02-13-2006, 10:06 PM
02-23-2006, 01:50 PM
It might be that clumsy people might not be selected for combat roles ensuring their survival. Most likely our genetic ancestors were left at home to tend to the sheep or crops. Of course, that did not prevent the enemy from killing them, stealing their sheep and burning their crops.
02-23-2006, 06:20 PM
"Basically, the arguement is that because we're better at focussing on a single thing than the majority of NTs we're better at information processing tasks, such as finding errors between multiple copies of things, or checking computer programs for errors, etc. (also there's problem solving abilities associated with that one)"
okay, let's think about that one. Let's say before the industrial revolution the mass of the population were illiterate labourers. Multi-tasking abilities were not necessary since people learned a trade from a young age. Focussing on one particular job and being repetitious was neccessary. Being able to memorize and recite large amounts of information could be an advantage to those who were illiterate and without computers. The rise of technology really is replacing rote tasks and physical labour. But instead of being replaced by the machine, some are mastering it. But then you are speaking only of those autistics that are able to use computers to make money. Mult-tasking seems to rule and other talents that I sorely lack: ability to manipulate and talents that NT's excel at.
okay, let's think about that one. Let's say before the industrial revolution the mass of the population were illiterate labourers. Multi-tasking abilities were not necessary since people learned a trade from a young age. Focussing on one particular job and being repetitious was neccessary. Being able to memorize and recite large amounts of information could be an advantage to those who were illiterate and without computers. The rise of technology really is replacing rote tasks and physical labour. But instead of being replaced by the machine, some are mastering it. But then you are speaking only of those autistics that are able to use computers to make money. Mult-tasking seems to rule and other talents that I sorely lack: ability to manipulate and talents that NT's excel at.
02-23-2006, 10:16 PM
http://www.autismtheory.org/topotheory.html
This is link to a very interesting theory that autism evolved when most of human kind lived in small isolated bands. I can see some advantages autistic people would have if the world's population suddenly decreased dramatically in the event of war or disease.
This is link to a very interesting theory that autism evolved when most of human kind lived in small isolated bands. I can see some advantages autistic people would have if the world's population suddenly decreased dramatically in the event of war or disease.
02-24-2006, 02:29 PM
What mostly is the problem with employers is how they select applicants and train them. I do not do well in the interviews and selection part. Many office jobs I could do I can not get because they are not considered "entry level". An entry level position is "receptionist" which I cannot do because of auditory processing problems.
Strange to say that most people who use technology do not understand how it works. Eliminating everyone with AS in the future would not be advantageous to the development of future technology.
Strange to say that most people who use technology do not understand how it works. Eliminating everyone with AS in the future would not be advantageous to the development of future technology.
02-26-2006, 11:57 PM
Some ancient cultures valued individuals who could memorize and orally recite large quantities of text or information. I also believe that people who were considered sages, seers, witches, healers are not being pushed into the population of people who are considered "mentally ill". I think many many people have been misdiagnosed with schziophrenia or other disorders when they had autism. They could have made more positive contributions to society but were prevented because they did not "fit in".
02-27-2006, 10:56 PM
Tiger of Malaysia Wrote:
Aspie's are essentially naturally gifted at a certain area of interest, and as long as this interest is compatible with a career, Aspergers is an advantage. To use the example in wikipedia
"The child obsessed with naval architecture may grow up to be an accomplished shipwright, for instance."
As jobs become more and more specialized, Asperger's becomes more and more a gift.
"The child obsessed with naval architecture may grow up to be an accomplished shipwright, for instance."
As jobs become more and more specialized, Asperger's becomes more and more a gift.
The opposite could also be argued. As interpersonal and mangerial skills become more required in today's jobs, AS becomes more of a curse rather than a gift.
02-27-2006, 11:53 PM
Problems with people not knowing how to manage and interpersonally relate with folks in the workplace are endemic. Not just true for aspies. I'm actually considered to be one of the better managers around the joint where I work. Why? Because I do performance evaluations, check the budgets and don't overspend, stick up for the people in my group, am considered to be fair and objective...stuff like that. People mostly have to learn this stuff through trial and error, it seems.
03-01-2006, 01:57 PM
theosoph Wrote:
Tiger of Malaysia Wrote:
Aspie's are essentially naturally gifted at a certain area of interest, and as long as this interest is compatible with a career, Aspergers is an advantage. To use the example in wikipedia
"The child obsessed with naval architecture may grow up to be an accomplished shipwright, for instance."
