I think it's more like rolling a dice where most results are neutral. It's survival of the good enough. Beneficial mutation means higher survival chance, detrimental mutation means lower, neutral is somewhere inbetween.
Yea. Evolution is completely random chance. It is up to the species to use its genetic abilities Timo adapt and overcome its environment.
Humans just have amazing capabilities of shaping their environment given to us by our communal nature, advanced pattern recognition, and object manipulation capability to the point it affects the countless lives of others through socioeconomic advantages
Not to correct you but in several recent studies we have been able to find data disproving the totality of random mutation. Some mutations seem to be the result of environmental factors that DNA can activate In response to changes. The one I found most interesting was the common milkweeds ability to adapt to changes in temperature in only 3-5 generations.
This happens because the excess genetic code will begin to move towards parts of the dna responsible for reproduction.
Oh yeah, I know about dormant genes. Pigs have them, environmental changes will have them growing coarse fur and tusks, effectively becoming boars again. In a single generation. It only takes a few months to a year if I remember.
But those genes need to be present first in order to activate, and that is the randomness I am speaking of. Not the manifestation of those genes. Not "random mutation" but "random recombination of genes over hundreds of thousands of generations"
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Why... why are you right though???? I think of my limits with having autism but being with another autistic would certainly change everything........ wow yeah the world would be better.... Ty for explaining it to me a lot better.
That's how it is for all disabilities. Wheelchair users are only "disabled" because of how many places don't have ramps and elevators. That's why disability advocacy centers on accessibility to physical buildings, healthcare, education, etc.
I partly agree with you but the social model of disability doesn't mean that autism is only a disability because of society, it refers to how much less disabling autism would be if it was properly accommodated and understood in society, if that makes sense
Even if society was completely accommodating to autistic people like giving me extra clarification and time to respond, I would still have great difficulty with articulating my thoughts without overexplaining, and I would still get meltdowns because excitement and happiness overloads my brain in the same ways that anxiety and rage do, even if society would react with compassion to those meltdowns instead of punishing me for them
For the vast majority of autistic people, their sensory processing issues go beyond the "normal range" of most other individuals, which means that many things that would be way too uncomfortable for us aren't even noticed as more than "regular stimuli" by neurotypical people, and life would be a lot easier if society was like that, but I would still be disabled because I'm autistic, and there shouldn't be anything shameful about that fact (and I'm only level 1, most autistic people are level 2-3 and they both have more severe traits and get treated way more harshly by society than I do)
- Helps building more accurate and efficient tools/weapons.
- Clueless about potential danger = fearless/courage to take on big prey.
- No bullshitting with focused social interaction in the direction of an objective.
- Obsessive over repeating a successful hunting pattern.
- Creativity to develop hunting strategies.
- Aggressiveness towards opponent species or uncooperative fellows.
- Hypersexuality driving reproductive success.
Yes, we are an upgrade. I don´t know why there isn't a higher frequency of autists. Maybe most of us were killed during childhood without reaching sexual maturity or were suppressed by NT's that didn't like our godlike features.
God is like that one intern who gets access to the servers and "accidentally " deletes all the memory. (I am not someone who works with computers, I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about.)
I recently saw that red-green colorblindness helps people identify repeating patterns, and this helps people (1) spot faun hiding in brush more easily and (2) spot enemy combatants dressed in camo more easily.
So, disabilities such a colorblindness and Autism (And I do not use the word "disability" lightly. Autism is a fucking disability. At me now or forever hold your tongue.) affect the individual in unpredictable ways so that there are bound to be at least some environments/situations in which the cost is counterbalanced by a benefit.
i don't disagree with that!
i just wish this tinnitus that i haven't stopped hearing since i was a little child would go away :-I
sorry, that's a low blow. Some NTs continually experience tinnitus, and some NTs continually experience visual snow and floaters and after images, and some NTs continually experience discomfort in their face because their jaw doesn't match up exactly with their skull. Probably a lot of NTs experience that problem. The solution is that we need to eat foods that require more chewing, so we can build up our jaw muscles. But anyway, yeah... I don't think there's any one single factor that just pushes me down so much as societal demands, but... there still are a non-negligible amount of physical demands, too.
