Is positive generalisation as bad as negative?

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This has been on my mind a lot lately. Apparently there's been a lot of complaints with UK aspies about "generalisations" with the media and public to show us all as murderers, dangerous, or whatever (although I don't think it's been that bad myself... there was the Magnificant Seven movie and the aspie on Grange Hill, which were positive to me.)

But anyway...if an NT says something like "all aspies are serial killers" or "all aspies are lonely and miserable" there is quite rightly an uproar. Yet when someone on these site says "all aspies are intelligent" , "all aspies accept other cultures", or "all aspies are advanced mathematicians" noone bats an eyelid. But for some reason this gets my goat. Do you find "positive genralisations" of us irritating?

They can be irritating, but it depends on context. I don't like the oft used generalisation that we're all supposed to be of above average intelligence. Many are, some are exceptionally clever, but the majority, I'd suggest, have an intelligence within the +/- 1 SD of the mean for the population as a whole. And those polls on IQ we keep getting here, I don't think are particularly reliable.

I think that in and of itself is a generalization

But yeah, I also find those positive generalizations to be annoying. Although, a lot of it is that I feel inferior to most aspies because I don't fit most of the positive generalizations, whereas I do fit a considerable number of the not-so-positive ones.

me too....I mean, I'm no genius... I tried to read Stephen Hawking's book, I got to page 3...I can't live up to the "rainman"-ish members (that is, if they are half as brainy as they claim to be)

In fact, I think a few aspies feel inferior because they don't live up to the "genius" stereotype.

At one level, definitely.

I'm not an Albert Einstein, or an Isaac Newton, or any positive "claimed" aspie. I don't want to have to prove my positiveness at every moment, because *that* is the *proper* role-model.

On the other hand, I can see the temptation, possibly even the need, to counterbalance the stereotypes seen as negative. Gently suggesting "it needn't be as bad as that" is not the instinctive counter-propaganda, but then, overstating a case can ruin it too.

The real situation is too complex for a sound bite, a poster, or a generalisation.

There are some aspects to human existence that I don't think I'm ever going to get "from the inside". That doesn't mean I'm blind to them. There are some things I do very well, and some things I find difficult. The scatter of these characteristics, while being within the range of humanity, happens to be somewhat away from the statistical norm.
And, compounding, there is tendency to take a statistical norm as having social implications. That's a whole fresh complexity. Who gets to define the social normal, and by extension "positive" and "negative"? Just weight of numbers, or more select groups with leverage?

Tom,I definately agree,I find positive generalising as bad as the negative.
I'm fed up of hearing the above average/superior intelligence steriotype [I am not one of those,and do not need to be preached to,in the same way they do not like it done to them by NTs]
Another steriotype I do not agree with is 'females with AS have it milder than males',this is certainly not,and has never been the situation for me,it is daft to assume just because AS [or any other specific type of Autism] has a set minimum criteria,that we're all the same,but that does not make us clones.
Alas,positive steriotyping is why it's so hard to get any support from people like the social services.

The claim that all people with AS have above average irritates me also. I have an above average IQ, but only by about 10-15 points (it's around 115-120ish) so it doesn't really matter. Just because Albert Einstein and many other geniuses might have had AS, doesn't mean that everyone with AS is exceptionally intelligent.

That's probably true. I guess it's very tempting for people who like facts and figures to grab the only easily-obtainable numerically quantifiable measure of human "worth" and make more out of it than necessary. In reality, though, I guess it's like the cliché: it's not what you've got, but what you do with it.

I think positive stereotypes are just as bad as negative ones.

It depends on the situation.

I feel the same way. Stereotypes and generalizations tend to do nothing more than deny us our individuality. We are all unique individuals with different talents and traits, so we should not be generalized.