I recently decided to re-read Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited, both by Aldous Huxley. In Brave New World, society is too social and the world is over-populated. In Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley says that we need to use birth control and increase the average IQ as some of the few out of many steps to keeping the future from becoming a Brave New World.
The average IQ for autistics is higher than the average IQ for NTs, so if we kept autistics around, the average IQ would be bound to increase. Since LFAs almost never marry and have children and the chances of a HFA marrying and having children is only 1 in 11 (only about 9%), just having autistics around might decrease population because they'd take up space in families and then few of them would have children. Also, everyone knows that autistics are not as social as NTs, so if we kept them around, it might mean the prevention of society becoming too social like in Brave New World.
With these points in mind, society shouldn't be looking at autistics as defective, but as the solution to the problem of our society quickly becoming a Brave New World. Your thoughts on this?

I think reducing the variation of humankind to a higher average IQ would not help the world at all. There are horrible people with a brilljant IQ. There are great people with a low IQ. And vice versa. I can not imagine that weeding out lower IQ will do the world good. In fact it will harm our society a lot. Because we then take the place of god (no matter if you believe in god or not) and decide who we like to be in our world and who not.

And if you want to create a higher intelligent population it will be those with the high IQ and the pedigree breeding attitude that will decide. Not the nicest people in my opinion.

I'm happy they probably won't choose me to procreate. Children in a world like that would be a very bad idea I think.

Autism spectrum would be exactly one of the "defects" that Huxley would have advocated exterminating.

I haven't read BNW revisited, but have found it on-line now, and will have a look.   Thanks!

We're already, in the developed world, well into BNW territory as it is, and I don't know that autistics as such would be able to do anything to prevent it.  Nor, as hyke points out, does IQ have anything to with people's motivations and actions.

I have nothing against people getting better education so their IQ will increase, but I do have something against weeding out people with lower IQs. I'm just saying that if they're worried about the population in general dumbing down, they shouldn't say that autistics are defective because most of them are geniuses, even if they require some assistance in some areas. Everyone is of value, no matter what flaws they have or how high or low their IQs are. As Hannah Montana sang, "Nobody's perfect." I wonder where I would be in the Scientific Caste system of Brave New World...

"IQ" is unrelated to level of education.  There are dim people with rich daddies at university, and there are geniuses starving in the gutter.  Also, IQ scores are often completely meaningless in relation to autistic people, because our skills scatter is so pronounced.

There are autistic people with IQs less than 70, there are autistic people with IQs over 120.  The "most of them are geniuses" nonsense belongs in the bin with the refrigerator mothers and the idiots savant.  We shouldn't have to keep harping on about the genius myth to justify our existence, as if the only autistic people who are worthy of life are the smart ones who are good at maths, and those with lower IQs or talents in areas other than maths/science are failures and, well, not really good enough to deserve the title 'autistic'.

Perhaps the genius myth got started in Nazi Germany to protect Hans Asperger's kids from the gas chambers, and as America is kind of cutthroat and intolerant (a little bit fascist), we still maintain the myth.

And it's a grand kick in the teeth to those autistic people it doesn't cover.

If we 'sell' ourselves and our right to exist on the basis of non-existent intellectual or scientific superiority, that automatically implies that those autistic people who DON'T do well at IQ tests or sums are less worthy and, because 'autistic people are geniuses' it also means they're not worthy of being autistic, they're failures.

So, rather than hiding behind a convenient myth dreamed up generations ago, why not actually 'fess up and accept that there is the same spread of IQs and talents among autistic people as among the wider population?

I think it was Conquest of the Planet of the Apes that showed me how fascist American culture could get in the 1960s or 1970s- how borderline it was...

So, are you going to challenge it or hide behind a convenient stereotype?

Sure I will challenge it.  What is the evidence anyway about Asperger and computer programming?  Does Asperger make a better computer programmer?  I tend to think so.... if you can think like a computer.

Word, word, word, word, word.

Inaccurate "positive" stereotypes are just as inaccurate as inaccurate  "negative" stereotypes, and in order to move past stereotypes, we all need to be free of ALL stereotypes.

Totally agree. I have been at times characterized as highly intelligent or a genius, but as soon as I hear someone going off on "see, autism isn't all that bad, if some of them are 'smart like her'" I have to restrain myself from foaming at the mouth. Also, while I tend to be good with academic areas, there are many many skills that I'm way behind most people in. Even when it comes to what the IQ test measures, on some aspects I scored in the top 9%, on some others I scored in the bottom 1%.

Even if the average IQ score was much lower, but the society and how we play roles in it were much different, and people's attitudes were really different, would be a much better one than what we have today (even if IQ were a reliable measure of "general intelligence").

Basically, I think that diversity of ideas and people, and acceptance of this diversity, is one of the strongest things about a society. IQ has very little to do with this, except as much as IQ is a part of that diversity, like musical talent or physical characteristics, or interests or batting average. Autistics are valuable not because of being an extra special goodie for the human race, but by being equally as good - just that our standing is often put into jeopardy by being in the minority in a world that doesn't like to accept or accommodate us.

Actually, it is possible for education improve scores on IQ tests.

Ever read Gould's Mismeasure of Man?

IQ tests measure the ability to take IQ tests.

Exactly. If the test focused on my visual-spatial reasoning, like the matrix reasoning and block design subtests, my IQ would be in the top 10%. Whereas, if it were based on skills like in arithmetic and vocabulary, then I'd likely have an IQ in the bottom 1%.