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The theme of autism, like the theme of encouraging innovation and creativity, is certainly important but also far trickier than people tend to assume. In fact, these two themes are both connected. Please forgive if I end up raising questions; I am still groping for answers, as I am also groping for answers to the question of how we could push the new development of the IOT into a safer pathway.
I remember seeing and hearing government efforts to encourage creativity which included the funding of chorus lines to chant "yes we can" and " we WILL be creative," which reminded me a lot of the singing sessions Bo Xilai propagated in China until Xi caught up with him. (I am not exaggerating here. I remember a more serious workshop in the Westin Hotel near the old NSF, where we could hardly hear our speakers at times over the loud chanting from the government-funded innovation corps in the adjoining room.) It is true that self-affirmations can be useful in focusing the memory of those who have not yet learned deep inner self-control and focus, but it is also true that developing social commitments without the ability of people to follow through personally often leads to nonproductive forms of groupthink. The folks who develop new engines are not the folks who love to lose themselves singing and dancing in such chorus lines. The folks who are too embedded in such social activities often fail to take the mental acts of will required to get out of current thinking, to get out of the box in reality. They remind me a bit of the couch potatoes who cheer loudly for their sports team, while they drink beer and let their OWN bodies go to seed -- worshipping physical activity but not doing much of it.
But no, autistic people are not generally like that. They are the exact opposite of that. If we approach autism in the same spirit of charity as medieval Christian nobility did, feeling ever so good about themselves as they distributed a few bits of bread or small coins to the poor from time to time, we will not do full justice to what different ways of thinking can really contribute.
Modern neuroscience actually could discuss autism at a much deeper level than today's practical clinical guides. But the details are complicated, and you wouldn't want to see them all in an email.
(See https://www.facebook.com/paul.
for links to a debate which included them and "the new AI" in a debate, which only set up a few of the prerequisites). But perhaps a few examples would bring out more on what the real challenges are here.
First -- it seems clear that Albert Einstein himself was autistic. (I have been to conferences for mathematicians and physicists where I spoke to people who actually knew him and Von Neumann, and who verified things in the literature.) I believe it was Hildebrand (sp?) who had access to twelve top mathematicians of the time, including those twelve, and all twelve EXCEPT Von Neumann thought in images so intensely that they had problems with ordinary verbal thinking. Right-brain types. (Von Neumann was more balanced.) Obviously Einstein was not stupid, and he did produce interesting words, but he was focused, fixated and even alienated in a way which people around him were overwhelmed by. His childhood problems integrating with society are well documented.
I have often thought: if he had gone to a modern, more benevolent kind of school, they would have treated his autism more effectively, and he would have grown up as a more normal, well-integrated person. How many potential Einsteins have been cured in that way in modern US and China, converted into more docile personalities better integrated into our enthusiastic chorus lines?
Second -- when I ran several technology-oriented research programs at NSF from 1988 to 2014, we worked hard to find out who the most truly creative, ground-breaking thinkers were across many fields. That database of experience really shaped my attitudes on many things, and did not support the conventional ways of thinking about them. I was reminded at times of what a teacher once told me about Sophocles, about how all the great heroes had to have fatal flaws as well. I remember one woman who complained to be about the irrascible behavior of one guy I funded, and I replied: "EVERYONE I have funded, who does visible or useful work, has SOMETHING truly weird or challenging about them." She replied: "WHAT? You fund ME, and I am perfectly normal." Relatively speaking, she really was -- but she was also a practicing witch and a teacher in a school of flamboyant belly-dancing. (By the way, the guy she complained about spoke just like Donald Trump. It was really unnerving for me to hear Trump a few years ago for the first time, and to recognize so many familiar mannerisms. The guy also made a lot of money, getting into one of those lists at Inc, until he had a major collision with a major defense company engaged in corrupt practices.) Lamar Smith put a stop to that kind of thing, all across the board, and put more emphasis on chorus lines; that's basically why I chose to retire in 2015, as did a lot of other NSF Program Directors.
How can we make full room for the very most extreme and productive potential of such people, without crushing them (or even the Von Neumann types) into useless nonthreatening docile behavior, but also without unleashing their OWN less social possibilities to make life hell for the rest of us? I remember trying hard to fund an irrascible guy who reminded me a lot of the Koch Brother's father, whose new engine could have really remade the whole world economy... but he kept offending people .. and I wondered what he might have done IF he had become a billionnaire, as he really should have.
Many years ago, when I worried about local schools crushing my OWN children, I did help create a kind of local partial solution. I worked with a local Quaker meeting, to set up a new K-8 school (still doing quite well), which made it a firm mission: "Our mission is not to indoctrinate. Our primary mission is to develop SKILLS. Above all, we will maximize development of the powers of the body, the brain and the soul -- NOT belief but practice and skills." How to do that? Not easy, but the key was to keep trying and learning. Years later, I was surprised to learn that Thomas Jefferson played a key role in founding west Point, which still remembers that same mission! The same three skill sets! I wondered: what does West Point do to develop skills of the soul, as Jefferson called for? Their big display on that one stressed social diversity and football. But in the end, I should probably concede that West Point may have done more to foster the unique potential of autistic kids than our Quaker School did. But then again... (But: to the big three, we should have added the integration of the three. And the fostering of just enough "humility" to be able to learn things.)
All for now. If anyone read this far, I thank you for your patience.
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