May 10 2011
Autism Prevalence Higher than Thought
Over the last 20 years the prevalence of autism (now part of autism spectrum disorder, ASD) has been increasing. The medical community is largely agreed that this increase is mostly due to expanding the diagnostic category and greater efforts at surveillance. There remains some controversy over whether or not these factors explain all of the measured increase, or if there is a small real increase hidden in there as well. But largely – we are finding more children with ASD because we are casting a wider net with smaller holes.
If this is true, then we do not yet know what the true prevalence of ASD is. There must be a pool of undiagnosed children out there. Eventually the measured prevalence will hit the ceiling of the true prevalence (unless, of course, we expand the definition further) – but where is the ceiling?
That is the question researchers recently set out to answer, and they did so with a comprehensive 5 year study conducted in South Korea. The results surprised even them:
Results: The prevalence of ASDs was estimated to be 2.64% (95% CI=1.91–3.37), with 1.89% (95% CI=1.43–2.36) in the general-population sample and 0.75% (95% CI=0.58–0.93) in the high-probability group. ASD characteristics differed between the two groups: the male-to-female ratios were 2.5:1 and 5.1:1 in the general population sample and high-probability group, respectively, and the ratios of autistic disorders to other ASD subtypes were 1:2.6 and 2.6:1, respectively; 12% in the general-population sample had superior IQs, compared with 7% in the high-probability group; and 16% in the general-population sample had intellectual disability, compared with 59% in the high-probability group.
The previous estimate of autism prevalence was 1% of the population, or about one child in 100. This study found a prevalence of 2.64%, or about one child in 38 – more than twice the previous estimate. They came upon their higher measurement by taking a thorough survey of the general population. Previous studies have looked at high probability groups – children receiving special services or who have already been diagnosed. This study went into the general population and did a thorough survey for undiagnosed cases. Therefore there is a vast untapped pool of potential ASD diagnoses out there.
The results above also indicate that children with undiagnosed ASD in the general population had less intellectual disability than those in the recognized high probability group. They were also less likely to be male and less likely to have classic autism rather than a more subtle variant than the high probability group – which is not surprising. In other words, the undiagnosed children in the general population met the diagnostic features to be considered on the spectrum, but were largely functioning well in mainstream classrooms. In some cases parents were in denial about their child’s condition, in other cases the parents simply had no idea. In South Korea there is apparently still some stigma attached to the diagnosis.
While the authors conclude that their results indicate the need for still better detection of ASD, many of the undiagnosed children would likely not require or even benefit from special services. Although some would, and of course it would be desirable to capture all of those children.
While 2.6% is a high number for any such disorder, it is not out of line with other common mental disorders such as anxiety, depression, or ADHD. Of course these questions always bring up the very relevant issue of where to draw the line between “normal” and “disordered.” As I discussed recently on this blog, categorizing brain function is tricky business. Any identifiable psychological or neurological trait seems to vary at least along the classic bell-curve. You can therefore take any trait and declare two standard deviations to either side as the cut-off for “normal” (a standard practice in much of medicine) and declare those at the fringes to have one or another disorder. That would result in 5% of the population being abnormal.
But it takes more than being at the tails of the bell curve to be considered as having a disorder. The definition also requires that the identified traits are associated with (and plausibly cause) some dysfunction or negative outcome. In the case of ASD the disorder is a lack of social ability (not just learned skills, but the raw neurological hardwiring that underlies our ability to socialize). Interestingly, the current measured rate of 2.64% is almost exactly two standard deviations to the left of the curve (the other 2.5%, making a total of 5%, is the cutoff to the right of the curve – those with high social ability, which is generally not considered a disorder).
Since many of the children captured in the current study seemed to be doing fine, it is possible that the current definition of ASD is simply capturing the left two standard deviations of human variability along the bell curve of social ability. Perhaps the definition is therefore too broad, and needs to be tied more closely with some measure of disability. That is a subject for future research.
The bell curve hypothesis also can be used to support those in the “neurodiversity” community. They argue that ASD is just what I described – normal human neurological variation. I agree with this view to some degree, and I think the data above support that. However – when you get out far enough to the left side of the bell curve you do get to the point where dysfunction is undeniable. At some point it is useful to consider a neurological phenomenon to be a disorder. Children with low social ability (even if they make up for it in other ways) tend to have difficulty in school, with making friends, and later in life functioning in the work environment. No matter what you choose to call it, it is useful to identify children who can benefit from programs to help them compensate for their lack of social ability.
Also – we cannot assume that ASD is simply everyone more than two standard deviations to the left of the bell curve. It is possible that the actual curve is not a pristine bell-shape but is bi-modal, representing one hump of normal human variation, and then another hump at the low end of social ability that represents a theoretically definable separate population. This second hump might represent those with one of a group of genetic variants that leads to what we recognize as autism. This is almost certainly true, as children with autism have a higher incidence of intellectual impairment and seizures, suggesting a neurological disorder and not just normal variation.
Further – the low end of the bell curve of normal variation would blend imperceptibly into the second hump of autism disorder. At present the diagnosis of ASD is based entirely on clinical features, making it difficult to separate out different underlying causes. (As I stated above, we can make subtype distinctions based upon associated neurological conditions, but this is still a clinical inference rather than a distinction based upon known cause.)
As neuroscience advances, h0wever, it may become possible to tease out the current mixed bag of clinical ASD by identifying specific underlying genetic or neurological conditions. We may undo the lumping of all these children into one ASD spectrum by identifying subtypes by either their genetic profile, or perhaps their neurological function as examined by functional MRI scanning or a similar functional scan. We are already making significant progress in this area, but this is still an area ripe for further research.
Conclusion
This study adds an interesting data point to the whole picture of ASD. If correct, then the theoretically upper limit of ASD prevalence is about 2.6% of the population, more than twice the previous estimate. It also indicates that when you undergo a program of thorough searching, you will find more diagnoses. No one can reasonably think that the true prevalence of ASD suddenly doubled.
While it doesn’t prove that the steady increase in ASD diagnoses over the last 20 years was due to increased surveillance, it does support that hypothesis by showing the potential of just looking harder. Those children with ASD were always there, they were simply not identified.
116 Responses to “Autism Prevalence Higher than Thought”
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The refrigerator mom idea of autism seemed to be alive in well when I was living there 2003-2008.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2007/jan/23/highereducation.research
Koreans are very very proud of their blood lines so to suggest that a person’s blood line might have spawned mental illness is a difficult subject to broach, even between doctor and parents. It’s a bit like fan death. It’s easier to tell a family the polite lie their father died of fan death than he drunk himself to death or died of a heart attack while with his mistress.
Is there a lot of variance depending on location, or is it pretty consistent across the board?
Just to point out, while going from 1% to 2.6% is a doubling, it’s still just an additional 1.6% overall. In general, it wouldn’t surprise me that different studies might vary by a percentage point or two. Not saying that is necessarily the case here though, 2.6% may indeed be closer to the real rate.
Thanks for looking into this new study Dr. Novella. It causes me to wonder,that if ASD has always been this high,then why aren’t we more aware of it in adults.I don’t know of a single adult that I associate with that I would suspect as having ASD. Do adults just learn how to compensate to the point where they don’t stand out?
I shudder to think how this study will be used by the likes of Generation Rescue and company.I’m sure we will find out very shortly.
tmac57 – I guess it’s a matter of seeing what you know. I know many many adults that I suspect are on the spectrum (I need to emphasize many). This may also be the circles that I travel in.
In it’s mild high functioning form, ASD can manifest simply as adults who are socially awkward. They don’t make great eye contact. They may be written off as nerdy or geeky. They don’t insert smoothly into a conversation. They are often considered just to be “odd” individuals.
