Could Aspergers Be A Positive Evolutionary Trend?

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Well, you are right in thinking that ASD bears some of the traits of being a distinct genetic population, but we won't know if that's true until the root cause of asperger's is found. As for there being any kind of trend towards becoming a seperate species, I doubt it. The tendency of aspies to not reproduce combined with the fact that their overall survival skills are lessened by the disorder make it much more likely that ASD will be bred out of the gene pool eventually.


Of course, the increase in reported cases does still raise a number of points of interest, particularly surrounding the possiblity of environmental factors in the development of the disorder.


Also: Hello community!

They might be able to understand how the autism gene works one day and use it to manipulate an embroy's genes to make more creative artists, scientists, or even a more charismatic NT. We could one day see a genetic caste system. I think it was the Myans who had their professions chosen for them depending on what day of the month they were born on. With the proper gene therapy we could make this happen. I do not think we are going to evolve anymore then what we all ready are. Any new genetic leg up will be seen as a mutation or horrible deformity and they will simply erase it with genetic gene therapy like they will probably do with autism. 20 years from now the modern nations who can afford to screen for genetic problems like autism will see a decline in autistic types who think differently and perhaps better than average NT. These are the people needed for the great advancements in technology and art. The third world countries who can not afford to screen their children will become the new masters of technology and inovation thanks to their autistic thinkers they will be the new overlords of the planet we aspies will have the last laugh at the NTs and their fear of autism.

A species doesn't need greater numbers in order to become dominant. Humans are vastly outnumbered by the populations of many lower species which reproduce on a massive scale.

Just look at farm animals. If their populations weren't kept sky-high, we'd have nothing to feed on.

I don't know why people are always so upset that NTs outnumber aspies. They serve an important purpose, imagine an ant colony with no workers. It's much better to have them around, and it's not such a bad thing that they have more simple and common interests than aspies, just like worker ants are content to be inspired by simple chemicals emitted from their queen, or something. If they were all utterly absorbed in their own random interests, the colony would never get anything done.

If aspies are ever going to occupy the evolutionary position of becoming "the brains of this outfit", they're still probably going to need the jolly hordes of NTs to be the "brawn". Some people prefer meticulously designing houses down to the last detail, and some people find it more satisfying to do the work of building them. Different strokes.

This thread is ridiculous. Don't you believe in neurodiversity ? And what would you do about people with other disorders than Autism (since NT here mostly means non autistic) ? Some very intelligent people with these disorder could also argue that they are a positive evolutionary trend or that the world would be better if most people were like them.

And do not forget that all Autists are not like you, or that all NTs are not the same.

You highly dislike it when people make stereotypes about Autism or treat you like an inferior creature, then why are you doing exactly the same thing here ? When calling yourself rational, logical and honest (or better, perhaps more moral than NTs) ? You are not thinking here, you are feeling. You are just responding to a violent world with violence, this leads to nothing.

We need everyone to make the world, every kind of person, utopia does not exist. Would not it be better to wish for a world without any crime and discrimination (though it would be totally irrealistic when looking at the human behaviour) than for a world full of autistic people ? Because some of us could be criminal. Some of us could take advantages of the others in a way or another. I have seen lots of AS arguing over who was the most intelligent, taking IQ test for granted, being so narcissic that they had forgotten that their speech made no sense.

And I must say that I do not like it when a group of people start to imagine its superiority. Who are we to claim that aspies are better than NTs ? Who are them to claim that non autistic is better than autistic ? How could one really say "gifted is better because iq tests are so accurate", or "my son is dyslexic therefore is is superior to yours because he thinks differently" ?

We all have negative and positive qualities, I believe more in neurodiversity than in an autistic world or in a world in which people would me even more divided according to their diagnosis.

I may not go along with many people or have troubles being sociable, but I work on it and I have met many interesting and highly intelligent people who were not Aspies (but most of them had another disorder, right). But I have also met an Aspie who is highly creative and intelligent and non aspies who were stupid and mean.

What if you are to consider the specrum as soley autistic or soley typical - like two different animals . . . as if we were developing towards specrums that discribe two branchs of very differently evolved humans.

On one end of the autistic spectrum you have classic autism in the middle you have aspies, and at the far end you have the undiagnosed savant who is successfull and not "disabled", maybe has special abilities which do not appear on the NT spectrum

The NT spectrum might place the uber social NT who can't percieve that they bog down their team at work and get fired from jobs for hanging out at the water cooler at the bottom and the guy who sells life insurance at the top.

If you consider them as seperate populations with overlap (not a true hybrid, but maybe subspeicies?)

Then the number of successfull (undiagnosed) genetic examples remain untracked.

If some of the genetic mutations for autism are dominant, you can assume the successfull examples are also rising - based on the numbers of ''NT's'' producing autistics I am led to believe the Autistic genes are much more pervasive than we think. That many of these ''NT's'' are undiagnosed and maybe not as ''typical'' as they outwardly appear.


NT's have not evolved much in the last 10 000 years - the monkies we had runnning around back then were not too different from the monkies we call NT's.

We have eneugh people on the planet that we should start seeing some neuro diversity indeed!