I feel Autism is Evolution

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OOPS!  Typo!  My bad.



It is about 7,800,000,000 people.  Thanks for catching that.

Do you say evolution or eeeeeevolution?

There are several examples in nature where inadvantageous features have succeded, the peackock is one, antlers on some deer is another.
Nature doesn't chose the best fit to pass on the genes, in fact it does not chose at all. It all just happens and if peope suddenly would find autistic people attractive, well perhaps we'd have more autistics around after a while.
However, people in general don't find us more attractive than NTs, so it's pure speculation about a parallel universe.

/Mats

Dead wrong.
It is not random.

And obviously nature "chooses". Though not in an intensional anthropormorphic sense. It chooses unintentionally when a trait becomes more common in succeeding generations.

The male peacock with the most ostentatious tail attracts more females, gets to mate, and passes on more offspring, than do his less ostentatious male rivals. So his genes for a fancy tail become more common in the succeeding generations. That is what Darwin meant by "natural selection". Mutations are random. But the way nature selects for which ones are represented in the next generation are not random.

Your point is that an excessively large tail, or large antlers, are maladaptive. And get in the way of survival of the male animal in question. But its not the simple. A large tail could be taken as a sign of health, or antlers a sign of fighting prowess. But yes...a sign that evolution may have taken a little too far in the case of the species in question- so it may cross the line into being a bit maladaptive. But that doesnt disprove evolution through natural selection.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 25 Sep 2021, 1:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

We're not part of the evolutionary process. We're completely exempt from it.

That's what makes us unique.

Interesting question. Whether or not our species has exempted itself from evolution, or not.

It used to be common wisdom that are now exempt from it. Recently some scientists question that assumption. There is some evidence that humans have continued to evolve subtley even over the last few thousand years. Like in loosing our wisdom teeth.

Humans developed abstract thinking, planning, executive function as a beneficial trait. Some autistic traits are one step further in same direction, but it clashes with our genetic luggage, especially when we don't understand our physiology and our rational brain doesn't find many beneficial activities fun anymore.

Traits I have thanks to my condition could be leveraged to my advantage if only early on I understood how to keep my "irrational" part happy and how to max out my learning, planning, decision making, creativity etc to achieve more. Looking back I understand I could have been straight A student without putting as much effort, I could have been much more popular, etc.

There is very little understanding of what we need to be most productive, creative, etc. There is correlation between activities NT enjoy that contribute to that. There is inverse correlation between activities most people with ASD enjoy. A lot of trouble people attribute to having ASD are result of being depressed for the most of their life. People on the spectrum who are not depressed due to blind luck of their circumstances achieve great things, they are seen as savants, eccentric geniuses, etc, there are many examples in history.

The real issue is this knowledge and understanding of our nature.

From what I last read these traits are not evolution, mostly adaptive mechanisms, epigenetics. All the information is still there, it might revert in couple generations if conditions would suggest this trait is beneficial again.

I didn't suggest it to be random. Mutations, variations etc are random, but what is picked up and passed on as somehow advantageous is not.
What I meant is that some variations are not advantageous in a practical sense, but may be seen as appealing and thus be passed on to offspring. It's really the oposite of random if you think about it.

/Mats

Half of us can barely handle a spider in the sink. I doubt we are a step forward.

Some HF autistics can certainly pass their genes on and many often do but a lot of people with autism can't interact with others well enough to do so. If I could tolerate scraping the barrel enough and find myself a needy and incapable woman who needs constant support for basic tasks then I'm sure I might be in luck with passing my genes on in that sense. The problem is I don't want to go home after the long weeks I do to a partner that cries when she stubs her toe and doesn't know her way around basic paperwork. That's my idea of hell.

The alternative is to find a more capable woman who isn't a second job when I get home and that's where I fall flat on my face being an aspie.

i do think aspies are a evolutionary step ... We maybe the inbetween steps of evolution , Some do very well some do very poorly sometimes?
Personally i do not like to think of myself as the Platypus in the scheme of the evolutionary process.

I don't think autistics are more or less evolved, just differently evolved, and since we are in the minority, I wonder if we are either a recessive trait, a newly emerging one, or maybe a throwback? Regardless, we definitely aren't common and struggle for that reason. I do think if we were all grouped together in one place it would likely be successful in many ways. We have so many awesome qualities if all assembled- we make a nice bell curve of abilities, sensitivities and the like- and all of those skills and senses are needed in a truly cooperative community. We do seem to have pretty high empathy, understand each other for the most part, and can cooperate- all things some people suggest enabled humans to become so numerous. Maybe if we were more concentrated we'd find each other more easily and we wouldn't be in the minority long at all

^^^^^^^^ Yaay exclaimed the Platypus ^^^^^^^

Hi Jakki,
I am not quite clear on the meaning of your response. Could you clarify for me?

hi there , it was an attempt at humour, as given the ongoing discussion was feeling particularily weird in the NT world , kinda like how people look at pictures of a Platypus . And was saying Yaay for how you expressed youself , because i agree with what you wrote.

Thank you for the explanation @Jakki.

I miss attempts at humor, oops! My aspie is showing