Why is aspie separatism/supremacy controversial?

Post Reply New Topic

I do not see this as being too much of an issue in the typical hunter gatherer society and for most of human history, most humans have lived in hunter-gatherer societies (isolated instances of agricultural societies do not begin to appear untill around 10,000 years ago).

I am not entirely sure what you think this has to do with anything.


Sounds like nonsense to me.

Unlike the tail of the peacock, intelligence actually does have advantages independent of sending a signal that you can cope with a significant handi-cap; it's less than clear that being intelligent actually does constitute a handicap per say.

Physical robustness would be easier (for prospective female mates) to observe and confirm than intelligence.

Minor variations in intelligence are quite unlikely to correlate strongly to general genetic fitness such that it would be a reliable means of selecting healthy genes by proxy, and this would be more particularly the case prior to the evolution of large brain to body ratio.

Large brain to body ratio is actually a very persistent trait in the generalized body of plan of primates, yet many primates have social and living patterns that do not facilitate any particular opportunity for females to assess the intelligence of prospective mates, much less for it to be a better means of selecting good genes by proxy than more direct observations of size, strength, fur/hair quality, general physical appearance, agility, speed.....etc.

Selective pressures are not the only important evolutionary influence. Niche exploitation is also a very important influence in evolution.

How so?


I think that it is quite clear that blue eyes are less unfit than Autism when it comes to reproduction, yet no dominant blue eye allele.

I doubt it. I see no reason to expect either speciation along Autism/non-Autism lines, or displacement of non-autistics by Autistics.


As opposed to non-Autistic people having nearly twice that number of viable non-Asperger children? That's hardly likely to result in displacement.

How do you conclude this consistent 50%? What inheritance model are you assuming or accounting for to arrive at such a statistic?


I have no idea what this is supposed to mean...tend to get back what, or to what, or with what, or at what?


That just makes no sense to me whatsoever. How do alleles switch back and forth between being dominant and recessive in your view? Not why, or what advantages this might entail, but how? I have no idea what you mean by "important hybridization", nor why you think that in the event of prospective speciation genes would (even if they could) switch from recessive to dominant, nor what you think this has to with hybridization.


Again, this is just not making any sense that I can see. If people with Autism breed together and the result is the removal of the genes causing Autism from the gene pool, then this will simply result in less and less Autism genes in the wider human gene pool and has nothing whatsoever to do with founder effect.

If people with sickle cell alleles were to exclusively breed together, this would lower the proportion of sickle cell alleles present in the wider human gene pool and gradually reduce the proportion of extant humans possessing one or more such allleles. The proportion of sickle cell alleles in the human gene pool would reduce, and the sickle cell population would reduce relative to the non-sickle cell population. Explain how and why this same effect would not occur in respect of Autistic alleles if Autistic people were to interbreed exclusively or predominately with other Autistics.


Absolutely not.
The best that will garner us is ridicule and we face enough of that as it is. Autism's public image is poor enough as it is.


I find your suggestion astounding. We are talking about a creature that kills its own kind over such differences as which football team one supports and you want to suggest that we might not even be in the same species?

Are you a masochist?

Last edited by pandd on 11 Mar 2010, 10:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[/quote]

Good, we have nothing to lose then.

[/quote]

Its a feature not a bug that its "astounding". Its not going to change a thing, as you said they kill each other over football teams. We are already on a "team" by default, we are "diseased". We weren't in hitler's lists? Or autism was to young back then? Movements like the WWF and greenpeace show that NTs aren't exceedingly speciests.Evolutionarily, theres a balance between competition and cooperation, humans are heavily wired for cooperation.

Omnicon I

Note most of the NT power structure is derived from the effectiveness of such virals. After years of study I have come to the conclusion NT's do not know what they are actually talking about. They are better than us at giving the impression they do when they can get away with it. Genocidal bastards have near perfected this art. Curiously, after the war ,most Germans admitted to have never even read all the the book of the main GB . It was fashionable to keep it on display on their book shelf, and its absence was questioned at social gatherings.

Intelligence, humor, honesty kept simple and flashed with occasional brilliance is a good inoculation against GB ranting and lip foaming.

We should sell our services to them as well , they respect this more than being given stuff for some odd reason.

So, I want some money , rather a lot actually, and I will deliver a workable theory that they currently need.

Also the more things you ask for increases your standing . This is most weird but true. I want a
part time female social skills assistant for a totally non sexual working relationship if they set me on. I require a reasonable quiet property. Time to fiddle around with my SI for relaxation.

Given those things I promise never to blabber other staff/ visitors about my imaginary friend who is part of my SI. (She is a cyborg you know, and requires building.

