Asperggers: The next step in evolution:

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. A valid point, but rather a minor one, and I am not sure how it bears on my primary thesis
Right and wrong. I will go back and make changes. I was careless. But I was mostly right. I mentioned physics and chemistry because unlikethe other areas those are hard sciences, not a matter of opinion like peace or literature. One could throw in physiology. The point is that this kind of work involves risk, and risk is something generally confined to the young, and usually to males. I would suspect that on a test, many of these women would show more than the usual number of male attributes, similar to how I show more than the usual numbero female attributes, and my significant other shows more than the usual number of male attributes. (I am male and she is female ) But thanks. I will go back and make appropriate changes
Actually I knew about AS people being less faith drive. I was careless, and will go back and make the changes.

No --- YOU DID NOT!! !. I worked on this for several months. I expected that there would be errors, and really want other eyes on it. In fact, that is how actual science works most of the time. The idea of the brilliant lone scientist coming up with his breakthrew theorem is mostly fiction. For a good take on that see various articles and evidence that the primary source of relativity was Einsteines first wife. At the very least she was a major contributor.

I would appreciate your explaining how I stated my theories as fact. I thought that I made it clear that there are no facts in science, only theories. Are you familiar with Hawkings book "the grand design"?

Again, thanks much I will get new version posted by tomorrow evening.

Aspergers does have positives to it, but at the end of the day it's a disability, not the next stage in evolution. I suspect people sometimes develop these superiority complexes as a coping mechanism to deal with this (I've kind of been there myself). Who would you rather be, a brilliant scientist with no friends, or an average joe with lots of friends and a girlfriend and who can genuinely connect with people. Of course 99% of people with Aspergers are not brilliant scientists, so even then it's a skewed comparison. To quote The Smiths, "if you're so clever, then why are you on your own tonight?".

Evolution comprises of mutative trial and error, sometimes causing 'undesirable' or 'unintended' results. Autism could well be a sign of evolution, but it has by no means been perfected yet.



Are we generalising here or being specific? I'm fine with the suggestion that in some instances what you say is true.



Neither of these options are appealing to me.



What does cleverness have to do with being in company? Pithy quotes from song lyrics are no substitute for a well-reasoned argument, which I don't see in your post.

It's best to use my way of quoting, it's just easier to read.

Here's the skinny of it: Pyschopathy is antisocial personality disorder, they are now considered the same thing: have you met people like this? Because I used to go to a forum for these people to observe them, and they are not like autistic people, I'll go through several points based on the DSM definitions, the works of Tony Attwood and lovely wikipedia, which in this case seems to be quite reliable in teaching us about pyschopathy.

Autistics are emotional but have trouble expressing, managing and naming their emotions (this is called "alexythemia")
- pyschopaths emotions are shallow, in one experiment the brains of those diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder/pyschopathy was scanned while they were presented with images and words meant to cause emotional reaction, their reactions were minimal compared to that of the control group.

Autistics feel great empathy, I know you might disagree with this but if there is one complaint on the forum about the ol' "no empathy" chessnut it is that autistics have too much empathy and end up overloaded, Tony Attwood agrees, as do his patients apperently.
- pyschopaths do not experience real empathy.

Autistics are "honest"
- pyschopaths are manipulative, divisive and aggressive, they will use you then abuse you

Autistics are "logical"
- When it comes to logic and pyschopathy, anecdotes come to mind of the pyschopaths who commit crimes not for money or power, but simply out of an urge, impulse and need to do wrong, not very logical.



What would an autistic party's platform be? what would our economic stances be? Are we free trade? Fair trade? Do we support interventionist policies abroad? Are we pro euro? Support gay marriage? Do we allow abortions up to a certain point or is abortion murder?
Autistics comes from a wide variety of political stances, some are communists, some are anarchists, some are fascists, some are conservative - how exactly do you expect to make a political party out of such a group? Unless your main platform is simply going to be autism supremecy.




