Is autism nature's way of slowing human reproduction?

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This would make for a great coffee session debate

Are you taking the mick?

Seriously though, is it the way I phrase my posts that makes 99.9% of all humans switch off?

As jk1 said nature can 'act' in the sense that the weather system 'acts' or that the free market economy 'acts'. Nature can be seen as a self regulating system that 'does things' even though it has no mind nor will nor intention.

So how might this work in regards to autism being a break on the population?

First of all: is autism increasing in frequency?
I dont know of any real evidence that it is.
It was endemic to the human race thousands of years ago, it is endemic today, and will continue to be endemic in the foreseeable future. It wont go away, but it doesnt seem to be increasing in prevelence either.
There is no clear evidence of the human race trending toward becoming more autistic.

But lets say that autism is increasing ever so slowly (despite the lack of evidence).

Why might this be happening?

Maybe folks are getting married latter in life. Autism does seem to correlate with older parents.

Economics might be causing folks to marry later. And the economic factors might be the result of population pressures.

So if you could prove that overpopulation causes economic factors- which causes later marriages-which cause an increase in autism- (which would be a break on population because autistics indeed dont reproduce as much as nt.s) then you could say that 'nature is causing autism to increase as a break on population".

The point is -you have to establish a chain of cause like that.

None of these "autism is evolution in action" theories folks post here ever establish a clear idea of how nature is supposed to favor autism.

The idea that autism is appearing for the purpose of slowing our population growth actually has some logic, but even that- needs to be fleshed out a little to really make any sense.

So- I challenge you believers in the theory: if nature is causing autism in the human race- and it is doing so to slow down population growth in the human race- how exactly does that work?

What mechanism is causeing nature to responde to human population pressures that way? How does nature's pushback on the human race cause more autistics to be born?

And what is so wrong about people with autism reproducing if they would like to? I don't want to as I doubt I could raise a child...what is your reasoning for wishing people with autism were sterile?

I think you have misread the comment. I think the person is saying that autistic people are not sterile so they can populate the same as an nt. So the original post is wrong.

100% no. Your comment at the bottom did make me smile but no i am being serious.

Yes well I wish I was more banal and generic like everyone else sometimes as at least then I might make more connections
with others!

Not to further the tangents some are going on, but we do NOT ACTUALLY KNOW if Nature or the Universe is mindless or not. Given some things going on in physics it may be the opposite is really true..
Getting a little closer to the OPs origional theme, I'd say maybe not.
BTW, there DOES seem to be a slight decrease in fertlity in some human populations. Anyway, in the traditional Darwinian sense, I would have to say that having an ASD will decrease your reproductive chances.

Sincerely,
Matthew

I'm an aspie and I have four NT kids. I suspect that my youngest son may have a touch of AS, and he's ADHD as well, but my kids are perfectly fine socially so they won't have problems either in the relationship and procreating department.

If there is an increase in autism, I think it might be that autism is recognized more now than it was, especially the milder forms of it. Back when I was young nobody had AS, we were just wierd. You were only autistic if you were pretty bad off. People didn't really notice things like that when they weren't severe, and it was even more true for previous generations.

The one thing that I have seen really increase, in just a generation, is severe, life threatening allergies. An example is peanut allergies. While that's always been around, it hasn't been as common as it is nowdays. I wonder if vaccines play a part in the increase of allergies because a vaccine messes with the immune system. I do not know the science behind my theory or if there even is science behind my theory, it's just my opinion. I dislike vaccines and haven't had any myself because I was allergic to the vaccines when I was little and I only got the ones I absolutely had to for my kids and never the pertussis because my oldest daughter was allergic to it and the doc said not to give it to her or any of the other kids. I could go on about vaccines, but I won't.

I would think that if nature was going to intervene to slow reproduction that it would be in more direct ways. Something like a rise in infertility would be the logical way to go about it. That would be directly slowing it, where something based on personal preference and social norms wouldn't be the natural way for that to occur.

Asking whether autism is nature's way of preventing overpopulation is implying that nature as a whole has predetermined intention. I don't know that it does.

I would expect that if autism has actually increased (rather than autism numbers being inflated by changing definitions and by increased screening), it may be because opportunitiy and selectivity in mating and opportunity and selectivity in breeding have increased drastically within the past several hundred years, in particular within the last few decades.

A hundred thousand years ago, humans mated only within small populations of nearby humans. If one happened to be autistic, they may not be able to breed, and if they did, another autistic person may not be available.

Two hundred years ago, humans mated only within a somewhat-larger but still generally geographically limited group of humans.

Telephones increased human interconnectivity, creating opportunities to meet people from further away.

The internet increased human interconnectivity even more, creating opportunities for people to meet others who met very specific criteria, which over a few generations, causes more selective breeding and more expression of selective traits.

The population of people has also increased dramatically within the past few hundred years, which has added to breeding possibilities. Six hundred years ago, if someone was autistic, they may not breed. Now, they can use the internet to communicate with similar people(who may also have autism), and breed, which increases their children's likelihood of having autism. Not only that, but because of the need for technical jobs, autistic traits, which in previous generations were often selected against, can mean higher incomes in some circumstances, which may be selected for. Even if it's true that a majority of autistic people are unemployed, the number of autistic people who are employed in high-paying positions is probably drastically higher than it was in the past.

The increased availability of people to communicate with and to breed with may be all that's needed to explain why there has been an increase in autism diagnoses.

No. Nature doesn't do anything intentionally.

Gaia begs to differ Fnord

No offense but you'd have to be very young to think autism rates are climbing super rapidly.

Aspergers wasn't even diagnosis just one generation ago.

Granted I'm sure certain societal pressures may make the rate climb and drop but that's a limited effect that hasn't had time to build up in our society.

I do believe in intelligent design. I am Protestant and think everything has some purpose. Anyway, autism seems to make us more specialized in our fields, yet slightly less able to reproduce. In our overpopulated technological society, this is quite beneficial. Also autism may be or may not be increasing. It might be something recent or it might have existed for thousands of years. I know that allergies are recent. Good health actually promotes allergies because the part of the immune system that attacks parasites also attacks peanut butter and other non-hostile invaders. Autistics are increasing because of human intervention and perhaps autistics are as well.