Neurodiversity < Aspergianism

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Prove it. Prove to me that autistics are inherently more logical than neurotypicals. And in your proof, explain to me why an entire forum full of autistics could go on disagreeing with you in terms of fact, not opinion, if we're all supposed to be so logical.

I don't think you really understand the implications of what ostracization really means. Ostracization does not just mean that you have to put up with people disagreeing with you. Ostracization means that people will simply tell you to get the hell out. In my Greenpeace example you will no longer be allowed to debate the issue because you will no longer be able to set foot on Greenpeace property. At work it will simply mean that you are fired. Basically it will mean that you are silenced and the effects will be so disastrous that you will qualify as a disability.

There is a reason why neurotypical adhere to the social conventions of groupthink. While neurotypical people are allowed to choose factions they must then rigidily conform to the tenants of the group they choose to join.

As for support from the autistic community, even there I would be at a disadvantage simply because Autistics have been persecuted for so long that they start believing that indeed something is wrong with them. If we had a society based on unconditional love and acceptance the autistic mind could really flourish. Instead we have a society that is so brutally oppressive that autistics are born literally without the ability to speak.

Way to dodge the question. I'm still waiting on proof.

Hi Chamomile

OK, I've got some time. Actually, this is being written in shifts in a notepad document to copy in later.

I can see that my comments about dumping all the neds in a pen in the Sahara could have been taken seriously. I'm sorry. This was me being facetious. It's tempting at an instinctive level, but it would be both morally wrong and wholly impractical.

Note to self: do not make facetious comments with an aspie audience; they are likely to take you seriously. It's a symptom of the condition.

The suggestions made about what to do with NT children in an exclusively Aspie world were made to show that the whole idea is morally wrong. Keeping slaves or killing off NT children in their first few years are ideas that I would hope would be utterly repugnant to anyone reading this thread.

I hope that clarifies my position.

I agree that any moral code must begin from certain assumptions. You use one of the more common assumptions found in modern western societies: roughly, that an action is good if it provides the greatest good for the greatest number. It's based on the principle of Utilitarianism and the work of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. (I assume you know this, but I probably need to provide some background for readers less well versed in moral philosophy.)

I see two major problems.

The first is that there are few premisses that you can demonstrate to be objectively true. You can get as far as "dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum" (I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am) and then run into Descartes' devil spirit (often mistranslated as "evil genius") problem (probably the most popular rewrite of this problem is found in the film The Matrix).

To get around this problem you take a premiss that everyone (or almost everyone) can agree on. I'll use your premiss which I'll paraphrase to "those actions are good that provide the greatest good to the greatest number".

This presents us with another problem.

Let me take two examples.

1) Ned* is hungry. He has no job. He also has a partner and, since he has no concept of birth control, has two children to support and two more by a previous partner. Ned sees a blind person in the street. Ned has two choices.
a) Ned can pick the blind person's pocket. Ned's chances of getting caught are minimal, since the blind person can't see him. If the blind person becomes aware that her pocket is being picked, she will not be able to identify him to the police. Ned's children will eat today.
b) Ned can go round the local shops and shoplift. Every time he shoplifts he runs a risk of being caught. If he is caught, he will certainly end up arrested and, given his previous convictions, may well end up in jail. He will eat, but the children will go hungry.
Bear in mind that your average ned won't and probably can't think this far. If he can think this far, he probably can't articulate the statement. That said, taking our premiss, the logical *and moral* thing to do is to steal the blind lady's wallet. Ned has no idea that Ned's friends have stolen the lady's wallet on several occasions this month already but, since only the blind lady will now go hungry, it is still the morally correct thing to do to steal it again.

Yes, this is based on the experience of a blind friend. If anything, it goes way beyond stealing the wallet.

Take also the case of a couple of other Scots. We'll call them Blair and Cameron, for no particular reason. Blair and Cameron run some tin-pot little island somewhere, but they've got a big army, and they have another pal, who we'll call Bush, again for no particular reason, who runs a bigger country, and who has a *really, really big army*. They're NTs, not aspies, but they're running a script.

