Autism and Invention Are Connected • Hacker News Board

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#151

Post by drtillberg » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 11:56 AM UTC

nullsense wrote: post #74

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…

I have trait agreeableness in the bottom 1st percentile. I'm also diagnosed with ADHD which is often co-morbid with ASD. I very much refuse to go along with a looooot of things just for the sake it. Anything steeped in tradition without a whole lot of logic to it gets met with mostly flat rejection. This has steadily increased as I've gotten older. My mum used to be a special needs teacher and she kind of suspected I…

It's a spectrum and you already know you're somewhere on that spectrum or nearby. IMHO, you have all the information a professional could reasonably supply.

I tell my own ASD child, it's such a broad spectrum of otherwise loosely-associated characteristics that whatever diagnostic standards are deployed by professionals almost certainly will be reassessed as erroneous in my child's lifetime, which means all authoritative guidance you can receive now on the subject is 'wrong'. ASD is a bucket of 'different'. Those doing the judging can't even be consistent in expressing how ASDers are 'different'. That is all.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#152

Post by hiena03 » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 11:58 AM UTC

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 someone in the spectrum, how could I improve my empathy?

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#153

Post by sandspar » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 12:21 PM UTC

drtillberg wrote: post #151

nullsense wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have trait agreeableness in the bottom 1st percentile. I'm also diagnosed with ADHD which is often co-morbid with ASD. I very much refuse to go along with a looooot of things just for the sake it. Anything steeped in tradition without a whole lot of logic to it gets met with mostly flat rejection. This has steadily increased as I've gotten older. My mum used to be a special needs teacher and she kind of suspected I…

It's a spectrum and you already know you're somewhere on that spectrum or nearby. IMHO, you have all the information a professional could reasonably supply. I tell my own ASD child, it's such a broad spectrum of otherwise loosely-associated characteristics that whatever diagnostic standards are deployed by professionals almost certainly will be reassessed as erroneous in my child's lifetime, which means all authorita…

Spectrum diseases like schizophrenia and autism seem ripe for splitting. In particular, I'm holding out hope for improved diagnoses (and treatments) once we learn more about genetics and neuroscience.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#154

Post by scns » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 1:19 PM UTC

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #117

novok wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADHD and mild ASD can sometimes look like one or the other. TBH a good neuropsych will do both if they have any suspicion of ASD if they are also doing ADHD testing.

interesting. i was diagnosed with adhd in my freshman year of high school, but i distinctly remember about a year later my therapist conducted a cognitive performance test that showed i did worse on the meds, which i remember he was surprised and embarrassed about. so, i wonder... i have always had a faint suspicion, but i know im absolutely not qualified or objective enough to make an inferrence

There are several forms of ADD, some of which don't respond to stimulants. Check Daniel Amen's work, there is a video on youtube "healing add - see and heal the 7 types".

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#155

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 2:06 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#156

Post by Doxin » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

vizzier wrote: post #94

BurningFrog wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the programmers I think are "on the spectrum" seem to have a real blind spot for the possibility that other people lack the knowledge they have. If they know something, they just assume I do too.

I'm not sure that this is exclusive to those on the spectrum. It is common enough to have a name; The curse of knowledge [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge

I mean sure there's that, and then there's colleagues you have to ask for context every single time. A previous coworker I had would frequently start talking to you about some bug he's trying to fix without first telling what bug he's even on about.

I feel like the curse of knowledge mostly applies when experts talk to non-experts. Not including trivially required context when talking to co-experts seems like something else to me.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#157

Post by astura » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 5:13 PM UTC

pikelet wrote: post #101

novok wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low end ASD can make dating really hard for men, and their often inflexible nature makes them hard people to live with at times. I think from that perspective alone it's a disability.

For a large part of my life I was somewhat jealous of my brother, who had Asperger's, for his natural wit, and his incredible creativity (in art, in music, in writing). So I can't possibly see it as a disability. It certainly makes some aspects of life more difficult for him, but my experience is that he generally figures things out in the end, even if it's many years later than his peers. On the other hand, some thi…

Asperger's does not give one a natural wit, usually it's very much the opposite.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#158

Post by hnracer » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

galoisgirl wrote: post #146

hnracer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We're still a society that treats women very differently. For instance, women have to be just the right level of assertive. Too little, and you're not respected nor listened to, you're passed for promotions... Too much, and you're viewed as aggressive. You have all those articles about women leaving tech - they must have had the interest to get there, the opportunities, and yet they're leaving.

