How to tell the difference between a geek and Aspie ?

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Again, your treating love of technology as being aspie like it's one and the same. While they coincide, they aren't that bindingly inclusive of eachother.

I doubt it Steve is way too personable and outgoing to be aspie.

Lol, Lunar was quoting me - I'm the one who said that.

As for being outgoing, so what? I really don't think that negates AS that much really. We're definitely not all shy withdrawn wallflowers.

Yeah, but if it is in a social context, I think would. And I don't think Steve ever had a problem with public or social atmosphere. I would sooner believe he had ADHD, as he did seem driven.

Maybe you are thinking of Steve Wozniak, his partner in starting Apple, as Steve always seem to be pushing the brilliant but backwards and introverted Wozniak. Woz built them and Jobs sold them. Jobs' charisma and ability to talk people into nearly anything got the company going. He could not have been so forward, communicative, charismatic, convincing, and successful in sales and business if he were an aspie.

Nah, I think we just have different concepts of AS. Not to say being real extroverted and charismatic in that way doesn't decrease the likelihood a little, but then again it doesn't really rule things out either. I guess what I'm really trying to get at is not caling Steve Jobbs an aspie (again, I have absolutely no idea), just that he's in the same group but is a very atypical nerd - a lot of us are very atypical as well in similar senses which I explained a few posts ago to someone else.

It depends a lot on what criteria you apply.

According to DSM-IV it's not much of a stretch. Geeks essentially get a free pass on DSM-IV section B-1 (abnormally intense preoccupation or interest). Sections D through F are tests for other, more serious disabilities, so the geeks are on the same footing as everyone else. All that leaves is sections A and C, which deal with "qualitative", "marked" or "clinically significant" impairment to socialization. What exactly do those terms mean? Does the criteria apply only to innate skills, or should we disqualify people who have learned to work around their impairments? Interestingly enough, the other common traits people keep mentioning on this site (impaired verbal communication, enhanced sensitivities, etc.) aren't even listed criteria.

Gillberg's Criteria, on the other hand, requires a much lower functioning (more autistic) level and in some cases directly contradict the DSM-IV list. For example, Gillberg requires motor dyspraxia AND verbal communication problems AND non-verbal communication problems. Very few geeks would be diagnosed with AS under that set of impairments.

Roger Meyer's list is the most comprehensive, and yet the least restrictive I've seen. His is more of an "if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and swims like a duck then it's a duck" approach. Rather than worrying about the degree to which specific diagnostic criteria can be observed, he lists the typical effects of AS and infers the diagnosis from the degree to which those effects are found.

According to Gillberg, I have no business being on this board. The DSM-IV criteria are vague enough to create a grey area where I may or may not have AS. When I read Meyer's list I feel like someone's been recording my every waking moment....

I have a superpower and that superpower is saying things that really piss people off and alienate them from me.

That's what I thought too. I'm also a dork but more a geek than a nerd but not very much of a geek.

I can't be the only one who thought of Itchy and Scratchy when I saw that name . . .