Why is aspie separatism/supremacy controversial?

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The explanation is sufficient to demonstrate that it is plausible for Autism to be a disadvantageous heritable trait and still be maintained in the human population.


It is difficult to determine mutation rates in humans actually. However the estimates are somewhere around the order of one mutation in every 10,000 genes per generation....each human evidently has 30,000 genes, which works out to an average of 3 mutations per person...

So in other words never?


I do not believe that the above quote makes sense. Why would dominant genes replace recessive ones in the scenario you describe?


Leaving the population merely another NT population?

Again, you are not making sense so far as I can see....


There are sensible reasons for defining it as such. The fact is the huge costs associated with the skill/competencies we have impairments in, are such that unless they were significantly advantageous they would not have evolved in the first place.


It's not some "add on" trait that we have that non-Autistic people lack; it's the reverse. Non-Autistic people learn to modify this trait in culturally/socially appropriate ways....Autistic people do not learn this as easily or fluidly as non-Autistic people...that's one of the reasons why even non-Autistic "kids say the darndest things"...they have not yet learned to appropriately modify this behavior so well as adults.

However not all these social skills are beneficial to them as a whole. For example one highly technological group of NT's is currently engaged in warfare with a lower technologically capable group. They are actually doing surprisingly badly in this conflict given their technological superiority. They are currently having to fight this war because their communication skills have not evolved to the level where they can do otherwise. This is at a massive cost to human life and resources and is not an efficient way to exist on the planet.

Their intelligence forces have tried to hack the memetic coding of their technologically weaker opponents and failed. The guy who wrote that coding was a once in a thousand year genius btw. It is sooo good, you can not fit a memetic razor blade between the joints. But they don't have a clue what it is they are even looking at, because they can not do the Aspi stand back in the mind thing and properly examine stuff like this. We can, possibly because we have had to learn to write much of our own "coding" for ourselves.


We are worth so much more than they offer us, and this is just one field. Suddenly an impairment becomes an asset.

Finish doing the math. Even if one believes that Asperger's is the result of only a single gene, and that any mutation to any nucleotide anywhere in that gene will cause Asperger's - an extremely unlikely supposition - the chances of one of those mutations hitting the right gene to cause Asperger's are still one in 10,000 - 0.01%, too low to explain the roughly 1% incidence rate of Asperger's.

More likely any genetic causes for Asperger's, if they exist, are spread across multiple genes and require very specific changes to those genes, making its appearance by mutation even less likely by many orders of magnitude.

It's much more plausible that there is some advantage to Asperger's traits, or was at some time.


So in other words, your argument was a straw man. Universal aspie traits would have resulted in less people taking offense, not more, as aspie ways of speaking only cause offense to neurotypicals, who would be infrequent in an aspie dominant society.


This may be a tangent to your point, but I would note that being beneficial to the population as a whole is not how evolution works. Being better able to read other people, for example, might be useful primarily in shifting shared work to others or obtaining a better share of resources for oneself. It would benefit the individual - and the gene - even if it worked to the detriment of the group as a whole.

That is a good point, until you consider that we now have to think in terms of "whole" given the nuclear arsenal currently at their disposal to reduce both individuals and "whole's" to no-thing.
The evolutionary challenge is to help get them and us past this point, because it is our mutual interests to do so.

We are discussing evolution. Evolution does not care about the whole, or about anything for that matter.


Unless you can demonstrate how what you describe is significantly changing the rate at which alleles are being reproduced, by lowering the rate at which alleles correlated to the non-Autistic "social suite" of skills is concerned, it's actually irrelevant.


And you think the evolutionary relevance of this is........?



None of which is actually relevant to my comments unless you can demonstrate how alleged assets result in a net reproductive advantage for those effected by Autism.


Fragile X linked Autism is apparently caused by one mutation.


I have no idea why you think this is unlikely.

Actually it appears that there are a number of genes that produce Autism when altered so your maths is all wrong.


