Are AS people truly intelligent ?

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At one of my autism doctor visits, I recited a bunch of quotations from my favorite books, e.g., one of my favorite quotations is from the book 1984 where Winston is eating breakfast with his friend, and his friend - a state worker and possible ASPIE - is glowing about how successful and creative he has been at removing words from the dictionary. His friend raves about how words like "bad" can be removed from the dictionary, because we already have "good" and "un" so the conjugation of "un-good" is possible to represent the thought of "bad". Thus, "bad" can be removed, so that the people will have less ability to think with fewer words available to express thoughts, and so the state can have better control on what the people think.

Why I remember this is because of the dark humor of Winston thinking silently to himself - while his friend is engaged in his possible ASPIE special interest long dialog of thinking of ways to reduce the size of the dictionary - "He is too smart. They will surely have him killed".

I always found that funny.

Winston's friend is so fixated on his special interest of doing this job that he misses the reason of why the state is having him do that job - to eliminate smart/thinking people like him.

After reciting my quotations, and possibly impressing him, my doctor asked if I thought I was intelligent. I did not know how to answer. After my pause over the uncertainty of the question, he further
said my brain is like a computer and we don't think computers are intelligent or do we ?

So, that is the philosophical question I pose, are we intelligent , are we just like a computer and even so can we still be intelligent ?

Last edited by LoveNotHate on 21 Dec 2013, 1:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Aspies are no more intelligent than the NTs around us... the misconception comes from the fact that if a person has an iq of 70 or less, they cannot be diagnosed with Asperger's, but instead, autism... As a result, our average is skewed because we lose our low end.

that explains why i was diagnosed with autism then. i seem more like aspergers, but i have a low iq and was very dim at school and had speech delays too.

I would say that I am of average intelligence.

I think there's a difference in the way I use my intelligence but the final results are the same as NT's.

I'm nothing like a computer (perhaps a specialized reference encyclopedia) and I'm more intelligent than most of the neurotypicals around me, but extremely well-informed in specific areas and certainly not an all-around genius. My math skills are terrible, but my language skills border on OCD.

Okay, they're well over the border.

I don't know whether or not any of that is related to the autism, or merely coincidental.

A computer can score as "genius" on an IQ test however, we don't say every computer ever built is a genius.

The dictionary definition of genius is "1.Extraordinary intellectual and creative power".

The question is whether AS people who only know the world through memorization are intelligent or not, or do we regard them just like computers and the concept of intelligence does not apply.

It depends on the person. My IQ tested at 95 at 8 years old and 113 at 15 years old (both on the WISC-III). On the second test, though, I had a huge discrepancy between the Verbal IQ (131) and Performance IQ (93).

I remember when I was in Air Force Basic and was moved to the 319 TRS (Training Squadron) to prepare for discharge, and there was a training instructor there, a woman, who told me I'm not as smart as I think I am, in a serious voice, like she was trying to get me to realize something I had been missing.

It is a philosophical question. It is not about "IQ".

AS people like me only know the world though memorization and we are good at memory/recall, however, we are akin to a computer. If I recite the passage above that I read twenty-five years ago does that make me intelligent or just like a computer that is not considered intelligent ?

Do you think your computer is more intelligent than you ? You see it recall tons of data everyday so based on memory/recall - it must be more intelligent than you ?

The computer has to be built and programmed by people who possess certain kinds of skills. Therefore, the workings of the computer is a reflection of the workings of their minds. It is not that people with ASD:s are like computers; but that the way a computer processes information stems from people with abilities similar to those of some people with ASD:s. A comparison between your memory and a computer could be a compliment, as long as he/she doesn't rule out your other qualities and/or considers you non-human.

Also, the question could be said to apply equally to NT:s, if we consider that all conscious brain functions are based on sensory inputs and memories of previous sensory inputs, and the general state of being we associate them with.

You might be referring to this distinction:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_and ... telligence

As I understand, autistic people tend to have better crystallized intelligence than fluid intelligence.

EDIT: There is this statement:

"Deficits in fluid intelligence are found on some measures in individuals with Autism spectrum disorders, including Asperger syndrome, whereas enhanced performance on other tasks measuring fluid intelligence has been found in this population."

It's impossible to know the world through memorization only. To know is to discriminate (between up and down, red and blue, safe and unsafe, etc.), and discrimination requires interpretation and judgment of available facts in addition to knowing facts.



You did more than memorize and recite it. In fact, the memorization was secondary. The very reason you remembered it is utterly non-computer-like: you interpreted the fictional scene as irony, and it appealed to your sense of humor, thus you were motivated to commit it to memory. Computers are fed data and have no such preferences for any part of it, and their order of processing is the exact opposite – the memorization (data storage) comes first; only then can processing take place.

Yes, they are.

Here's an interesting article saying that indeed autistic people do have good fluid intelligence, that is we are good at novel situations, pattern recognition, etc.:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/pos ... and-autism

Yes! This looks like what I was thinking .

I never heard of this and it will take me a few days to review this.

Thanks.

This brings up the question, what is intelligence?

Is it the ability to memorize and recall data?
Computers do that extremely efficiently, better than humans.
Is it the ability to do mathematical calculations?
Again, computers excel at that.
Is it the ability to recognize patterns?
Computers are improving there but many humans are much better there.
The ability to learn and think creatively?
That is where humans have the advantage over computers.
There is also intuitive "knowing"
Science has a hard time explaining how many people can just know stuff that logically they shouldn't.

But then there's the question of how AS intelligence compares to NT intelligence.
For the most part, there is very little difference. AS sometimes provides advantages in very focused aspects of intelligence.

You appear to have a very deep understanding. The reason I created this topic is because of another thread where I tried to explain what "lacking NT common sense" meant. I think I did a good job eventually.

NT people have to memorize too. However, they inherently or through learning pick up on relationships, and priorities of relationships, so that when an event happens they know if and when an action should supersede another action. AS people do not appear to gain this insight unless it is explicitly memorized, so later the NT person tells the AS person, "you lack common sense".

I cited a website of an AS person as an example where the AS child had to pee but was earlier told that no one can leave the classroom. The child did not know that "needing to pee" could be an exception to the rule of "no one leaves the classroom". Somehow NT people know that certain events can supersede rules and AS people don't. So, when the AS child pees in the classroom, and the teachers asks, "How come you did not ask to use the bathroom?". Everyone laughs when the child says, "You said no one could leave", and the child is tormented later with "you lack common sense".

How do you explain that based on what you wrote ?