Gawker.com article on Asperger's. Must be seen.

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Well,

I think it is nearly impossible to get adults diagnosed. I myself have been wrongly diagnosed on multiple occasions. Zuckerburg has his Aspie strengths and unfortunately the business world is not all enamored by it. I certainly can relate as a successful CPA. Aspie qualities make us good employees but work politics will forever get in the way.

I would sum it up this way, what is better an employee with Aspergers that does twice the work of other employees, finds solutions, implements new cost saving procedures or someone who is not a good employee, socializes all the time, non-productive, but tells great jokes, socializes well, can discuss recent news, is a backstabber and climbs the corporate ladder methodically planning failure on others?

Unfortunately, it is the last employee that businesses want and reward.
B

I think the unchanging reality is that there are some niches in life that work well for the strengths and some that don't. Those that are fortunate find a niche that works. The fact that you are a successful CPA, sounds like you have found a fairly good niche.

If a deaf person comes into the workplace, accommodations are required, however it is much harder to convince the rest of the employees to learn sign language to accommodate the employee. Some will, some won't, unless there is a way to require it.

The situation with non-verbal communication difficulties can be more difficult because neither parties may be fully aware of what the communication difficulties are.

Many entry level jobs require good skills in social interaction, it's likely part of the reason the unemployment statistics for ASD's are so high, particularly for those that aren't fortunate enough to have the resources or abilities to make it through higher education, to gain a needed skill.

Not likely that many adults with potential ASD's, experiencing significant impairments in life functioning in the US, even have the resource to attempt a professional diagnosis. At least, improvements in accessible health care may afford them the opportunity to gain some type legal protection in the workplace for accommodations that might be of benefit.

My experience in the workplace was quite the opposite. I worked in a field where social interaction was a requirement, but the only reason I got the entry level job was because of I was the only one that had some experience with computers.

I was the kid in school picked last on every team, but eventually became an Athletic Director at a Military Installation, mostly because of the computer skills, with no respect to knowledge and experience with organized sports.

I did not want to be an Athletic Director, but the boss that put me into that position, insisted on it calling me a proven commodity.

Times have changed, it would not be much advantage now, because most everyone can find their way around a computer; they are not nearly the frightening mystery that they used to be for people.

In the field I was in, I watched an organization dwindle from over 300 to just over a 100, mostly because computers took the place of systemizing jobs in accounting, payroll, auditing, inventory, warehousing, etc., moving those responsibilties to people that were not systemizers. These were all good career type government jobs, a niche for individuals whom were systemizers, that are gone forever because of those efficiencies deriven from computers.

So while the benefits of the IT revolution were a grand opportunity for those with systemizing abilities at the start, they don't appear as beneficial today as they were at one point in time.

Interesting though, that it has pushed many socially interactive people into roles with a machine instead of people. The benefits of their niche are not necessarily the same as they were before either.

There was a time were people stood around and spent a great deal of time socializing, but toward the end of my career most everyone was slave to a computer screen, to complete their collateral roles as accountant, payroll clerk, secretary, etc. The only time someone socialized was during a cigarette break. Of course this was white collar government work, and not a private organization, where those at the top make their own rules.

The creation of systemizing machines from systemizing brains, are effectively replacing the human being, as a more reliable commodity in the workplace, and it may actually be impacting systemizers more, because the jobs that were once done by these people are now done by non-systemizers as well. Not to mention all the folks overseas that are benefitting because IT has no boundries.

In the article there was some resentment that the so called "aspies" were pushing people into an anti-social world with their devices, however it is a result of more detailed layers of systemization.

It makes sense to me that a great deal more people in the world are being forced into a systemizing role, that were not cut out for it, just as those systemizers that are forced into the social roles in the workplace.

Non-systemizers may have equivalent problems in the workplace in many environments, that are every bit as severe as the systemizers, that have a hard time meeting the perceived standards in social communication.

Zuckerberg has reduced social communication outside of the workplace into a systemizing process as well. There is evidence that facebook is stressing the hell out of some people; and it is the individuals that have social expectations that are not being met, that appear to be suffering the most.

It is interesting to me that rarely are any of the systemizers that I knew in school or work, a member of facebook, however almost every single social butterfly, I knew, is an active part of the experience. One day they may wake up and realize they have been transformed into a systemizer, by Zuckerberg. The ultimate revenge of the nerds, not likely intended, but perhaps part of the effect of becoming included in someone else's special interest.

