A suite of recent studies has reported positive genetic correlations between autism risk and measures of mental ability. These findings indicate that alleles for autism overlap broadly with alleles for high intelligence, which appears paradoxical given that autism is characterized, overall, by below-average IQ. This paradox can be resolved under the hypothesis that autism etiology commonly involves enhanced, but imbalanced, components of intelligence. This hypothesis is supported by convergent evidence showing that autism and high IQ share a diverse set of convergent correlates, including large brain size, fast brain growth, increased sensory and visual-spatial abilities, enhanced synaptic functions, increased attentional focus, high socioeconomic status, more deliberative decision-making, profession and occupational interests in engineering and physical sciences, and high levels of positive assortative mating. These findings help to provide an evolutionary basis to understanding autism risk as underlain in part by dysregulation of intelligence, a core human-specific adaptation.
I’m not fond of the “Republicans just want to make Americans dumber, because dumb people are <whatever it is that people think correlate with being Republican>”.
But there’s a special irony in Conservatives fixating on autism as a public health crisis, given that it is literally boiling down to “too many smart people are fucking”, a thing their eugenics-loving elites think we need more of.
The end goal of these policies will have to be - intentionally or otherwise - to dumb down the average American. I guess malnutrition, early childhood disease, and mass management of toxic waste could achieve these ends.
I can attest, autism runs on my mother’s side of the family. I have two uncles who are low functioning.
One’s practically a child mentally with an obsessive recall for music charts over the years, and absolute statistical knowledge of the NY Giants history. He’s brilliant, with essentially encyclopedic knowledge within his extremely narrow interests, but can barely take care of himself otherwise. The other is a somewhat independent and capable of dealing with life, but… just inept and weird, and not smart at all.
I’m also mildly autistic (Asperger’s, on the old system I guess) and smart. Not a genius, but fine. It’s been pretty easy for me to pick up on complex concepts and tasks in life, so long as it’s not too math heavy. I’m working in IT automation/cloud/etc. and generally doing well in life. A little socially awkward and introverted, but happily married and successful overall, more so than average in my age/peer group.
Autism may well be the next step in human evolution and it might not be in humanities best interest to try to “find a cure” and apply it, except for finding a way to compensate the side effects of low functioning autism.
I’ve worked for some time with developmentally disabled young adults, children, and teenagers, generally people under 20, with debilitating autism.
To me, there’s a stark contrast between that stereotypical autism and what the term has turned into today. It almost feels as though any kind of personality quirk now qualifies as autism.
Yes, people behave in accordance with their physiology—we speak through our mouths, see through our eyes, hear through our ears, and so on. Despite these shared functions, there are natural differences among humans. But we cannot just start categorizing every behavior deemed “inappropriate” as autism. There needs to be a sharper line between what is traditionally considered autism and what are simply personality traits or quirks.
At this point, the labeling is becoming preposterous. I even know people in my own life who call themselves autistic simply because they are unsuccessful. That feels like a slippery slope to me.
We went down the slope once people started using it as the next euphemism for “retarded”.
At the same time, to my knowledge autism (and ADHD for that matter) aren’t well enough understood that we can say for certain “all these things we consider autism are caused by the same thing”, it feels more like a grouping of symptoms and as usual you get the diagnosis it if it significantly interferes with your daily functioning.
I can tell you that it very much did (and still sometimes does, though it really helps that most of my peers now think similarly) interferes with my life that people seemingly expect me to know magic to understand what they mean, and inversely their magic that works on everyone else malfunctions on me and gives them completely wrong ideas.
But I am also entirely capable of living life on my own, and fundamentally it does make sense that there needs to be some distinction between someone that needs constant assistance vs someone that is mostly fine if people show some basic attention to not sensorily overload them/can mitigate the issues largely on their own as long as no one prohibits it.
The thing is, it is very much a spectrum and outside of the clear “incapable of surviving on their own in society” and “does fine but people think they’re weird” there’s a ton of “does generally fine but if multiple people start talking at them at once they might shutdown”, “is caused distress by a few basic tasks but can deal with it, it’s just a stress factor” and “needs some active assistance, but is mostly independent” and people (rightfully so) neither want to be told “well your problems aren’t real because you seem fine from the outside” nor “you’re too disabled to live a normal life” when it isn’t abundantly clear that that’s the case. And trying to distinguish between the extremes will necessarily lead to that for a lot of people.