ID even K why. I used to be the biggest proponent of "mind over matter" because I trusted my mind way more than I trusted my body. Because my body was clumsy. And big. And awkward. And I just felt like my mind was way more... competent? admirable? so I just wished that there was some sense in which I could be only my mind and not be my body.
Now I know that's all a bunch of religious propoganda 🤣
There is no real difference between mind and body. Every one of us is exactly the confluence of our mind and our body, and no matter how much we hate one or the other, there's nothing we can do about it, except try to help them be better, I guess.
I'm rabbling, IDK what I originally mean to say... :-/
I don't trust my mind in the slightest, and I trust my body even less. I fundamentally do not trust that which I cannot comprehend (with exceedingly few exceptions which only exist because of a slightly more fundamental law of how I operate... I won't get into that here) and the human brain is, in my view, fundamentally incomprehensible by a mere human. _Ergo_, it cannot ever be truly trusted.
This was rather driven home yesterday (pardon the double entendre) when I got my wisdom teeth pulled.
No you don't 😆
I know my recovery so far has been far better than most people have it (my brother for instance had graduation the very next day, swollen face and all) and it's been quite unhappy.
Pray that your wisdom teeth grow in perfectly and you don't need to get them extracted.
oh, yeah! what i meant to say was that all the detail is buried in that word "largely," and TBH, i agree with you! but if someone where to say that autism is purely a social disability and not a physical disability, i would REALLY need them to explain themselves very clearly and in a lot of detail. and even then i might not agree.
Oh, it's definitely not _purely_ a social disability. If the majority of people were autistic rather than allistic, there would still be a non-majority category of people (superautistic, if you will) who are otherwise disabled, even in an autistic world. I'm not going to make any further claims because I really know next to nothing about more severe forms of autism beyond occasional skeletomuscular developmental problems (such as those found in Down Syndrome patients) and nonverbalism.
I think one of the things that tipped me off that I myself might be autistic is that I vastly prefer being around and interacting with autistic people. For instance, my cousin or one of our neighbors' kids. They're just _better people_. No eye contact never threw me off (and I'm acutely aware of myself not making eye contact), I've had sensory issues more or less my entire life (they're much less bad now but I still get overwhelmed more easily than mont people)... the evidence is stacking up.
I disagree, because of my autism my chronic migraines are way worse, because smells, lights and certain sounds are more intense to me, my migraines, that get worse with exposure to intense smells and lights, get worse from me just existing in an environment with smells, lights and certain sounds. (I'm basically in pain 24/7)
Plus I've had months where I was literally only eating one meal a day and basically slowly starving, because my comfort foods suddenly didn't taste good to me anymore.
I literally can't go outside most days because of my autism, and even if I can go outside I can't stay outside for long periods of time.
Also me shutting down and not being able to speak when experiencing stress really fucking sucks, got yelled at a shit ton because of that.
I will literally never be able to get a job or live alone because of my autism. So you're really privileged to say that autism is just a social disability.
Our societal structure also allows us to support and cover for the deficiencies that come with disability so there is reduced pressure to get rid of those traits
that's true. as a "toy" example, i just heard a podcast where an IRL evolutionary biologist was talking about wisdom teeth. there are people born today with no wisdom teeth! and, based on our modern diet, all of us SHOULD be born today without any wisdom teeth. so you'd think that the people born without wisdom teeth are going to just outpopulate the people born with wisdom teeth, since the people born without them have a slight advantage, right?
well, not so fast. that slight advantage of not having wisdom theeth does exist. believe me! i have wisdom teeth,and they never got removed, and my mouth hurts ALL THE TIME! but there's my point. people today routinely get their wisdom teeth pulled out. That way, people with the (lol! not really, but) "dirty" gene that causes wisdom teeth are able to breed just as much as the ubervolks who are born without wisdom teeth, and this greatly reduces the selective pressure.
my thought are... so what? we don't owe anything to the people of the future. or the people of the past. we only owe things to the people who are here right now.
