Slashdot Mirror
Wired on Autism in the Valley
digaman writes: "The December issue of Wired magazine contains an article of mine on what appears to be an upsurge in autism among the children of programmers and engineers in Silicon Valley: "The Geek Syndrome." A complicated issue, explored in depth. I hear the California Department of Developmental Services is launching a research project to investigate the questions raised in the article."
Did they ever consider it not a disease, but lack of teaching? Most geeks lack social skills and are poor at picking up social clues. Now, if they have children, where will their children learn this from?
Fight Spammers!
I realize many of you will simply dismiss this as poor research, but it is frighteningly true. A good friend of mine teaches elementary school here in the Silicon Valley, and last year she had the misfortune of having 2 children affected by this, one with Autism and the other with Asperger's. This was in a class of 20 children, mind you, and the odds of 2 in a group of 20 children having these are astronomical. So don't try to tell me this is BS!
The future isn't what it used to be.
I've read that the levels of pollution in SV are pretty mind-boggling. While software development is "pollution free" (except for the crap we developers eat that mascarades as food), other industry there has not been so kind to the soil and water.
As Salon points out in this article, the situation is pretty dire.
From the New Almaden Mine in the Santa Cruz mountains, to the "largest plumes of poisoned groundwater in the United States, over 3 miles long and 180 feet deep, contaminated with xylene, toluene and other volatile organic compounds, including the chlorinated solvent trichloroethane (TCA)" that IBM left behind when manufacturing disk drives, there are some serious problems.
O's R would suggest that we look at this first, rather than at the genetics of the parents. Birds of a feather have flocked together for centuries, with no apparent ill effects.
The "conclusion" that has been [almost] reached is that the cause of the weirdness in Nick is the same as the cause of the similar (attenuated) weirdness in each of his parents. The suggestion is genetic predisposition. The parents' occupations are effects, not causes.
There has been a similar upsurge in cases of autism in the UK which has generated considerable publicity because the growth has been linked to the triple MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vacine.
i d_1687000/1687967.stm) It seems as though there are considerable vested interests on the side of those in support of the MMR vacine.
The theory is that in a small percentage of cases the vacine triggers some type of bowel disfunction which causes the children considerable pain and autism is a neurological feedback from this condition. Unfortunately, the condition seems permanent regardless.
The doctor in the UK who was the first to suggest that there may be a link has just been forced from his position in a London Teaching Hospital even though he is a world-renowned expert in the field of bowel disfunction in children. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/england/news
Parents with young children should perhaps consider whether there is indeed a link between the two because autism seems a very high price pay when single vacine alternatives are available.
Actually, many people with autism show NO extreme abilities at all, and if they do, they have no way of communicating them to us.
The Slashdot Effect: A new for
it's also been proven that kids who have small pets (cats, dogs, ..) are better to notify body language and emotions and so.. so all geeks in silicon valley should adopt a cat for their children..
Learn about pinball machines on www.flippers.be
I not in CA, I'm in NY, but a programmer all the same. Yes I've bought my 4 yo son every electronic toy in the store, and he's addicted to computers just like me.
/. population could be considered autistic.
He had a problem with speech not too long ago. Nothing drastic, but he would tend to slur a couple words in the middle of long sentances. We had a speech therapist visit once a week for a couple months. She decided he must be autistic. She went on to explain that they (phsycologists) are finding that there are several levels of autism. I asked to see the criteria for determining autism. I was expecting to find some scientific process for testing. What she handed me was a booklet similar to this, with all the criteria used to judge a child.
For those of you that follow the link, you can see how subjective and innacurate the evaluation is. Basically, if you are not considered "Perfect" based on some arbitrary set of standards, then you must be autistic. Based on that test, probably 80% of the
I truly doubt there is an increase in autism, just an increase in the number of children they are diagnosing as autistic. I never believed or trusted in psychologist in the first place. This just reassures me that they are as bad as lawyers, only caring about getting more clients and more money than actually helping anyone with real problems.
Absolutely, company hierarchies are stupid and wasteful (micromanagement), so is trying to read 'body language', I myself prefer the WYSIWYG, approach.. It's so much simpler to just say what you mean to people, no guessing games, no fights later (ie, the typical 'I didn't actually MEAN that, you should have known better!' behavior exhibited by wifes/girlfriends).
I prefer to not deal with people, and I've believed for a long time that the human raced is doomed to become extinct from simple stupidity. While it's kind of spooky that the descriptions in the article hit very close to home, I actually found it reassuring that large amounts of intelligent people who don't display or recognize the BS are spawning.
Let the stupid people's genes die, long live the geeks IMO.
Just because you disagree doesn't make it offtopic or flamebait.
"bringing a plague down on the best minds of the next generation"
I have some symptoms of autism (I'm sure I'm not alone), and have done a fair bit of reading on it. It seems very common that with autisms come some very great intellectual gifts - eg. Rainman. Some these kids need a lot of help, but I have to question whether autism is really a curse.
