Is autism just organic nerdiness?

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Long before autism and aspergers entered the public consciousness, there existed the stereotype of the nerd: A socially awkward physically uncoordinated guy with an obsessive interest in math related concepts. The stereotypical nerd sounds like someone with mild or borderline autism, and indeed a disproportionate number of autistics seem to have parents who work in nerdy fields like engineering or computer programming. However a key difference between nerds and autistics is that nerds tend to be smart and rich (Bill Gates) while autistics are often mentally disabled and unemployed.

How do we resolve this paradox? Well, too much of a good thing can be bad, so perhaps there's an optimum level of nerdiness for a particular culture and those who are too nerdy are labeled autistic.

However nerds tend to be smart. If autism is just extreme nerdiness as I proposed several months ago, shouldn't autistics be EXTREMELY smart. Some certainly are, but more often it seems autistics are mentally ret*d. How can this be?

The answer lies in the fact that there might be two kinds of extreme nerds: organic nerds and familial nerds. To understand this distinction, instead of talking about extreme nerdiness, consider extreme height. Being extremely tall is a huge competitive advantage in life, making men successful at work, sports and dating, however, the taller you are, the more likely it is your height is caused by some disorder like a pituitary disease. Now because you have a disorder, instead of being athletic and attractive, you are clumsy and deformed.


So there are 2 kinds of super tall people: organic tall people (whose height is caused by a genetic mutation) and familial tall people (biologically normal people whose extreme height is part of the normal variation). The latter group is far more successful and may even play in the NBA. However the further one deviates from the mean on genetic traits, the more likely it is that their deviance is organic (a mutant gene) as opposed to just being a normal extreme.

Nerdiness is a human trait, just like height and weight, and nerdiness is distributed normally in the population. In technological societies, the nerdiest people are often the most successful, however the nerdier you are, the more likely it is that your nerdiness is organic (biologically abnormal). Thus the same mutated gene that caused your extreme nerdiness caused disruptions in other biological functions causing disabilities, and in extreme cases, mental retardation.

You haven't actually established that there <i>is</i> a paradox. You proposed that nerdiness (which is kind of meaningless in the context of this discussion until it is defined) is somehow connected to autism, but, unless you give some sort of proof that a connection exists, there is no discernible paradox.

The connection between nerdiness and autism seems self-evident. The stereotypical nerd is socially awkward, physically clumsy and obsessed with analytical subjects. These are also the traits of a stereotypical autistic.

In addition, famous nerds (bill gates, Einstein, mark zuckerberg, newton) are all suspected of autism.

In addition, autism strikes most frequently in nerdy neighborhoods (silicon valley)

I see that way: Nerd is more about a certain way of living, while aspie is a neurological condition. They fit quite well and I believe many aspies might be happy as nerds (as I am) but definitely not all of them. And you don't need to be aspie to be a nerd, also.
I believe these two groups overlap above statistics but they are not the same.