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* Xmas stocking filler * "THE PATTERN SEEKERS, How Autism Drives Human Invention"

aidie

New book just out,,, written by Simon Baron-Cohen

how autism drives human invention

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/books/review/pattern-seekers-simon-baron-cohen-autism.html

heres the pitch

A groundbreaking argument about the link between autism and ingenuity.
Why can humans alone invent? In The Pattern Seekers, Cambridge University psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen makes a case that autism is as crucial to our creative and cultural history as the mastery of fire. Indeed, Baron-Cohen argues that autistic people have played a key role in human progress for seventy thousand years, from the first tools to the digital revolution.
How? Because the same genes that cause autism enable the pattern seeking that is essential to our species's inventiveness. However, these abilities exact a great cost on autistic people, including social and often medical challenges, so Baron-Cohen calls on us to support and celebrate autistic people in both their disabilities and their triumphs. Ultimately, The Pattern Seekers isn't just a new theory of human civilization, but a call to consider anew how society treats those who think differently.

what do you think ?  I find it a hard theory to believe but I love the very last line above

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  • I'm going to read this, but I am sceptical about his male female brain theories, and that Emotional Intelligence and Systematising are on the same scale and kinda a 0-1 sum game. I'd see them as separate axes, potentially independent.

    Overall I think autism research is still in the dark ages and there's methodological flaws especially due to the data sample. My guess is those with lower EI scores get spotted whether systematisers / high AS Quotient scores or not; those with low systematiser scores go unnoticed cos as a society we don't value it; and those with high AS scores but also high enough EI scores to help them get round the problems also go unnoticed or are just considered quirky. So we only explore a subset of those with AS brains.

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