Autism and Programmers | Hacker News Reader

Autism and Programmers

hossgifford.com

54 pointsgb27 comments

But what happens if you create a concentration of left brain thinkers? Imagine if an industry sprang up that relied on such people, resulting in a dense population of super-geeks. So dense that they started breeding little geeks. If autism is genetic, as it we are starting to believe it is, would this not cause an increase in the cases of people being born with traits from the autistic spectrum?

This theory was proposed in a paper by Simon Baron-Cohen (ref: http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news/Systemizers-Have-A...). His study showed that children of "high-systemizers" were more likely to be autistic. If this is true, it would explain quite a bit. The rise in autism rates seems to match the growth of the tech industry and the value of "knowledge workers."

Autism is more complex than that. See for example http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=vitamin-d-a.... One of the big mysteries is that Somali immigrants to the US and Sweden have a much higher rate of autism than their native counterparts. Other factors implicated include increasing parents age at time of birth(mother's and father's), more frequent ultrasounds, more chemical environment, etc. Once you start to think through each factor, the N^2 effect of geeks marrying other geeks is unlikely to explain the 5-10X increase in autism over the last 20 years.

> One of the big mysteries is that Somali immigrants to the US and Sweden have a much higher rate of autism than their native counterparts.

Given that Somalia lacks a government, I would imagine health care there is rudimentary, and it's likely that autism (and other conditions) is under-diagnosed.

This whole autism-geek connection is a useless myth. I have a son with autism, and we know a lot of parents with autism. Parents come from every income range, social class, profession and "geek orientation".

And contrary to another myth, most autistic kids (the vast majority) have no savant skills. It is a disease. The ones who recover do tell how they felt trapped inside.

For those of you who have young children or planning to have children, here is a suggestion: investigate just how many vaccines we are giving kids these days, and compare that to how many were given 25-30 years ago. Educate yourself - I wish I had. I trusted the "system" implicitly, without realizing that the average doctor and certainly the average pediatrician is an unthinking protocol pusher. The average pediatricians typical workload could be automated. Enough said.

For those of you who have young children or planning to have children, here is a suggestion: investigate just how many cellphones we carry around these days, and compare that to how many were around 25-30 years ago.

> investigate just how many cellphones we carry

Or how many pirates there are on the high seas.

The connection between any kind of background EM and any human disease was discredited many years ago (and in fact was proposed by one specific crackpot.)

How many vaccines do kids get these days vs. how many were given 30 years ago?

Seriously, while I feel for you, get the facts. There is no evidence linking autism to vaccines. While dosing frequency has increased, dosing volume has decreased. Not only that, even if you are right, a lot more kids would die from the vaccinated diseases if we lose herd immunity as a whole.

Don't you find it the least bit suspicious that the only people who "figured out" this mystery are quacks with books and supplements to sell? Isn't it much more likely to be caused by our terrible food, chemical-laced water or other modern issues like proximity to high-strength EM?

For your information, the government recently legally conceded a case of autism-vaccine connection where the parents (both medical professionals) had a perfect record of their daughter's medical history.

Keep down-voting me; but if you have a kid, please, please investigate this before you accept conventional wisdom.

I know both sides. I have a friend who is one of the greatest proponents of alternative medicine treatments of autism. Both my children have been vaccinated.

http://www.babble.com.au/2009/02/24/bad-science-how-the-auti...

I shouldn't have to explain how a legal ruling doesn't equal evidence. Scientific proof is demonstrated using repeatable studies, which have been done. Go look them up.

There is no validated mechanism by which vaccines cause autism. At the moment, my money would be on things like genes (highly likely) or environmental contaminants. But, it's just speculation. We just don't know at the moment. This may be hard to accept as a parent, but it's the reality.

Lou has to have the right music in his head to spot his patterns and I, like many developers, have experience of getting into the zone with the help of familiar ambient music. It’s as if the regularity of the music, it’s lack of surprising contrast, drowns out the rhythmless noise of our environment. The alternative is to completely remove all noise...

Any suggestions on this kind of ambient music? Thanks!

EDIT: I'm looking for specific suggestions of which artists/collections/radio channels worked best for you. Thanks to all who replied!

On iTunes you can go to Radio -> Ambient and there are a bunch of stations that play the style of music. I'm a fan of StillStream and Drone Zone.

Pandora also has a good selection of electronica and ambient music, and can store and learn what you like in a custom "station".

Sometimes I'll play trance ambient just loud enough to smooth over the environmental noise while coding: http://www.hbr1.com/perl/apax.cgi?run=jorbis&station=

Same for me. Trance is a good coding music. I get mine from http://www.trance.fm

Also check out http://ddance.fm

djbolivia.ca - he even has a few mixes expressly made for programmers.

Brian Eno has an extra feature to his ambient music. Occasionally there will be a little note out of place, a tiny surprise. He says this is to keep you from falling asleep, or rouse you out of a daydream you may have fallen into. If you're really concentrating, this little "bump" in the music probably won't even register.

This is featured in "Music for Airports" (good for busy places), and "Discreet Music" (takes some getting used to, but fades solidly into subconsciousness after a few minutes).

I often listen to...

David Sylvian - Look for albums: "Camphor", "Alchemy" & "Approaching Silence"

Brian Eno - His Ambient collection.

and some varied classical music.

Strangely when I get into rhythm I tend to switch to something more "driving" like Radiohead

Well, my classical music (e.g. Beethoven 9th, Mozart Magic Flute that kind of thing) is too exciting, actually. What's yours?

Mozart as well. Also Bartok, Wagner, Stravinsky & Prokofiev are frequently played.

Am I the odd one out in listening to jazz while I code?

Here's a few related threads:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=139901

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=167076

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=132026

I usually listen to the di.fm stations, without any strong preference to any one in particular. Some days chillout or ambient works best, while sometimes its goapsy which won't let you out of the zone.

Anything by Radiohead. Steve Reich "Music for 18 Musicians" - single hour-long track. Rachmaninoff "All Night Vigil". Cabaret Voltaire "Plasticity". John Coltrane "A Love Supreme" Anything by Stereolab. Tim Hecker "Harmony in Ultraviolet". late-1960s cool jazz (Miles, Herbie, Freddie Hubbard, etc) Most stuff by Bach. Older stuff by Autechre. Philip Glass "Koyaanisqatsi" - another hour-long track; can't play it too loud though or it gets tiring.

Baroque music generally does it for me. Bach is the exception. When I listen to his more abstract works -- the keyboard partitas, the violin partitas, the well-tempered clavier, the english and french suites, goldberg, the art of the fugue, a musical offering, inventions and sinfonias -- I become so totally absorbed that I just cannot do anything else or even think any other thoughts. Is this what is called /samadhi/?

Just out of curiousity, does anyone here listen to old Bollywood songs while coding; the likes of Kishore Kumar and such? They are very melodious.

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