Or they may be well compensated in their day-to-day interactions, but their social awkwardness only comes out when they are in challenging or stressful situations where they don’t have coping strategies at the ready.
But – if you did the standard assessment they would score on the spectrum.
“I don’t know of a single adult that I associate with that I would suspect as having ASD. Do adults just learn how to compensate to the point where they don’t stand out?”
My first thought about this comment is you used the term “associate with.” I would expect ASD people to be underrepresented, almost by definition, in the people we are exposed to on a daily basis due to the social implications of ASD. Of course, this is most affected by which groups you associate with… we might expect also some clustering as well and overrepresentation in certain settings.
“Children with low social ability (even if they make up for it in other ways) tend to have difficulty in school, with making friends, and later in life functioning in the work environment. No matter what you choose to call it, it is useful to identify children who can benefit from programs to help them compensate for their lack of social ability.”
I just want to tell you how much I appreciate your clear, rational and human approach to this topic (and all others). You are truly the voice of reason.
“of course it would be desirable to capture all of those children.”
Someone on age of autism is definitely going to quote you on this
One would expect exactly that from a natural variation, some prevail lot’s don’t.
Basic evolutionary principle.
The dysfunctional ones practically prove it’s an adaptation to a changing social environment over the last 10 millenia.
If all were dysfunctional it would be a true aberration, if none were it would be a normal condition.
QED
Nice study. I would like to see a similar population-based study conducted to establish the prevalence of ASD in an adult population. If the prevalence estimates match closely, it would help to dispel the hypothesis that more inclusive diagnostic strategies do not fully account for the increasing prevalence of ASD and that there must be a separate environmental factor(s) responsible.
That assumes of course that case ascertainment in adults is as accurate as it is in children.
Someone needs to do a prevalence study at a Star Trek convention.
A concern I have with this study is that in the children in the “intellectual disability register”, only a small number responded (~1/3) and of those only half were evaluated. The non-response and refusal to consent to evaluation could have introduced bias.
The way they dealt with the lack of data was to assume that the children evaluated were the same as those who were not. The problem with lack of response and consent would only affect the high probability group. Even if all children not evaluated were assumed to be not affected (in all groups), this still puts the prevalence pretty high. It would be hard to get it below 2%.
My own feeling is that the spectrum is very broad and that the cutoffs are arbitrary. Most of the children were in regular school, which (I presume) meant that they were coping pretty much ok.
# Steven Novellaon 10 May 2011 at 11:24 am
“tmac57 – I guess it’s a matter of seeing what you know. I know many many adults that I suspect are on the spectrum (I need to emphasize many). This may also be the circles that I travel in.”
Scoring at the end of the scale for autism you’d never know meeting me till i get bored. Over time on learns to mimic empathy and social intercourse better then an average person.
The only way you’d pick up is when i get bored and just forget you are there.
There’s hardly a person who doesn’t think i am a gentle, pleasant fellow. My wife sometimes get’s fed up with hearing how well she’s done by having such a nice husband.
My father has AS as well, he became a successful businessman in real estate. Which entails good social manners. Though i’ve seen him putting a phone with client on line in drawer and sometimes yell yes yes to it.
My guess there are way more people on the spectrum then you’d think. It’s only now, with the advanced stresses of modern society and the invalidity of ‘treatments’ offered that ASD children get overstimulated and go into lockdown/tantrum.
Put me in a crowd or a high stimulus environment and i get completely overwhelmed by the stimuli. This is a commonality shared amongst ASD as i’ve read on all AS boards and what causes most of the social problems.
Avoidance is the best option of all. (or get shitfaced but that help conversation much either
)
I’m betting you’d get quite a few, probably more than in a “normal,” diverse, population. People that think and act alike are generally drawn together.
# Steven Novellaon 10 May 2011 at 11:24 am
“tmac57 – I guess it’s a matter of seeing what you know. I know many many adults that I suspect are on the spectrum (I need to emphasize many). This may also be the circles that I travel in.”
Scoring at the end of the scale for autism you’d never know meeting me till i get bored. Over time on learns to mimic empathy and social intercourse better then an average person.
The only way you’d pick up is when i get bored and just forget you are there.
There’s hardly a person who doesn’t think i am a gentle, pleasant fellow. My wife sometimes get’s fed up with hearing how well she’s done by having such a nice husband.
My father has AS as well, he became a successful businessman in real estate. Which entails good social manners. Though i’ve seen him putting a phone with client on line in drawer and sometimes yell yes yes to it.
My guess there are way more people on the spectrum then you’d think. It’s only now, with the advanced stresses of modern society and the invalidity of ‘treatments’ offered that ASD children get overstimulated and go into lockdown/tantrum.
Put me in a crowd or a high stimulus environment and i get completely overwhelmed by the stimuli. This is a commonality shared amongst ASD as i’ve read on all AS boards and what causes most of the social problems.
Avoidance is the best option of all.
“I don’t know of a single adult that I associate with that I would suspect as having ASD. Do adults just learn how to compensate to the point where they don’t stand out?”
Most people just tend to think i’m either just a quiet person or rude, eye contact is a problem for me if I look away people think I’m “shifty” or “untrustworthy” so I have in the past attempted to force and hold eye contact. I have since been told that when I do this, I look “scary” or “intimidating” , something about how long I hold eye contact or not blinking, I don’t know for most people its apparently natural I have not figured out how to “fake” it well enough.
People rarely ever consider that I have autism though.
“Over time on learns to mimic empathy and social intercourse better then an average person.”
The problem, I imagine, is that you would have to want to fake it, and that there may be many instances in which a person would not care to
Eye contact with a woman is the most beautiful thing in the world. Of all the people I know, my wife has the most beautiful eyes and I never cared what the rest of her looked like (not that there was anything to complain about).
I would hate to be autistic.
I’ve just finished reading Simon Baron-Cohen’s book ‘The Science of Evil. On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty’. Worth reading, but the best thing I can say about it is that the author recommended Frans de Waals’ book ‘the Age of Empathy’ which I had already bought, but hadn’t got around to reading. Now that book is a 5 star book.
I suspect I have Aspergers syndrome. I have very little empathy, I have extreme trouble in judging the hidden motives of other people, I prefer predictable events. If I like a book, I’ll often immediately reread it. When I was in early primary school I remember I had the habit of rubbing my hands together continually, a repetive motion, until I was shocked by a teacher physically stopping me. When I donated $2000 to the S-E Asia tsunami appeal I did it for logical reasons (I wanted the tax deduction).
I think a lot Aspergers syndrome individuals go through life completely unnoticed.
I can re-iterate what Steve and many of the commenters here have said about the trouble with identifying Autism spectrum disorders in adults. For one, they are less likely to be associating with you at all. Second, unless you are familiar with and actively looking for the symptoms, anyone you have social contact with can likely function well enough that you will not notice.
I was diagnosed with Asperger’s nearly 2 years ago (I’m 28 now). I had gone to a psychiatrist to investigate attentional problems (I was also diagnosed with ADHD, inattentive type). I was always thought of as shy and a little odd, and consistenly had trouble at school and University despite getting mostly good grades and being recognised by my teachers as having above average intelligence. And yet I never once in all my life had anyone suspect (including myself) I might have Asperger’s until I saw the psychiatrist for other reasons.
As Steve mentioned, eye contact and inserting into conversation are 2 of the main problems. When I was younger I didn’t even realise these things were considered impolite, and people would often think of me as arrogant or rude. I realised long before I was diagnosed that these were things I needed to work on, but it is still incredibly difficult. Needing to make a phone call makes me anxious. Just this morning, walking my daughter to school, a neighbour came out their front door as we walked past and I wasn’t sure whether to smile or wave or say hello or just keep walking. I usually need to wait for the other person to initiate, then I will reciprocate. Though all too often people sense my reticence and don’t initiate with me.
