I do find it interesting that we ask Aspies to become more empathetic, but we don't ask neurotipicals to become a little less hung up on social niceties.

Obviously, neurotypicals get the benefit of the doubt for "how people should be", since there are so many more of them. But we don't ask gays to be straight, despite not being "normal", numerically, so why should we ask Aspies to be more empathetic? Why assume an Aspie is broken, by default? Where's the proof that lack of empathy is a problem for anything other than working with neurotypicals?

I can't help but wonder that the future might not actually belong to neurotypicals. That, perhaps, the Aspie mutation might be better adapted to a world that is becoming more and more computerized and less and less hospitable to neurotypicals.

For example, consider Zynga. How many normals are completely wasting their lives and earnings on an objectively stupid social game because their normal, empathetic minds have been hacked to "like" and see value in it? We all can see that it's sad, and yet we know there's virtually nothing that can be done for them, short of banning those games. They simply cannot adapt, where Aspies can (and have).

Neurotypicals seem to think Aspies have "anti-social" lives, but those I've met seem pretty happy. And at least from my perspective, are really straightforward to get along with, if you can understand their behavior and not take offense and what would normally be a slight in neurotypical-land.

Perhaps trying to turn Aspies into neurotypicals is really only beneficial today because most of the world is normal, so Aspies, to some degree, need to work with neurotypicals if they are to achieve anything.

But how long will that be true? When will a critical mass of Aspies exist, or the world become hospitable to them despite not having to pretend to be neurotypicals?

And what then? Do we continue to try and "make the gays straight", so to speak? Or do we realize that an Aspie is just as valid a way to live as anything else, and not a disability to be overcome?

It's strange to see evolution happen right in front of us. I don't have any answers, but these are the thoughts that have occurred to me for some time now, and I thought I'd share.

We do do this. Have you never been involved in a work conversation where someone says, "Get to the point, you're wasting everyone's time."

Have you never gone to someone to make a request, and you're starting out with a long spiel about your reasons, and the other person says, "Look, I'm busy, just tell me what it is you want."

I see these kinds of conversations a lot. It's not always in one direction.

Yes, being busy is an excellent excuse to behave a bit like an Aspie, even if you're neurotypical.

Aspies (and introverts in general) thrive in environments where people are evaluated more on the basis of getting shit done quickly and accurately, and less on the basis of how often they drink with their boss. It's maker's schedule vs. manager's schedule all over again.

So, in a sense, modern societies' increasing emphasis on efficiency and productivity might work in favor of Aspies. So does urbanization, which allows you to disregard what your great-aunt's second cousin thinks about your new socks.

The very low prevalence of the condition means that people with Asperger's would have to enjoy vastly higher rates of reproductive success to become a substantial portion of the population. That doesn't seem to be the case.

And that presumes that there is a mostly genetic basis for the condition (the womb environment does seem to factor into autistic spectrum disorders).

Do you think that aspies are less susceptible to Zynga games? I don't know either way but in my own experience aspie types that I have met seem much more likely to be hooked on games like WoW certainly.

I'm not sure that the comparison to gays works so well because by and large being gay doesn't affect your day to day relationships with other people apart from in specific circumstances. Unless you act in a stereotypical gay fashion it's quite likely that nobody will ever know you are gay unless you tell them. I've met plenty of people whom I've known have been gay but in all likelyhood I've met countless more who have been gay and I've had no idea.

It's very hard to hide if you are an aspie or socially retarded in some way and it's something that is likely to affect your relationship with everybody who you meet. By and large these effects will also be negative since people are uncomfortable around people they regard as "weird".

Zynga specializes in social games. FarmVille is rather pointless if you're not interesting in visiting your friends' farms and chatting about each other's cows. WoW, on the other hand, is fun to play even if you're not into idle chitchat.

Now, Minecraft, that's an Aspie's wet dream.

>I can't help but wonder that the future might not actually belong to neurotypicals. That, perhaps, the Aspie mutation might be better adapted to a world that is becoming more and more computerized and less and less hospitable to neurotypicals.

