Neurodiversity
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Neurodiversity
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Re: Neurodiversity
#2Everyone always wants to prevent cures for autism, but no one ever suggests inventing something that gives people autism.
(It was sort of a plot point in a Vernor Vinge novel. And Brave New World?)
Re: Neurodiversity
#3Everyone always wants to prevent cures for autism, but no one ever suggests inventing something that gives people autism. (It was sort of a plot point in a Vernor Vinge novel. And Brave New World?)
Aren't those functionally the same thing?
It reminds me of a debugging technique I sometimes use, to prove to myself I understand a complex issue I try to make it worse. If I can then I almost certainly understand how to fix it too.
Re: Neurodiversity
#4The author has a point. As long as we don't understand how we're built and functioning, modifying our code is a bad idea. Learning by doing is only applicable when the thing in question is expendable, which is definitely not the case with the human genome.
Re: Neurodiversity
#5Everyone always wants to prevent cures for autism, but no one ever suggests inventing something that gives people autism. (It was sort of a plot point in a Vernor Vinge novel. And Brave New World?)
Aren't those functionally the same thing? It reminds me of a debugging technique I sometimes use, to prove to myself I understand a complex issue I try to make it worse. If I can then I almost certainly understand how to fix it too.
A reliable repro is 98% of solving the problem.
Re: Neurodiversity
#6The actual question is- what is or was neuro-diversity useful for?
Its a uncomfortable question, because the answers may insult conservative and progressive comfort zones.
The publicly condemned sadistic murderer, might be a perfectly adapted model-citizen for a society that wents savage every second generation.
The schizoid paranoid might be have been a model citizen in society ravaged by disease and bubonic plague, forming hate-filled sub-communitys, who would purge outsiders and self-quarantine.
The sexual-deviant might have been a model citizen in a society that had no real justice system, by being forced to uphold basic social contracts.
Autism would be a attempt of evolution to develop reliable automation and mass production in a medieval society in need of it.
All of this of course has to be "triggered" somehow, so there would be a feedback loop of mothers in the making, that create with the society they perceive, the counter measure of tomorrow. Have strife and stress? Next generation will have more psychopaths that see your genetic lottery ticket through that. Have a disease like the anti-baby-pill?
Lots of paranoid schizophrenic that want humanity to retreat into gated community.
Of course non of this is written in stone, it is always how nature turned out by supply and demand. What we make of this, is completely open to debate, but it has to be made upon a foundation of well researched knowledge, not upon a wishing well.
Re: Neurodiversity
#7Everyone always wants to prevent cures for autism, but no one ever suggests inventing something that gives people autism. (It was sort of a plot point in a Vernor Vinge novel. And Brave New World?)
Problem is there is autism like (maybe) Einstein or Tesla and then there is autism where the child can't communicate or adapt to any form of human social interaction or contact. The former is neurodiversity, the latter a debilitating disease.
These are not the same thing and need different terms.
Re: Neurodiversity
#8Everyone always wants to prevent cures for autism, but no one ever suggests inventing something that gives people autism. (It was sort of a plot point in a Vernor Vinge novel. And Brave New World?)
I think you're talking about Distress by Greg Egan? Was the book about the announcement of a Theory of Everything on an artificial island?
Re: Neurodiversity
#9Everyone always wants to prevent cures for autism, but no one ever suggests inventing something that gives people autism. (It was sort of a plot point in a Vernor Vinge novel. And Brave New World?)
This isn't as inconsistent as it seems. People would probably also be equally uncomfortable with both the idea of "editing" an embryo's genome to make it light-skinned, and the inverse idea of editing it to make it dark-skinned.
Re: Neurodiversity
#10I live with mental "illness". With respect to the brain, the diversity is our story. The types and subtypes are challenges on how to live, past and beyond the diagnosis.