http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/aug/22/autism-creative-thinking-study
In brief: a study was conducted measuring creativity in people on the autism spectrum. As it turns out, autistic people and people with other developmental disabilities are more likely to come up with unique ideas to creative problems.
Key sentence: "We speculate that [the results] may be because they are approaching things very differently."
Yes. We are. This is the entire point of the neurodiversity movement, and why eugenics is such a terrible idea. If you wipe out diversity, you destroy humanity's potential to progress. You lose all those ideas from all those people that don't make the perfect ideal model for a "healthy" human being.
Great artists were often depressed. Great men in history had psychological or genetic problems that made their lives a struggle, but they took that struggle and used the wisdom it gave them to benefit others. (Examples: Vincent VanGogh, Edgar Allen Poe, John Keats, Abraham Lincoln, and the recently departed Robin Williams)
Going by eugenics and the idea of "weeding out imperfections," none of these people would have been allowed to live. The world would be a much poorer place without them, in my opinion.
Eugenics and neurodiversity aside, it's nice to see another field besides IT possibly opening its arms to people on the spectrum. I think we have a lot to offer pretty much any field, but the vast majority of them aren't welcoming to people with social difficulties. Because humans are such social creatures, it's immensely difficult for people without social intuition to network their way into most fields.
Perhaps I'll be able to watch different fields of the world open their arms to neurodiversity the way I watched one state after the next approve equal marriage. It was like watching dominoes, in very slow motion. Someday soon, I hope.
In brief: a study was conducted measuring creativity in people on the autism spectrum. As it turns out, autistic people and people with other developmental disabilities are more likely to come up with unique ideas to creative problems.
Key sentence: "We speculate that [the results] may be because they are approaching things very differently."
Yes. We are. This is the entire point of the neurodiversity movement, and why eugenics is such a terrible idea. If you wipe out diversity, you destroy humanity's potential to progress. You lose all those ideas from all those people that don't make the perfect ideal model for a "healthy" human being.
Great artists were often depressed. Great men in history had psychological or genetic problems that made their lives a struggle, but they took that struggle and used the wisdom it gave them to benefit others. (Examples: Vincent VanGogh, Edgar Allen Poe, John Keats, Abraham Lincoln, and the recently departed Robin Williams)
Going by eugenics and the idea of "weeding out imperfections," none of these people would have been allowed to live. The world would be a much poorer place without them, in my opinion.
Eugenics and neurodiversity aside, it's nice to see another field besides IT possibly opening its arms to people on the spectrum. I think we have a lot to offer pretty much any field, but the vast majority of them aren't welcoming to people with social difficulties. Because humans are such social creatures, it's immensely difficult for people without social intuition to network their way into most fields.
Perhaps I'll be able to watch different fields of the world open their arms to neurodiversity the way I watched one state after the next approve equal marriage. It was like watching dominoes, in very slow motion. Someday soon, I hope.
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