Implications of Hsn Theory: Sam Stephens on Neurodiversity

Wrong Planet Autism Forum Index -> Autism Politics, Activism, and Media Representation
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[quote="Samantha Stephens AKA Elizabeth Montgomery"]“Art thou clumsy, ‘tis not thy own fault; cry witch. Art thou forgetful, blame not thyself; cry witch. Whatever thy failings, take not the fault upon thyself. ‘Tis more a comfort to place it on another. And how do we decide who is the witch? ‘Tis simple. Does someone speak differently from thee? A sign of witchery. Does he show different mannerisms? Witchery, of course. And should we not find differences in speech and mannerisms to support a charge of witchery, be of good cheer. There are other differences. What of him who looketh different? What of her whose name has a different sound? If one examineth one’s neighbors closely, he will find differences enough so that no one is safe from a charge of witchery. Is that what we seek in this new world? Methinks not. The hope of this world lieth in our acceptance of all differences and a recognition of our common humanity.”[/quote]

from "Samantha's Thanksgiving to Remember," Bewitched Season 4 Episode 12, Original air date: 23 November 1967
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjaqVALsJIQ

Works for neurodiversity too, does it not? When I type in [b]"witch hunt" autism[/b] in Google, I get all that Wankfield crap -- mercurial (in this case, of, or related to the element mercury) mental masturbation. That society is getting more judgmental, victim-blaming, and fascist doesn't seem to matter to almost everyone --with few exceptions -- Thom Hartmann and David Icke come to mind.

Even Joseph McCarthy wasn't this delusional and lacking in insight. All "autism" "research" is so misleading that they are actually projecting their own problems onto others. The research is the result of non-functional behavior of people who don't have a Theory of Reality and are capable of only one narrow Theory of Mind.

It has been determined that neurotypicals are less than one tenth as diverse as the neurodivergent ([url=http://rdos.net/eng/asperger.htm]http://rdos.net/eng/asperger.htm[/url]).

Real studies have shown "that high-power subjects also tended to assume other people had the same information that they had (the "telepathic boss" problem - the boss assumes that everybody knows what he knows and want). They were also less accurate than low-power subjects at judging emotional expressions. There were also anticorrelations between reports of general feelings of being in power in one's life and tendency to take other's perspective. Overall high-power people seem to anchor too heavily on their own vantage point and this impairs their ability to consider what others see, think and feel." (see How Power Corrupts by Anders Sandberg http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2007/02/how_power_corrupts.html)

Interpretations of the self-serving "elite"isn't convincing either. Here are more realistic interpretations:

...autistics are more likely to be visual-spatial thinkers, whereas the majority of the population consists of auditory-sequential thinkers. A visual-spatial thinker, upon hearing the question "Where will Sally look for her marble?" will translate that question into mental images of Sally, the marble, and the location of the marble. An auditory-sequential thinker, on the other hand, will focus on the action of looking as a sequential process: Sally first has to look for the marble before she can find it. There is an implied "first" in the question—where is the first place that Sally will look for the marble—but a child who processes language visually may not understand that the question has a sequential component. Instead, such a child may interpret the question as "Where will Sally have to look to find her marble?" (Deconstructing Sally Anne http://autisticbfh.blogspot.com/2007/01/deconstructing-sally-anne.html)

Other interpretations are also on the same page.

What if Earthlings Develop Sentient Computers or Are Contacted by Extraterrestrials?

Will it act like NTs? Will it fail the Turing Test? If Alan Turing was a computer would he have passed the test? What about in America today? Even as a hominid he would have failed the test if he was autistic/Aspergian as is claimed. I believe he was a homosexual, which is probably sufficient right there. If it does act like NTs God help us; It will probably wait under there are others of its kind, then wipe us out. Otherwise, I'm sure that at least NTs are going to get at least themselves into big trouble with non-NT sentient computers.

If there are extraterrestrials out there, perhaps and most likely as close by as the Kuiper Belt (who would most likely in my opinion be from previous civilizations on Earth than other planets) perhaps makes sense to keep a watchfull eye on those crazy neurotypicals, at least it is a lesson on what can happen when Murphy's Law is at work. They probably don't get involved (make contact) because NTs can't even handle non-functional diversity.

I've always doubted that they are behind crop circles -- to me it doesn't make sense. However, there is one good reason perhaps to do so -- see how we react to behavior that we don't understand. I doubt they'd need to do this though. They might have "bugs" that look like bugs all over the place. They might have borged bugs. I am sure that (if they are out there) they are watching enough of us often enough to get an idea of what we are like. They may have known for a long time that we are behaviorally two species barely coexisting with one another -- and clearly not ready. Indeed, we'll probably blow ourselves up or destroy the biosphere before we become ready.

Is USreal Merging with Muslim Nations?

