Neurodiversity < Aspergianism

Post Reply New Topic

Huh?

Some consider Down Syndrome to be a form of neurodiversity. I don't exactly have any comparison charts, but I don't think people with DS are generally lower-functioning than autistics. [sarcasm]So we should all fear having children lest retardation happen?[/sarcasm]


Does this mean you got fired for telling off your boss or disrespecting your employer some other way? NT's do that. Celebrate it if you must (hell, I found it amusing), but it's still a serious lapse of judgement usually followed by an apology and temporary insanity plea.

Here's a secret to the workplace, Andro. Your boss' problems are not your problems. If he's doing something stupid, it's on his head and not yours. And if he tries to make it your problem, don't tell him off, just quit. You place a high value on practicality, and yet you demonstrate none yourself.

Cool! I've actually had such fantasies myself! We would hover over jrc, leap out and rescue all its prisoners, welcome them to our community of AirHaven, and then possibly bomb the rest of jrc, as well as autismspeaks headquarters!! !

lolwut? I've seen people who don't have autism call each other out for using logical fallacies. And like I said, some of the most fallacious stuff I've ever read has been on these boards.

I think a lot of neurotypicals dismiss the logic of the autistic. NT's constantly call out referees when they believe that an autistic is off topic or irrelavant in his arguments. What it really means is that the neurotypical fails to see the big picture and to see things in a wholistic way and how a lot of things are actually interelated. Some Nt's are so myopic that I cannot even use an analogy without upsetting them.

My post. Did you read it?

Lots of people do that, regardless of whether or not they have autism. Logic is not solely an autistic thing.

Hey.

Do these records also show that you're inarticulate? I've been looking at a few of your posts, and it cannot be said that you can't string a coherent sentence together. Many of your posts are short, pithy, and even laconic, but I see no evidence of stupidity. Dumb and pathetic people cannot do this. There are plenty of those around where I live. You do not fit the criteria.

I would humbly suggest you try writing. You might want to avoid poetry and anything involving creative dialogue - I can't do either, for reasons I suspect are symptomatic, but creative prose might be a good outlet for you.

I do have a great deal of sympathy with feeling pretty down about yourself. Humansmin general and NTs in particular are good at demoralising others. The way it's been explained to me is that it's about this hierarchy thing they're so keen on - if everyone who isn't normal or a good little subordinate gets systematically put down, they climb higher on their ladder to what they call "success".

While hiding under a rock somewhere is emotionally appealing at this point, allowing them to make you feel like this simply lets them win. Someone has been trying to drum this into me for months!

I think some of the separatists need a better understanding of evolutionary theory, genetics and speciation.

Unlike some on here, my obsession isn't something "useful" like maths, physics or computer programming. I am much more interested in ecosystems. In a world where humans cared about the environment, this might be useful, but I have to study lepidoptera ecology on my own, because nobody will hire me. The days of the great naturalist are over.

Aspies are not a different species to humans. I'm as guilty as the next aspie as referring to humans as an alien species but, as a naturalist, I can assure you that they're not.

Let me take a local example. Until recently it was thought we had two subspecies of one species of crow around here. The common one here in Fife is the common carrion crow. A few dozen kilometres further north we have a species called the hooded crow. They were classed as two subspecies (Corvus corone corone and Corvus corone cornix, if I recall correctly).

This would be roughly comparable with having two species of humans, say Homo sapiens larcenensis (Neurotypicals) and Homo sapiens aspiensis (us).

Recently someone did a study in the overlap zone between those two groups, and studied egg viability of hybrids. It was found that those hybrids had lower egg viability than "pure" carrion crows or "pure" hooded crows. For this reason, the two are now regarded as separate species.

I know of no evidence (although I admit I haven't looked and suspect that nobody else has) of lower fertility of hybrid neurotypicals and aspies. I conclude neurotypicals and aspies are the same species.

I acknowledge that neurotypicals tend to reproduce more often with other neurotypicals and aspies tend to reproduce more often with other aspies, but that says a lot about social selection.

This could, and I emphasise could, be the first step towards speciation. Speciation occurs when two populations are separated or a few individuals acquire a gene that allows increased likelyhood of reproduction that other individuals in a population lack. This likelihood increases if the two populations are artificially separated by, for instance, a desert or mountain range or even a wide stretch of farmland. This is elementary biogeography.

That said, with NT/Aspie hybrids breeding straight back into the general population with no evidence of either hybrid vigour or lower fertility this seems improbable. My educated guess as a naturalist is that the genes involved in ASD will persist in the population because they are an asset at a community, if not at an individual, level in a similar way to, for instance, those for homosexuality.

