Aspies For Freedom

They search for perfection and end up discarding those who can see outside the square.  What they then get is mediocrity.
Alison

talking to people who know something about this, they say things like nothing can ever under any circumstances be done that would make human beings less genetically diverse, if any gene were removed it would be necessary to bank huge numbers of it, because any gene could prove to be indespensible to species survival later. so maybe human beings, in practice, cannot do eugenics without eventually destroying ourselves.didn't we go thru this already? and hasn't anybody figured out that some of the most brilliant people in history were not "perfect"?

i didn't express myself well. i meant that people had told me that makeing human beings less genetically diverse was so potentially dangerous that it must never be allowed to happen , not that it was impossible.

Yeah, when it comes to preservation of the genepool people get a bit irrational and don't even know why - truth be told it's natural instinct exerting itself over whatever defines us as 'human'. That said we have a real track record as a race for letting natural instinct overpower the human being inside of us, a tide that usually can't be reversed unless there's a big enough threat that the opportunity costs to the gene pool weigh out differently (ie. for the most part, unfortunately, almost everything we think we stand for is sheer economics and evolved stated of watching our own backs or wanting help when we're down - genetic issues tend not to fall under that natural shelter).

Thinking of it from their perspective though, 'they' is a relative term, there really is no solidarity between people off spectrum or even on sometimes (nothing you don't know already), and consequently when you live in that world and haven't tasted constant ill judgement its much harder to do something that puts you in a position that will have you judged and even harder to bring a child into the world who from your perspective will have 70 or 80 years of hell which may or may be true but limited scope of personal experience definitely factors in heavily on that one. Like most people here already understand emotion comes before fact with the majority out there, logic becomes the tool or asserting emotion half the time, again - it just goes right back to nature and just more complex versions of the same games monkeys, deer, racoons, and elphants might play. I can definitely see and understand why parents would want to do it, it's the easy way to have a kid just like them and better assure that storybook life and family that our society tells us we have to have if we want to be 'normal'. That also again, from the perspective of evolutionary psychology, is a heavy issue because we used to live in herds of maybe 100 to 200 and if you weren't liked you were exiled to starve or die in other ways. Its a real shame that in our day and age our wiring hasn't changed a bit but the crap reality is we are what we are.

On one hand you could look at it as sheer evil, on another you could think 'Hey, they're putting themselves out of our misery before we even hit the table - if they really wanna cull us and it unravels their society its their problem not mine', but there's also this third concern. The third concern is that its hard to say they'd be benefiting by stamping it out just because if we are in fact a sign that the Y chromosome or something of the like is degrading it means eventually parents will be having more children they have to prenatally cull. In otherwords they could do whatever they want in terms of prenatal screening and it still may not solve a thing in terms of trying to stamp out what they see as negative genetic anomolies. Either way the human race is pretty much going to be done probably unless we can solve the problem of our basis in genes themselves (whether its genepool degredation or because animal heirarchy or emotion-first thinking mixed with WMD's and nukes is a much worse cocktail than drinking and driving). Happy thoughts eh?

I hear what your saying on group identity but when I talk about evolutionary psychology and why they fear certain differences and not just the usual deficiencies most people have - I'm saying most of the same things but cutting it closer to what I feel is really the root cause, natural selection which is something far more instinctive and less cognitive than that. When you see such a bulk majority of people making the same stupid choices you have to step back and realize "Wait, there's too much uniformity in that to be just individual stupidity - it has to be comming from somewhere" and when you look at it, that's about the only plausible explanation why while our society at a young age does nothing but tell most kids not to think like that most do - that education runs as a direct cross-current to natural instinct. As adults we tone it down and manage it better but when it comes do dating, reproduction, childbaring, this is where it resurfaces again and its at its hardest to regulate because from most angles we feel everyone has an unalienable right (which they do) to make their own choices on such matters.

I was thinking less in an evolutionary way than as on an individual basis, with regards to how many would define the term \"disorder\" since the topic has sort of shifted back towards ASDs and away from the larger picture of evolution.

In many ways, a disorder could be defined as a difficulty to adapt in a given environment. Granted, this definition isn't functional in every respect, otherwise things such as homosexuality or even \"normality\" could be considered disorders given a particular environment.

For instance \"normality\" in cognition and intelligence can be a deficit in the area of academia or other intellectual persuits where the intellectual bar is place even higher.

