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I don't think it's a good thing either. I also find the spread of autism terrifying. My wife works at a kindergarten and she has had to deal with children that

I don't think it's a good thing either. I also find the spread of autism terrifying. My wife works at a kindergarten and she has had to deal with children that have problems from the autistic spectrum, healthy enough to be allowed to integrate in a normal collectivity, problematic enough that adjustment is very hard - they simply stand out from everybody else. And she noticed an interesting pattern, those children usually come from families of engineers, mathematicians or software developers. And maybe the sample is not representative of the general population, but it scares the bejesus out of me, especially since we have a son that is happy, loving, socially apt, smart and healthy, but that was a late talker and at 4 years old he still does mispronunciation for many words - this is another recent trend. I have read a book at some point, can't remember the title, but especially in boys you have brain parts specialized for certain tasks and this happens when you've got certain parts of the brain underdeveloped, with maybe other parts overdeveloped. It usually goes away, once the child grows. Maybe this is just an evolutionary step, or maybe we are broken, I don't know.

FD3SA 12y ago
> And she noticed an interesting pattern, those children usually come from families of engineers, mathematicians or software developers. This is a serious issue, there was an article on HN a few years back on how the concentration of children born with Autism in SV is something like 10x higher than elsewhere across the nation. They concluded that its most likely due to a severe case of assortive mating between mathematically gifted couples. People wanted to know why evolution didn't continue to make us smarter? There's your answer...there's an upper ceiling imposed by biology. The way our neural architecture develops puts a damper on how much abstract reasoning we can do before we sacrifice our basic survival mechanisms (i.e. social interaction). Autism is one of the most fascinating conditions from a medical perspective, but its absolutely terrifying when the majority of HN (myself included) is at greater risk of producing autistic children. Guess there was a reason why people married their secretaries...
inDigiNeous 12y ago
Is standing out a bad thing ? Look at where we are now. Consumerism at its highest, people becoming mass educated, mass medicated, mass produced. Is the world in a good shape ? Maybe those who stand out are exactly the specialists we need to change this world. To think differently, as Steve Jobs famously said. We are not broken. We are perfect as we are. It is our approach to these children and people that is broken. We should embrace them, and foster their creativity and unhuman kind capability to concentrate. And not medicate them with medicine that will kill their creativity and unique way of looking at the world. Think of them as Specialists, not Generalists. Our current education system sucks for them, sure. But it will change.
- tacotime 12y ago
  I like it. But, I do think you can't fully embrace your strengths until you've admitted your weaknesses. Maybe it's my own biases but I'm afraid of people ending up at a dead end, an unsolvable problem, and not having an outlet because they haven't been forced to lead a somewhat normal life like the people surrounding them. That's an awfully dark place to be in. I think it's important not to let someone get too inside their own world, you still have to try and "integrate" them into "society" but I certainly agree there are better ways it could be done than holding everyone to the same strict/lacking standards across the board.

FD3SA 12y ago

> And she noticed an interesting pattern, those children usually come from families of engineers, mathematicians or software developers. This is a serious issue, there was an article on HN a few years back on how the concentration of children born with Autism in SV is something like 10x higher than elsewhere across the nation. They concluded that its most likely due to a severe case of assortive mating between mathematically gifted couples. People wanted to know why evolution didn't continue to make us smarter? There's your answer...there's an upper ceiling imposed by biology. The way our neural architecture develops puts a damper on how much abstract reasoning we can do before we sacrifice our basic survival mechanisms (i.e. social interaction). Autism is one of the most fascinating conditions from a medical perspective, but its absolutely terrifying when the majority of HN (myself included) is at greater risk of producing autistic children. Guess there was a reason why people married their secretaries...

inDigiNeous 12y ago

Is standing out a bad thing ? Look at where we are now. Consumerism at its highest, people becoming mass educated, mass medicated, mass produced. Is the world in a good shape ? Maybe those who stand out are exactly the specialists we need to change this world. To think differently, as Steve Jobs famously said. We are not broken. We are perfect as we are. It is our approach to these children and people that is broken. We should embrace them, and foster their creativity and unhuman kind capability to concentrate. And not medicate them with medicine that will kill their creativity and unique way of looking at the world. Think of them as Specialists, not Generalists. Our current education system sucks for them, sure. But it will change.

tacotime 12y ago
I like it. But, I do think you can't fully embrace your strengths until you've admitted your weaknesses. Maybe it's my own biases but I'm afraid of people ending up at a dead end, an unsolvable problem, and not having an outlet because they haven't been forced to lead a somewhat normal life like the people surrounding them. That's an awfully dark place to be in. I think it's important not to let someone get too inside their own world, you still have to try and "integrate" them into "society" but I certainly agree there are better ways it could be done than holding everyone to the same strict/lacking standards across the board.