Autistic Prodigies Since “Rain Man”
nautil.us
nautil.us
My significant other works in a classroom of kids who are on the spectrum. One of her boys, 6 years old I believe, has the entire transit map (all routes, stop numbers, and stop times) memorized for one of the largest cities in the world. When you meet him he asks what bus or train you take, and then he recites back to you every single stop number on the route and the next 10 arrival times at each stop. It's awe inspiring.
But that's on a good day for him. On a bad day he just sits and pretends he is a transit driver, going through the routes in his mind, for 10 or 12 hours at a time. Any type of interruption results in loss of control and mayhem.
There is a huge amount of work to do in this area still. Most of these kids with incredible abilities are not receiving the help and support they need in order to ever be in a position where they can join society and use them for good.
Second half of this first:
> autistic people whom fate is much worse, IMHO
It's astounding to me that you find "creeps, weirdos, nerds and morons without friends" to be a worse fate than "On a bad day he just sits and pretends he is a transit driver, going through the routes in his mind, for 10 or 12 hours at a time".
I'm one of those miserable "bullied in childhood" types and I'm still thankful that I'm able to participate in society and pursue my interests. A severely disabled person will never be able to do this. I can think up ethical frameworks that'd result in the judgment that social misfits have it worse than extremely disabled individuals, but they'd be tough to justify on various levels.
> no one ever write articles [about nerds]
They do, if you know where to look[1][2]... but they're unpopular, for various reasons (cultural zeitgeists, also consider the nature of popularity/zeitgeists and how a "nerd" might fit into that).
1: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2091#comment-326664
On a bad day I spend 10 or 12 hours at a time watching gaming streams on Twitch, I'm not sure it's so fundamentally different. (I'm high functioning enough to succeed in my career and fake it in social situations, but not enough to attract a mate.)
3 : one of a pair: such as
a : either member of a couple and especially a married couple
b : either member of a breeding pair of animals
c : either of two matched objects
If you said “find a partner”, “find a match”, “attract a partner”, “get a boyfriend/girlfriend”, it wouldn’t have the same meaning and would be less off-putting.
Why nitpick trivial things like this on someone you have never met?
> Seriously, what's wrong with that?
Maybe he was being rhetorical, but I didn't read it that way.
"Significant Other" and other terms are more readily accepted.
Indeed, if you've been following the last billion years or so, a procreative role is a common reason why males and females seek each other out. I admit I don't understand why openly seeking to reproduce is to be frowned on.
(And a larger point is that people on the spectrum don't take very well to social conventions that are based on tide and fashion instead of reason and logic and clear communication. I decided long ago I'd rather be a lonely tiger than a really terrible pack wolf.)
However, publicly seeking someone to be nothing but a baby-factory for you is frowned upon for most people in public, because people like being valued for more than their sexual organs.
Hence when you refer to people as 'female' or as a 'mate' in certain contexts, there's a hint of a creep. Calling the new VP a 'hot piece of ass' is censurable for the same reason: because it minimizes her value as a person, professional and team member, regardless of how accurate the assessment regarding how nice her butt is.
Trying to frame this as a 'fashion' vs 'logic' trade-off is nonsensical.
It's a tradeoff in spending the effort following and trying to understand changing conventions for very small transgressions of social norms with small consequences, with a brain that doesn't do this naturally the way it does for other people.
Having to rely on verbal feedback, (vs nuanced body language and facial expression) means for every little thing I have to wonder if someone like you is on top of social conventions or is just expressing an individual point of view. I have no idea.
Just using this as a micro-example, "mate" is much more descriptive and precise in describing what I would have liked to have found in my youth, than "significant other" or "girlfriend" would be. Indeed what I used to want was a monogamous life partner to have children with. I'm sure it was commonly used without negative connotations in my parents' generation. Now, I can try to learn to "correct" this kind of speech, but I haven't found that to be a productive avenue for self-improvement, because almost everything I spontaneously say has these little tone flaws in it, and socialization is _already_ an exercise in pre-screening everything I'm about to say and avoiding acting in the moment.
(Aside from that, I also think denial of our animal nature and sexual dimorphism is a trendy college liberal 2017 thing, and will, too, fall out of fashion. "Gender is purely a social construct" is exactly as wacky an idea as flat-earthism.)
It means it's based in your best reasoning given your known lack of data about the issue.
You've now been given explicit data in the form of responses in this thread about why one avenue is preferable to the other. Now, with that data on your doorstep, you get to decide to act upon it, or intentionally ignore it.