As jobs become more and more specialized, Asperger's becomes more and more a gift.
"The child obsessed with naval architecture may grow up to be an accomplished shipwright, for instance."
As jobs become more and more specialized, Asperger's becomes more and more a gift.
The opposite could also be argued. As interpersonal and mangerial skills become more required in today's jobs, AS becomes more of a curse rather than a gift.
Requiring interpersonal and managerial skills (good verbal and non-verbal communication skills) is a current trend in hiring these days. This is because the greedy money crunching financial whizzes running companies do not want to hire managers to tell workers what to do. They also want people who can multi-task and manage themselves. They just want to have to pay less workers to do more work so that they can make more money. It is only to their advantages (and stock-holders). It can be short-sighted because a major crisis will put them out of business.
Alot of companies lose very innovative and creative people because they can not put much effort into implementing methods of communicating and dealing with people who have different communication skill levels and styles. They put the emphasis on hiring for "personality fit" which really limits their creativity. Managerial administration is much more than refereeing interpersonal conflicts between workers.
03-02-2006, 01:52 PM
There is a decided lack of mentoring in workplaces today. I would do very well in a job where I could be mentored but I find that people doing training resent others, see them as a threat to their job security and just leave them to "Figure it out for themselves". I might be able to cope with all the technical duties to the job but their is more to it than that.
Companies mostly promote people into "managers" not because they are going to manage anyone but because it represents an upward career move that seems to motivate some workers. Typically financial companies have hundreds of vice presidents just because dealing with a VP makes their clients feel more important.
What was the original posting about anyway?
Companies mostly promote people into "managers" not because they are going to manage anyone but because it represents an upward career move that seems to motivate some workers. Typically financial companies have hundreds of vice presidents just because dealing with a VP makes their clients feel more important.
What was the original posting about anyway?
04-04-2006, 06:07 PM
The workings of evolution are still not really well understood. The concepts of "survival of the fittest" and advantegeous traits being passed on to future generations may be true if looked at just on the surface but I believe evolution works in much subtler ways also. Medical technology may have changed the rules of the game but the game is still being played. Take a look at this article I found. It says domesticated animals usually have smaller brains than their wild counterparts. Could it be that most of humanity has become domesticated but we aspies still retain some level of wildness in us?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,...74,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,...74,00.html
Quote:
Maybe because she's a fox
Science Notebook by Terence Kealey
WHY DO WOMEN have smaller brains than men? Male brains weigh around 1.25kg; female brains weigh on average 100g less.
One possible answer comes from an unexpected study of foxes. In 1959 Dmitri Belyaev, a Russian geneticist, launched a long-term experiment to tame foxes. Starting with a population of caged wild animals, he selected from each generation the puppies who were friendliest (or, initially, least hostile) to humans, breeding only from them.
After 35 generations he produced animals that had been transformed from the usual snarling fearfulness of wild foxes into animals that were similar to domestic dogs. The tamed foxes wagged their tails, whined for affection, were submissive, barked like dogs and their ears flopped. As Darwin said: “Not a single domestic animal can be named which has not in some country drooping ears.” Belyaev seems to have concertinaed all this into 50 years when it took 10,000 years to domesticate wolves as dogs.
And the tame foxes’ brains were smaller. Domestic animals generally do have small brains. On average, domestic dog, cat, sheep and pig brains weigh 25 per cent less than those of wild animals. The mechanism remains a mystery. A recent study by Elena Jazin and her colleagues from Uppsala University in Sweden, published in Current Biology, reported that of 30,000 brain genes about 40 showed differences between tame and wild foxes. All we do know is that blood levels of stress hormones are lower in tame than wild animals and that brain levels of anti-stress hormones are higher.
But would it be dangerous to suppose that women’s brains are smaller than men’s because, over the millennia, we men have been selecting friendly women with whom to breed? And that therefore we have domesticated them? And that they, in turn, have selected assertive men? Interestingly, human skulls of both sexes have been shrinking over the past few tens of thousands of years, suggesting that as human beings have been increasingly domesticated, so they have shrunk their brains — without losing the gender difference.
One force that drives up brain size is social interaction. It was Robert Trivers, the biologist, who showed in his 1985 book, Social Evolution, that there is a direct correlation between the size of a species’ brain, the size of its social groups and the degree of social interaction between the animals of the group. Men and women inhabit different social spheres, and though women may enjoy deeper social interactions than men, it is probably men who, as tribal leaders, have experienced wider social interactions over evolutionary time.
