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tomato
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11 Jun 2014, 11:42 am

SyAn wrote:
tomato wrote:
I speculate that the autistics can be divided into two groups. One before the "the matrix has you" message and one after. The one before are born with a special characteristic, but have not yet gotten the call that informs them about who they are and what their mission is. They still believe in all the lies, and struggle to live a decent life among the agents. Maybe this is the reason asperger and pre-schizophrenia are similar conditions? I believe we live in a massive lie. Autism is a gift because it forces you to try to see through that lie, and it also makes you less susceptible to the hypnosis.
I realise once more how I struggle with sarcasm - please put me out of my misery - are you serious?
yes I was serious



Who_Am_I
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11 Jun 2014, 6:50 pm

KingdomOfRats wrote:
Norny wrote:
-facepalm

Damn I slapped my face and it evolved into a rash. :afro:

sounds like an idea for a new pokemon.


I lol'ed.


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Dan_Undiagnosed
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15 Jun 2014, 1:26 am

Shadi2 wrote:
Dan_Undiagnosed wrote:
We are all evolved. That's kind of how evolution works. I'll occasionally do a bit of NT bashing but this kind of talk is the neurological version of saying "whites are evolved".


To be fair, I've seen plenty of non-autistic people (is this term ok Norny? lol) bashing autistic people, a whole lot more than the other way around. Just go to any forum that is not about Autism, mention ASD, and see the reactions. One thing that I realised is taboo in general, is to dare mention if you have noticed a person has a few autistic traits, the only ones who will understand that you don't mean this as an insult are the ones who are either knowledgeable or familiar with Autism.

Also I think "NT" bashing is possibly in response to ASD bashing, at least in some cases. Other than that, some people simply feel superior to others, for whatever reasons, whether they are autistic or not.


I agree with all of that but I still like to check myself when I speak about 'NTs' in general terms and I would include stuff like this thread under the same umbrella of NT bashing. To say something like 'we are evolved' just means the OP doesn't understand evolution. It's the same offensive garbage white colonialists would say when they made it to the new world. I'm assuming you'd be offended if someone on here made a thread about white aspies being 'more evolved' than non-white aspies, right? What's the difference? Neurological bigotry is still bigotry. Everything is evolved. There is no 'more evolved' or 'less evolved'. That's all I was saying.



Dan_Undiagnosed
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15 Jun 2014, 1:39 am

Most people don't really understand evolution. There is no value judgement in the scientific view of evolution such as 'more evolved' or 'less evolved'. There is fitness but that's no kind of value judgement. It merely means the ability to have previously adapted to occupy a niche. Therefore everything that is alive in the present tense is obviously 'evolved' in the sense that it is still fit enough to occupy a niche. Something becomes unfit when it is extinct.
Evolution doesn't make predictions like 'People with this gene allele will be better suited to a colony on Mars so we should start encouraging them to breed for humanity's future'. Taking part in eugenics or even just making such value judgements without acting on them is just begging to be on the wrong side of history and have egg on your face. We don't know which humans, or animals for that matter, will be better suited for the future because we can't predict the future in all its complexity with anything approaching accuracy. For all we know the double chromosome of Down Syndrome could dominate the Earth one day for some unforeseen reason. Or people with webbed toes. Try swapping 'We are more evolved than NTs' with 'Members of my ethnicity are more evolved than all others' and see how people react. It's no different. Speculating on the future of evolutionary trajectory is purely speculative and, unless you intend on living for thousands or millions of years to find out for sure, it's unfalsifiable. Science doesn't do unfalsifiable.



Aspie1
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15 Jun 2014, 10:22 am

Well, it's questionable whether or not aspies/autistics/spectrumites (hereafter, simply "aspies") are more evolved per se, I do think they moved away farther from our pre-modern human roots than NTs did. It's not necessarily good or bad; it just is. Consider the following criteria. I am curious, however, what the human life on Earth will be like in the distant future. Although if you've read Time Machine by H. G. Welles, where the main character traveled to years 800,000, 15,000,000, and 30,000,000, it's nothing good. Anyway, on with the comparisons.

WALKING.
NTs: NTs swing arms slightly while walking. Some aspies do not. The arm swing (brachiation) is an evolutionary remnant from the times when human walked on all four limbs. They also used them to climb trees, a behavior that persists in today's kids. Now, fast-forward 2 million years. Now humans walk on two legs, but the arms (former front limbs) never stopped moving in sync with the legs (former hind limbs). The arm swinging can easily be overridden, such as when grabbing handles on a treadmill or carrying shopping bags. But it happens by default when hands are free.
Aspies: This is one of the traits many parents notice in their children: the lack of arm swinging while walking. Many aspie adults continue to walk this way, either dropping the arms at the sides or "carrying" them in front. After all, the arms have little or no functionality in walking, an activity performed entirely with legs. It's not clear whether the arm swing doesn't happen because aspies logically don't see a need for it, or because it's no longer a part of their natural functioning. Especially considering that lots of aspies learn to swing their arms, enough to start doing it naturally.