I have also had trouble realising people’s hidden motivations for acting the way they do, but once you realise people can be like that you actually become very good at spotting when something doesn’t add up about a person.
A lack of empathy is something I can’t empathise with (couldn’t resist). I have always had a heightened empathy and sense of right and wrong. As shy as I am, I have always made myself heard when someone is being treated unfairly, and I get an awful, sickly feeling inside when I see someone hurt or treated badly if there is nothing I can do about it. Makes me a really bad salesman and negotiator
“Eye contact with a woman is the most beautiful thing in the world.”
BillyJoe7, I agree completely. I have always had trouble with women, but over the past few years I have actively improved my interactions and being comfortable enough with a beautiful woman to be able to stare into her eyes is something I missed out on for far too long.
Another difficulty in diagnosing adults (and even older children) is that there is movement on the ASD spectrum over the lifespan. A specific degree of symptomology is not fixed, there can be movement depending on life circumstances.
Human brains are in a continuous state of neurodevelopment. They have to be. When a brain instantiates a memory, there are physical changes in the configurations of matter in that brain. That is neurodevelopment of some degree.
Monkeys that have been socially deprived (raised in isolation) can be partially rehabilitated.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/5283943
That rehabilitation can only occur through neurodevelopment.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/566193
My hypothesis is that there is such a “pull” for proper social neurodevelopment, that if even profoundly deprived individuals are exposed to the “right” environment, that the neurodevelopment paradigms can be triggered and re-entrained and that there can be some degree of recovery.
I think that a high NO level is what allows the neurodevelopment to proceed in a low stress direction (toward a more social phenotype) or in a high stress direction (a non-social phenotype).
This is not to say that the refrigerator hypothesis is correct, but what ever the “cause” of a less social phenotype, the only way that a more social phenotype can be produced is by invoking the normal neurodevelopmental pathways that produce a social phenotype.
“Well it was either that or Nitric Oxide.”
# ccbowerson 11 May 2011 at 5:21 pm
“The problem, I imagine, is that you would have to want to fake it, and that there may be many instances in which a person would not care to”
Quite correct, except it’s not a problem. It takes effort so you restrict it to persons you want to be with. You are free to choose, whilst others are forced to even if they don’t want to.
My wife’s mother is slowly dying. She is totally freaked out. Can’t function normally.
When my first wife died in my arms from cancer in the night it was a matter of fact thing. According to her wishes i prepared the corpse for burial myself, put it on a cooling plate and went to bed.
thequiet1 pretty much said everything I wanted to(while I was signing up on wordpress
). Just entered this to reinforce thequiet1′s post as I do strongly agree with it. I would like to point out that having empathy and having the ability to use it well are separate things. Also being able to see what motivates a person plus manipulate them is also quite different from empathy, in my personnel experience as a young man with Autism I have found that people often mistake the two.
“Quite correct, except it’s not a problem. It takes effort so you restrict it to persons you want to be with. You are free to choose, whilst others are forced to even if they don’t want to.”
I can see that in most instances this is true, but in most peoples’ lives they cannot choose everyone they interact with. There are life circumstances (work, relatives, etc) that can make this problematic.
The other thing I wonder is how does one even know to fake it? Is it simply through observation of anothers actions at the time, or are the situations predictable enough to know from past experiences?
Well obviously i can’t speak for all autists and can only relay my personal experience and those from our discussion groups.
Workrelated problems usually are restricted to adolescence- late twenties. After that most that can succeed do succeed quite well.
(autists have a slightly higher then average intelligence overall, but also the usual misfits which would fail regardless of their condition)
Either because their work is of high quality so the employer accepts the quirks, or they take a job were social interaction is at a minimum.
A perk of autism is the enormous detailing you do. You can see every twitch, every minimal bodymovement and become very adept at reading someones state of mind.
As you age you accumulate a reservoir of ‘correct responses’ and you apply them when deemed necessary. This is purely an intellectual process. Every day i meet this guy who has a recurring braintumor which metastasized. So he’s pretty well doomed.
When i meet him i know he’s actually a dead man walking. That’s what i would tell him if he were to ask me. Luckily for him he didn’t so i fake empathy by touching lightly his shoulder in passing by and saying: You look fine, enjoying your holiday? or similar noncommittal phrases.
I do this because i know intellectually someone in such a state rather not be treated like he’s not well. Not because i feel compassion.
You may not feel compassion in the same way, but you must care in your own way in order to want to behave in a manner that is postive. It can’t all be just a rational response, because some of these behaviors are not just reason, but involve values in order to apply the reason. If not how do you feel that you are different than what others may call a sociopath? (not meant to offend) Is it just a matter of valuing others?
Actually it seems he’s feeling a compassion based on rational rather than emotionally instinctive considerations. Which sociopaths could also fake, but mainly to conceal their particular pathology.
“Actually it seems he’s feeling a compassion based on rational rather than emotionally instinctive considerations”
I understand this, but I wonder if there is more going on rational considerations (a bit of rationalization that a given behavior is rational). A sociopath could come up with rational reasons for doing all sorts of things that nonsociopaths would consider terrible things.
But then you’d have to assume he’s lying about what he did and why, and you could assume that possibility about what any of us here are making claims to.
“But then you’d have to assume he’s lying about what he did and why, and you could assume that possibility about what any of us here are making claims to.”
Lying has nothing to do with it, but the second part of the statement could be true. We are often not really aware of our true motivations, and I am exploring the idea that there is a type of caring for fellow person beyond the emotional response for him (and yet may not be strictly rational). The sociopath reference is there for contrast, not as much for comparison.
Lying and related pretense has everything to do with whether or not behavior is sociopathic. Especially as in your admitted comparison with that of autists.
ccbowers,
petrossa’s motivation could simply be to get through social interactions as smoothly as possible. Showing signs of empathy when it’s expected would facilitate this. That may sound very cold but I’m sure the process only sounds so rational and calculated when explained in hindsight. I would guess it is likely petrossa learnt to respond like this because at some point in earlier life he din’t act that way and received a negative reaction as a result, so he learnt how to avoid the negative reaction. It’s not empathy, nor is it sociopathy, it’s just learning how to interact socially without the automatic responses most people have.
I am slightly different to petrossa in that while I would feel empathy in the same situation, I don’t intuitively know how to express it. That is something I have to learn by observing others and consciously applying it, adjusting my technique over time according to the reactions I receive. But I never think of it like that when I’m doing it, it’s just a natural adaptation to fit in and be accepted by those around me.
thequiet1-
I understand what you are saying. I was just surprised in the way that petrossa expressed his lack of emotional response in many situations, and in some ways was wondering if he was a bit like you describe yourself. I feel I do have strong empathy – particularly perspective taking ability, but find that I do occasionally find it difficult to give the type of responses people want for comfort in certain social situations. If I did not empathize with others I doubt that I could interact with others for more than 30 seconds without being viewed as jerk.
ccbowers, I think we may simply differ in our interpretation of the definition of empathy. I use it to mean a sympathetic emotional response to another persons situation. Therefore being able to take alternate perspectives and understand why someone feels the way they do would not be empathy on it’s own. I’m not sure if this matches the definition of empathy that would be used in diagnosing or describing ASD, I would be interested to find out.
I have had a quick look through some common definitions of empathy, and it seems most do concentrate simply on being able to understand another persons situation and how they would feel. I did however find this quote from Simon Baron-Cohen on wikipedia:
“Empathy is about spontaneously and naturally tuning into the other person’s thoughts and feelings, whatever these might be [...]There are two major elements to empathy. The first is the cognitive component: Understanding the others feelings and the ability to take their perspective [...] the second element to empathy is the affective component. This is an observer’s appropriate emotional response to another person’s emotional state.”