Blair, Cameron and Bush really need oil. Without it, their economies won't function, lots of people will be unemployed, and they'll end up with a Ned problem on a really big scale. To solve this problem, they've sent their companies into other countries and, backed up by their armies, have been taking the oil. Yeah, they've paid for it - sort of - but a lot of people have been roughed up, and a lot of other people have got a bit pissed about foreign companies (and their armies) on their turf. Some of them have got so pissed they've started killing civilians from Blair, Cameron and Bush's countries.

One day one of Blair's soldiers finds a guy who might know something about another attack on civilians back home. He won't talk. If they torture him he might give information that would stop the attack (or he might spin a pack of lies to make Blair's friends stop torturing him).

In this case, if one accepts that one aims for the greatest good for the greatest number, it is morally right to torture the prisoner.

Does this demonstrate why our scripts get us into trouble?

(Pure utilitarianism does cause this problem: Jeremy Bentham, who formulated the principle, actually worked out a separate theory of justice that would prevent individuals being tortured "for the greater good" or, presumably, prevent the mugging of blind people in the street. Such theories of justice seem unpopular.)

Do all aspies follow such scripts, and do all NTs work out morality from example? No, but I didn't say that. I said it appeared to be a tendency. It can be demonstrated that this tendency is not universal by reading some of the posts on this thread. If it were universal this thread would not have stretched, so far, to 9 pages.

It's perhaps reasssuring to know that if it is not the case then the argument that people with ASDs should be excluded from the human moral community falls.

My experience suggests that your average ned probably does not consider utilitarian principles in any great detail. Stealing from vulnerable people is easier than the alternatives. That seems to be as far as it goes. One wonders if Blair, Cameron and Bush, and their corporate executive friends think similarly. I can't demonstrate one way or another.

Sorry, I'm starting to ramble. My blind friend was in Newcastle last night. She was turned away from several youth hostels because she has a guide dog and they wouldn't let the dog in. She and the dog ended up sleeping in a doorway the night before a bank holiday. She has texted me to tell me she's OK, but I currently have a very dim view of expressions of NT "morality".

Of course morality is arbitrary. Me calling this object I am writing this message on a "computer" is arbitrary. That's the nature of existence. The best anyone can do is take a position based on reason, but I never said this was exclusively the province of aspies. I observed a tendency, based upon my experience.

I agree that aspies tend to be more socially isolated and that this will lessen our chances of acquiring bad moral habits, such as stealing from blind people. I also agree with your statements about rigidity. I accept they are contributing factors to our morality being different, in general, to NT morality.

That said, I would also observe that average aspie intelligence is higher than average NT intelligence. This does not mean, for the mathematically semi-literate on here (Chamomile; I do not mean you) that all aspies are more intelligent than all NTs. It simply means that, because all the individuals with low intelligence have been excluded from the sample by the definition of AS, our mean is higher than their mean. Some NT's are therefore more intelligent than some aspies. Some NTs will be more capable of logical formulation than some aspies. We are not superhumans.

Given that higher average intelligence it seems reasonable to conclude that we are more likely to make different moral judgments, partly because we have not acquired bad examples from our peers, partly because of our rigidity, and partly because we are reasoning through a problem on the basis of abstract principles (partly because we lack those examples and partly because, *on average*, we're smarter than they are). We are, however, less likely to consider the social consequences of our actions.

In some ways this thread demonstrates that, but it's a long way from a proof. I certainly can't demonstrate that all aspies think logically. I suspect a tendency that is greater than the tendency in the general population, but that's based on average intelligence, which correlates with better education. It is a partial explanation for why many of us (not all of us) make different moral judgments from most (but not all) NTs

Failing to consider those social consequences has got me into so much trouble that for some time I found myself unable to make any moral judgment with any confidence. I'd be interested to learn if others have had this problem, but that's probably for another thread.

What this does prove is that those judgments are not superior, at least in my case. They are merely different. I stand by my view that stealing from vulnerable people is wrong, even if my moral judgment that I should stand up to those stealing has negative social consequences. That may be considered an error.