We have plenty to loose. "Bad enough" is better than "even worse".

The premise itself is actually rather cliche. That you think it is a good idea in some kind of political/socio PR sense, that it will improve our socially standing in some way, to be seen to proclaim this premise is what is astounding. Why not describe us the lost descendents of Atlantis or MuMu land, or maybe crystal children come to move mankind into the next stage of spiritual development while you are at it?

No we were not (on Hitler's lists).

Dr Asperger's work dates from around this time. His handling of the condition in his published writings discourages elimination (he posits it as a precursor to necessary/desirable kinds of adults; more specifically exceptional achievers capable of original thought and serving a role in society that probably no one else could fill so well).


No they do not. Have you considered why these organizations actually exist? Is it because of years of respect for and non-exploitation of other species have decimated many of them across the globe?


With a small pool of familiar "in-groupers".

No. The general suggestion seems to be identifying what skills we have and selling them. Increasing wealth and social capital. The other component of this suggestion is directly related to the thread. Contemporary environmental conditions , (such as this magical box I am typing this on) may allow AS skills to develop and expand to an extent not achievable before. Furthermore if this expansion allows an increasing number of Aspies control over some of the networks from which we have been excluded or exploited, this may also change the perception of us by NTs. We become useful individuals , even more wealthy individuals, maybe with a bit of odd social baggergery, but nothing too serious, we might even become fashionable. Who knows.

Economics , power and wealth acquisition is the reality check barrier. We can manufacture memes to explain and reinforce why we are doing so well.

Have you ever wondered why some groups of words paint a very vivid and emotional , living picture in your head? Or some pictures want to make you figure out what they mean in words? And if you were superstitious if you "saw" these mental images , and were unaware of the technical skills underlying their construction you would probably take them for a kind of profound truth even if they could be logically deconstructed to be rubbish . Well you wouldn't take them at face value , and most Aspies wouldn't , but NT's don't question this kind of stuff too much or often because it never occurs to them to do this.

No it is not. Go back and re-read. The comment you are responding to is referring to the notion of announcing ourselves as some kind different species. None of which is necessary or unlikely to be counter productive to increasing our wealth and social capital.

It would be nice if this world was full of nothing but us Aspies. For some reason, however, I have this weird image in my head of the Planet of the Apes series. I am NOT trying to insult anyone. It's just a simple analogy expressing a reversal of what species eventually rules the planet. Of course the apes. Apes - Aspies. Humans - NTs. Sorry ahead of time if that analogy sucked. But hey...

Sorry thought we had already more or less agreed we were "ex-speciated" to some degree and were trying to figure out what to do next. My error if case.

Are we branching on the genetic scale? I don't know . Not my field. But what you present is very interesting and I will think about it.

Are we branching on the social scale and are our behavioral traits and related information processing systems in the new environment likely to lead to our physical increase in the gene pool? I know Gengis Khan has more physical descendants alive today than the guy that made his armor. Power comes in more benign transactional forms as well.

That is just because he had craploads of wives/sexual partners. Mind you, does not work for everyone as Henry VIII managed to demonstrate.

From a practical (communicational constraints), we are beater off promoting that we are speciating. Even if this is not totaly true it doesn't matter. Anyway i think they are meny hipocrites alredy on this thread about us being equall with NTs, to avoid offending any one. Speciation, doesn't violate equality.

Like i said earlier, in a extremely short, NT friendly message, we tell them, we are very different but not diseased. Good PR, we get more of what we want.

..... I live in Belgium, a country torn apart by two communities, proclaiming they are different here is for accommodating everyones specificities with out getting tyrannized by the others. Its not an district9-like deviation.

I see my self alredy in the planet of the apes.

@ pandd

You are overreacting, we are alredy in the "diseased" team and people try to "cure" us (well, if you don't talk, i think you need there help).

Fears of genocide are overstate, we are smart enough so that we aren't considered a threat. We aren't prawns, we are still 99,9999999% identical with NTs. Speaking of prawns, we are alredy in a similar situation.

Life is naturally fulled of dangers. We just need to asses the risks and potential gains. If you don't take risks, you never win anything in life.

I'm confused, you are talking to me or pandd?

About "branching on the genetic scale", thats "sympatric speciation", i'm not pulling this possibility from my ass . This can happen, with exponential increase of sexual isolation, we are at the very beginning of the exponential. (oversimplifying the juice of the theory)

Sorry I was Pandd talking to , primarily and probably blabbering a bit to everyone else.

Like sound of exponential . We need to be clever as hell to get away with it, and no big blabbering.

