Not sure what to make of this guy's humor.

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This is Simon Baron Cohen's cousin.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb3IMTJjzfo[/youtube]

I'm trying to understand the empathy balance here.

Fire up a load of low IQ people and show their prejudices to an audience with a different set of prejudices .

Ok it works to a point about showing how prejudice can be formed , but it leaves me feeling uncomfortable about manipulation and technique.

What if these Cohens and their accademic ilk were , to an extent , taking the piss out of us as well?

Find a group of people , label them A empathy 'loosers' , show your labelling to another group of neurologically different people, then sell your stuff claiming an understanding/cure for the first group of people you have labelled.

You've got to admit it's a similar technique to the one 'Borat' uses, different audience, different source of income.

I dunno.

Meme

If I recall correctly they're second cousins who've never really met.

I highly doubt Simon Baron-Cohen's taking the piss out of anyone.

Sascha Baron-Cohen can be really funny and self-deprecating in his interviews with informed people where he's Ali G. I agree it's just classless and mean to try to entrap people who are just having some fun. I highly prefer his Ali G character to Borat or Bruno (which is pretty homophobic).

The guy is out to make fun of the world, no one group in particular. It's the crowd reactions that make it funny, not what he does. His skits are designed to be funny/offensive because a lot of the observations he's made are stereotypical truths. Essentially, the smart people will find him funny because of how outrageous it is, or offensive that he even did it. The more ignorant people will find him funny because he does stuff in character that resonates with their upbringing (racism, etc).

So it would be OK to rip into say a set of NT intellectual prejudices about us in the same way Borat does and they would find it funny . You know, one that holds us to be "diseased, pathological, inhibited, lacking empathy." etc.

Cool.

I will get on with it .


Meme.

Honestly I use the words NT and AS but there isn't such a clear division. There's comedy like Steve Carell's character on the U.S. Office who's as unselfaware and socially off-the-mark as he can get but he and everyone who watches it is making fun of the socially maladroit person within themselves. It's funny because it's relatable, we've all embarrassed ourselves with our social oblivion... it's a part of everyone however much buried or hard to pick out...

I can't tell if that "cool" was sarcastic or genuine memesplice, that's why I'm just sort of talking, saying what I think.

Aw , I'm just in a twitchy mood, you know when the whole world seems a bit more NT than usual
and that makes you more radical.

Yeh, I guess it was sarcasm.

I'm getting a strong urge to demolish a big theory - you know like ToM . But that would be very juvenile, in the same way as wanting to go into legitimate demolition work because you like big bangs and falling masonry and clouds of dust.

Suppose could just do it for a laugh- when I found out the guy who developed ToM was related to' Borat', it kind of made me step back a couple of paces from my normal sense of morality and think, "why not?"

Thanks for asking.
Meme

Yeah, go ahead and demolish the Theory of Mind theory! I'd like to see it done! I'd help if I could but I'm not that careful of a thinker, especially not now. But no not juvenile.

Suggest formation of team of bad-ass intellectual HFA's and form assault pioneer group on current doctrines ?

Would that cheer you guys up?

that and some funding and we call it a PHD program hell yeah

joestenr

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt169711.html

I like the smell of burnt-out bull-theory first thing in the moring.

Hell yeh!

On, the contrary, I don't think everyone HAS experienced that kind of social ineptitude, many people laugh at characters like that because they genuinely feel the character is just an idiot. They don't see themselves in it at all, though they may think they see other people whom they look down on.

I do think both television and movies in the past decade have begun creating characters with very AS traits, in both comedy and drama, though they never actually CALL the character autistic ('House' at least acknowledged the notion), and by not calling it what it is, they are able to gloss over and ignore the very real sensory and emotional issues that go along with it.

Prior to the late 90s I don't remember ever seeing fictional characters that seemed so obviously on the spectrum (Spock and Data notwithstanding). Perhaps due to the growing prevalence of the diagnosis after it was included in the DSM in 1994. It could be entirely coincidental, but I doubt it.

thats pretty funny.

I see. Honestly though I think people laugh because they share the embarrassment of what he does. That's really why anyone laughs at anybody. I'm probably taking this too reductively but I think NTs see, or are made to see by these characters, where they could easily go wrong in social situations and thus it hit home for them just as much as someone for whom these situations aren't close calls but a daily occurrence? Just my thoughts.

It's funny because he's actually jewish.