Neurodiversity and Autism: The Other Side of the Story

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I would describe the so-called autism spectrum as a new arm in the evolution of mind, of the human brain. It is working out the kinks of a new step in thinking; we've all seen the autistic kid who can play anything on a piano or instantaneously calculate square roots. Right now the NTs are still dominant because of socialization, it is hard for the AS/HFA flavor to reproduce, much less those who can't make a sandwich. Of course, to an NT, we don't make any sense or communicate, but we can understand each other, so it isn't like we couldn't make it through a bottleneck where many NTs might fail by social adaptation. Nature rewards the last one standing, and past performance is not an indicator of future returns. I have always played to my strengths because my weaknesses - not really being able to swim, never getting bikes or skateboards - were so abnormal.

I'm not entirely sure why I'm stepping in here...

But I'll say this much: We are not disabled.

Imagine for a moment, if you will, how much better we would cope on a daily basis if the majority of people were, like ourselves, Aspergian / Autist.... and along those lines, if the whole of society had been founded on such.

There is nothing objectively wrong with us; We simply have dissonance with the ways of the Mundies.... ways which, I note, are unnecessarily irrational and inefficient. Ways which should, for all intents and purposes, be displaced and replaced by our own.
Why would we need non-verbal communication into an age where communication itself takes the form of text as much as spoken, and the need for facial contortion is vastly diminished?

Undesirable to whom?

NT's.

Harmonious social situations are not really a priority for aspies, that's the whole point!

IR, you seem determined to define AS in terms of what people can't do and you are very dismissive of any positive aspie traits that people perceive. So I doubt that we'll ever see eye-to-eye about this. For instance, I strongly believe that aspies often have a superior ability to hold large amounts of factual information in their heads, and many here would agree. This is a useful skill. Depending on what you're trying to achieve, it may be more useful than being able to multitask. It's been incredibly useful for me in an academic environment.

And yes, if I'm going back to prehistoric times again, I imagine that it would be very useful to have someone in the village who could remember details about every plant in the vicinity: where to find it, whether it is poisonous or good to eat, whether it helps soothe wounds etc. Also useful to have encyclopaedic knowledge about local animals. Particularly in a time when someone had to store all that knowledge in their head because nobody could write it down. You say that increased sensory sensitivity would be a disadvantage but I'm not convinced. Of course, a LF autistic whose sensory input was so scrambled that nothing coherent got through would have real problems, as they do now. But the kind of sensitivity that many aspies have could be useful. Would it be overwhelming? I doubt it, compared with the problems that aspies have today. There would be no car horns, motorbikes, rush hour commuters with overpowering aftershave, no fluorescent lights, no idiot playing his music aloud on the bus. The lack of these things just might change sensory sensitivity from a liability to an asset.

You also say that most geniuses are NT. Well, of course they are. Most PEOPLE are NT - the fact that most geniuses are doesn't really tell us anything, unless we know exactly how many people are on the spectrum and how many people qualify as geniuses, on and off it. Then there can be comparisons. I think it's probably the case that a lot of aspies are very good in a particular field.

How good/bad you think the balance of aspie traits comes out naturally depends on how vital you think social skills are. They're not that important a part of my life, so I value my "book smart" ability more. Whatever value you put on each of these things is always going to be subjective.

That's the very definition of disability though -- if nobody had legs then no-legs would be normal, too, and everything would be designed for the convenience of no-legged people, and people who did have legs would have problems if they ever popped up in the population, they might not even fit into regular rooms by the time they were adults unless they did things damaging to their own bodies. Disability isn't just a deficiency, it's a difference of any sort combined with a society not planning for the convenience of people different in that manner.



How would that help the many autistic people who find verbal communication (either spoken or written) inaccessible?