Autism As a Disorder of High Intelligence
I’m not fond of the “Republicans just want to make Americans dumber, because dumb people are <whatever it is that people think correlate with being Republican>”.
But there’s a special irony in Conservatives fixating on autism as a public health crisis, given that it is literally boiling down to “too many smart people are fucking”, a thing their eugenics-loving elites think we need more of.
The end goal of these policies will have to be - intentionally or otherwise - to dumb down the average American. I guess malnutrition, early childhood disease, and mass management of toxic waste could achieve these ends.
So, uh… yay?
“Too many poor smart people are fucking, and that means the populace is harder to control” is what eugenics boils down to.
Non-conformity is a threat.
I call that a real life bit overflow
I can attest, autism runs on my mother’s side of the family. I have two uncles who are low functioning.
One’s practically a child mentally with an obsessive recall for music charts over the years, and absolute statistical knowledge of the NY Giants history. He’s brilliant, with essentially encyclopedic knowledge within his extremely narrow interests, but can barely take care of himself otherwise. The other is a somewhat independent and capable of dealing with life, but… just inept and weird, and not smart at all.
I’m also mildly autistic (Asperger’s, on the old system I guess) and smart. Not a genius, but fine. It’s been pretty easy for me to pick up on complex concepts and tasks in life, so long as it’s not too math heavy. I’m working in IT automation/cloud/etc. and generally doing well in life. A little socially awkward and introverted, but happily married and successful overall, more so than average in my age/peer group.
Autism may well be the next step in human evolution and it might not be in humanities best interest to try to “find a cure” and apply it, except for finding a way to compensate the side effects of low functioning autism.
although most issues with autism is dealing with neurotypicals.
9/10 major issues I have in life are indeed caused by having to deal with neurotypicals.
I’ve worked for some time with developmentally disabled young adults, children, and teenagers, generally people under 20, with debilitating autism.
To me, there’s a stark contrast between that stereotypical autism and what the term has turned into today. It almost feels as though any kind of personality quirk now qualifies as autism.
Yes, people behave in accordance with their physiology—we speak through our mouths, see through our eyes, hear through our ears, and so on. Despite these shared functions, there are natural differences among humans. But we cannot just start categorizing every behavior deemed “inappropriate” as autism. There needs to be a sharper line between what is traditionally considered autism and what are simply personality traits or quirks.
At this point, the labeling is becoming preposterous. I even know people in my own life who call themselves autistic simply because they are unsuccessful. That feels like a slippery slope to me.
We went down the slope once people started using it as the next euphemism for “retarded”.
At the same time, to my knowledge autism (and ADHD for that matter) aren’t well enough understood that we can say for certain “all these things we consider autism are caused by the same thing”, it feels more like a grouping of symptoms and as usual you get the diagnosis it if it significantly interferes with your daily functioning.
I can tell you that it very much did (and still sometimes does, though it really helps that most of my peers now think similarly) interferes with my life that people seemingly expect me to know magic to understand what they mean, and inversely their magic that works on everyone else malfunctions on me and gives them completely wrong ideas.
But I am also entirely capable of living life on my own, and fundamentally it does make sense that there needs to be some distinction between someone that needs constant assistance vs someone that is mostly fine if people show some basic attention to not sensorily overload them/can mitigate the issues largely on their own as long as no one prohibits it.
The thing is, it is very much a spectrum and outside of the clear “incapable of surviving on their own in society” and “does fine but people think they’re weird” there’s a ton of “does generally fine but if multiple people start talking at them at once they might shutdown”, “is caused distress by a few basic tasks but can deal with it, it’s just a stress factor” and “needs some active assistance, but is mostly independent” and people (rightfully so) neither want to be told “well your problems aren’t real because you seem fine from the outside” nor “you’re too disabled to live a normal life” when it isn’t abundantly clear that that’s the case. And trying to distinguish between the extremes will necessarily lead to that for a lot of people.