That is how I think of empathy. In this case there are 2 ways in which petrossa may not fit the definition; his response is not “spontaneus” or “natural,” but learned, and he lacks the affective component, the emotional response. I would say he is only acting on the cognitive component.
petrossa I’m sorry for speaking with the assumption that I understand your inner workings. Correct me if I have missed the mark
# ccbowerson 12 May 2011 at 1:55 pm
I’m not offended by sociopath. There’s a huge difference between the two. I have no desire to or derive pleasure from harming even a fly. I don’t hate, i’m not angry at society. I’m fine with it.
# Jeremiahon 12 May 2011 at 5:32 pm
I can’t lie when asked a direct question. That’s a major hurdle in social interaction. If someone asks you does this make me look fat you’ll respond honestly, which is what most prefer not to hear.
Ofcourse over time you learn to lie, but it’s hard not to just blurb out the first thing that does come to mind. Count to ten, then lie.
# thequiet1on 12 May 2011 at 10:52 pm
You are correct.
My take on empathy is:
Once upon a time when we were nomads we needed every member of the group to survive. Survival was hard. Each member less was a diminished change of survival. So that got hardwired into the limbic system.
As the neo-cortex developed it started to incorporate the input from the limbic system in it’s continuous dataflow. It doesn’t ‘know’ were it comes from (there’s next to none vertical connections between the two layers) it sees the corporal changes. The hormone secretions, the facial expression, the muscle tonus, the heart rate etc etc. It tries to give it an explanation and comes up with ‘feeling’.
This ‘feeling’ gets analyzed and is put into context. A reaction is generated and your brain tells you afterwards what it made up as story.
With autism in general this interpretative mechanism is not or less developed resulting in emotions not being analyzed. The annoys the limbic system and it floods you with more hormones making you anxious. Hence the prevalence of anxiety in autists.
Back to empathy. By experience you learn that other people need some kind of response to certain situations. Over time you learn by trial and error what fits and you become very adept at reading the telltale signs of the limbic system. The micro-expressions, bodystance, eyefocus etc. In his way you can rationally determine the other persons emotional state of mind.
Then it’s up to you to ignore it or react to it. Rationally. If you’re a nice person you’ll try to give a proper response, if not you don’t because you couldn’t care less.
When i meet people who annoy me or i’m just generally irritated i obviously couldn’t care less.
In general my first impulse it to try to respond in away that is best for them in order to avoid unpleasant situations.
Overall one avoids people all together. Saves the bother.
petrossa, I sensed earlier that you are not motivated to lie.
But there’s also a common form of lying known as rationalization. By all accounts it’s self-deceptive, but Robert Trivers for example thinks even though it appears self-deceptive, it’s deception with the end purpose of deceiving others. I sense you aren’t motivated to do that either, but I could be wrong.
Afaik it’s a commonality amongst HFA to not be able to lie easily.
My mind is completely literal. Ratio is pure, and hard. I’m acutely aware of all my defaults, it just doesn’t register as a problem.
I have no need to lie (except to my wife when i spend too much
or authority figures to avoid getting shafted) because i feel i am not beholden to anyone. I am who i am, and that is enough. People can take it or leave it.
If i lie to someone it’s to protect him from my perceived truth.
Rationalization is not an option, it’s how my mind works. There no other mode.
Jeremiah-
I think I disagree with the assessment of rationalization as a form of lying, at least in the way I used the term. I say this because in reality most of our thinking as human beings is lying… we often act, and retrofit reasons on top of those actions. This is a form of rationalization but is not really lying, because our intent is not deceive anyone. It is driven by a desire to make a logical sense of something that may not have been actually thought through at the time
thequiet1-
I don’t think we disagree about the definition of empathy too much… I was just emphasizing perspective taking ability as an important component for me. There is certainly an additional emotional component that personalizes it a bit more… viewing the situation from your own perspective.
Petrossa,
I’ve never believed in p-zombies.
Your posts here have made me have a rethink.
Of course you are not a classical p-zombie, but it sounds like you’re half way there, so may be there are also totally unconscious robots walking around pretending to be human.
And of course, you could be full of shit, which would save me the trouble of the rethink.
Unfortunately you don’t sound like it.
(I’m going to assume you are not offended by this post, otherwise I’m going to reclaim my non-belief in at least half p-zombies
)
rationalize |ˈra sh ənlˌīz; ˈra sh nəˌlīz|
verb [ trans. ]
1 attempt to explain or justify (one’s own or another’s behavior or attitude) with logical, plausible reasons, even if these are not true or appropriate
# BillyJoe7
Nope not offended at all. From my pov i don’t suffer from emotional submission. I am free, free from the cosntraints of an ancient survival mechanism that’s hopelessly out of it’s depth in modern society.
Whatever label you want to give that is immaterial. It has no added value.
# Jeremiah
I see your point in principle however it’s in the wrong context which i guess confused others.
When one talks about ratio, the very first that comes to mind is a kind of logical thoughtpattern devoid of emotions.
In your ‘synonym’ it’s in effect not a logical thoughtpattern devoid of emotions but actually the inverse.
One tries to twist things so that they look more acceptable.
I think the dictionary needs a rewrite
petrossa-Is your use of ”
” an affectation too?
Nothing i wrote sofar contains any form of affectation so in this case also not. Affectation is not my thing. I am who i am, and i need not present myself any other way since i’m quite ok with myself.
The smiley is conveying the notion i suddenly realized by Jeremiah’s use of rationalization that the concept is turned in on itself by that definition.
I find that amusing.
Jeremiah-
I did not find your dictionary post of rationalize in conflict with what I meant. Lying implies an intent to deceive, rationalizing implies an intent to explain… which may or may not be incorrect or deceptive.
Rationalization implies an intent to disregard the requirement that an explanation be honest. You are rationalizing when you argue otherwise.
# Jeremiah on 14 May 2011 at 1:27 pm
Can’t agree with that definition. Rationalization implies you use ration rather then emotions.
As with all things it can be abused, but that’s not implied.
“Rationalization implies an intent to disregard the requirement that an explanation be honest.”
Nowhere in the definition that you posted does it say this. In the same way that simply being wrong does not imply deceipt (but lying does), a person who rationalizes may not be conscious of their reason for doing something (therefore they attempt to explain it). This may be wrong, but wrong is not lying. For example right now you are wrong about the term, but I don’t think you are lying about it. =)
petrossa and bowers,
I’m not wrong about the term. Rationalization is a form of lying, consciously or otherwise. It’s intentionally misleading as in the telling of half the truth and not the whole. Just as self deception is a form of lying, and especially these arguments to make a point when you both should know you don’t really have a point to make.
The definition I posted is clear, but if both of you want to make up your own that’s fine.
However, here’s what evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist Robert Trivers has to say about it from his paper, The Elements of a Scientific Theory of Self-Deception:
“Fictitious narratives of intention. Just as we can misremember the past in a self-serving way, so we can be unconscious of ongoing motivation, instead experiencing a conscious stream of thoughts which may act, in part, as rationalizations for what we are doing, all of which is immediately available verbally should we be challenged by others: “But I wasn’t thinking that at all, I was thinking such-and-such.”
Sounds like ccbowers, but maybe that’s just me.
And for petrossa we have this from Wikipedia: “In psychology and logic, rationalization (or making excuses[1]) is a defense mechanism in which perceived controversial behaviors or feelings are explained in a rational or logical manner to avoid the true explanation. It often involves ad hoc hypothesizing. This process ranges from fully conscious (e.g. to present an external defense against ridicule from others) to mostly subconscious (e.g. to create a block against internal feelings of guilt).”