You seem to have this odd disposition against emotion, zest, passion and whatnot. not every autistic wants to be a vulcan. Some autistics revel in passion and art.



Pardon the last sentence.
pyschopathy is not defined by logical behavior, it is defined as a lack of remorse. They act quite illogically outside of fiction.
I am not ignorant of this topic, do not assume you are the "prime expert" on all things sociopathic (I'm only realizing now I've been misspelling psychopath, bah), it's quite condescending.



When you attempt to come off as intellectual, knowing, stoic, reserved and whatnot, to me - one of those pathetic lower life forms - you actually come off as a mix of condescending, irritated, faux vulcan, superior and aggressive. There, you needed to know that.

Thanks, but I'm aware of the basic mechanisms behind evolution, but I believe the implication in the original post was that Aspergers is an evolutionary step forward as is. If it hasn't been "perfected", like you say, you seem to be agreeing with me. In western countries, being an extrovert and having good social skills are highly regarded, so where's the evolutionary driving force for introverted people with poor social skills? I would imagine autistic people have less sexual partners than the average, and that's pretty important for evolution.




Because there's academic cleverness and then there's social cleverness. Someone with Aspergers may be very bright, but also not understand people, so have no friends etc - academically bright, socially not so much.

Please go read my article, then tell me, specificially, why my ideas are not a way of addressing your concerns, perhaps the best possible way. Please be specific.

Is it valid to assume that you have not yet bothered to take the time and effort to read my 15000 word article?

I do not think that you read my article. I wrote it as a way to address all the problems and inconsistencies that I see in the world. It was only after I finished the article, or at least got to where I am now, that in the past few days I decided that AS is the next stage of evolution. This actually follows from how evolution works. And please feel free to point out errors in my logic or information.

1. Survival of the fittest means the most the most reproductive success in a given environment. When that environment changes, than traits that that had survival value may continue to do so, may become neutral, or may be counter to survival.

2. I believe that my thesis, supported by some observable information, and logic that being obedient to authority was a survival characteristic for a tribe or clan.

3. Aspie people do not relate / connect with other people. For this, or perhaps for other reasons, they do connect better with the physical world.

4. Fear and anger are primal survival emotions. Everyone has those. One can not have more sophisticated / complex emotions unless you have a theory of mind, and that is, apparently from ALL experimental evidence, lacking in those with HFA or AS. In the old world, where connecting with the group and living in a patriarchal, hierarchal authoritarian society/culture/environment was necessary, then this was not a survival characteristic.

5. As is show in my article, this old structure patriarchal, hierarchal authoritarian society/culture/environment is going to get us killed. It leads to bureaucracies that blow up everything from oil platforms to space craft to banking systems. It does this because people follow authority and ignore the physical world.

6. Thus we come to a conclusion: People who relate better to, and learn from the physical world bring distince advantages to their society/culture. Hence people less connected to other people, and more connected to the physical world are better adapted to the new complex world in which we live.

7. I think that AS and HFA are also less likely to be swayed by group think, authoritarians, etc.

A nod to psychological theories: most are grandiose bs. If there are no measurments, preferably with controls, than such theories are no more than streams of symbols with little or no meaning. The fact that an Aspie person experiences fear in the presence of others does not mean that he is empathic or knows what they feel. As one observer said, when you have seen one aspie, you have seen one aspie. Making generalizations about them is hard. One thing that can be said, is that they do not relate well or easily to others. It was from this general consensus that my other observations, in particular in relating to and learning from the physical world as opposed to authority, follow.

Specific criticisms are welcome

referencing phonic:

Well I guess we would need to define empathy. For one thing, how can soeone lacking a theory of mind have empathy? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally–Anne_test. I am not saying that AS and HFA do not feel. But without a theory of mind, how do you class that as empathy?



You really do not understand psychopathy. If what you say were correct, than they would not be over-represented in upper management in corporations. I suggest that you expand your research from a forum made up of a self selecting set, to those who actually have done actual research on the subject. Bob Hare, and Jon Ronson come to mind.




