My SO puts many hours into WoW, but she enjoys the social interaction. Our needs for that aren't the same, so WoW is a way to accommodate our differences.
And she's happy... and as long as the situation truly works for both of us, we'll be okay. Besides, I'm familiar with addiction recovery myself, so we have tools to maintain some semblance of balance.
(Of course, she needed better hardware so she now has an AMD64 box. I got to scrounge her old system to upgrade my own:-) )
IMO (as a person with an HFA/AS diagnosis, by TEACCH in North Carolina [US]) there is a substantial risk of presuming that one's observable behavior is sufficient to quantify one's internal state. What I mean is that one's observable behavior is the sum of underlying ability plus whatever compensatory emulation can be built on top of it. If someone on the autism spectrum manages to work like hell to reasonably emulate "typical" social behavior some of the time, that does not necessarily mean that s/he is minimally affected or "not autistic".
Consider this analogy: if someone who ordinarily uses a wheelchair is able to drag himself up a flight of stairs using only his arms, no one would say, "Well, he can get up the stairs on his own, so he's not really disabled and doesn't need a ramp or elevator."
This deserves at least a vacation from the CowboyNeal poll options...
Alvin Toffler saw this coming...
on
Life Interrupted
·
· Score: 1
...in his 1970 book Future Shock. Its theme was the relentless increase in transience, novelty, and diversity, and the resulting effects on individuals and societies.
I am autistic, and seem to have some of the "enhancements" being discussed here such as very good situational focus and access to unfiltered detail. However these come at considerable cost, for example susceptibility to sensory overload, sometimes-extreme difficulty with unscheduled or illogical changes, and so forth. (Perhaps these attributes could be analogous to "side effects" of the cognitive enhancement drugs?) While it could be argued that "everybody does/has/experiences this", the degree of it can be extreme for some of us, and may point to caveats regarding the meds.
FWIW I've come up with a number of metaphors for my experience of being autistic, and it might be useful to examine these in the context of "cognitive enhancement". There are in the "self-awareness" article directly accessible here (URL may change in the future) or through my domain.
In any event, it may be prudent to go back to the movie "Charly" and ponder his answer to the question, "What do you see?" and the ensuing dialog. Seeing more clearly comes at a price...
Re:a better alternative to being a packrat
on
Digital Packrats
·
· Score: 1
My SO and I have gotten into watching Clean Sweep and it's helped...
...I'd suggest identifying your strengths and seeking ways to best put them to use. Many of us on the autism spectrum have "splinter skills" - aspects of cognition in which we are very capable. (For example, mine involves visual metaphors.) If a good fit can be found in the rather-wide range of activities called "programming", then success is possible.
Several posters have focused on math. But I would argue that, as part of a system-design team for instance, one would not need math skills in order to make important - and possibly brilliant - contributions to the design process. Even in the implementation of a design, one can conceive of a good approach or algorithm without being able to code it or describe its operation in great detail. If it has been your experience that you "just know" the right answer to some types of problems without being able to describe the steps you took to reach them, then you may well have some nonstandard abilities which could be put to good use, if not in programming then elsewhere.
My very uneven twenty-year programming career ended just as I was being evaluated for autism. Had I been able to use my strengths and gain self-awareness to interface better with others, things could have gone much better.
For more on my experience of being autistic and some insights into achieving good quality-of-autistic-life, please take a look at the two papers at the website above. Good luck!
If DVDs of this image quality became available, then knockoffs of merely-terrific quality could follow pretty quickly. These could still be better than the DVDs the studios are now selling...
My SO and I were each pondering the word problem. I found a solution, then she walked in and said, "If you can't figure it out, I know the answer." Well, we each came up with a different answer, and I think they both are valid...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
hers was "apple",
mine was "white".
Neither of us is exactly "standard" neurologically; I am autistic and tend to think in visual metaphor (see "Self-Awareness" at this site for examples...
These folks would suggest first determining how much energy is really needed and in what form, then figuring out which source best meets that need. With this methodology, it is cheaper to reduce demand first, until efficiency improvements become more expensive than the life cycle costs of more power plants, then seeing which kind of power plant might be needed.
It's now out of print, but Amory Lovins' book "Least Cost Energy: Solving the CO2 Problem" discussed this at length and in detail. It was published maybe twenty years ago. Its principles are still sound... for those who care to listen, anyway.
Telling him: you have X syndrome... gives him an excuse to throw his hands up and essentially absolve himself of any personal responsibility to remedy his situation.
Like any other tool, self-knowledge can be misused. It can become the basis for a lifelong "pity party", or it can instead open the door to discovering one's responsibilities and opportunities for growth. That is, if one can learn to deal with the often-erroneous assumptions and expectations of others... such as the suggestion that those of us with AS are indulging in some kind of fad.
As a person with AS, I benefit from sensible explanations of *why* social customs/protocols exist and what purposes they serve. This material can be presented as "interfacing skills", and experiments set up to see if one gets better results by using them.
I echo the parent post's emphasis on gaining self-understanding. I wasn't diagnosed with AS until age 46 (ten years ago), and the quality-of-life difference from "before" to "after" is striking (see my URL for info).
Even if one totally accepts Toshiba's claims about safety, the economics would still remain an issue.
Discussions like this usually begin with, "What is the best way to deliver x (well, okay, n) megawatts to this community? But as Amory Lovins and others have pointed out, the starting point has to be determining how much energy is really needed. The least-cost approach would look at efficiency improvements first, because anything that reduces demand at a cost of less than $2000 per KW is a better buy than this power plant.