Einstein... DaVinci... Newton... Bill Gates... yup.

Sadly I don't think society really cares all that much. We're like any other animal on this earth - a strain of organism constantly tries to cleanse its genepool to make its overall species more and more viable. Trouble is for us we don't have REAL viability tests employed in our way of lives so we're just using pettiness as our guide - who knows what this'll turn out in terms of natural law...

The way I'm really feeling now - if they really want their world the way they want it and have no one in it that doesn't conform or at least not conform in a way they deem acceptable - pffft, fine, let em. If things do change for the worse let it be their problem. We, just like them, don't owe anyone anything and I don't know why we'd want to work so hard to ensure future generations of aspies when things will be this way as long as human beings have 46 chromosomes. If there are no aspies left its really them putting themselves out of our misery permanently.

Well, there's truth assessed by logical thinking and actual care for the bottomline truth and then theres.....well, animal emotional truth. That second is what our world seems to be built on when you get to the relationship world, its meant to be bungled, and the cream rolls to the bottom while a lot of what should be there instead floats to the top. Again, if that's their world I'd rather let them have it and die single without passing on my seed than bring another aspie into this world on my own just to go through all the tribulations I did just to see that there's no hope and end up thinking the kinds of things when he/she's 26 turning 27 that I am now. Don't get me wrong, I still have morals about how I handle people and all that but its getting to where humanity's just feeling like another animal species and if it drives itself extinct....wait...what was it that made it so important in the first place?....oh well....just like evolution made it evolution may just as likely destroy is...thus is just the flow of life in general.

Sophist, my thought is that the whole game of life is pretty much based on the inherent will of the collective genepool - rather loosely, you still have all kinds of things and hobbies as well as a handful of emotions varying from person to person that are kind of on their own. Still though, it seems like we as humanity (AS, NT, and otherwise) are largely slaves to it and while we can make the moralistically and ethically right decisions when they aren't too close to home it seems like the power of genetic instinct almost always wins with people and the few shining cases where it doesn't when a situation is too close to home are still too few to make a lot of difference in this world. Whether its war, murder, theft, genocide, racism, pettiness, heirarchical need, intolerance of almost any type that' aimed toward something that's completely neither here nor there that doesn't harm anyone - it seems like almost all the evils of the world are based in the fact that we are animals and are slaves to a genetic structure. The ideas of good and evil themselves seem to come from either choosing to be a human being or chosing to be an animal - regardless though it seems like the animal is the stronger of the two currents. I really don't know what will happen but I'd wager that yeah, if people can stamp out anything that's a discomfort to them or what they'd feel would be a discomfort to itself they probably would. It doesn't enter their minds always that they're trying to purify the gene pool and a lot of people don't want to think of it that callously but they'll almost always think of another way to put it, rationalize, and bulls--- themselves into feeling ok with what they're doing. I don't hate them, I don't hate the players, I hate the game itself and the fact that its got this most cohersive power across the whole planet and maybe even all life as we know it in the universe.

I agree with most of your points, but have to hesitate at the last statement about life as we know it in the universe.  We don't know any other forms of life except what's right here on earth.  That's rather like a caterpillar munching on leaves in somebody's back yard trying to understand what life would be like in the depths of the ocean: they have no other point of reference but their own little cabbage.  
Alison

true, but my own thought on that is this: with anything coming into being on its own, via random chemical combination or bombardment - even if it's not genetic in our sense wouldn't it be prone to radiation and at least something like free-radical activity? Wouldn't it at least have some experience with environment ratcheting with its self worth? if a structure reproduces and that structure at its earliest form is prone to radiation or oxidation bombardment or is no better than its creator it stands to reason that this is a process that nothing could luck out on - I think the better question probably would be is there a race still alive much older than our own that went through the same quarrels we did, faced its own inner demons, ever last grimey aspect of what it was, and still won out in the end? If so it would be interesting to see how they achieved such ends and I'd kinda doubt it's quite as happy of a story as we'd hope for.

Yes, definitely.

And I also think a large part of this equation is that, no matter how social a species has become, individual preservation is still first rung as per importance. Social constructs I think were developed to improve the chances of the individual. But inherent selfishness is certainly the entire purpose of socializing. No altruism occurs without some personal benefit or perceived benefit.