Hmmm.... Anarchist yea... But fascists? conservative? I would like to see some evidence of that. And is there a difference between fascist and the current american conservative? If there is, I can not find it. More to the point. You have not yet read my article have you? If you had, you would not likely be asking such questions.



Exactly what logical steps did you take to get from my statement of having a 25 year partner and a 20 year old son to my having a disposition against zest, passion and whatnot.???



I am sure that one can provide evidence of psychopaths acting illogically. What I doubt is that you could show that they are any more illogical than NT. And I would bet money that you can not show that successful psychopaths, those at the higher levels of politics and corporate management, are illogical. Almost by definition, a successful psychopath must be at least as logical as the people against whom they compete. If they have any fault that would make them prone to failure it would not be a lack of logic, but rather hubris. Do you really think that the former gov of Ill, or Clinton, or Rumsfeld, or Nixon, or the Democratic candidate with the $300.00 haircut and mistress got to their positions because they were illogical?



I do not attempt to come off as anything. I am trying to describe the physical world as I see it. I am trying to address problems in the world. Emotions seldom result in a good permanent fix to a real problem in the physical world. I would suggest two things to you. If someone behaves in a way that you do not like, calling them names is not likely to change their behavior. The fact, as you state, that you see someone as having attributes that you do not like, does not mean that they have those attributes. It may mean that your perceptions are not entirely accurate.

Finally, before puting writing more on this subject, I would suggest that you actually read my article as at least one other person (who, by the way gave well thought out and accurate criticisms) has done.
_________________"

I read the opening of that article, I decided it was too long and I don't want to debate even more stuff. I don't really trust the author either since his second piece is called something like "Woman are inferior".

Websters best definition was "the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this " while Theory Of Mind is mainly the ability to see things from someone elses perspective - they arn't quite the same, two examples to show this:

A sociopath sees someone hurt and in a lot of pain, they feel no pain in return (most people would) but understand the situation and why the person is crying - this is a lack of empathy but shows theory of mind

An autistic sees someone hurt and feels pain in return, but doesn't understand the nature of the emotions, showing the reverse of the above.

But there is a far easier way to find out that autistics are heavily empathic: ask people on this forum, make a thread, it isn't hard - I garuntee you that the grand majority will say they certainly feel pained when they see others in pain.



Enough with the f*****g "I've got credentials, you don't, so my word is law on the subject", no one is buying it and I don't need to prove anything to you by reading the people who share your opinions, as opposed to people who might disagree but are knowledgable on the subject, Joel Bakan comes to mind.



Like I said: ask people here, you'll find about half of them slant towards the left and about half slant towards the right, just like anyone else. Sorry no we're not a masterclass of logical leftists, we're just as stupid as NT's in this area.



Yes, conservatives clean up nicely



I actually think these people are astoundingly illogical, completely bent on short sighted economic gains at the price of future stability, a disregard for ecological safty, the pathological pursuit of profit and power. Corporate CEO's and politicians are professional world destroyers, they make a living off other peoples misery with no insight into how much they affect the planet and little remorse into the millions they indirectly kill with sanctions, overpriced healthcare, mining, wars of aggression. Or how about the nucleur arms race of the Cold War: the two big superpowers in a room filled with gas trying to see who can get the most matches

These people are basically destroying the world for short term gains, they're incredibly illogical.

I am that example.