I am autistic (and my username is the DSM code for autism). A common but IMO erroneous view of autism is that there is a "real person 'trapped inside' the autism". That sure isn't my experience - what I am is an autistic person, not a person with (and therefore concealed by) autism.
This may not be case for every condition labeled a "disability"; just speaking up for my own circumstances:-)
...save for the last disk which had an off center hole. It had varying pitch, which I was still able to tone down a bit.
If the center spindle of the turntable is removable, position the record so that the pressing is centered. It's easy to check this visually by spinning the record fast with the turntable switched off.
This'll also help with the occasional record which is pressed off-center.
Nest week: Switching the run and parity error light covers on an 1130 for fun and profit.
Or, for some auditory entertainment, find and run the 1130 program deck which made the print chain on a 1403 play "Anchors Aweigh". Those were the days...
...is that this approach can easily ignore why the behavior is taking place - that is, what the internal state of the individual is.
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.
This thing would seem to be a grand-scale lightning rod. It'd be nice to see some analysis on how well it'd stand up to being hit by some serious energy...
Slashdot Mirror
And she's happy... and as long as the situation truly works for both of us, we'll be okay. Besides, I'm familiar with addiction recovery myself, so we have tools to maintain some semblance of balance.
(Of course, she needed better hardware so she now has an AMD64 box. I got to scrounge her old system to upgrade my own :-) )
Consider this analogy: if someone who ordinarily uses a wheelchair is able to drag himself up a flight of stairs using only his arms, no one would say, "Well, he can get up the stairs on his own, so he's not really disabled and doesn't need a ramp or elevator."
This deserves at least a vacation from the CowboyNeal poll options...
...in his 1970 book Future Shock. Its theme was the relentless increase in transience, novelty, and diversity, and the resulting effects on individuals and societies.
FWIW I've come up with a number of metaphors for my experience of being autistic, and it might be useful to examine these in the context of "cognitive enhancement". There are in the "self-awareness" article directly accessible here (URL may change in the future) or through my domain.
In any event, it may be prudent to go back to the movie "Charly" and ponder his answer to the question, "What do you see?" and the ensuing dialog. Seeing more clearly comes at a price...
My SO and I have gotten into watching Clean Sweep and it's helped...
Several posters have focused on math. But I would argue that, as part of a system-design team for instance, one would not need math skills in order to make important - and possibly brilliant - contributions to the design process. Even in the implementation of a design, one can conceive of a good approach or algorithm without being able to code it or describe its operation in great detail. If it has been your experience that you "just know" the right answer to some types of problems without being able to describe the steps you took to reach them, then you may well have some nonstandard abilities which could be put to good use, if not in programming then elsewhere.
My very uneven twenty-year programming career ended just as I was being evaluated for autism. Had I been able to use my strengths and gain self-awareness to interface better with others, things could have gone much better.
For more on my experience of being autistic and some insights into achieving good quality-of-autistic-life, please take a look at the two papers at the website above. Good luck!
If DVDs of this image quality became available, then knockoffs of merely-terrific quality could follow pretty quickly. These could still be better than the DVDs the studios are now selling...
Neither of us is exactly "standard" neurologically; I am autistic and tend to think in visual metaphor (see "Self-Awareness" at this site for examples...
These folks would suggest first determining how much energy is really needed and in what form, then figuring out which source best meets that need. With this methodology, it is cheaper to reduce demand first, until efficiency improvements become more expensive than the life cycle costs of more power plants, then seeing which kind of power plant might be needed.
It's now out of print, but Amory Lovins' book "Least Cost Energy: Solving the CO2 Problem" discussed this at length and in detail. It was published maybe twenty years ago. Its principles are still sound... for those who care to listen, anyway.
Like any other tool, self-knowledge can be misused. It can become the basis for a lifelong "pity party", or it can instead open the door to discovering one's responsibilities and opportunities for growth. That is, if one can learn to deal with the often-erroneous assumptions and expectations of others... such as the suggestion that those of us with AS are indulging in some kind of fad.
I echo the parent post's emphasis on gaining self-understanding. I wasn't diagnosed with AS until age 46 (ten years ago), and the quality-of-life difference from "before" to "after" is striking (see my URL for info).
...folks would have to remember to use it:
:-)
When at a possibly-spoofed site in IE,
1. click in the address bar
2. hit the "End" key, then the space bar
3. click on the "Go" button
Me, I'd rather keep using Firebird
Discussions like this usually begin with, "What is the best way to deliver x (well, okay, n) megawatts to this community? But as Amory Lovins and others have pointed out, the starting point has to be determining how much energy is really needed. The least-cost approach would look at efficiency improvements first, because anything that reduces demand at a cost of less than $2000 per KW is a better buy than this power plant.
So much for the "extra something" we lefties can bring...
This may not be case for every condition labeled a "disability"; just speaking up for my own circumstances :-)
Looks like the fact-checking needs a little work, as shown here...
If the center spindle of the turntable is removable, position the record so that the pressing is centered. It's easy to check this visually by spinning the record fast with the turntable switched off.
This'll also help with the occasional record which is pressed off-center.
...but it's well worth the effort. Best wishes to you both!
Or, for some auditory entertainment, find and run the 1130 program deck which made the print chain on a 1403 play "Anchors Aweigh". Those were the days...
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.
This thing would seem to be a grand-scale lightning rod. It'd be nice to see some analysis on how well it'd stand up to being hit by some serious energy...