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Huge Survey Shows Correlation Between Autistic Traits and STEM Jobs (cam.ac.uk)
Bruce66423 writes: A survey of more than 450,000 people in the UK has shown there is a significant correlation between a higher score on the Autism Quotient and being a scientist or engineer. AQ scores are also higher for men than for women. "On average, the male AQ score was 21.6, compared to a female score of 19.0. People work in a STEM-related job had an average AQ score of 21.9 compared to a score of 18.9 for individuals working in non-STEM jobs. This suggests autistic traits are linked to both sex and to having a ‘systems-thinking’ mind." A professor involved with the work said, "These may shed light on why we find males in the population on average have slightly more autistic traits than females do, and why fathers and grandfathers of children with autism are over-represented in STEM fields."
Men shape the world so that they can earn more money. I demand equal access to autism for women!
I would much rather we classify conditions such as autism by the extent that someone is unable to lead a full and prosperous life. Rather than get all tangled up with low-level biases that may or may not say something about the disability. All this study really shows is that personality types are attracted to certain jobs. It does not advance our knowledge of autism. What would have been really interesting is whether there is a change in score over time as people enter various careers - to more autistic traits emerge in people who code for a living.
What Is NT?
Neurotypical syndrome is a neurobiological disorder characterized by preoccupation with social concerns, delusions of superiority, and obsession with conformity.
Neurotypical individuals often assume that their experience of the world is either the only one, or the only correct one. NTs find it difficult to be alone. NTs are often intolerant of seemingly minor differences in others. When in groups NTs are socially and behaviorally rigid, and frequently insist upon the performance of dysfunctional, destructive, and even impossible rituals as a way of maintaining group identity. NTs find it difficult to communicate directly, and have a much higher incidence of lying as compared to persons on the autistic spectrum.
NT is believed to be genetic in origin. Autopsies have shown the brain of the neurotypical is typically smaller than that of an autistic individual and may have overdeveloped areas related to social behavior.
Help find a cure!
http://isnt.autistics.org/
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Must have been somebody who's quite fond of statistics.
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SCIENCE CAUSES AUTISM. No wonder with all those chemicals in it.
Correlation does not necessarily mean causation. That doesn't mean that there is never a relationship. That'd be fucking stupid.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Of course. That's all anecdotal evidence is good for.
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
http://assets.amuniversal.com/...
The current hype around STEM jobs hides the fact that knowing people is still a much better way of being successful than knowing things. STEM jobs are like garbage pickup: It's very important that somebody does it, but you don't want your kids to end up doing the hard work for little money. Yes, I know that STEM jobs are considered well-paying, but with the same work ethic and intellectual ability that they require, one could easily make more money in other fields. An innate talent for science and technology, which appears to be correlated with mild autism spectrum disorders and thus a much lower chance of getting along with people, is as much an evolutionary advantage as being on the other end of the bell curve: The world works best for the people in the middle, not for the outliers.
Non-STEM people just can't concentrate because they have the attention span of a gnat, that's why they call the thinkers autistic.
Being cast out and denied success in the society is human evolution at work. It's the 'selection' phase.
Could be the opposite bias too. "Normals" that didn't found a .com have an excuse and something to be thankful for: "Well I'm not autistic that is why, and at least I don't have a disease." I agree with you though most techies are "well adjusted" they might have a tendency towards "nerdy interests" but is that any worse than a musician that goes to India to learn to play "weird" instruments, or a lawyer that reads cases in a different subspeciality because they are interested in the law? People have things they are passionate about, whippedy shit. Not everyone is stuck doing a job they aren't interested in.
They are negititve trade offs too. A big symptom of autism is the inability to adapt to change. This adaptability to change is one of our key evolutionary advantages. In a world where the effects of global warming is happening we really can't afford a society that is unable to change.
Sure they may be good at STEM jobs now, but what happens when they get older and the methods and technology have been altered.
A baby boomer with autism may get a job as a mainframe system administrator. He may still have a job today, but increasingly threatened as such systems are being retired. Combining autism with older age will make it nearly impossible for him to transisition to deal with a distributed server farm. Even though they may not be that different to people with a lower autism spectrum, to him it would be like changing you career from a system administrator to a marketing manager.
They are a lot of talented techs without autism or score very low where they they can perform just as well without the baggage.
Now this doesn't mean we should outcast these people, but to say they are our next evolutionary step seems like it would lead us to a dead end like the Neanderthal. (Where they are some interesting hypothesis that the Neaderthal had many autistic like tendencies. Large brains and very focused, however not so good at adapting to change)
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If STEM favorize hiring autism spectrum disorder (high AQ) , since there are more men than women having ASD, it is then not a question of sexism as many pretend but at least partially just plain biology ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
And found an overwhelming ratio of "an average AQ score of 21.9 compared to a score of 18.9". Stop the presses, it's time to draw all sorts of wide ranging conclusions based on a single study finding a difference 3 points in AQ score.
