What role does Asperger's play for the bio cycle?

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Are we socially incompetent because of population control?

Are we only here as tools, so that neurotypical people can feel they have a leverage over the less incompetent? I mean. What would the world be if everybody was equal?

We're specialists.

Because autistics and other neurodiverse people can specialize in one area at the expense of other areas, we benefit our societies despite our lower reproduction rate because the innovations we produce have benefits for the entire society. Even if most autistics never make a major innovation, the "cost" (i.e., fewer babies) of having us in a community is outweighed by the permanent benefit of a new innovation.

As far as natural selection goes, that's why I think autistic (and other atypical) characteristics stay around in the gene pool.

Sociologically, disabled members of a society tend to, if the society can support them, make the society more cohesive by allowing all members to become more interdependent. If you know that you will be supported if you become disabled, then you are less likely to spend all your time on becoming independent, and more likely to depend on others for some things and specialize in one thing. Overall, it advances society. (An example is ancient Egypt, where disabled people were included in society to a greater degree than anywhere else--and where technology advanced at a greater rate than anywhere else. Their prosperity due to the constancy of the Nile allowed them to support disabled individuals, and their interdependence as a society--greater than any other of their time--allowed them to make technological advancements.)

That's just looking at the natural selection and the sociological aspects of it, of course. In the domain of ethics, we are quite simply categorized as human beings with the same worth as any other human being. The only time things get tricky is when there are not enough resources to support everyone, and when one person needs more than most. I think it is simply our responsibility as a society to prevent these situations, so that we never have to perform that kind of triage.

I understand, but thinking that all Aspies are nerds and inventors is a big misconception.


Not all aspies are gifted. Asperger's is not an advantage. It is a dis advantage.

I mentioned that. Re-read it--Asperger's genetics stay around because even if only one in a thousand autistics invents something useful, it's a net natural-selection benefit.

Explained this in my blog last month--
"Bob the Autistic Cave-Man"
http://chaoticidealism.livejournal.com/73652.html

Alternating current was invented by an aspie, Nikola Tesla. Without it our modern civilization would not exist-we'd be stuck somewhere in the 1870s or so and never have progressed farther. We'd be using steam engines and maybe the occasional internal combustion engine for small applications, but other than that we would have hit our limits as humans and have nowhere to go but down. Rome might have survived had they invented alternating current, but they didn't, so they went as far as they could before imploding. It could be argued that the inventions of the internal combustion engine and alternating current are causing the whole SPECIES to evolve, thus creating more autistics. Where else will we get our mechanics and network admins and computer techs? If Tesla's patents could be fully understood, it's possible that we could journey to the stars as easily as the fictional Captain Kirk, and we would have solved the mysteries of existence. If society produces more autistics, then the likelihood of producing another Tesla increases, leading to further evolution. At some point humanity will go past the point of no return, as happened with agriculture and urbanization. The net benefits of one Tesla, one Einstein, are able to negate the drawbacks of millions of poop smearing screaming non-talking autistic people. And most autistics aren't that bad.

Let's just hope our society evolves as fast as our technology appears to be doing.

Oh Callista...you know that's a vain hope. Technology races ahead and we run after it struggling to keep up. Sometimes I think this can be a good thing. Technology forces changes and society must cope because once a technology exists you can't un-have it. I think reliable contraception and nuclear weapons are two technologies that have forced societies to confront and re-think ingrained ways. But it's a real struggle.

It is like the sun, where the poles turn faster than the middle and it causes solar winds.

Did you know that the steam engine was invented in Alexandria, in the first century? However, because society was based on slavery nobody felt any necessity to apply this invention to practical ends, since who cared to make labour less intensive for slaves? So it remained a toy. Society has to evolve morally before it can evolve technologically. The way in which society's treat their minorities tells you a lot about how civilised they are.

We are somewhat more evolved than we were in the first century AD, but I don't know that we'll evolve much further for a while yet. We may be approaching our apex. What happens next is anyone's guess.

This is not a reason for autistic genes surviving in gene pool - both the relatives and the non-relatives of autistics benefit from these innovations, then having autistic genes is not an advantage in anything (even if you are 100% NT, you have the benefits of autism).

This is similar to the free-rider problem in economics:

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

NPR (National Public Radio, in USA) had a thing about aspergers having an advantage with certain jobs:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... c=fb&cc=fp

And then their announcement on facebook got these responses:

http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=1 ... 9627945786

You have to scroll down until you find the story.

But the relatives benefit more. The members of your small society benefit more than the people on the other side of the world, and said small society shares more of your genetics than the people on the other side of the world do.

Rome used lead for all the water pipes. The Latin (ancient Roman) name for lead is plumbum, from which we get the modern plumbing. While they used lead for plumbing they had no hope. This is the reason for a lot of the fruity nobles and Caesars.

I believe Tesla's work paved the way for radar, thus also radio and television. He helped combustion engines by inventing the "spark plug". This also meant he was a major influence on flight.

Thomas Edison was alive with Nicola Tesla. Edison was a major advocate for DC current, mostly because his experiments and inventions were with DC current. Tesla was just confident AC was better because it could travel much farther distances without significant current loss. Nicola Tesla was also apparently working on some sort of Tesla coil system that would have supplied free electricity, through the ground. No idea if it actually worked and we probably will never find out. After all money makes the world go round, with humans. This is also the reason we aren't is space yet, we could easily have been if people worked together.

I would say that all our advancement is designed to make our lives easier. This has the side effect of de-evolving humans. If people with medical conditions that would otherwise not survive (diabetes for example) then that weakens the human race as a whole, slowly over time. Think about it- if evolution is "survival of the fittest" and we are making even the most frail able to survive then that is not evolution.

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This sentence quite frankly worries me. Einstein's work went much further towards "understanding the mysteries of existence".

If anything the rare "Aspie" that does invent something only serves to make life easier on the average slobs who couldn't survive without our modern conveniences. Lastly if anything ASD's are just a random occurence, back when we were hunter-gatherers having someone that understood hunting, herbs, how to cook, etc was a survival advantage for the tribe. We have long since past the need for that.

My vibe is that autistic people drive society forward because of their focus and attention to detail picking up things that NT people just gloss over or accept.