When Little Bill Gates was coming up machines talked to machines, People were keypunch Operators, and when I started that was done by punching holes in cards, We were not even in 1s and 0s,

Where Apple did steal the mouse and Graphic User Interface from Xerox, they missed on application. Gates made one that talked to machines, and other people.

He made what people wanted, a means for machines to program humans,

Human workers are a non standard product, Training them is expensive, the computer brought a standard, It also produced a performance log, In the days of type written paper and hand written notes, filing cabnets, it was hard to tell who was doing what,

It worked for the same reason that having them work in offices did, evidence they at least showed up. And they figured out look busy, or get fired, and if that is all you are watching, someone will type the same thing 1,565 times,

The computer reduced the workforce by half.

The same for the social world, Saloons used to have girls living upstairs,
Later bars had girls paid to drink there, and other things.

I really should have been around in the Twenties, Coke, Flappers, and all in a paid off the law underground.

During the Depression, The Big Band Era, Movies showed Night Clubs, which few existed outside the movies. Food, drink, Bands, Floor Shows, Were Nude in Paris, a few in New York, where the rich, well dressed, could show off their stuff.

They were mostly not glamor or rich, The Roadhouse, some live music, dancing, often BYOB, we have ice and mixers, and some cabins out back for a card game, or getting to know someone new.

There was not much for the young beyond the school dance.

Then Night Clubs sprang up worldwide, where young people could afford to look good on the weekend. It was social, meeting people outside your neighborhood. It was still local.

Facebook takes that a step farther, makes it cheaper, and broadens it.

I only know it from hearsay, but it does seem everyone on earth has a page, where they lie and try to sleze their way into all of the traditional forms of human behavior.

It has the ethics of Craigs List, an open playground.

It was just what humans wanted.

So Gates and Zukerburg saw them as they were were, could not relate, but saw they lacked Order, and gave it to them.

This is War on the NT, Computers gave a way to measure performance, and get rid of people who just came to socialize their way up the corporate system.

Facebook is exposing fools that you might think something else in a loud dark club while drinking. You get to see the range of their life, their room, their whole wardrobe, and a lot of what is under it. Also through their Friends, you get to see who they play with.

It gives me ideas related to punch cards, raw data to be sorted, and I might market it. I have two versions, the first is, "What IS Wrong With You?" It is an impersonal feedback, with hints. I doubt it a Cure, but it is something you should know.

Alex Plank started one what is wrong with you site, with a narrow focus. It works, It is not just me. While we are not the same, we have a lot in common.

Just knowing there are thousand like me, and there is not a Federal SuperMax for the type, makes me feel better.

I too gave them what they wanted, smaller scale, fixed their cars and computers, and they resented it but paid well.

All of that great mass has been drawn into my world, seeking their social needs through the screen.

If I pull it off I will still be known for being heartless with a blank stare, usually looking somewhere else. Even the idea of having a public persona frightens me.

It has the usual downsides, start the greatest night club, then a few years later tally the drug over doses, murders, suicides, broken hearts, wasted lives, and worse that passed through.

Then there are people like the article that will point out that you are not perfect.

Put a few ideas together, take a shot, people will say the ideas were around, and you only acted on them.

It does seem we have our good points, can provide service to the whole herd, but they are still the herd.

Do it anyhow, better to be hated than ignored.

Reminds me of how much people hated DOS based applications. I didn't care for them either, until a D-base program came with the first computer game I was ever exposed to.

A crude video game of a little snake that made it's way around a maze. I couldn't operate a joystick well in those games that my peers had been pouring quarters in for years, but I could operate a keyboard well.

It gave me the feeling that I would never again experience boredom and finally understood why people were willing to give so many of their quarters to a machine.

The start of a long process of being programmed by machines, that was greatly enhanced by a keyboard and a graphic user interface.

A very enlightening post.

He stole from TV. Before TV we all had regional dialects.

You could turn it on, select a station, and imprint your children.

It is hard to tell where a War Baby grew up, between TV and moving every five years. Pre WWII one could not just hop in the car and cruise to California. Grapes of Wrath was about an upscale family, with a truck.

The last regional voices were AM Radio, a local product, that used accents and localisms to form local identities, which might include the other towns your's played football with.

There were also local behavior patterns, I went to Texas as a child, camping in State Parks, and Texas girls wore the shortest shorts, but were good girls. In Georgia, the Vamp of Savanna was real, those girls talked like Mae West, and were socially about twice my age.

We were warned about Arkansas, all her older sisters had a baby on the way, a shotgun wedding, and she wanted out.

We were also warned about Florida, age of consent ten, and nobody cared. Even back then, Florida was where crazy people went.

