Why the Autism Spectrum is Not the next evolutionary step.

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let's consider the shift in geeks or nerds desirability and social status in what by evolution scale is less than a fraction of a millisecond,
AS in many aspect is kind of a super geek(or whatever the local term is,I'm from Israel,here we call such a person a CHNUN)
society is changing very fast, and even faster,many AS and autistic of all kind are very good looking(thank u very much) extremely smart,sensitive and creative,
we may be too sensitive or shy to our current environment and our sense of privacy is often miss understood but we r not monsters or mutations,
our time will surely come,
i never had any problem in attracting the opposite sex but like many of us have many problem with communicating and acting upon it so i choose to date only AS and things got much better for me,
it's all about knowing yourself and being true to your self and forget all the integrating with society crap and i never took advice from no shrink or the so called professionals,
they r all just a bunch of useless idiots .

It answers the question "why?" in as far as it answers the question "what caused this?" - sometimes "why" implies the quest for a purpose, but whose purpose would you be talking about?


What's politics and prestige got to do with the real science of evolutionary theory? Darwin was so scared of the religious bigotry of his time that he originally planned to have his research on evolution published posthumously. Sure, he was religious himself. So was Occam, the guy who said that the theory of choice should be the one that introduces the smallest number of assumptions and entities, all other things being equal.......yet he also believed that the Bible was absolutely and literally true from cover to cover. Now if he'd had the ability to use his own "razor" on that assumption, he'd have presumably dismissed it as too complicated and unlikely for its own good, which is exactly what secular (and most Christian) people do nowadays.


The term is not without its limitations - the edges are fuzzy - but it's still a useful one IMHO. One of the best introductions to the concept of natural selection that I've seen, explains "unnatural" or "artifical" selection (animal breeding by humans) in order to help show how evolution works. It certainly cleared a few blocks for me.


Hmmm......the "progress" view of history used to be quite popular. But as soon as you ask "progress towards what goal?" and "who decides what the goal should be?" then that view is in deep trouble. Or am I missing something?


Conformity? Looks more like consensus to me. You can pin labels of "gutless" on those who don't agree with you, but you might win more support for your idea if you argued them more coherently and played down the attempts to make us all feel like wimps just because we expect a thing to make sense before we believe it.

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Last edited by alba on 25 Mar 2009, 10:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

that's funny, b/c all this sounds like to me is "why we're the next super-race"--which is really only very low self-esteem very poorly masked as superiority. people with aspergers as a group are no better or worse than any other group. just different. we have our challenges and deficits just like NTs do, just in different areas.

^^^would you consider a low self-esteem contest then?

Aspies and NTs cross breed. It is only by isolation (geographic or in the case of humans, cultural/politcal) that separate sub-species may arise. As long as there are no hard reproductive barriers between people on the spectrum and those who are not, the formation of such sub-species (or "breeds" as you put it) is unlikely.

ruveyn

i always wondered whether the less severe forms of autism, asperger's etc, were some kind of cross breed or mutation of the autism gene.

I have a very low self-esteem,almost none,been told that too many times by people who are familiar with what i do and for some reason imagined they know me,
but i never payed attention to such crap because i feel that too high self esteem is the source of most of the troubles on our poor world,
wish ppl wouldn't think of themselves too much as most people are much worse than what they pretend to be and consequently they take a very bad decisions and inflict their bad judgment on others ,
high self esteem is the cause of most of the suffering in the world,
AS at least tend to shut up and concentrate on the task ahead or just observe and think quietly which is one of the reason we serves as a scapegoat and had to suffer so much abusement and misunderstanding and never get the appreciated for the work we do,
i work as a programmer,in most places i worked i dived into the code(i liked that) while others went around bragging about their so called capabilities and wast huge amount of time promoting themselves by faking human emotions,
I'm less than a zero and wish i could be even less,and the "next step" thing isn't about super race but an attempt to discuss our identity as no one else would do it for us.

Last edited by nara44 on 25 Mar 2009, 10:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

the "why?" could be answered at many resolutions,
cause and effect is very intricate subject and every action could be explained locally or globally or scaled to many different durations of times.
Darwin theory is the best so far but i think it would be a grave mistake to present it as the ultimate explanation,that sound to much as a religion to me and if Darwin would have been satisfied with what was in the textbooks of his times we didn't have such nice peace of theory and in that context i expressed my disappointment of the attitude of our little discussion.
it would be impossible for me to present my complete theories and thoughts on the subject in such small space as this post,it requires several books, i wast just annoyed by the attitude presented here as i felt it hinder further development of ideas as is your attitude of 'all or nothing' because i feel we need to allow some incoherency in order to develop.




which serves as a very nice example of how difficult it is to present new ideas against the fixed notions of one time.



perhaps animal or vegetation breeding by humans is also natural,
as houses and cities and computers and everything else we do,
we r also part of nature.



