What is the evolutionary 'value' of an aspergers population?

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07 May 2011, 9:01 pm

So I found a fascinating analysis of aspergers from a well known "Very High IQ" guy at http://www.paulcooijmans.com/asperger/s ... erger.html . There was a part that analyzed the evolutionary implications of aspergers, and he basically concluded that many of the associated characteristics are really evolutionary drawbacks and not just a "different way" of thinking.

Quote:

It is said by some that Asperger Syndrome is a new stage in human evolution. If this is true then only partially, as there are certainly aspects of the syndrome that are not desirable and should better not be passed on to future generations; that are not improvements at all. These are things like motor clumsiness, impaired spatial ability, impaired general intelligence, oversensitivity, rigidity (inflexibility), being math-impaired, and being inclined to obsessions and compulsions.

Other Aspergoid aspects though are indeed superior and should be striven for in posterity. This need not take long; evolution is a much faster process than commonly thought, and through careful selective procreation significant improvement is achieved in a mere one or two generations, as we have known for millennia from animal breeding. Care must be taken to tune down the undesirable, disabling aspects at the same time. Examples of superior aspects are honesty (inability to lie and pretend), sense of justice, conscientiousness (including ability to focus on a subject, and the other aspects mentioned in my article on conscientiousness), and a wide associative horizon (including not being restricted in one's thinking by the conventions of the herd, the dull mass).

It must also be noted that some of the undesirable aspects are really the high end or exaggerated form of desirable aspects, so that one has to find an optimum there and not go further. For instance, rigidity (inflexibility) is the high end of ability to focus, to concentrate, on a subject. With too much focus it becomes difficult to switch to another subject, which is what rigidity is. And obsessions and compulsions are the high end of conscientiousness.

Further it can be said that the profound social problems of people with Asperger largely result from the difference in communication style with the normal people, and from their honesty not being tolerated, and do not primarily originate inside themselves. So those problems will disappear as more and more are born who naturally use the Aspergoid (literal and verbal) style and are honest. So these apects - the social problems - need and can not be outbred in their own right. The same goes for things like violent outbursts and grim sadism; such does not originate inside the person with Asperger, but is a response to being exposed to the bullying, harassment and torture of one's environment for years or decades at a stretch.

Last edited by swbluto on 07 May 2011, 9:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Verdandi
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07 May 2011, 9:08 pm

That period on the end of the url is breaking it.

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07 May 2011, 9:14 pm

Verdandi wrote:

That period on the end of the url is breaking it.

Taken care of.

momsparky
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07 May 2011, 9:29 pm

Don't think the dude really understands evolution; you don't get to pick what side-characteristics come with the characteristics you are selecting for: take a look at what happened to female hyenas (which apparently selected for "masculine," aggressive behavior.)

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07 May 2011, 9:32 pm

swbluto wrote:

LP0rc wrote:

The original post establishes a false dichotomy of two uniform groups. This is a vast oversimplification and the worst kind of generalization.

And you're suggesting that there aren't relatively common deficits for autistic groups? You're joshing me, right? The DSM-IV clearly states a relatively uniform set of criteria that characterizes autism.

The DSM was created to standardize diagnoses. It has a small number of simple, uniform criteria for each condition not necessarily because that is the best characterization, but because it is the best characterization that is simple enough to "keep everyone on the same page." It's first purpose is standardization; accuracy and other things are also important, but ultimately secondary to standardization.

So, its reason-for-being mandates the way that the criteria in it are written, rather than anything essential about the condition mandating that.

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07 May 2011, 9:54 pm

From that article:

Quote:

Personally I think Asperger and autism should not be treated as the same disorder and do deserve separate diagnoses. I have heard that some psychiatrists, who believe Asperger and autism are the same, more or less boycott the current diagnostic criteria and simply give everyone "autism". This is bad because it makes research into the possible differences a priori impossible. It would be better to revise the Asperger criteria and make them more different from those for Autistic Disorder, for instance by including the less popular negative features that are missing from the current image of Asperger, but have been observed by Hans Asperger in his original study and are known from forensic psychiatry. These include motor clumsiness, insensitivity to another's feelings, destructivity, aggression, endlessly bottled-up anger, violent outbursts, and grim sadism. Some of these set Asperger apart from classical autism, and failing to include them in the criteria makes it appear as if Asperger and autism are really the same.