I'm no expert, but it seems to me that mildly autistic people often get better themselves (usually after puberty), and still retain their mental gifts. IMHO we should be trying to develop and harness the abilities of these kids rather than trying to make them normal.
Finally some (non-expert) advice. This is just stuff that would have helped me when I was younger. If your kid is really autistic, you need professional help:
Let them do their own thing. Many things which are normal for most people are very stressful for autistic people, they need their own routine / fantasy world / etc. to relax and get them selves together. I would suggest managing a team of specialists for your kid 80 hours a week is not the best approach. At the same time, it's important not to let them obsess for hours on end. Find something they like to break the routine occaisionally.
Find some physical excercise they enjoy. In school predominantly team sports are played, autistics typically don't like these. Try individual or one-on-one sports. Excercise I got into (in spite of being very non-physical) included swimming, running, tennis and martial arts. Creative pursuits are also good - particularly visual arts and music.
Above all, remember that your kid does not have to be normal - no-one is. For every time you lament their lack of friends or weird behaviour there will be a time you are amazed at their accomplishments.
I used to also believe that ADD was a load of hooey. Until I met my college roommate, John. Nice guy, very creative, very cool.
He had a much more extreme case of ADD than I had seen. When he forgot to take his ritalin, he was unable to get anything done. I don't just mean homework, I mean he wasn't able to stay focused on tv or video games or projects he was working on to procrastinate doing homework. He found that extremely frustrating. When medicated he was still extremely creative and imaginative, but he could put those abilities to use for more than 5 minutes at a shot.
Now, I will be the first to admit that ADD is overdiagnosed, but to say that it's just a stupid name for kids who are simply different is to deny people like John any medical assistance, and to condem him to a life of spinning his mental wheels, when he'd rather take the perscribed drugs to balance his brain chemistry so he can do the stuff that he wants to.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
There are plenty of serious diseases that are "just genetics". PKU, sickle-cell anemia, even things like an elevated predisposition to breast cancer are "just genetics".
While I agree with your conclusion that labels and drugs are not the answer, I don't see how it's relevant whether a disease's origins are genetic or not. In some ways you could even argue that genetic oddities should get *more* attention than ones that are more behavioral, given that you have control over your behavior but not over your genes...
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
From famous painters who cut off their own ears, to the antisocial Einstein, there has never in history been a single gifted person that wasn't 'disabled' in one way or another. That's the main reason I'm proud to be schitzophrenic.
The more skilled a person is, the less 'normal' they seem. Personally, schizophrenia has made it difficult to hold focused conversations. My mind just doesn't work in straight lines, but that also means I think of things that other people do not. While everyone else is focused on what they think the problem might be, I pull something out of left field and it makes sense.
I personally don't believe that mental illness brings about superb abilites, but that it is the abilities that cause the brain to function in an abnormal way. The human form is the most adaptable creature around, and that applies to the mind as well. I believe that if the person chooses to be adept at something, their brain begins to work in a way that most suits the person. Of course that may mean some other skills are negated, that doesn't mean the excentricites of these people are a bad thing, only that in the eyes of society, something is wrong with them.
I.E. If I was to go around mumbling to myself all day, people would believe I should be institutionalize. Not because I've done something wrong, just because they don't like the looks of it. In other words, the problem is not with the people (they can usually function just fine) but with societies' views on what a person should look, act, and be like.
Just as it used to be considered a bad thing to be a geek, it is considered bad to act different. Now geekdom is seen as something good and benefitial and is pretty much accepted. One people realize the strange behaviors are a harbinger of talent, those types of people will eventually gain acceptance.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Dont compare someone with diabeties or cancer to someone with Autism.
Someone with a REAL disease which they can die from needs help.
Someone with Autism doesnt need "Help", Never usually asks for help, and usually has unwanted help forced on them ALL the time.
Autism is more compareable to someone who has a short temper, or who is depressed. This is not always someone who needs "help".
Mike Tyson, I'm sure he could use some anger management classes, but for a boxer, his anger is what made him champion of the world.
Sometimes helping people who dont need it actually harms them (drugging them up in school, forcing them to see psychologists) etc etc.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I have a thought about autism. And it was to some extent assisted by Rainman, but even more by a book called The October Child. It seems that deeply autistic persons, see the raw data from which the rest of us are shielded to avoid the kind of sensory overload that causes autistic persons to retreat into ritual and routine.
For example, the Rainmain, counting toothpicks scene. We _all_ see the exact number of toothpicks but normal people have a filter which stops us from processing the raw data and as such we see "bunch of sticks" first and if we want detail then we concnetrate on extracting it. The autistic sees the raw data and knows it, but then they see the raw data in everything. Imagine how overwhelming that would be.
Consider also the musical "idiot savant" the order and pattern in music is a refuge for them to help coope with the cacophony of data with which they must otherwise deal.