Deliberate selection of aspie-aspie partnerships bluntly will not work. The eugenecists on the board will be disappointed to learn that the expression of aspie traits is unpredicatable, even from aspie-aspie matings. You are highly likely to find yourself with a neurotypical offspring. What do you propose we do with such children? Keep them as slaves? Kill them off as soon as they respond with eye contact in standardised tests? Dump them in concentration camps?

Hans Asperger wrote eloquently to ensure those with the syndrome that he identified in Austria in 1944 would not be caught up in the Nazi extemination of untermenschen. He would be spinning in his grave at such a suggestion.

An aspie friend has suggested something related, which might actually work, but is probably impractical.

Take anyone with violent tendencies or those willing steal from or exploit those more vulnerable than they are (most NTs), shove them all in a big pen the size of the Sahara (the Sahara might do), give them sufficient food and a limited supply of cooking lager and wait for them all to kill each other. If you keep selecting like this for long enough you should end up with a nonviolent, vegan population with morals based on reason, not on what the biggest monkey can get from the smaller ones. Whether such a population would be exclusively aspie remains to be seen. I suspect not. Gandhi, for instance, showed few aspie traits.

For the science fiction buffs on here, a related idea can be found in The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S Tepper (1988). This is a feminist analysis where, to prevent another world war, men are excluded in military camps until they prove they are nonviolent. The violent ones think they are fathering the children on "festivals" set aside for this, but it's actually the ones allowed back into the community who are responsible for fathering the next generation. The book is loaded with irony, and is a good read.

On superiority.

I see little evidence of aspies being particularly superior to neurotypicals.

It is commonly stated that aspies are, on average, more intelligent than NTs. I am of the view that this is an artifact of definition. Asperger syndrome is partially defined by the criterion that there must be no impairment of developmental function beyond those specified. Since those impaired cognitive functions do not include intelligence, all those possible aspies with impaired intellect are defined as having another ASD.

The average aspie IQ is therefore higher than 100, because the low scores have been taken out.

A small minority of aspies can become "successful" in NT terms because of our tendency towards obsession in one subject. This works a lot better if your obsession is in electronics or something else the NTs need than if it is towards memorising toaster models, to give the classic example.

Morality is a more complicated question, but that is always the case with morality.

It appears that most NTs appear to learn morality from observing their peers. If this example is immoral the NTs will seem to tend to regard this as acceptable behaviour.

Aspies, on the other hand, seem to try to work out morality from a point of logic. We develop scripts that tell us, for example, that stealing is wrong, and do not generally deviate from those scripts. Stealing is wrong in any circumstances. I have ended up in trouble because of misjudgments relating to my scripts that stealing is wrong (some people apparently do not regard their actions as stealing, when I would disagree) or that I should try to ensure that nobody gets hurt (a script that has, on occasion, resulted in all concerned getting hurt).

That said, if the NT example is moral, then you end up with a moral NT, but this seems uncommon. Equally, our scripts can get us into trouble, because we struggle with the grey areas. NTs are also capable of moral judgments based on reason. This is the basis of Humanist morality. My experience suggests that much morality, particularly NT morality, is honoured more as lip service than in action: you look good in front of your friends if you pretend to be moral. That's my experience of a tendency. It is not universal.

I would suggest that going to war with NTs would be a very bad idea, not just for the practical reasons outlined above in other posts, but because war is immoral. Wars cause a great deal of damage to the planet. This brings us down to their level. It proves we are not morally superior if we are even considering the idea.

I did run into some writing from one unnatural (sorry, moral) philosopher who suggested that people with ASDs should be excluded from the human moral community because we don't develop morals the same way NTs do. I refute this by pointing out that rationalised morality cannot be demonstrated to be inferior to morality from example.

I conclude, like others above, that aspies cannot be demonstrated to be inferior or superior to neurotypicals. We are different, and this gives strengths and weaknesses. It cannot be said we are all equal. We might be equal in moral rights, while having different moral interets (see Peter Singer for more on this subject). Other forms of equality are an artifact of definition in capitalist societies, where the successes or failures of the individual may be atributed personally, rather than structurally.

I don't usually like throwing around latin terms when the other guy is actually making a well-constructed, well-thought out, rational argument, but this is begging the question (petitio principii is the latin). Specifically, do aspies (or, more generally, people on the spectrum) work out their morality from a point of logic? Indeed, is such a thing even possible? Morality must begin with at least one arbitrary declaration, that something is wrong. For example, the keystone of my morality is that anything which decreases the total amount of happiness in the world's long run is wrong, and anything that increases it is right. There can be absolutely no logical justification for this. It probably feels right to most everyone reading this. You could construct a logical argument as to why my morality is right even if your arbitrary, elemental definitions of right and wrong are different from mine, but that logical argument must still begin with an arbitrary, elemental definition of right and wrong (incidentally, "elemental" here meaning that it cannot be broken down into any smaller components, which is now understood not to be true of the actual periodic elements, but there you go).