You do not judge a book by its cover, but by its title. Your time is so important in your world, that you did not bother to click on the link where you would have seen this: The Inevitable Inferiority of Women and Why, if They do not Start Running Things, Then We are Doomed I actually gave a talk on this at the universalist unitarian church and it was very well received. I do not. From this statement you will likely conclude that I am a sociopath. Also, if a person is experiencing some sort of emiotional pain, due to an imagined slight or some other reason that makes NT people upset I see them acting in some weird manner, but to me they are just being stupid. And of course, this is where I am puzzled. Why are we calling this empathy? Perhaps seeing someone else hurt is causing the autistic person to perceive a threat and thus be fearful. How is this supposed knowledge of someone elses inner state determined? Is the autistic person questioned about how they feel? A little research and I stumbled across this: Alexithymia frequently co-occurs with other disorders, with a representative prevalence of 85% in autism spectrum disorders. While technically this would disconnect lack of empathy from ASD, it would also indicate that contrary to your observations, the great majority of people with some form oif ASD also lack empathy. This study, where they actually controlled for various parameters, and looked inside the brain sort of confirms this.
http://imfar.confex.com/imfar/2010/webp ... r5981.html
Yes, easier as in, "I know what this person is like cause I read the title of one of his essays", You mean that kind of easy? I prefer doing actual research, to find actual information derived by professionals who can demonstrate verifiable results, and possibly come up with falsifiable theories. As I said above. That is not empathy, at least if it is confined to one or two primal emotions, which it appears to be. Bob Hare does not share my opinions. He is actully considered the definitive authority on psychopathy. You may have heard of the PCL-R psychopathy check list - revised, also known as the Hare psychopathy check list. It is not that he agrees with me, but that I did the research. I did a search on Joel Bakan and could not find any information that ties him to ASD or psychopathy. Perhaps you could inform us as to why he is such an authority. Perhaps you could do that without name calling and without profanity? I have nothing to say regarding imaginary nonsensical writings derived solely from within your own brain. It certainly is based on nothing that I wrote. Well, now we have a definition of illogical, at least acording to you. That which you do not like is illogical. Most people would be content to call things that they do not like BAD, but you take it up a level and call it illogical. You would have a place in politics.

I support the Ideas presented in this thread completely, they comply with my world view almost perfectly(in that I do not consider myself part of this whole human society and thus am largely free from all of it's weird conflicts and problems, incidentally OP, you wouldn't happen to be a furry would you?).

I don't, however, think we should start our own party, the task of running the planet seems to go to those who's concerns generally involve attaining power for their country, exploiting others for no real reason and providing protection from other governments. This are not qualities of AS(aspies) and so I wonder, why isn't the government dominated by the most logical of the population(us)? The best answer I have to that is that humans as a group as well as individuals are sentimental idiots who prefer to elect people they can relate to rather than who they think will do the best job at maintaining prosperity, there always has to be a better way of life or a more prosperous future for them, right?

Its already discredited due to the simple belief that is outright stated that Those of us on the spectrum are the next step on the evolutionary totem pole and thus superior to everyone else.

Really... if your gonna spout a superiority complex its gonna lose a lot of credibility. Regardless I will re-read it all over again and pick it all apart in its entirety after I get some sleep and have time aside from fixing my own life.

tl;dr.

Regarding the subject title: is the extra 'g' for greatness?

Regarding the subject title: is the extra 'g' for greatness?

I believe that responded to that when the issue was first raised. Did you not understand the explanation?

Its already discredited due to the simple belief that is outright stated that Those of us on the spectrum are the next step on the evolutionary totem pole and thus superior to everyone else.

If you had read my article (and I realize that this might require more effort than you can muster) you would know that in the context of my article, that statement makes no sense. In fact, you may have even seen that I specificially mention that the word better, does not, in general, make any sense to me.

This will be my last response to people who are so arrogant that they can ascribe to me all sorts of motives and mind sets simply by reading the title of a posting, without bothering to read what is the basis of that posting. In every case on this forum, they have not only demonstrated laziness, but have come to conclusions that were wrong, and in fact, contradicted by what I wrote. Thus, I will respond to people who have criticisms or ideas based on specific things that I have written. They can start by saying "I disagree with ---------- " and then paraphrase or quote from what I wrote.

Otherwise, I will let the lazy and arrogant chat among theselves, call me names and otherwise amuse themselves.

Well I don't quite get what the article is suggesting exactly, yes I went to the link.......however I disagree with those of us with AS not being able to have empathy. In my case its just difficult for me to express it.