But since petrossa doesn’t feel he avoids the truth, or is subject to emotions such as guilt, he won’t know from personal experience if he or others rationalize as described above or not.
# Jeremiah
I never claimed you were wrong about the term. I just had issues with the ‘implied’ lying when using ratio.
Furthermore i have issues with the dictionary, i feel that the definition of Rationalization as you use is incorrect.
That doesn’t mean you are incorrect. The definition is there so you can use it, therefor using it absolves you of the responsibility for the error, but it’s still incorrect.
To my mind lying is a derivative of deception, which is always using your cognitive functions. But not restricted or even connected to our ratio, since practically all mammals that can express themselves are capable of deception.
And, as i’ve understood, advanced language studies with primates have also shown deception in language. Although it would take me long time to refind that particular tidbit.
PS
As for Wikipedia: Sigh.
www dot populartechnology dot net/2008/11/anti-wikipedia-resource dot html
petrossa, even plants use deception, but lying by most definitions is generally considered to be a human tactic. We deceive each other all the time just by keeping secrets, playing certain types of games, etc.
But most of those don’t involve the essentially human tactic of a pretense of honesty and truth. So there’s acceptable deception in our various cultures and there’s the type that’s not. Those types include forms of intentional dishonesty that will put the other party at an unacceptable disadvantage.
Even so, there’s a lot that by definition qualifies as lying:
lie 2
noun
an intentionally false statement
And while I’d like to see that definition changed to ‘intentionally and unacceptable false statement,’ that’s not likely to happen.
I disagree. Lying and deception are 2 branches of the same tree. The only difference is that lying is verbalization of deception.
They all serve the same purpose. Hide the truth. Gaining an advantage by misdirection.
But for me i’m done now. Was fun but i lost interest, since i’m right and you are wrong. It was nice discussing with you.
petrossa,
“Nope not offended at all.”
I’m not autistic but I, also, am never offended by anything said to me on the internet and it seems crazy to me that anyone should. Hell, words on a screen posted by someone I’ve never met. Get out of here.
“From my pov i don’t suffer from emotional submission. I am free, free from the cosntraints of an ancient survival mechanism that’s hopelessly out of it’s depth in modern society.”
I’m afraid you don’t know what you’ve missed out on. An emotional connection with someone of the opposite sex is just about the best experience there is.
petrossa said
This fits the definition of ‘affectation’.I’m afraid that you are deceiving yourself when you say “Affectation is not my thing. “
Definition of AFFECTATION
a : the act of taking on or displaying an attitude or mode of behavior not natural to oneself or not genuinely felt
b : speech or conduct not natural to oneself : artificiality
Oh. In my language it gets translated as a negative form of attention getting. Over the top behavior, for example someone gets pinched and screams as if he was hit with a bat.
In your definition i now see what you mean.
No, the smiley was true. I do have quite a good sense of humor, the problem is often i state it so deadpan that people are confused if i’m joking or not.
The other day i was in a shop were the checkout lady was filling up the cashdrawer. In french the word for a compartment for coins is the same as hole. So she said when dropping the pennies in the quarters, oops i’ve put it in the wrong hole. I said immediately in my monotonous voice: happens to me all the time.
Took her quite some time to work out the innuendo, after which she blushed
# BillyJoe7on 15 May 2011 at 6:35 am
You don’t know what you miss out on not being bothered by emotions. For every positive there 3 negatives.
If your partner dumps you’ll go in a fuque, i’ll just go find another.
@petrossa,
>I disagree. Lying and deception are 2 branches of the same tree. The only difference is that lying is verbalization of deception.<
Still different, even though way too simple and wrong to boot. And lying is a branch of the deception tree, if you want to paint a better picture.
And how would you be an authority on the difference if you can't do either? Which of course, as it turns out, you can.
Two of my children and myself are on the spectrum, and I have met many autistics at my sons school, none of them lack emotion or empathy. Autistics are not sociopaths and they don’t act like Spock. While in general I have a flat affectation and so does my youngest son. My wife tells me she can read our emotions just fine now that she knows what to look for.
“If your partner dumps you’ll go in a fuque, i’ll just go find another.”
Thats not autism, thats being a sociopath. Autistics love their wives and children as much as anyone else.
“Autistics are not sociopaths and they don’t act like Spock.”
This is why I was exploring this question… his responses seemed a bit extreme, and I was wondering if he enjoys the idea that he is completely rational and without emotion more than it is true. (I’m not sure that reason is possible without emotion, but that’s another topic) At first I thought I was misunderstanding via hyperbole, but it appears he was actually being literal.
Sometimes people have difficulties with the emotions they have so they pretend they aren’t there (ASD or not). Also, we also have to keep in mind that ASD encompasses a broad range of personalities/traits, and is not a narrow biologically defined disease. I would expect a range of empathic ability among those with ASD, but perhaps less of an ability to communicate the empathy in a way that is understood by others
# Halfdead
Thank you for your diagnosis but i think i’ll go with the official one i’ve got from a professional who took time to diagnose me properly rather then jump to conclusions from a few comments i made.
Autism is a spectrum. You are unfortunate enough to be on the low end.
In AS discussion groups i meet frequently people like me who also are officially diagnosed with HFA/AS
I don’t easily take affront but in this case i do. Not so much because i care what you think, but for all you now i might fragile and insecure and take you seriously.
That was an irresponsible remark.
Petrossa,
“If your partner dumps you’ll go in a fuque, i’ll just go find another.”
What the hell does fuque mean?
Interestingly, my wife was in the process of leaving me six years ago. She’d seen a solicitor and had picked out alternative accommodation for herself and the kids. But we are still together and my life has changed dramatically. But you will never guess why she was leaving? She felt emotionally isolated (I’d become too wrapped up in my work).
I guess you would have just got up and left.
Oh well…horses for courses…
# BillyJoe7 on 16 May 2011 at 8:23 am
Sorry, typo. Fugue, dissociative fugue or psychogenic fugue (DSM-IV Dissociative Disorders 300.13)
Yes i can imagine she’d feel like that. Many NT-Autist relationship fails because of that. My wife wanted to divorce me too but she got cancer and died before she could. That seriously pissed her off. Why me she said, why not you? You don’t care anyway.
She wasn’t wrong but well, life is a bitch and then you die.
On the discussion fora you see a lot of questions from NT partners asking for advice. There isn’t any.
Strangly enough an autist-autist relation has even less chance of succeeding.
You see, what is at stake here is a totally different state of mind. To me relationships don’t have the importance they have to you. I don’t want to procreate, sex i can take or leave it (common among AS), company gets on our nerves.
The only reason why there’s so many cries for help out there in the relationship field is because of peer pressure. Young autists are constantly bombarded with being ‘not normal’. So at a young age you start to really believe that and frantically try to be ‘normal’. Which is surefire way to failure because they are already ‘normal’ just different.
This is largely to blame on the professional community, whose incomprehension tries to hammer a square peg in around hole anyway.
This is now getting worse and worse since autism is a buzzword now. I’m sure glad that in my youth i was never diagnosed and i could develop as i felt like. I feel sorry for the kids which are now being told they ‘suffer’ from an ‘disorder’.
Petrossa -
“Strangly enough an autist-autist relation has even less chance of succeeding.”
That is very interesting – I would think that two autists would mutually respect each other’s desire to avoid tedious social chit-chat and other relationship obligations that NTs emphasize. Does the failure arise from restricted areas of interest that are mutually exclusive?
Beats me. I couldn’t stand to live with someone like me, maybe that’s it. Always wonder how my wife manages who has a Mediterranean volcanic personality. Stabbed me once in a burst of fury.
Opposites attract?
