07-03-2007, 09:39 AM
Randomly chosen Greek letters ftw! I've tried to put most of the ideas I've been expressing into this. It's quite long, but if you have the time it maybe interesting.
As part of our argument for autistic rights, we tend to cite examples of geniuses with autistic traits. How may of these people are alive? How many are we 100% sure have AS? It's sort of a fallacy. The number of aspies who are successful is small even though our level of abilities is high. The social element is the main thing holding us down, as well as procrastination in some cases. While the latter is easily solvable, the former is more difficult.
NT will respect us for our talent before they respect us for who we are. Proving that we are useful rather than citing examples of long dead people who might not have had AS is a sort of activism in itself.
Together the autistic community can help itself and as a side effect help everyone by expressing our talent. The problem here is the procrastination that I earlier mentioned. We haven't made the systems that bring our ideas outside theory. In one thread I took note of this:
As part of our argument for autistic rights, we tend to cite examples of geniuses with autistic traits. How may of these people are alive? How many are we 100% sure have AS? It's sort of a fallacy. The number of aspies who are successful is small even though our level of abilities is high. The social element is the main thing holding us down, as well as procrastination in some cases. While the latter is easily solvable, the former is more difficult.
NT will respect us for our talent before they respect us for who we are. Proving that we are useful rather than citing examples of long dead people who might not have had AS is a sort of activism in itself.
Together the autistic community can help itself and as a side effect help everyone by expressing our talent. The problem here is the procrastination that I earlier mentioned. We haven't made the systems that bring our ideas outside theory. In one thread I took note of this:
Quote:
Preface:
Yeah I know, we aren't big on organization, but we still need it. We've had many ideas over time, but most of them soon became too unrealistic, and I think it's because we lack a quality control mechanism.
The Game:
A useful analogy is to think of the spread of ideas on AFF as a game with, rules, players, etc. Like all games there a metagame (the game about the game), which defines how the game would likely unfold. Though the players are a component the rules are more fundamental. Over a period of time people will post new ideas, as the rate increases the better ones get more attention, so there isn't much to improve there. For realistic ideas to grow we have to turn to the rules.
There seems to be a life cycle to these ideas. They start small then grow a fanbase that adds on new thoughts in an unorganized way each one more elaborate. What started as a simple idea has grown to be unworkablely difficult. At some point the plan runs into a dead end and is forgotten about. That's what happened to Aspergia, recently it's happened to the magazine, and if we don't fix the problem soon it will happen to the think tank.
The New Game
To fix the problem we need to make a new game; one that will, criticise ideas (and by that I don't mean "oh this will never work, forgot the whole thing") and organize big ideas into small manageable steps. Perhaps a sub-forum with specific type of posts, such as proposals and criticisms (the former being revised by the latter), as well some means to get them started in a small way. It should work better than what we have; I would be open to any input or criticism (yes, it starts here and now!) that anyone might have.
Yeah I know, we aren't big on organization, but we still need it. We've had many ideas over time, but most of them soon became too unrealistic, and I think it's because we lack a quality control mechanism.
The Game:
A useful analogy is to think of the spread of ideas on AFF as a game with, rules, players, etc. Like all games there a metagame (the game about the game), which defines how the game would likely unfold. Though the players are a component the rules are more fundamental. Over a period of time people will post new ideas, as the rate increases the better ones get more attention, so there isn't much to improve there. For realistic ideas to grow we have to turn to the rules.
There seems to be a life cycle to these ideas. They start small then grow a fanbase that adds on new thoughts in an unorganized way each one more elaborate. What started as a simple idea has grown to be unworkablely difficult. At some point the plan runs into a dead end and is forgotten about. That's what happened to Aspergia, recently it's happened to the magazine, and if we don't fix the problem soon it will happen to the think tank.
The New Game
To fix the problem we need to make a new game; one that will, criticise ideas (and by that I don't mean "oh this will never work, forgot the whole thing") and organize big ideas into small manageable steps. Perhaps a sub-forum with specific type of posts, such as proposals and criticisms (the former being revised by the latter), as well some means to get them started in a small way. It should work better than what we have; I would be open to any input or criticism (yes, it starts here and now!) that anyone might have.
It's difficult to suddenly put a complex system into practice. The "new game" despite having all of the elements needed to solve the problem was to too complex. To make an evolving system we need an evolving meta-system. This appear to be even more complicated, but it isn't. When the old system cannot contain the complexity of the work, then we evolve the system. If we let the system be static, then our ideas will never be more than ideas.
Making these first systems would require the right starting blocks and input. It would need to be simple meme-like and contribute to some sort of evolution.
