4 ms·

1. "So, on average, only about 1 out of every 5 working programmers you'll encounter will be female." 2. "And did you know that autism skews heavily towards ma

by sspiff 13y ago

1. "So, on average, only about 1 out of every 5 working programmers you'll encounter will be female." 2. "And did you know that autism skews heavily towards males at a 4:1 ratio?" 3. "Interesting. I might even go so far as to say some of those traits are what makes one good at programming." 1 & 2 => 3 smells an awful lot like equating correlation and causation. Additionally: 4. "In an earlier post I noted that many software developers I've known have traits of Aspergers." Looks like unquantified extrapolation and using anecdotes as evidence.

matthewmacleod 13y ago
1 & 2 => 3 smells an awful lot like equating correlation and causation. Additionally: 4. "In an earlier post I noted that many software developers I've known have traits of Aspergers." Looks like unquantified extrapolation and using anecdotes as evidence. I don't think Jeff is claiming it to be anything but. There are some obvious correlations there that should make observers go "Hmm, that's interesting!"
lutusp 13y ago
> Looks like unquantified extrapolation and using anecdotes as evidence. Yes, along with perpetuating the myth of Asperger's, which has been abandoned as a diagnosis by people who had every reason to defend its continued existence (clinical psychologists), but who realized they could only do so by sacrificing more public credibility.
- talideon 13y ago
  Actually, what happened is that it ended up bundled into high functioning autism in the DSM. That only means that the term "Asperger's" was deprecated in the context of the DSM.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > Actually, what happened is that it ended up bundled into high functioning autism in the DSM. Yes, that's the psychological version of politics. Did you really think psychologists would come out and say, "We made a mistake and there's no such thing as Asperger's"? That would be like the Catholic church saying Galileo was right. What they did say was, "It's not an evidence-based term." Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/health/03asperger.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/health/03asperger.html?pag... That's good enough for me or any other scientist -- it's not real. The proof that there's no such thing as Asperger's (as a mental illness) has two parts. One, anyone could get the diagnosis through the simple expedient of visiting a psychologist and saying, "I think I have Asperger's". Two, the number of wildly successful people who were said to have Asperger's, including Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, and Bill Gates, which means if Asperger's is real, then wealth and fame are reliable diagnostic indicators for the condition. That would give "mental illness" a whole new meaning.
    - thaumasiotes 13y ago
      > Two, the number of wildly successful people who were said to have Asperger's, including Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, and Bill Gates, which means if Asperger's is real, then wealth and fame are reliable diagnostic indicators for the condition. That would give "mental illness" a whole new meaning. If three successful people are said by some to have showed signs of Asperger's, how many non-Asperger's successful people are needed to make "wild success" an unreliable indicator? I'll lead off with Oprah, Dale Carnegie, and Bill Clinton.
      - lutusp 13y ago
        Sorry, that makes no sense. Mentally ill people aren't expected to become famous billionaires -- it's just not part of the social expectation. The fact that there are similarly successful people without a mental illness diagnosis only adds to the perception that the diagnosis has no meaning.
        thaumasiotes 13y ago
        From the old standby, wikipedia: > In 1947, after his near-fatal aircraft crash in 1946, [Howard] Hughes told his aides that he wanted to screen some movies at a film studio near his home. Hughes stayed in the studio's darkened screening room for more than four months, never leaving. He subsisted exclusively on chocolate bars, chicken, and milk, and relieved himself in the empty bottles and containers. He was surrounded by dozens of Kleenex boxes, which he continuously stacked and re-arranged. He wrote detailed memos to his aides on yellow legal pads giving them explicit instructions not to look at him, or speak to him unless spoken to. Throughout this period, Hughes sat fixated in his chair, often naked, continually watching movies. When he finally emerged in the spring of 1948, his hygiene was terrible, as he had not bathed or cut his hair and nails for weeks
        lutusp 13y ago
        Yes, but obviously unrelated to Asperger's or any similar behavior.
TeMPOraL 13y ago
There's no 1&2 => 3 it's more like 2&3 => 1, where there is a probable casual relationship between 2 and 3 (attributes of a good hacker and of a person diagnosed with Aspergers overlap quite a bit (4)).
jfindley 13y ago
I've heard it argued - convincingly I might add - that the autism male/female skew is actually a lot less than this, but we (as a society) are bad at spotting autism in females. This book also has some interesting passages on the topic: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aspergirls-Empowering-Females-Asperger-Syndrome/dp/1849058261 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aspergirls-Empowering-Females-Asperg.... I should emphasise that I am in no way qualified to say if this is true or not - but I personally found the arguments presented to be plausible and interesting.