I have no idea what you think this means. Where do these changes come from if not from mutation?


Er no. Some advantage is completely irrelevant. Only net reproductive advantage is irrelevant. I think it is fairly far fetched to suggest that Aspergers Syndrome conveys a net reproductive advantage as a general rule and quite reasonable to suggest that it poses a net reproductive deficit in most instances.

No and frankly I do not see why you think it was.

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that there was ever universal Autism in the human race. None, nada, zilch.

If you want to believe we are atavistic throwbacks, that is your prorogative of course, but personally I find this notion of a "golden age of universal Autism" less then golden and exceedingly far-fetched.

Pandd. We are discussing not only genetic evolution but also social and cultural evolution as part as an overall evolutionary approach. The social and cultural factors exist " outside " genetic parameters.To my own mind they are patterns of behavior which have, ( from the first protozoic "dance" through to the most complex contemporary social interaction,) an existence and effect beyond the scope of genetic influence. This is how we learn, or rather the social and broader environmental material we learn from. What aspects of these we choose to attend to, depends in part on what we are hardwired to attend to, and in part what we are "taught" to attend to, and later how our attention is to be interpreted.

Because our learning processes are "impaired" we have to "write" some of our own social rules to deal with this otherwise seamless and natural function. Because we understand this process we can abstract it and apply it to other uses. These things are not so apparent to those who have had a relatively smooth learning process. We can look behind the " fabric " of everyday reality and inquire into those process. It would not occur to NT's to take this approach because they have never learned to do this.

One interesting thought is this : That first "protozoic dance" possibly was a simple pleasure pain , yes-no SR circuit. Now that has an expressible value. You ask what do this have to do with complex emotions in evolved sentient creatures? Does digitally recorded music make you feel anything? Think about it.

And I think the evolutionary relevance of this is?

( If I'm not being totally Aspie and just "sh**ting trains",) then we offer a potential far less costly in financial terms or resources , lives and environment , than the ineffective methods they currently employ. In their currency we have value.

And you would just love the rest of this! But it is a good game.

Natural selection, doesn't want her creatures to be overspecialized. If they do, they get harder to adapt. You can see autism, and many other, seemingly less then perfect humans, there simply to avoid having clones. Strictly speaking, if we had multiples of a small number of clones it would be 100% optimal, but then the slightest little disease will wipe them all out. Over specialize, and breed in weakness. This is why sexual reproduction evolved since micro organisms alredy, you simply get variation, so that the trial and error of evolution can test them. Evolution, sends some creatures at random places to check if they survive, so the gene pool shouldn't be too perfect. Beater is worse.



In general, if your inteligence is bellow a certain threshold, your autism will bring it further down. If your above, it will bring it further up. Thats what i'm actually saying.

Literacy increases intelligence by stimulating your brain more. Even normal born children, if they grow up in a family of ret*d(really ret*d, not an insult) they get ret*d too. Being stimulated is very important for the brain.

Your brain, has "programs". These are set up by natural selection, and work on average. In autism several of these programs are absent, or under functioning. Today, you can always read something up about almost anything, scientific quality studies, from how much longer women weight in lines to go to the toilet, to differential geometry in n dimensions. The products of an entire technological civilization, a difference of several order of magnitudes. If you have autism, you'll just use your logic. If you don't, your programs that work on average will interfere. If you aren't smart enough, you can't use correctly the torrent of information, if on top of this you have autism, you lose also the average results of the "programs".

By this, people here, probably underestimate parent issues that have ret*d autistic children. And also concludes favorably with autism supremacy.

I wonder which "highly technological group" you are referring too. If you study the situation, they aren't doing "surprisingly" badly.



We could say the real impaired its the ones that started the war in the first place.

Aspie, "nuptial song".

