Is autism just organic nerdiness?

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Long before autism and aspergers entered the public consciousness, there existed the stereotype of the nerd: A socially awkward physically uncoordinated guy with an obsessive interest in math related concepts. The stereotypical nerd sounds like someone with mild or borderline autism, and indeed a disproportionate number of autistics seem to have parents who work in nerdy fields like engineering or computer programming. However a key difference between nerds and autistics is that nerds tend to be smart and rich (Bill Gates) while autistics are often mentally disabled and unemployed.

How do we resolve this paradox? Well, too much of a good thing can be bad, so perhaps there's an optimum level of nerdiness for a particular culture and those who are too nerdy are labeled autistic.

However nerds tend to be smart. If autism is just extreme nerdiness as I proposed several months ago, shouldn't autistics be EXTREMELY smart. Some certainly are, but more often it seems autistics are mentally ret*d. How can this be?

The answer lies in the fact that there might be two kinds of extreme nerds: organic nerds and familial nerds. To understand this distinction, instead of talking about extreme nerdiness, consider extreme height. Being extremely tall is a huge competitive advantage in life, making men successful at work, sports and dating, however, the taller you are, the more likely it is your height is caused by some disorder like a pituitary disease. Now because you have a disorder, instead of being athletic and attractive, you are clumsy and deformed.


So there are 2 kinds of super tall people: organic tall people (whose height is caused by a genetic mutation) and familial tall people (biologically normal people whose extreme height is part of the normal variation). The latter group is far more successful and may even play in the NBA. However the further one deviates from the mean on genetic traits, the more likely it is that their deviance is organic (a mutant gene) as opposed to just being a normal extreme.

Nerdiness is a human trait, just like height and weight, and nerdiness is distributed normally in the population. In technological societies, the nerdiest people are often the most successful, however the nerdier you are, the more likely it is that your nerdiness is organic (biologically abnormal). Thus the same mutated gene that caused your extreme nerdiness caused disruptions in other biological functions causing disabilities, and in extreme cases, mental retardation.

Sure there's probably something there, but I haven't read any convincing scientific journals or studies on it.

I'm autistic and I'm not nerdy. My IQ is high. I am socially awkward and don't date. But I am into sports and while I respect math, I hate the idea of studying it.

Maybe I will create a new human sub species. I just need to find a social girl and our kids would be perfect!

I used to be nerdy looking (big glasses, unfashionable clothes, eclectic tastes, non-sportsman, bookworm). I wear contacts now and I hardly go out. I only have a passing interest in math. Writing & literature is my thing these days. I'm as socially awkward as they come so I can see promoting my novellas in person in the near future could be a problem.

Nerdiness is subjective. So in this realm, you'd be talking about surveys across many different cultural divides (e.g. high context vs. low context cultures, etc.). This would be more of a sociological study than cold hard science. However, sociology can be useful because you can take a lot of concrete things out there and sort out a ton of demographics. But, where would the biology/chemistry fit in, and how? And even if it did, you couldn't easily correlate scientific and subjective data.

I suppose you'd need some kind of database of marked genetic mutations corresponding with individuals "flagged" as nerdy by their respective cultures. The result of a study such as this would result in a "good read for nerdy people" but not a whole lot more.

[BTW I'm good at math and literature, but I like discovering and investigating new things for myself. I highly doubt I'd discover a new realm of either, so I find them boring and a waste of time for the most part. I'm highly competitive so I enjoy sports, and I'm taller than both my parents due to recessive genes from taller people on both sides.]

According to the mercury causes autism people, autism is organometallic nerdiness.

Autism isn't necessarily organic nerdiness. I and several other Aspies I know fit that description but I also know a few Aspies who aren't at all nerdy.