The ultimate cause of autism

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The ultimate cause of autism

Paleolithic-era humans didn't fight wars. If they didn't like each other, they just stayed away from each other. It was not easy to fight wars: wooden clubs were ineffective, spears were not accurate, stones were too heavy to carry. So, the world was relatively peaceful. Population density was very low. Human clan size is typically estimated to be around the "Dunbar's number" of 150 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number).

Things changed with invention of the bow. That was when hunting became easy. Population increased, but animal supplies dwindled, meaning people were forced into agriculture for steady food supply. Food became stored, which meant the start of pillaging wars. Hunting groups became smaller, and dog domestication turned crucial. Whoever had dogs, survived better in wars. This was the moment color blindness entered human history: it helped humans to see through camouflage of opponents. BAP (Broad Autism Phenotype) entered around the same time, probably related to bow and arrow technology, and war planning. This was the end of epipaleolithic or mesolithic era, and dawn of agriculture or neolithic era. Human clan size increased from the "Dunbar's number" (150 people) typical of hunter-gatherer societies, to several hundred.

Because of quick depletion of animals for meat supply (after invention of the bow), people were forced to domesticate animals: poultry or cattles. Settlement population grew further (above 1,000), with the steady supply of meat. Unfortunately, that also meant more incentive for wars. Government and politics started to enter the scene: local bullies started to collect "protection fee," which meant taxes. These mafia "godfathers" needed accountants. (In a lot of languages, "livestock" or "cattle" still means "wealth.") The mafia bosses worked with the "bean counter" accountants side-by-side. Those clans with good brainy accountants ensured survival in the case of internal fights or external wars. This is because of better planning, or better weapon design. That was the moment for the clinical-level of autism to enter the human race. Now, it was not just some clever guys, but brilliant geniuses. The accountants were necessarily physically weaker, so not to pose a threat to the mafia boss. The accountants that were physically strong wouldn't have become accountants: they would have been either drafted to labor, or to defense work, like everyone else. Or if they did do accounting but were a threat to the mafia boss, they would have been killed. That is why autistic people usually have some physical shortcomings. Physical shortcomings are not a bug, but a feature.

From there, the wheel, metallurgy, and writing, were all invented. But the real trigger to modern human life was the invention of the bow. It was the equivalent to today's gun. The bow was what has introduced color blindness and autism in humans. The bow was the single most important cause of modern human life. It was what has separated us from animals, and what has affected our genetics via "natural selection by wars." Clans without autism? Sorry, those ones have been eliminated a long time ago.

Um, I read your drivel but nowhere in it does it mention any cause of autism, never mind the ultimate cause.

The advent of accounting did not create autism in people. It may be one of the earliest professions where autism was an asset, but you've provided zero evidence that it caused autism.

Ditto with the bow as a weapon. How did a bow create autism? Was it a magic bow that bestowed autism upon all who drew it's string?

Also, it's been well documented that it was the plow, not the bow, that created an abundance of food supply for humans & enabled us to thrive. Close, though.. at least you got the "ow," part right, I guess.

When crackpots collide.

Very cute.

(1) Please explain why color blindness in humans, and autism, are male-dominated.
(We know dichromacy is nothing new in mammals. But why is color-blindness in humans male-dominated and mostly X-chromosome bound?)

(2) Please explain why color blindness has a prevalence rate of around 4.3% in the world, and clinical-level autism has a prevalence rate of about 2%, with BAP suspected to be roughly around 5%, around the same ballpark as color blindness.

(3) Please explain why schizophrenia's prevalence rate (around 1%) is lower than the prevalence rates of color blindness and autism.

(4) Please explain why autism typically comes with other physical conditions.

Huh? Where are your answers, now? Ha ha.

I apologize, we live in different circles. Sorry if you guys cannot understand anything that I explain here.

It's understandable. But what you're presenting is that correlation equals causation. Pretty much everything you lay out are idiosyncratic theories coupled with anecdotal evidence. The biggest problem of which is that it's present as fact, rather than conjecture.

Translation: None of this s**t has anything to do with the others.

Last edited by goldfish21 on 15 Apr 2018, 2:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

Are you going to teach me about science?

