Is Asperger's Evolution in Process?

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You're still anthropomorphizing nature, just not as bad. If we run out of resources, then we will have restricted ourselves. Nature itself does not and cannot place restrictions on us through any methods including fire, pestilence, or famine.

The earth will stop meeting our needs simply because it has no further resources to offer.
The impact will be that we have to adapt to that new circumstance or die - possibly through fire (war?), famine or pestilence.

That's not anthropomorphism

i was not aware that my eye tracking tests were not essential to my diagnosis of asperger syndrome. maybe they were indeed designed to rule out alternative diagnoses (like epilepsy), but my doctors did seem to ascribe some importance to what they gleaned from my results.

i was used in research so i may guess (after reading your post) that my eye tracking tests were not designed to validate my diagnosis, but to add to the stock of data they acquired for research purposes.
i do defer to your professional knowledge, but i truly was tested for my "attention points" using mild laser beams that were focused on my retina that plotted my focal points whilst looking at pictures.

here is a picture that i have cobbled together that is like a picture they presented me with (i was shown both still photographs and short films), and this is similar to my focal tracking with respect to a still picture. i can easily remember the chronological hierarchy of my focus on the elements in a picture, and the following picture is very similar to the pictures i was shown.

i understand now that it is not a necessary test that is vital in the process of diagnosis, but my doctors (and the psych students involved) seemed to draw firm conclusions given the progress of my focal trace.

The tests may have been very useful and informative, they will have given your consultants a great deal more to work with than the diagnostic test results alone - I do sensory profiles to inform diagnosis and believe they are all but essential to understanding a person's strengths and weaknesses but they are not part of the diagnostic process.

PS - I can see exactly why they found your trace informative - you do not track faces at all and you focus on people only a fraction of the trace

Do you have prosopagnosia?

yes i do.

Last edited by b9 on 25 Feb 2013, 7:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

i should add that i will always recognize my girlfriend because i have seen her face tens of thousands of times.

Natural Selection enables individuals with certain genetic mutations or differences to outcompete their brethren, breed and survive more successfully thereby driving change within the species. As great as being an aspie is one thing it doesn't do in most cases is allow you to outbreed and survive better than NTs. In fact for breeding it puts you at a disadvantage so the answer to the OPs question is a big fat no.

In the wild, animals that can't cut the mustard die. The percentage of weak animals in the wild is very low, because they keep getting weeded out. The percentage in humans is growing. We have the people that are born 'weaker', just because of the genetic lottery, and then we keep them alive, and we help them to reproduce and even to raise their young. ( I apologize for using the word 'weaker', I just can't think of a less insensitive word right now, and I am trying to make a point)

I don't think I should start with a discussion about whether it is right or wrong, or whether that is 'what makes us human'.
But the fact is that it is not how nature usually rolls. And on top of that, we have artificially altered our environments a LOT. The processed food, the chemicals, the pollutions, the EM radiation, the electric fields, the assorted stimuli into all hours of the night, the change in types of activity and the variation in levels of that activity. Plus we have created multiple artificial advantages - transport, communication, housing, food preservation, and horticultural manipulation to extend food availability, medicine, (including phenomenal advances in reproduction aid).

The usual rules do not apply. In past times, autistics might have had less chance to survive, less to reproduce. Now, our options have increased. Likewise, being only smart in the past was less of an advantage. Now weak, skinny people can be effectively more powerful than entire army of strong warriors.

What is reproductively successful is changing from generation to generation. In the 50's, an older man was supposed to be a good catch because he'd supposedly be financially set up to support a wife and family. Nowadays, good-looking, smart, healthy men can father children to women they will never meet, if she wants to pay for the turkey baster to do it. Financial prowess is optional.
Gay people can have their own kids, even dead people can have kids. Again, I am NOT making moral judgements on any of it. I am simply trying to make it clear that natural evolutionary laws are much more complicated for our species, and it is not easy to determine where they will take us.

Join the club - mine only affects my ability to retain an image, not to see the whole face though, so it's not that much of a problem for me but my son has severe proso and it has a severe impact on him.

Just that one piece of information makes a huge difference to how you approach life and the sort of strategies you need to make life comfortable for you - in itself, severe proso can be more disabling than autism for many people. It affects about 2% of the general population, though most don't know they have it, but a much higher percentage of the ASC population.

Yup, prosopagnosia comes in many degrees. I can recognize people who are very familiar to me, like family and people I have known for a year or more. The list now includes two or three professors, about ten fellow students, and four or five support workers and counselors, as well as my immediate family, grandparents, and one aunt. Some people with unique features are easier to memorize than others. If you have pink hair, I'll remember you until you dye it some other color!

I'm fairly sure I'm quoting you from another thread here: Citations please?

Last edited by whirlingmind on 25 Feb 2013, 1:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No. It's known as "differential reproduction". We don't need to outnumber them to be the branch of humankind that is eventually the most successful (hypothetically). There are more and more people having fertility problems. What if people with ASCs were found to have less fertility issues, and OK it might take a thousand years, but there could be a mechanism that makes more people born with ASCs eventually. Who says it's a myth that there are rising numbers of people with ASCs? Where is the proof?

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_25


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 095049.htm




I'm sure you are far from being the only family like this. That place could well be the adaptation of the human race to our overpopulated environment. Perhaps for all we know, in the ASC genetics is a resistance to something, and that something could be a catastrophe that wipes out large proportions of humanity, whilst leaving enough Aspie humans to rebuild civilization but to keep it within manageable limits (because we might breed less) to avoid a repeat of overpopulation. It might sound far-fetched but no-one knows how the universe started it or whether there was intelligent design.

I really don't think I want to live in an aspie world - my sensory system already clashes with half of my family's sensory systems and i can't imagine what it would be like if everyone I met had sensory systems like mine - aaarrrrgggghhhh!

My HFA daughter has highly sensitive hearing like me, yet she is the one who usually screams the loudest! I am permanently wearing earplugs indoors. It's funny how even with sensitive hearing we can scream so loud ourselves

my son is the loudest person I know - no volume control at all - yet woe betide anyone else who makes a noise

And my favourite soothing stim is singing