This article
expresses much of what I believe about Asperger syndrome. Perhaps
considerations of political correctness have led the author not to point out
that Asperger Syndrome is not a survival characteristic in the real world, so
there is a real question how it persists contrary to Darwinian
principles. Two possibilities occur to me. First, there could be
some unrecognized advantages to it (like sickle-cell anemia in
About 2006 I watched Nova on PBS, a program titled The woman who thought like a cow. Portions of this program seem to come and go on Youtube, so you will have to search for it. Watching it, I had a tremendous sense that here was a person like myself. The term that was used for her condition was Autism. Since her diagnosis, there has been growing recognition that this term covered a wide variety of situations, and the term Asperger Syndrome has come to be used to describe people who have the communications problems associated with Autism, but not the reasoning impairments. I have come to use the latter term to describe my own difficulties in relating to other people. Perhaps my account from the inside of the phenomenon will help others.
Although this woman was obviously bright, she had a very difficult childhood, but was rescued by her mother's commitment that some way should be found for her to live a full life. Eventually, with help, the girl learned to manage her difficulties and eventually became Dr. Temple Grandin. As a girl, she had taken a great interest in animal behavior, and made this interest into a career. She noticed that farmers and other animal handlers ignored what seemed to her obvious factors that caused animals to behave in ways contrary to human interests. She has made a very successful career out of using these insights. Because these insights are so valuable, and so many people are aware she has them, they are willing to accept her eccentricities in exchange, a little bit like those who a happy to accept the difficulties of communicating with Dr. Stephen Hawking because of the extreme interest in what he has to say.
I have put considerable thought into what makes me different from other people. I believe that most people have a subconscious process of adapting their mental processes to make them more similar to those around them, and that this process is absent in myself, and perhaps this can be considered the defining characteristic of Asperger Syndrome. This is the definition that will be used in this website.
A trivial but telling example is that I have lived in the
In a way that I think is similar, Dr. Grandin grew up less responsive than most children to social pressure to react ‘appropriately’. As she watched cows, she noticed what seemed to motivate their behavior, and how the humans who controlled them seemed totally oblivious to what seemed so obvious to her. Not only did this cause unnecessary suffering to the cows, but it required unnecessary work for the humans, who had to force the cows to overcome psychological obstacles the humans had thoughtlessly created. Dr. Grandin has made herself honored and respected by designing equipment and procedures to avoid these problems. I suggest that many people were born with just as much ability to think like a cow as Dr. Grandin. Those who did not have Asperger syndrome learned from their parents, teachers, and playmates to think like a human, and lost the ability to think like a cow.
No doubt it is in general better to think like a human than to think like a cow, but this example shows that it can be advantageous to the community to have a few people who think in unusual ways. As the world changes more and more quickly, the number of new opportunities for taking advantage of unusual new ideas increases. Asperger people are therefore potentially an increasingly valuable resource.
Of course, dealing with us comes at a price. Until the value of Dr. Grandin's insights became clear, she was no doubt not a popular person. Now her value is clear, other people are happy to overlook her social gaffes while they make use of her special insights.
My own career has been somewhat similar, on a smaller scale. I found computers easier to understand than people, and became a programmer. My experience with Mobil Oil about twenty years ago is typical. They became aware of my expertise in a programming language (more accurately an Integrated Development Environment, if you're interested) called Telon. They needed such expertise, and offered me a job, which I accepted. After I had worked there for several months, they asked me to do a task that was obviously going to take at least a year. Part of the way through the task, my manager called me in and asked angrily why I had done it a particular way. I told him I thought that was the way he wanted it, which he denied. Later, I found the email in which he had given me the instructions, and showed it to him. His only response was to say 'You were obviously the wrong person for the job.' and he fired me.
A few years later, Mobil got into trouble with Telon (at least in part by doing things I had recommended against). Through an agency, they asked me to dig them out. I proposed a very unusual solution, and at first they told me they did not think this solution would work. I said I could think of no alternative I thought would work, and apparently no-one else could think of another way either, because eventually they agreed. Meanwhile their concerns had made me less confident, so I insisted on more favorable contract terms than I might otherwise.
