The world without aspies

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I was thinking, what have aspies contributed to the world, and what would life be like without them.

I started with just three inventors. Edison, Da Vinci, Tesla and one scientist, einstein.

I was listing things we would be lacking like the electric engine, light bulbs, but since Edison developed DC current and Tesla AC, those wouldn't matter since there would be no electricity period. We would also lack air transport (Wright bros based their work on Da Vinchi). Our knowledge on quantum physics would be non-existant. Alot of our scientific fields would be less developed. Heck we wouldn't even have the stappler.

So much can be traced back to aspies, I began to wonder if every technological advancement was a result of aspergers syndrome

How do you know those men had asperger's syndrome?

well I'm going by what others have said they found out. Though I've looked at Da Vinci personally, he just screams aspergers to me.

ALSO, how do you know edison was AS? Frankly, he seemed a little too NT. And the wright bros based it on da vinchi? The techniques seemed different? And HOW do you figure the stapler?

Lots of geniuses have been suspected of having AS, like Newton, Einstein and Norbert Wiener.

I think there may be a legitimate relationship between technology and AS or autism.

Aeroz:

While I understand the impulse of groups whom society relegates to marginal lives to demand the recognition, respect, and rights due to them in part by mining history for examples of "our kind" getting over, making good, and contributing brilliantly to science, technology and the arts, I feel that this impulse is by definition defensive, and as such a tendency to excess will be a near certainty.

Blacks and women, for instance, are right to insist on greater recognition of the accomplishments of wollstonecraft, curie, du bois, carver, williams and so on, but when defensive identity politics cross the line into insisting on the superiority of ones own "kind," the stupidities of afro-centrism and difference feminism (in some forms) are the unfortunate result.

Aspergians are no more immune to this temptation than any other marginalized group. I understand that you want recognition for your kind, but there really is no reason to believe that Da Vinci was an Aspergian, and indeed even a cursory examination of his life and work yields much that contradicts your claim.

I hate to say it, but I have to agree. Edison, in a lot of ways, wasn't an inventor. He DID have other people working for him, etc... He didn't think some things through and, when caught, he tried to discredit the other method. In wikipedia it speaks of a bit of truth OFTEN forgotten in the lore of Edison:



That covers, among other things, the fact that edison did NOT invent the lightbulb! HECK, it is hard to believe that people didn't try a high temperature metal, like tungsten, earlier. It is ALSO amazing that nobody tried a vacum before. I mean it IS well known, and has been for HUNDREDS of years that OXIdation weakens metal. It has ALSO been known for HUNDREDS of years that AIR is required for fire, and helps conduct heat. So creating a vacum is a likely solution. Of course, creating a real vacum in a case like that is difficult, so who knows how edison got credited with it. Of course, you CAN always just replace oxygen with something that won't be a problem.

They'd jsut be sitting around in caves talking to each other.

first off, you should never use wikipedia as a cited source, or any wiki for that matter. Because it can be editted by any random person the accuracy is always in question. Should use it to find what they cited, and use that as your source. I'm not saying you are innaccurate I am merely saying for future referance.

And beautifulspam, how do you figure Da Vinci showed traits contrary to aspergers? A non-social artistic and scientific person with an obsessive desire to learn about his latest interest. Sounds aspie to me

Still if you guys are correct and those people didn't have aspergers. Then I guess I was mistaken, Aspies haven't really contributed to advancement of society

It's fun to speculate about the Asperger status of this or that individual, but that's all it is - speculation.

true, hard to know about a person that was dead before aspergers was even recognized

Just imagine people running around screaming, "WHO'S GOING TO FIX MY PC!! ! WHO'S GOING TO HELP ME BEAT LEVEL 9?! !! I HAVE NOBODY TO CHEAT OFF OF FOR MY TEST!! ! THE HORROR, THE..HORROR!"

I don't think the world would be that much different

I know wikipedia may be wrong, and it may be in precise specifics here. STILL, it IS correct in the types of patents, lightbulb, etc...



You're right! That sounds aspie! The problem is that that is NOT ENOUGH! ALSO, da vinci made some DUMB mistakes! They were explained away by patent concerns, and the time, but they were dumb none the less. If it wasn't patent concerns and the time, it would be an indication he WASN'T ASPIE!



EVEN if ALL the people you cited weren't aspie(I would be surprised if tesla wasn't, and tesla came up with some neat stuff), it wouldn't mean there weren't a lot of aspie contributers. Maybe the guy that REALLY invented the light, etc... was aspie! You act like all those people were even the originators of some fantastic find, etc... They weren't.

In FACT, the inventor of the basic technology behind electricity DIED in 1867!! !! ! Nikola tesla was only 11 at the time! Edison was 19! He apparently didn't get his first patent until 2 years later!

SO, how important was the OTHER guys contributions? Let's see... He discovered the theory behind GENERATORS, and is credited with the first one! He discovered transformer theory that set the stage for radio, and EVEN changing the current/voltage in power lines. So how important is that transformer? Well, the power won't go very far without it, so power plants would be all over, and expensive! But THEN, you can't do much except power lights with it! It would FRY the electronics we use today! So how do they make it so it doesn't? UN HUH! ANOTHER transformer! They are in tvs, radios, computers, etc... You know those BIG plugs you have? Or the box in the middle of a power cord? ONE WORD! TRANSFORMER! He ALSO discovered the idea of crosstalk, how it was caused, and how to prevent it. The unit of capacitance is named after him "FARAD".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday

BTW I used wikipedia to determine age, and show YOU! Everything else here is from what I learned like before I was 7! Faraday was a hero of sorts to me.

Now he DOES look pretty aspie. He even married around 30. HECK, he used the wire in some of his wifes hats for his experiments! I bet she was MAD!

BTW WHO KNOWS how much the ones you mentioned used faradays work. It DID affect them! Tesla went further on rules that faraday came up with! The transformer had one major failing! It only worked its magic when power was LOST, or just came on!! !! !! The idea is that the growing magnetic flux of one coil intersects another, and generates a current. GUESS WHAT THAT MEANS! UN HUH! DC won't work! So THAT is why we have AC now! SOME say it was westinghouse! NOPE! He ADVOCATED it! He was using FARADAY'S technology! BTW Westinghouse started 19 years after faraday died.

People with AS aren't any smarter than "normal" people; I've seen a lot of "normal" people fixated on a single subject, a single field, there's nothing wrong with them other than being dedicated to their interest. The prevalence of executive dysfunction in autistic spectrum disorders would probably preclude too many inventive geniuses with AS.

Without AS the science wouldn't be where it is today. A lot of inventors and scientists, as well as authors probably had AS. Einstein was more HFA than AS, though...