Best of luck!
(Just to be clear - my only nitpick here was with the Logic vs. Fashion dichotomy, but you've edited your post and added a number of conflating assertions re: Liberal fashion.)
"O tempora o mores" was said by Cicero over 2,000 years ago, which - together with plenty of other evidence - suggests that this is part of human nature.
"Mate", according to you, has become an unfashionable word, but it was quite acceptable in my youth (the 70's).
For example, there was a radio quiz program when I was growing up in South Africa called "Check Your Mate!"
And when I was so clueless in my early twenties to think it would be nice to have a get-together to which I invited my then-girlfriend and some ex-girlfriends, without mentioning this to any of them (because it didn't even cross my mind), at the gathering my then-current girlfriend - without warning - bit me hard on the shoulder and hissed at me, "Don't mix your mates!"
I've also never heard anyone complain about the word "soul-mate".
All I'm saying is that we each speak from our own world view, and suggest that maybe it's fallacious to think that it's always the prevailing world view.
I'm not arguing that the modes we operate under are informed by the mores of the time - I'm arguing that pretending they don't exist isn't 'logic'. It is willful ignorance.
The piece of data I was missing was that I didn't understand that people associate "mate" mainly with animal behaviour these days. It didn't have that connotation for me at all, it was a perfectly natural way my mother would have spoken about a lifelong spouse with children.
In quoting me on "logic and reason" you missed the additional "and clear communication" in my sentence. I thought "mate" was clearer than "wife" or "girlfriend" because it's more specific to what I was trying to say, something more like soulmate to raise children with. And I now acknowledge that it wasn't a clear way for me to communicate, given the discussion above.
(Still, however, my brain isn't wired in a way for me to be able to analyze all this in real time, or pick it up intuitively like normal people do.)
If you feel like taking this advice, maybe it can help. Otherwise, I would hope you just be yourself instead. :)
As for the fate... I think we should change the angle a little bit. Autistic brain walks different paths, as you know already. The transit driver may not care what his peers are thinking about his interest. There are no peers anyway. I could assume that fate of the closest relatives is not an easy one, but the transit driver himself might be a happy person. He can follow his "special interests", he is focused, he's doing what he likes whole day - this is what keeps him satisfied. You may be happy about social interaction you have been able to pursue. But there are plenty of others who don't care about that aspect of life. Even more, they value a solitude better than being with the crowd. For a neuro-typical person his state of mind may be treated as disability, for him it might be a blessing. On the other hand many autistic adults, especially if they aren't diagnosed (or not properly so), have a lot doubts. They are aware about their peers, social circles forming above and below but very often out of reach, about loneliness. They have to live their lives with constant feeling that there is something wrong with them. I know people, and read about them too, an adults that got revelation after stumbling upon ASD traits list. Many claim this event was a life changer.
I wasn't making a judgment about the terms "creeps, weirdos, nerds and morons", I was merely reaching for a shorthand to refer to the groups you were discussing. I could have substituted in "people with mild autism" and have made the same point.
> but the transit driver himself might be a happy person. He can follow his "special interests", he is focused, he's doing what he likes whole day
Let's consider this. The original poster points at something interesting:
> There is a huge amount of work to do in this area still. Most of these kids with incredible abilities are not receiving the help and support they need in order to ever be in a position where they can join society and use them for good.
The OP believes that there exists an idea of goodness extending beyond oneself, relating to joining society and acting. Perhaps what we, as members of society, want is not a happy life, but a meaningful life[1]. Happiness is relatively easy in comparison, we have drugs that can provide it on demand (opiates, for example).
Religious practices were aware of this divide between happiness and meaningfulness, with the most obvious example being Protestantism, whose practices directly support the idea that but hard work = a good life. But, it's ultimately up to you to decide to what ends you want to live your life. Perhaps the fact that you have the ability to make this decision, while a low-functioning person does not, is what makes the original claim (about high-functioning individuals having a worse fate than low-functioning individuals) absurd.
1: http://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/1547772/cf4bc2ae6f...
