Asperger's and the Uncanny Valley

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This gets even funnier in the context of the quote below:

I don't think it's spurious. It's a very reasonable description of the graph of the phenomenon.

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



The addition of "valley" takes it beyond Freud's description by charting (and finding a valley in the graph of) people's reactions to various human-ish things.

Alex promotes Alex. We briefly discussed a matching program I have that would work well for aspergers types. Heck it found me a partner 28 years ago. But that would compete with his aspi singles which is, as near as I can tell useless except for the benefit of Alex. By the way, the neurology of aspergers and psychopathy have non trivial overlap

I think that's absolutely true, but the way they are outwardly expressed has non trivial differences as well.

As far as the algorithms go, I think that one is more of an endo-symbiant, and the other more of an ecto-parasite.

I think both are past expressions that are resurfacing again at a high rate.
We've been here before.
To the algorithms, the current landscape is starting to look similar to landscapes of our past.

I love your posts here.

There is a lot to your theory about the hive mind. I have a similar perspective, only in my mental model I assume a different calibration, and make allowances for multiple distinct archetypes of high level brain wiring. In concrete terms:

I don't believe that it takes many people with a psychopathic brain wiring to infect what you call the neurotypical hive mind. If a small percentage of say 2-5% of the population has a brain wiring that is close to the psychopathic archetype, 80% or so of the typical population will be infected by thinking patterns and behavioural routines that can be traced back to a psychopathic mind.

I come to this conclusion because there is significant evidence that typical human brains are primarily cultural copying machines. The fidelity of the copying mechanism is quite impressive, certainly from an autistic perspective. Some researchers even present the human ability to copy behaviour as the greatest achievement of humanity. Psychopaths seem to have an intuitive understanding of the typical human copying mechanism, and they simply present their victims with templates that serve their special interest in dominance, and then know exactly how to activate the copy button... again and again. The hierarchical structure of societies is no accident. It is the result of psychopaths playing copying machine operator with the typical population.

People with a neurotypical brain wiring are in many respects like a blank slate, and are programmed by their surrounding culture, which is of course operated by psychopaths and their subordinates. The neurotypical special interest is social acceptance, i.e. the desire to fit in with the surrounding structure of society. Depending on the specific culture in which they grew up, neurotypicals can be very compassionate and caring, or they can act in ways that mirror the psychopathic template. On the one hand the neurotypical population is under psychopathic influence (which transforms the desire for social acceptance into a desire to maximise social status in various pyramid schemes), and on the other hand they are also under the influence of a few taboos that prevent society from complete self-destruction.

As we know, the autistic brain wiring endows us with a special interest in understanding one or more aspects of the physical world, which of course can also include an interest in understanding human behaviour from an external anthropological perspective. I find it somewhat hilarious that strong special interests are perceived as a unique autistic characteristic. The typical population is blind to their extreme interest in social acceptance, simply because social acceptance is perceived as the "normal" special interest, and due to psychopathic infection of typical minds, even a strong interest in dominance is perceived as "normal".

Beyond the neurotypical, autistic, and psychopathic archetypes of brain wiring, I would not be surprised if there are further ones, for example relating to manic depression etc.


Swimming in synchronised schools is a good metaphor for neurotypical behaviour. The difference between typical fish and typical humans is mainly the size of the behavioural repertoire that is part of the typical pattern.

Understanding how human societies operate and evolve requires (a) understanding the software of the various concrete cultures, (b) understanding the prevalence of the different brain wiring archetypes, (c) understanding the extent to which the different archetypes can co-exist within a single brain or are rather mutually exclusive, (d) understanding the genetic and epigenetic factors that may play a role in propagating aspects of brain wiring across generations, and (e) understanding all the external forces acting on the various cultures, since no culture is a closed system. I would suggest humans are far from understanding any of this to any reasonable extent.


Agree. A few weeks ago I was not aware of this thread, and I started a similar one with links to related material and research http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp6184409 ... t=#6184409.

I have to agree with all of that.
The psychopaths have a need to manipulate others, and I think there is a significant occurrence of psychopaths specifically taking advantage of autistics.