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Autism and Invention Are Connected

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Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#41

Post by pickpuck »

programmerslave wrote: post #12

Mental disabilities are mostly adaptations that have huge upside. Technology is exacerbating that upside. You can’t have a majority autistic society, but you want some of them around

I think what you might be getting at is that having a minority of people with mental disabilities increases the overall diversity of thought within our species, which can sometimes prove beneficial. However, any given mental disability may not be beneficial for the individual.

So one explanation is that natural selection has found a balance that yields benefits for the group.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#42

Post by skissane »

PlugTunin wrote: post #21

Interesting read. Minor point of clarification: It's noted that many autistic folks struggle with empathy. There are two dimensions to empathy, cognitive and affective . Cognitive is more about perspective taking, or reading the feelings / intentions of others, while affective is the ability to share/understand the emotions of others, and respond appropriately. Putting aside that the two may overlap, it's often the c…

> as well as the related concept of Theory of Mind.

On the topic of theory of mind and ASD, I think this is quite an interesting read: "Empirical Failures of the Claim That Autistic People Lack a Theory of Mind" – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6959478/

"We conclude that the claim that autistic people lack a theory of mind is empirically questionable and societally harmful"

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#43

Post by verisimilidude »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #17
ksm1717 wrote: post #14

The first sentence rubs me the wrong way. The claim that you wouldn’t expect autism to be coupled with invention because it is a disability only makes sense because of the semantics of labeling autism necessarily a disability. Not to mention the slight to disabilities as a whole

One of my sons has Asperger syndrome. He's brilliant, happy, and has one of the sharpest senses of humor I've encountered. I'm not sure if his Asperger syndrome is a net positive or negative in his life, but it's certainly not a straight-up disability. Perhaps the author was thinking about a strong form of Autism that pretty unequivocally makes life difficult?

Yep.

I was diagnosed with Asperger's later in life. I received this diagnosis after I already had a successful career, happy marriage, and house full of kids. Not much of a hindrance, right?

On the other hand, my brother suffers a much more severe form of autism. He does hold a profession job in finance. But he otherwise requires a full-time caretaker, tons of medication and understanding, etc. No friends. He's not self-sufficient.

It's a huge spectrum.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#44

Post by [deleted] »

amelius wrote: post #27

Please don't take this the wrong way, but there is a 3-to-1 male-to-female ratio in autism prevalence. Does this mean that males invent more things than females? Or is the percentage of people with autism too small to have an effect here? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28545751/

[deleted]

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#45

Post by Godel_unicode »

lumberjack wrote: post #33
ksm1717 wrote: post #14

The first sentence rubs me the wrong way. The claim that you wouldn’t expect autism to be coupled with invention because it is a disability only makes sense because of the semantics of labeling autism necessarily a disability. Not to mention the slight to disabilities as a whole

Most (like 90% or more) autistic people are low functioning. But they are completely invisible to people like you. When you hear the word you think of the border line cases that fall under the label "high functioning autism". But the author is not limiting himself to just these borderline cases.

Do you have any data for this distribution? This is the first time I've heard someone suggest any particular shape to this distribution, much less that it's shaped as you suggest.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#46

Post by hnracer »

PlugTunin wrote: post #40
amelius wrote: post #27

Please don't take this the wrong way, but there is a 3-to-1 male-to-female ratio in autism prevalence. Does this mean that males invent more things than females? Or is the percentage of people with autism too small to have an effect here? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28545751/

There was a time when society relegated women to pursuits that frequently deprived them of many opportunities to invent. Fortunately, society has changed.

This is definitely a large part of the picture but it's also possibly partly genetic when it comes to the science and tech fields. I'm talking about interest and not competence. Women tend to self select out of science and tech in richer societies where they have the freedom to do so, and self select into disciplines that serve the empathic personality better. There are persuasive studies on that topic.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#47

Post by godelski »

kylebenzle wrote: post #4
neonate wrote: post #3

https://archive.is/dil8Z

Bless you people. I am amazed at how many pay-walled articles are posted on HN. Are most people here really well off enough that they can afford the dozens of subscriptions that are often linked to here?