Why is this relevant, well because maybe some of these filters are the result of socialisation by peers and by parents. It would seem that some of these kids are might be missing some of the processes that lead to this socialisation. Get any kid young enough and they will wear something stupid for a bet.
(This is also an interesting prompt for a theme for a book, but that is my secret)
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
I hate to say this, but I think most of the disorders and non-bacterial, non-viral diseases that are on the rise are explained by two things: women's liberation and environmental contamination.
;-)
The first might seem like a silly joke, but think about what's different today in the mating game from what was the norm in almost all of human history until it started changing in the last 60 years. Traditionally, marriage had little at all to do with common interests, and nothing to do with common professions. Male-dominated society meant that men would engage in professions and women, if they were in a working class, worked at common "women's jobs" like straight factory work or sewing or teaching/watching young children. People didn't marry because of anything they had in common. People usually married based on convenience, friendships between families, whoever lived nearby, whatever wife they could afford, etc.
By contrats, today women and men meet, date, then marry, and most of the people they meet work in similar professions and therefore have similar interests and if those interests are determined genetically, similar genes. It's like a mild, remote form of inbreeding. More often than not techies marry techies, teachers marry teachers, scientists marry scientists, lawyers marry lawyers, etc. The result over time is to reinforce those genetic factors which are common between these people who have married and procrated thanks to common interests or employment. And if some of those traits have slightly negative side-effects, then those side-effects will become more pronounced. Add in this selective breeding over several generations, and well--you're looking at a pronounced enhancement of both the positives and negatives inherent in genes which cause one to have a predisposition towards certain vocations.
Second, I think we can't deny that we've changed our environment significantly, particularly in the area of foodstuffs and radiation. We now eat more and more genetically enhanced food--some of it enhanced through centuries of selective breeding, such as the milk we drink and the meat we eat, and some of it more recently enhanced through artificial hormones which may leave traces in that food--such as, again, milk and meat, and now even some vegetable foods. For at least 6 years people have expressed concern that hormones in milk may be contributing to the progressively earlier ages at which girls are hitting puberty, and that perhaps the same hormones contribute to cancer. Whether that's true or not, surely some of our food additives and genetic enhancements have effects we cannot measure or imagine. I'm not saying to go organic--I liberally at such altered foodstuffs--but I am saying only a person with his head in the sand would refuse to realize that some of our alterations to our food, whether genetic or chemical, have to have effects we don't fully understand yet.
The same is true of radiation. I'm not a nut who insists on not using cell phones because they allegedly cause cancer, but I do believe that with all the low-level radiation that passes through our bodies on a daily basis, at least a few particles eventually interact with our matter. This could easily explain the huge upswing in cancer over the last 40 years, as low-level radiation exposure has steadily increased. Before you dismiss it, think about how much radio, cell phone, television, cordless phone, microwave, and myriad other forms of man-made radiation passes through your body each day. Almost none of it interacts with you, since most of it can even pass cleanly through feet of concrete without interaction. But think of what a small antenna or dish it takes to get reception of so many radio, TV, satellite, or other channels, compared to the much larger size of your human body. What if only 1 in a billion of these low-energy particles interacts with your body? That's still a rather large interaction, when you consider the constant levels we experience day and night, even when sitting at home. What if it's only 1 in a trillion? Then it's still significant, given the constant bombardment. All it takes is one particle interacting with one cell to potentially cause a change that could spark a cancer. Given constant bombardment by so many low-level radiation sources, this has to be significant. We don't want to believe it, and usually dismiss it our of hand because we like our technology, but this is just so much sticking of heads in the sand. We're never going to give up our tech, even if it's the primary cause of cancer, but we could at least be honest about it when we look at it.
Sure, there are genetic predispositions for things like cancer. We know this. But factors which are most likely environmental have increased cancer rates exponentially over the last 40 years. A genetic predispostion still needs a trigger. I think large amounts of low-level radiation are a likely candidate for this.
Well, those are my theories, anyway. I know people are just lining up to disagree, so let's hear it!
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Well how do you know his problem is actually ADHD and not something else?
It seems most people who have so called ADHD, its a childhood phase, i havent met any adults with it. Secondlly most people who do have it, while they cant concentrate on school, they DO concentrate on things they like.
I dont think ive ever met anyone who couldnt concentrate on anything at all, perhaps your friend is a rare extreme case, and if ritalin is helping him thats good. But doctors these days give people drugs when they dont really NEED them. Your friend obviously has a serious problem.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Sickle cell anemia is a horrible disease. It's a co-dominant trait. If you've got double-dominant genes, you don't have the disease. If you've got double-recessive, your blood can't carry enough oxygen, and you probably die by age four.
If you're single-recessive, you have a mild, survivable version of the disease. You probably couldn't live at high altitudes. And you're very resistant to malaria. A malarial infection sends your blood into a sickling crisis, and the malaria can't get enough oxygen to survive.