I am trained as a theorist. A theorist's job (like e.g. Stephen Hawking, whom you commented before) is to come up with theories and explain things. Experiments and confirmation come later (and in the case of cosmology, that may be decades or hundreds of years later). Theorists provide direction what to explore next. Theorists necessarily are ahead of everyone else. Stephen Hawking could not possibly get a Nobel Prize, because all he did was unconfirmed conjectures. I didn't see you criticizing Stephen Hawking.

Let's see Stephen Hawking's black hole radiation paper:

Title: Particle Creation by Black Holes (Hmm... how come the title was not "Particles May Be Created by Black Holes"?)

And here is one random paragraph:

This negative energy flux will cause the area of the event horizon to decrease and so the black hole will not, in fact, be in a stationary state. However, as long as the mass of the black hole is large compared to the Planck mass 10"5 g, the rate of evolution of the black hole will be very slow compared to the characteristic time for light to cross the Schwarzchild radius.

Wow, Stephen Hawking is presenting a conjecture as fact. How alarming! The problem with you, is you pretend to know how scientists work.

The only valid way to criticize a theory, is to come up with an even better explanation. That's how science works. Oops, I forget, we operate in different circles.

As for me personally, my children and I just keep plowing forward. We are not the ones whining. We have fun, every day. You can choose to be stuck forever, behind. Ha ha, with all my weird theories, how come I have been so successful, both with myself and with my children? Isn't that strange?

There’s a difference between a theory and B-rate fiction writing for a made for TV movie.

I don't know of any evidence that being color blind helps one see through camouflage.

Also I don't think they had mafia back then in the cave days.

There was actually violence among Paleolithic humans. There is evidence of smashed skulls, and even cannibalism. Anatomically modern humans may have helped their archaic human cousins disappear through pushing them out further and further by threat of violence.
As for autism during prehistoric times - - My personal suspicion is that the first artists - as many involved in the arts today - might have been on the spectrum.

You present some interesting ideas to consider and think on, however, you make your statements as fact rather than as theory. Nowhere in your OP do you state or clarify that you are theorizing. Rather it is a long string of loosely connected ideas. Furthermore, your appeal to authority does not support your cause. Neither does your appeals to the success of you and your children. Quite the opposite. You come across as being a bit belligerent and quite arrogant (we operate in different circles). Perhaps it's just my adding of emotion to the textbased conservation, and it doesn't help that the first reply you got was dismissive rather than inquisitive, but regardless, the fact of the matter is that your original post implies your statements are fact rather than opinion, conjecture, or theory. Although, I would suggest you the correct language would be to hypothesize rather than to theorize. In either case, right or wrong, you obviously have connected your ideas to your ego and so feel the need to resort to talking down and being dismissive, which does nothing to convince others that your ideas are worth considering.

In regards to the origin of autism, I would beg to differ on the assertions made. First, while autism does have a high rate of physical limitations associated, that does not mean that all individuals with autism are physically limited. While I was the only one of my brothers and sister diagnosed, I am certain that at least 3 of my siblings, including both of my brothers, are on the spectrum. Of all my siblings, I am the one with the most health issues, but even then I am in fairly good health. I just spend most of the day remodeling my wife's shop and am now working my weekend parttime job while feeling pretty good overall. Also, my older brother is a CPA. Now, this is anecdotal evidence. I am aware of it. Yet, your implication is that typically accountants are autistic, or at the very least frail, by comparison to their overlords.

You also have made interesting claims about the characteristics of war, agriculture, and much more in your post. I would like to see sources on these claims.

In my opinion, the "ULTIMATE CAUSE OF AUTISM" is quite simple. Genetic characteristics that adapted for individuals that were skilled in problem-solving and specialization. That could have started long before the advent of the bow. Take chimps for example. They are our closest genetic relatives. Bonaboes and the common chimpanzee. These apes have managed to survive all this time, yet one of the characteristics that they do not share with us that is the fascinating lack of co-operation when they are foraging for food. SPECIFICALLY, while they may forage for food together, it is the exception rather than the rule for one chimp to help another GET the food. If a limb has fruit out of reach, the act of one holding it down while the other picks, and then for them to share typically only happens between the mother-child relationship. In cases of hunting, while it looks like they coordinate in chasing down prey, at the end is a dominance fight over who gets the best bits/eats their fill rather than sharing the resources out between them. So I would argue that a big factor in the advancement of homo sapiens into the era of civilization had a lot more to do with co-operative behavior than it did to do with one particular tool.