The yellowcake is a lie.
Indeed.
I have a cousin with a severely autistic son. He's in his early teens now but is completely incapable of any kind of social interactions and has never shown any kind of interest in any kind of intellectual activity. He mostly just sits in the middle of the floor and requires day-round care for even his most basic needs. He has occasional screaming fits (sometimes physically violent), which tend to be triggered by visitors or other events that interrupt his routine. He's never spoken a single coherent word.
He shows a basic attention reaction to a handful of external stimuli (most notably, for some reason, that godawful Donkey Kong CGI cartoon show from a decade or so ago, which will get him to focus his eyes on a TV), but that's about it.
He doesn't scrawl complex equations on the wall. He doesn't paint pictures of indescribable beauty. His intelligence, as you suggest, is impossible to measure because he simply doesn't interact with the world.
This isn't a different way of being a functioning person. It's a very severe disability. He would have a better chance of living an independent life if he were quadriplegic rather than autistic.
I've seen lots of people claim to be "a little bit autistic" as a way of excusing and enabling their own anti-social behaviours. But there's a big difference between "I don't get along well with others" and "full-blown autism".
My friends 13 yr old isn't great at school and his autism makes him very emotional and socially awkward. He doesn't really like music though, haven't heard him play for a few years so I suppose he could be getting good. But say that is the way he "succeeds" with his autism? It doesn't stop the socially awkward and emotional bits.
Being ADD/ASD with hypersensitivity I am in a position to tell you how wrong you are.
First of all there is nothing wrong with being very emotional. Who sets the level of acceptability for emotional sensitivity? It's an advantage in some situations and a disadvantage in others, if you are hypersensitive you just have to learn to play to your strengths like anyone else. The main problem for a kid is that if other kids figure out they can upset you they will stop at nothing to do so. That's an asshole problem, not an ASD problem. Drugging the asshole neurotypicals into dull submission would solve the problem nicely, preferably with something that makes them drool or do something embarrassing that they will cop a lot of shit for from the other kids.
As for social awkwardness, I was socially awkward most of my life and still have social anxiety. That tends to happen when you have years of compulsory association with people that are assholes to you and it won't be going away anytime soon, but you can learn social skills and also learn to 'ride the wave' with anxiety in ways that are very successful in social situations, in much the same way that a performer might harness their anxiety to add to their stage presence. I have friends, I have lovers, I'm popular at my local drinking spot and I know how to meet new people. Your friends son might learn to do really well socially if he meets some people a bit more understanding and helpful than you.
He'd probably end up being a musical "genius" in the Kobain sense not in the Handel sense, ie not able to cope with the things that cope with it and dying because of it. He's as bad off as if he was born with no "special talent" for anything and instead had an IQ of say 80..
Fuck you for setting such negative expectations for your friends son. In reality I doubt you are a true friend to him and with your attitude you are certainly an enemy of his son's, even if you don't mean to be or see yourself that way. Fix your attitude or stay out of his life.
Wait, what's wrong with their cars?
I've seen lots of people claim to be "a little bit autistic" as a way of excusing and enabling their own anti-social behaviours. But there's a big difference between "I don't get along well with others" and "full-blown autism".
Indeed. It's called tha autism spectrum for a reason. My 25 year old son is moderate to severely autistic. When he was first diagnosed it was at a time when autism wasn't the "mental disease du jour". Having lived with him for this long, I can clearly see behaviors in anyone that I would consider on the spectrum, myself included. And yes, some of those characteristics would be beneficial in a STEM career. But it bothers me when people who obviously don't say, "I have autism" or "that's my autism kicking in".
True, diagnosed, full autism isn't an evolutionary advantage because 95% (guessing, but it feels right) of those people will not reproduce, my son included. My son has a good life and even has his own apartment now (heavily supervised by case workers and us), but likely the only type of job he will ever be able to hold down is grocery bagger, which he does now. To me it feels like the disease of autism grossly over-amplifies a certain set of characteristics that are present in all people - to the point where it's debilitating.
You are not autistic because you like math or because you are socially awkward...
No, seriously.
There's this speed these days to which people are labeled "autistic" when really it could just be that there's no underlying medical condition. It could be some people are just maladjusted.
At least, that's what it was when I was a kid.
I've said this before in this space (not looking for pity, just kind of a contrast), I was raised in an abusive environment that was detrimental to my ability to interact with people. I also just happened to have the right skill set to be able to get an engineering degree. No therapist in the number I've seen over the years has ever even so much as suggested to me that I might be autistic.