So, if you live in a malarial environment, single cell recessives are the only people that can survive. And sickle cell anemia is a good thing.
Clearly, autism isn't that simple. Everybody does fine without any traces of autism. And it's also surely not just one gene. But people with mild forms of autism may have some kind of advantage in certain settings in modern society. And full autistics rarely have children. It could be worse than just dying, in terms of evolution, because not only does the autist die, but he or she also detracts from the ability of their parent to have more children.
All people with sickle cell anemia have ancestors from malarial environments. And now we're seeing a similar effect in silicon valley. It's an environment where the semi-autistic people have some kind of competitive advantage, like the single-recessive sickle cell anemics. However, in this case, the double-dominant people do not have much of a disadvantage at all, compared to the double-dominant people did in malarial regions (A sure death of malaria is a big disadvantage). So. I have a guess for what might happen. If these conditions continued indefinitely (where semi-autists have some kind of competitive advantage, and these conditions will likely not remain unchanged) then eventually there would be some kind of adaptation that makes it so that semi-autists are less attracted to semi-autists.
This way, autism would still be propagated, but rarely to the point where people were no longer functional.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
"I don't know enough about the syndrome to know if it is passed on through the genes, ..."
A syndrome is a collection of traits.
It's quite possibly for some to be genetic predispositions, and for others to be nothing but nurture. One ought to try to treat the ingredients of the syndrome as being independent. e.g. the intellectual traits ranging from below average to above average implies that one shouldn't try to correlate traits pertaining to attention span with those pertaining to test-answering intelligence.
FatPhil
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Contrary to popular belief, ritalin is not some magic drug, it works almost exactly like amphetamine. If your friend had been addicted to speed for the last ten years, would you be surprised that he was a wreck when off it? There are alcoholics that can seem completely functional for long periods of time as long as they stay drunk, but break down completely if they do not get a drink - same thing goes with most drugs.
+1 harsh but true.
Joe and Jane Normal are tedious herd beasts. Never mind dressing it up as "neurotypical", anyone with fewer than 2 SD's from 100 IQ (either way) is a dragging knuckle away from being a fully integrated member of the monkey tribe. Note the mindless chattering, the social grooming, the dominance displays and the obsession with screwing those monkey people who display the most normal traits. WWF and Survivor are made for Joe and Jane Normal. Jerry Springer features actual human beings, hooting and shrieking and flinging faeces. These are normal people being invited to display the extremes of their normal monkey behaviour for the amusement of the millions of other normal people watching them.
An interesting part of this state of affairs is that Joe and Jane pursue happiness constantly, but (apart from brief moments of faeces flinging) they can never achieve it. Their busy monkey minds can focus only on how they can aquire what they believe that they need to be happier later. Never any pause to contemplate how happy they are now. I (and probably you, dear reader) revel in the buzz from untangling a glottic knot of code, or catching a split infinitive, or even just from staring at a corner of the ceiling and considering the angles. Joe and Jane can't understand how anyone could get pleasure from doing that - it's not something that a normal person would do. Normal people pursue happiness, they don't experience it. During lunch at work, I have to listen in an abstract way to Jane and Joe speculating on how much they must must own, and how many other monkeys they need to screw before the magical switch is flicked and they achieve the happiness that their aspirational books and TV promise them. Meanwhile, I stare at the corner of the ceiling with a beautific smile on my face, utterly content with what I have and who I am.
The only thing that intrudes on my idyll is that I am aware that I am elitist, and that has negative connotations, especially if Asperger's is genetic. Like the parent poster, I do view myself as one of the master race, but I have no wish to be anybody's master. I already have everything that I want, so the monkey people are free to go back to their monkey antics and leave me alone to enjoy the thrill of creating software. I have no objection to Joe Facilities and Jane Manager sharing in the rewards from my work, nor does it bother me that Jane Manager considers her contribution more important, or that her financial rewards are higher (and yet still she must pursue happiness). Monkey dominance games are amusing and irritating in equal measure, but as it's clear that I won't play them, I'm not often bothered by them.
And that's the world of Asperger's. When the monkey people leave you alone, it's a happy world. "Low functioning" Asperger's and autists are in an even more blissful place, farther removed from the monkey jabber and the last lingering urge to watch Oprah. I can't pretend that I don't envy them, just a little.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
..I do believe that with all the low-level radiation that passes through our bodies on a daily basis, at least a few particles eventually interact with our matter.
As far as ionising radiaion goes, waves need a wavelength approximately less than 0.1 micron. This is to get the necessary 12.4eV (using E=hf) to liberate an electron. Regardless of how many radio/tv frequency waves hit you, they haven't got the energy to ionise you. This is why tv/radio is regarded as safe.
That said I don't know if two waves in resonance couldn't attain the necessary energy, à la the microwave oven. However, I imagine they're too big to go interacting with anything the order of DNA.
Having been programming for 25 years, two engineering diplomas and a PhD, I nevertheless go get psychiatric help every few years because of the stress of not beeing able to communicate and feel good among others.
