"For success in science or art, a dash of autism is essential"

[AnudduhMom]

<p>I had to laugh at this, Naturally in #16:

What I’m trying to say here is that most science involves a lot of collaboration, cooperation, and social interaction. Part of the goal of science is not only to make your own discoveries, but to allow other people to BUILD off your discoveries. It is easier to encourage this if you interact with people and build a rapport. It would certainly be possible for someone with Asperger’s to be a scientist, but IMO it would definitely be a drawback, not a benefit.

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<p>Here’s Dr. Tony Attwood, probably the world’s leading expert on Asperger’s Syndrome right now:

When I lecture at a university, I play a little game which I call ‘Spot the Asperger’s Professor,’ unless of course it’s an engineering school, in which case I play, Find the One Who’s Not.”–Dr. Tony Attwood

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<p>Please, Naturally, I invite you to spend a day at MITCaltechCMURoseHulmanHarveyMudd, and look all around. You’re likely to spot hacks or pranks or projects or inventions or exhibits or discoveries or RPGs (like Assassin’s Guild or D&D) done by TEAMS OF STUDENTS, many of whom are on the spectrum.</p>

<p>People misunderstand the essence of the Asperger’s conundrum: there is social interaction aplenty, as long as there’s a context. Just want to hang around, shoot the breeze? Make idle chit-chat? Naw, Awesome Aspies don’t have the patience or interest in that. Build an operating system? Decode the human genome? Catalog species with every detail and get a group together to do it? You bet there’s an Aspie in that group. That’s why they always paste people like Bill Gates (who has a very very nerdy style and rocks in his chair) with the Aspie label, and you know what, say what you want about MS, he made a lot of his colleagues rich, and they all work together.</p>

<p>One Aspie I’m fond of catalogued a relative’s shell collection, using reference books and naming the shells and putting them in groups: “this is a spider conch, and this is a slipper limpet…”. He was wearing a drooler bib. He was 2 years old. On a trip to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum he saw a mural on the wall and shouted out: “LOOK, IT’S A CHAMBERED NAUTILUS” and everybody around him gasped and one person said: “did you hear what that baby SAID?”. And then his mom went to change his diaper. That’s what Aspies are like, they catalog, they sort, they analyze, they drill into their interests to an astonishing degree. They expect you to be as interested as they are. </p>

<p>They thrive in groups that are all interested in the same thing. That’s how science works, I think.</p>

<p>(@mathmom: ‘someone I’m fond of’ went to College Acceptance Students Weekends with a length of cat 5 cable wrapped around his waist to hold his cargo pants up because the electronics were so heavy!)</p>