There is a school of thought that autism is the next step in human evolution. That was many years ago when I read that. The rate is up to one in 45 babies born in the USA falls within the spectrum.
Yes. The ability to understand programming and sit a computer for long periods of time is ideal for Autistics. Imagine that. Something that would be a disability in any other time is now an advantage. Average people with average intelligence and average abilities no longer matter.
The ones that are able to focus on technical data? They may do quite well, however, autism does not guarantee a techie. You might get someone totally introverted and wishing to communicate with no one. You might get someone who cannot understand the laws of communication and therefore cannot really function.
The ones that are able to focus on technical data? They may do quite well, however, autism does not guarantee a techie. You might get someone totally introverted and wishing to communicate with no one. You might get someone who cannot understand the laws of communication and therefore cannot really function.
It does seem a good many autistic people do have a flair for technical understanding or for something aesthetic like music, and there is some suggestion of a genetic disposition as hinted at, in that some are born to families with a technical background such as a tradition of engineering (by that word's genuine, not everyday, meaning).
However, it's by no means axiomatic, and the idea of Autism = Brilliance in any given field, the old "Autistic Savant" myth, does not hold water. There are plenty of very clever people about but only a fraction could clinically be called autistic; and there are plenty who are autistic but by no means all are of unusually high intelligence or ability.
Whether what we see now as "autism" is really a burgeoning evolutionary development is a moot point, and probably cannot be answered with much certainty for a good many generations yet. Deep autism can be seriously disabling, anyway, not genetically advantageous whatever the individual sufferer may contribute to those around him or her.
I believe it more likely that people react to what's around them as they grow up, so someone of a generation bathed in what is often lazily called "technology" (whatever that it) is more likely to become a scientist or engineer than if he or she had been born more than about 300 years ago when these disciplines were in their infancies and many aspects we now take for granted, could not even be foreseen.
The likes of Newton, Kepler, Faraday and Clark-Maxwell had brilliant minds, able to see Nature in new, profound ways from which we now all benefit in our everyday lives; but there is no suggestion that they were autistic, nor any particular reason for direct descendants of theirs to be so either, whether their trade be stacking supermarket shelves or designing experiments at the known limits of Quantum Physics.
This post was edited by Durdle at December 8, 2016 4:48 PM MST
Thriftymaid 