Thats maybe too theoretical. Its not the phenotype that is the important aspect, but the probabilities you will get it, wen parent genes mix. If aspieness is good only in small quantities and intermittently in the human population, you beater have recessive genes. A dominant aspie gene would have to reproduce it self over many generations, i'm theorizing, that in our past that wasn't probable. Your siblings can be cariers, of your aspie genes, you fail to reproduce, but your presence help your siblings to reproduce, just for an example. If the situation changes, and suddenly you get a solid population of aspies, dominant gene can survive in them, because social pressure relaxes, for example . Over simple math about probabilites, at least some recessive aspie genes will get replaced by dominant, they can be various reasons why this could happen. You can have children with aspies, and get consistently, at least 50% aspie children, that survive just fine in the social environment of the aspie population. But in an important aspie population, its logically expected aspie will prefer to mate with each other. The few that don't, tend to get back.

Oversimplifying, selfish genes would want to be dominant.


leaving the population as aspies that can reproduce with each other, without getting too many ret*d or other wise children. Thats the founder effect i think.

Sexy!

Yes, the universe is indeed hilarious. I'm living proof.

Moog- I just find it amusing that there's that huge vast thinginess out there and right now a group of bickering,nuclear-poo-chucking bald-rock monkeys ,are as far we know, are probably the only means by which it is conscious of itself. There is now way we are even the end of the evolutionary line.

Feel free to approach available females with the quantum dance song. You know what, maybe we should learn to dance like that as well.

Non-Autistic people acquire culture socially, via their inbodied experiences in the world as a result of biological propensities. We lack those propensities or are characterized by something that interferes with their function. Cultural and social change occur within generations but within the limitations of the biological traits and features that cause culture to be acquired in the manner it is. Can you explain more clearly what you think these things have to do with biological evolution and whether or not the human race is biologically evolving towards an all Autistic species (which is what I was referring to in the comments you quoted and responded to)?


No, they exist as a result of genetic parameters. Humans have culture because of their genotype.


I must disagree with your mind. In what culture is there no provision for the acquisition, preparation and eating of food? I suggest there is no such human culture because our genetically influenced biology requires the acquisition, preparation and consumption of food, so no culture that does not facilitate such things can exist amongst humans. Genotypes create a range of possibility and culture occurs within that range.


The "hardwiring"? What determines that if not biology which itself is strongly influenced by genotype? What can be taught (or self acquired) is limited by genotype and biology.


No more so than someone has to get a job or they will not have anywhere to live. Homeless people exist. Autistic people who do not bother to "write" their own social rules to deal with their lack of fluent socio-cultural acquisition also exist.

Would not think to do that huh? Excluding the psychologists of course, oh and also the sociologists, and don't forget the anthropologists, or the philosophers, the shameless charismatic manipulators.....etc.......


I did not ask any such thing.

Less expensive? Perhaps. As viable? No. As for ineffective, that makes no sense whatsoever. Can you explain why you think something so costly would be so evolutionarily stable if it were ineffective?

... which may or may not be related to Asperger's, as autism is rather broader than Asperger's.


That's what I covered in my next sentence:


In other words, Asperger's being a combination of multiple genetic loci only strengthen my argument here.


They come from inheritance. The prevalence of Asperger's, when compared to the low mutation rates, means that if Asperger's is genetic, the vast majority of people with Asperger's must have gotten it by inheritance rather than by direct mutation. Going back, that was the point being discussed here: de novo mutation is not a sufficient explanation for Asperger's. To get to the observed percentages, any genetic explanation of Asperger's must include either some evolutionary advantage, now or in the past, to Asperger's or to genes associated with Asperger's.


There's no evidence that a neurotypical mindset was ever universal, either. The fact is, we just don't know what the human mind set was 100,000 years ago.

Last edited by psychohist on 11 Mar 2010, 3:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Omicron : Would it be fair to say we are all pretty impaired when it comes to poo throwing into the next cage irrespective of who started it? Might just be time to find another erm interest shall we say.