My view on the "we are next step of evolution" thi

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The ability to act a certain way to do well in business is something anyone can learn though, there's a book called How To Get Rich that tells you all about that.

It's also worth noting that you don't need to lie and stuff to do well in business, Richard Branson talks about that in his book Business Stripped Bare.

And anyway, even the best salesman in the the world would be useless without the product to sell. For Bill Gates, that product was the software he made.



Exactly right. There's also Bram Cohen, the creater of BitTorrent. He's worth quite a few million dollars too.

@Tantybi, thanks for your post

Last edited by Asp-Z on 09 Jan 2010, 10:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

Then there's Dr. Phil...oh wait, he's not aspergers, he's just an as.....

I am always telling my NT husband that our Aspie children and I (Aspie) are highly evolved beings!

However, two things come to mind.

1) Bill Gates being one of the pioneers in the field, grew up without the technology already in place, and therefore probably picked up various social skills in part due to necessity. There are a lot of older folks on WP who have posted in the past about just learning through the school of hard knocks, instead of all the younger people here constantly asking for all the answers without doing any of the work. As I mentioned in my first post, technological advances allow AS folks not to learn social skills. While I think WP is a great support site, I think it can also be a crutch to an individual if he or she allows WP to be that way. Ultimately, social skills are learned through practice and repetition and just slogging through them (i.e. the school of hard knocks), not by learning them out of some book like some abstract theory like many AS folks seem to want to do.

2) As mentioned by other people in this thread, Bill Gates has other people working with him in Microsoft. And I have to disagree with your statement that Bill Gates, as the developer of the product, is the primary driver of the business. He may supply overall business vision and direction due to his position and power in the company, but it's not really about him as the developer anymore. There are many companies out there whose product is more image and hype and tradition, rather than an innovative, reliable and valuable product. Look at all the technical Aspies who think Microsoft Windows is a terrible product. How many of us would rather be using Linux or some other OS? How many of us use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer?

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One thing that came to mind while snowshoeing this weekend was that with technology progressing towards robotics and automation, machines are becoming more self-sufficient. Machines are already conducting scientific experiments and analyzing data (e.g. chemical screens). All you then need is robots to learn how to build and repair other machinery and then they will be largely self-sufficient. Once technological advances reach that point, when robots can conduct science, draw from their own repository of programmed knowledge, and build new robots, then how exactly will further advances in technology favor the Aspie? The technical skills of the Aspie would no longer be needed, and who on Earth would want to employ the "human machine" if a robot will be better at the job? At least the robot doesn't freak out if it has to look at somebody in the eyes. Then you'll just be left with unemployed Aspies and technological-junkie NTs. That doesn't sound like a "next step of evolution" to me, that sounds more like the Aspie developing his own poison with which to kill himself.

If you're going into any sort of business, you'll be learning social skills anyway, and no matter how many websites you use, you still need to socialise in real life. For example, I have to socialise in school, and learned to do it to enough of an extent that I can talk to people when they talk to me. Using the internet dosen't stop people from having to socialise in real life too, and when you do socialise in real life you can't ask the person you're talking to how to respond, so you are doing it as you describe in this post, through the "school of hard knocks" as you put it.



Today he is not the primary driver of the business, in fact as far as I know he's retired. And yes, if you are building up a huge company like Microsoft, you do need to work with others. Delegation is important in business.

However, it's important to note that business social skills are different from personal social skills. In business, you'll have a lot less complex stuff to deal with. Say for example you're having a meeting in your business, you will just have a basic conversation with only little body language and other such things. So that would make it a lot easier for most Aspies.

Hype and tradition is the mark of a good marketing department, nothing more. If your product turns out to be crap, people still won't buy it. OS X is more reliable and secure than Windows. Same applies to Firefox vs. Internet Explorer.

I'd also like to point out that, despite the fact OS X and Firefox are superior, they are still the minority of their respective markets.



That's a whole lot of speculation you've had to give there to come to that conclusion, remember. You've assumed sufficient A.I. development for computers to think for themselves, design robots and learn... That's a huge jump, and won't be coming for a long time yet, and when it does it'll be very controversial I'm sure.

Also, don't forget that computers will always need to be maintained. What if a virus spreads to all the systems? A human would need to sort it out. A human would need to build and finance the factory and technology in the first place.

I have many doubts in the theory of progress being made by specialists; after all, the Renassaince (sp?) was (at least in theory) the age of generalists (look to Da Vinci, for example).

And, attending that many innovation are made combining ideas from different fields, it seems that a jock-of-all-trades could be good at inventing new things.