Everyone always wants to prevent cures for autism, but no one ever suggests inventing something that gives people autism.
(It was sort of a plot point in a Vernor Vinge novel. And Brave New World?)
(It was sort of a plot point in a Vernor Vinge novel. And Brave New World?)
These are not the same thing and need different terms.
Or, even if they were in some sense fundamentally the same, is your argument that their effects are so practically different that they ought to be called by distinct names anyway?
As I understand it, there isn't even a consensus on any theory of what autism fundamentally is. Some theories try to explain the social issues as a lack of Theory Of mind, but these theories don't cover the many other symptoms typical of autism. One more recent theory ('Intense Worlds') does present a 'fundamental' explanation for all/most symptoms, but AFAIK it's not well-accepted or supported by evidence (yet), and the fact that it explains so much is also considered a drawback (too vague / overfitting / whatever the term is).
> Or, even if they were in some sense fundamentally the same, is your argument that their effects are so practically different that they ought to be called by distinct names anyway?
I've noticed that there seems to be a movement in treatment approach that focuses on treating individual symptoms without focusing too much on the overarching 'labels'. In my experience it's been a very nice, down to earth approach, and it strikes me as more measurable too. This approach strikes me as particularly useful for autism because there's so much variation between different autists and the particular symptoms they exhibit.
As a result we're hearing the phrase "somewhere on the spectrum" for any number of behaviors we don't see fitting the norm, and the reality of autism is not this "beautiful mind" scenario for many, but instead a crippling illness like the AP mentions. They are definitely not the same thing to the people who live with them.
The article is completely centered around the media image that autism creates geniuses, and that's a dangerous, misleading idea at best. The reality of living with it is usually much more ugly. Children who often become grown adults who can't make connections between cause and effect violently lashing out, throwing feces, biting care givers, screaming, screaming, and more screaming.
We should absolutely keep looking for ways to prevent and try to treat/cure it, and not act like everything is fine and great and accept it as diversity, for the sake of those who can't live normally.
Beneath superficial success and contribution, my life is a nonstop Munchian scream. I find it less insulting when people say everyone on the spectrum should be exterminated, than when people say some of us should be allowed to continue existing because our particular end of the spectrum happens to write pretty code / invent pretty theorems / etc.
While it's not important enough for genetic engineering on it's own, I'd probably edit my children to be darker. Having spent a few days on the beach in Thailand, the genetic inferiority of my own fair skin is quite visible and painful.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/04/how-europeans-evolved...
It is reasonable to think that there the significant drawbacks associated with that hacked-together solution are no longer necessary because modern diets easily give adequate vitamin D.
Some aspects of cultural, ethnic and religious identity are associated with and expressed by genetic factors like skin color.
For African Americans, just to give an example, the premise of "editing" children to be "whiter" might appear to enable racial genocide.
It doesn't apply only to skin color - some deaf people would consider genetically engineering away deafness an attack on "deaf culture."
But with what you describe as "genocide," not a single person is harmed. To me, an African American person has the same intrinsic value as a white person or anyone else. Therefore, I can't see any particular reason why I should care if we have more or fewer African Americans in the world.
I'm familiar with the argument made by deaf people. But those advocates never seem to address the reversal argument; why shouldn't we also produce new deaf people (e.g. by sedating some children and painlessly puncturing their eardrums) in pursuit of this goal?
It's not a rational way of thinking, but it is common.
Your argument is merely a straw man that left wing types smugly create and then dismiss to portray those they disagree with as stupid.
Yellow-skinned Africans would still be Africans, purple-skinned Asians would still be Asians, and green-skinned Europeans would still be Europeans.
When Obama was first running, there were discussions about whether or not he was "black enough" to really represent African American culture as President. Part of that was because of his upbringing (because, unfortunately, there is the perception that being educated, well spoken and wealthy is somehow antithetical to "true blackness") but part of it was the lightness of his skin color. It would have likely been easier for some people to accept his "white" background if he'd been physically darker.
You yourself correlated European with "white" in an earlier (probably still flagged) comment, so you know that references to skin color can seem intrinsic to many things to which it doesn't really apply.
Is this like reductio ad absurdum of PC signalling? Where do you spend the other 362 days of the year? In an environment that fair skin provides advantages for things like vitamin D production perhaps?
I find it very entertaining to be accused of PC signalling a few days after being accused of white supremacy.
https://pixabay.com/p-199674/?no_redirect
https://tonycavanagh.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/5005.jpg
Hardly a big difference. For genetic modification, the best solution is to increase range of tanning rather than changing the constant. It's already possible to get black skin [0] with eg. melanotan-2, so it's not that big of a change.
Similarly, I'd like them to be born intelligent and naturally athletic.
"It is evident that as much as 69%-82% of the South Asian populations in India had 25(OH)D levels in plasma less than the minimum acceptable levels of 20 ng/ml"
Skin colors evolved when most people were outside for the entire day. Now the opposite is true.
[0] http://www.pjms.com.pk/issues/octdec208/article/reviewarticl...
Not all of us have your superpower :) I've managed to tan 1/32 of my summers.
Like, I think taking some hormones can make one's skin produce more melanin .
Idk if one has to keep taking it or not to keep it up, but from the pictures it looked fairly thorough.
Tbh I was also just mentioning what I mentioned because I thought it was amusing/interesting/novel or uh, thought it would look good to mention or something
What you mentioned was amusing
It reminds me of a debugging technique I sometimes use, to prove to myself I understand a complex issue I try to make it worse. If I can then I almost certainly understand how to fix it too.
If I recall, the main premise was that new parents could choose to give their children a neurodevelopmental drug that would cause vastly increased intellectual prowess at the cost of gradually losing their connection to human society to the point of indecipherability.
I think it was a bit heavy-handed. But maybe I'm not remembering the story correctly.