Maybe. Your emotional disconnect probably prevented a mutual homicide! : )
I am no expert, but I think that autist-autist marriages would tend to be more successful because of reduced unrealistic expectations.
Happily ever after isn’t something that just happens except in fairy tales.
So it’s a successful marriage where you’re unhappy just as you both expected?
# Woodyon 16 May 2011 at 7:55 pm
It was just a flimsy steakknife, it just marginally pierced the skin. But had it been a real knife i’d been bleeding that’s for sure. As it was i got 2 stitches and a bandaid.
# Jeremiahon 16 May 2011 at 10:49 pm
At an average western big city divorce rate of 50% one could at least say people have an warped view about what marriage will bring.
My father (super HFA) just celebrated his 45th anniversary. I do believe that # daedalus2u is half right.
2 autists just don’t get along, but NT-AS relationships that are conscious of the issue tend to last long.
It’s where one of the partner’s isn’t aware their partner has HFA things go wrong. From what i gather quite often the HFA isn’t diagnosed and his/her partner doesn’t understand his behavior. They frequently end up on the board looking for help.
Where there is this awareness people swear by their HFA partner. Most often used are kindness, intelligence and quirkiness.
petrossa,
“I don’t want to procreate, sex i can take or leave it, company gets on our nerves.”
I said it before, but I’m happy I’m not autistic.
Jeremiah, I think that the reason most marriages fail is because the parties don’t get out of it what they expected to get out of it.
If you are getting out of a marriage what you expected to get out of it, how is the marriage failing?
I am not telling people what kind of expectations they should have, but one of the standard ideas of marriage is that the marriage itself is “the happiest day of my life” which implies that each day afterward will be a little less happy.
That kind of mindset isn’t going to produce a successful marriage (in my opinion).
petrossa said:”It was just a flimsy steakknife, it just marginally pierced the skin. But had it been a real knife i’d been bleeding that’s for sure. ”
Just make sure your wife never watches ‘Crocodile Dundee’
# BillyJoe7 on 17 May 2011 at 7:28 am
Supposedly some schizophrenic once said a few 1000 years ago: “Blessed are the weak of mind, for they shall inherit the earth.”
(i may have the quote wrong there somewhere )
# tmac57 on 17 May 2011 at 10:09 am
Best not lift a finger against me. Last time 3 bulky goons brushed their way between us, one of them pushed me a little.
3 milliseconds later he had 1.55 mtr of screaming shedevil on him. He and his comrades quickly crossed the road to scream insults at her from a distance. She advanced halfway back across, they retreated even further back. I just stood there, smilingly admiring the spectacle. You don’t mess with a Mediterranean female.
d2u says,
>one of the standard ideas of marriage is that the marriage itself is “the happiest day of my life” which implies that each day afterward will be a little less happy<
It implies the opposite, because it expresses an emotion based on expectations of future happiness. Assuming those involved are capable of the emotional responses that make up a large part of being happy.
That’s assuming happiness is only an emotion. There is also intellectual happiness, which beats to other happiness anyday because you can control it.
@petrossa
Lacking those emotions, how would you know that? Or not know by your intellect alone that the emotions are given credit for the larger part of our intelligence as a species. The scope of our predictive abilities would be much narrower without its contribution to our curiosity and drive.
Also, petrossa, speaking of controlling the pleasures of the intellect, you wrote on another thread the following:
“It sure sucks major to be aware constantly, i destroyed my pancreas by selfmedicating on alcohol. Those were nice years when i was in an alcohol induced dumbness.”
When Billyjoe7 remarked earlier that you “could be full of shit” I thought that was a bit out of line, but on second thought I don’t.
Well Jeremiah, what an aggressive tone. Obviously you are free to believe whatever you want.
Anyway, it may surprise you to know that these things are actively studied. There is for example this piece
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0008429
which i discussed a little bit with one of the authors. The reward system is wired into the cognitive system.
So thought can provoke a reward sensation not related to a limbic stimulus.
I thought it fitted nicely with my theory on how self was created. The author was kind enough to agree. Tickled my pride a bit.
petrossa,
That study involved 19 right-handed healthy subjects (12 men and 7 women, mean age 30.7 years, SD 7.1, range 23 to 50 years) without any neurological or psychiatric illness.
What does that have to do with how you personally have compensated for the disconnection between the relevant brain regions that these subjects were demonstrated to have?
You said for example, “thought can provoke a reward sensation not related to a limbic stimulus.”
Who other than yourself has said it couldn’t? And if it had been said about yourself, how would this study of those unlike yourself prove anything to the contrary?
As to your theory on how self was created, I hadn’t bothered to comment on that at all, so again you’ve made no point with any relevance to what supposedly would surprise me.
But the limbic system neither came from nomads or was hardwired as a result of their exclusive needs.
If the author of the paper agreed with anything you may have rattled off on the subject, I doubt that simplistic supposition was a part of it.
Also what good is an intellectual perception of reward if you have no intellectual appreciation of punishment?
# Jeremiah
It’s not with whom that study showed that, it shows in general that the reward system is linked to the cognitive functions. Which stands to reason. There must be some feedback system to make cognition work. How else can it develop?
You are stuck in the psychological side of the human condition.
Forget about that. Psychology is like astrology, or phrenology. Looks like it means something but it’s just junk.
Your cognitive functions are just as mechanical as all other functions, regulated by the same feedback systems as any other neural network. You have no ‘perception’ you just get the same positive stimulus you’d get as if the limbic system was causing it. Solving a problem can sure make you FEEL very good. But it’s not an emotion because it has nothing to with the limbic.
Your ‘self’ is a side effect of all systems humming along. As such it has no real meaning because it doesn’t exist as such. It never evolved the same way other brainfunctions evolved. It can’t be because it doesn’t depend on a particular neural network.
I’m not going to post 100′s of links of other studies here, you can do your own homework.
Read a book. There’s plenty of popular science books written by great neuro……. (fill in the particular discipline)
Mostly i recommend: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/1932594019.html to start of your quest.
Self is not something of very much importance in the species. If anything it is a negative longterm survival factor for the species.
petrossa
The limbic system IS a vital part of the cognitive function. Read some books yourself, if you’re capable of understanding what you’ve deluded yourself is not important, since if it was of course, you’d not be what you seem to think is operational. Except from all the foolishness you’ve written here you’re barely functional. Parasitical would be a more appropriate description.
Read Damasio, Rose, and the like and then we’ll talk.
But then again, you wrote, “Self is not something of very much importance in the species. If anything it is a negative longterm survival factor for the species.”
Except that all biological entities on the planet have had an elementary sense of self with respect to where they were in relation to all other entities in their immediate environment. That elementary sense has been one of the most important aspects of survival since life arose on earth.
So on second thought, I doubt we’ll get around to finding any common ground to talk on.
# Jeremiahon 18 May 2011 at 2:56 am
I don’t know which books you read but they are completely wrong or you interpreted them wrong. There are many out there with outdated, plain wrong, or just way out there theories.
Evidently, since the limbic system existed long before the neo-cortex and given the fact there are next to none vertical connections between the two any interaction can only be by inference.
The limbic system itself is capable of cognitive functions. Totally independent. That’s what you call emotions.
It’s a multi-layered cake of abstractions. From the basic ‘real’ brain and its various networks, layer and layer of dataflows crossover and intermingle.
All this noise creates yet another layer of abstraction, and yet another till finally we are at ‘self’.
The most distant layer of abstraction of them all is psychology. That is so far removed from what goes on it is totally disconnected. Phrenology but worse.
The animals with the least sense of self survive the longest as a a spieces.
A medusa hardly has a nervous system, still it is here after 500.000.000 years.
So your statement: “That elementary sense has been one of the most important aspects of survival since life arose on earth.” is totally incorrect.
