A Case for Asperger's Supremacy

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So you have no interest in reality or objective facts, you just see this as an opportunity to get back at others.

Count me out.

I see no problem with myself, but then again I've learned to embrace my autism rather than worry about it. It's part of me, it's who I am. And by all accounts, from any research I've done- it's a large part of why I'm so proficient at the things I am proficient at. For background, I am an electrical engineering major and a lot of what we do in electrical engineering and especially in the digital logic part of it involves the simple statements of TRUE or FALSE, HIGH or LOW, 1 or 0, YES or NO, ect. Now, perhaps if I had chosen to be a social worker that "black and white" way of thinking would have not helped me. But in this case, digital logic is almost like the study of black and white, and all of a sudden my autism becomes something that gives me an edge over other people. And if you look at the salaries for electrical engineering- it's very high, higher than any "social" related job. Additionally if an electrical engineer hits the goldmine of creating something people will want to use then forget about it; they WILL end up very wealthy. And so, my autism has been my "superpower" allowing me to move up on the economic change and perhaps someday will help me do something great.

One thing I might add - NT's who really push themselves to focus on what matters or think from first principles get to be a lot like us as well and need to find increasingly well selected groups of friends, otherwise they run into the 'bucket of crabs' problem where insecure people try to drag them back downhill. I think they tend to take it in stride a bit better because they don't have a medical label associated with it hanging over their heads.

Our culture has been having problems with the idea of meaning, seeming to equate it with the worst of the 20th century, and the lack of it has contributed to a drought of integrity. I have to think of a lot of our problems in that context, ie. that we live in a place where personality disorders seem to be given free reign and not being like that - whether AS or NT - we find ourselves in a rather strange and alienated place.

I thought this was fascinating. Eric is suggesting that you have schools trying to press out one kind of person at the expense of others that have genuine value to contribute and I think it relates back well to some of the challenges we see with autistic spectrum conditions, Eric's main foci were dyslexia and ADHD.

To an extent it's probably always been this way and we're just seeing it now that its our turn to make it in the work world. At the same time I do think that the marketplace of global competition, the rarifying of the talent needed to get by in the world, I do think people are panicking for their survival (ie. what's deemed of their worth) and that's having negative effects on how people treat each other.

No, Asperger's/autism was classified the way it was because it brings about unique challenges to anyone with it, and often their parents.

Part of why that's a bit of a third rail these days is that human beings look at one another and have a deep distrust that we'd be morally capable of handling this information.

I remember the debates that Sam Harris had with Ezra Klein over this - Ezra is more the sort of pessimist that I just mentioned, Sam is more concerned (along with Steven Pinker) that hiding truths simply makes extremists and racialists holders of 'forbidden knowledge' which in their minds is a much more dangerous scenario. I'd add this to Harris and Pinker's concerns - crazy utopian and totalitarian ideologies seem to stem from a belief in a sort of nature that's mutable to human belief and they turn into dystopias fast because while the consequences of that disconnect might be negotiable with people they aren't negotiable with nature - ie. nature doesn't reason or negotiate.

Part of why we have such a wild managerie of crazy beliefs these days is because so many people don't have to deal with the unforgiving in nature and if they're dangerously crazy enough people will just capitulate (partly because Dunning Kruger is a nearly invincible superpower in debate) - seeming to evidence to them that both they and their rogue ideology are correct.

Thinking if the ways I'm different from other people and the difficulties I have make me realize we aren't supreme.