We had Local Culture, Jimmy Swaggets cousin said, "Chantilly lace and a pretty face, pony tail hanging down, wiggle and walk, giggle and a talk, makes the world go round round round, nothing in this world make me feel so funny, makes me spend my money, like a big eyed girl, makes me feel real loose like a long necked goose, im in love, im all shook up."

His thirteen year old cousin settled him down to domestic bliss.

No problems in America, just the English tour.

His reply, a tribute to his wife, "You shake my heart and you rattle my brain, too much love drives a man insane, You came along and moved me honey, You broke my will, what a thrill, goodness gracious, Great Balls of Fire!"

Of the rest of the worlds view that we were a sexest racist culture, I present Little Richard!

By todays standards, our middle school sock hops were top 40 and mostly illegal. It was the Culture that produced Rock and Roll, and took over the world,

We were a mixed culture, as Janis took Scott Joplin's name.

New Orleans is the birth place of Jazz, but that came from Rai, of the Atlas Mountains of Algeria. we rocked the world with music, but it came from the islands, Brazil, and we just let visitors sit in.

Once upon a time we were open to the world, we shared a planet, it was a fusion of feeling that spread.

I heard Roland Kirk and Mongo Santamaria, live in New York, Los Gatos Bravos in Honduras, the world still rocks.

We still have the good stuff, and as the Philosophers said, "Time will tell us, who is trying to sell us."

We are our strongest when we are just enjoying being alive.

is it possible that mark zuckerburg could have a non verbal learning disability like samantic pragmatic disorder or hyperlexia.these dont get diagnosed as much as they did in the 90's.could this make more sense than asperers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlexia



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatic_language_impairment



He could have mild symptoms associated with all three disorders. The symptoms of all three disorders are related to each other. He's found a very successful method to adapt in life. I think that is all that really counts for anyone, no matter if they have symptoms of a disorder or not.

It's not likely he would have been accepted at Harvard, if he had any serious areas of academic weakness. I doubt he was diagnosed with an actual learning disability in childhood; but it's not impossible.

Failure is a great teacher. A single person who notices they fail at social interaction, and not all the time, is the one driven to look at the overall pattern.

To go in Politics, notice someone you met once five years ago, and go ask if his son John got in the university he wanted. This is what works, knowing everyone, and recalling everything about them.

Even in NT Land some stand out.

I was amazed by my teachers who knew every child by name the first day. My own record, I doubt I knew half by the end of the year.

More or less everyone has the same problem, building a stable social network in a changing world.

Facebook fits for Mass Socializers, or for narrow social types. It takes looking, but people like you exist.

I have other values, and spend my time searching for NOS 60s motorcycle parts. It is an obscure field, where I have dealt with dozens that have it worse than I do.

I have few but strong interests, I find the same pattern in writing. If I have a well researched question in a narrow field, I go to the leading figures in that field, and have never been refused.

That works for me, and I see it in the tech that Gates and Zukerburg held close, while casting a net over something they could not function in.

If 1960s motorcycle parts are ever the answer to world conquest, I know the crew.

Writers and Scientist are more likely to aid in getting out a book that has a broad appeal.

As long as it is cast as our defects, by people who have studied the Psychology of the masses, who I consider Social Whores, who wish to pander to everyone, some lowest common denominator of function, we will never define the sub groups who have another function, path, and judging from results, are the ones being labled as Social Defective Billonairs.

Even in my fields I skipped some, what is Common Knowledge is mostly wrong. Even in storytelling, there is a lot of general story that can be avoided, as points that have not been developed get expanded.

A writer entertains, but also spreads knowledge, a sprinkling of expert knowledge gives an overview that only an expert can. The story, as seen by someone who knows. Good writing is good reading, that leaves something beyond being entertained.

Some of us deal from a small corner of life, some broadly. Both have their good points and work for some personalities.

Problem solving changes. My first computer jobs were because I was a good mechanic, and they were the first run of punch card machines, built by Engineers, and things in the real world do not work like that. They took constant tweeking.

In cars, I was an engine man. power plants are a pattern, that all has to work together, and I was expert at troubleshooting, and tuning. I did my own, had some customers, but my status was I was the third mechanic, called when two had given up. I fixed it.

When I came back to digital computers, it was learning something that changed every six months. Because I worked on them, I was in school, no one else was. I also fixed things other techs said were hopeless.

In all of this the people I worked with were not my peer group, my social network, they were the people who broke machines.