Millions of species are extinct, and still are dying out. The amoeba has theoretical eternal lifespan. I seriously doubt it has any sense of anything.
“So on second thought, I doubt we’ll get around to finding any common ground to talk on.”
As long as you are stuck in the superiority mode of life i guess we won’t. I understand it’s hard to grasp if you are fully immersed in this ‘life is the ultimate’ way of thinking.
Accepting that one doesn’t mean nothing is hard. That’s why religion is so widespread.
petrossa,
“There is also intellectual happiness, which beats to other happiness anyday because you can control it.”
But we normals are not deprived of intellectual happiness. My favourite group is Jethro Tull. There is very little emotion in their music or lyrics, but it is intellectually very satisfying. The musical ideas and the complicated rhythms are a pleasure to behold. You have to like the flute though.
And we normals can also learn to control emotional happiness. We can make it work in our favour and learn to elinimate the undesireable side-effects.
I have a crush on one of my employees who works only one four-hour session per week. She charges my fantasy life and, through her, I can once again masturbate to orgasm. But I’m not so silly as to think I can make reality happen here. She is considerably younger and her other job brings her into contact with my wife – who got her this job. The pleasure she gives me by just being there once a week is enough. Anything more could end badly.
BJ-
Your personal life antectdote makes a good point, but there is a line in there that qualifies as TMI, I think.
# BillyJoe7 on 18 May 2011 at 7:08 am
Never claimed ‘normals’ couldn’t. We call your type NT btw, not normal.
As long as you have intellectual capacity the same goes. Why shouldn’t it?
Just i wonder why being under the whims of a prehistoric brain that is hardwired for certain responses should count as positive.
Those response patterns are totally inadequate nowadays, more then ample proof of that is in the myriad of negative happenings caused by lust, xenophobia (a very good survival strategy when you are for the first time meeting a tiger), territorial protection, procreation drive.
From all the wars, crimes, mayhem, bloodshed i’d say the most part is caused by a derivative of those.
Sure you have coldblooded socio/psychopaths but those are a minority (luckily).
I can admire the beauty of a woman as much as the next guy, but there nothing in me that will take me over and lust after her.
If i watch a pronflick i’m watching for the way the silicone wrinkles, the blemishes, the way the eyes of the actress flickers in the direction of the director, how the same scene reappears from 3 different camera angles and are repeated once again, and then get bored with it all.
The idea of masturbating to an unreachable is not my idea of fun. I prefer to let my partner handle that. I have an on/off switch for that. If my wife shows signs of ‘wanting some’ i just switch on and dive in. But i’m just happy if she leaves me alone.
Suits her fine evidently.
petrossa: “The amoeba has theoretical eternal lifespan. I seriously doubt it has any sense of anything.”
Wikipedia: “In environments that are potentially lethal to the cell, an amoeba may become dormant by forming itself into a ball and secreting a protective membrane to become a microbial cyst. The cell remains in this state until it encounters more favourable conditions.[8] While in cyst form the amoeba will not replicate and may die if unable to emerge for a lengthy period of time.”
Me: How’s that for an elementary sense of its environment?
petrossa: “the limbic system existed long before the neo-cortex and given the fact there are next to none vertical connections between the two any interaction can only be by inference.”
Me: The limbic system, far from being unconnected to the neo-cortex, interacts with it on a non-stop basis unless some physiological problem interferes. The systems communicate on a subconscious level, which we normally “feel” on our more conscious level but can only monitor on that level by the inferential process that you so fondly yet ignorantly speak of.
What books do I read that aren’t out of date? Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain by Antonio Damasio is on my Kindle as we speak.
# Jeremiahon 18 May 2011 at 12:51 pm
wikipedia: http://www.populartechnology.net/2008/11/anti-wikipedia-resource.html
An amoeba has a theoretical eternal lifespan since it makes identical copies of itself. Theoretically an amoeba you find now might be the ‘same’ one that lived billions of years ago.
Subconscious doesn’t exist. What you call subconscious is in fact the limbic consciousness.
And as biologically determined fact, there is hardly any physical connection between the layers. Interaction is by proxy.
Antonio Damasio is a ‘superiority’ believer. The world is filled with books by people like him refusing to accept that they have no meaning and start to look for it. It’s content is not unlike some new age floaty-floaty stuff.
Sense of self in an amoeba. Yeah right. and god is in us all.
Read it, believe it if you need to. But realize that they’re all the same basic thing: Why am i here? Please love me.
The answer is: you aren’t here and the uncaring universe doesn’t give a crap.
petrossa, you knew that subconscious means subordinate consciousness to us superiors, didn’t you?
Also we all should know amoebas don’t make identically exact copies of themselves. If they did, they would not have evolved as a phylogenetically diverse species. So what you say about their life span is irrelevant to your questioning of the extent of their awareness, individually and/or collectively. You did know they can communicate with each other, right?
Or would you dismiss that as somehow an interaction by proxy so it doesn’t count. Drawing inferences up a multitude of their minuscule gazoos?
And Damasio is new age. Right.
ccbowers,
Your personal life antectdote makes a good point, but there is a line in there that qualifies as TMI, I think.”
I was replying to petrossa though.
I think in his world anything goes.
——————————————–
petrossa,
“The idea of masturbating to an unreachable is not my idea of fun. I prefer to let my partner handle that.”
Why not both?
In fact, fantasising the unreachable is often far better than reality where things can get messy and complicated.
——————————————-
jeremiah,
“How’s that for an elementary sense of its environment?”
As long as you don’t push that like someone else who finally left this blog after several returns under different badly disguised monikers.
Excuse me, Billyoe7, but are you telling me not to discuss some aspect of evolutionary biology that you may happen not to be familiar with?
Are you an evolutionist by any chance, as I don’t gather that from your commentary so far. So far it seems you’re someone who has a business of some unknown sort (like plumbing?) with a wife that is quite lovely except that you needed to hire a younger woman to secretly jerk off to while supposedly hard at work instead. Secretly that is unless your wife or someone you both know has access to your computer or this blog.
Do you have some positive comment to make about the nature of the self that is in some sense more instructive than we might find in Damasio’s works? Maybe you can drop the tool that you’re working with long enough to let us know what that is.
And at least petrossa has some positive opinions that can make others think and react to. Have you any?
# Jeremiahon 18 May 2011 at 3:22 pm
petrossa, you knew that subconscious means subordinate consciousness to us superiors, didn’t you?
Yes, that’s why i said it doens’t exist.
Did you know that prions evolve in response to their environment? So they communicate in the same sense you seem to think amoeba communicate.
Prions aren’t life by the longest stretch of the imagination.
petrossa
Prions evolve by responding strategically to their environment. They have a mechanism for proactive choice, such as do viruses.
They replicate, except by parasitic means. They meet at the minimum the generally accepted criteria for life.
If that stretches your imagination, so be it.
# Jeremiahon 19 May 2011 at 2:41 am
They meet at the minimum the generally accepted criteria for life.
Just know more then anyone else afaik it’s yet unclear how prions adapt.
But the overwhelming majority of those who think they know for a reason, believe it’s adapting the same way a grain of sand becomes a grain of sand.
If you believe sand meets at the minimum the generally accepted criteria for life well, so be it.
The rest of the conscious world doesn’t.
Virii aren’t considered to be ‘life’. Life involves selfreplication. A virus doesn’t. It’s host does it for it.
As such it doesn’t meet at the minimum the generally accepted criteria for life.
It’s unclear exactly how any biological entity adapts, but it’s commonly agreed to by biologists that it’s a process of Darwinian selection. If sand is the result of a similar selective process it’s news to biologists. Even bigger news that sand grains arrange themselves for replication. Is a sand dune in your view a social group that has cooperatively formed the dune, and will carry out a process of replenishing the energy that the dune needs to survive?
