autistics make better specialists.




I dont see why that should be a problem either, just develop a system of 'literal' communication.

Or even just use pictures where possible, ASD people seem to understand these better.

Evidence, please?

Better yet, just wake up ... you're dreaming again ...

Einstein

Bill Gates
Temple Grandin
Nikolai Tesla
Isaac Newton
Mark Zuckerberg
Richard Branson
Andy Warhol

Many of the people on the list are simply speculated as autistic, and some of them are very likely NOT autistic.

This isn't good evidence of anything, especially given the sloppiness of the method.

I don't think the problem is communication. It's going to more likely be politics. In order to settle conflicts, there is an intense need to create power-groups that can override the opposition in a manner that seems legitimate. This requires a lot in terms of theory of mind, and clever communication techniques. Aspies and high functioning autistics are not going to be masters at this process.


Yeah, Steve Jones's idea sounds too black and white and questionable.

I don't think better follows from the evidence we have though, even if some flaws are avoided.


A lot. It is one thing to communicate, and it's another thing to achieve social goals. Societies need to coordinate towards common goals. This involves politics, and submission to authorities in many cases.


Well, there are reasons to think that some of our variances are a lack of recognition of NT social conventions and not anything wrong. The problem is that there are also a lot of.... issues that are harder to understand.

So, if I said to someone "Hey, you're getting heavy", there's a few different things I could be doing:
1) Informing them of their weight issue.
2) Trying to hurt their feelings.
3) Trying to put them down in front of their social peers.
4) Other. (A catch-all for things I didn't think of)

Now, NT's are very aware of reasons 2 and 3, and they recognize 2 and 3. Now, maybe society needs to be less sensitive, so 2 shouldn't matter. However, 3 is always going to matter. If there is a game-theoretic gain from using words that "seem" innocuous, but that really aren't, then there will be beings that will try to exploit this so long as they have the intelligence to do so. And there are game-theoretic gains from undermining the status of others, as in many political games, status is zero-sum.

So, part of the problems that Aspies and NTs have is that Aspies really do tend towards deficiency in many theory of mind issue causing poor communications on their part, while the more politically aware NTs can see the text and subtext in a lot of dialogue very quickly.