This will ENTIRELY depend on who out-reproduces the other.

>Neurotypicals seem to think Aspies have "anti-social" lives, but those I've met seem pretty happy.

But not necessarily reproductively successful.

>When will a critical mass of Aspies exist, or the world become hospitable to them despite not having to pretend to be neurotypicals?

Quite probably the opposite will happen (has happened, and is happening).

In a very ironic/paradoxical sense, it is the "Aspies" (people who have historically "obsessed" over machinery, technology and the physical world -- to the detriment of their own sexual reproduction) who have enabled the technophobes to successfully increase in numbers far beyond what they were capable of before. When human reproductive choices were far more limited (because travel was limited, total number of human interactions were limited, technology spread/scaling was limited, etc) then the anti-social (a-social? under-social?) Aspie types still had a chance to reproduce in sufficient numbers such as to pass on their genes. In addition, at previous levels of technology access to information/tools essentially required interaction with other human beings (to a far larger degree than with current technology).

The modern world -- with everything from antibiotics to automobiles & jet airplanes -- has led to humans having wider circles, to the greater marginalization of Aspie types; and recent technology (especially the internet) has facilitated a self-withdrawal of more and more Aspies; such that more and more of them are likely to be genetic dead-ends.

Ergo the chances of Aspies reaching some "critical mass" is not only highly unlikely, it is improbable.

Wikipedia describes Asperger's as a "pervasive developmental disorder", characterised by "significant difficulties in social interaction, alongside restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests" and also often "physical clumsiness and atypical use of language." This description, along with my impression of how people with the condition function in life, brings to my mind an image of people who are socially-blind, unable to avoid constantly tripping, stumbling and smashing into the obstacles of social terrain around them.

While I support the move to view Asperger's more as a different way of being human rather than a defect per se, this does not to me sound like the making of a new master race. If Zynga was the result of a Asperger's conspiracy to hijack the frivolous satisfaction pathways of "neurotypicals" and so take over the world, I might think differently. But it's not. People with Asperger's don't seem to be interested in conquering the neurotypical world, they seem to be happiest staying at home playing with computers and avoiding other people.

Basically, my impression of Asperger's sufferers is that they lack the social insight and intuition to succeed in the real world. They do okay in carefully-constructed bubbles with interesting non-human toys and machines to play with. But they can't cope with normal human beings.

Additionally, your characterisation of normal human beings as too dumb and clueless to resist mindless games is... rather crude I think. You sound bitter.

>Basically, my impression of Asperger's sufferers is that they lack the social insight and intuition to succeed in the real world.

Or, phrased a different way, they seem to be incapable (or uninterested in) tricking and manipulating their fellow man simply for their own benefit, regardless of the detriment to others.

>They do okay in carefully-constructed bubbles with interesting non-human toys and machines to play with.

Or phrased a different way, they help mankind progress by focusing on the physical world, solving problems and creating tools... rather than attempting to gain benefits for themselves by manipulating and suckering other humans in a series of "con artist" games.

>But they can't cope with normal human beings.

Or, again viewed from a different angle -- they have difficulty dealing with (to them) unpredictable,lying, manipulative, socio-parasitic people.

>Additionally, your characterisation of normal human beings as too dumb and clueless to resist mindless games is... rather crude I think. You sound bitter.

Or there is the possibility of the opposite view -- that it is YOU who are more than a bit 'bitter' -- technology is largely a black-box puzzle to you, so you allow others to deal with it, and instead concentrate on parasitic (people manipulation) means of satisfying your needs and wants.

And then you justify this by denigrating those who deal with (and advance) technology in ways that you cannot.

Hmm. I appreciate the strength of your feelings. That said I disagree with you on a couple of points here.

Before I explain my thinking though, I first want to apologise if I came across as overly dismissive of people with Asperger's in my last post. I assure you that was not my intention. I do not intend to attack or criticise. Seriously. I have nothing against people with Asperger's - I find the whole notion that there is or should be some sort of conflict between neurotypicals and people with Asperger's baffling. I feel sympathy for people with Asperger's just as I feel sympathy for all human beings, especially so because it seems like people with Asperger's have a pretty hard time of life in a lot of areas.

