Aspies, Neanderthals, and Agency

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Fern, I suppose that you, as into evolutionary biology, cannot have missed this exciting article in science:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/350/6262/820

So what does this say about your claim that there is no Neanderthal DNA in Africa? Also note that this individual is from almost the same place as the immigrants from Somalia that you claimed proved that autism was widespread in "Africans".

Besides, I'd be interested in your opinion about how courtship could be used to define species, and how multiple courtship phenotypes would prove that a species must have a hybrid origin. True or false?

Greetings rdos

I enjoyed your autism assessment. I think it is the most comprehensive and useful one online.

It might be better to just give us all a short synopsis of your argument the autism/neanderthal link rather than just citing papers at people.

I have been to your website and read some of the information, but maybe bullet points with a source might make this easier to understand here.

feral

Last edited by feral botanist on 05 Nov 2016, 8:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

That's just so bizarre...I don't even...what?

My main focus right now is to publish more neurodiversity research, which has proved to be hard. There still is only the 2013 article published, even if I've had over 10 different articles on peer-review, all have been rejected, sometimes for very strange reasons.

I haven't made any real update on the Neanderthal theory for a while, which is partly related to my intention to get it published in the peer-reviewed literature instead. I've also done 15-20 peer-reviews of autism papers, which is a great way to influence researchers, and stop bad research from getting published.

I did hint on the only realistic way of proving the theory: Through the still existing courtship and relationship preferences that are linked to neurodiversity. I have an article about human courtship that uses the Neanderthal connection as the basic hypothesis, and that is on peer-review since a few months back. If that get's accepted, I think the first step in proving the Neanderthal theory is done. Because a species cannot have variation in courtship without having a hybrid origin, and when I've proved these variations are linked to my neurodiversity definition, it also means that neurodiversity must be part of our hybrid origin.

It sounds like this is your focus.

I am more of a general specialist.

I am often careful with statements like this. All it takes is one reasonable counter example and others will often discount the rest of your argument no matter how will substantiated.

You might want to look up herring gulls and ring species and you will find variations in breeding behaviour within what is accepted as one species.

This might be more related to the issues with species concept than to anything else.

Lets talk more about this. As I have said,I have been claiming to be a Neanderthal for years,long before I was diagnosed. You should read the "Devil is Dead" by RA Lafferty.

feral

Working to a desired outcome, isn't that exactly how premature interpretation works, the "must" is unscientific", it could be, from these points, could, but there's plenty of other input.
Diversity, the intelligence to adapt, and how's that nonsense about no variation in courtship?
(there's been plenty of suppression of variations, in the name of religions, traditions, laws and outlawings)

Relationships are my main focus because it appears that the most important differences can be found there. It's also important because so many NDs are single (and not by choice), and you really cannot go about relationships like a social endeavour like many people think. A relationship is not a social thing. It's a thing between two people.



It is. The species concept is both poorly defined and understood. Many people think that it is based on physical traits, which is also why people think that NDs should have Neanderthal physical traits, which they don't (if we disregard hair, which doesn't preserve). But NDs cannot have physical Neanderthal traits, because this would leave them as easy targets of discrimination, so this link was selected out of the gene-pool. The Neanderthal courtship is still with us, and it is still linked to neurodiversity, and it has been criminalized in most of the world.



Maybe I should. However, even the exceptional talents of NDs all appear to be based on either hunting adaptations or relationship preferences. For instance, belief in the supernatural, as well as liking science fiction, all links to relationship preferences. So you basically need to understand those before you can understand the talents. There really is nothing strange or odd about the talents of NDs. They are all products of evolution: Either as hunting adaptations or through sexual selection. This is also the only way to understand the strong special interests mainly seen in male NDs. They evolved through sexual selection and as such are part of relationship preferences.

I am understandably good with patterns, so ecology and plant taxonomy were a very good fit for me, but I also work backwards from both of this to infer evolutionary history. Most of my predictions have been subsequently supported by molecular evidence.

Species concepts are very poorly defined and are often defined based on what the researcher needs the definition to be for their research. Some have supported abandoning the hierarchy of nomenclature, but it is too useful for management and communication.

I have to go, doctors appt. Lets talk more.

I'm not the one doing unscientific data mining as other autism researchers do. I formulated my hypothesis is 2001, started to research it in 2004, and have made several updates to it so it would fit with empirical data. That is how science should work. You cannot do large studies without having a hypothesis of what you will find. That's data-mining and unscientific.



You fail to understand that no other species have any real variation in courtship. Not even our closest primate "cousins". They all have rather fixed social behavior, courtship and mating behavior. Humans don't.

