Article-Undiagnosing Einstein, Gates, Jefferson by J Mitchel

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You missed the whole point about the unibomber. What he did does not compare, in objective numbers, in motive, in method, or in just-plain-sickness, to what the Administration does every day. Had Kaczynski been a socially acceptable person, everyone, including the families of the victims would have smiled and winked.


And my question was about that sneer at Clinton.
I can't properly beat you up if you are not more specific

Yeah, I am not a "die-hard promoter" of retroactively diagnosed, but I still wouldn't totally discount it, especially not on the basis of flimsy stereotyping as in the article.

I don't know so much about the others, but Einstein really did strike a personal chord with me, reading in books about him and quotes from him. There are so many similarities, between his childhood and mine (which is quite notable considering that I grew up as a girl in the late 20th century in California). One of the few things that struck me as that different, is that he started speaking somewhat later than I did.

My dad and I have both had friends, and my dad has had romantic relationships and is currently married for about 20 years to my mom, and while there are definite social differences, being autistic is not a sentence to have no friends and no romantic relationships.

Think of all of those who have fallen through the cracks though.

The author of this [not very good] essay is a well known anti-autistic autistic. He has only one view of autism: that it's bad and needs to be removed from the gene pool.

Can anyone tell me what the credentials of this person are?

Is he more qualified than Professor Michael Fitzgerald?

He's a fifty two year old, American aspie. Unemployed, single and living with his elderly parents. Has a middling college education. No psychological/psychiatric experience or qualifications. He glass is half-empty. I wish he would stop pissing on our parade. Writes a blog ["Autism's Gadfly"] frequented by John Best and his cronies.

Well, if he was a socially acceptable person, he would have been different. What is your point?




Well, GB was only trying to finish what BC started, and it was based on "intelligence" based on BCs administration's "findings". BC rescinded laws which gave china more ability, banks a greater chance to go bankrupt and bankrupt people, etc... BC is ALSO rumored to have commited murder, etc... And WHY didn't anyone investigate the FEEBLE attempt to coverup vince foster's murder? Since it was impossible for him to move, etc... after his death, he obviously did NOT commit suicide! If I was on the police force, Bill Clinton would have been an INSTANT suspect since so much ties the two together and Clinton claimed they were close friends, yet he did NOT demand that it be investigated!

So don't go talking about how GB created so many singular problems. HECK, you could(as I did DECADES AGO when I predicted it) blame CARTER for the twin towers incident! When I was in highschool, and carter was about to campaign for his second term, I said that he made the US to look like a bunch of IDIOTS and that problems with the moslems would escalate because of his IDIOTIC attempts to save the iranian hostages. MAN did I call that! EVEN in UBLs latest speaches he talks about the US not acting against threats and how the US is NOT so formidable! Had Carter done what he was SUPPOSED to, and not give the hostages any help and hit "all enemies foreign and domestic" with the intent to protect the US, those enemies would have had second thoughts about trying to hurt the US.

You say that Bill Gates' marketing skills nullify his chancces of being autistic? Really? I for one could talk about hours about my ideas about the world and I could make a great spokesperson for Amnesty International.

Bill Gates was marketing something he understands and as we all know before someone can understand anything you have to understand it yourself first. Another aspect of selling is the unique selling proposition which fulfills some kind of interest in the person. I am terrible at doing both.

Bill Gates knew how to sell his products because he understood the market, not theory of mind.

Atually, BG did a horrible job marketing. But the product HE marketed was practically the only one, and things came down to NUMBERS!! !! !!

1. HOW did it COMPARE with ANSI!? (Answer... WELL)
2. HOW LONG did it take to convert to the platform? (Answer... NOT LONG)
3. HOW MUCH did it cost to license? (Answer... NOT MUCH. Apple only had to sell 20 computers to break even)
4. HOW many COMPETITORS do you have? (Answer.... Basically NONE!)!

So would YOU buy something that cost you the price of 20 units if you KNEW it could DIRECTLY be responsible for selling HUNDREDS of units, and indirectly mean the difference between going broke and becoming a household name!?!?!?

That is a pretty easy decision, I THINK! Besides, there were REALLY only like 3 processors they had to support at the time. The 8080, 6800, and the 6502. So porting wasn't THAT hard!