I think I've presented a consistent case (previous facetious comments aside!). I also suspect, Chamomile, that you and I probably agree more than we differ. I agree that not all aspies are more logical than all NTs. I suspect, but cannot prove, that some of us are - a tendency, not an exclusive category - for reasons outlined above. If nothing else, AS expresses itself in different ways and to differing degrees in different individuals.

Sorry for the long ramble. Please consider it an expression of an aspie trait.

*Ned: now an unusual name, but also in my native language (Scots) an undereducated individual: possible derivations include "Never-do-well" and "non-educated delinquent". I hope you get the idea.

I definitely agree that we agree far more than we disagree (well, probably, I haven't really taken an inventory of your opinions), but agreeing with people is just no fun so let's not dwell on that.

So then: Ned. Ned's very much in a bind, if his options really are limited to just pickpocketing a blind woman to feed his children or shoplifting from a corporation and running a very high risk of getting caught and his children starving. You seem to be an advocate of the shoplifting option (unless I'm misreading you again, in which case I apologize in advance), but that leaves four children out of a meal. Is that course of action really better just because you know the blind woman and don't know the children? At this point in Ned's life, I don't really see any right answers. Looking at the string of bad decisions that led up to this, though, there were plenty of chances to avoid this situation. He didn't have to have unprotected sex so often that he brought four children he can't feed into the world (not meaning to get too explicit in a forum meant for all audiences, but couldn't he just have gone with non-vaginal sex?). He might not be capable of becoming an engineer, but I find it fairly likely that he could've had a more honest job a long time ago, and a reasonably honest career at this stage of his life, if he hadn't been taking the easy way out and pickpocketing blind women long before starvation was the only other option.

Incidentally, a blind woman was turned away from several youth hostels and ended up sleeping on the streets, and then sent a friend a message from a device capable of delivering messages to people halfway around the world, which can only be created by machines due to the incredible level of precision necessary to its construction. This doesn't have anything to do with morality, it's just that I find technology to be kind of surreal sometimes. Like living in a science fiction.

Anyways, your incredibly subtle* analogy concerning Cameron, Blair, and Bush involves an order of magnitude more complexity, as these things tend to do so once scaled up to a world with literally trillions of variables in human interaction alone (imagine everything that could influence a single person's behavior and then multiply by six billion for a rough estimate of the number of variables we're dealing with in global politics, without even touching the environment). Bush&co. might have tried to justify to themselves that invading other nations for purposes of oil (assuming for the sake of argument that they did, because this post is long enough already and I don't want to get into that debate right now), but it would've been a really flimsy justification. There's all kinds of alternative options to Middle-Eastern oil, we just aren't really eager to chase after them, chiefly because they're expensive, or bad for the environment, or just involve cutting back on the world's ravenous consumption of oil supplies.

Not to mention, an act like torture goes far, far beyond just the immediate suffering that it causes to the man captured. There's also the fear that it creates, the notion of "if you get on our bad side, we will do extremely nasty things to you." Fear and oppression can do absolutely terrible things to a person's psyche even if you never harm them physically. You don't even have to threaten to hurt someone. You smash someone's dreams or dehumanize them long enough, and despair and a feeling of worthlessness will begin to set in, and if you lay that on thick enough it can be very nearly as bad as the absolute worse physical tortures while being much easier to replicate across massive populations.

*I probably shouldn't be using sarcasm so soon after falling prey to my own tendency to take things too literally. Oh, well.

My first instinct on reading this is that there is no possibility of radiation-free nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is generated by harnessing the heat generated by the decay of radioactive materials. There is no physical way to do this without producing nuclear waste or risking a release of nuclear materials if containment around the reactor is breached. The limitations are those of physics, not engineering. Imagining things is all very well, but one of our species' greatest problems at the moment is imagining things that will work but, in the words of one fictional engineer (and fellow Scot) - ye canna tamper wi' the laws of physics! Radiation-free nuclear energy tampers with the laws of physics. It is a technological constraint because it's a physical constraint. I can see why the Greenpeace member didn't see any point in talking to you.