So does that make me autistic and is there anything genetic about it?
Who cares!
What you should care about is that staying alone is not really fun and although interacting with other might be difficult and you constantly need to remind yourself "look at the eyes, look at the eyes", it does pay off!
If you have brains, use them to figure out if you are really happy. If there are any doubts, go seek a professional who can help you!
Agreed. The most obvious factor at work here isn't radiation or bad genes, it's both parents working ridiculously long hours and leaving the children to raise themselves. For the past ten, twenty years, there's been an upsurge in "psychological disorders" children are supposed to suffer from that, to my mind, aren't disorders at all, just fancy names given to bad upbringing.
ADHD=spoilt brat
PDD-NOS ("mild form of autism") = loner
I've recently looked into this stuff together with my g/f, who is a secondary school teacher in a thinly populated area of the Netherlands (more like Montana than Silicon Valley), and we both felt that the criteria used to diagnose so many children these days with "psychological disorders" are extremely vague, appliccable in a whole slew of different situations (tends to be an indication of bad science) and, worst of all, there's a striking similarity between purportedly "pathological" behavior and "healthy" behavior.
Now in a situation where parents actually have time to spend on bringing up their children, such tendencies usually get checked in such a degree that the child may be a loner or a very chaotic person, but at least he'll be aware that in order to function within his society, there are some situations in which it's advantageous to conform somewhat. If, on the other hand, both parents work 9 to 9 in a cubicle farm, rarely have dinner with the kids and leave upbringing to school (teachers don't have time to raise 30 kids all at once), television, books, computer games, the internet, what have you, such tendencies will run unchecked, resulting in society, parents, doctors and overworked school teachers screaming "ADHD!" or "autism!" or what have you.
It's a problem that's not unique to Silicon Valley, it happens everywhere, but given the nature of Sillicon Valley society, it's not surprising that the problem is most apparent there. I'll guarantee, however, that it'll be a problem in other parts of the western world as well, and I'm very curious to see what it'll do to the fabric of society in years to come, when all these autists/ADHD/whatever kids grow up and start assuming positions of power and responsabilities.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
Okay, let's look at the evidence presented:
- It's genetic
- It's on the rise
- It's not a disease and can't be cured.
- It's higher in the children of smart people
- It makes the kids bad at some things, better at others.
Even without knowing what those things are, if someone just presented me with these points, I'd say it sounds like the humans are evolving.
So let's look at what they're evolving into:
No social skills : looks like they'll need to get in touch with people through computer chat instead, huh?
High intelligence, repetitive behavior: I bet the new humans are really good at video games.
Low verbal skills: Looks like voice interfaces won't be the way of the future.
When more than 30% of new humans are "Autistic" we may start to find out what they're best at, and we may find that the future needs them more than 'us'. Assuming I'm not already one of them. I suspect I am.
I was given a dual High-Functioning Autism/Asperger diagnosis by TEACCH in 1994, when I was 46. The dx was confirmed by the University of Pittsburgh when I participated in its autism study. (This is why my nick is the diagnostic code for autism.) FWIW two accounts of my experiences with autism, presented at an AS conference in Sweden in early 1998, are here and here. There is also a huge amount of Asperger info and resources here.
From my perspective, labeling autism as a "fad" or an "excuse" does no one any good. While it might be possible for neurotypical folks to mimic autistic behavior, that is very different from an autistic person being unable to consistently emulate nonautistic behavior and having to put up with the consequences of that 24/7.
There seems a huge amount of misunderstanding regarding autism, much from folks who have a great many expectations of, or assumptions about, autistic folks' behavior. Motives are imputed to our behavior and appearence, as when my often-flat expression and tone of voice are taken as signs that I am upset. (By that interpretation, Data is pissed off nearly all the time.)
IMO what is needed most is a sociological approach to autism, to complement the existing medical/psychological one. This is already underway at a grass-roots level by various folks on the autism spectrum - one early example, a message to parents of autistic children, may be found here.
People with autism show extreme ability in some area of scientific or artistic endeavor but extreme retardation in basic human social and communication skills (i.e. some can barely speak).
Bzzt. Autism, as in "the bonafide psychiatric/neurological disorder called autism" does not equal "extreme ability in one area vs. extreme retardation in social and communication skills". It's a genuine, empirically verifiable form of brain damage that *primarily* leads to severe retardation of social skills (and that, I can assure you, is a very broad category of skills), but to other forms of retardation as well. The so-called "Idiot Savant" is nowhere near as sexy as urban mythology would have you believe. If you were to take a look at the fruits of these so-called "extreme abilities", you'd find that they aren't that wonderful at all, they show insistence to do something, but not any form of talent, genius or what have you. Rather, they look like they were done by someone with Down Syndrome, but in a very mechanical, monomanic way.
