[akvadrako]

It takes a while to get to the point, but this is what the page is about:

As we explained in a recent review paper, researchers have repeatedly found evidence that Autistic individuals are, on average, more consistent, less biased, and more rational than non-autistic individuals in a variety of contexts.

Specifically, many Autistic people seem to be less susceptible to cognitive biases, and therefore better able to make judgments and reach decisions in a more traditionally ‘rational’ manner.

Interesting if true; it could indicate that at least mild Autism is a beneficial adaptation. Though those biases probably came about for good reasons, it could be they've become obsolete and are no longer worth it.

[mherrmann]

I know what you mean by "mild autism" but an article [1] that was recently discussed here [2] explains that "mild" vs. (say) "severe" does not quite capture the nuance of the condition. Just pointing it out here because I found it interesting.

1: https://neuroclastic.com/its-a-spectrum-doesnt-mean-what-you...

2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29682917

[Groxx]

yeah, autism is very much an "umbrella term". we define it by the effects, not by any identifiable causes. there are still broad "less impacted" and "more impacted" cases, arguably a spectrum, but it's very very much not linear.

cystic fibrosis used to be under the (all-encompassing) umbrella "chronic fatigue" because, well, they were chronically fatigued. when its niche finally gained enough data to escape the umbrella, diagnosis and treatment greatly accelerated. of course, you'd expect that once a cause is identified, but umbrellas tend to contain many totally unrelated sub-causes with wildly different subtleties that just happen to fit a vague description that matches others.

[guerrilla]

Weren't they just saying that the spectrum isn't a measure of severity, not that one can't talk about severity separately.

[Okx]

The article also argues that severity of autism doesn't really make sense.

[coldtea]

Well, if it leaves one unable to function effectively in society, or seriously hampered in that, it does make sense to differentiate from a less strong case.

[zeckalpha]

That is a problem with society being severe, rather than the autistic individual

[coldtea]

Well, the society is what it is.

If a person can't e.g. talk to someone to buy food, and the huge majority of people can, then they have a problem. That's not severe - it might be not perfectly accomondating, but it's reasonable. And of cource society does try to help in many ways (consulting, people being understanding, parents, school experts, medicine, etc)

[guerrilla]

Alright, well I can't agree to that part. It all depends on your goals and some people are less able to accomplish their own goals than others due to those traits from the spectrum. There's no need for conceiving of utility to others to speak of grades of functionality.

[zepto]

Sure, but the point is that the thing that is ‘severe’ isn’t ‘autism’. An autistic person can be severely disabled, but the disability is itself a trait they only some autistic people have, so it doesn’t make sense to call the disability ‘autism’.

[guerrilla]

That doesn't seem like a useful place to draw the distinction. If someone has more autistic traits, they can be considered to be more autistic but not necessarily more disabled.

[bryanrasmussen]

well you can have a benign tumor or one that is killing you, by that theory we should say the one that is killing you shouldn't really be called a tumor.

[alexvoda]

I remember when that article was trening on HN. I wonder how supported by data that article is, because if it is scientific it would be a wonderful quick and easy reply to people using autism and the spectrum for various arguments.

Higher resolution (of concepts) is better.

[Zenst]

As somebody who sits upon the autistic scale, I personally have a deep rooted ethic of fairness, even if it means I yield an advantage, I'm just as uncomfortable being unfairly treated as I am being over fairly treated and to empathize I just look at the others position as if that was mine and how would I feel about that, at least that is how I empathize.

Also tend towards common sense slanted bluntness over diplomatic word dancing more than not and with that, Greta Thunberg does some good examples of that.

One finally aspect, my thinking is more wider in scope still as a child and with that, will happily ask that awkward question and equally see things from a perspective others tend to overlook.

[solarmist]

Yup!

One time during an exit interview I pointed out (some concrete feedback they could take action on, aaah, how naive of me) how bad the DevOps team had it (80+ hour weeks, constant weekend work, all hours on call, etc) as one of my reasons for leaving and the CEO could NOT understand why I would care about this at all. His response was about how our team (BI) had it so good, which we did, so why would that matter!

He literally could not understand that I had empathy for another team and it affected my perception of the company.

[eftychis]

To sound perhaps a bit weird now I guess but: isn't empathizing with another team normal? I would not want to be in a company that was OK with some team taking the short end of the stick continuously... It says a lot about people and well I would/do feel bad. The response of the CEO of course might be one of avoidance or narcissism... (Of course nobody can't psychoanalyze people from a distance.)

[solarmist]

Oh totally, but this is where it sunk in that I didn’t judge things relatively like others. I have a pretty rigid moral scale and I have a hard minimum.