I think it is safe to say that on the ultimate level, morality can never be logical because logic can never be your end, but always your means. And frankly, I question whether autistics are really significantly more likely to be logical, to the point where a more logical society would be constructed by a purely autistic population, considering the incredible illogic on parade in this very thread and others like it, all from people claiming to autistic. Incidentally, I also have incredible doubt that a society of women would actually be significantly less amoral, considering that anyone who's interacted with any of them for any length of time is going to be aware that there are plenty of them who can be vicious, petty, and cruel, and it's anyone's guess as to whether or not they'd be more prone to violence if society didn't heavily reinforce the message that only men are supposed to hit people when they're angry.

On that note, any attempt to cordon off people of a certain sex or neurological type in an area of the world and then cherry-pick the non-violent ones is doomed to failure. Assuming the group you're ghettoizing is actually more prone to violence for any reason, genetic or not, their ghettoization will lead to a heavily violent society, which will cause the products of that society to be more violent, regardless of what their natural disposition is.

Which also brings me back to autistics (meaning everyone on the spectrum) being naturally more logical in their construction of morality. I've already said that I don't think this is true because ultimately, morality cannot be defined on an elemental level by logic. The first assumption(s) made must be arbitrary. So why do autistics differ so much in terms of morality from neurotypicals? I believe there are two reasons, first, autistics are more likely to be socially isolated, which makes them less likely to osmose others values simply because there is less exposure to them, not because we're magically immune to the inherent side effects of the human learning process. Second and more importantly, it is well known already that autistics are rigid, so when we learn very basic, black-and-white moralities as children, we're much more reluctant to give them up. Which is not to say our moralities are very basic, but rather that instead of slowly replacing one aspect of a child's morality with another, we build on the basics. When it becomes consistently easier to steal (for example), our rigidity means that we will be far more reluctant to alter our morality than neurotypicals. But this doesn't mean autistics are inherently morally superior! If you teach an autistic child from a young age that stealing is permitted and anyone who hasn't secured their own belongings had it coming anyway, then that autistic will be much more reluctant to change his values once grown than a neurotypical raised in the same environment.

Honestly, your own arguments are implicitly in favor of cordoning off 99% of the world's population and leaving them to exterminate one another, which as far as I'm concerned is no different than killing them yourself. You knowingly and willingly took action which you knew would almost certainly result in their death, and the fact that a proxy did the actual deed doesn't change that. You're also, assuming I'm reading this correct, hypothetically fine with relocating that same 99% of the Earth's population against their will, presumably taking from them all their property and the entire society upon which they've built their lives up to that point. Even if the process is bloodless, such an action would cause a huge amount of outrage, panic, fear, and despair regardless of the temperament of the affected party (autistics would experience much the same emotions). Personally, I am of the opinion that if you are indeed willing to condone such an action, then you are, yourself, evidence that autistics are not at all morally superior to neurotypicals by default.

Hi Chamomile

Thanks for your intelligent and well-constructed post.

I'm going to go over some of your arguments later when I have time to refute them logically, although I admit that many of them do seem to stand up to scutiny.

In relation to your last paragraph, I was not in fact suggesting the corralling and extermination of 99% of the world's population. I was trying to explain why I thought it wouldn't work and, in any case, it would be impractical, not to mention wrong, for reasons you suggest.

I said "Deliberate selection of aspie-aspie partnerships bluntly will not work," and explained why.

The book by Sheri S Tepper in fact ends with an object lesson in what happens when you try to remove violence from society and, indeed, while the actions that follow are carried out at one remove, those planning it are the "nonviolent" women. I refuse to accept that Margaret Thatcher, Condoleeza Rice or Sarah Palin are men in disguise.

More to follow, but probably not this afternoon. Your post deserves more attention than I currently have time to devote to it.

