Is Asperger's just cold climate personality type?

Post Reply New Topic

All of these theories that link Asperger's to some sort of evolutionary benefit are bunk, plain and simple.

It's like arguing that broken legs exist because they play some sort of adaptive role.

Yes that's exactly what it is. As humans migrated out of Africa and into the colder climates of Europe and finally North East Asia, our brains became more and more autistic. Social intelligence (which is useful in warm countries where people must attract and mate with more numerous partners) became less important in cold climates where you mate with only one person and build a tiny family and become obsessively focused on just that one partner. So the parts of the brain that give us social intelligence began to shrink as humans acquired other parts of intelligence that are useful in the cold (technological ability, logic). However now that humans have conquered the cold climates, the autistic mind is less advantageous and people with more social intelligence now have the competitive advantage. In addition, because the autistic brain is large and complex and they wait until their old to have kids,a lot can go wrong, so many high IQ autistics (nerds, academics, engineers) mutate producing mentally ret*d (or unintelligent) autistic offspring, who inherit only the large autistic head but not the large brain that goes with it. It is this subset of unintelligent autistics who are largely the ones diagnosed with autism, but the majority of autistics are never diagnosed and are smart and successful (bill gates, mark zuckerberg)

Except that broken legs aren't a genetic trait you MORON, it's a physical injury that can happen to anyone. If you're going to use a metaphor, do it right.

It promoted a certain culture arguably. See JAnte's LAw
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante

I disagree with your hypothesis. I don't think it's possible to generalise about Aspies like this.

Speaking for myself, I'm certainly not well adapted to living in cold climates. I *hate* the cold with a passion, I'd much rather be too hot than too cold. I'd much rather be living back in the Middle East or South of France than North West England. I don't do cold. At all. My friends and neighbours always joke that my apartment is like a sauna, because I tend to have the central heating on a hot temperature. I'm not certainly not sensitive to sunlight, in fact I might be the opposite, I wonder whether I get seasonal affective disorder due to lack of sunlight in winter, because I have been known to get very depressed.

As for the other stuff, I wouldn't necessarily say that I'm less emotional and more rational. Yes, I'm often rational and logical to the exclusion of behaving empathetically towards others, but sometimes I'm hypersensitive and overly emotional and irrational.

I don't think your hypothesis stands up to scrutiny, Aspies are too individualistic in those respects, I don't think a 'type' can be generalised to relate to Aspies insofar as it relates to adaptions to any particular climate.

I like the cold better than the heat. It's summer here and I find myself longing for winter. As long as it stays dry I love winter. The lack of sunlight can affect my mood though, that's probably the only thing I don't like winter. I never really connected this with autism though, and I don't see any reason to.

Uh...right.

That was a simile. Look it up. It's not supposed to work on every level. The commonality between broken legs and AS was (rather clearly) meant to be dysfunction, not etiology.

But I'm the moron.

Well, maybe I'm just pissed off at your negativity. I struggled my entire life thanks to pessimists like you who thought I would amount to nothing because I was an Aspie. I was able to prove them wrong but only because I maintained a positive outlook on life, but it was no thanks to you and the other naysayers.

Call it evolution or what have you, there are benefits to being an Aspie. I've gone through social skills therapy enough to know how to act, to the point where it's hard to see unless you spend a lot of time with me and know me well. But I am not, nor will I ever be, one of the crowd. This is a good thing, in my eyes. Because of my AS I was able to develop my own beliefs and convictions free of the corrupting influence of society, which has made me into the person I am today. And it's thanks to this philosophy that I have a few friends, not just friends, but REAL friends, friends who trust me with their lives, and vice versa. In fact, one of these friends told me that she would probably have committed suicide this summer had it not been for my constantly checking up on her and spending time with her, and standing by her when something happened.

I'm able to be this way because I am an Aspie, because despite my social ineptitude and my somewhat cold demeanor IRL I am a caring person who is honest with himself and doesn't give two f***s what people think of him for following his beliefs, and who recognizes the value of a true friendship and will stick by the people I care about regardless of what society thinks. TBH I wish more people could be like this because that would solve about 90% of the world's problems.

So don't you dare - DON'T YOU f*****g DARE - write you, me, or any other Aspie off as a failure for life. If I can live my life with my head held high, then so can you, and anything you say otherwise is merely a self-delusion. You are an Aspie but that makes you an individual. IMHO it makes you more individual then the rest of society because you are free of that influence. But if you keep telling yourself that you're a mistake or a cripple then you're only going to hold yourself down, or worse, drag others with the same situation down with you. And that I will NOT tolerate.

Cold climates lead to more time spent indoors with other people, it also takes a lot more mutual co-operation to survive.

I'm not sure these are Aspie traits.

Jason.

My family came from the subtropics, so definitely not cold. I think autism and mental problems have been prevalent in the family for generations, as well as very high IQ. The high IQ helped them to cope with life and secure some jobs, so they kept reproducing. But it also drove them nuts. I'm very glad I didn't live in the old times. I would have been considered very dull (with 140 IQ) by the old family members.

Nearly all the males before my dad's generation had bad endings. They either went crazy and committed suicide, or turned to drugs and alcohol, or sunk into poverty due to not getting along with regular people. There was an old tale saying men in the family never live to 60. But both my dad and his cousin are over 70 now, extremely successful, bright but not too bright and only a little odd. So at least in my family's case, those with reasonable intelligence did way better than those with genius IQs.

I have Asperger's, but I HATE cold weather! I can't srand being cold.
I hate it so much, I grew up in Michigan and eventually couldn't take it anymore, so I moved to FL!