Someone else in this thread mentions another popular misconception, that of Einstein being an example of an autist: this, too, is wildly off the mark. Sure, he was a bad student, but for the most part his social skills were well within "normal" range.
If you were to meet an autist in real life, you'd find that, to put it bluntly, he'd be a "retard", hardly distinguishable from other "retards".
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
However, this does not mean that giving them drugs is the right thing to do. All it does is create a dependency which may or may not be necessary. It is a much more responsible thing (IMHO) to recommend they take Ritalin only sparingly, and at least attempt to overcome their neurological problem by themselves. This approach would give them the opportunity to learn behaviors that would help them when they don't have access to Ritalin, and ultimately be much more beneficial to them than just relying on drugs to fix their problem.
see how they weigh up:
Normal People:
round them should just read their minds, damn it!
basis
a cool word, regardless of whether those products
are any different from anything else out there or
not
inquisitiveness of a mushroom, and a faith in
simple interfaces that the religions of the world
can only stand and marvel at.
Autistic people:
symbolic logic
-something-. The more "autistic" a person is, on
the autistic spectrum, the more important it is to
filter out the "background noise" of their
environment. If they didn't, they'd go nuts.
groups. Large groups put the mind on overload.
abstract concepts, in the mind, usually in some
symbolic way. It's as easy for an autistic person
as changing channels on the TV.
There are no more "autistic" people than there
used to be. The difference is, they're no longer
being put into mental institutions, locked up and
forgotten. They're getting $$$ in computing,
instead.
(Which only goes to show that society is fickle.
People rather reject "problem people" than see how
they could be beneficial. If you've watched the
news, in the past 3 months, I'm sure you can name
a fair number of "problem people" that society is
hell-bent on rejecting. Maybe society has no real
option, maybe it does. It's the reflex reaction of
destroying the different that is the real enemy,
though, in my humble opinion.)
P.S. I'm diagnosed Aspergers, with Bipolar I. The
labels are useful, because they help me see what
my mind is chemically & electrically designed to
do. It's no different from labelling a computer as
a Pentium III, or a PA-RISC. Each of them is
suited for different types of task than the other.
It doesn't make one "better" or "worse", in the
abstract, but only in the context of running a
specific class of algorithms. Or, to put it
another way, the best, the most accurate clock in
the world makes a damn lousy web browser. Not
because of a defect in the clock, but because it's
not - and never was - configured to be a web
browser. If it were, it could not be the most
accurate clock in the world, as it would need to
spend time handling HTML, et al.
Psychological labels are powerful tools. But only
if used correctly. But we're already familiar with
that. DDD is a powerful debugger...
a programmer. Hand it to Joe Schmuck, and they
would be hopelessly confused.
A psychological label tells you, in general terms,
something about the configuration of the brain. It
really doesn't do any more than that. With enough
time and effort, any person with any brain CAN do
anything any other person can do, the same way a
PA-RISC chip can run a Pentium III emulator. But
you're burning a hell of a lot of brain cycles in
the process. Doesn't it just make a hell of a lot
more sense to forget about "others", and use your
brain for something it can do, and do phenominally
well, that you enjoy? Emulators can be useful, but
don't make them your entire life.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Pollution could be a factor, for sure, but it seems that we should also consider the possibility that Silicon Valley, with it's go-go-go lifestyle and stressful jobs, could be. Check out this article in Yahoo News describing a link between stress in the 24-28th weeks of pregnancy to Autism.
-Paul
The real Paul Vallee is slashdot userid 2192, and, what do you mean it's not cool to point out your low userid?
If you need to know anything about Asperger's Syndrome, Get This Book. Tony Attwood is a genius, and nine months ago I had the pleasure of talking to him at a conference in Binghamton, NY (at the Heritage Country Club, the former IBM Country Club), and I kowtowed to him. Take it from me, because I have Asperger's syndrome. I program VCRs before I read the manuals, and read the manuals for FUN. My friend Ryan is a Pokémon Fanatic. I am a computer gamer and my best friend Andy is a nerd like no other, programming until his brain leaks out his ears. And I still don't get neurotypical girls. And if you're going to cure autistic persons, leave them with Asperger's syndrome. Please.
First, I would like to say that I've never doubted for a minute that geekyness exists. It is a set of behaviors, a non-standard view of the world, that's shared by a small, but not insignificant percentage of people, mostly men. While I do not know if geekyness ("Asperger's) is inborn or acquired in infancy, I AM sure of one thing: psychiatrists should be the last people on earth to be trusted with the answer, or even more frighteningly, the "treatment". Remember, this is a "science" that until quite recently advocated electric shocks, applied directly to the brain, as a way of treating schitzophrenia. I've actually known someone who survived this, and to my knowledge the morons who thought this up have never been punished in any socially accepted way. Once, out of curiosity, I actually tried looking up what their definition of "schitzophrenia" was. Guess what? It's all mush! Basically, if you're "crazy", you're a schirzophreniac to them. The brain is an incredibly complex structure, and like all such structures, it can fail in many complex ways. The only ones modern psychiatry is really sure of are direct and simple. Example: if a person gets hit in this area of the skull, their speech may get slurred. Hmmm, that is probably where the "speech" area is (I'm not joking).
