tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post113622788053389182..comments2024-03-27T03:19:11.216-04:00Comments on Assistant Village Idiot: Your New Masters Will Have Asperger’sAssistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-46111629675675328342020-10-02T20:53:36.495-04:002020-10-02T20:53:36.495-04:00One of your themes lately has been the importance ...One of your themes lately has been the importance of resilience. That isn't the stock in trade of autism spectrum folks.jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01792036361407527304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-63369749012033059782020-10-02T18:49:32.846-04:002020-10-02T18:49:32.846-04:00Some thoughts:
Many technically minded people und...Some thoughts:<br /><br />Many technically minded people understand the amount of brainpower it takes to integrate the often subtle signals that humans use to indicate their wishes/thoughts. It takes a special kind of person to get a group to work together productively, without fracturing along the lines of conflict.<br /><br />Many smart people overestimate the importance of IQ. Interpersonal skills are a very important component of getting ahead in life. Many high IQ couples birth children that are severely deficient in getting along with people.<br /><br />In the old days, a very smart person would usually marry a person with a more nurturing personality. That led to children who had both brains, and a warm personality. Similarly with athletic abilities; the physical composition wasn't enough. You also had to have the emotional toughness to handle setbacks, the ability to get along with a team, and the humility to benefit from a coach's experience.<br /><br />The old adage that opposites attract? Might have had some genetic benefits, in giving offspring a range of traits that fit them for whatever changes came along. In humans, the Jack of all trades is king; specialists perish if the environment changes.Linda Foxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15024201252345608291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-9258304120619617822010-04-01T08:00:43.434-04:002010-04-01T08:00:43.434-04:00Bad Penny! You're wrong. I have Asperger , I h...Bad Penny! You're wrong. I have Asperger , I have power and work for more. I am VERY interested, because I see political correctness is killing the Western World. I saw this when I was three (I am now 40) and I always wondered why so few other people saw this (and still do).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-87508531242087120932009-02-24T21:37:00.000-05:002009-02-24T21:37:00.000-05:00I've always been sceptical of the fact that sudden...I've always been sceptical of the fact that suddenly every incredibly cerebral, socially awkward, clumsy genius (particularly those that reside in that esoteric, ulterior dimension known as the Information Technology lair) has Asperger Syndrome. Sure, I can see how most techies would have it, as techies tend to relate better to mechanical contraptions of pure logic such as computers and the rigid, systematic thinking involved in computer and mathematical sciences, but unless someone has a pronounced deficit whereby they cannot read nonverbal social cues, simply having a rigid personality is not definitive enough for a diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome. As someone who is bipolar myself, I got really interested in working in counseling, especially in the area of early childhood development. And I see a lot of patients who have high-functioning autism/AS. There are a few patients whom I see who clearly do not have HFA/AS, they just happen to merely have a few set characteristics (e.g. obsessive interests in numbers, mathematics, computers, etc) and are often very introverted people who simply are more interested in expending their considerable energies toward their interests. There is a peculiar immersion to whatever they become ensconced in, but this immersion is not so intense that it compromises their abilities to talk to people and pick up on signals from various interactions on the periphery. These people are still polite, and they acknowledge people as sentient forms, and can judge whether or not they need to put their activities aside in an effort to assist and interact with other people around them. <BR/><BR/>However, there are those who truly have High Functioning Autism/AS who do not pick up on social cues at all and are subject to the particular rigidity that characterizes people like Ray Kurzweil (whom I strongly suspect might have some aspects of his cognition and perception that are very similar to the logical and apersonal thinking (I know that isn't a word, but it's the closest approximation I could come up with; the emblem of autistic thinking is that while they have superior logical/analytical reasoning and thus can relate more to computers and machines than they can to people), they lack the kind of personal intuition that would lead to making