Aspergers Syndrome
Aspergers Syndromehttp://www.autism.org/asperger.html
Asperger's Syndrome is a form of Autism characterized by poor ability to recognize others' emotions, poor CommonSense, poor communication skills, impatience with "human" qualities, a compulsion for certain math-based patterns, and increased incidence of becoming a programmer.
Poor CommonSense? Please explain
I imagine it comes from having an UncommonSense?. CommonSenseIsAnIllusion; there's no such thing as a global common sense; there are only statistically common cultural experiences and paradigms that result in statistically common forms of reasoning. People with Asperger's experience reality with a somewhat different paradigm (one that is often mathematical in nature) and they tend to avoid certain common social experiences. Thus they don't have 'common' sense as compared to the others in their culture. Of course, if you put a bunch of people with Asperger's personality in a room together, you might find a different form of reasoning as common among them.
I only think it's ridiculous to call this a 'syndrome' which, in psychology, relates it to a pathology. Those 'diagnosed' as having this 'syndrome' are often quite happy with it and entirely functional in life.
Much of psychology is possibly like this. Someone who is "hyper-active" may have been a great hunter in an earlier setting, for example. Often such "syndromes" are a matter of deviation from the "norm" to such an extent that it becomes difficult to work with those who are in the "norm". In other words, they are having trouble with WhenInRome.
Common sense? Sometimes I think it should be called Rare Sense! -- DaNuke?
One possible reason for becoming a computer programmer. TempleGrandin suggests computer related professions for people with functional autism and Asperger's Syndrome.
See http://www.udel.edu/bkirby/asperger/.
A "geek gene(s)" may yet be identified.
I wonder if other personality types will have syndromes to go with them? What about a super-social person who must be with people and must talk to them all day. Sales? Many "criminals" in jail crave risk and violence perhaps. People on the "edge" spend all their life fighting to be in the middle. Programmers often have to force themselves to be social (to non-geeks), for example, and highly social people have to learn to shut up in class. An NPR (public radio) host, Larry Mantle, told his audience that he received good grades in school, but the teachers always complained that he talked too much in class. "I just could not shut up", he said. Lo and behold, he has a job as a professional talker.
Hmmm. I couldn't shut up in class either, but I became a math major and am now a computer programmer.
I have Asperger's Syndrome [http://www.wrongplanet.net/] (a form of autism) and I am interested in computers. It seems that this is common among those with Asperger's syndrome. I think it has to do with the way our minds are wired. -- Alex
The defining characteristic in autism is a disconnect from the real world and an increasing connection and affinity for how things work, not why things work. - this is why people with forms of autism can be seen as having a hard time with concepts like empathy and emotion, but can be really great at taking apart a clock radio and putting it back together. It's absolutely about the way the brain is wired:>) -- KachinaCrowe [This comment is a reversed-deletion, and was not written by the person who reversed that deletion.]
I wonder if this has something to do with the annoying geek trait of disparaging all forms of advice, parables, truisms, etc. because they don't apply to absolutely every case, i.e. because they require common sense to understand how they apply. See for example the discussion under KillYourDarlings and other advice-like pages. Admittedly not every geek is like that, but it seems common enough to be correlated.
Actually, a big factor (at least for us programmers) is that truisms and common sense do ocasionally fail, and therefore a program based on these things can also fail. Programmers spend a lot of time trying to make programs that don't fail (or at least fail gracefully). After a while, it just becomes an ingrained habit to look for ways that an algorithm or idea can fail.
Could it be, rather, that we are interested in the way things work to such an extent that we want to know what makes them also fail? --MarkLaBarbara
A comparatively trivial question - is the "g" hard or soft?
See http://www.bartleby.com/61/62/A0466250.html where it says that according to The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000 it's hard.
[No matter how I pronounce it, everyone thinks I have ass burger syndrome. Mmmmm, ass burger.]
Oh great. I'm fat AND have no people skills.
I obsess on baroque music, I have "Kapsberger's syndrome".
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