My coworkers were sympathetic or empathetic, but would just shrug and agree saying there were “culture problems”.

[emsy]

I don't know if you meant this to be an example of "autistic" perception, but fairness is deeply embedded in a lot of animals, including humans. It sounds more like the CEO was sociopathic. Also, of course it makes sense to care for another team for a multitude of reasons, starting from group harmony and ending with self-care, because you never know when you or your team will be at the short end of the stick.

[solarmist]

No, not really. It was a game company, and the justification he used was that it was SOOO much better than the studios he'd been at before.

The only “autistic” part would be the degree I cared compared to people around me. This was where it sunk in that my moral scale wasn’t relative like most people’s.

[int_19h]

Fairness is deeply rooted in humans in general. Ethological studies show that even kids as young as 7 will anonymously distribute candy in a more egalitarian way even if they have an option to take it all for themselves. (https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/3833/3/2008_Fehr_NatureV.p...)

[solarmist]

I have what you would deem mild Autism and it CAN be a beneficial adaptation, but it's is highly context-dependent. I think it's only in the last couple of decades when that's become true, specifically information, knowledge work, or science.

Think of the cartoons where the "nerds" are trying to fight/play sports and are trying to calculate optimal trajectories, etc. The additional rationality slows down coming to conclusions significantly and I'd argue in most cases the added accuracy is of marginal value.

Basically, I believe a lot of those biases are shortcuts that give a good enough answer in significantly less time. I.e. Newton's method over actually computing derivatives.

[lamontcg]

Society is getting so complicated that spending the time to find the actual right answer is supplanting various "going with your gut" heuristics since its about 50-50 as to if picking the simple answer is right or the counterintuitive answer is right. The whole "blink" thing of knowing the right answer is deeply busted.

We still value people who strongly assert what they think is the correct answer quickly though and view that as a sign of intelligence (and to be fair it is, but its more about the intelligence of knowing how to convince rather than the intelligence of knowing what is correct).

[AnthonyMouse]

I'm not sure it's so much about shortcuts.

Suppose you're a judge in a contest. The contest has rules. If you apply the rules the same to all the contestants, that might be considered a disadvantage when you have the opportunity to apply the rules more favorably to your friends. Whereas the other guy who interprets the rules to favor his friends creates the expectation that the friends will return the favor someday.

But the advantage isn't always an advantage. If the other participants view you as biased then they won't even show up or pay entry fees anymore. Then there is no more contest and your friends lose even the possibility of winning.

It's kind of like asking if there's a disadvantage in not being a sociopath. Turns out, maybe not.

[rackjack]

Yeah, I suspect the fact that Autism reduces a person's ability to relate emotionally and socially to themselves and others allows them to dedicate more brain power to thinking rationally. In a mild enough case, with a supportive tribe, they could be a useful advisor. No autistic members = tribe has trouble making good collective decisions. Too many autistic members = tribe can't collaborate. That's just my armchair psychologist theory though.

[seba_dos1]

That's a bad stereotype. It's far more common for autistic people to have the ability to relate emotionally to others cranked up to overwhelming levels (hyper-empathy), which makes them avoid situations that require relating to others out of severe stress it's usually causing on them - leading to other people perceiving them as unempathetic.

[m_fayer]

I almost wonder if empathy is the right word then, maybe this would best be described as something like "susceptibility to emotional contagion." Empathy as commonly defined includes an impulse to comfort and stand by, as opposed to avoidance.

[bitwize]

Empathy has a performative component to neurotypicals. If you are not acting as though you are empathizing, you have "no empathy" and are thus a strange form of psychopath. Actual psychopaths can pass the performative part of neurotypical empathy with flying colors because they are excellent maskers and mirrorers -- that is, of course, when they can be bothered to try at all.

Neurotypical psychology is deep, complex, and fascinating. They devote significant brainpower to constantly evaluating and testing other people's behavior against a constantly evolving set of rules in order to ascertain whether they are a member of the neurotypical's tribe or ingroup. The rules have to change and evolve because ingroup members will be able to predict how they will change, and so catch any outgroupers who have heretofore successfully infiltrated the ingroup. It's like you have a monster CPU with a lot of cores, and then devote half (or more!) of those cores to the world's most elaborate DRM scheme. We benefit because much of that CPU power is in us freed to do other exciting things, like programming or particle physics; but we also suffer because most of the people around us cannot attest that we are legitimate humans running a legitimate copy of the human OS.

Relatedly, I love Japan and I love the Japanese people but... Japanese society has one of the most elaborate, impenetrable set of social rules in the world. If you want to know why hikikomori are such a thing there, it's simple, really: so many more people are frustrated with their failure to conform to the elaborate ruleset it takes to simply be Japanese and tired of being flagged as impostors in that game of Among Us that they simply give up and withdraw into whatever brings them comfort.

