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."

Comments

Overdiagnosis?

[www.sorehands.com]

Many doctors and teachers are diagnosing kids at ADHD because they have too many kids in a class to manage properly.

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?

Re:Overdiagnosis?

[budgenator]

Boy you should see my family at christmas dinner, most of us would probably qualify as border-line Asperger's syndrome and the 'Normals' in the family usualy either hide in another room, or leave crying over percieved social snubs. Yes I can be "social", but its a skill set that's learned, and when I do it it's a mode of thinking that I turn on or off.

And as for teachers, they are either crying johnny can't focus, or johnny is so focused that he resents my trying to get his attention to teach him this silly bullshit. Most of what I learned in school was learned inspite of the teacher.

Could Pollution in Silicon Valley Be The Cause?

[puppetman]

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.

Re: false representation of the logic involved

[HydroPhonic]

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.

The MMR Vacine May Have Something to Do With It

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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/newsi d_1687000/1687967.stm) It seems as though there are considerable vested interests on the side of those in support of the MMR vacine.

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.

we need cats

[DZign]

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..

I'm in that boat

[scott1853]

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.

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 /. population could be considered autistic.

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.

a plague?

[Alpha State]

"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.

Re:ADHD

[Cuthalion]

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.

Re:Good point but

[Preposterous Coward]

why do people treat autism like its a disease, when its just genetics

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...

Every inteligent person is disabled in some way

[evilviper]

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.

A Theory

[awol]

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)

It's actually a contributing factor, I think.

[Chasing Amy]

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! ;-)

Re:It's actually a contributing factor, I think.

[Marcus Brody]

Interesting comment. I think you are quite right about the link between modern lifestyle (post industrial-revolution) and the rise in certain diseases.

However, despite the persuasive argument, I have to disagree with this:

It's like a mild, remote form of inbreeding.

There is a compelling evolutionary argument that people subconciously select partners who are of a distinct genetic make-up. Alot of this debate has centered around "HLA haplotypes". These cell-surface antigens help the immune system distinguish between inate and foreign matter within the body. If everybody had the same HLA haplotype, it would be trivial for bacterial diseases to mimic the HLA type and thus sweep through the world population. Of course, diversity has evolved within HLA genes to stop this happening. Furthermore, the argument is that people purposefully mate with partners who have a different HLA haplotype and thus create new combinations of HLA genes. This will create a child much less susceptible to disease than an inbred child, who would have a HLA type similar to the rest of the family.

This is quite a compelliung argument and may operate at other levels than HLA. Before someone argues "But why arent there lots of inter-racial mariages?", it has to be said that this proposed phenomenon would be extremely complex with many confounding socio-economic confounding factors. Furthermore, the jury is still out. Much of the molecular evedince has been confusing and contradictory.

In summary, I think it is highly likely that mechanisms exist to stop exactly this type of "accidental inbreeding".

Sickle Cell Anemia for Geeks

[Elwood P Dowd]

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.

Re:Autism or Aspergers?

[fatphil]

"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

Re:ADHD

[Hobbex]

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.

Re:this is evolution of mankind

[Rogerborg]

• Society is the abberation, not us

+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.

Re:read the article

[uebernewby]

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.

It's just Darwinian adaptation!

[retrosteve]

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.

Urban myth

[uebernewby]

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".

Re:ADHD

[GMontag451]

You're right, ritalin works almost exactly like amphetamine or caffiene or any other related stimulant. However, you will find that if you give a stimulant to a normal person, he/she will start acting like Cuthalion's friend when he was off the drugs. But if you give a stimulant like ritalin to a person with ADD or ADHD, it will actually calm him/her down. This indicates there is a chemical difference between normal people and people with ADHD.

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.

Normal vs. Autistic

[jd]

Let us define some traits of each of these, and
see how they weigh up:

Normal People:

• Don't care about understanding - everything
  round them should just read their minds, damn it!
  
• Get infected with e-mail viruses on a regular
  basis
  
• Prefer AOL, as it does the thinking for them
  
• Buy products marked "digital", because it's
  a cool word, regardless of whether those products
  are any different from anything else out there or
  not
  
• Have the imagination of a doormouse, the
  inquisitiveness of a mushroom, and a faith in
  simple interfaces that the religions of the world
  can only stand and marvel at.
  

Autistic people:

• Have phenominal memories for patterns and
  symbolic logic
  
• Have the social skills of a dead slug
  
• Generally don't work well with ambiguity
  
• Develop a survival mechanism of focussing on
  -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.
  
• Generally work best on their own, or in small
  groups. Large groups put the mind on overload.
  
• Can map out complex interrelationships between
  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... ...if you're
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.

Re:Normal vs. Autistic

[jd]

The chances are, the "exceptional" brain surgeon, concert pianist, or playwright, are "exceptional" precicely because they are on the autistic spectrum. (Accountancy seems to be one of the few professions where no correlation exists. That's actually been observed!)

As such, each of those people will have their own "DDD"'s, in their own profession. The name doesn't matter, it's the nature of the understanding that counts. Symbolic, visual associations are key to autism. (There's a GREAT book on the subject, called "Somebody, Somewhere". It explains this in much more detail, and much better, than I could.)

The use of symbolism to create or manipulate the physical, RATHER than having some direct association, is the key to identifying an autistic profession. I'm firmly convinced that whoever devised musical notation was autistic, as it is a purely abstract, symbolic notation. It has no relationship, other than imagery, with the music it represents.

Could Stress in Silicon Valley Be The Cause?

[vallee]

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

Beware the cure!

[garyrich]

I saw this in the Wired article:

"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 /.) experimented with this idea in his latest book, calling it "Focus". The ramifications where not totally positive, to say the least.

garyr

Is It Really That Surprising?

[Bowie J. Poag]

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,