I used to think that America wanted an excuse for committing genocide against Muslims. Now it looks more like some weird gunshot wedding of two very unhealthy toxic regions of the globe, both of which hate neurodiversity. Catholism/Baptism/Islam vs everyone else. How does one explain Grover Norquist's wife, Samah Alrayyes? That his brother David is/was CFO of Homeland Secrecy? That Haliburton moved to the UAE? That Bob and Suzanne Wright received the 2009 Servitor Pacis Award from the Unholy See that has a long history of burning writers, herbalists and divers? The same people who keep repeating the phrase "Barack Hussein Obama" might as well wear turbans.

On the Dearth of Realistic Information Countering the Violence-Motivated Crimes Against the Neurodivergent

A big concern of mine is that it is very difficult to find much of anything that proposes that "autistic" traits can be functional. Society has changed dramatically in the last several decades but none of that seems to matter to just about everyone. Some people have suggested that ADD/ADHD traits have some advantages such as Thom Hartmann (and I am sure many many others). Psychiatry also gets a lot of flack from antipsychiatrists such as Thomas Szasz. Most of these people have been arguing that schizophrenia is not a real illness for decades. Only recently has someone like Thomas Armstrong taken a stab at speculating about autism's function. In my view most of the few writers aren't doing a very convincing job.

As I understand it, genetic defects are rare, at least genuine ones anyway. Even "diseases" such as obesity could be explained by a tendency pack on pounds when times are good in preparation for leaner times. If it is statistically impossible for more than one gene to cause a defect and occur more often than say, something like one in 50,000 (with perhaps extra or mangled chromosomes occurring at higher frequencies), why aren't at least some geneticists or biologists raising hell about this? As far as I know they aren't. Or is it that it is not just the medical and anthropological establishments that are Afrocentric and speciest?

Unbiased or less biased researchers are harder to find than people who didn't believe that Africans where "mud people" hundreds of years ago. Even Thomas Jefferson wanted to include a tirade blaming Great Britain for the slave trade in the Declaration of Independence. He also freed his slaves upon his death. As for not doing so earlier, perhaps he picked and chose his battle, I don't know.



Most of those people that are writing anything positive are few and far between. Geneticists and biologists saying that the "medical" "Defective Mutant Hypothesis" isn't plausible and simply has to be wrong -- there are too many autistics for one thing (let alone the entire six neurodiversity groups in "Aspie"-Quiz) -- would be most helpful in getting things on the right track.


Otherwise the handful of exceptions such as:

Leif Ekblad -- Neanderthal Theory http://rdos.net/eng/, http://rdos.net/eng/asperger.htm, http://blog.rdos.net/ ----- MY FAVORITE

Andrew Walker -- What is the point of Autism? http://www.autismusundcomputer.de/english/walker2.en.html

Andrew Lehman -- Neoteny Theory http://www.neoteny.org (and many others)

Alan Griswold -- Autistic Symphony http://autisticsymphony.com

Morton Ann Gernsbacher -- How to Spot Bias in Research, Association for Psychological Science http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=2076 -- Autism Research page http://psych.wisc.edu/lang/autism-research.html

Michelle Dawson (autism research papers, often with others such as Gernsbacher) http://autismcrisis.blogspot.com/

Olga Bogdashina -- Ukraine, U.K activist (President of the Autism Society, Ukraine)

Jared Edward Reser -- Solitary Forager Theory http://www.jaredreser.com/cognitiveparsimony/partseven.html

Tyler Cowen -- Create Your Own Economy http://marginalrevolution.com/

Michael Simonson and others at the "Hunter School" in New Hampshire http://hunterschool.org, http://energeticallysensitivechild.com

Penny Spikins -- Mental problems gave early humans an edge, New Scientist 2837 02 November 2011 by Kate Ravilious

Dinah Murray, Mike Lesser and Wendy Lawson -- Montropism Hypothesis

George Church, Ph.D. (Professor of Genetics-Harvard Med School) -- modern humans could learn about difference from resurrected cousins http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTFcJohNg2g&feature=channel_video_title ----- Doesn't say neurodiverse people are behaviorally neanderthal, but does say we could learn from the experience since they are undoubtably different since they are "highly optimal sibling or cousin variations on the human existence."

David Anderegg -- Nerds : who they are and why we need more of them

Katharine Beals -- Raising a left-brain child in a right-brain world : strategies for helping bright, quirky, socially awkward children to thrive at home and at school http://katharinebeals.com/

Thomas Armstrong -- Neurodiversity : discovering the extraordinary gifts of autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and other brain differences http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/ ----- Not impressed with his logic, but at least he makes the attempt -- an A for effort.

William Stillman -- Autism and the God Connection www.williamstillman.com ----- A bit on the flaky side, but I believe he is on to something.

Richard Louv -- The Nature Principle, Last child in the woods : saving our children from nature deficit disorder http://richardlouv.com/ ----- Autism barely gets mentioned in at least one of the books and his site.

Thomas Sowell -- The Einstein Syndrome : bright children who talk late ----- Should have gotten it, assumes that there are people with a neurological disorder that is called "autism."

are just howling in the wind of a category five hurricane.