MotownDangerPants wrote:
I guess I don't really understand how they determine if an autistic person is mentally ret*d or not. I understand that autism with an IQ under 70 is considered mental retardation, but asfaik someone with a low verbal IQ who scores poorly in many areas of the test will often have a high functional IQ, so how can they be sure how high the IQ of someone who is severely autistic is if they can't even take an 1Q test properly? Couldn't these people have extremely high functional IQs that can't be measured? How do you know what's inside the person's mind if they can't express themselves or aren't aware enough to take a test?
The short answer is, "It doesn't matter." Might sound cruel, but what is the rest of the world to do if the person can't communicate well enough to "tell us" how intelligent they are? Intelligence is measured by what one can or cannot "produce." If you can't demonstrate correct answers to a series of questions, there is know way for anyone else to know whether the person taking the test knows the answers.
Suppose they do know the answers, and are able to process everything they see and hear, maybe even better than the rest of us?
If they can't communicate it to the rest of us, it's of no use to anyone, including themselves, other than in their own private world that can't be shared with anyone.
I know this kind of stuff can sound harsh to some of us, but there are at least SOME realities we have no choice but to accept. If you can't share your skills, they are of no value to anyone.
For the sake of argument, I'll use myself as an example. I started writing songs decades ago. For nearly five years, they were recorded on tape, and put in drawers where no one but me ever heard them. It took me that long to realize they were basically worthless to anyone but me sitting around collecting dust. No one else ever heard them, so no one cared. For better or worse, I'm putting them out there now, letting others hear them. Now, they have value.
That's a bit of a simplistic comparison, because I know the songs had value for me, and there are some writers who never release their work, and it's fine with them. They enjoy it, and it makes them happy. They don't need anyone else to enjoy them.
It's a lot different though when we're talking about intelligence. You can't measure what you can't see. Effectively it's the same to the observer as if it doesn't exist. For all we know some people with full blown "debilitating" Autism may be processing mathematics, language, and whatever else at a level none of the rest of us will ever realize. And if they are, of what use is it to anyone but themselves in their own world? None really.
From there, all that really matters to the "rest of the world" is whether the Autistic can care for themselves. Can they live a safe life without supervision? Can they take care of their own hygiene? If not, that's a problem for us, because someone has to do it for them. That's something we are morally obligated to do, and something we can measure, so it does matter.
Until someone can come up with some kind of "Sci-fi" type way of "seeing" these people's thoughts, and use it as a means of actually seeing or hearing what really goes on inside their heads, whether anything is happening is irrelevant, because we can't know.
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I'm not likely to be around much longer. As before when I first signed up here years ago, I'm finding that after a long hiatus, and after only a few days back on here, I'm spending way too much time here again already. So I'm requesting my account be locked, banned or whatever. It's just time. Until then, well, I dunno...
13 Jun 2010, 11:59 am
