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Autism and Invention Are Connected

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Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#51

Post by skissane »

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.

DSM-5 criteria for ASD have as criterion A "Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts". So if one doesn't have persistent deficits in social interaction, one doesn't meet the criteria for ASD. So this is a core part of the diagnosis of the condition, it is a mandatory requirement for diagnosis.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#52

Post by BlueTemplar »

Some autistic nitpicking :

> our ancestors started inventing things 70,000 to 100,000 years ago.

Erm, and what about the other 200k-230k years of homo sapiens?

Not to mention that Homo erectus invented the handaxe and domesticated fire about 1700k years ago, both of which were a pretty big deal!

https://tauromachy.org/2018/07/18/the-handaxe-the-thundersto...

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#53

Post by godelski »

cbozeman wrote: post #26
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

> Mental disabilities are mostly adaptations that have huge upside. There is extremely scant evidence to support this claim, and conversely, an enormous amount of evidence to disprove it. The first part is questionable in its very premise. Mental disabilities as an adaptation? By what metric do you measure this? And having huge upsides? There aren't many upsides to someone being born severely mentally retarded. There…

I think a big problem of this is that we don't actually represent these people and the way we talk about mental illnesses and disabilities is just strange. Like a lot of people were confused by Robin Williams and Chris Farley, but I don't think anyone that's ever suffered from depression was surprised at all. We think of depression as sadness instead of the existential emptiness or mundane that many experience. Autism is represented by geniuses like House or Sheldon Copper and no one understands the sensory overload aspect that is so common. It's also trendy in some circles to have illnesses because it represents struggle and overcoming obstacles. But the challenge is that many mental illnesses are extreme versions of the human condition and if you dilute it enough everyone has an anxiety disorder and depression and multiple personalities. I don't blame people for not knowing but maybe we should cool the jets on how woke we are because it seems like we're perpetuating misnomers more than recognizing nuances.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#54

Post by [deleted] »

verisimilidude wrote: post #43
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

[deleted]

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#55

Post by michaelt »

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/

Men get far more patents - but as men also get far more engineering degrees, I don't think you need autism as an explanation.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#56

Post by progval »

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 is a 3-to-1 male-to-female ratio in autism prevalence

There is a 3-to-1 ratio in diagnostic prevalence. From the article you linked: "There appears to be a diagnostic gender bias, meaning that girls who meet criteria for ASD are at disproportionate risk of not receiving a clinical diagnosis."

There are multiple theories for this difference: genetics, environment, ...; but also gender bias in diagnosis. eg. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/sep/14/thousands-of...

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#57

Post by username90 »

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.

I have gone through the autism diagnosis process myself, it is very flexible so as long as you have the stereotypical problems with social situations they will give you a diagnosis if you want it. I didn't want it so they didn't give me a diagnosis. I guess if there were parents involved who wanted something to blame they would have pushed for the diagnosis though.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#58

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

verisimilidude wrote: post #43
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

I too received a probable-diagnosis later in life. (It was part of neuro-psych testing to look for ADD, so they didn't run the specific test battery used for Asperger.)

In many ways my life has been just fine: steady well-paying employment, wonderful wife and kids, etc. So as with you, being (probably) somewhere on the spectrum isn't correlated with a crappy life.

But...

I've also had some unusual personality traits for my whole life, and I've really beaten myself up regarding them. Once I had a probably Asperger diagnosis, I felt like a tremendous weight was lifted. I no longer felt like I was uniquely messed up in those way. And maybe the subconscious logic is that if I'm part of a cluster of people with these idiosynchronies, maybe there's an underlying physiological cause that's somewhat out of my control, and therefore I'm less morally culpable for my atypical social failures.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#59

Post by bitL »

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…

"Empathy" in the business circles, the one we hear most about these days, means if a given person takes into account the (profit) goals of other people. It has nothing to do with emotions.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#60

Post by BlueTemplar »

hnracer wrote: post #46
PlugTunin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A significant factor seems to be that the way (not only STEM) academia is currently organized means that women have to pick between a career or having any children (at ages favorable to childbearing):

https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4522

And I kind of have the impression that the situation here actually got worse during the last decades?

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