Aspie Elitism

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Now that is a great post LabPet.

And my mum is extraordinary.
After years of struggle and isolation, a few years ago she inherited a harbourside apartment from a wealthy great aunt. the aparment looks over Sydney Harbour - the Harbour BRidge and the Opera HOuse. she loves water. It has a big inground pool where she swims every day.

She spends her days on her own for the most part, with a very specific transistor radio and all her current affairs books and newspapers.
SHe can look after herself really well. the problem was looking after others.

In the end, the Gods smiled.

And Mission Control finally got to smile a little too.

HOMAGE TO THE BIG "A"

So is dying of cancer. That does not mean it is biologically neutral, so is being fecund, that does not mean it is biologically neutral.

Good and bad are moral valuations and should be distanced from biological facts when we seek to understand biological facts.

You can valuate biological facts as good or bad, or choose to not attach a moral judgment. But I see no reason to be less clear about biological facts just because someone, somewhere (or many ones many wheres) might choose to make X, Y or Z moral construction about biological facts.

I think you do not understand the point that I was making, because the point is that many people do not attach the same moral judgments to biological facts as it appears you choose to. Many people can see biological dysfunction but just cannot make any moral measure of it as an independent biological fact.

In my own instance, it most often hurts my head to try to extract a moral meaning/valuation from a biological fact. Aside from preference valuations, I just do not "get" moral information from biological facts, even when I try very hard to. It's like trying to decide whether a brick is moral. I have no idea how to do that.

pandd, you are quite a rhetorician. You're turning the question on its head. I'm not the OP, or one of the others on this site who become enraged at people like me who claim AS isn't a horrible life sentence of brain-damaged existence to escape from if at all possible. The people who are pining for a cure and who deplore their condition and claim they are miserable about their impairments and dysfunctions, are clearly applying value judgments to medical conditions ("good", "bad", "elite"). Here are specific words from the OP: "better", "superior", "fortunate", lower", "relegated".

If value judgments and values were not central to the interpretation of elitism and degradation experiences, then maybe your attempt to portray AS as "independent biological fact" might be the focus of this thread. I think that "independent biological fact" would be relevant only to a logic or scientific technical thread, but not this one.

I am not turning any question on its head. I am simply trying to establish whether or not people are discussing the same question or actually talking about two (or more) different things.



I am not suggesting that no one is, or has, or will ever apply moral valuations. I cannot see how that could plausibly be an issue of dispute. It seems very clear to me that people do make moral valuations. What I am suggesting is that in this discussion and perhaps in others like it, some people are talking about one thing, and other people are talking about something else.

This is not a minor or beside the point issue. If one person is arguing A is true, and another is arguing B is false, but both people are using the same word (the first to mean A the second to mean B), then these two people could argue without end, each convinced the other has a false belief, but both might actually believe the same thing (that A is true and B is not true).

It matters whether or not in using a word people mean the same thing. If they do not, then clearing up what each participant in the conversation means, will ensure at least that the conversation is more productive than if no one knows what anyone other than themselves means.


It is unclear to me what you disputing.

Are you convinced that there are no objective biological facts correlated with the concept referred to as AS? Or are you convinced that those facts must have a consistent objective moral meaning? Or are you suggesting that anyone involved in the conversation happens to be using the same definitions/interpretations as yourself?

Boy this thread sure has covered a lot of territory! Quite a read.

I apologize for going back a few pages but I see Garyww's point without quite agreeing. I have noticed that AS is certainly the only concern of most threads. Some posts have also struck for an attitude best summed as "too bad AS is related to classic autism, people might think I am like that."

I don't think it is malicious, but a TOM issue, or young people who haven't learned better.

That is my impression.

Right, and AS IS Autism! Mistake to even consider this 'separate,' it is diagnostically not. I am 'high-functioning' and therefore (dually) Dx'd w/ Asperger's AND 100% Autistic. That is, I have commonalities with all on the spectrum. Functioning really isn't a factor; we have the unifying common denominator of Autism regardless. True, Autism comes in all manifestions but it's all "The Big A." < Thank you, Inventor

This thread did cover everything! Except for maybe ceiling wax, etc........

Leave it up to Al to find the real core of the matter and that being for some reason that some people prefer to think that being an Aspie isn't being Autistic. Ironically even Lorna Wing herself said that the Aspergers label has far less 'social' stigma that the Autistic label and that is why many professionals prefer to use it. It's kind of funny to think that they are now considering taking it out of the DSM.

And The Inventor disgarees with The Lab Pet disagreeing based on some Diagnostician using the term Genius.

This is a recent thing, a concept brought forth by prentious people over a hundred years ago who also restarted the Olympics, but with wearing clothes this time, ruining it as a spectator sport. They also liked to coin words from Greek and Latin bases.

All the other roots of this word are sexy. Either a species, or things to do making more of a species.

As such, we come back to the great Social Philospher of the 1960's, Mick Jager, who put it all in one word, "Performance."

It goes back to a Roman Gens, as in, how are your Gens hanging Marcus Dude?

It's meaning is in custom one off production.

A related term, Epi, is where something starts from, a beginning of something new.

Scoring 145 on a test is not nearly as much fun, and produces nothing.