In practice, my proposal worked much better than I had ever expected, so Mobil complained that I had cheated them by asking such favorable terms. The agency repaid Mobil part of their commission, but I made it clear that I expected to be paid as agreed.
Mobil then asked if I would take charge of another project through the same agency. After the new project had started, they (or the agency - I never did find out) asked that a senior project manager from the agency come in once a week to oversee things. This manager then overruled many of my decisions, some of which I told him were critical to the success of the project. The project was just a little ahead of schedule when I was removed from it - the agency claimed at Mobil's request. Later the project fell apart. The agency and I quarreled for some time about whether I should be paid as specified in the contract.
My intent is not to criticize Mobil for this. The same thing keeps happening to me, so clearly I evoke it somehow. People find me different, and are uncomfortable around me. Mobil only rehired me because they had no choice. When the project I controlled was so successful, I think they decided they wanted another equally successful project, but they wanted a buffer between them and me. When the buffer screwed up the project, it was more comfortable to remove me.
For the first project, I hired my own staff, though the agency helped look for candidates. Perhaps because of this, or perhaps because the project was obviously going well, there was no internal dissention within the project, though afterward, the man I recommended most strongly commented that he had worried during the project that I might not be aware of his extra qualities. On the second project, I hired part of the staff, and the agency hired another part. This time there was internal dissention, which was probably part of the reason for my removal. After I was removed, the dissention increased to the point that a fistfight had to be broken up by Mobil building security.
Even when I communicate by email, I get the same result. I recently found a website with some fun physics problems, and sent in an answer to one which was previously unanswered. ( http://www.feynmanlectures.info/ . Click on ‘exercises’, and then on ‘stack of bricks’.) (Added later – I notice that the website has changed ‘stack of bricks’ to the less accurate ‘pile of bricks’ since I pointed to it, and has also added an erroneous answer – not mine. The published answer miscounts the bricks by calling the second brick ‘first’, and also confuses ‘less than’ with ‘less than or equal to’ – but the errors cancel!) I also thought of an interesting (to me) variation of the problem and sent that in too:-
(Q) Given n bricks of length 2, how
do you stack them so that the top brick has the maximum offset from the bottom
brick?
(A) Stack each brick r on top of
brick r-1 with an offset of 1/(n-r+1) for 1<r<n+1. (r from 2 to n: brick
1 is sitting on the ground and has no offset.) Once the stack is complete, the
CM of each substack from r to n is exactly over the edge of brick r-1. (This is
left for the student to verify.) The total offset is thus ∑ (r=2 to
n) 1/(n-r+1) which can be rearranged to ∑ (s=1 to n-1)1/s
where s=n-r+1.
This sum has no bound as n
increases, so there is no limit to the total offset if the supply of bricks is
unlimited.
This elicited the following answer from the webmaster:-
If the total offset were infinite, then CMx would be infinitely far from the right end of brick 0, and the pile must fall when CMx is past the right end of brick 0. So your "solution" (to your own problem!) is not only wrong, it's plain stupid, if you don't me saying so.
Again, I am not criticizing the webmaster - somehow I elicit this reaction from people in general.
The real irony of this example is that the website is maintained in honor of Richard Feynman, who himself certainly had AS and struggled with authorities who failed to follow his original mind. Whether the website has fallen under the control of a defender of the status quo, or whether the response is evidence of AS communication difficulties of the responder, I don't know.
(Added later):
The webmaster is obviously not amused at his behavior becoming public, as shown by his email to me below. Judge for yourself!
Mr. Blackwell,
We are asking you once again to remove all references to the Feynman Lectures website from Case Integrator Corp.'s web page http://www.caseint.com/john/asperger_syndrome.htm. If you do not comply to this request immediately we will be forced to consider pursuing legal action against Case Integrator Corp for defamation, seeking both actual and punitive damages, as we have evidence that your statements may be injurious to the sale of our books and to out professional reputations.
Actually, I do have an idea why he is behaving this way: I accidentally addressed him as an equal (a common 'Aspie' mistake) and I think he feels insulted by this.