[Dracophoenix]

Any examples in your Japanese case?

I would have thought the main performance bottle neck to social calibration would be the unspoken mind-reading requirement that seems to be prevalent in American society.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but from what I know of Japanese society is that it's pretty blunt in its expectations. So there isn't this "mental searching tax" to make the "right" social choice that seems to be de riguer in the States. Everyday behavior in Japanese society has explicit procedures that don't change all that much.

As I understand it, social failure in Japan is result of one of two things: The inability/lack of interest to follow these procedures (e.g. hikikomori, non-conformists, etc.), or following these procedures but with mistaken assumptions as to how the consequences would turn out (e.g. "herbivore" salarymen who have done everything right, but are unable to find wives like their fathers could)

[m_fayer]

That's interesting. A German friend of mine who's on the spectrum and had established a second life in Japan told me that Japan's explicitly defined social mores, and slightly more chilly and formal relations between people suit him much better than the Western default. His German buddies who also have one foot in Japan all seem like they're on the spectrum too, because of this I thought Japanese culture is a safe harbor for autistic folks.

[bitwize]

Well, for one thing, we Americans claim to value honest communication to each other in our personal relationships. Whether we actually live up to those values is a different matter, but my point here is the Japanese do NOT. Honne/tatemae is pretty ingrained into Japanese society, and you must avoid embarrassing yourself and, more importantly, your ingroup (family, company, club, etc.) by being too honest around outgroupers. The Japanese are so pressured to not lose face that they are actively encouraged to hide their feelings and intentions, even when showing them would be mutually beneficial. You see it in business -- the old saw about circumlocutions like "We will give your proposal the consideration it deserves" meaning "no freaking way"[0] -- but you also see it in modern Japanese drama. Taro loves Hanako and Hanako loves Taro, but they are from different social strata and their parents would be shocked to find out they're in love, so neither of them says anything and neither of them knows the feelings of the other. Plus Taro is going to America to play baseball and Hanako is going to medical school. Will one of them work up the courage to go against the social grain and the wishes of their family, and confess their feelings before it's too late? Or will they just say shouganai and go about their lives without ever knowing what could have been? That sort of thing.

So as a Japanese person you are tasked with not only following the rituals, but also sussing out from the vaguest of cues what your friends, family, potential mate, etc. are thinking because they're following the rituals too instead of engaging in explicit communication.

Regrettably, I had to learn a lot of this by reading; I don't have a lot of personal experience with this because I'm a Westerner. The Japanese are generally more willing to be open with foreigners because of the relative lack of social repercussions for honesty with foreigners than with Japanese. They don't have to be "on", they don't have to actively be Japanese in front of us and that makes for some interesting and refreshing barside conversation, lol.

[0] Earlier negative stereotypes of Japanese as being "sneaky" and untrustworthy are partially rooted in this sort of thing. They mask their true intentions to avoid embarrassment, but to Americans it looks like they're trying to trick or defraud us. And they see us as loud, pushy bulls in china shops who are unable to handle delicate affairs with any nuance, even if we're well-meaning.

[Jensson]

> Empathy as commonly defined includes an impulse to comfort and stand by, as opposed to avoidance.

Right, and thinking something is delicious includes an impulse to eat rather than avoid, but lots of people still avoid food they think is delicious in order to diet. When empathy becomes too strong then it starts hurting you as a person a lot every time you see someone who has problems, so you learn to predict and avoid those situations, or you might even learn to fear them since the empathy creates too much agony in you. Empathy is just a feeling, your rational part can still work around it.

[karmakaze]

I think empathy is the right word meaning to sense/feel what the other person is feeling. Being empathetic is the comforting non-avoidance aspect.

[jiggunjer]

Citation needed for your definition of empathy. Oxford disagrees.

[jjk166]

Empathy is seeing the world from someone else's perspective. While it's common to comfort and stand by someone you empathize with, particularly if they are going through tough times as you presumably recognize that they want to be comforted and stood by, that impulse isn't itself empathy.

[wavegeek]

Exactly - the overwhelming nature of these signals (e.g. the searing brightness of eye contact) pushes people away from them. This then produces difficulties as a result of not seeing these signals (and not learning about them). The result is a lack of Cognitive Empathy - inability to read signals - which is often confused with a lack of Affective Empathy as seen in sociopaths.

[zepto]

> I suspect the fact that Autism reduces a person's ability to relate emotionally and socially to themselves and others

This is not a fact. It’s a now discredited stereotype.

[Jensson]

Or maybe it is still a fact, but the definition of autism/Asperger changed so it is no longer true with the new definition?