In any event, small brain size seems to optimise emotional intelligence. In a paper published last month in Current Biology, Brian Hare and his colleagues at Harvard University showed that domesticated foxes were better than wild foxes at reading human social cues. For example, domesticated foxes instinctively understand a person’s intention when he or she points at an object and they investigate it. Social intelligence, therefore, seems to be increased when fearfulness and stress are lowered by selective breeding for tameness. Certainly our border terrier at home, Rusty, is uncanny in his ability to understand our intentions (when he wants to).
And then there is body size. Irrespective of other factors, there is a direct correlation between the size of an animal’s body and its brain. We human beings have haremic tendencies, so women are smaller than men. So their brains are too.
Does any of this matter? A recent paper in the British Journal of Psychology by Paul Irwing, of the University of Manchester, and Richard Lynn, of the University of Ulster, claims that more men have very high IQs than women do. But IQ tests remain so controversial and so subject to cultural factors that we will need another half century before fully understanding them. Not only that, we also simply do not know enough about our brains to draw safe conclusions from any of these observations.
But what I do know is that such speculations are dangerous in the academic world. Lawrence Summers, the President of Harvard, lost his job when he conjectured that women might not scale the same intellectual heights as men, so for me to continue this theme might be perilous.
The author is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham.
Science Notebook by Terence Kealey
WHY DO WOMEN have smaller brains than men? Male brains weigh around 1.25kg; female brains weigh on average 100g less.
One possible answer comes from an unexpected study of foxes. In 1959 Dmitri Belyaev, a Russian geneticist, launched a long-term experiment to tame foxes. Starting with a population of caged wild animals, he selected from each generation the puppies who were friendliest (or, initially, least hostile) to humans, breeding only from them.
After 35 generations he produced animals that had been transformed from the usual snarling fearfulness of wild foxes into animals that were similar to domestic dogs. The tamed foxes wagged their tails, whined for affection, were submissive, barked like dogs and their ears flopped. As Darwin said: “Not a single domestic animal can be named which has not in some country drooping ears.” Belyaev seems to have concertinaed all this into 50 years when it took 10,000 years to domesticate wolves as dogs.
And the tame foxes’ brains were smaller. Domestic animals generally do have small brains. On average, domestic dog, cat, sheep and pig brains weigh 25 per cent less than those of wild animals. The mechanism remains a mystery. A recent study by Elena Jazin and her colleagues from Uppsala University in Sweden, published in Current Biology, reported that of 30,000 brain genes about 40 showed differences between tame and wild foxes. All we do know is that blood levels of stress hormones are lower in tame than wild animals and that brain levels of anti-stress hormones are higher.
But would it be dangerous to suppose that women’s brains are smaller than men’s because, over the millennia, we men have been selecting friendly women with whom to breed? And that therefore we have domesticated them? And that they, in turn, have selected assertive men? Interestingly, human skulls of both sexes have been shrinking over the past few tens of thousands of years, suggesting that as human beings have been increasingly domesticated, so they have shrunk their brains — without losing the gender difference.
One force that drives up brain size is social interaction. It was Robert Trivers, the biologist, who showed in his 1985 book, Social Evolution, that there is a direct correlation between the size of a species’ brain, the size of its social groups and the degree of social interaction between the animals of the group. Men and women inhabit different social spheres, and though women may enjoy deeper social interactions than men, it is probably men who, as tribal leaders, have experienced wider social interactions over evolutionary time.
In any event, small brain size seems to optimise emotional intelligence. In a paper published last month in Current Biology, Brian Hare and his colleagues at Harvard University showed that domesticated foxes were better than wild foxes at reading human social cues. For example, domesticated foxes instinctively understand a person’s intention when he or she points at an object and they investigate it. Social intelligence, therefore, seems to be increased when fearfulness and stress are lowered by selective breeding for tameness. Certainly our border terrier at home, Rusty, is uncanny in his ability to understand our intentions (when he wants to).
And then there is body size. Irrespective of other factors, there is a direct correlation between the size of an animal’s body and its brain. We human beings have haremic tendencies, so women are smaller than men. So their brains are too.
Does any of this matter? A recent paper in the British Journal of Psychology by Paul Irwing, of the University of Manchester, and Richard Lynn, of the University of Ulster, claims that more men have very high IQs than women do. But IQ tests remain so controversial and so subject to cultural factors that we will need another half century before fully understanding them. Not only that, we also simply do not know enough about our brains to draw safe conclusions from any of these observations.