Only contraversial is news.

"The people who focus on machines have made some more." UPDATES AT SIX!

It is fairly well ducumented, about 38-40,000 years ago. A small group of people started making things.

Things were made before then, but very few. Three stand out, the throwing stick, which could knock down a human, the thrown spear, which could kill a human, and the hafted axe which could finish off and butcher a human hit by the throwing stick, impailed by the thrown spear, and nothing else.

38-40,000 years ago was a better human killing spear, the spear thrower, and a lot of indirect tools, the first not made for the main human purpose.

Sleds, boats, snowshoes, skis, clothes, shoes, nets, were the first products not made to directly kill people. They also started the domestication of plants and animals. They had the first large vocabulary language.

Not much happened, and 32-34,000 years ago came another wave of useless goods, sculpture, modeling, painting, weaving cloth, seven weaves, tents, calenders.

What we can tell is there were a lot more of them, and they lived over a wide area. The next wave comes 15,000 to 8,000 years ago, when a city was built with large irrigated fields, and the production of high fire pottery, the wheel, pre planned housing, and thousands of people living and working together.

Their last act was to abandon their city, move to Salsbury Plain, and build Stonehenge. While they did stop buildng cities, they did have a wide sea going food collection system. While their technology moved huge stones, their houses were scattered, made of sticks, woven smaller sticks, plastered in mud, and not used for long term.

5,000 year ago is the first time we run into writing, but there is no Proto Sumarian, in writing or math. It was a full system brought from somewhere else. That and Egypt did not develop anything new, just applied some old building skills.

There was a long dark age between Sumaria and Babylon, 800 years, another after Babylon, 800 years, till the Greeks, Greeks through Romans,1,000 years, followed by an 800 year dark age.

Dark ages hold 50% of the last 5,000 years.

So people recently learned to write again, by 1850 we caught up with Greek metal working skills. This was not everyone, just a few, and the majority plowed with Ox or Mule, and kept up Dark Age traditions.

Trade Guilds had educated a few to keep skilled trades alive over time, it worked. With lots of labor, a large population, large shops did well, and grew to factories. There were better ways than having twenty blacksmith forges in a row, so work changed, new tools were made, and almost anyone could have some metal hardware. A metal hook to hang a pot in a fire place was high tech.

Then something happened that also happened to the Greeks, enough people and markets that a class of metal workers rose up to fill the market. It did not matter if you had a mechanical aptitude before, there was little metal and few ways to work it. Once it became common, it attracted a type just as computers did later.

We went into the Civil war with muskets that had been around for hundreds of years, and came out with some Winchester rifles that "Can be loaded on Sunday, and fired all week." Guns drove high quality interchangable machine parts, and a series of wars.

John Browning had aspie traits, he had a special interest in machine guns.

War is great, but the problem is the best trained keep dying.

Post WWII, we enter another era, and it has avoided most war while keeping the threat going, and has driven technology, to the point where home hobbist could build anything they could think of.

For me, the internet has captured time and space, it is the only "real world" I like.

Everything done before was through a few books, learning in the trade, and then applying all to some inovation.

Then comes the convergence of knowledge, computers and machine tools, computers and metal structure, and then composite materials. The process has lowered the costs, but the machines and materials can make parts for machines no one has yet dreamed of.

It also favors dreamers, so they rose in the computer world, advances came quickly, till the right kind of people got a university degree in computers, and the field has been dead since then.

In their smart way, they saved a few dollars by shipping the hottest tech to China so they can develop the future. How could they know that would cave in the American economy? Their degrees were in business, they had been taught to make money, not manage an economy.

The Ivy League were not going to let some social ret*ds take their position of leadership, it would tarnish their image.

Life goes on, the next tech is coming in other places, the i-phone is a fantastic idea. Desktops may be collector's items. I love my digital camera.

The hardware is now so micro that few can make it, but the applications of the cheap chips are endless.

This is where the right people stall out, they are still focused on the desktop market.

Applications and web content are the new frontier. Only visual thinkers need apply.

Yes, people do use computers, mostly as typewriters, Email, and half the web is porn.

The mechanical is good, speed is up, content is boring and lame.

It is said that the generation that develops a technology has no idea of it's real use.

The next generation that grew up with it uses it for it's best use.

We have the thought machine, a thought can be developed. like some aspie talking to people who are not interested, put on the web, and there are hundreds of other people world wide who are just as much into the same subject.

WP is an example of a small private club that has read everything ever written about Autism, and mostly disagrees. I have watched the subject get refined, no University, Med School, could spend the time and attract the minds for this project.