There seems to be a great bundling going on, where people with a wide range of various problems gets bundled under large umbrella terms like "ADHD" or "Autism". Before Autism and Asperger was different, now they are the same etc. and some even argue that ADHD and Autism are the same thing.

Edit: Btw, there was one stereotype that was never true, that Autists didn't have empathy. Autists always felt empathy. What they were said to lack was the ability to read people, not feel empathy for people. Not being able to read people can be said to reduce "a person's ability to relate emotionally and socially to themselves and others", so that statement wasn't wrong with the old definition/understanding.

[zepto]

> What they were said to lack was the ability to read people…

That’s not a fact. It’s a now discredited stereotype.

[nicoburns]

Autistic people can have trouble accessing emotions, but a lot of the reason for that stereotype is just that they communicate their emotions and emotional reactions differently and/or that their emotional reactions to certain situations are different to those of neurotypical people: not that they're not actually feeling emotions at all.

[karmakaze]

Later in life I considered myself to be on the autistic spectrum as it explained many of my quirks. Growing up, I thought everyone was normal like me but less rational. Very recently I found out about Alexithymia, the inability to identify, describe or express one's own emotions, which actually nails it. Many of the outward interactions are similar but the internal experience is different. The best way I can describe my experiences is that the 'feeling' or even awareness of existence of an emotion lags, sometimes by hours, until it becomes sorted-out and conscious. I also don't much have emotional overloads other than being drained by certain forms of interactions that I'd chalked up to being introverted, which was odd because I'm very extroverted at times. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing that I don't put effort into interacting emotionally outside my closest circles.

Maybe it's like smell, where there are many bad scents and even if it didn't impact my survival I wouldn't want to live without the sense, and I should indulge more. The only concrete thing I've learned is that significantly reducing my caffeine intake helps but also distracts.

[wayoutthere]

It’s less about being unable to access our emotions than our emotions being frequently influenced by sensory (over)stimulation — we learn to ignore them because they often tell us things that aren’t useful.

My main trigger is light — too bright, bad color, too much flicker, all of which can cause me to get “irrationally” angry in a conversation about any mundane topic. I’m not really that passionate about most of the things I get overwhelmed by, so my heightened emotional state because of some sensory stimulus is not useful.

All my anger/sadness tells me is that it’s bright and I need to either put on some sunglasses or turn off the lights. I have learned over time not to blow up at other people about it because it’s not their fault, and they’ll think that I think it is if I have a meltdown in front of them.

[BizarroLand]

It might also be that Autistic traits would be a good solo or small tribe survival adaptation.

Highly logical, no breaking down in a fit of misery, less susceptible to loneliness, very useful for times when you're stuck in a survival situation.

[labster]

I doubt autism correlates that strongly with resilience and grit. But I have long thought that groups benefit from having a portion of the population having autism. Variance in thinking means more potential strategies for success. Too much variance probably hurts group cohesion.

[PeterisP]

IMHO the most effective adaptation for "solo or small tribe survival" that we and other primates have is all the factors that decrease one's chances of being put in the very disadvantageous solo or tiny tribe situation. (For example, various submissive behaviors and the quite interesting concept of crying seem to be adaptations towards that - continuing to live in a larger tribe instead of leaving) It's simpler and more effective to try and avoid or fix that problem in the first place, instead of trying to optimize for tolerating the problem.

[KerryJones]

This seems rather obvious to me, but glad it's being directly said (I have made a habit of studying biases for the last couple of years).

Emotion is a known irrational effect on decision making, autism is often associated with the lack of emotion in certain contexts (or inability to understand the emotion). Having less of the thing that makes you irrational would make you more rational by default.

Similar to Charlie's Munger devotion in life isn't to be smart, it's to figure out how to not be dumb. How can you not be irrational? Don't let emotion impact your decision making.

* To be clear, I'm not saying those on the spectrum don't have emotions (they do), though in my experience it comes across quite differently. It feels more like "another factor to be analyzed", which can easily be disregarded in some contexts, than an "invisible hand" behind the scenes influencing decisions.

[ben_w]

> Though those biases probably came about for good reasons, it could be they've become obsolete and are no longer worth it.

I suspect (but don’t know how to test the hypothesis) that cognitive biases are why human learning can produce good results with dramatically less data than machine learning. More rational, yes, when you get there; but harder to learn at all.

[wavegeek]

> biases might help

You might like the book "Simple Heuristics that make us smart" which explores this idea

https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Heuristics-That-Make-Smart/dp/...

[riwsky]

thing is, those cognitive biases are themselves the result of eons of learning via evolutionary optimization

[ben_w]

No disagreement there! But, at the risk of cargo-culting, it might be interesting to see the effect of deliberately trying to reproduce such biases in an A.I.