None of these are jobs where you become loved, welcomed, get social status, I was someone who drove out evil spirits, who was only called when needed. Other people in the field had to put up with me fixing things they could not. I did not make friends there.

I only dealt with the person who paid me,

My terrible social skills and narrow focus on complex machines was what worked. Social skills, reading body language, small talk, decoding office apes, were of no use fixing computers.

I have also read that people like me were hired to assemble the Norton Bomb Sight. It was a double plus, works first time every time, and no friends or social network.

So now we have the DSM saying that real people can carry on a conversation with three people, while listening to radio, tap dancing, and do their office work. They have found their place in the social order, and spend all their time maintaining it.

These are the same people Gates made obsolete, and Zukerburg gave something else to do at the office. They can expand their illusion of being alive. Facebook has become a major drag on productivity. Active on Facebook, first ones that get a pink slip.

So the DSM Crew and Human Resources, both favor the people that are laid off and never rehired. They have interpersonal skills.

Performance based people doing contract work are getting the jobs.

So we were the odd minority in a social world, when Betty, Beth, Mary and Bob said they thought something was wrong with us, we just did our job and never talked, never asked about thier children, cat, church, or square dancing. So we got fired to maintain the status quo, and were called back as contract workers when the system collapsed.

Now they have all been laid off forever, and productivity is up without them. Surviving workers are told to mind their own business.

The DSM and invented conditions is being replaced by reality. Of the several million troops we rotated through Iraq and Afganistan, 18 a day are killing themselves. Many spent more than half of the last decade in the war zone, where everyone is your enemy.

Nam was one year and out, some of these troops have five years at the front. More have killed themselves than died in the wars. More are dying at home than in Afganistan. Staying till 2014 is going to make it worse, and the social fallout from Nam came years later.

Some 25% of the workforce is un or under employed, and will be for the future, with more joining them as technology takes over. A lot of them are War Babies who will retire broke, and get the lowest Social Security for they have not worked in years.

My view of the future is finding a safe place to retire, like Northern Mexico.

@aghogday.if someone with a NVLD couldnt get into harvard then how could someone with aspergers get into harvard.a samantic pramatic learning disability has nothing to do with uderstanding technical info just its emotional content.this mentality would be assumed in any autistic personality.nevermind even aspergers,there have been people who were mid functioning at best on the kanner syndrome spectrum who graduated from yale

I didn't even bother to read past the first few paragraphs.

I am so very tired.

Difficulties in math are a symptom of Non Verbal Learning Disorder. Some people with Aspergers have difficulties with math as well. In either case, it would be hard to get into Harvard with low math scores. But, I'm not suggesting it would be impossible.

@aghogday.i have never heard dificulties in math were a symtom A.S or NLVD.first you said Z berg had autistic traits and now your saying no autistic could get into harvard.i swear your just giving contradictory arguements just to find some way to belittle me.your arguements make no sense.first you any many people talk as if everyone with A.S or autism is a computer tech or mathmatical genius and now you say autistics cant do math.whatever

Here is my quote you are referencing:



I've never suggested that everyone with Aspergers traits was a computer or mathematical genius. If you can find a place I said it please quote me, and I will stand corrected.

I have suggested the opposite on many occasions to debunk that stereotype, and provided examples of fields they excel in that are not dependent on computer or mathematical skills. I can provide those quotes if you like.

Zuckerberg's gift goes well beyond the fact that he knows computers. He found a way to apply the knowledge and skills to make him a billionaire. That's an extremely rare talent.

It's not my personal opinion that difficulties with Arithmetic and mathematics are an associated symptom of NLVD. It's a fact evidenced by Wiki, from the linked resource I provided, as quoted again here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonverbal_learning_disorder



I didn't say difficulty with mathematics was a symptom of Aspergers, I said that some people with Aspergers have difficulties with math, per my actual quote above.

Some with Aspergers are diagnosed with the co-morbid condition of Dyscalculia that causes problems with mathematics which can require remedial help in school. Others with aspergers are average math students, and others are above average math students. There are no specific math requirements for Aspergers.


And per my actual quote above, I didn't say people with Aspergers could not get into Harvard.

I indicated it would be hard to get into Harvard for those diagnosed with Non-Verbal Learning Disorder, with low scores in math, as well as individuals with Aspergers with low scores in math. I also made it clear that I was not suggesting it would was impossible for people with low math scores to get into Harvard.

Sorry, if I didn't make it clear enough in my quote, hopefully this will provide clarification for you.

@aghogday.ok fair enough,sorry for the rude post

No problem.

He blinks.