@26pglt@null_hypothesis@actuallyautistic@neurodivergence I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the genes they identify that are correlated with multiple kinds of neurodivergence are in fact genes which modulate neurotypicality in some way. They always look at neurotypicality as the default setting, as if that is how the system is supposed to work and neurodivergences are failure modes. But I think there are multiple ways the system is supposed to work (evolutionarily speaking). If they put them on equal footing in their research, they'll learn a lot more about all of them, because their assumptions won't mask patterns that don't match them anymore.
Temple Grandin is a contemporary example. Historically, Ada Lovelace seems very likely to have been autistic, just for example -- and today is Ada Lovelace day! She has always been a hero and role model for me. But it's definitely the case that there are far fewer examples than for men.
Without the genes which seem behind autism (when too many are dominant perhaps as opposed to recessive) it seems unlikely we'd have learned to tame fire or invented the wheel. Maybe we wouldn't have learned how to make quality stone tools. So I see this as part of what it is that makes us human and differentiated us from other primates. We know it's genetic because it runs in families. There's a lot of it in mine.
It's plausible that infant inflammation affects the epigenetic expression of some of these genes.
@copsewood@hosford42@actuallyautistic@neurodivergence
I think it's right brain priority thinking, wholistic, parallel processing, compared to allistic left brain priority hierarchical serial processing. I think this priority setting is advantageous & normal, not an 'inflammation' or anything that needs a 'cure'. It is to learn to manage the influx of the whole 'everything everywhere all at once' feeling. Just like allistics need to learn from others, less competitive more cooperative.
@copsewood@actuallyautistic@neurodivergence It could be that autism benefits the tribe, when present at an appropriate frequency within the population. Who is to say that evolution hasn't tapped into something simple like inflammation levels to regulate this frequency at a level close to what is ideal to maximize the benefit?
@hosford42@GreenRoc@Susan60@actuallyautistic@neurodivergenceNeurotribes goes into great detail about Henry Cavendish, an 18th century British physicist who's probably best known for (a) discovering hydrogen as a distinct substance and (b) figuring out a reliable way to measure the strength of gravity in general. Prior to that, we only knew how strong gravity was in the context of very large things like the Earth's gravitational pull and the way planets and moons orbited.
Checks all the boxes, right down to a strong preference for routine and an aversion to social gathering, which (thanks to the social norms of the day) probably kept much of his work (apart from the topics already mentioned) unrecognized at the time.
I was working in the defense industry when the Ada programming language was announced as the US Department of Defense standard. The project I was on wouldn't be using it, so I learned Ada out of pure curiosity, and wrote a few demo programs to try it out. My bosses somehow heard about my little hobby. Next thing I knew, I was teaching Ada to software engineers from all over my division. 🙂
@hosford42@GreenRoc@Susan60@actuallyautistic@neurodivergence There's a story that a journalist learned he (Einstein) needed a minder at conferences because he was always getting lost. "Do you even know what your room number is?" "Oh, that's easy. It's π."
"Dad, here is a book on autism" I say. "I dont need to read that" he says in a scoffing tone, "you're just trying to be spoiled". I think he was autistic too, and never knew. RIP dad, died before his retirement not long after burnout.
@Susan60@actuallyautistic@neurodivergence Yay! That's why I posted it. I'm glad I did. The research is bunk. But all these opinions and insights from my fellow autistics in response is golden. :D