AI and cognitive psychology rant (getting more and more OT - tell me if I should shut up)

[Stephen Horne]

On Fri, 17 Oct 2003 17:38:23 +0200, anton at vredegoor.doge.nl (Anton
Vredegoor) wrote:

>Stephen Horne <$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$@$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>Asperger syndrome inflexibility is a different thing. If you were
>>constantly overloaded (from lack of intuition about what is going on,
>>thus having to figure out everything consciously), I expect you would
>>probably cling too much to what you know as well.
>
>It is tempting to claim that my post was implying Aspergers to be
>potentially *more* flexible because of lack of innateness, however
>knowing next to nothing about Aspergers and making wild claims,
>linking it to anthropology and computer science, may be a bit prone to
>making oneself misunderstood and to possibly hurting people
>inadvertently in the process of formulating some consistent theory. So
>I'd rather apologize for any inconveniences and confusion produced
>sofar, and humbly ask my post to be ignored.

No offence was taken.

I could be tempted to claim that people with Aspergers would be more
flexible than other people, *if* they didn't have to deal with a world
full of normal people.

I suspect that this would be just as wrong, though.

The tendency is that less innateness = more flexibility, but only in
healthy individuals. People with Asperger syndrome have lost a subset
of innate social abilities - but not all of them, and we haven't all
lost the same ones. We have less innate abilities, but we are not
adapted to have less innate abilities. When neurological development
processes break down, there is no order to the abilities that remain
and no guarentee that they will work together.

Learning helps fill the gaps, but it isn't magic.


-- 
Steve Horne

steve at ninereeds dot fsnet dot co dot uk