i don't care if it was popular or not,history draws a progress,
u have to be extremely stupid to miss such an obvious reality.
what u miss(in my opinion) is that great part of Darwin achievement was in showing that reality can be better explained when the "control" or "decision" issues are omitted,
i think that was made ppl of his time so angry because it hurt their self importance,
AS should understand what i talk about because that what we do to the general society and that why we r hated so much.
the goal is love,
simple as that,
life,development,science,art,technology r all geared toward creating an environment and society which will be able to support love,
we r still very very very very very far,
but if we go back to the topic of this thread i think AS present some qualities which are relevant to such progress,
i think AS are monogamous by nature and that why we attract such a schizophrenic attitude from the NT,
our so called obsessiveness,shyness,uncanny degree of concentration,sensitivity,reservedness,
our tendency to take words literally and the fact that many of us,including me,vary rarely speak at all,
the peculiar way many of us attach sounds to vision,
our loneliness,
to me society as it now looks like an orgy,
and I'm no prune,
just can't connect to the expectations of everyone around me to make and immediate human touch,
and from what i've seen in this forum and many other like this i'm not alone feeling this sentiments.
and it is not coincidence that AS as a movement are very tied to the net as a space and technology, it correspond so well to our sense of border between private space and public space,
again,the subject is very complicated and it will take books to draw just a partial pictures,but i felt u deserve my attempt of an answer,even at the price of some,if not allot,of incoherency.
sorry for my poor English,my native language is hebrew and for obvious reasons i had very little formal eduaction.

Human species has already diversified into breeds in certain areas. Groups of humans containing specific genetic markers could be called "breeds" of humans.

I don't think anybody here has been particularly closed to theories that are alternatives to evolutionary theory......I'm just saying I'm not likely to believe it without seeing coherent evidence. That's very different to holding a reactionary, fixed notion that Darwin was 100% correct and being scared of anything that challenges him.


Yes it can be seen like that.


My sister's theory is that we're going backwards. My own view is that life is a messy accident, with no particular objective point or purpose to progress towards, though individuals are free to create their own goals.


Love might be your goal, and it might be my goal, but I see no evidence that the world is necessarily progressing towards that. In the 19th century, many Marxists thought that human society was "evolving" inexorably from (hateful) capitalism to (loving) communism, but it's showing no signs of happening as far as I can see.


I don't think that monogamy is a higher form of social order than anything else - just that it seems to be the most successful method in terms of limiting genetic damage, so there are taboos about doing anything else. Perhaps AS people with their reputation for possessiveness are more effective at enforcing monogamy than NTs who often seem afraid to object when their partners aren't being very loyal. I agree with your view that we seem to be living in an orgy. Even the BBC has discovered that when trousers come down, ratings go up. We have monogamy in principle but adultery has been legalised, except that the injured party can still get a quick divorce, The law would still expect the couple's shared wealth to be divided equally as if nobody had done anything wrong. I know the old Victorian system was much too biased towards men, but in trying to equalise things they just made women less wholesome, when they should have made men more wholesome. So now nobody's wholesome, integrity is out of fashion. Some people would call that progress, I call it going backwards.


No need to apologise.....your English is a lot better than my Hebrew! I hope you will forgive any misunderstandings I may have made because of the language barriers between us.

Talking about autism as being an evelutionary thing with respect to the brain itself may not be to accurate since there is some evidence that differences in perception and the process of reasoning may not be wired into the physical aspects of our biology at all and takes place in the 'space' between the neurons.

Talking about autism as being an evelutionary thing with respect to the brain itself may not be to accurate since there is some evidence that differences in perception and the process of reasoning may not be wired into the physical aspects of our biology at all and takes place in the 'space' between the neurons.

I think the reason that some people think autism is the next evolutionary step is because they get too obsessed with the X-men comics and then they want real life to be like that. I mean, it's such a great way to affirm your existence and why you are such a freak, a vindication of differentness, which is why the concept was put into the comic books (in which being born with superhuman powers that manifest at some point in life is considered by many to be the nest step) and why they have been successful.

as to whether it actually is the next step, I think we will have to wait and see how the earth changes and who survives such a change, and of course it relies on autism being heritable.

Assuming it is as inheritable as it appears to be: If such a world develops that autistic traits are advantageous for survival and reproduction, then yes. Otherwise, no.

Get back to me in ten thousand years and I'll have a much better idea of where it's going.


I've always liked the idea of autism being a throwback to our ancestors' way of thinking. I don't know about the neanderthals, but it certainly seems to make being a hunter-gatherer easier, in my experience. I came up with this idea on my own as a teenager, and thought of using the word "atavism" instead of autism to describe the situation. but it's just a W.A.G., not really a theory.

Absolutely. "Mankind" does not take "evolutionary steps." Individuals do. Want to play? Get married, and have a lot of kids. A viable population beats world domination any day of the week. It lasts longer, and it's more satisfying.

Unless you get a really good IT job and make a truckload of money. Hot NT chicks like men with cashflow, kids. Never forget this.

Market yourself as a brilliant eccentric with a deep and enigmatic soul. Artsy babes love it, and they're hot in bed.

Good luck!

Has anyone ever heard of survival of the fittest? Are aspies ‘the fittest’?