So if you're looking for science in psychiatry, you've come to the wrong place at the wrong time. This wouldn't be so tragic if they were not constantly insisting on "treating" innocent people like you and me. I could think of lots of scientific fields that are pure speculation. Cosmobiology sounds like fun for example. But there is no financial incentive that I know of to apply cosmobiology to real life. Unfortunately, there IS a financial incentive to "treating" crazy people. So the story of all quacks who've come before them gets repeated one more time, and "bad humours" become "chemical imbalances", "being posessed by the devil" becomes "schitzofrenia", and "exorcism" gets a direct charge out of the wall socket. The fact that these quacks have now set their sights on us (and even gave our condition a name) cannot be good news.
My understanding of autism is that there are several genes which contribute to it. If somebody has some of the genes, but not all or most, they may have some of the symptoms of Autism. Having some of the genes can be a benefit, but having all or most can be a detriment.
Same as with the gene for sickle-cell anemia. If you have 1 copy of the sickle-cell gene, you can survive malaria. If you have both genes, you're gonna get sickle-cell anemia.
Among my family members, I have a brother with Autism, and a nephew with Asperger's.
My brother is high-functioning. He does trig and exponential math in his head. (He compared calculators to himself and found mistakes in a calculator.) He can tell you the day of the week for any day from 1583 A.D. to 6482 A.D. And when Easter Sunday will occur on year in that time frame. He also taught himself 15 human languages by reading dictionaries and grammar guides. He can write math programs that run perfectly the first time. But, for social skills, he is like the character in the "RainMan" movie.
My nephew is still young (11 years), but he already has shown a lot of aptitude for math. He's still learning what skills he can develop, and with a supportive family, he will be encouraged to learn. His brother (13 years) is also a math whiz who has already built his own computer, and set up the device drivers for that computer.
Among my siblings, I have a sister with a masters degree in math and chemical engineering. She makes chips for Intel.
I have another brother who put his math, geography, and computer skills to work making mapping software.
I make software tools for people that design custom chips.
One member of my family does multi-dimensional calculus in his head.
Some of my extended family pick up new software languages quickly, and learning the nuances of it. We have many advanced degrees and unusual specialties. There is a wide range of social skills among us. The vast majority of us do just fine at getting along with others.
Apparently having some of the autism genes allows geeks to provide much needed skills to society. (And get the neat high $ jobs.)
I saw this in the Wired article:
/.) experimented with this idea in his latest book, calling it "Focus". The ramifications where not totally positive, to say the least.
"We have the human data," says Shestack. "Now we need the brute-force processing power. We need high-density SNP mapping and microarray analysis so we can design pharmaceutical interventions. We need Big Pharma to wake up to the fact that while 450,000 people in America may not be as large a market as for cholesterol drugs, we're talking about a demand for new products that will be needed from age 2 to age 70.
OK, I work in Big Pharma (though I don't speak for them, blah blah). The big $$ here would not be "curing" those 450k. The $$ would be creating a drug to *induce* an Asperger like state in the normals. Think of it as Viagra for study skills. I think we could sell a few doses of that....
Vernor Vinge (wonder if he reads
garyr
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Well gee, lets look at the facts..
You have a group of people consuming copious amounts of a drug known to cause low birth weight, birth defects, mental retardation, and complications during pregnancy. Caffiene. A fetus isn't able to metabolize caffiene, so it builds up in the fetus' body eventually interfereing with nervous system growth. To the mother, Caffiene is also a diuretic, and an appetite supressant. The more caffiene the mother takes in, the less likely she is to eat well, and provide her unborn baby with the nutrients it needs.
The mothers and fathers spend alot of time near high-strength EMF from computer monitors, at least 8 hours a day if theyre employed. EMF causes chromosomal abnormalities.
The mother and the father of the children live in one of the most polluted areas of the entire country in terms of air quality. Carcinogens given off by automobiles make their way into the air, into the water, and in some cases, even into the food they eat on a daily basis. Welcome to California.
Is it any wonder your kid turns out autistic?
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
I just finished a meeting with the speech therapist at my son's elementary school--he was tested because he was having problems in his kindergarten classroom--such as not finishing his work ("though it is done wonderfully" the teacher reports), have problems interacting with his peers (he doesn't like to be touched), and other small things.
During the meeting the teacher leaned over to me and asked if I had considered autism as a possible problem with my son.
Of course I did! I **did** read the article in Wired...and am myself a special education teacher who, by the way, have dealt with *true* aspergers children.
Now, besides the fact that I thought the teacher was a little off her rocker--she means well but her 50+ years of teaching experience might make her a bit long in the tooth--I also have been watching myself as much as my son lately.