>they seem to be incapable (or uninterested in) tricking and manipulating their fellow man simply for their own benefit, regardless of the detriment to others.

>Unpredictable, lying, manipulative, socio-parasitic people.

I will try and summarise what you seem to be suggesting: the world is a seething mass of deceit and trickery, and people with Asperger's are just too honest for their own good. The "lying parasite" view of humanity.

I disagree with this. I think what you are describing does not reflect reality. I think you are expressing a stereotype, and a pretty extreme one at that. Personally, my experience of the world is that people are generally very generous and honest. Regardless, what is more important for me here is to understand WHY you (or in general someone with Asperger's) would come to feel this way. Here are my two guesses. NB: this is all just my speculation. I am not claiming to know for sure that any of this is right.

The first guess is that someone would Asperger's would naturally become extremely frustrated by their inability to understand the feelings and motivations of others, and thus function smoothly in normal society. I can only imagine how frustrating that must be. Often, when people are frustrated like that for such a long time, quite naturally they develop a justification to minimise their sense of failure or not-fitting-in - something along the lines of "It's not my fault - it's their fault! They're all fucked - the whole system is fucked." This helps because, instead of feeling like they have failed because they can't do something, they feel like they have succeeded because they purposefully chose to avoid something. Psychologically, they have regained a feeling of autonomy and control.

My second guess is that someone with Asperger's might assume that their own feelings and ideas about what they are expected to do are widespread. This is called projection in psychology. That is to say, someone with Asperger's might feel like they are pressured to "pretend" or "lie" in order to please others. Which could lead to thoughts like "Why do I have to pretend - shouldn't people accept me as I am?" This could be worsened if they feel like the reasons people offer sound instrumentalist - like they must pretend to be a certain way (caring, interested, jolly etc) so normal people will like them. This sounds like manipulation - and quite naturally again someone with Asperger's could assume that this is how ALL people work - they all pretend to be nice, they all feel like shit inside, they all just do it to get what they want. They project their internal state onto the world at large.

These two guesses may or may not be correct. Please note I am trying to offer them without judgement of any sort. I think they are the sorts of things that any perfectly normal person would do in that sort of situation. If you feel like crap, you try to make it better somehow.

But again, and especially on the second point, that view of normal society is just not correct. People are on the whole honest. Seriously. For most people, sympathy with others come pretty naturally. For most people, some days they feel good and some days they feel like crap, and they act however they feel. They don't walk around constantly trying to suppress their inner state, filled with deceit and distrust, just trying to manipulate each other!

The second point I want to rebut is your assumption that I do not understand technology. That it is a "black box puzzle." I'm sorry, but you're just plain wrong on that one. Why should you assume that social intelligence and analytical intelligence are mutually exclusive? It makes no sense to me - I can only hazard a guess that it might be a superiority reaction - thinking something like "Well yeah, but they don't understand what I'm great at."

Third, (and I apologise for rattling this off, I'd spend more time going over my thoughts but I'm in a bit of a rush) is your idea that neurotypicals and people with Asperger's are necessarily at war with each other - that normal society is a lazy, parasitic entity that feeds off the work of people with heightened analytical intelligences, chewing them up and spitting them out just because they don't have the inner dishonesty to protect themselves. Again, I think this is wrong, and curious to boot. Do you really feel like you are so abused and mistreated? That wider society is so dismissive of people with Asperger's? Society is a pretty sprawling construct - it's not like there's a council of neurotypicals that gets together every three years to set policy on the oppression of people with Asperger's or anything.

In summary, I think you have a highly mistaken impression of "normal" people and "normal" society. More importantly, I think you should realise that no sensible person thinks that the best way to go through life is to pretend not to be yourself - whether you're "normal" or not. If I was talking to someone with Asperger's, I would never say "pretend to be XYZ." I would try and help them explain some of the social cues and reasoning that might make their life difficult in the absence of understanding. But hell, if you feel angry or reclusive, then be angry or reclusive. If you don't care about what someone is saying, don't pretend to. That's how normal people work, I swear. They just act as they feel.