Motor clumsiness is known. I think some autistic people seem to have the opposite? But I wonder how many have motor clumsiness as well.

Insensitivity to another's feelings - I think many characterize this as obliviousness. I know if I actually recognize the feelings or have them pointed out, I'm not insensitive at all. This seems like it is common to autistic people, due to the inability to read non-verbal cues and lack of ability to see others' perspectives.

Destructivity, aggression, violent outbursts - This sounds like meltdowns, which are common to autistic people.

Endlessly bottled-up anger - I have done this to the point of having meltdowns or shutdowns. I am not typically carrying a lot of anger, unless something specifically happens to prompt it. Often, I forget fairly quickly thereafter. My father - who has spectrummy traits - does do this.

Grim sadism - Okay, is anyone here like this? What specifically is the observed behavior that led to this conclusion? He proposes an alternative explanation in the part that swbluto quoted, though.

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07 May 2011, 10:06 pm

Verdandi wrote:

Grim sadism - Okay, is anyone here like this? What specifically is the observed behavior that led to this conclusion? He proposes an alternative explanation in the part that swbluto quoted, though.

LOL! I'm slightly sadistic, but it's fairly questionable whether or not I'm really aspie. As for others, I haven't really noticed that in the WrongPlanet community, however, maybe all the "nice aspies" get shoved off to WrongPlanet? I joke. He might be getting the "grim sadism" part from the unintentional 'mean' and 'rude' comments that's typical for aspergers. I don't think English is his first language as he appears to be from the Netherlands(?), so there's probably a few "translation issues".

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07 May 2011, 10:20 pm

swbluto wrote:

Verdandi wrote:

Grim sadism - Okay, is anyone here like this? What specifically is the observed behavior that led to this conclusion? He proposes an alternative explanation in the part that swbluto quoted, though.

Well I don't think the others would be communicated so much in discussions here, except describing things. And meltdowns are a common topic, and can appear to be destructivity, aggression, and violent outbursts.

Your explanation for the grim sadism makes sense.

It just doesn't seem like these are unique traits, just traits described differently for Asperger's patients vs. Kanner's patients.

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08 May 2011, 4:53 am

Evolution is very simple. If you breed and the offspring survive to breed that is successful evolution at work. Nothing more. People are talking about technology and knowledge and differences but that is not part of evolution.

Humans as a race are able to do some complex abstraction. This has given rise to technologies that we use.

On its own AS makes socialisation difficult. Humans in general are very social and form villages, towns and cities. So say instead everyone had AS. Most would prefer to be on their own?

What if humans weren't a social species? We all live in our own territories, have completely different rules on socialising and how territory boundaries are formed. Perhaps form lifelong mating pairs. No more cities or towns, no more technology. AS super focusing ability instead used to super focus on surviving.

That is still successful. All evolution is is the ability to survive to reproduce.

As humans are now we have technology and using that we have dominated the Earth. At the same time we are completely dependant on our technology. A vast majority of people do not have the skills, ability or fitness to survive outside of our convenient cities. You have heard evolution is survival of the fittest, but I've said twice it isn't. Many humans are not fit to survive, it's just we reduced the difficulty of surviving by such a large margin with our technology.

Humans as a whole have made our society from all the different personality types. The smart who can create and invent. The strong and charismatic who can command others. The cunning that can manipulate and take advantage of the work of others. The greedy to hoard things and live as the pinnacle of comfort for others to strive towards. The normal who are happy to just work and live their lives.

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08 May 2011, 6:26 am

If everyone were autistic, society would collapse immediately. The human race would probably cease to be after a few hundred years.

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08 May 2011, 9:36 am

Poke wrote:

If everyone were autistic, society would collapse immediately. The human race would probably cease to be after a few hundred years.

Perhaps. I see it lasting a little longer than that, but I too don't see a fully AS or autistic society being sustainable for a long period.