During the meeting, my wife pointed out that many of my son's behaviors that would classify him as autistic she has observed in me. Examples:
--> My son doesn't like to interact with his peers: Big surprise--neither do I.
--> My son would rather stay inside at recess and do his homework: again, I will stay after work 3+ hours to finish my paperwork just so I can sleep well that night!
--> My son can't finish his work on time, but while his classmates are still working on the letter K my son is reading Dr. Seuss to his mother before he goes to bed.
--> My son has problems communicating with his teacher: I just had my job review and the only 'black' mark was that I didn't kiss enough arse with the CEO of the company I teach for. Otherwise I was a great teacher (thier words, not mine).
--> My son has to follow the same routine every day or gets very out of sorts and frustrated: guess what--my wife pointed out how much grief I give her if my morning routine is intruded upon.
Bottom line: Many of the things that I dealt with as a child (and even an adult!) are the very things that make my child a frustrating, easily upset, highly intelligent problem solver who will have to travel the same road I did to maturity--dealing with bullies, teachers who weren't as intelligent as yourself, learning how NOT to offend the very people who give you grades/sign your paychecks.
The asbergers that is being talked about here isn't a disease or disability, it is a gift set that can be *very* lucrative in the long run...
The staff did not know what to do with him, so they called in a psychologist (with our permission), to observe him. After a few other tests, this woman diagnosed him as autistic, and suggested we enroll him in the county-sponsored "early intervention" program, as he would never be able to survive in a regular classroom.
Now, at the time, I had only a superficial understanding of autism, but my bullshit meter was redlining. This little boy was (and is) a very affectionate child. I still remember one particular day, when he was still a toddler, he climbed into the lap of some sad-looking older woman in a doctor's waiting room and attempted to engage her in "conversation." Her whole epxression and mood seemed to change.
And this kid, although extremely stubborn and sometimes difficult to manage, was a joy to have around the house. I had real fears about involving him with "the system" before I did more checking around.
He has always been an unusual child in many ways. He could tell time perfectly at age 2, and do instant conversions in his head for time zones around the world. His brother found this amusing enough to display him to his friends, like a trained animal. At 3, the child could read maps accurately and navigate from the back seat of the car with a county road atlas. BY the time he was five, he knew all the presidents of the U.S., in order, with their vice presidents and cabinet members plus other obscure historical trivia.
At any rate, I went nuts doing the research thing...read about Asperger's and considered it briefly...but it still didn't ring true. One day, it occurred to me that my son was always asking, "What?" "What?" and we were so used to this that we'd repeat ourselves without thinking. I wondered if he might have a hearing problem, so I took him to a speech/hearing therapist for an evaluation. His hearing was perfect, but he turned out to have some kind of strange, cognitive speech disorder that was frustrating his attempts to process language.
Essentially, this kid had learned language like parrots learn -- by mimickry. (Back when I was doing Internet training in the early 90s, I used to joke to my classes that my son could make modem noises before he could talk.) Because we were older parents (40) when he was born, and because his brother was 9 years older, he actually had a very advanced vocabulary. Therefore, although he would regularly use words inappropriately, we thought it was "cute" and never suspected any sort of a language problem. The "What?" "What?" business was his attempt to get us to explain something to him in a different way, so that he could maybe understand it.
Our HMO at the time was perfectly happy to send this kid for unlimited CAT scans and MRIs, but balked at paying for speech therapy. We went to war with them, and they eventually caved. After six months of speech therapy three times a week -- the therapist essentially taught him how to relearn language -- he was absolutely a different child. We switched preschools, and he thrived in the new one...happily participating in activities, etc. By the time he got to "regular" school, there were no problems whatsoever. I am thankful every day that we caught this problem and made it go away before he got into elementary school.
The child is 10 now; he reads at an 11th grade level, writes beautifully and is a whiz at math (which he doesn't find real interesting, alas). He still absorbs facts upon facts about American history, but his true obsession these days is sports. He can name every major league baseball and football stadium, knows when they were built, what their names used to be before "naming rights" took over, knows the records and ages of most major league players as well as which teams they have played for, can tell you the history of every manager and coach... Has both the ESPN and Sports Illustrated almanacs and sucks up an alarming amount of information. Is regularly challenged by his brother, and is almost always right.
He also has friends -- a couple good ones; he's not the belle of the ball -- and he has the respect of his classmates, who regularly choose him for things like student council and reading the "news" on the school TV program. The teachers are all crazy about him. Even the school custodian, an eastern European emigre who speaks with a heavy accent, tells me, "That boy is special. Gonna be president someday, and I'll be a citizen and vote for him."
Yeah, yeah...I'm a proud mom. He is, of course, my youngest chick and I love him to pieces. But I still get the creeps when I think of what might have happened had I let "the system" get hold of him at such an early age. Please, please, please...get second and third opinions. Sounds like you're already doing a lot of research. Keep doing it. Talk to speech therapists, not just shrinks.