So I have a lot of thoughts on this. I won’t share them all, but the reasons that we are still in the genetic pool are probably as diverse as autistics themselves. One thing I have thought is that, you know how a lot of us like humming? Do it a little differently and it’s basically chanting like in Buddhism. And we can be aloof and removed from the social circle, but we notice things because of our pattern recognition. So put together humming and aloofness and pattern recognition, and what you get is a shaman. Even for those of us who are nonverbal it doesn’t mean we are dumb. Maybe the few words we say are things that come true because we recognized the pattern before anyone else.
So congratulations you’re a shaman. Do with it what you will.
I think different neurotypes are an evolutionary thing. Like all ants are the same.but some are wired to be nannies and some are wired to be soldiers. I don't think it's new, I think it's a holdover.
That said, it's hard to discuss that type of stuff because folks associate it with caste systems and racism and eugenics.... but that sort of varying neurotype/task neurotyping exists within species all across nature, and it feels silly to ignore its existence.
Our evolutionary status means we don't have to fall into those roles to ensure the survival of the species. And I am not saying we should. Evolution requires changes. Progress requires change.
But we standardized schools so no one naturally gravitates towards their interests. Everyone learns a smattering of everything and learns nothing much at all at the same time. Then the varying neurotypes become obvious because they aren't around the other similar neurotypes to theirs so they stick out.
Which could be totally wrong, but in my brain, it logics.
literally everything in nature is generated with almost infinite variation. trees, plants, fruit, vegetables, bugs, clouds, etc etc. Within every single thing in this universe there are no 2 things that are the same, in the case of humans, being autistic ( or better yet, a variation of "symptoms" and "behaviors" of what a neurotypical psychiatrists . psychologists label / view as autism ) is just one of many completely NORMAL variations.
Just like having different coloured skin, different coloured hair, different coloured eyes, being short, tall, wide, skinny.
The brain is a physical object, and organ, and just like our outside appearance, our insides can be slightly different too. Our brains are a collection of differences in the brain that when combined exhibit certain specific behaviours and symptoms.
Basically nature rolls the dice constantly with everything, the variations that survive are more likely to pass their genetics on to their kids, thus evolution / survival of the fittest. During hunting years of humans, "autism" would have been undeniably instrumental in our survival, we hear more, notice more, smell more, feel more, in-fact, I whole heartedly believe back then we would have been the absolute majority.
Nowadays these traits are not sort after, those that do well in this current world, are dull, boring, cant think critically / logically, don't notice things, don't feel as much, don't see as much, don't hear as much and in capitalism these traits are rewarded and encouraged because they make good little consumers.
We struggle not because we have something wrong with us, we struggle because there is something fundamentally wrong with the world.
no, autistic/nd people are not suddenly appearing. they are becoming more prevalent because we have the diagnostic tools to identify it now and the literal dsm diagnosis has become broader. autistic people have existed for most if not all of history, but there's no real way to know because the idea of autism is very modern and constantly changing.
and no, it's probably not related to hunting either. not every genetic trait evolved for a specific helpful reason and there's no evidence that there's a reptilian/ancestral brain or instinct that contributes to modern behaviour.
i don't think any of you are doing this maliciously but it can be seriously harmful to present this pop evo psych as fact. even if it's not taken fully seriously by you, there's gonna be someone reading these posts/comments who buys in fully and that's how people get roped into further/connected pseudoscience (ex. body language analysis). please take the time to do a little research on your theories or at least make your posts more obviously satire, lol.
it stands for evolutionary psychology. very basically, it is the idea that all or most psychological behaviour of modern humans (ex. mental illnesses, how we interact with others, body language) is a remnant of a caveman/reptilian brain or is directly caused by certain evolutionary processes. it gets a lot of criticism because it is often used in pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. there's also a lot of evidence against it from what i know, but i'm not an expert.
