pensieve wrote:
We need socially awkward scientists to obsess over their work and invent things.
Just found out last night one of my heroes who is a scientist seems very AS. Oppenheimer.
If everyone socialized by going to clubs on the weekend and then the next day crawled to their average job nursing a hangover, and still chatting to their friends when they should be working, the human species would not progress.
The other day I was talking with my friend who is a scientist, and he is very intelligent but like a lot of people doesn't know that much about autism and has preconceived ideas/stereotypes (the stereotype being often non-verbal and kind of like Rainman), so when I found the courage to finally tell him about Aspergers and autism, and that I am a high functioning autistic and/or Aspergers (will be all the same soon anyway) he was denying very much, telling me I don't think you have it you are very smart and good with music and talented and so on, but when I told him about the scientific tests here and my results, he said he is sure he would score as high as me (i.e. on the autism spectrum), and he did one of them, the highly sensitive person and he did have a result very close to mine.
But here's the most interesting part ... being a scientist he is around many other scientists, and he told me he thinks most of them have many of the characteristics of ASD (I showed him a list of traits).
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That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along. ~Madeleine L'Engle