TREATMENT OF FELLOW HUMANS
NTs: This is going to be a sore subject: bullying. It seems to be a natural part of NT society, whether blatant like in kids, or more subtle like in adults. I've had my first run-in with bullying at age 3, in preschool. At that age, kids cannot have cognitively learned to bully; it came natural to them. Bullying is used to separate the strong from the weak, as a way of killing a weak person morally, since it's illegal to kill them physically. At the same time, it never occurred to me that I could bully someone else; it just seemed wrong beyond wrong.
Aspies: Aspies are usually victims of bullies, rather than the ones doing the bullying. Instead, kindness comes naturally to them, with little or no need for it to be actively taught. When I saw lessons on kindness in kids' shows, I laughed: why would they want to preach something that was made as much sense as the Pope being Catholic. It never occurred to me to do the bullying myself, except on very rare occasions, when I copied the NT behavior I observed, and even then, I felt bad afterwards (and secretly apologized to the person).

COMMUNICATION
NTs: NTs communicate mostly in body language and facial expressions, with actual words making up about 10% of information being passed along. Pre-modern humans communicated entirely non-verbally, and today's human still do mostly non-verbally. All this, despite tens of thousand of years of the written word, and an even longer history of spoken word. While I can understand the ratio of 100,000 years of language history vs. 2 million years of human evolution, the strong evolutionary tie is evident.
Aspies: Aspies, as we all know, have trouble reading non-verbal communication. But they often communicate wonderfully in spoken and written words, an invention of civilization. They have more strongly integrated a language, whether English or another, into their functioning, rather than relying on non-verbal communication, as pre-modern humans did. I have to say I'm wondering how aspies talked to each other before spoken language was invented.

VIEW OF ANIMALS
NTs: NTs often see animals as mostly being of utilitarian value, other than those dictated by society as pets, like dogs and cats, or those having cuteness value, like bunnies. They may like looking at them, and even enjoy they company, but oftentimes still see them as "just animals". The Bible even specifies that people have dominion over animals.
Aspies: Aspies have a tendency to view animals as their friends of sorts, despite eating meat. They often have the ability to instinctively understand them, and are able to get along well with them from the get-go. It's not clear whether or not this is a compensatory behavior from not being able to get along with people, and some aspies end up adopting the NT view of animals.

FEARS
NTs: This is an area where NTs have a strong evolutionary advantage. They have preserved many pre-modern survival mechanisms, and therefore fear little other than what's truly dangerous: snakes, falling rocks, armed muggers, etc. Household noises, strange chandeliers, etc. get tuned out as useless information, and do not evoke fear of any kind.
Aspies: Countless aspies reported fearing harmless objects, like heating vents, in their childhood. Certain chandeliers in my case. Many reported fearing household noises, like a vacuum cleaner. Due to being more adapted to living in a kinder, gentler civilized society, sights and sounds found in this very society end up feeling dangerous, when they they aren't.



Janissy
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15 Jun 2014, 11:38 am

Aspie1 wrote:
WALKING.
NTs: NTs swing arms slightly while walking. Some aspies do not. The arm swing (brachiation) is an evolutionary remnant from the times when human walked on all four limbs. They also used them to climb trees, a behavior that persists in today's kids. Now, fast-forward 2 million years. Now humans walk on two legs, but the arms (former front limbs) never stopped moving in sync with the legs (former hind limbs). The arm swinging can easily be overridden, such as when grabbing handles on a treadmill or carrying shopping bags. But it happens by default when hands are free.
Aspies: This is one of the traits many parents notice in their children: the lack of arm swinging while walking. Many aspie adults continue to walk this way, either dropping the arms at the sides or "carrying" them in front. After all, the arms have little or no functionality in walking, an activity performed entirely with legs. It's not clear whether the arm swing doesn't happen because aspies logically don't see a need for it, or because it's no longer a part of their natural functioning. Especially considering that lots of aspies learn to swing their arms, enough to start doing it naturally.

.


Arm swinging has utility.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_swing_ ... locomotion


Quote:
. Although such pendulum-like motion of arms is not essential for walking, recent studies point that arm swing improves the stability and energy efficiency in human locomotion.


The arm swinging can be overridden-we've all done it when carrying something with both hands-but at the price of stability and energy efficiency.

Read Dan Undiagnosed's posts directly above yours, That is what you need to understand about evolution to understand it correctly. There is no "more" or "less" evolved. There is fitness for a niche.