human connections. And I think that this is partially due to the fact that computers are for the most part more concrete, exact (providing they are all functioning nominally) and well....predictable, to the autistic person's mind, than would a human being, who has these whack emotions that are totally out of their range of thinking. <BR/><BR/>But then again, I think that there are those who don't have an autism spectrum disorder who may have aspects of autism (logical/analytical, abstract comprehension on different levels than most people, difficulty picking up nonverbal cues, is sociologically aberrant and does not relate to ppl in the same way, etc) but don't necessarily have the disorder. So I think that a few areas of distinction have to be present in order for one to have autism. Particular among these is the inability to interpret the nonverbal signals of the social world. The crux of this is that someone can have technological inclinations and obsessions with certain topics and not necessarily have Asperger Syndrome. I really think that AS is more of a personality thing than an actual autism spectrum disorder. Because unless the person has severe developmental delays leaving them bereft of social intuition, and severe organizational problems such that they literally cannot function enough to hold down a job for more than a month, they don't have a pervasive developmental disorder such as autism or AS. These people could just be socially inept or not care very much for social conventions or what others think in the first place. They could just be socially inept geeks. Autism is a heck of a lot rarer than statistics would show, and a heck of a lot more complicated than mere social ineptitude. This is why it's so greatly misdiagnosed and overdiagnosed.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-1144165314791015732006-04-04T11:41:00.000-04:002006-04-04T11:41:00.000-04:00The trouble with the clergyman's criticism (that t...The trouble with the clergyman's criticism (that the scientists are "children playing with what they don't understand") is this. Either the clergyman believes himself to belong to a superior species, better than normal humans (in the way that Marxists seem to consider themselves, when they classify everybody's thoughts <I>but</I> their own as being motivated by "class interests"). Or the clergyman admits that he himself is a human being and he himself doesn't understand things any better.<BR/><BR/>In the latter case, the decision to leave human beings in the same state they're in now -- short lives and all -- is itself a <I>choice</I>. Made by inaction. By the same sorts of alleged children who are supposed to not be competent to choose to live longer instead.<BR/><BR/>In other words, religion has the same problem as Marxism: it wants to abolish human reason and autonomy, yet not to abolish it.<BR/><BR/>That's quite a problem, and I don't think I'm going to be the only person to notice it. C.S. Lewis certainly described it, e.g., in the dialogue of Reason with the Spirit of the Age in his <I>Pilgrim's Regress</I>...<BR/><BR/>--Erich Schwarz / emsch at caltech eduAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-1136502703610777232006-01-05T18:11:00.000-05:002006-01-05T18:11:00.000-05:00I agree that those on the autisitc spectrum seldom...I agree that those on the autisitc spectrum seldom have much interest in power per se. But they do have a strong interest in making things be a certain way, and can be rather persistent in making it so. They won't think of it as controlling us. They will think of it as getting it right.<BR/><BR/>NTL, your scenario doesn't sound far-fetched to me. It may be a matter of who gets in first and hardest.Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-1136490361223888222006-01-05T14:46:00.000-05:002006-01-05T14:46:00.000-05:00Aspeis won't be your masters because Aspies aren't...Aspeis won't be your masters because Aspies aren't interested in having power. One possible scenario is that Aspies will invent stuff, and power-seeking NTs (neuro typicals) will use the inventions to control others.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-1136397940833385122006-01-04T13:05:00.000-05:002006-01-04T13:05:00.000-05:00I doubt that the real masters of the future will h...I doubt that the real masters of the future will have Asperger's. It seems entirely more likely to me that the flaws this author inadvertently describes in the future Master Race (and what a chilling thought that is) are really projections of the author's flaws. Perhaps he, along with such men as Lanier and Kurzweil, have a compulsive side to their behavior that resembles Asperger's, and of course they imagine Utopia as being <I>full of people like them</I>.<BR/><BR/>That's the flaw with every Heaven scenario ever dreamed up - the creators of such scenarios inevitably believe that their Heaven will be populated with the kind of people THEY like.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com