Aspergers/Autism the next step in evolution.

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???

Evolution doesn't work like that.

Could be, as well as a species evolving physically, perhaps it evolves mentally as well.

Although while I think maybe HFA and Asperger's may be evolutionary, I'm not sure low functioning autism is

If this thread rolls. I'm going to be avidly lurking...Bwaaha.

Are there "next steps of evolution" anyway? Sometimes I do wonder what most people imagine about how "evolution" works like.

Ugh, not this crap again! No, it isn't. Evolution doesn't even HAVE steps. Natural selection isn't "survival of the best"; it's "survival of those who are adapted to their environment". And evolution isn't a ladder with one life-form above the other; it's a matter of life branching out, adapting to new environments.

The effect of natural selection is to weed out the genes of those who don't fit into the place where they find themselves. What an organism is depends on where its ancestors lived. For humans, the prevailing theory is that we lived in a place where there was a lot of chaos, a lot of climate change; and we had to learn to adapt faster than genetic change would let us adapt. So, the people who survived were the most flexible, the most capable of thinking and learning when things changed. Thus, bigger brains, longer childhoods, and eventually homo sapiens. Evolution doesn't select for bigger brains or smarter people; it's more of a matter of whoever happens to be left standing. In this case, it was the flexible, adaptable people who survived.

We're not hominids living in a variable climate anymore; we're humans living in a global society. That's a totally different environment, and it's not really apparent which traits will be useful even fifty years in the future, let alone five million. Where we'll branch out from here, how our descendents will change, is anybody's guess. The most likely scenario is that we will have multiple species as descendents, and each one will be adapted to a different sort of environment. And, even beyond that, remember that humans don't live in isolation. Societies compete against each other, too, and successful societies absorb or crowd out less successful ones. We have not just a natural selection of genes, but a natural selection of ideas.

Autism is part of human diversity, and, as such, makes the human race as a whole a stronger species. But it's diversity that's important. It means that, whatever problems humans face in the future, we will have just one more way of addressing them.

If you want to make an evolutionary argument about autism, leave out the "next step" garbage and talk about the value of genetic and social diversity--the way we need all kinds of people to make up our world, and "all kinds" includes autistic ones.

I added another line when I saw your post, before you replied to me.

Also, "survival of the fittest" being observable does nothing to prove that evolution cannot move in "steps", nor does it prove that we are purely the result of the process of natural selection, all it proves is that those most suited to survive do survive, don't try to stretch that to mean more than it does.

So did I. I've got to stop posting things before I'm done typing them!

Anyway, yeah: Natural selection--observable, testable law of biology. There could be other evolutionary mechanisms, but we know for sure that natural selection is one of them.

And I just did it again.

You should probably note that the OP edited their post, removing part what I was responding to from it.

The OP originally claimed 'survival of the best' rather than 'survival of the fittest', and I didn't feel like going through and giving a longer, better written response like Callista eventually did. (It's just that my response was the only one before the edit).

I can see why you would make that distinction.

And there seems to be a mutual understanding with that other stuff.

Evolution: survival of the fittest

The basic process of evolution takes quite a long time, and traits slowly start to show up more and more as others are eliminated.

As far as I can tell, people with or without Autism can prosper.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest

Personally, I think AS stays in the population because of how AS traits in BAP-y people are beneficial in the sciences and technological fields. And those fields are much more prized and sought after nowadays. But AS itself isn't being chosen for. Look how many people with AS don't even have children to pass genes on to. I think it's one of those things like how sickle-cell anemia is a troubling condition that stays around genetically in black individuals because of how being a carrier for it makes a person more immune to the malaria-causing Plasmodium parasite that runs rampant in Africa.