[mjevans]

They probably came about for good reasons; and the current world is doing a poor job at utilizing the full ability of it's people, of many different types.

[kragen]

Oh, it's obviously true. I have a lot of experience with "high-functioning" autistic people, and the rationality is like the most obvious thing to me. Or maybe #2 after sensory overload.

[MisterBastahrd]

On the flip side, many autistic people have trouble understanding neurotypical people because they miss nuance in their communication that other neurotypical adults would find to be obvious.

Autism isn't some reasoning superpower, it's just a difference in processing stimuli.

[nicoburns]

This is also true the other way around however: neurotypical people miss nuance in autistics communication that other autistic adults would find to be obvious.

I would agree with your characterisation as a difference in processing stimuli.

[coldtea]

>Interesting if true; it could indicate that at least mild Autism is a beneficial adaptation.

This assumes that being less rational (and e.g. more passionate, optimistic, etc.) is not more beneficial, which might very well be the case.

[Lammy]

> it could indicate that at least mild Autism is a beneficial adaptation

Not picking on you or your post, but it's interesting that we still consider this an adaptation. What if this is humanity's natural state and allistics are the adaptation?

[solarmist]

I think you meant this tongue in cheek, but this seems highly unlikely.

The neocortex handles rational thinking and reasoning, so an increased reliance on it would put autism further from evolutionary predecessors. Also, you would expect the ratios of allistics:autistic to be reversed as well.

Also, as a mildly autistic person, I don't believe autism would be a beneficial trait in the wild. I would probably be fine, but some of my tendencies would lessen my likelihood of survival.

[PeterisP]

If that would be the case, then it would also then manifest in behavioral traits of non-human primates, since they would not yet have this relatively recent adaptation.

[solarmist]

I'll bet it does. We don't have a generic description of what autism means yet. I'm sure what we describe as autism is a cluster of differences.

So it's hard to imagine what it would look like in other primates.

Like these[1] loners in slime mold colonies. We don't even know if these kinds of variation are common or not. Autism-like variations might be like this or it could be human specific.

[1] https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/slime-molds-sh...

[wavegeek]

> allistics are the exception?

Actually this seems unlikely given the sequence of evolution. But...

Here is a spoof of Allistic Spectrum Disorder imagined as if it affected a small minority of people (trigger warning for those obsessed with status).

From [nonexistent] DSM-VI: Hyper-Social (Allistic) Spectrum Disorder

HSSD is a syndrome in which there is an over-focus on social phenomena at the expense of other aspects of the world. Contrast with Autistic Spectrum Disorder, which is in many ways the opposite.

Diagnosis: Any 5 of the following are present:

Inability to express self clearly; use of ambiguous and vague language; discomfort with clear language

Obsessive interest in knowing personal details of acquaintances or strangers e.g. celebrities, or even fictional characters

Unfounded belief in being able to read other people's minds, in particular to know if someone is lying or not.

Difficulty in thinking in a systematic logical way, e.g. to do math or program computers

Tendency to try to bend and stretch rules for no obvious reason. Discomfort with accurately following instructions and processes.

Forms beliefs based on the opinions of others rather than on facts and evidence Tendency to affiliate with groups and to align all opinions to the group

Frequently lies, mostly for social convenience (studies suggest 3-5 times a day)

Preoccupied with social status and “looking the part”

Focus on status symbols, and symbols of virtue and group affiliation

Focus on appearances more than underlying reality

Intolerance of diversity of opinion

Intolerance towards people who do not have HSSD

Spends large amounts of time on shallow “social” activities with little actual content. May lead to destructive activities such as substance abuse e.g. alcohol, and over-eating.

Lack of interest in mastering difficult, especially technical, subjects in depth Tendency to stare into people's eyes, and to believe that this gives great insight into the other person's mind. Usually unaware that this can create discomfort in the other person.

Tendency to think that staring into people's eyes demonstrates trustworthiness.

[lazyasciiart]

Interesting thought. Are autistic traits also seen in animals?

[greyface-]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_model_of_autism

[nathias]

It doesn't mean that at all, its but that real world is not made for rationallity, and even if we have created special contexts where it is, it doesn't mean it can be generalized out of them.

[kragen]

I would argue exactly the contrary: the real world, the seasons and stars and seeds, is pitilessly rational. It cannot be tricked, pleaded with, or emotionally manipulated. It is harsh, but equally so to everyone, and according to an inexorable logic that cannot be altered but can be exploited. It is the special contexts the humans have created, like churches, courts, and tribes, where the laws of rationality can be imperfectly and temporarily suspended, replaced by a "virtual reality" that is merely a social consensus.