Some boy strings along anecdotal evidence threaded with emotional bias? I cannot abide idiots who merely resort to lengthy phrase to have their opinion heard.
There is a pattern of frame and thought different to aspies and nt's. If ever you've read into works by Nietzche or Einstein, it should be obvious.
It's bad enough when neurotypicals do it; but when it is minimally educated sociopaths clinging to the flimsy excuse of autism for all their lives woes does the insufferable "autism epidemic" disease myth gain!
Selfish teats who think nothing of the potential impact of their words leave me quite irate, to say the very least on the matter.

I gave him a quick google and he seems to be just some guy with a computer. However, I refuse to use that against anyone because I don't believe that ANY credentials are meaningful in this subject. The guy is just a jerk, all by himself. You don't need to carry a card to do that.

The point is that socially acceptable people do things that are a lot more terrible, a lot more often, and nobody cares.

You can get worked up about weak RUMORS about a SINGLE murder? But the thousands of blatant murders, in broad daylight, are fine. (My brother-in-law was on the 25th floor that day. He and most of his friends got out. The close friend who did not get out became the father of twins five days later. George tried to murder my brother-in-law, and I take it personally.)

Why stop there? We could easily take it back to Manifest Destiny. I blame western culture for a lot of things. But George is worse than all of them put together. I don't see a difference any more between George and Adolph. The German population had the excuse of low self-esteem, and didn't have as much history to think about. But why the US population willing to sleep through this whole thing, as though nothing is happening? And worse than that, defend an obvious bully. I've run out of excuses.

On the other hand, I think some people need to chill. I think Ishmael is on the right track in a lot of things, but the bedside manner needs a little work.

Yeah, there's a lot of stereotyping in the article and so forth, but it's no worse than the other camp, whose thinking is largely 'somebody said [insert famous person's name here] was [insert any vaguely AS-like trait here] - that absolutely, positively proves he was autistic! This proves humanity would shrivel up and die without autism!' Given that AS has some similarities with OCD, social anxiety, etc, 'diagnosing' someone you haven't even met with no neurological evidence to back you up, isn't very credible, especially about people that hve been dead for a long time, as mores and social norms do change with time, and hence what strikes us as abnormal might have been merely slightly quirky then; also, no first-hand witnesses you could interview.
In any case, insisting on famous people reeks 'you're autistic, why can't you be like Einstein?'

At least by the time Nietzsche wrote Ecce Homo, he was psychotic (due to brain damage due to syphilis). The reputation for AS is being very logical; Nietzsche is one of the least logical philosophers.

His first name is BILL, NOT george! I don't blame you! He should have stopped it earlier, and let Bush now about the details.



WOW, THERE IT GOES! I guess you are happy it is basically dead then! And we can recognize that YOU brought out the A word!

Maybe the OTHER guy should simply get out of bed!

BTW I enjoy this!

I assumed he meant that Nietzche was NT!

BTW People just said Einstein looked like he was HFA or AS. That doesn't mean all AS people are like Einstein. And it is OBVIOUS that HFAs aren't necessarily going to be VERY bright, even though they can be.

Cats are animals, but animals aren't necessarily cats.

It's not how many letters you have after your name, or how many publications you have, or how celebrated you are by your colleagues, it's whether your arguments are basically correct or not. I much prefer Mitchel's arguments to Fitzgerald's, on the basis of their content and logical structure. I also like what Oliver Sacks wrote about Henry Cavendish. I consider Mitchel and Sacks' arguments to be much more convincing than Fitzgerald's. Maybe Fitzgerald just isn't very good at explaining his thoughts, but I don't believe any of his diagnoses, even, unfortunately, for the people I know nothing about.

The nice thing about science is that you don't have to take anyone else's word for anything - science is set up so people question each other's arguments in order to make them stronger, and if you don't believe the argument, you're welcome to go gather your own data and see for yourself. There's a kind of natural selection. Often (though unfortunately not always) the better science prevails.

The importance of public figures with diagnoses is that they give people an accurate idea of how the disorder comes across in real people - what it looks like from the outside. I don't think the current list is accurate - I think it gives a biased picture of what autism looks like.

Mitchell's arguments are superficial and crass. His only view of Aspergers are his own symptoms. i.e. I'm autistic, I've no friends - therefore autistics don't have friends - therefore Gates is NT because he has friends. Fitzgerald is a doctor, psychiatrist and academic who has had hundreds, if not thousands of autistic patients. Fitzgerald may be wrong, but this high school essay doesn't prove it. Sachs on the other hand...