We agree in full that women face these problems across tech and also in other industries.

However, this is not evidence of a uniquely bad problem in tech which can explain why tech has a gender disparity (which occurs primarily because women are self-selecting out of it before college) and other areas do not. Tech workers are far less blokey and much more aware/introspective of the issues than finance workers for example, actually the contrast is rather extreme speaking as someone who's worked in both industries, but it has less women proportionately than in finance which is contra to what your hypothesis would predict.

We also have to contend with the fact that women are underrepresented in tech (again due mostly to less women entering technical fields in college, even though they can easily do so if they wanted) across every developed country. Are we to say that chauvinism is such an extensive problem in tech across every single country, and that it's consistently more of a problem than in Law, Finance and almost every other field, and that we can't find a single exception to this in Scandinavia or one miscellaneous country?

I find that dubious and think a genetic explanation (i.e. genetics influencing group means in interests/passions) is a far better fit to the available data, especially since such differences show up at a very young age, across cultures, before significant socialization. Not to mention that these results fit with fairly mainstream science (evolutionary psychology).

This is not an attempt at a value judgement, prescription, or to diminish the very real issues that women face in the workplace (including the tech workplace). I'm just trying to get a descriptive answer to the question "what's the biggest factor behind tech having so few women?".

> they must have had the interest to get there, the opportunities, and yet they're leaving.

I see these as anecdotes. They're interesting and worthy of attention, but it's not good data that compares how many women and how many men are leaving tech when compared to other industries.

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I would really like to see a survey of 18 year old women who are enrolling into college, and straight up ask them why they didn't choose tech. My money is on them saying they have no interest, and not that they read some article about tech-unique chauvinism. I will await such results keenly.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#159

Post by nullsense » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 6:48 PM UTC

sandspar wrote: post #153

drtillberg wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a spectrum and you already know you're somewhere on that spectrum or nearby. IMHO, you have all the information a professional could reasonably supply. I tell my own ASD child, it's such a broad spectrum of otherwise loosely-associated characteristics that whatever diagnostic standards are deployed by professionals almost certainly will be reassessed as erroneous in my child's lifetime, which means all authorita…

Spectrum diseases like schizophrenia and autism seem ripe for splitting. In particular, I'm holding out hope for improved diagnoses (and treatments) once we learn more about genetics and neuroscience.

The opposite happened with ASD. It was Autism and High Functioning Autism and Asperger's and it all got merged into ASD.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#160

Post by osacial » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

BlueTemplar wrote: post #142

cma wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no opinion on this, but some think the hand axe was genetically transmitted rather than culturally: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5066817/ And that modern humans had some kind of creativity explosion substantially after they were anatomically modern.

Sadly I didn't have the time to read it all, but I note that your authors also talk of a cultural-based "shift in speed of artifact change 300‐200 ka" and maybe (or maybe not) also another (?) cognition-upgrade based shift 100-45 ka, which would be that "creativity explosion" that you are talking about ? They also talk about individual learning as a third mode, which somewhat ironically seems to be what the autism ar…

Anti-social people are actually very social - they just do anti-social things to others.

Asocial people on other side are not social, but they don't do any anti-social things - because that would mean that they have to socialize and that is opposite to being asocial.

Autistic people are not anti-survivalists, as by definition they have hightened fight-flight response, so they want to survive, however they have to really depend on society(humans by definition are social animals) to provide them survivable environment, so they could invent. Hardly any invention can happen, if there is no fertile ground, as being among morons requires different goals and skills to survive and adapt - with creativity.

Autistic people also are no anti-reproduction either - modern society is in general against reproduction, as there is overpopulation on this planet.

There are no problems to reproduce, if female is autistic, as she has much higher chances to find a partner and produce autistic offsprings, but it is more complicated for autistic males to find a partner and without a partner there is no reproduction even if males are pro-reproduction.