EDIT: if you're up for some reading, I was informed of this essay[2] by philosopher Thomas Nagel which addresses some of these topics:
> Suppose an intelligent person receives a brain injury that reduces him to the mental condition of a contented infant, and that such desires as remain to him can be satisfied by a custodian, so that he is free from care. Such a development would be widely regarded as a severe misfortune, not only for his friends and relations, or for society, but also and primarily, for the person himself. This does not mean that a contented infant is unfortunate. The intelligent adult who has been reduced to this condition is the subject of the misfortune. He is the one we pity, though of course he does not mind his condition. It is in fact the same condition he was in at the age of three months, except that he is bigger. If we did not pity him then, why pity him now; in any case, who is there to pity? The intelligent adult has disappeared, and for a creature like the one before us, happiness consists in a full stomach and a dry diaper.
> If these objections are invalid, it must be because they rest on a mistaken assumption about the temporal reelation between the subject of a misfortune and the circumstances which constitute it. If, instead of concentrating exclusively on the oversized baby before us, we consider the person he was, and the person he could be now, then his reduction to this state and the cancellation of his natural adult development constitute a perfectly intelligible catastrophe.
> (...) in order to ever be in a position where they can join society and use them for good
But you are still judging the person as NT, which seems strange to me especially as you mentioned in previous comment you are autistic as well (unless I've read that incorrectly.) You should know in the first place that it is not up to you or me to judge the meaning of someones life, and especially autistic life. I said before that autistic brain works differently and this still applies. It works so differently that NT/ND comparison doesn't make any sense.
What if they don't want to be a member of the society? What if many of them care about society no more than about weather the other day? [1] You might be unaware, but lot of autistic people feel pride in how different they are, how autism shaped their lives and they wouldn't switch back to be NT if you gave them such option.
That being said I am not stating that low autistic people never seek for an interaction, understanding or just thoughts sharing. I am just stating that there is such a possibility. Even if they do, there is not much NT society can do fulfill their needs.
> He is the one we pity, though of course he does not mind his condition. (...) If we did not pity him then, why pity him now; in any case, who is there to pity? The intelligent adult has disappeared and for a creature like the one before us (...)
This. Exactly this. "We", "pity" and "creature." Author is happily measuring above mentioned person by his own ruler, his and the society he lives in (and stays in this manner throughout the essay.) It didn't occurred to him, or he decided to ignore the fact, that the subject is completely different person, now. It would be impossible to perceive the world as the subject so we have to extrapolate. But by doing so we must be aware that our own judgements does not apply anymore. We must throw away our pity. Do not try to be emphatic because you have no slightest idea how the subject feels.
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/aspergers/comments/7jw22y/i_dont_mi...
Edit: Changed "normal" to "NT" in one place. Overall point stays the same.
You don't?
The kid sitting there for 10-12 hours, who knows how he experiences that. It's externally sad, but we don't know if he's okay with how he experiences things.
The other guy who sits at home contemplating suicide, we know how horrible that is.
The traits required to get the diagnosis are explained[1].
The field hasn't matured yet and even kids sometimes can't get proper diagnosis[2], not to mention adults. Above all the adult women are in the worst position as their traits differ to some extend and also they show more empathy than men.
1: https://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism/diagnosis/dsm-5-dia...
2: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100322131423.h...
Edit: Formatting and typo.
This is such a hard call to make, because the more severe the autism, the harder it is to know how happy they are. Perhaps the person who is totally into trains who spends their entire day playing with trains and train simulators and watching videos of trains is really happy. But maybe they are still lonely, but don't really know how to let others know? The higher functioning individual is able to let others know how lonely they are, and they are often attacked for it, but is that really worse than being lonely without the ability to even communicate that?
A loss for society too; we need these people at least as much as they need us. I wish that we, as a society were genuinely committed to mental/developmental health the way we’re obsessed with longevity. It’s not just people with autism, but a whole range of issues such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder who have as much or more to contribute as the rest of us.
How many “Rain Men” or “Beautiful Mind(s)” have languished and suffered because they didn’t get anything like support?
For a sample, read the article below, including the sidebar.
https://www.khaleejtimes.com/business/mind-reading-sharjah-g...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FG_syndrome
Anyway, very good article.
We (and his teachers) can't work out how he does it. I think at some point he's sat in front of a PC calendar and memorised it!
He can also recite the US and UK release dates for most kids films (he learns them from Wikipedia)... and then he can subsequently tell you the day of the week!!
Most of his tricks are based on his amazing memory, he recites long sections from film and TV shows years after watching them.
That doesn't mean his brain haven't developed the same algorithm for it.
The brain is exceptional at noticing patterns. Some people's brains are very preoccupied with numbers, and abstract data. (Some people like spotting license plates, some can't even look away.)
You can also check if your son has "Eidetic memory" . It comes in very handy sometimes ;).