Would the world be better off if it was run by autistics?

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What do you think?

The whole planet? As in, not a single country, state, province, etc under NT management?

I think there's a decent chance it would be.

Perhaps not a single country, just the most powerful ones. I dont think we need every country to control the world. The USA and China pretty much call the shots so maybe just them at least.

Problem is their people fall into the sheep mentality that NT people are so prone to.

I know its a pipe dream and completely hypothetical. Ive thought for a while now that rather than being our betters, NT's are actually holding us back. If we had our way we'd probably have flying cars, self drying clothes and bases on Mars by now. We need to cut the chords and do things on our own.

One word - eugenics.

It would be much quieter and maybe not so much light pollution.

Not eugenics. NT's will continue happilly breeding like rabbits, regardless of whether or not autistics are in charge.

If anything i think the very existance of autistics are the only thing holding back the floodgates to a full blown devolution back to homo ergaster.

We don't have much evidence to suggest superior outcomes. We just have ad hoc speculation, based upon the positive self-regard of this community.

The evidence we do have is potentially mixed.

Heck, just looking at this webforum and how it works doesn't give strong evidence that we'd make the world that much better.

Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 30 Nov 2012, 8:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.

There does seem to be a lot of knuckle dragging going on,especially among politicians.They are obviously reverting back to a more primitive state.

its little wonder theres no or few politicians who present any obvious 'signs' of being on the spectrum.

The ones that are even remotely progressive or eccentric are castigated and marginalised.

The corridors of power are little more than a cult of sychophancy and normalisation.

NT thought process in politics gravitates towards self interest and careerism.

Autistic culture is more greatly centred on honesty and to the point communication. Even NT's will admit this.

^^^^^I can't imagine an Autistic person saying"read my lips,no new taxes",and then raising taxes.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCAspQvw_F0[/youtube]

Yup.

Ok?

How does this prove anything about autistic politicians? An autistic politician is going to be the kind of person who will be able to elicit enough other autistics to select them for power. That will involve selecting for many of the same traits that are selected for in NT politicians. So.... I am not sure how this will change things. The nerdiest autistics are definitely going to know that applications of game-theory along with a utilitarian model may justify certain political abuses(lies, etc) to maintain power to enact social changes considered to result in good outcomes, so even if Aspies are hyper-logical deities(which they aren't), we should expect them to lie because that's what the game theory of the situation would tell them to do.

Even further, nothing said actually suggests that autistics are going to tend to be saner leaders. Once again, just look at this forum: Do you think the people on here are more likely to create good compromises? Do you think the people on here are going to be ideologically reasonable when they need to be? Is this thread even BASED upon good social scientific reasoning in the first place, or is it mostly just the self-favoring opinions of autistics without a REALLY thoughtful glance at what is needed to make society work??

I mean, let's be blunt:
1) It's not a black and white question. There is a spectrum of autistic conditions all varying in their traits.
2) To what extent will autistics be able to or willing to engage in the processes needed for a working politic? (Is there any empirical analysis on this?)
3) To what extent are existing problems actually the constraints already given to a working politic by the limits of our knowledge and the game-theory of the situation? So, politicians act as they do because they're working with constraints. Governments act as they do due to their constraints. If the nature of the actors is only a part of the problem, then changing the actors will leave a lot of the problem unsolved.
4) Could some of these issues actually hinder the success of an AS rulership? So, if NTs are a mess of half-baked heuristics, and aspies happen to missing a few of these half-baked heuristics, it doesn't mean aspies are fully baked. One possible problem is that the set of NT heuristics could be ecologically rational, so even though there are many irrationalities, the balance ends up creating a successfully working organism and society. But... aspies don't necessarily have to have an ecologically rational set of tendencies(our lower successes in certain areas could be evidence we don't have this), so.... we could actually be worse off. NT careerism and self-interest could be what keeps them away from outright ideological extremism, but aspies, lacking these traits, may actually be honest politicians and try to drive the world into the ground in pursuit of the abstractions that ordinary politicians may avoid due to the pragmatism of careerism.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rationalit ... ationality

Definitely the latter.

And yet George Bush Sr's actions were the right actions due to the rising deficit. So, if you can't imagine an autistic doing that, then you may be imagining a world where these rigid idealists drive the world into the ground.

In order to have a working politics, we do need flexible people to enter that field. Right now, we need Republican politicians who are willing to break their promise to raise taxes in order to make a deal with Obama, DESPITE their pledge. We need people who are focused on the "flow" of things, and not just on rigid, abstract constructs. The problem is that the rigid, abstract constructs were never the reality.

By saying this, I am NOT saying that autistics couldn't actually make a better world. We don't have the social scientific evidence to prove that autistics couldn't. However, we CERTAINLY don't have the kind of evidence we need to show that they would. We certainly do have reasons to think that autistics would not automatically be a benefit.

The simple problem of politics is that it's not going to be black and white, and we may actually NOT be better off with the black and white solutions. We may really be better off with NT flexibility, with an NT lack of principle, with an NT sense of flow. So, for a concrete example: I don't think the law would be better if Aspie judges read the law in the most literal sense, but rather NT's reading things into the law has made it work better in many ways.