by sspiff 13y ago

matthewmacleod 13y ago

1 & 2 => 3 smells an awful lot like equating correlation and causation. Additionally: 4. "In an earlier post I noted that many software developers I've known have traits of Aspergers." Looks like unquantified extrapolation and using anecdotes as evidence. I don't think Jeff is claiming it to be anything but. There are some obvious correlations there that should make observers go "Hmm, that's interesting!"

lutusp 13y ago

> Looks like unquantified extrapolation and using anecdotes as evidence. Yes, along with perpetuating the myth of Asperger's, which has been abandoned as a diagnosis by people who had every reason to defend its continued existence (clinical psychologists), but who realized they could only do so by sacrificing more public credibility.

talideon 13y ago
Actually, what happened is that it ended up bundled into high functioning autism in the DSM. That only means that the term "Asperger's" was deprecated in the context of the DSM.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > Actually, what happened is that it ended up bundled into high functioning autism in the DSM. Yes, that's the psychological version of politics. Did you really think psychologists would come out and say, "We made a mistake and there's no such thing as Asperger's"? That would be like the Catholic church saying Galileo was right. What they did say was, "It's not an evidence-based term." Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/health/03asperger.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/health/03asperger.html?pag... That's good enough for me or any other scientist -- it's not real. The proof that there's no such thing as Asperger's (as a mental illness) has two parts. One, anyone could get the diagnosis through the simple expedient of visiting a psychologist and saying, "I think I have Asperger's". Two, the number of wildly successful people who were said to have Asperger's, including Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, and Bill Gates, which means if Asperger's is real, then wealth and fame are reliable diagnostic indicators for the condition. That would give "mental illness" a whole new meaning.
  - thaumasiotes 13y ago
    > Two, the number of wildly successful people who were said to have Asperger's, including Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, and Bill Gates, which means if Asperger's is real, then wealth and fame are reliable diagnostic indicators for the condition. That would give "mental illness" a whole new meaning. If three successful people are said by some to have showed signs of Asperger's, how many non-Asperger's successful people are needed to make "wild success" an unreliable indicator? I'll lead off with Oprah, Dale Carnegie, and Bill Clinton.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      Sorry, that makes no sense. Mentally ill people aren't expected to become famous billionaires -- it's just not part of the social expectation. The fact that there are similarly successful people without a mental illness diagnosis only adds to the perception that the diagnosis has no meaning.
      - thaumasiotes 13y ago
        From the old standby, wikipedia: > In 1947, after his near-fatal aircraft crash in 1946, [Howard] Hughes told his aides that he wanted to screen some movies at a film studio near his home. Hughes stayed in the studio's darkened screening room for more than four months, never leaving. He subsisted exclusively on chocolate bars, chicken, and milk, and relieved himself in the empty bottles and containers. He was surrounded by dozens of Kleenex boxes, which he continuously stacked and re-arranged. He wrote detailed memos to his aides on yellow legal pads giving them explicit instructions not to look at him, or speak to him unless spoken to. Throughout this period, Hughes sat fixated in his chair, often naked, continually watching movies. When he finally emerged in the spring of 1948, his hygiene was terrible, as he had not bathed or cut his hair and nails for weeks
        lutusp 13y ago
        Yes, but obviously unrelated to Asperger's or any similar behavior.

TeMPOraL 13y ago

There's no 1&2 => 3 it's more like 2&3 => 1, where there is a probable casual relationship between 2 and 3 (attributes of a good hacker and of a person diagnosed with Aspergers overlap quite a bit (4)).

jfindley 13y ago

I've heard it argued - convincingly I might add - that the autism male/female skew is actually a lot less than this, but we (as a society) are bad at spotting autism in females. This book also has some interesting passages on the topic: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aspergirls-Empowering-Females-Asperger-Syndrome/dp/1849058261 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aspergirls-Empowering-Females-Asperg.... I should emphasise that I am in no way qualified to say if this is true or not - but I personally found the arguments presented to be plausible and interesting.