Is Asperger's Evolution in Process?

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It is possible that the "date & mate" issue may resolve itself as awareness of autism spreads and acceptance increases. Auties may feel more empowered to push themselves into society and we may reproduce more than it has been speculated that we have been. If autism is something that has been passed down genetically then the "mutation" (for lack of a better word) would seem to have survived quite well.

I agree with AW that auties are more adept at the non-verbal forms of communication that are widespread now. The technological nature of our society may make us more successful than we previously have been.

Much of academia is like that.

Note the key words - they indicate a "Subjunctive Mood" in writing, which uses of verb forms that typically express various states of unreality such as wishes, emotions, possibilities, judgments, opinions, or actions that have not yet occurred.

An empirical view is more in line with actual conditions and events; which in this thread give no indication that Asperger's Syndrome is in any way an evolutionary advancement.

True. Just speculation and musing.

I use the subjunctive a lot largely because I work with people who all have the same diagnosis but who all are entirely different and I can never say categorically that anything I identify as a trait in a group can be applied to all people with that diagnosis even though it may apply to most. If I stated that all ASC people do such and such, even if I backed it up with peer reviewed statistical evidence, I'd soon find myself in a mess with someone objecting.

I'm actually very careful not to make statements of fact unless I'm willing to go and find the empirical evidence to back them up - ideas are just as valid as facts but must be recognised as not being facts, musings are important but need to be shown to be subjective through using a subjunctive voice

the more possibilities there are the wider our ideas can range - if we restricted ourselves to facts I would get very bored very quickly

I get all of that already. But what YOU dont get is that you're not stating your own case. Not coming within a country mile of stating your own case.


If I were you I would state it like this: Nature metaphoriclaly 'fights' back against the depredations of man. American civilization had cut down too many trees in the Ohio and mississippi watershed for two centuries. And nature 'fought back"(not literally but metophorically)with floods and soil erosion throuth out the midwest and south in the 1930's.. The forest cover was gone-that caused soil erosion and flooding.

Similarly the whole human race is overpopulated today so metaphorically nature is reacting by causing autism.

But then you have to explain two things (a) is there more autism then there used to be (the quesiton posed by the OP is:" IS autims evolution in action"-in the present tense- not the future-now).and more importantly (b) what exactly is the mechanism by which nature is causing more autistic children to get born?

You steadfastly refuse to do either of those things.

The link between deforestion -and flooding is clear. But not this link you are making between overpopulation and autism.

My own opinion is that autism is indeed part of the raw material of evolution- part of the genetic variety in the human species. Random variation that is not itsself a product of natural section. But is there, like a bank account if needed by natural selection. Variation is what every species needs to evolve.

It is not 'evolution in action' now.

Given present trends there is no reason to think that humans are 'evolving into autistics". There were always a few auties around, and there probably always will be a few around. But there is no reason to think that we as species will all become autistic ( ie autism will become the norm).


However this is not to say that a some point in the future it might become selected for by evolution. If it turned out the auties and aspies had temperaments better suited to space travel or living in underground mars colonies (dont know if they would be -lets say they would be) then spectrum people end up as the norm as interplanetary space colonist. After centuries of colonization it transpires that there a millions living beyond earth- and most are on the spectrum. Further- earth might get hit by an asteroid wiping out much of the stay at home mostly NT population. This forces earth to recolonize from the space colony population. The result is autisticazation of the human race because autism became 'selected for" in evolution by events of future history.

These possible future forces of selection would then make the autisticalization of the human species "evolution in action".

But I dont see how anything like that is happening now.

I would not say "metaphoriclaly" I would say metaphorically.



You've just reworded what I said, which I can't understand the point of. Why are you more bothered by my wording than the content?

I cannot answer those questions, only hypothesise, like everyone else on this thread. But the fact that I don't have the scientific knowledge to be able to answer them, doesn't mean they are not possible. Is there a scientist alive who could explain all of that!



Don't know why not, I think I've explained it pretty well.



Proof?

It's good to read everyone's opinions, but not so good to try (and fail) to blast them down just because you don't agree. You are no more in possession of the proof or fact of the matter than I am, or anyone else. I fail to see how your hypothesis is any more correct than mine either.

The reason that im more bothered by your wording than by your content is that IM MORE BOTHERED BY YOUR WORDING THAN BY YOUR CONTENT!

Your wording is the issue.
I didnt 'blast your opinions'.