Other people haven't been exposed to circumstances like mine; they may just be introverts that aren't quite sure how to ask people how to interact with people so their unknown-unknown is "hey, there's a gap between their behavior and mine, but I don't know how to change things".
Now, I know that people who do these kinds of studies are well-intentioned (in a "gee that's sort of neat that it happens like that" way), but thing is, that's when the media looking for a story runs with it, and the meme becomes a tool used for labeling people and putting them in little intersectional boxes so that we can add words to the coded vocabularies of privilege and identity and whatnot that gets in the way of getting work done, because we need to cater to all of these little labels and associated feelings and other blah-blah.
But at the end of the day, who's getting the work done? I bet most of you that need to get stuff done in a day rarely even think about stuff like this because it's not part of your job to think about it. It's not relevant, and it taking time and energy away from what you feel is part of the discussion about your actual job.
TL;DR: Who the fuck cares? Be autistic on your own fucking time.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
The current hype around STEM jobs hides the fact that knowing people is still a much better way of being successful than knowing things. STEM jobs are like garbage pickup: It's very important that somebody does it, but you don't want your kids to end up doing the hard work for little money. Yes, I know that STEM jobs are considered well-paying, but with the same work ethic and intellectual ability that they require, one could easily make more money in other fields. An innate talent for science and technology, which appears to be correlated with mild autism spectrum disorders and thus a much lower chance of getting along with people, is as much an evolutionary advantage as being on the other end of the bell curve: The world works best for the people in the middle, not for the outliers.
One of the real handicaps of being socially awkward is that employers can take advantage of you. Even if you are in a highly-skilled profession.
Doctors and lawyers are generally "people persons". It's practically a job requirement. They form professional organizations which can lobby governments and otherwise make the world more pleasant to them.
Techies are generally not people persons, even when they aren't actually autistic. They don't form protective organizations. In fact, they're often anti-union (and face it, just because the AMA doesn't call itself a union doesn't mean that it doesn't carry many union traits) and they often subscribe to a Libertarian/Randian ideal that they can sit all high and isolated and self-sufficient. Ironic, since the Randian Bible (Atlas Shrugged) is premised on the idea that the oligarchs (falsely equated to the majority of creative people) form what is for all practical purposes a union and go on strike (the "Shrug"). Oligarchs pretty much have to be people persons too, of course.
In short, if you have few social skills, you're screwed.
In years gone by, this would have been more accurately described as severe mental retardation. Unfortunately, society has decided to abandon the term "retarded" due to perceived stigma. I feel this is unfortunate, as the term is actually quite accurate. Any term can, and in fact historically has been, co-opted to become a pejorative describing people who don't actually fall under the classification of some disability.
Many parents, faced with having a child with a severe mental deficiency, leap to "autism" as a way of internally mitigating the greater negative internal emotions that would follow a diagnosis of mental retardation. Medical professionals accommodate this psychological need of the parents, or buy into the classification themselves due to modern conditioning.
I think that as time goes on, and more knowledge is gained, diagnoses of "autism" or "Asperger's" will eventually be more limited. A huge portion currently diagnosed will be seen as just being socially awkward as youth. Anecdotally, many children in my school environment in the 70's and 80's would today be characterized as being "on the scale". They were shy, didn't make friends, and didn't know how to "get into a group". Due to the demographic nature of my town (few leave), I can say that I cannot think of one of those people who would consider themselves to be "on the scale". At different times in their lives, they got over most of their shyness, and they participate very effectively in local businesses, charity organizations, and social clubs. They may not be boisterous, but they carry on conversations and speak up when they have something to say.
The ones who have a true mental disability will be classified in ways that reflect the actual reason for their deficits. This will increase our ability to mitigate the risks of children being born with or developing a disability. It will also give us a better chance at treating such people. Sweeping everyone under one grand carpet will do less to address the individual issues of each person.
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
I wish I had mod points for this.
Someone who is a mainframe admin has probably been around the block a few times and had probably seen a few iterations of the changing fashions in IT and in society in general. They are no longer impressed. They understand what's going on and they realize that it's not even new really. They may recognize it for the overhyped nonsense that it is. They may know not to get too excited and realize that "it too shall pass".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Just think how great it would be for corporations if they could convince people that suffering is a desirable trait?
The "work ethic" will only take you so far. If you really want complaint slaves, you have to convince people that pain is good for you.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And they say autistics don't get sarcasm.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I got chills reading that. That's one of the most accurate descriptions I think I've ever read.
The description fits me very good aswell.
I'd bet it fits about 95% of the population
It's called the Barnum Effect.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.