Also, the dual courtship preferences of humans are not random, and the variations themselves are highly stable. So our courtship in no way is the product of culture. Culture tries to eradicate it, and replace it with "dating norms", but it really doesn't work. Besides, in much of human history, marriages were arranged, which clearly points to how inefficient the mixed-up human courtship behavior is for creating successful relationships.

In the social area, we have the introvert vs extrovert dimension. Introverts basically have solitary species traits, while extroverts have social species traits, which is highly atypical to find witin a single species. In other primates, Gorilla and Orangutan are mostly solitary, while chimpanzee and bonobo are social.

Look up the herring gull it is a circumboreal species, but at the extreme end of its range, the mating call has varied so much that it no longer recognises members of the same species as potential mates.
Im not saying you are wrong, but you may not know all the examples. I taught a class on species concept.

Getting an IV more to follow. You should also look up salamnders around the central valley of California.

In regards to mating calls, humans have those too. For NTs, it's called catcalling.
Catcalling is considered a lot more offensive by ND females than NT females. Feminists, and our culture in general, are trying to make it illegal (by claiming it's a form of sexual harassment).

Another anomaly of humans is asexuality. Asexuality generally was considered as an unusual anomaly (in NTs) related to a low sex drive. However, for NDs, asexuality is not a low sex-drive, rather a disgust reaction to bonding with sex. Which leads us into another strange anomaly in humans: The majority of humans have sex all the time and are unable to plan reproduction without contraceptives. This is clearly instinctive and a species-typical characteristics. That would all be well within a species, if it wasn't for ND asexuality. This too is instinctive and part of the developmental process. I've shown that problems with intimacy in the 20s and beyond are mediated by identifying as asexual or disliking sexual intercourse except for reproduction in the mid to late teens. The latter link was the strongest. Thus, in a significant number of NDs, there are adaptations to plan reproduction, and those are highly maladaptive in a species where people bond with sex.

Yet another area is infatuation and attachment. NDs have a lot higher infatuation scores. For NTs, attachment is increasing slowly with time, while for NDs, attachment increase sharply in the beginning and then decline. We wouldn't expect to see this pattern within a species either. There are indications (mediation analysis), that in NDs, infatuation is mediating a strong attachment. Thus, without an infatuation, some NDs will get a poor attachment. It seems pretty likely that among NTs (and certainly many NDs too), regular sex is what is mediating a strong attachment. Thus, this actually ties in nicely to asexuality.

Lastly, we have polyamory. Species are typically either monogamous or polygamous, but humans are mixed on this too. People that are monogamous are often serial monogamous and are unable to love more than one person at the same time. People that are polyamory can have several relationships going at the same time. Being polyamory is linked to neurodiversity.

It shouldn't surprise anybody that all of the above differences have lead to prohibitions and stigmas. Something that is based on strong attitudes among people that have one of these variants (often the majority version), and are unable to accept the variation. For example, many sexual people are totally unable to accept the simple fact that some people find regular sex for fun disgusting, and so had to assume that asexuality was a problem with sex-drive (something that is still the "accepted" view of asexuality by professionals).

I didn't even mention the ND courtship variant, which is seen as highly offensive and already is part of the "sexual harassment" category. For no other reason than being offensive to a majority.

Whoa, too much at one time. Obviously you have put a lot of thought into this.

One point I can make is that there are numerous cases of asexuality in other species. The obvious ones are eusocial insects, but then there are naked mole rats, male lions without a pride, non-alpha members of wolf packs and then the genetic eunuch deer of Kodiak Island.

So something I often do for friends is read through their papers before they submit them. It often doesn't matter that I am not very familiar with the subject. I look for logic and flow, also if something doesn't make sense to me, unless it is very technical, then maybe it needs to be broken down or explained in another way.

I would enjoy discussing the Neanderthal hypothesis with you.

I'd consider that the next time. Right now, I'm waiting for one peer-review, and for results on CFA with STATA.

What about the examples of animal asexuality I wrote about earlier. I am trying to understand you hypothesis, how do they fit or not fit with you hypothesis?

I think it fits. There is a low-level of asexuality in NTs too (about 1%), and in other animal species. The difference in ND asexuality is that many of these people will also agree with "feeling disgust for sexual intercourse without wanting to reproduce". So, here we actually have something that really isn't true asexuality, but something else. People are ending up using the asexuality label because they can use it to motivate why they don't want regular sex. They have no other label they can use for this purpose when pressured for sex by sexual people.