And it’s not necessary to “selfreplicate” in the sense that life has to do it all by its lonesome. If it were, the procreation process would not have been a viable alternative to cell division.
But then of course if the procreated entities are not really living, then you’ve made your point that we’re all not really here.
A prion isn’t an entity. It’s a protein. If you seriously want to argue that proteins are life, well. What can i say?
My proteinshake is bursting with life. So is my steak.
Jeremiah,
Your problem is that you don’t recognise anthropomorphism when you see it (or read it). Just because biochemists speak of bacteria as if they were human beings going about their business of socially interacting with each other, doesn’t mean that they actually believe that they are actually like human beings. It’s just friggin’ short hand! Sure there are some prominent scientist who really do think so, but there are also prominent scientists who are creationists and climate change denialists.
And if your reading of my posts are anything to go by, you need lessons in comprehension:
I did not hire the female employee, my wife hired her. She works with my wife in my wife’s other job. Before she came to work with me, I had met her only once. There was an immediate attraction but I never expected to ever see her again. I was embarassed when my wife told me she had hired her for the vacant position we had at work. Am I supposed to deny the attraction to myself? Who knows where that could lead? Or do I acknowledge it and make it work for me and make sure I prevent any messy complications that could affect everyone?
And I don’t jerk off at work. Where ever did you get that idea? I don’t even get time for coffee breaks and I have to sneak in lunch when I can.
Finally, my wife does not read blogs such as these. She is not interested in science at all. She wouldn’t be seen dead here. She is a touchy-feely type of person. Ironically, she is actually a computer network technician. She only works part-time in my busness hiring and firing and organising because I hate that sort of thing.
Thank you BillyJoe7 for teaching me that one should not anthropomorphize to the point at least of using sand grains as examples of non-living replicators. You and petrossa have a lot more in common than you think.
You should invite him down to Mooroolbark to have a circle jerk, where I’m sure nobody reads this blog and would recognize you from these various depictions of the mixings of your business with your pleasures.
Let me guess: you 2 are actually married to each other and fight out your squabbles online in a totally offtopic tangent on a random thread.
These comments on this post have taken an odd, but admittedly amusing path. I think if viruses were not considered life, that was due to an overly narrow definition of life that was created before viruses were discovered. In other words the definition of life being used is wrong or the term becomes less meaningful. Prions are another story altogether
Jeremiah,
You have now become that rare bird amongst bloggers – someone who has actually upset my demeanor. That is no mean feat.
To be honest I never suspected that anyone on this relatively small blog would be able to identify me in this far off part of the world. May I just say to you that I gave my anecdote in good faith – and perhaps without thinking too much about it – in response to something petrossa said. Somehow it has upset you. I don’t think it could have been my comment about not pushing the analogy too far with respect to viruses, as that was a relatively innocuous comment. Anyway, a lesson well learnt. I will make up my anecdotes from now on and not base them on real life. And, in case it is not clear, I have the utmost respect for the people in my life and I trust you will respect that.
Don’t tell me what to think about, or tell me that my problem is I think about it. You seem to use your anonymity to throw stones instead of information.
But you live in a glass house. Think about that a bit.
Anonymity allows most of us the freedom to express some new or controversial idea, without excoriation from some members of our various faculties or other institutions where our knowledge contributes to our living.
You seem to use it for purposes of saying things to others that would earn you a punch in the mouth if you said it to their face.
Ask yourself how that’s been working out for you so far.
ccbowers, if you argue, which I do, that the ultimate dividing line or border between life and non-life is that entity’s ability to have and use a self replicating strategy, then prions would appear to qualify as living. In addition they consistently choose where and how to exercise that strategy. And do so consistently as a cooperative endeavor. Cooperation not just with a host but with each other.
But those who disagree with that part of life’s definition will, and to a large part do, consider prions to be on the side of the border where the non-living are. Nobody necessarily wants them to be on either of their sides, but there you have it.
Jeremiah,
I honestly don’t understand what you’re so upset about. The response I made that got you all riled up seemed pretty innocuous to me. But, if you really do believe that bacteria have a social life, you would do better to defend that view than to launch a personal attack on those who consider such an idea preposterous.
As for life: there is no dividing line. Just as there is no dividing line between adolescence and adulthood. And just as there was probably no dviding line from non-life to life in evolutionary history. If I have to say “in my opinion” in order to avoid upsetting you, then take it as said.
“…the ultimate dividing line or border between life and non-life is that entity’s ability to have and use a self replicating strategy, then prions would appear to qualify as living.”
I think that replication is a requirement, but insufficient on its own.
BillyJoe7
“But, if you really do believe that bacteria have a social life, you would do better to defend that view than to launch a personal attack on those who consider such an idea preposterous.”
Those who consider such an idea preposterous might want to back that up with some scientific defense of that consideration before personally attacking the integrity or intelligence of the bearer of what they feel is bad news.
“As for life: there is no dividing line. Just as there is no dividing line between adolescence and adulthood. And just as there was probably no dviding line from non-life to life in evolutionary history.”
See, now you’ve put forward what you think is a logically positive argument. Probably the worst argument ever made for answering the question as to whether a prion is alive or not, but that’s just my opinion. I can dissect that further if you like, but perhaps upon reflection you will realize it’s obvious.
And I’ve got scientists like Damasio to defend my views on this. Which such authoritative sources have you got or even offered up in defense of yours?
It is, in fact, those who are claiming the bacteria have a social life who need evidence to support their claim. In fact, it is an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence. And quoting a few scientist who you think make that claim or who actually do make that claim is not sufficient. Climate deniers are able to quote 3 out of 100 top climate scientists to support their claim. I’m sure you can do likewise for the existence of a social life amongst bacteria. I have not seen a consensus statement on this by relevant scientist but I would suggest they would be in a small minority, even what you mmight call a fringe group. This doesn’t make them necessarily wrong of course.
Is a prion life or non-life? I think the answer doesn’t matter. There is no definition of life that draws a sensible dividing line between life and non-life. For any definition there will be exceptions that you want to exclude or include. All we can say is that there are three groups: non-life, life, and a small nebulous group in between which is difficult to classify as either non-life or life. Similarly, in evolutionary history, at some time in the distant past there was clearly no life. Now there clearly is. The naturalistic assumption is that life evolved from non-life. In the transition, there was a nebulous group which we would find difficult to classify as either non-life or life.
So then upon further reflection you can see that there may be a place for a prion in the area of the group that for you at least is nebulous, right?
Of course it’s never been entirely clear that there was ever a complete absence of any form of life on earth, unless we define life not only by the existence of whatever we’ve observed that meets the definition but by whatever may be discovered in future as having once existed here that doesn’t meet it. By that measure, however, we couldn’t even call it alien life.
As to the need for anyone to present evidence in support of any claim that microorganisms have a social life, they would need only to turn to the aspects of Darwinian theory that refer to the variety of kinship mechanisms for social integration. There would appear to be no species where such a mechanism is absent. The burden thus returns to you to find one where it is.
cc, so a person past reproductive age, or infertile from birth is “non-living” but a crystal that sheds smaller seed crystals to replicate itself is “alive”?
daedalus,
“so a person past reproductive age, or infertile from birth is “non-living” but a crystal that sheds smaller seed crystals to replicate itself is “alive”?”
That’s a nice illustration of the fact that:
“For any definition [of life] there will be exceptions that you want to exclude or include.”
Jeremiah,
I think we are now going to argue about the definition of “social life”.
On the other hand, if you are not one of those who believe bacteria consciously and purposefully interact with one another, then I have no argument with you.