[PeterisP]

Humans and other primates are social animals, and pretty much all aspects of personal success and ability to influence the external world - survival and safety, access to nutrition, mates and other resources, and general power - are mostly determined by social factors, so "winning" at the social factors has been more important than what a single individual can achieve by exploiting the "real world" even since before homo sapiens existed. "Individual fitness" at the expense of social fitness is maladaptive in the environment where humans live and lived; Starving or not starving depends on social factors more than on individual hunting prowess, the same for procreation, the same for changing the world in various ways, most of which depend on how many other people you can motivate to go along with your plans. These "special contexts the humans have created" have dominated the human life as long as humans have existed and before that, as we can see in non-human primate communities where living or dying in a power struggle or inter-tribal war is largely a factor of social aspects and not the strength of some individual ape.

There's no "merely" social consensus, quite on the contrary, the social consensus has always dominated all the things that matter; being exiled from the tribe was effectively a death sentence even if the tribe did not directly kill you, and a dominant position in the tribe gains larger benefits than dominating against the real world, both in a hunter-gatherer environment and in modern society.

[kragen]

Almost everything in your first paragraph is correct (though you accidentally capitalized "starving".)

But everything in your second paragraph is incorrect. Even before the industrial revolution, it was commonplace for banished people to find a new place to live, either as hermits or as part of a new tribe; the outlawing and persecution of individual refugees and "stateless persons" is a Late Modern aberration. Since the advent of the industrial revolution, a subordinate position in a tribe like Japan that is very "dominant against the real world" gains larger benefits than a dominant position in a tribe like the Wola that is much less "dominant against the real world". For example, as a Japanese person, you live twice as long, you probably won't get raped, you are at no risk of being executed for witchcraft if you fall from favor, and if at some point the two tribes come into armed conflict, the Wola will be entirely at the mercy of the Japanese.

Even in the first paragraph, though, there is a significant error. You say, "Starving or not starving... procreation... [and] changing the world in various ways [mostly] depend on how many other people you can motivate to go along with your plans." But in fact they do not. These things depend jointly on whether you get teamwork on plans, a social question, and on whether the plans are any good in the first place, a rational question. This is what sunk the Great Leap Forward: Mao was suffering from the delusion that you so clearly expressed here. He evidently motivated people to go along with his plans to an almost unprecedented degree, but many objective, non-social aspects of the plans (notably backyard smelting, the Four Pests campaign, deep plowing, and close planting) were destined to produce catastrophe, especially if they were executed thoroughly. The greatest famine in human history was the predictable consequence, killing some 40 million people.

The industrial revolution was a consequence of Galileo's rebellion against this subjectivist view: he dared to look through his telescope at the real world and believe what he saw, despite its incompatibility with the socially constructed virtual reality of his time. It took some time, but Italy paid for its rejection of Galileo with centuries of penury and destitution. Ultimately Galileo influenced the external world, as you say, far more than the crabbed Inquisitors who persecuted him.

I stand with Galileo and against Mao. Will you join me?

[PeterisP]

I'd argue that even in the horrific example of the Great Leap Forward, Mao and those who went with him mostly succeeded with their personal goals and ensured all kinds of long-term benefits to themselves granted by a higher social status in the party, while those who went against him and had better plans failed in all their goals, often starting with the primary goal of immediate survival. In this scenario having the better plan was not useful, and trying to execute it was not rational as it only hurt your interests.

Using your example of Galileo, his effectiveness in propagating his science was severely limited by a scientifically irrelevant feud with church officials. Had he been more politically savvy, he would have been able to avoid tying the scientific issues with the personal conflict, and would not have provoked the church into this conflict - IMHO what we have in historical evidence indicates that it was perfectly plausible for him to get the church to support his position, which would have supported both his personal interests and the general progress of science, but he failed at that due to his personal qualities w.r.t. social aspects.

[kragen]

Often that does happen in the short term, although in this particular case, it led to Mao losing control of the Party for six years and arguably delayed Mainland China's economic boom by 20 years. Certainly many of the people who tried to resist the Great Leap Forward died as a result, but so did many of the people who most enthusiastically practiced it.

I don't think a Galileo who spent much of his time acquiring political savvy and currying allies would have been able to make the progress he did make. Such a Galileo might have simply decided not to believe what he saw through the telescope, or to keep quiet about it. The Church had already burned Giordano Bruno at the stake for possessing the writings of Erasmus, and there are many other such stories: Bach was imprisoned for refusing to resign from his Kapellmeister post; Swartz committed suicide to escape imprisonment for downloading too many academic papers; Turing committed suicide to escape persecution for being openly gay; Newton lived to a ripe old age but certainly had a life full of interpersonal conflict; Champollion deciphered the hieroglyphs while awaiting trial for treason.

