This is relevant:
Simon Baron-Cohen Autistic Spectrum Test
I hired someone with Asperger's – now what?
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Re: I hired someone with Asperger's – now what?
#42I'm a sperg. I'm getting better. Meditation, vipassana. It uncramps your soul, unravels deep habits of attention, or something. It's miraculous.
Anybody here relate?
Re: I hired someone with Asperger's – now what?
#43I find it rather annoying that people like myself get lumped into this as well when such broad definitions are being used. Do I prefer to be alone/ in a small group most of the time? Hell yes! It's more exclusive and I get more work done. In a social situation, less people means more signal, less noise. Do I sometimes completely avoid social situations? Of course! But it's solely due to the fact that sometimes, I jus…
The problem with this is that you're thinking that these symptoms define aspergers. They don't - they're just symptoms, resulting out of other issues which you (and everyone else) can't see.
Just like every other medical and mental disorder, just because you have some of the symptoms doesn't mean that you have the actual condition. Jeff Foxworthy has a great joke about this - seeing a program on a disease, his wife says "I have everyone of these symptoms! I've got it..." To which he responds "No, you do not have testicular cancer!"
If you don't have aspergers, great! I'm happy for you; there are many things about being NT that I wish I had as well. But at the same time, don't classify aspergers as not being a real problem just because you share some symptoms without the underlying cause.
Re: I hired someone with Asperger's – now what?
#44Asperger's doesn't particularly exist. IIRC it is being removed from the DSM-V; 99.5% of sufferers are self-diagnosed with information that they found on the internet, and sometimes have confirmed with helpful psychiatrists. The criteria seems to be that one has a terrible personality, is simultaneously high-maintenance and inconsiderate of others, thinks very highly of one's self, but lacks any other connection with…
My second downvote I think.
Re: I hired someone with Asperger's – now what?
#45As someone who was diagnosed with Aspberger syndrome, reading that article made me want to throw up. There can be significant differences between a number of people with the same diagnosis, and generalizing them all under one mocking nickname of "aspie" is disrespectful. My diagnosis is not obvious to anyone talking to me unless I were to disclose it, and I have done very well in school leadership activities; I parti…
Some of the mass media articles about Zuckerberg have just been absolutely venomous taunting about his Asperger's. You can be the most successful internet billionaire of your generation and average people will still sneer at you for having a mental disorder. The stigma against it is still incredibly strong (even though it has no connection to violent/abusive behavior). Here's one well-known example: http://gawker.com…
Sigh, Gawker thrives on sensationalism.
Luckily, based on the CNN article, it sounds more positive that Asperger is a syndrome and not a problem.
Re: I hired someone with Asperger's – now what?
#46Hmm I sometimes wonder if I might not have this thing. I do share quite a lot of characteristics they describe...
Asperger isn't a binary diagnosis; it's more of a continuum. The skills that make you a good programmer place you a little further out on that continuum almost by definition. [1] Therefore the real question is: Do you feel you would benefit from the treatments that become available to you were you to receive the diagnosis? [1] The simplest way to (sort of) get that is this quote from Inventing on Principle: "People w…
This link blows my mind. Thank you.
Re: I hired someone with Asperger's – now what?
#47"I have Asperger's: I am just like you" Um, not to hate or anything, but there is a reason it is called autistic syndrome. Autistic people lack the ability to form a "theory of brain", which means they just do not understand other people's intentions that well. You can't ignore this fact and hope it will go away.
Like everything in the physical life, it's all about degrees. As a matter of fact, people with a high ASQ ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_Spectrum_Quotient ) are very common in software industry. There is even an online test http://psychology-tools.com/autism-spectrum-quotient/ I scored one point less than the minimum to be considered in the Asperger spectrum, and I hadn't had any "symptom" in my infancy, so I…
Great tool!
Re: I hired someone with Asperger's – now what?
#48The posed question is kind of offensive and arrogant if you think of it. It is kind of along the lines of 'Will/do you hire someone who is a woman/foreign/handicapped/ugly?' Suddenly the proposed properties are super offensive. "Women are smart", "Women think differently", etc. "Dave Wellman has managed several employees who were women." Eh what? How about asking "Will/do you hire someone who is good for the job?". T…
> The posed question is kind of offensive and arrogant if you think of it. It is kind of along the lines of 'Will/do you hire someone who is a woman/foreign/handicapped/ugly?'
...
> How about asking "Will/do you hire someone who is good for the job?". The question asked here though is more along the lines of "Will/do discriminate in your hiring process and how much?"
I don't disagree with you, but I think it's important to realize that this article is written to address and correct some common human biases. People whose moral development exceeds a certain level are less likely to subconsciously classify and stereotype people based on a handful of social cues, but are more likely to evaluate people as individuals. This article is not written for such people. It is written for people whose moral model of a person is so simple as to equate "autistic" with "dysfunctional" and ignore the individual characteristics of a person.
It may be offensive or arrogant to discuss autistic spectrum individuals in this way, but it's also necessary because most people are simply going to stereotype and dismiss them unless they're prompted to think more thoroughly about the issue. Decades in the future, when humanity's collective moral reasoning has hopefully progressed, we will be able to look back on articles like this and marvel at how simpleminded people were at the time. But articles like this are a necessary step to getting there.
Re: I hired someone with Asperger's – now what?
#49"I have Asperger's: I am just like you" Um, not to hate or anything, but there is a reason it is called autistic syndrome. Autistic people lack the ability to form a "theory of brain", which means they just do not understand other people's intentions that well. You can't ignore this fact and hope it will go away.
Like everything in the physical life, it's all about degrees. As a matter of fact, people with a high ASQ ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_Spectrum_Quotient ) are very common in software industry. There is even an online test http://psychology-tools.com/autism-spectrum-quotient/ I scored one point less than the minimum to be considered in the Asperger spectrum, and I hadn't had any "symptom" in my infancy, so I…
Thanks for the link. I scored higher than I expected.
Re: I hired someone with Asperger's – now what?
#50I find it rather annoying that people like myself get lumped into this as well when such broad definitions are being used. Do I prefer to be alone/ in a small group most of the time? Hell yes! It's more exclusive and I get more work done. In a social situation, less people means more signal, less noise. Do I sometimes completely avoid social situations? Of course! But it's solely due to the fact that sometimes, I jus…
You clearly don't understand how the diagnosis of these things works.
There is a spectrum of behaviors, raging from healthy to problematic.
Drinking alcohol has a range too: from abstaining to enjoying in moderation to alcoholism. Neither abstaining nor moderate enjoyment are problematic. While the parallel is awkward, just as occasionally having one beer too many doesn't constitute alcoholism, occasionally avoiding social situations is different from always avoiding them (the reasons for avoiding them are important too!).
If you don't understand the criteria for determining when a behavior is problematic enough to warrant a symptom and when it is not, and you read through the DSM-IV (which defines mental disorders), you will think you qualify for many of the disorders listed: in all likelihood you do not qualify for any of them. Why are the definitions written this way? Because mental disorders are often characterized by normal behaviors happening to an extreme degree (being anxious before a big potentially career-altering presentation is healthy, having panic attacks as a result of everyday situations is problematic). Also because the DSM-IV is meant to be used by trained professionals who already understand this distinction.