Generally I don't get locked out of articles. The combination of uBlock, privacy badger, and auto deleting cookies seems to take care of 99% of cases. The rest are handled by outline.com and archive. But I'll be honest in those cases I'll read the comments first to see if it's worth reading.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#48

Post by programmerslave »

layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #28
programmerslave wrote: post #12

Mental disabilities are mostly adaptations that have huge upside. Technology is exacerbating that upside. You can’t have a majority autistic society, but you want some of them around

You could believe this if you have only ever saw mental disabilities in movies. Pay a visit to an actual mental ward and I can guarantee it will change your perspective.

My family has multiple people who have spent extended periods of time in mental hospitals, I know what goes on there. But I still stick by my point

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#49

Post by skissane »

akvadrako wrote: post #36
username90 wrote: post #24

I wonder how much this is autism and how much it is people with low trait agreeableness being diagnosed with autism for being "bad with people". Refusing to do rituals without a good explanation makes people think you are autistic, but it could just as well be that they are disagreeable by nature and don't do things just because people tell them to. And refusing to do things the way everyone else does them obviously…

Autism is a spectrum disorder, defined by just a list of traits, one of which you describe. So it is, by definition, autism.

All of the traits of ASD also occur in people who don't have ASD – people with other disorders, people with broad autism phenotype (BAP), and just "neurotypical" people in general.

Kamp-Becker I, Albertowski K, Becker J, Ghahreman M, Langmann A, Mingebach T, Poustka L, Weber L, Schmidt H, Smidt J, Stehr T, Roessner V, Kucharczyk K, Wolff N, Stroth S. Diagnostic accuracy of the ADOS and ADOS-2 in clinical practice. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2018 Sep;27(9):1193-1207. doi: 10.1007/s00787-018-1143-y. Epub 2018 Mar 20. PMID: 29560529:

> There is an obvious symptom overlap between ASD and emotional and anxiety disorders documented by several studies [24, 52–56]. Both disorders involve profound social interaction and communication defcits, problems in emotion recognition, insistence on sameness, infexible adherence to routines, or ritualized patterns or verbal/non-verbal behaviour. 30% of children with an anxiety disorder (but no known diagnosis of ASD) were above the cutof of the ADI-R in at least one domain [57]. Other disorders are likewise associated with “autistic traits” of profound amount, such as ADHD, conduct disorders, intellectual impairment, and language disorders (see above)

Since none of the traits of ASD is unique to ASD, none of those traits can be said to be "by definition, autism". One only should be diagnosed with ASD if one has enough of a broad enough cross-section of those traits, and those traits cause clinically significant dysfunction. (A person with a broad cross-section of those traits but without clinically significant dysfunction doesn't have ASD, they have BAP, but the boundary between ASD and BAP is unclear and varies from clinician to clinician.)

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#50

Post by Godel_unicode »

lumberjack wrote: post #37
username90 wrote: post #24

I wonder how much this is autism and how much it is people with low trait agreeableness being diagnosed with autism for being "bad with people". Refusing to do rituals without a good explanation makes people think you are autistic, but it could just as well be that they are disagreeable by nature and don't do things just because people tell them to. And refusing to do things the way everyone else does them obviously…

Autism diagnosis does not really focus on social interactions. Difficulties in social interaction are a side effect but it is not how they diagnose the condition.

Can you cite a reference to a diagnostic tool for autism which doesn't "focus on social interactions"? The DSM-5 certainly seems to indicate that social interactions are important diagnostically (excerpt below):

https://www.autismspeaks.org/autism-diagnosis-criteria-dsm-5

"""Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts, as manifested by the following, currently or by history...

Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity...

Deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction...

Deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships... """

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