I'm going to be honest here. I have skimmed this entire thread, but I have not taken the time to carefully read every single post here. Thus, if I'm repeating points that have already been made, I apologize.
I recall a disturbing YouTube video I came across a while back. This video made a rather flimsy case for Wrong Planet being a hate site. Don't ask me to locate this video now - I saw it a long time ago, and only remember that this video existed, nothing more.
Let me get to my point: I completely disagree with the person/s behind this video. If I really believed that WP was a hate site, I would be saying far away. That said, I feel compelled to point out that if one wanted to argue that WP is a hate site, there are posts on this very thread that could be used to make a convincing case for that. IMHO, that's something to think about.
Onward to my next point: I felt compelled to reply here, as any talk of "superiority," of one group being inherently "better" than another sets off alarm bells in my head. The posters on this thread who came out in favor of this way of thinking may not have any violent intentions. Hypothetically speaking, however, if this idea of "Aspergian Superiority" were to catch on, there would almost definitely be those who would twist those ideas to suit their own ends. That could lead to some pretty horrific outcomes. The propspect of a "master race" once helped fuel the massacre of millions of people of Europe. That's not something that any of us should forget.
Moreover, any sort of homogenous society would be highly problematic. You'd have a group of people who tend to be quite similar regarding overall strengths and weaknesses. Who would be there to provide balance?
Coming out in favor of neurodiversity, we need different kinds of people to keep our society moving forward. Individuals on the spectrum are most likely responsible for many of the technological advances that have forever altered how society functions. That said, has it been these spectrumites who are spreading the word, and promoting their inventions in a manner that makes it possible for them to catch on with the so-called "masses?" I would say that individuals with a degree of social savvy are pretty crucial to this stage of the operation.
On a related note, I think that the neurodiversity movement could have a greater impact if more spectrumites would recognize potential alliance with non-ASD individuals who are otherwise neurodiverse. This would include individuals with ADHD and dyslexia. The cause of neurodiversity would undoubtedly be more recognized if our number included more socially savvy individuals who could promote the cause and win over a wider range of supporters.
I'm going to stop here, as I have already rambled on far too long. Besides, I haven't even had coffee yet today, and I am fast running out of steam. Now, I'm staring blankly at the screen, as my brain function has come to a screeching halt. I shouldn't be allowed to post here when I haven't had my dose of caffeine. Like I said, the arguments raised by some of the posters on this thread set off alarm bells in my head, and I had to say something. For now, I have said all I have to say.

I agree with your whole post. I just wanted to jump in here especially. I agree that the starting point of any moral system is non-logical (not quite the same thing as illogical) but I don't think it's arbitrary. I think it starts from emotion/feeling. People pick a starting point which elicits positive feelings or avoids things that inspire negative feelings such as disgust, dread, fear and then the system is a logical extension from that emotional starting point. If you reverse-engineer a moral rule back to it's starting point, that starting point will be emotionally based but not arbitrary.

Your starting point (my starting point too) of rightness/wrongness being tied to global happiness/unhappiness feels right. It's emotional but I don't think it's arbitrary. I think it's chosen based on the way you wish the world could be.

Logic is an amoral tool. You can use it to build a consistent system but you will need to repeatedly check it against ethics (which are non-logical) to keep it moral.

The problem is that if we accept the concept of neurodiversity which means that the autistic point of view is no better than the neurotypical point of view then the neurotypical viewpoint will always win by default merely because NT's outnumber autistics 100 to one. So by that logic we might as well say that Einstein was no smarter than your average man and that his theory of relativity is no better than the older Newtonian paradigm.

Well, fair enough, "arbitrary" was a poor word choice.

Also, @Niall: Apologies that I misunderstood your argument. I'm looking forward to your full response.

@Andro: There is no such thing as the "autistic point of view" or the "neurotypical point of view." Have you not been paying attention? This thread is full of autistics disagreeing with one another, most forum are full of neurotypicals disagreeing with each other, and frequently enough I, an autistic person, will end up the ring-leader of one side or another in a debate simply because I post often, have well-constructed arguments, and can be really vicious when I want to be. Most of my supporters will be neurotypicals in these situations, even though statistically speaking my opponent was neurotypical in most of these cases. There is no fundamental moral common ground between autistics or between neurotypicals.

Of course there is an autistic point of view and a neurotypical point of view. The autistic uses real logic to form his opinions but the neurotypical's logic is always bounded by social constraints.

I am not saying that neurotypicals do not disagree with each other but even with disagreements they form camps or social factions. Let's take a look at how a neurotypical thinks. Take for instance the subject of nuclear power. There is the no nukes camp and the pro nukes camp. When debating nuclear power with a neurotypical the neurotypical told me that nuclear power is unacceptable because of the dangers of radiation. So I replied what would she think if a nuclear power plant could be invented that produced no radiation. This neurotypical refused to believe in the possiblity that radiation free nuclear power could exist. But her belief system was not a technological constraint but rather a social constraint. It was socially unacceptable for her to believe in radiation free nuclear power because that would mean social ostracization from her Greenpeace organization.

And now you tell me that in the interest of neurodiversity and equality that there is no superiority with autistic thinking that transcends social boundaries? The neurotypical gains a temporary advantage which is social in nature and she also has the illusion that she is a mentally healthy individual. But in the long run she betrays the environmental group that she belongs because she opposes the greenest and cleanest energy ever invented which is radiation free nuclear power.