Genius did have non sexual meaning, but it still relates to producing something new.

The Greeks of course saw Genuis as the result of Deamon Possesion, The Muses.

It still all related to the production of something that was considered above the range of Mortals.

As it is used by Diagnosticians in the, lets make money off of people field, it is a double trick, one is you are a Genuis, but the next is, you produce nothing, so you are not living up to your potential.

The traditional meaning was used, after, someone produced something considered extrodinary.

The Lab Pet contributes intelligence to science, which it needs, but until lightning strikes the tower and is carried down into the Laboratory and induces life into your parts collection, your work is not close to done.

So I contend that The Lab Pet is not a Genius due to lack of production of a Genius Work. Which is a needed step to get accepted into the Genius Guild.

I also contend that The Lab Pet is not a Genius because these agreeing Diagonosticians have a range of 145 to 160 for Genius, and The Lab Pet is overqualified.

The Lab Pet is in fact of the Blood of The Elder Gods, which is a seperate Guild.

Liresse is a graduate with a minor in Latin and she can tell you that genius is definitely a word on its own and is very unlikely to have originated with gens.

gens = family, heritage, race, birth etc
- note that gens has five million* cognates/derivatives including GENUS, however...

genius = guardian spirit.
- ...is not one of them.

i have nothing else to contribute sorry but since latin has so little application i thought i should jump in. Continue!

*not literally

The Romans had Greek teachers,

Genius= guardian spirit, is equal to the Greek Muse, a Deamon who was a spirit who brought knowledge from the gods to mortals.

Mortals were never Deamons, they created when the Deamon came and took them over.

The description fits an intense session of obsession, but it got results.

I think you need a moderately high IQ to be able to channel genius effectively, so genius and IQ are related. They may not be the same thing, though. Genius does feel like possession in some ways, but perhaps I am not allowed to say that? And I am not being elitist.

All I ever wanted was to be normal and have a normal life. I still wonder, if the school system had steered me in a different direction, perhaps tested me for pitch and steered me into music technology, perhaps I could have a normal life now? Maybe?

Geniuses who are recognized as such often suffer serious loss early in life (e.g. losing a parent) - genius productivity seems to be a compensation mechanism. Not something I'd wish on anyone. Better to wish happiness and ordinariness for all.

Good information should not be burried under 25 levels of dribble.

Am I using too many big words?

Famous geniuses tend to have had unhappy childhoods. They're overcompensating. Who wants that? Better to be happy.

The underlying trait can be fun, though. Something to play with.

No, you can have any I.Q. and be gifted. In my mind, intellectually or artistically gifted people are those who can see through to the nature of a thing -- a problem to be solved or an idea -- and use that meaningfully. You would be surprised how many high-functioning NTs out there are idiots who have college degrees and white collar jobs and have no idea what they are doing or what is right and wrong day after day. The whole banking crisis is a good example of a team of idiots who are individual high scorers and professional successes, who don't have real insight (or the balls) to do a job right when the professional culture around them is telling them to do things the wrong way. You can call those banking and finance professionals "successful", "accomplished" and even "brilliant", but are they geniuses? Not really. They are good professional monkeys. Genius and I.Q. are two totally separate things.

Genius is by nature special and constructive.



What is "normal"? The absence of being "different"?

You can still work on your talents and develop new accomplishments. It's only in your own mind that you think that there was some key point in your past life that was the right time for you evolve in a certain direction. And it's only in your own mind that you are frozen in that path now. What is preventing you from learning some music technology now?



Sounds to me like you have some cartoonish stereotype in your head about geniuses being personally defective people growing into manic obsessives. A lot of geniuses just love what they do, more than anything else.

The fact that you wish "ordinariness" on everyone is kind of creepy, if you ask me.

Not that I disagree, but don't some of us overcompensate high IQ or not depending on skills and other psychological aspects involved?

I'd also have to ask what you mean when you say geniuses often suffer loss in early life. Is there data to back that up or is this just you?

My sister has a high IQ and she seems to be happy with what she's doing. Not that I would really question how good or bad geniuses have it. All I can say for myself is I struggled through school and found that I was far more a visual learner than mechanical. I myself would give anything just to be "normal"....then again maybe not. Our society is run in such a way that there is no room for those who learn differently. At least not enough of these programs in schools and jobs.

I will say that in autism and aspergers, people may score low on some things and yet score high in other areas that're of interest. I know I tend to hyperfocus on subjects I have a great interest in yet it's not easy focusing on other aspects that're not that interesting no matter how important.

There are several books by scientists on genius. Eysenck, Dean Simonton, R. Ochse. In one or more of them, I have seen the figure of 30-40% of famous geniuses losing a parent early in life, which I think is significantly above average even for the time (otherwise why would they mention it?). At least that's what I remember reading. It's been a while.

It usually takes a lot of work to become a famous genius, which makes it easier to accomplish if you're extraordinarly motivated or have no personal life (or have a lot of support from the community, which can happen, too - look at Renaissance artists, for example). The cartoonish stereotype does have some support, though it's not universal.

I think the 120 IQ cutoff is from research, too. I think it's from Terman's research study, volume 1, but I could be wrong. Again, from memory, did the reading a long time ago.