But what I do know is that such speculations are dangerous in the academic world. Lawrence Summers, the President of Harvard, lost his job when he conjectured that women might not scale the same intellectual heights as men, so for me to continue this theme might be perilous.
The author is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham.
04-08-2006, 10:37 AM
I also think it's possible there may be some genetic advantage they haven't worked out yet. Yes, there is the thing about looking younger, but I think there could also be a proper epidemiological study, not to figure out the gene(s) so they can correct/delete them, but figure out what positive properties and attributes go with that. Just like the sickle cell/malaria resistant thing there must be something going on.
I heard on BBC Radio 4 recently a programme about a village in Derbyshire where they had quarantined themselves during the bubonic plague outbreak. It was a very courageous act on the part of the villagers because about half of the population died over the course of a year but they refused to leave and spread the disease elsewhere. Because it's a rural/fairly remote village and a fairly close knit community to this day, lots of descendants of the villagers who survived the plague still live there. A modern study was carried out to examine their DNA which pinpointed a particular gene they had in common.
Another strand of research, aside from the biochemical/DNA research could look into an epidemiological study from an anecdotal/medical records point of view - to take down family histories and figure out who possibly had AS/were somewhere on the spectrum and note what ailments they suffered from/what was the cause of death. Except I can envisage one problem with this - personally speaking, I'm totally estranged from my family and I believe AS had no small part in that. I guess family break-up and estrangement might make it more difficult to conduct that kind of study.
I heard on BBC Radio 4 recently a programme about a village in Derbyshire where they had quarantined themselves during the bubonic plague outbreak. It was a very courageous act on the part of the villagers because about half of the population died over the course of a year but they refused to leave and spread the disease elsewhere. Because it's a rural/fairly remote village and a fairly close knit community to this day, lots of descendants of the villagers who survived the plague still live there. A modern study was carried out to examine their DNA which pinpointed a particular gene they had in common.
Another strand of research, aside from the biochemical/DNA research could look into an epidemiological study from an anecdotal/medical records point of view - to take down family histories and figure out who possibly had AS/were somewhere on the spectrum and note what ailments they suffered from/what was the cause of death. Except I can envisage one problem with this - personally speaking, I'm totally estranged from my family and I believe AS had no small part in that. I guess family break-up and estrangement might make it more difficult to conduct that kind of study.
04-14-2006, 04:31 AM
It seems to me that the bigger the NT population, the more they fight; whereas the bigger the AS population, the more we focus on our individual interests. Perhaps our lack of interest in domination and ruling the world may eventually turn to our advantage: Aspies might inherit the earth. Although what state it will be left in after the NTs have finished with it probably doesn't bear thinking about.
Alison (appalled that nuclear power is apparently back on the agenda)
Alison (appalled that nuclear power is apparently back on the agenda)
04-28-2006, 05:04 AM
john cranberrysauce Wrote:
I should point out that evolution doesn't promote favourable genes, it removes unfavourable ones. Thus, many characteristics that make little difference either way to survival will persist.
I have to disagree with the first statement of the above quote. A creature with favourable genes ie, a genetic resistance to parasites, would be more likely to reproduce successfully and have more of it's young grow to reproductive age. We can see something similar happening at the moment in Africa - there are more tuskless elephants being born which remain tuskless throughout life. They have no ivory to hunt them for, so poachers leave them alone to breed and pass on their genes. In this case, human culture has influenced the spread of the tuskless variety of elephant, which is now a survival strategy.
Alison
05-15-2007, 10:36 AM
nathanww Wrote:
Here's my theory about this
Autism genes have for a long time been expressed only very rarely. I believe that the reason they stayed in the genome was simply because there are many genes involved. In a way, their existance provides a kind of species-wide eveloution, a way for every fifty years or so to have someone who could come up with truly brilliant ideas and move the whole species along to a new paradigm(Think Thomas Edison).
Only recently, with the invention of computers, etc, has it really had a survival advantage for the individual, and this may account at least in part for the eexplosion of autism cases.
Autism genes have for a long time been expressed only very rarely. I believe that the reason they stayed in the genome was simply because there are many genes involved. In a way, their existance provides a kind of species-wide eveloution, a way for every fifty years or so to have someone who could come up with truly brilliant ideas and move the whole species along to a new paradigm(Think Thomas Edison).
Only recently, with the invention of computers, etc, has it really had a survival advantage for the individual, and this may account at least in part for the eexplosion of autism cases.
I'm not sure if there has actually been an explosion of autism cases. It's more likely that diagnosis has become more common and at earlier ages.