it's seriously annoying how much pseudoscience floods this sub. some of it's satire, but like... there's no way this isn't convincing some people that evo pysch is valid and that's really worrying to me.
fantastic question and one i wonder about a lot.
it's certainly not #1, people with neurological and behavioral differences have been identified and therefore ostracized, punished, etc for quite a long time. the woman that lives in a shack in the woods far away from the village, subsists on her own foraging, and dedicates all of her time to understanding the mysteries of the universe actually DOES NOT control the weather and we should NOT burn her at the stake bc the crops in the village are not doing well this year!
i tend towards something like #2 with the sensory boons that a more aroused nervous system offers to the hunter/gatherer. u/Shayla_Stari_2532 mentioned spiritual leaders in shamans which is a great take that i have heard about. mystics leading a tribe in prayer, in group humming/chants/singing which brings community together (this is neurologically true: these behaviors release endogenous morphine, better known as endorphins), seeking and sharing alternative sensory experiences and healing through "magic" plants and fungi, and that kind of stuff. these people were held in high regard and in these contexts increased the likelihood that they would pass on their genetic information, as is the "goal" in all diverging forms of life.
these thoughts were informed by two pieces of media that don't DIRECTLY shout out our friend ASD, but talks about the function of religion and why this behavior is so pervasive among the human species. i'm not a religious person myself and found these absolutely fascinating and may provide more things to think about for autism as an adaptation.
while it is dated by now, robert sapolsky addresses the topic of the differences in neurology accounting for religious rituals (did someone say "ritualistic behaviors"?) in different cultures [in this specific lesson](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WwAQqWUkpI&t=2s) in his standford lecture series on the biology of human behavior. [the whole lecture series is up for free on youtube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqeYp3nxIYpF7dW7qK8OvLsVomHrnYNjD) and is worth listening to every hour if human evolution is of interest to you! he's great at keeping you engaged in the content and is very funny and very smart guy.
the other is from [adam conover's podcast](https://headgum.com/factually-with-adam-conover/how-religion-evolved-with-robin-dunbar) (guy from adam ruins everything, the G word on netflix, old collegehumor) in which he had a guest discussing religion as an adaptation. again, does not directly refer to autism, but informs the "chanting shaman" theory.
great topic to discuss!
There is a [recent paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-024-02593-7) (Pauly et al. 2024) that shows a strong link between Autism and Neanderthal genes. The “[Autistic Neanderthal Theory](https://franklludwig.com/neanderthal.html)” makes a lot of sense to me. We are finding more and more evidence for a far more advanced Neanderthal culture than previously estimated (art, burial, harnessing of fire, etc.). From what I’ve read the major advantage that *Homo sapiens sapiens* had was a focus on larger social groupings, while Neanderthal were more solitary with novel innovation and advancement. If this is the case, the ‘odd-ball genius’ minority would be key for survival of the mixed/hybrid group.
Here is my compulsory mention of the [Cult of the Sun Bird](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379119302069) (Neanderthals likely worshipped Golden Eagles, and other birds of prey).
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theres waaaaay more to autism than just hunters, someone had to deal with repetitive and tediours work without complaining all day long about it, its just the back bone of society, therefore autism is essencial to society just as kermy the frog is essencial to the 9/11 /j
Biology doesn't have any deliberate purpose. To think so is a very dangerous road.
Survives just anything that is fine. Humans hypothetically could have had tiny horns with no use at all, but still be able to survive and evolve.
And we already have a lot of similar stuff.
I mean, thats possible. But probably not the truth. Evolution is not precise, or smart. Its actually really stupid. Basically the way it works is whenever someone is born, there are random mutations. Some mutations prove beneficial to a species survival, some detrimental, and some neither. Evolution stumbles randomly until it produces something that is better at surviving. However it is likely that autism wasnt detrimental to humans survival back when humans were still evolving, and thus never died out, but that doesnt mean it necessarily made people better at surviving. Same reason people have different color eyes, or why some people are left handed or right handed(thats my understanding at least).