I then wondered if you might be thinking about fusion. It's still nuclear energy. In theory, one could build a fusion reactor that would run without producing lots of nasty radioactive by-products. These would run off Hydrogen-2 or Helium-3, which produce much less to worry about than uranium, plutonium and the nasty breakdown products of nuclear fission such as iodine-131 and caesium-137. If you stick a fusion reactor in an earthquake zone and the thing gets wrecked, it stops working. It doesn't spread poisons over the landscape. The process still releases stray neutrons, so you'd have to be very careful where those neutrons went.

There is a theoretical means of generating fusion energy using something called Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusion. This fuses a proton to Boron-11, which decays to Beryllium-8 and Helium-4; beryllium-8 decays in nanoseconds to more Helium-4. There are stray neutrons, but the decay process is so fast that as soon as you switch off the reactor, the radiation release stops. It's not radiation-free in terms of physics, but it is for all practical purposes.

The trouble is, workable commercial fusion reactors have been "twenty to twenty-five years away" for decades. There is still no prospect of one of these in time to solve our current energy problems. Of course, the bigger the initial atomic mass, the more energy is required to start the reaction, which is why experimental reactors use hydrogen isotopes. I'm not even sure that Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusion has made it into a lab.

Anyone can look this up on the internet. It's not hard.

In the meantime, I suggest you desist from making wild claims about the safety and cleanliness of nuclear energy, because it's neither, and can be neither without violating several physical laws.

The other reason many environmental organisations oppose nuclear energy (both fusion and fission) is that this system concentrates control of the energy supply in the hands of those rich enough to build the reactors - on other words, big corporations. Environmentalists tend to favour smaller-scale solutions in the hands of communities - for good reasons that I won't go into here.

As an environmentalist, I am slowly coming round to the benefits of nuclear (fission) energy for baseload generation, not because it is "good" or "safe" or "clean" but because it is a bad option that is less bad than the alternatives (coal and oil). That said, that is nuclear energy under certain very strict safety constraints, and I will be the first to admit that I have no solution to the problem of nuclear waste. The problems associated with mining (this goes for coal as much as uranium) can be solved. Whether they will be solved when corporate profit is at stake is another matter!

In the meantime, I suggest that hyperbole about clean nuclear energy be avoided. Statements like these, on both sides, add nothing to an important debate.

I would like to add that this is not an aspie-NT debate with aspies on one side (supporting nuclear energy) and NTs on the other (opposing it).

If you are going to call this an expresion of "NT morality", you need to make a case that an AS person minding the hostel door would have let her in.
Can you really make the case that an AS person is more likely than an NT person to break an established rule in order to accomodate a novel situation?

Personally I don't think there is such a thing as different moralities for different neurologies.

Hi Chamomile

I'm aware I was (over)simplifying my examples. My point was not to make a set of watertight examples (I agree with your variables problem, but it's closer to seven billion, not six - your point remains), but to say something about how humans make decisions. In Ned's case, the solution to his existing problem is a huge grey area, but I think we'll agree that stealing from vulnerable people is morally wrong.

My impression, and it is merely an impression, is that most humans make decisions on the basis of practical utility (that which is easiest), not moral utility (that which can be demonstrated to be morally right, even using arbitrary premisses).

Let's take the case of my friend. If I were running one of these youth hostels I think I would have made a moral judgment that a blind woman and her guide dog were welcome in my hostel. This is not simply a matter of what the law says. The law, frankly, usually doesn't much care what happens to vulnerable people, especially when there are fights breaking out in Newcastle city centre the night before a bank holiday. I might have more problems if someone comes to me complaining that they are allergic to dog hair. Given the likelyhood that all youth hostels in Newcastle have people with guide dogs in them, the second person can always find somewhere else, and I can always cower behind the disability discrimination legislation if I have to.

So, why does life not work like this? I suspect it is because people are making decisions based on practical personal utility (in Ned's case, it's easier to steal than to get a job; in Bush, Blair and Cameron's case, it's easier than restructuring their economies and getting into political fights with the big corporations who fund their election campaigns - and yes, I know I'm simplifying). It's easier to show one vulnerable person the door than to get into a row with one or several less vulnerable ones. It then becomes someone else's problem. Of course, thanks to Ned and others like him, she can't afford a hotel - which also might well turn her away for the same reasons (yep: it's happened).

