Old comment, so maybe this isn’t worth it, but: as someone diagnosed with Asperger’s as a kid, I’d really prefer if people didn’t attribute things you don’t like about people to their being autistic, in a causal manner and without providing supporting evidence. I don’t mean you can never be justified in saying that a group having a high prevalence of autism explains some negative feature of their behavior as a group. But I think care should be taken here, as when dealing with any minority.
I agree peer review is good, and people should not dismiss it, and too much speculation about how smart people are can be toxic. (I probably don’t avoid it as much as I should.) But that’s kind of part of my point, not all autists track some negative stereotype of cringe Silicon Valley people, even if like most stereotypes, there is a grain of truth in it.)
late to reply, but those are fair points, thanks for pointing that out. I do need to be more careful about attribution and stereotyping. The phenomena I see which I was trying to point at is that in the push to find “the most intelligent people” they end up selecting for autistic people, who in term select more autistic people. There’s also a self-selection thing going on—neurotypicals don’t find working with a team of autistic people very attractive, while autistic people do. Hence the lack of diversity.
Old comment, so maybe this isn’t worth it, but: as someone diagnosed with Asperger’s as a kid, I’d really prefer if people didn’t attribute things you don’t like about people to their being autistic, in a causal manner and without providing supporting evidence. I don’t mean you can never be justified in saying that a group having a high prevalence of autism explains some negative feature of their behavior as a group. But I think care should be taken here, as when dealing with any minority.
I agree peer review is good, and people should not dismiss it, and too much speculation about how smart people are can be toxic. (I probably don’t avoid it as much as I should.) But that’s kind of part of my point, not all autists track some negative stereotype of cringe Silicon Valley people, even if like most stereotypes, there is a grain of truth in it.)
late to reply, but those are fair points, thanks for pointing that out. I do need to be more careful about attribution and stereotyping. The phenomena I see which I was trying to point at is that in the push to find “the most intelligent people” they end up selecting for autistic people, who in term select more autistic people. There’s also a self-selection thing going on—neurotypicals don’t find working with a team of autistic people very attractive, while autistic people do. Hence the lack of diversity.
Thanks for responding.