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Autism Traits Prove Valuable for Software Testing
Back in 2009 we ran a story about a Chicago based non-profit company that trained high-functioning autistic people to be software testers. Two years later Aspiritech has grown to offer services in Belgium, Japan and Israel. Autistic debuggers are used by large clients like Oracle and Microsoft and have proven to be so good in fact that companies are now recruiting to meet demand. From the article: "Aspiritech's board of directors includes social service providers, therapists, a vocational expert and a software engineer. The nonprofit also received start-up advice and consultation from Keita Suzuki, who has co-founded a similar company, called Kaien, in Japan. Aspiritech has hired and trained seven recruits with Asperger's syndrome. These recruits have since worked on software-testing projects for smartphone and cloud-computing applications. Aspiritech now offers functional-, compatibility- and regression-testing, as well as test-case development, with experience in cloud-computing platforms including Salesforce."
do well at software testing. That's really the story here. Autism is irreverent. This very idea is based upon a lot of wrong information about people with Autism.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
But we do know that autism isn't caused by vaccines.
Dozens of identical/fraternal twin studies, initially carried out in the 70s, prove unquestionably that autism is up to 92% genetic. While it's been hard to point to specific genetic anomalies that cause it, it does not invalidate its genetic roots. The genetics of autism is more nuanced and complex than we realised, as are other inherited conditions, it's not genes but also involves e.g. copy number variations.
Bailey, A., Le Couteur, A., Gottesman, I., Bolton, P., Simonoff, E., Yuzda, E. & Rutter, M. 1995. Autism as a strongly genetic disorder: evidence from a British twin study. Psychological Medicine 25(1), 63-77.
Glessner, J.T., et al., 2009. Autism genome-wide copy number variation reveals ubiquitin and neuronal genes. Nature 459(7246), 569-573.
Science only very rarely shows that some hypothesis is correct. More often, it shows that every other tested hypothesis is wrong, and that the one that's left is just the most likely.
The "vaccines cause autism" hypothesis has been tested, and is shown to most likely be wrong. The "magic space fairy causes autism" hypothesis hasn't yet been tested, or the "too many hard sneezes while pregnant causes autism" hypothesis, nor a few hundred others. We have such a long way to go...
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The most over-self-diagnosed conditions on the planet, thanks to the perceived ability to explain social awkwardness and claim a special area of brilliance.
That, and taking Aspergers frees up stat points for you to allocate elsewhere.
DATABASE WOW WOW
Maybe it's just me, but this reminds me of focus from Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky.
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
And the most recent twin study proves that autism is largely environmental.
"But surprisingly, mathematical modeling suggested that only 38 percent of the cases could be attributed to genetic factors, compared with the 90 percent suggested by previous studies."
This study would disagree with you.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/health/research/05autism.html
The actual statement that you make is that "x is UNLIKELY to case y" along with a degree of confidence. artor3's comment is stated as an absolute so don't bother tossing stats into the discussion. Stats deals with estimation, likelyhood, probability, forecasting, etc. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_intervals and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance
artor3's comment is also stated without citation. Not a good start :(
Online essays don't necessarily point either way -- my text messages often span over 3 messages (diagnosed nearly 5 years ago, had plenty of time to deal with the symptoms), and I've read about a high-functioning autistic guy who's one of the best speechwriters in America (Send in the Idiots, a short book if anyone is interested). Check out some of the posts over at wrongplanet some time if you don't believe me; sitting behind a screen makes it a lot easier to communicate, as one can think about what they want to say and take their time with it. Also, there's nothing like body language to compound the difficulty of communicating.
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
I wouldn't say it's the reverse. They're more like expressions of the same thing. With ADD, attention is side tracked in many different ways. With Asperger's Syndrome, the attention is stuck on a few special interests. That can work fantastically well if the aspie finds the topic at hand interesting, but can be fantastically awful if the topic is uninteresting. Myself, I have a great deal of trouble focusing on anything I'm not interested in and usually find my thinking returning to my special interest de jour. One trick I use when faced with a boring task is to find a clever or more optimal way to do it, since that challenge can make it more interesting. In either case, the challenge is what makes it easy for me to get in the zone and work at something for hours, but being interrupted while in the zone is frustrating and I'll usually avoid getting in the zone if I'm likely to be interrupted within an hour or two and my output will be low. I often wonder what it's like to be "normal" and to be able to get stuff done while only being half focused (not in the zone).
Be relentless!
Now, I don't like such absolutes as "never", because they're so... absolute. It's fully possible to, while following the scientific method perfectly, prove a hypothesis correct. It just takes a very particular kind of hypothesis, and a very particular kind of experiment.
As an example, consider the hypothesis that of Foo, Bar, and Baz, Foo is the most quiggle. This hypothesis can indeed be proven correct, but only by testing every possibility, which of course results in proving other hypotheses wrong.
As for the fields of pharmacology and medical science, your complaint of worthless research seems to be based on the assumption that only perfect knowledge is worthwhile. Quite the contrary, actually: Medical treatments can be effective even if we don't know why. The pain-relieving quality of willow bark was known 2300 years before its pharmacological mechanism was understood. Research into new treatments is very valuable, even without full understanding of the mechanisms involved. Of course such knowledge is preferred, but that's another several years of research after the initial findings.
The only "huge issue" I see with pharmacology and medical science is that they're so intently watched by the media and "science fans" for any sign of a coming miracle cure, in the constant hunt for headlines. Any finding of anything affecting any kind of cancer cells is reported as a "potential cure". In the actual research paper, the findings are almost always stated exactly as they should be: some indications, little concrete evidence, and suggestions for further avenues of research. Other sciences are picking up this attention, as well, but still usually maintain their integrity. Electrical engineering hits the news whenever some transparent, tiny, or shiny prototype finally works. Psychologists are asked for comment when there's a serial killer running amok. Sociology has its fifteen minutes of fame when there's some new theory to explain 4chan. Disease is just constantly affecting millions of people, so it's always interesting news.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.