Is Asperger's Evolution in Process?

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I get that too! If I try to sing along to anything she won't let me

so there we have it, precisely my point against ASCs being the next step in evolution; half of us desperate to sing our souls out and the other half screaming at us to shut up because they have hyperaccusis....

I find it highly unlikely. In fact most people with an ASD will have much less chances of successful reproduction, unless very late in Life ( bringing with it other risks for offspring). It simply does not compute.

Sincerely,
Matthew

The burden of proof is on both of us. In the absence of evidence, neither of us can safely assume we're right.

And I do plan on studying this in the future - maybe it'll be my graduate thesis topic.



A couple issues I have with that.

Firstly, blindness can be adaptive in some settings - there are some species who, through evolution, have lost their eyes. Generally because functioning eyes use up energy and are sensitive to injury, so if you live in a lightless environment (eg burrowing underground, cave-dwelling, or living near hot water vents deep in the bottom of the sea) eyes are an unnecessary waste.

Secondly, do you have evidence that AS strengths are a compensation for weaknesses?

This would require showing a causal link of:

weakness present --> compensatory behavior --> behavior builds skill

So, here are some findings that would support that theory:

a) longitudinal studies should show that the weakness can be observed earlier in development than the strength hypothesized to result from it

b) people who have the same weakness with different causes should show the same strength (eg autism caused by different genetic conditions vs autism caused by prenatal exposure to drugs vs autism caused by neonatal brain injury)

c) people who acquire the same weakness later in development (eg from brain injury) should not have the strength, or should take some time to acquire it



Nature does not fight back. Nature does not have intentions. Nature does not form plans for how we will turn out.

It's all about survival and mating.


By the way, has anyone considered that BAP may be selected for, instead of autism? That would make more sense. BAPers don't seem to have that much trouble finding partners, and a dash of autism can be quite helpful in some professional fields.

Nature doesn't care about "surviving and mating," either.

"Nature" doesn't actually "care" about anything as it is not a conscious entity.

To simplify: there are a bunch of random mutations that get into the gene pool, some of which get passed on because they directly aid in survival, some of which get passed on just because there is no negative influence weeding them out. It's a crapshoot. There are plenty of stupid, useless, or otherwise silly traits that get passed on for absolutely no other reason than that they're recessive and don't directly prevent an individual from breeding. The human backbone is one such example. The human backbone is an extremely stupid "design," but it continues because it doesn't impact breeding.

The law of the jungle is whatever survives, survives. There is no rhyme or reason to it, there is no "higher purpose," therefore, there is no such thing as being the "next step" in evolution.

"Autism" is just one of the many variants present in humans. It's not "higher" or "lower." It just is. It's on the same level as dwarfism, or being born with extra fingers. They don't prevent an individual from breeding, and can be passed-on directly or recessively; hence, they exist. That's it.

This is how nature fights back, (my personification doesn't mean the actual evidence is invalid) I will repost what I put a little higher up the thread:

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.

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



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

There is epi-genetics, and there is what you're talking about-differential expression of genetics due to environment. So it is more complicated than the old simpler model. But still how are autistics "evolution at work"?

If your contention that the very fact that autistics tend not to reproduce is itsself an adaptation to overpopulation-then how exactly does that work?

How exactly does nature 'know' (figuratively speaking) that we are overpopulated, and then what is the mechanism that nature uses to cause autism to appear to put a break on population growth?

Because by less breeding overpopulation will reduce over time.

As I said above, me personifying it doesn't mean it's not valid. As I said higher up the thread, for every action there is a reaction. By the earth being unbalanced because of what we are doing to it, it has a knock on effect. All of life on earth is in a relationship, it's not called the web of life for nothing.

For instance (this is just a rough, possibly partly-hypothetical example), global warming from the mechanisation and industrialisation of our environment, melts the polar ice caps, these affect sea temperatures, salinity and jet streams etc. which has an effect on which forms of life survives. It's all in a chain.

Or, by overfishing, the balance of the food chain in the ocean is put out of balance, which again, affects which species are present.

Or foreign species are introduced into an environment and they over graze certain plant types, which means that others previously held at bay are given the chance to flourish, completely changing the environment and which animal life forms survive there.

This is not a conscious decision by nature of course, it is a reaction. This isn't the same as 'knowing' of course, but when something is altered it affects something else.

And of course, I refer back to an earlier comment of mine: we don't know whether there is intelligent design involved in the creation of the universe or the continuing evolution of it.

No entity with any intelligence at all would deliberately produce a species so destructive and intolerant and then tell it it had a special place in the world better than anything else's - no wonder the human race has NPD

I guess that all boils down to free will. We could be part of some grand experiment.

What's NPD?

Narcissistic personality disorder

What do you mean "for obvious reasons?" Please elaborate.

Not necessarily, and yes it is really a handicap.

Theoretically the strengths could outweigh the weaknesses and someone could have an ASC without the serious impairments that make it a disability but then they wouldn't get a diagnosis because the criteria are based on the impairment model.

Also, I've never come across anyone remotely close to being on the spectrum who doesn't have some level of disability

prosopagnosia for me is quite a complicated thing to describe. it is not face blindness in the strictest sense. i can not mentally recall lucidly the shapes of people's faces even if i know them well, but if they knock on my door , i recognize who they are (after opening it and seeing them) without them having to tell me. i can remember hair color and hairstyles, and i can recognize bodily shapes and behavioural mannerisms, and i can remember very well the sound of people's voices as well as what they are likely to say.

i can not watch a movie because i forget who is who because i do not know them personally, and if any people in the movie look similar (same color hair for example), then i can not recognize what character they are and i rapidly lose the plot.

there are so many subtleties in the shape of a persons face that mere visual scanning is useless for me. i believe normal people instantly recognize other peoples faces due to an inherent capacity to amalgamate their contours with no effort.

an analogy that i think is pertinent to me is that if i looked at a persons fingerprint for 20 minutes, and i then saw other fingerprints, i would not recognize the original fingerprint when shown it after a few seconds. faces are the same.
i do not look at peoples faces for long because they have little meaning to me. expressions on peoples faces are not able to be read by me to any meaningful degree. i am perplexed how people can recognize a face no matter whether it is smiling or frowning.

for example, sometimes smiling looks like an anguished expression and vice verce. i got into a major social dilemma in a tea room at an office i used to work for when the TV showed some arab womens reactions to the deaths of their sons in a bombing and i thought they were laughing. i commented that i did not see what was so funny about the situation and i was socially stonewalled for quite some time.

i see expressions of some people who are supposed to be experiencing lust and i think they look very sleepy etc etc.

as long as i can buy what i need from the shops i do not care, so for me, prosopagnosia is not a cause of any major problems.

most peope find other strategies to cope - my son uses hair, clothing, etc for recognition but another person I know uses smell - gets totally lost if you change your washing powder or shower gel

recognition is not the major problem, the main issue is, as you describe, not being able to read the face fast enough or effectively enough to process the social information accurately, leading to social misunderstandings. This is more subtle but it is the primary impact for most people with proso and it makes all those hours many of our kids spend analysing emotion in pictures of faces almost useless to them - if you have to study a face in parts to read it by the time you've figured out one emotion the face has already moved on through 6 other emotions you've missed most of.

it can also make you very vulnerable too - if you can't read intent in a face you have far less chance of telling if a person is a threat to you or not. this makes the world very unpredictable and exacerbates the ASC propensity to anxiety.