This one subject Wiki is the future.

It would be a waste to teach it in schools, having a degree in Autism, Ivy League, is worthless.

Self educated interest groups can become the fountainhead for any field of knowledge.

Being the web and a group project, giving away the result really keeps ownership of the field.

I see two Autisms, one does need Psychology, research, and social and economic support.

The other, Broader Autism phenotype, does not need that type of support, but does need to know how their brain works, "A differance in thought and perception." I think it is 10% of the population, and the vast majority in electronics, engineering, web development, digital art, and this group could use content sites that are skill rich, that would be of little use to those of other neurologies.

It will be separatism by skills, talents, interests, and overlap with other fields.

Bringing in the world's best, the sites will be the Supreme talent and knowledge base.

Aspie does not qualify, each like a snowflake, perfect, and no two alike.

As people they will fit in an interest and skill group, and avoid the places that do not call to them.

Those with an Ivy League Degree, will likely avoid them, or overthrow their education. It is not a set of skills any more, it is moving along with the current developments. Education can never be more than an overview of where the field was sometime in the past.

The rapid advance of technology calls for educating yourself for what you think might happen in three to five years. This will be constant, if you want to stay in the field.

It is the only way we can have the education system we need to keep up.

No one objected when the 25% with a University Degree ran everything.

Art and technology collectives will be like the Guilds of old, they will have the highest knowledge, the trained workers, be doing their own scientific research, and have the best knowledge of the market for what they do.

Universities try to turn out well rounded people. Business trys to control industries through investing capital.

Neither would have worked when it came to turning out painters in the 15th Century. From a young age they lived the work, and nothing else. Their single focus paid off. Painters as a group did all the parts of the job. They did not take new people at random, there had to be talent.

Chosing one special interest, developing your life around it, worked wonders.

I think the Guilds took autistics, they fit the description of an apprentice. Most became skilled workers, a few became rich, and the system lasted a long time. Where most married at fifteen, spent thirty years farming the same dirt, apprentices were taken at six, and had to work till twenty one before they could marry. A system with enforced learning and a slow maturity.

We have been around, we have produced some good work, and have always lived and worked outside the world.

Politically, it's probably a bad idea. It could make us be seen as a threat, and the majority can still squash a small minority like us trivially.

I find that utterly unlikely and far-fetched.

I think it matters on a number of levels, not least of which is that many people with an ASD (such as myself) are strongly averse to inaccuracy and untruths. Many people in general strongly dislike, resent or even are offended by the spreading of inaccuracy, more so when it is deliberate.

I think there is more than enough false information about ASDs out there without a campaign to introduce yet more misinformation.

Good grief! You realise that non-humans do not get to vote? You realise that non-humans can be the legitimate property of humans? You realise that unlike companies, non-human live entities are not persons before the law and lack the rights of persons before the law? Do you think that it is an indication of equality between species from the human perspective, because that is not what it looks like to me.

More likely you and whoever else spreads such nonsense makes us look like flakes.

I believe that humans as a group are more comfortable with other humans who have a non-contagious disease than they are with very nearly but not quite human creatures of another species.

I suggest the message "ASDs are not diseases" is a much better message than "we are of another species", being that the earlier message is both true and unlike this proposed speciation message, is not an invitation to dehumanize us.


Accommodating other humans. Is it legal to eat humans in Belgium? What about non-human animals? Is it legal to eat non-human animals in Belgium? Is it legal to own humans in Belgium? What about non-human animals? Is is legal to own non-human animals in Belgium? I think you will find even in Belgium there is a distinct difference between the rights of humans and the rights of non-human animals. I think you will find that while it is ok to eat or own non-human animals in Belgium, it is not legal to do the same with humans, even diseased ones.

Better diseased humans than non-humans.

That is ridiculous. Being smart actually tends to make someone more capable of being dangerous as they are more likely to be effective in what they do. More significantly, being smart is no barrier to being genocided. I do not recall ever hearing that the massacres in Darfur were about the intelligence levels of those being attacked. The genocides in Rwanda occurred without any regard for the intellect of those being slaughtered. Hitler did not think Jewish people were stupid, on the contrary he advocated that they were particularly cunning. The overwhelming majority of incidents of genocide (or attempted genocide) were not premised on the victimized groups lack of "smarts".

More to the point, you are suggesting this as some kind of PR exercise. So to be a failure of an idea, it does not have to be the case that it would result in genocide. That it would not enhance and is actually more likely to worsen our public image is sufficient reason to put it in the "fail" pile.

If you take indiscriminate and stupid risks you are very likely to loose.