Autism and Invention Are Connected • Hacker News Board

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#171

Post by BlueTemplar » Tue, Dec 22, 2020, 9:47 AM UTC

osacial wrote: post #160

BlueTemplar wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rea…

I guess we mostly agree, my phrasing was just clumsy.

> There are no problems to reproduce, if female is autistic, as she has much higher chances to find a partner and produce autistic offsprings

Not only she has to birth children, in the absence of a strong (extra-)familial community she also has to be able to care well for them. Don't you think that autism, especially if in strong form, might make this a problem?

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#172

Post by galoisgirl » Tue, Dec 22, 2020, 11:04 AM UTC

hnracer wrote: post #158

galoisgirl wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exa…

I'm not denying the gender equality paradox, that in societies where women have the choice, they chose STEM less often.

I'm not denying a genetic factor either, because I can't disprove it.

What I'm arguing against is this "tabula rasa" at age 18. Women grow up with less female role models in STEM. A Barbie doll used to say "math is hard", which speaks volumes to how prevalent this message is. Sure, 18yo haven't seen the workplace yet, but they've seen how women are treated, how higher the bar is for them, how more criticism they get when they take a risk and fail, how often they'd be the only woman in the room... Going into STEM for a boy is being safe in a group of similar peers, going into STEM for a girl is harder, because all your life, you have to prove you're good despite being a girl, and because it's lonely.

My personal view is that both genetics and society matter here. I don't have a problem with genetics, but I do have one with society.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#173

Post by dusted » Tue, Dec 22, 2020, 1:02 PM UTC

cirno wrote: post #97

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 know when I started out what I struggled with and how difficult it was to learn things. But after having learned them, I have a lot of trouble explaining how I got there. I can't remember why it was hard anymore, as it just seems easy to me now. This is a large part of why I don't enjoy writing documentation or teaching others. Point being, I know about this problem in me, it's not a blind spot, there's just not a…

Exactly, most things are easy when you understand them, so even if it took a long time to "get" them, once you do, you tend to forget with time, how difficult it is.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#174

Post by throwaway80332 » Tue, Dec 22, 2020, 1:56 PM UTC

auganov wrote: post #145

Kharvok wrote: post #76

How much of autism diagnosis is just people misunderstanding people with high IQ? Obviously autism != intelligence, but I'd wager a fair amount of people are thought to be "on the spectrum" when really they just have an incredibly high IQ compared to their peers. Obviously not coming at this from a medical background.

Of course they do. Most mental/developmental conditions are nothing more than glorified personality quizzes created by PhDs. Unless you have the most boring personality in the world you're guaranteed to meet the diagnostic criteria for a whole slew of stuff they came up with. The only escape hatch to maintain some kind of legitimacy is to add a criterion of maladaptiveness - if you're doing well in every area of life…

^this*100

it's also not lost on those "professionals" that if you can diagnose enough kids with various unfalsifiable "medical conditions", you're set for life with a steady supply of paying customers in the form of easy-street "patients" you can "treat" without ever having to provide any "cure"

and anybody who questions the validity of a science not based on logical reasoning is obviously autistic themselves and thus doesn't count - real people have this emotional intelligence that you simply cannot understand, silly; you're just thinking too logically and thus you're wrong and if you don't shut up and obey we might have to put you in an asylum (for your own good, of course!) because we're so caring and understanding that I'm almost fainting just from thinking about just how good of a person I am

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#175

Post by hnracer » Tue, Dec 22, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

galoisgirl wrote: post #172

hnracer wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exa…

I'm not denying the gender equality paradox, that in societies where women have the choice, they chose STEM less often. I'm not denying a genetic factor either, because I can't disprove it. What I'm arguing against is this "tabula rasa" at age 18. Women grow up with less female role models in STEM. A Barbie doll used to say "math is hard", which speaks volumes to how prevalent this message is. Sure, 18yo haven't seen…

I think we are mostly in agreement. I agree that there are societal factors as well and that these are not good and we should work to address them.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#176

Post by Viliam1234 » Tue, Dec 22, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #169

Viliam1234 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ABA is... quite controversial, to put it mildly. It is essentially an "aversion therapy", which is a codeword for "I will keep hurting you until you learn to behave properly". (The same idea as behind many cures for homosexuality.) And yes, you can make kids stop performing some specific behaviors using ABA, so they will count it as big success. It does not make them less autist, only more terrified. https://en.wikip…

>ABA is... quite controversial, to put it mildly. It is essentially an "aversion therapy", which is a codeword for "I will keep hurting you until you learn to behave properly". This is not true. Modern ABA has no punishment as negative feedback component. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. If you find that a facility engages in said techniques they should be reported.

> Modern ABA has no punishment as negative feedback component.

Modern ABA is good at finding things that are extremely unpleasant to autists, but seem okay to normies, and use those as a punishment. Perfectly legal. (And even this improvement only came after the alternatives were made illegal.)

I am curious what would be your example of ABA without punishment. Could you perhaps send me a link to a video? Maybe we make different conclusions from watching the same thing.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#177

Post by ocschwar » Thu, Dec 24, 2020, 3:21 AM UTC

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

So many of the traits that are bundled into the label autistic are on par with lactose intolerance.

Lactose intolerance in adults is something that the majority of our species lives with. It's only the Indo-European minority that can keep drinking cow's milk after puberty.

So, for example: Eye contact aversion. Prevalent among autistics. But only a disability in cultures that equate it with dishonesty.

  Inability to tolerate fluorescent lighting. Those damned things did not exist until what, 60 years ago? How is it a pathology to  be averse to them.

Re: Autism and Invention Are Connected

#178

Post by worker767424 » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #124

thedevil wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just mammals and I wouldn't frame it as them being disposable when propagating the species. There's a bigger payout at the right tail of the distribution for male genes. Male genes can sometimes have 1000 offspring. Female genes generally can't. Male genes are generally more likely to have 0 offspring. So male genes have less to lose and more to gain by taking risks, behavioral and biological risks. See also…

> I warn you though, this is a controversial subject because of some of its possible implications I can imagine some of the implications people could come up with, but I'm curious which ones come to mind for you.

It gets into James Damore territory pretty quickly.