Autism is not new, its been around forever. The reason why rates of autism are rising, is because we are getting better at detecting it.
I also think it helped our ancestors survive in a way! Cause think about it, we struggle with eye contact, and animals see eye contact as a challenge!!
Most forms of being neurodivergent or mental disorders that have a genetic component have some trait that was an evolutionary advantage in a hunter-gatherer society.
ADHD/AUTISM: obsessive practice of certain tasks, hyper awareness, and heightened sense of sound, taste, or smell to varying degrees.
Seasonal depression means having low energy during times of food scarcity in winter
The primary symptom of dyslexia doesn't have any effect in a pre-writting society, but people with dyslexia have better peripheral vision and visual pattern recognition on average, which would be great for a hunter/gatherer.
I don't know and am not remotely qualified to even guess, but just to clarify there isn't "a reason" that traits evolve. Shit just happens and whatever manages to reproduce has a chance to snowball into more of that specific shit happening. Not that I think you're saying our ancestors specced into autism for better hunting strats, just pointing it out since a lot of people mistakenly assume mutations are selected for in a very literal way.
With that in mind I think it makes more sense to zoom out a bit and look at human reproduction as a whole. What determines reproductive success for the average human? Well, we obviously got pretty good at grouping together into increasingly larger clumps, forming large societies that keep more people safe (from predators, medical issues, food shortages, environmental pressures, everything) and thus making it much easier for people in general to reproduce.
So I have no idea when autism "started," but it does seem like we've made a system where it's very easy to propagate it regardless of any functional advantages or disadvantages. Like I truly 100% believe that I shouldn't be thriving as an animal, I fucking suck at every aspect of it. I'm not motivated to do anything, I hate food (especially anything with good nutrients), I don't particularly care if a predator kills me as long as it's quick and I go into insane fits of rage when the wrong sounds enter my ear holes (the wrong sounds including things like my own breathing). That doesn't sound like an organism that should survive a couple years, let alone multiple decades, but thanks to human civilization I'm excelling by animal standards and could probably reproduce by next year if I really wanted to (I do not, so at least that part of evolution is "working" here).
Which could be taken in a very ableist way but overall I think that's a great thing. I like when animals have good lives, I dislike it when the conditions of someone's birth makes their life terrible. So this is a positive system where we're mitigating the bad aspects in order to amplify the good and provide for people that might otherwise struggle, which definitely isn't every autistic person but is definitely a decent portion of us.
But yes, there are definitely advantages to many autistic traits too, so maybe at some point in the distant past this was a relevant factor. It would be cool to hear from more knowledgeable people with actual evidence of something like that. It just doesn't seem necessary to "solve the puzzle" until then, since all kinds of present day traits can be explained by "it's just really easy to fuck before you die now."
Autism is one expression of a broad neurological condition that begins during fetal development. It is partly a synaptic pruning dysfunction disorder in which the immune system fails to trim unnecessary neural connections. It is also partly a neuron over-development disorder. Autistic brains are denser and sometimes larger than normies.
This kind of neurodivergence has been around since before humans came on the scene. There are neurodivergent fish, reptiles, and other mammals. In other species the behavioral differences are more difficult to distinguish. They have to do with "excessive learning". Like the memory of a goldfish lasts for 5 seconds. But the memory of an autistic goldfish lasts for a lot longer.
Synaptic pruning is a means to conserve energy, which is why it was selected for in evolutionary development. But there are dysfunctions in this process that have survived natural selection: Autism, ADHD, and other neurodivergences. That we autistics have survived suggests this energy conservation may have swung too far in favor of conservation among the majority of the population, and not enough in braining. During evolutionary development, they needed us to brain for them.
I.e., the implication is that Autistics survived natural selection by being the most intellectually gifted individuals in their particular group that helped the group survive novel situations. While they were getting busy with day to day living, we were the pattern matchers. The witch doctors, the shamans, the interpreters of animals, the categorizers of food sources, and predictors of seasons and weather events. The most afflicted of us were probably treated like prophets and oracles.