Next question: do I believe I would have made the moral decision over the practical one because I am an aspie?

Supplementary question, with the same answer for the same reason: is it more likely that other aspies would make the same decision for the same reason than would neurotypicals?

Answer: I suspect that this is indeed the case, for reasons we've discussed. I cannot prove it. This does not mean to say that all aspies would make a moral decision or that all NTs would make a practical one. This thread has already demonstrated that some aspies would advocate actions that I think you and I agree are morally reprehensible.

Janissey, please refer to my above post.

The trouble is, there are two established rules. The first rule comes from the youth hostel rules (no dogs permitted). The second rule derives from the Equality Act of 2010 (and previously the Disability Discrimination Act), which makes it clear that assistance dogs are permitted in shops, restaurants, youth hostels etc. This overrules the first rule. It's not a novel situation. It's codified in law.

Are there different moralities for different neurologies? The evidence seems to point in that direction. This derives from the fact that people with ASDs have a different theory of mind. There hasn't been a lot of research on the subject, but those researching the conditions do seem to be aware of it. I'm not going to present evidence here. I'm sure you're perfectly capable of looking it up.

Of course the autistic would have let that poor blind woman inside of the youth hostel with her see and eye dog. The autistic would have thought nothing of it and it would not have even been an issue. The autistic would have done what was right even if there was no law explicity protecting disabled people. However the mean coworkers of the autistic would have immediately reported the autistic to the boss. Called into the office the boss would yell at the autistic and demand to know why he broke the rules especially when he made it very clear that there are to be no exceptions to the rule "no dogs allowed".
The autistic would reply that he didn't know the rules applied to see and eye dogs and the boss would say "no dogs period".

Prove it.

It would be very difficult in this day and age to prove anything because there are a lot of laws protecting disabled people. Many of the signs that ban dogs explicitly give exceptions to blind people. So today even a neurotypical would probably let a see and eye dog into a hostel because disability rights are now mainstream and socially acceptable.

So do neurotypicals blindly follow laws over the protestations of a heroic autistic resistance or not? Your worldview is not only divorced from reality, but internally incoherent.

Autistics are indeed pioneers of a higher ethic. Sooner or later, sometimes it can even take decades, neurotypicals will come around to my way of thinking but only when my way of thinking becomes the mainstream.

Show me your evidence.

Hi

I've already said that I cannot prove the aspie would always definitely make one decision over another. I have merely said I suspect a tendency. I have never attempted to defend the latter position. I will allow Androbot to do that if that's what he wants to do.

I have a tendency, when a discussion get to the "prove it" stage, to start throwing academic papers around.

I think I can demonstrate that the aspie would be more likely to make a decision based on predicted outcomes rather than on intention (the predicted outcome, in this case, being blind woman sleeping in doorway with guide dog for company).

This is due, as I have said, to our having a different (the literature says "impaired") theoy of mind:
Moran M.J. et al (2011) Impaired theory of mind for moral judgment in high-functioning autism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences February 15, 2011 vol. 108 no. 7 pp.2688-2692.
Here is the abstract (you need a sub to he PNAS for the entire article, and I don't have one):
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/7/2688.short

(For some reason I can't ge the links to underline properly.)

Since I suspect that most of us can't afford a sub to PNAS or don't have access to a suitable university library, here are some summaries aimed at the educated layperson:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Autism-Hinders-Sufferers-Theory-of-Mind-181820.shtml
Link: Liane Young, MIT: What blame can tell us about autism

Here is Simon Baron-Cohen (I'm sure we all know who he is: he dislikes the eugenecists almost as much as I do, by the sound of it) on HFA and morality (Lancet 2009, but the link is to the ARC site) (warning: he quotes - and refutes - someone who will make you steam!):
http://www.autismresearchcentre.com/docs/papers/2009_BC_Lancet_DoesAutismNeedACure.pdf

Note that I am not attempting to show that aspies will always make one moral decision while NTs will always make another. I am merely trying to shed some light on what appears to be a propensity one way or another. Many NTs will consider the likely consequences of their actions as well as the intentions. Many aspies have learned cognitive strategies to allow us to survive more effectively in a predominantly NT world.