Cultural Aspergers Hypothesis

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Assumptions:

1. Autism is caused by a combination of an autistic neurology and sociological and psychological factors that cause it to become a disorder.
2. Psychological factors in early childhood and the severity of the neurology determine how autistic the brain will end up being wired.
3. In culturals were autistic neurologies are more common less people with autistic neurologies will be diagnosed with Aspergers as they will be less socially alienated.
4. People with a higher high IQ will be able to work around their problems easier than someone who is otherwise equal.
5. Ergo, the average IQ of people with Aspergers would be lower in countries with a higher percentage of people with autistic neurologies as those with a high IQ in such a society are more likely to be undiagnosed than those with lower IQ in said society or those with high IQ in other societies.
6. Likewise, Aspergers will manifest differently in different cultures.
7. An autistic society may not be dysfunctional as these autistic people would not be severly effected in an autistic society and may not even be considered autistic.

Nope. Doesn't work in my head.

It all falls apart for me at "People with higher IQ's would be able to work around their problems easier..."

Higher IQ and social skills are too often in reverse correlation. Successful societies are highly dependent on effective social skills.

You are also forgetting the HF Autism and high IQ is not a given, and completely missing any mention of LFA.

It's a great utopian ideal, but it just doesn't work when it's plugged into reality.

That's why it's a hypothesis, not a fact, or even a theory. Anyway the focus of the hypothesis is mild autism, not severe autism, as it's the mild ones that could theoritically flip flop in different environments.

It's probably true that in areas with a larger autistic population, autistic people would have far fewer problems trying to fit in, so their social anxiety may be less pronounced, and because of that their condition would naturally be seen as less problematic than that of someone with the same degree of autism who lives in a less autistic part of society.

And of course, if an autistic person is the one who is diagnosing a patient, he may see the patients "symptoms" as actually being quite normal, as he can relate to them himself, so he is less likely to view the patient as having any real problems.

People often take for granted the fact that a diagnosis, or even a claim that a disorder exists at all, is a completely subjective opinion. Doctors opinions are no more objectively valid than those of anyone else, they simply share a collection of subjective opinions and are in positions of great enough authority to convince people that their personal beliefs are unquestionable facts of the universe, which they are not.

Aspergers is no more a disorder than the completely illogical neurotypical mindstate is a disorder, depending on who is making the judgement.

If we somehow god rid of all of the NT vermin, autism wouldn't even exist any more. It would be indistinguishable from the standard human mindstate, because it would be the standard human mindstate.

The number of arguments and disagreements on this forum suggest that an autistic community would fail.

This is ignoring the cultural aspect, we don't come from one culture, and we are naturally more divertly minded, so of course we will dispute here.

All communities have disagreements. If communities can currently thrive while being full of mindless animals in addition to these disagreements, then I don't see why the removal of such creatures from the equation would result in a community which fails where current communities do not.

I understood all the points you made here before I replied. It was clear that it is a hypothesis.

It was clear to me the focus is on mild Autism too, and that is one point at which, for me, and the way I view Autism, the hypothesis falls apart. To exclude an entire sector of the spectrum, to me, implies that LFA doesn't count. In my mind it does, and for any hypothesis to carry enough weight for serious consideration on my part, it wouldn't exclude LFA.

I've actually spent a lot of time hypothesizing along the same lines you have in your OP. It was when I realized that LFA, if incorporated into the theories I came up with, they fell flat.

The IQ thing doesn't even have to include LFA to fall flat. There are tons of Aspies who do not have high IQ's, and wouldn't even if you put them into a society such as you've described.

But, even if you discount LFA and IQ, and assume that LFA doesn't exits (only for the sake of argument), and assuem that all Aspies have high IQ's in such a society, that still doesn't consider the single most notable trait of Aspserger Syndrome, which is the social piece. And that's too important an issue not to address.

Even if Aspies were all part of a society that is totally accepting of our social styles, our styles vary far to widely, and are still not well honed. Acceptance doesn't mean our skills would be more effective. I don't think they would be. There is too much evidence right in the Aspie community that our skills as a group are not very well honed.

I think we have an even higher propensity to misunderstand each other than to misunderstand non-Aspies. We may identify with each other a little better, but that isn't the same thing as understanding.

Believe me, I totally understand the hypothesis. I just don't agree with it for these reasons.

EDIT: I'm pretty sure I understand what you're saying. That if we lived in a society that was more accepting of us, that we would function well as members of that society. I do agree in one sense. I agree that we would function better with that society than we do with society now, but I don't agree that we would function better as individuals, or that such a society would function better as as whole, solely based on their higher level of acceptance.

I think it boils down to the fact that I'm more convinced that AS causes real disfunction independent of influences around us than I think you are. I don't think those influences (society), are inconsequential. I don't think they are the cause or the "answer" either.

First I wasn't trying to imply everyone with AS has a high IQ, I was more implying that in a society where more people had the autistic neurology proportionally more autistic people with a lower IQ would get diagnosed with autism. Second I wasn't trying to conclude that everyone in a society where everyone had an autistic neurology would be functional, it's just that does at the top half would function, would not be diagnosed as autistic, and they might be able to hold the society together.

Yes. I realize that. I wasn't implying that was what you were implying.



Right. I understood that as well.



Agreed.



And that's precisely where I disagree.

These are still the same people they were before. Nothing's changed about them. Where we are basically in disagreement, I think, is that I firmly believe that if a person really is AS, though very high functioning and even with a high IQ, disfunction exists, independent of outside influences.

This may help you understand a little better why I disagree with the hypothesis:

Here's my own postulate:

If a person diagnosed with Autism in society now, would not qualify as being Autistic in the society you describe, they weren't really Autistic in the first place.

If you look at it that way, maybe we're more in agreement than we both thought, and the real issue we're talking about is misdiagnosis.

The part we really disagree is the first assumption. You believe it is false, this hypothesis is based around it being true.

I'm not sure we do disagree about that. Are you saying, hypothetically, that not all Aspies have high IQ's or that they do? I don't believe they all do.

It is possible that one of us, but I'm not sure which of us really, may be confused enough about what the other means, that we may not be able to agree or disagree at this point. Not sure.

This assumption has been shown to be false in other groups? Why would it be suddenly true in this one? People who are abnormally high IQ are actually more likely to have certain types of issues.

you know, sometimes I feel when I pick apart ideas like this, it's almost like I'm crapping on creative thinking. I hate feeling like that.

The thing is, reality has a way of doing that on its own. Ganadnox ideas are one's that have occurred to me too at one time or another. The unfortunate thing is that reality eventually forces me to abandon ideals that just aren't going to happen, whether or not they're based on firm premises.

Ganadnox, there's nothing wrong with thinking about your ideas. At some point though, we've all got to deal with what we've got (the real world), or face the consequences of not dealing with it.

It sucks, but that's the way it is.

The first assumptions is that autism is caused by a combination of neurological and psychological factors and had nothing to do with IQ.