Fundamentally, rationality is insubordinate, and social graces frequently demand dishonesty, so that those who most love the truth are never those who get along best with others.

And those are my heroes, not Donald Trump or Mao Zedong.

There's a better-written essay on this topic at https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-....

[nathias]

I really find it entertaining that all naive science supporters believe this myth about Galileo. The real story is very different, he wasn't prosecuted, he was put in house arrest, not for daring to science, but because he publically mocked his friend the pope. Anyway, it's a really interesting time to take a deep dive in.

[kragen]

As usual, the people posting smug dismissals to HN claiming to find it entertaining that someone might disagree with them, and to themselves know "the real story", are not well versed in the subject. While of course in some sense the real reason for any interpersonal conflict can never be disagreement over a question of facts, Galileo was in fact prosecuted, and the overt justification for his prosecution was, as my unfortunate interlocutor puts it, "daring to science." Quoting the introduction to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair:

> The Galileo affair (Italian: il processo a Galileo Galilei) began around 1610 and culminated with the trial and condemnation of Galileo Galilei by the Roman Catholic Inquisition in 1633. Galileo was prosecuted for his support of heliocentrism, the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun at the centre of the universe. ...

> Galileo's discoveries were met with opposition within the Catholic Church, and in 1616 the Inquisition declared heliocentrism to be "formally heretical." Galileo went on to propose a theory of tides in 1616, and of comets in 1619; he argued that the tides were evidence for the motion of the Earth.

> In 1632 Galileo published his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which defended heliocentrism, and was immensely popular. Responding to mounting controversy over theology, astronomy and philosophy, the Roman Inquisition tried Galileo in 1633 and found him "vehemently suspect of heresy" sentenced him to house arrest where he remained until his death in 1642. At that point, heliocentric books were banned and Galileo was ordered to abstain from holding, teaching or defending heliocentric ideas after the trial.

The rest of the article provides an even more thoroughgoing rejection of the confused ideas in the comment to which I am regrettably replying; the atom of truth in it is that, 16 years after first being prosecuted, he included the new Pope's own counterarguments in his book along with a rebuttal, which displeased the Pope, who had previously favored Galileo.

[nathias]

Ah yes, in the long run it's all rational, but in the long run we're also all dead. Even if that were the case, you are not a star, you are not near equilibrium, you are alive and don't have time to play long term rational games.

[kragen]

I'm not sure what you're talking about.

If you try to walk across the desert without drinking water you will be dead in two days. That's not "the long run."

If you carry water and salt with you, you can make it a week or more, but not if you strategize poorly: walking during the day instead of at night will deplete your water much more rapidly, and if you treat your canteen carelessly you will lose the water. If you have the knowledge to navigate to places with drinkable water along the way, or the knowledge and materials to distill water from crushed plants, you can make it for months, longer if you brought food or can find it. (Me, I caught and ate raw grasshoppers.) You cannot emotionally manipulate the desert; you cannot trick it; it will not treat you more gently because you beg it for mercy. Rationality (knowledge, skill, heedfulness, and above all epistemic humility) is your only hope. It's no guarantee, because a rattlesnake or a hailstone may strike you at random, but it's your only hope.

It's not just the desert. The same is true of the ocean, of mushroom hunting, of wasp's nests, and of the frozen North with its alpine sweetvetch. Nature's ways are subtle and merciless, but they are amenable to understanding, and rationality permits you to order your life in harmony with them and thus survive and prosper a little while; though not, as you say, in the long run.

The whole world is like this, all except for tiny special contexts humans have created where the ruthless laws of Nature are suspended a little bit, where mercy and humanity and fellow-feeling hold sway.

[nathias]

That's not really the concept of rationality I or the article is talking about (consistency, non-bias etc.) knowledge or it's use isn't the same, it's more like the a priori knowledge where the concept is immediately applied by universal rules etc. This specific rationality is good in formal games where the rules are universal and the concept should be immediately applied, but doesn't work for empirical contexts (life, science, engineering, etc.).

[kragen]

They aren't really different concepts of rationality; consistency and non-bias are about not fooling yourself, so that you can come to the conclusions that the available evidence would justify. That's how people as a group can empirically acquire knowledge about the world. Of course, for individual people, social aspects are often even more important, since learning from someone else's experience can be much cheaper than learning from your own—as in the case of alpine sweetvetch; but even resisting deception and knowing whose opinion to listen to benefit from consistency and non-bias. Indeed, perhaps even more so, since the alpine sweetvetch isn't trying to emotionally manipulate you into believing it.