The only caveat is, just as no one should expect you to pretend to be a certain way, don't expect anyone to pretend to like the way you interact with them. If someone is upset about something and you laugh or respond flippantly or dismissively, it is their right to not like your response, and their right to avoid showing such feelings to you in the future, and their right to avoid being around you. Honesty cuts both ways.

What is considered "social" is also a cultural issue. People often talk about Steve Jobs being an asshole. I suspect he too didn't ascribe to the prevailing no-fault social model in de USA.

In terms of social interaction, the USA is the exception, not the norm. Many other cultures are more direct, critical, and less respectful of other's opinions if they "know better". For Aspies it would be easier to live elsewhere.

Americans somehow are no longer used to being told that they're wrong. They demand respect for their opinions (or worse: beliefs) which they won't get elsewhere unless based in facts/reason.

Have you ever worked with Europeans, especially people from The Netherlands or Russia?

Free advice is meted out generously and without excuses. According to them, Americans are extremely hung up on certain "niceties" that Dutchies (and much of Europe) consider "fake" or "politically correct". In reverse, Americans generally consider the French (and Dutch, and Russians, etc.) "rude".

I'm not necessarily saying the directness/truth is better, but it saves a bunch of time/bull as pointed out elsewhere. It requires some getting used to for the non-initiated... but once they do, they like it. My clients pay me for it.

I love working with 'Aspies', but I won't take them into a client meeting anymore. :-)

(chuckle: Customer is very happy with a new feature and remarks "oh wow, that must have taken a long time to implement". I was happy he said so, because we were close to going over budget and I wanted to send him another invoice. Aspie programmer, rightfully proud of his work: "oh no, not at all, perhaps 15 minutes!")

> At least for some subset of them, "social intelligence" is little more than analytic intelligence applied to something that has a very low signal-to-noise ratio.

Yep, that's exactly what it feels like to me. I recently got diagnosed with Asperger's. I find it impossible to do "social intelligence" in real time during a conversation.

The frustrating part is that the signal is obviously there, since other people pick up on it just fine.

Paul Ekman has extensively documented micro expressions, which are trace views of the signal. Studying them will teach you the normal, longer expressions too, that's how I learned.

How exactly does asperger's work? For me the learning process went:

Learn that crinkles under the eye mean smile is real --> observe it quite a bit --> learn to see it naturally and intuitively

That doesn't feel any different from any normal skill acquisition. But I may have had the advantage of some neural mechanism absent in aspie brains.

Anyway, the whole process only took a few months. Ekman has som microexpression training CDs, highly recommended.

> learn to see it naturally and intuitively

What exactly does it mean for something to become natural and intuitive? It's not unimaginable for an Aspie to learn to observe all sorts of behavioral hints -- BBC's recent incarnation of Sherlock Holmes does this exceptionally well -- but does he actually reach the decision that "This person is telling the truth" by the same process that a "normal" person does?

In my experience as an Aspie, it never happens automatically, and it never feels natural. I can hear every line of the code that's being interpreted and executed in my mind. I have a fast CPU, so it doesn't take long, but it definitely happens.

    if (smile) {
        try {
            check_wrinkles(under_eyes);
        }
        catch (CantTellException) {
            make_do_with_rough_assumption();
        }
    }

Even worse, Aspies tend to focus intensely on one thing at a time, so multi-tasking is risky business. An Aspie who learned to watch for wrinkles under eyes in real-time might focus so much on nothing but wrinkles under eyes, so that much more obvious signs of lying go completely unnoticed. In other words, check_wrinkles() blocks everything else. Similarly, even though I have extensive experience both in walking around and in hearing my own name, if somebody calls my name from behind while I'm walking, there's over 50% chance that the call won't even register, because every event handler must wait while walk() blocks. Also, the whole program crashes when an unanticipated exception occurs, resulting in extreme frustration.