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08 May 2011, 9:56 am

Again, a number of faulty base assumptions here:

1.) That Autism is a single, static thing, rather than a loosely associated collection of traits
2.) That evolution involves planning, rather than being a random collection of genetic responses whose the benefits outweigh their drawbacks (where benefits = ability to pass on genetics to offspring)

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08 May 2011, 2:05 pm

A little bit off topic but natural selection is kinda problematic for explaining stuff like our ability to do abstract mathematics, consciousness, music, etc. One can understand the survival advantage of "common-senese" physics and "numerical" ability but the selection of cognitive structures that allow for stuff like algebraic topology, quantum mechanics, string theory, etc. seems problematic because such abilities could not have beeen selected for because they weren't even used until more recently in human evolution/history. I can kinda understand why some mathematicians can believe that there are mathematical objects just waiting to be discovered (platonism). Some physicists (e.g. Tegmark) go further suggesting that all structures that exist mathematically also exist physically. So in a sense, mathemetical objects are more "real"/primary than physical objects (stuff physicists study). The problem with this view is even if true, it still doesn't explain consciousness/qualia. Sorry, had an Aspie obsessive moment, but I couldn't resist.

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08 May 2011, 2:22 pm

Kon wrote:

That's largely explainable within the context of evolutionary theory. Verbal ability has been selected for over the past million years just as spatial ability has been that enabled spear-throwers and archers to be effective hunters in the tribe and there were other various "creative qualities" that were selected for(Such as arts, humor and the such -- this evolutionary trend persists to this day). The development of writing made the transmission of ideas much easier, and then the individuals with the best verbal, creative and/or spatial abilities tended to be the leaders of new theoretical ideas (natural variation in the population ensures there will be a class of "geniuses"), and researchers just incrementally built off the backs of their forbears who left their writings behind. To wit Isaac Newton, "'If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.".

Last edited by swbluto on 08 May 2011, 3:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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08 May 2011, 2:58 pm

I think it is only the autistic geniuses that have the creative imagination needed to solve the worlds difficult problems such as global warming , space colonization and the need for an infinite supply of a cheap radioactive free energy. It was for these reasons that the creative minds of the autistics evolved to a point in order to solve the unsolvable problems. Yet autistics face severe suppression from neurotypicals who can only think on a very mediocre level compared to the genius level of the autistic. Neurotypicals dismiss all autistics as mentally ill imbeciles who should either be on disability or be given the most menial jobs. Meanwhile the planet burns in a global warming greenhouse inferno while neurotypicals implement their mediocre common sense solutions using bean fart technologies such as coal and oil.

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08 May 2011, 5:56 pm

swbluto wrote:

That's largely explainable within the context of evolutionary theory. Verbal ability has been selected for over the past millenium years just as spatial ability has been that enabled spear-throwers and archers to be effective hunters in the tribe and there were other various "creative qualities" that were selected for(Such as arts, humor and the such -- this evolutionary trend persists to this day). The development of writing made the transmission of ideas much easier, and then the individuals with the best verbal, creative and/or spatial abilities .

I think there's a difference between our comprehension of numerical quantity and "common-sense" physics also seen in many other animals (so as to avoid dangerous objects/predators, find food, etc.) versus our unique ability to abstract/separate mathematical objects from their connection to the physical world and study it on its own. I doubt such abstract abilities could have been selected for because they weren't even used in our distant past. I can't see how our cogntive ability to study the properties of N-dimensional space, etc. could have conferred a survival advantage. Maybe Aspies, on average are better in this kind of stuff? But that same ability to excel in this type of abstract/symbolic stuff (math and sciences, language/symbols, etc.) makes them poor at other stuff. Although this isn't always the case, I find that many individuals far less capable of doing abstract/theoretical stuff are much better at doing everyday practical stuff. A lot of the "nerdy" kids that excel in the academic environment are total write-offs in the real world. I'm a prime example. Relatively school-smart but real world stupid. Other than manual labour, mopping floors, I have trouble doing other practical stuff and it's not simply due to laziness. My impression is this characteristic is more common with people in the ASD spectrum?

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