Enter the need for problem solving and specialization. Who was that one guy or gal that looked at the first rock that was turned into the first stone tool and thought, "I bet if the hit this chunk of rock really hard with another chunk of rock I can make a better chunk of rock for cutting meat, grinding seeds, and other stuff." I bet you dimes to donuts that that person was not an NT compared to his/her peers. And that is likely the birth of autism as a neurotype. Of course, at this point, it is all conjecture since we won't know until we have figured out a way of observing the past in action. Regardless, the argument is also a bit moot since this is effectively arguing the chicken/egg argument.

I am very much interested in reading your sources. Please provide them. I am open to being convinced, but I need more evidence than just conjecture.

My dear friend. I am a scientist. I don't make a comment like this one out of blue. This particular point is EXTREMELY well-known.

There is something called Google. Please. For a simple topic like this one, you enter the keywords of your question, and you shall get your answers. It's pretty straightforward, and you should try it yourself. Try different keywords, and you'll get more information.

Colour blindness may have hidden advantages
https://www.nature.com/news/2005/051205/full/news051205-1.html

The Upside of Color Blindness
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/apr/the-upside-of-color-blindness

Is Being Colorblind Actually an Advantage?
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2016/06/the_monkeys_of_south_america_evolved_to_be_color_blind_perhaps_because_it.html

From this last article:
Colorblind people don’t have this same overload and are often able to see through the deliberate “noise” of colored camouflage to spot the deeper patterns. During World War II, colorblind men were employed to break through camouflaged enemy positions and thereby spot possible targets for bombing. A certain colorblindness may also help create patterns as well as spot them: Vincent Van Gogh was able to create amazingly complex colorful patterns yet his palette shows a striking resemblance to defective color vision.

You can find all the sources just by googling. I'll get back to you with more details later.

Oh, I don't need to convince anybody in the world. I only need to leave things written.

Meanwhile, this is an article that I wrote up last year and have posted on WrongPlanet many times before. It's a bit dated, and some changes are needed. But it shows the main direction of what I am talking about. Ha ha, I just have to laugh. The square-root law has been there all along. I just realized that it is at the heart of the Central Limit Theorem, too. So simple, yet people have managed to miss it.

http://www.eikonabridge.com/Tomatoes.pdf

On square-root law and Central Limit Theorem:
https://www.britannica.com/science/probability-theory/The-central-limit-theorem
... The equation also illustrates clearly the square root law: the accuracy of X̄n as an estimator of μ is inversely proportional to the square root of the sample size n.

See, the thing is, you guys keep sleeping, while I have kept plowing ahead. That, is the difference between me and other people in the forum. I live a happy life. My children are happy. In the case of my son, it's even written into his IEP: that he smiles from ear to ear. Like that, every day. The world doesn't stop moving forward. I do many things and say many things before anybody else. What I want to say to aspies is: please, be a leader, not a follower. Take advantage of your creativity. Be confident about yourself. You are born not to fit in, but to stand out. Be a good role model.

Hawking's theories have been reviewed and praised by those who operate within his circles, have yours? Is there anyone within your circles, or any anthropologist or neuroscientist et al, who has endorsed what you're saying? My guess is there are a lot more theorists who come up with claptrap, than there are Stephen Hawkings. It's things like peer review and endorsements from others with credentials that allow the common person to know whether their dealing with one or the other.



It's anecdotal.

Last edited by EzraS on 15 Apr 2018, 6:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

If the OP wants people to listen, he must drop the condescending attitude towards others. I don’t listen to people who adopt this tone. I don’t trust them. I sense they’re trying to attract me to their cult.

These are methods used by cult leaders to attract them to their cults, and take money and property from them.

A comdescending attitude also indicates defensiveness, and a paradoxical lack of confidence in what they are putting forward.