As a consequence, when an Aspie finally gets enough practice to pass as normal, he might look like a normal person to casual observers, but the Aspie himself is always painfully aware that what he's doing is neither natural nor intuitive. At best, he's got the script cached in RAM for quick access.

Thanks for the explanation. Focus would definitely get in the way, since interpreting body language requires seeing many things at once.

I'll explain natural and intuitive by an example. In grade 8, I learned to juggle. Not well, but good enough. The process involved clumsily learning several motions and putting them together.

Now I can still juggle, despite years of not doing it. The skill, to the level that I trained it is intuitive. It no longer feels like many things, but just one.

Likewise, I learned to interpret many gestures. At first, I could only interpret them slowly, separately and consciously. Now I interpret them quickly, jointly and unconsciously most of the time.

Are there any skills you've acquired that can now run unconsciously in the background, or does everything require conscious effort and focus?

It sounds like the latter, but I'm curious how this works for things that require multiple separate actions, like driving, computer operation, cooking. Those feel like one thing, but really they're several smaller actions joined together.

Aspies are often noticeably clumsy when it comes to bodily movements. When they play sports, they use more analytical thinking than physical instinct. I often played badminton with my brother when I was young. Every time, I found myself analyzing the trajectory of the shuttlecock to decide where to put my racket. By the time I'm done, it's often too late to move my body into the right position. Ditto for pretty much every other sport I've tried. Beside social ineptitude, lack of skill in sports is a common reason why Aspies feel alienated in school.

But there is something called muscle memory, which allows even Aspies to do certain highly repetitive physical tasks without having to think too much. Typing and walking seem to fall into this category, though if there's nothing else to occupy my mind, it's not impossible for me to start being analytical about every step of a walk. I don't know where juggling fits in the spectrum, because I've never tried it, but the spectrum exists. Some types of bodily movements just seem to require some mysterious skill that can't be emulated with fast-but-single-threaded analytical reasoning.

Cooking is a piece of cake. You just apply a function to some ingredients, take the output, and feed it into the next function. Muscle memory takes care of stir(), and since it doesn't involve much thinking, I can afford to insert interrupts here and there to handle other events.

>Paul Ekman...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17221309

"M. O'Sullivan and P. Ekman (2004) claim to have discovered 29 wizards of deception detection. The present commentary offers a statistical critique of the evidence for this claim. Analyses reveal that chance can explain results that the authors attribute to wizardry..."

I wasn't talking about the "wizard" claims. Ekman literally wrote the book of facial expression classification:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Action_Coding_System#s...

You could argue that the system is bunk, of course, but that's a different argument from te wizardry claims.

First I read about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiognomy in the book from from 190x. Yes, the beginning of the twentieth century. They stimulated facial muscles with electricity and it allowed them to create emotions' expressions and classify them. So Ekman isn't even first to do that.

I see the FACS as a modern extension of the physiognomy. With all the scientific foundation of the latter.

I have both Asperger's and vision impairment. I can't discern microexpressions; I don't see crinkles under eyes or dimples on cheeks. What other ways are there?

Do you find it possible to identify the signals by analysing interactions after the fact, not in real time?

Sometimes I realize hours or days later that I missed something obvious and important, but of course I cannot do this for every social interaction because I don't have time. Also, thinking about it leaves me mentally exhausted in the same way that organic chemistry and advanced mathematics (two subjects I find easy) do for neurotypicals. But my after-the-fact realizations are contingent upon my noticing and remembering specific details that indicate emotion, which is totally hit-or-miss.

One point I would like to make: being an introvert doesn't mean you can't interact in a group situation (or have low social intelligence), it's just not your preferred situation.

I'd rather be reading a book than socialising with colleagues after work, but I do it and am far from a wallflower.

I also had an instructor on a course (on brainstorming) and he was very energetic, dynamic and dominated the room (in a good way). I chatted to him after the course and got on the subject of Myers-Briggs, and he said he was actually an introvert. He had just learnt (through training as an actor amongst other things) to be an extrovert when the situation required it.