Your so called opinions so vague and mushy that I cant decifer what your opinions are.

My purpose was to coach you into speaking in terms that I can understand- so I can understand what the heck you're saying ( if you're gonna use the word 'evolution' and enter Darwin country- then you need to speak in the language of Darwin -and natural selection etc).

But I guess thats like teaching someone a foriegn language. If you dont have the background then you just dont have the background.

Sorry...Nevermind.

After 51 years, I can say with some justification, negatives cancel out the positives. I can do some things really well, but I cannot tie my own bloody shoelaces.
But I guess everyone wants to feel special, so some will continue with this idea.
And again, in Darwinian terms, our reproductive success has been severely impacted by our traits.
I am not ashamed of (probably) being autistic but I refuse to buy into any belief system that makes us somehow better than NTs or any other group.

Sincerely,
Matthew

I work with young people, many of whom are newly diagnosed adults. It's part of my job to see the strengths in these people and help them understand that ASCs are not the end of the world for them (they are very, very vulnerable to despair at this stage) so I'm used to taking a positive view but I would never pretend to any of them that they might not have a disability and a life of struggle in certain areas. What I can do is help them recognise that they have the strengths needed to cope with the difficulties and to learn strategies to minimise the impact of the disability.

To teach people that they have a place in the world in spite of their difficulties is one thing, to encourage someone to think that a disability makes them better would be irresponsible.

I have met people who would argue they only have the strengths but those are almost always people who have such a blinkered view of themselves and their place in the world that they have no sense of reality. Sadly, their weaknesses are often all too obvious to everyone else around them and they often live very lonely lives because the arrogance and superiority that comes with this blinkered view drives anyone they might build a decent friendship with away.
In my experience it is these people who mainly argue that they are the next evolutionary step. Why anyone would want the human race to turn out like them is beyond me - our species is already quite arrogant enough!

Gee, thanks for being so kind as to offer me your coaching skills. Well as you are intent on being derisory about my wording not living up to your purported (!) superiority in the relevant scientific field, I shall only reply by being equally derisory about your own use of words. Let he who is without fault cast the first stone:



I let you have few freebies as I'm feeling generous. I think we could also say that your wording is the issue too (in the most literal sense of course )

I won't even bother explaining why it's not necessary to blind everyone with long-winded scientific terminology to have a forum discussion.

Now let's allow the thread get back to its original purpose shall we.

PS a little internet lesson in etiquette: text in block capitals is considered shouting and hence rude.

while i find your post amusing, the word "mississippi' is spelled correctly.

if you are alluding to the fact that the initial letter is not capitalized, i deem that to be inconsequential because i have never subscribed to the idea that capital letters are essential (except in acronyms).

i am not trying to belittle people who adhere to the convention of capitalization, but i personally think it is a superfluous convention.

I am indeed. But you are entirely missing the point. I would not have dreamed of pointing it out - however naturalplastic saw fit to critique my wording and lack of scientific terminology so I replied in a like way. It's rather hilarious that out of a long list of misspellings and grammatical errors you pick out one word because of the lack of capitalisation!

[quote="whirlingmind"

you do not have to explain your self to me. i do not care much.
if you can not read words that do not adhere to the conventions of capitalization then it is your loss and not mine.
i rarely am misinterpreted due to my lack of capitalization.

Last edited by b9 on 28 Feb 2013, 10:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

Where did I say that I could not read them? Again you are missing the point!

Never mind. We're just derailing the thread further by discussing this.

Whenever this evolution topic comes up, the views seem to fall into two broad categories:

1)those that anthropomorphize nature

2)those that do not anthropomorphize nature

It is possible for two people within the same category to have a fruitful discussion about this. Often the thread will run along two parallel tracks with the people in category (1) discussing amongst themselves what nature did or did not intend while the people in category (2) discuss amongst themselves what is or is not reasonable evidence for the track that evolution has taken so far. But fruitful discussion between the two categories just doesn't seem possible and degenerates into arguing about the categories themselves or goes entirely off topic.

I am in category (2) and always go into these threads arguing that anthropomorphizing nature is not a valid way to discuss evolution. (And I truly believe it isn't.) These viewpoints are incompatible with each other because they rest on fundamental philosophical differences that can't be resolved with mere presentation of evidence. But at least arguing about which of these two categories is a valid approach is more fruitful than arguing about spelling. Then it just gets silly.