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Rise in autism 'may be linked to clever parents'
This isn't the first time I've heard this idea, but it is the first time I've heard of someone doing an organized study on 'systemisers' to see if there's anything to be gained there.
The basic logic, as I understand it, is Darwinism in action. The 'left-brained' nerd who enjoys math and science and systems, who eats the same thing for lunch everyday and gets twitchy about someone disturbing his routine, meets a nerdette with a similar very logical, rational, structured way of approaching the world. They co-mingle their nerdy, systemizing genes, and inadvertently select for an extreme version of what in them is just a somewhat quirky way of operating in the world.
Conversely, take the 'right-brained' free spirit who paints herself with poetry and can't keep an appointment or a tidy apartment to save her life, and the wandering troubadour who sings for his meals and can't figure out this money thing but makes the most wonderful moss sculptures. What happens when you splash their crazy yet creative DNA together? ADHD?
That's not a casual snark. What's the opposite of a child who is essentially an uber-systemizer? A child who can't focus long enough to finish typing 'uber-systemizer'.
While ADHD isn't debilitating the way autism can be, maybe that's just because society's always been fond of stamping out its free spirits and tying them down firmly in the middle of the road as punishment for their errant ways. Crazy creative genes were kept in check by 'gotta pay the damn bills' genes, while nerds gathered in petri dish microcommunities of nerdly interest and, well, cultured, free from judgmental eyes because nothing scares away 'gotta pay the bills' types like theoretical astrophysiradiowhatsitology.
Maybe, instead of fretting over the kid who never speaks and organizes his toys by size and composition in one corner, and the kid who freebases Kool-aid and never stops speaking in the other, we should just start a program to hook up the artsy dudes with the nerdy chicks for some balancing of the cosmic scales, man.
I haven't really slept in a couple of days. Is it obvious?
This isn't the first time I've heard this idea, but it is the first time I've heard of someone doing an organized study on 'systemisers' to see if there's anything to be gained there.
The basic logic, as I understand it, is Darwinism in action. The 'left-brained' nerd who enjoys math and science and systems, who eats the same thing for lunch everyday and gets twitchy about someone disturbing his routine, meets a nerdette with a similar very logical, rational, structured way of approaching the world. They co-mingle their nerdy, systemizing genes, and inadvertently select for an extreme version of what in them is just a somewhat quirky way of operating in the world.
Conversely, take the 'right-brained' free spirit who paints herself with poetry and can't keep an appointment or a tidy apartment to save her life, and the wandering troubadour who sings for his meals and can't figure out this money thing but makes the most wonderful moss sculptures. What happens when you splash their crazy yet creative DNA together? ADHD?
That's not a casual snark. What's the opposite of a child who is essentially an uber-systemizer? A child who can't focus long enough to finish typing 'uber-systemizer'.
While ADHD isn't debilitating the way autism can be, maybe that's just because society's always been fond of stamping out its free spirits and tying them down firmly in the middle of the road as punishment for their errant ways. Crazy creative genes were kept in check by 'gotta pay the damn bills' genes, while nerds gathered in petri dish microcommunities of nerdly interest and, well, cultured, free from judgmental eyes because nothing scares away 'gotta pay the bills' types like theoretical astrophysiradiowhatsitology.
Maybe, instead of fretting over the kid who never speaks and organizes his toys by size and composition in one corner, and the kid who freebases Kool-aid and never stops speaking in the other, we should just start a program to hook up the artsy dudes with the nerdy chicks for some balancing of the cosmic scales, man.
I haven't really slept in a couple of days. Is it obvious?
