The future of Autisim!

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Gideon - have you ever had meltdown? A complete and utter shutdown of all communications skills due to a suddenly stressful situation or other sensory overload? In public no less?

Do people always disregard what you say or assume you are lying to them because you look 'shifty'? (...had a few other ones less complimentray than that too)

Have you ever been told by a boss that you are passive/aggressive for asking too many question which you 'obviously know the answer to because you're smart."?

Have you ever lost a job for laughing inapropriately at a customer?

Have you ever had your best friend sleep with your significant other because, when the question was brought up at a party, you did not react negatively to the suggestion 'like you should have'? (...that right there is a f'd up story... let me tell you...)

I do not fit the pattern NT's are programmed to respond to... like 99% of the population. I am different from them - not the other way around.

Advantages of clumsiness

Clumsiness is caused by higher than normal senses. You would think that more acute senses would lead to a better sense of balance but it doesn't as the centers of balance are thrown off by an increased aural sensitivity. Basically heightened sense input results in less ability to balance. In evolutionary terms it is a trade off. You can be balanced and nimble on your feet or clumsy and more attuned to the world around you. A person with aspergers would be much more able to use his heightened senses when alone in the forest to differentiate between sounds and pinpoint predators and prey.

All these are things NTs cause by their disability to react appropriately to social situations. They are not inherently aspects of aspergers but caused by outside influences.

"NTs" are not merely an arbitrary group whose brains and behavior happens to be "preferable" just because they're the majority. They are people whose brains work the way they're "supposed" to. The "typical" human brain is the product of a long process of natural selection, built to work in a certain way that's conducive to the flourishing of society. We are, after all, a social species. "Normal" or NT socialization is what it is for a reason. To say that behavior that contradicts the "normal" mode of socialization is merely a different kind of socialization is ultimately meaningless.

Uh, that's ridiculous.

Follow up to the advantage post.

Have you ever gone hunting with a NT? I have and I can tell you they neither see, hear, nor are they able to smell things nearly as well as I can. Alone or with one or two people someone with AS is the perfect guide to where animals are hidden in the landscape.

I don't believe this. Why not? Other animals. Having acute senses doesn't impair their coordination at all.

You are wrong. The sense of balance is housed in the inner ear when it is overstimulated it weakens the bodies ability to balance. Go ahead look it up.

Gideon, your insisting that what the vast majority of humans, autistic and NT alike, identify as (rather serious) disabilities are, in reality, mysterious "super-abilities" that we simply don't understand or appreciate is horse s**t, and it's offensive. You are clearly delusional.

We aren't other animals we are upright primates. Other animals have four legs and their ability to balance isn't as pronounced or as important as it is in humans. Even a slight decrease in our ability to balance throws us off more than it would other animals. Even NTs become unbalanced when they are bombarded by too many sounds or sounds at certain frequencies.

Last edited by Gideon on 28 Mar 2011, 1:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I identify them as evolutionary traits. Super abilities would be something like being able to fly. The ability to differentiate patterns, acute hearing sensitivity, sense of touch, and ability to withstand temperature extremes are survival traits not super abilities. They are certainly abilities that humans have had in the past and ones I believe that people with AS continue to express.

More power to you in trying to change the world, my friend. I'll back you up as best as I'm able. I have always had a soft spot for the underdog.

Correlation is not causation. You have theorized that your clumsiness is because of your acute senses. But what if it's just two things happening in one body? After all, the deer (or whatever) you are hunting can see/hear/smell you a lot better than you can them . (Ok, not so sure on the visual. Maybe they can't see better.) It doesn't make them clumsy.

I do agree that a person with AS would be an asset in tracking animals or plants. This asset may be how it got preserved in the genome in the first place.

Do you not realize that clumsiness is most often a simple lack of dexterity, which can be the result of a number of different conditions, most of which are the result of some kind of neurological insult?

I am not a deer a deer is not me. We know that aural sensitivity can and does cause clumsiness it isn't a leap to suggest that is the causation in people with aspergers. I addressed the clumsiness factor between deer and men in another post and i will repeat it has everything to do with walking upright being more unstable than four legs. The entire package is how it got preserved Aspergers are a compliment to an NT when hunting. The asperger person would be the lone scout finding where animals were located he then reports back to the social NT group of hunters. The scout evolved to work alone and to sift huge amounts of sensory input. The scout also needed to be more cold tolerant because he went out alone, he is more touch sensitive and more prone to sleeping disorders because he needs to be wary when asleep more than the social NT hunters. The NT hunters work with input from the scout but work socially. That is why Aspergers are more rare than NTs it is all evolution at work.

Human lived as hunters and gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years before we as of late became civilized is it any wonder we have hunting roles evolved into all of us?

I fail to see how lack of balance can make me accidentally stab myself with a fork while eating. Or make me drop a hefty book onto my foot. Or even allow me to casually tear off a strip of skin on the back of my hand while inserting dishes into a dishwasher each and every time I use it.

I once somehow managed to launch a bowling ball behind me. As well as a throwing knife. Come to think of it, a tennis ball as well.

This is not to mention all the times I have reached out to grab something and caught it right in the nuts.

A cheetah may be able to smell a gazelle from a mile away, but it doesn't mean anything if its response is to sprint right into a tree. Clumsiness would seem to counter-balance acute senses, even if they were causally connected as you say.

ETA:

You may be an aspie if you can somehow get a tack stuck in your hand while cleaning out a desk drawer, and not notice it until someone else points it out a few minutes later. Such a superpower would come wonderfully in hand in a world without antibiotics, hygiene, and full of sharp pointy objects.