[pieter_mj]

I've mentioned this before, but this is why I believe it's "easy" for RMS to be so single-mindedly incorruptible, and why he can be trusted to never waver.

[eftychis]

I am curious if this lack of bias stems from the imposed way of life or some other effect and not the mild autism itself.

E.g. Certain professions instill in you biases. Or force you to pick them. Examples: police officers, medical, politicians, social workers. And I bet those are professions that people with degrees of autism avoid.

I am curious if the lack of bias exists in other conditions that end up acting in a short of unempathetic way (for different reasons as noted).

[bawolff]

Hasn't this been the sterotype of autism for a long time? What's the preconcieved idea they are challenging?

[nomoreusernames]

personally i think both are needed in the genepool. just as handicaps during a economic boom during peace time make the tribe learn about compassion, which has a group benefit for the offspring. nature is a higher order system. we are not the sums of our parts. most discoveries are mistakes or roadblocks in the path of another objective. like sperm the best approach is the shotgun approach. in space legless people use less space oxygen and food.

[bopbeepboop]

Isn’t this why there’s a correlation between Asperger’s and engineers?

The same kind of logical, exacting thinking necessary for mastery of physical systems is in tension with the kinds of thinking used in social games. Some brains are better at one than the other — and we have disorders at both extremes.

I’ve always wondered if autism and dyscalclia are something of “polar opposites”.

[AussieWog93]

>I’ve always wondered if autism and dyscalclia are something of “polar opposites”.

I don't think they are. Plenty of autistic people are bad at maths (you just don't meet these people in engineering circles!), and plenty of "social butterflies" are good at it.

[TT-392]

Probably also related to a lot of other factors, like probablems with social interaction making people with aspergers more likely to for example spend evenings nerding out in their own room.

[georgestephanis]

Yes hi, "aspergers" is an unfortunate nomenclature and many autistic folks (myself included) strongly resent it. It was named after a Nazi doctor (Hans Asperger) and used to classify autistic folks into "useful" and "non-useful" people -- as Nazis and Eugenicists are known to do. When you think of it, if you could refer to folks on the spectrum as such, without referencing the outdated nomenclature (the DSM-5 replaced it for diagnostics, now everything falls under the Autism Spectrum, rather than viewing the "higher functioning" folks as having a distinct diagnosis)

Thanks!

[wavegeek]

> Nazi doctor

Asperger was never a member of the Nazi party.

I invite everyone here who has stood up against a murderous totalitarian dictatorship at the likely cost of their life to tell us how Asperger should have done better.

> now everything falls under the Autism Spectrum

This is only true in the US. And people who were previously diagnosed as Aspergers retain that diagnosis, even in the US.

[m_fayer]

I want to strongly second this. Asperger was a complicated person with a complicated story in a brutal context, but ultimately a sympathetic and insightful man. His story is told in "Neurotribes" which is a thorough history of autism, and highly recommended.

[overboard2]

Yes hi, why is the category of those with Asperger's syndrome not useful for the further understanding and communication of information.

[georgestephanis]

What information do you feel can be communicated and understood with that moniker that is not served by Autism Spectrum? And why do you feel those distinctions (if any) merit a wholly distinct diagnosis?

[mwigdahl]

I'll bite.

"Autism Spectrum" is a deliberately vague term that has been created and stretched to bring a variety of minor social and emotional functional differences under the general label of "autism". As far as I can tell, in the US the major purpose of this has been to divert special education funding from severely impaired children to less-impaired children from higher socioeconomic strata, and it has been very effective in doing so.

So to directly answer your questions, "Asperger's" (or whatever substitute term you find acceptable -- I'm perfectly fine with a substitute) is very useful to distinguish people with minor social and emotional functional differences -- those people who are, for example, able to hold down a tech job and post about autistic politics to Hacker News -- from highly impaired people such as my daughter who will never hold a job and whose verbal skills are at a three year old level.

These distinctions are vitally important to ensure that appropriate funding goes to these highly impaired children rather than being siphoned away to children of well-connected or politically savvy parents who are fully capable of succeeding in the mainstream educational system without aid.

[guerrilla]

> I'm perfectly fine with a substitute) is very useful to distinguish people with minor social and emotional functional differences -- those people who are, for example, able to hold down a tech job and post about autistic politics to Hacker News -- from highly impaired people such as my daughter who will never hold a job and whose verbal skills are at a three year old level.

There are plenty of people who the diagnosis of Asperger's who will never hold down a job. I'd hardly consider it "minor" even if it is relative to your daughter.

[jiggunjer]

I hear the phrase "high-functioning" more than "aspies". I think the distinction is useful in social contexts: just knowing Bob's son has autism is not enough info when writing party invitations or considering transferring Bob overseas.