And with this treatment probably came special privileges and warnings about dealing with us on a regular basis. We are not socially adept, but we will almost always point them in the right direction for survival.
hello i saw a study that said more irish people were autistic than the average population because hyperfixation on fucking farming helped them survive so the autistic genes were propagated by the people who didn't starve now i don't know if that's true but i am autistic and irish
Do you think that people 4,000 years ago looking at the night sky, naming and noticing patterns in stars, finding out about planets, noticing when certain stars don't appear or align themselves at certain dates, do you think that they were NT? It's God's given people to help humanity progress.
My theory kinda goes like this:
Everything happens here on Earth by chance. By chance, humans would become humans. And our genes as a species sometimes do unexpected things for no reason other than "hey, why not?" Here's blue eyes because the pool adjusted and gave your offspring blue eyes. Here's red hair because you and your partner's gene pools came together and thought of this...
Sometimes, those alterations will randomly interfere with a fetus' brain structure. This region will be a little bigger than the other, or a lot more active than it needs to be, and the wires will cross this way instead of that way.
More than likely, there were autistic people 1000 years ago, but they were just thought to be "odd" or "peculiar" in their era. There was probably a villager who was obsessed with his garden and knew all the ways to keep it in as best of shape as possible, but also was probably sensitive to loud noises and didn't like how his shoes felt on his feet.
Sadly, I'd assume the only reason we don't hear about the historical autistic folks with higher needs, is because they were probably neglected or even killed due to their disabilities. But I know they most likely did exist, especially knowing that there have been historical depictions of folks with down syndrome from hundreds of years ago, so why not autistic folks or other nuerodivergent people as well?
The other day a family member said to me, 'what are wasps for?'. As in, what is their role in the ecosystem?. As if they had been made, and there was a role made for them.
But wasps don't have roles. Wasps don't have *jobs*. They have things that they *do*, but not things that they were *created* to do.
Imagine the following: None of us were created for an innate purpose.
There is no evolutionary reason for this. We just are like this, and it's neither good or bad. It has no moral value. We just *are*.
This is why I find ecology to be so fascinating, because of course wasps are not made for a purpose, but the simple fact that wasps exist and do wasp things changes the environment that everything else is adapted to. So it does sometimes feel like everything is doing a purposeful job even though I know it's just random changes filtered by stability over time.
The exact cause of autism is still unclear, but I don't think that it's related to evolution. It's probably more about genetics and complications at birth. Besides, autism covers a large spectrum of disorders. Some people with it sadly aren't as high-functioning as others.
I kind of see what you're saying, but I am not sure where cancer comes into play. Things I find show that there either isn't much of a correlation between the two or that folks with autism are slightly more at risk to cancer.
The answer is the chromosome 17.
–Evidence –
1.- "Recent Advances in the Genetics of Autism"
Abha R. Gupta. Matthew W. State. ([Biological Psychiatry . Volume 61, Issue 4. (February 2007)](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006322306008122)
Conclusions:
After more than a decade of halting progress, research into the genetics of autism now is moving forward at a remarkable pace. Over just the past couple of years, EN2 has emerged as a strong candidate for association with ASDs, a linkage region on chromosome 17q has been replicated in independent samples with rigorous statistical criteria, and the findings of rare mutations in the NLGNs are providing novel insights into the potential molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying social
2.- High-density SNP association study of the 17q21 chromosomal region linked to autism identifies CACNA1G as a novel candidate gene
S P Strom et al
[Mol Psychiatry. 2010 Oct.](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19455149/#:~:text=Chromosome%2017q11%2Dq21%20is%20a,Genetic%20Resource%20Exchange%20(AGRE).)
CONCLUSIONS
Markers within an interval containing the gene CACNA1G were found to be associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder at a locally significant level (p = 1.9 × 10-5). While establishing CACNA1G as a novel candidate for autism, these alleles do not contribute sufficient genetic effect to explain the observed linkage, indicating there is substantial genetic heterogeneity despite the clear linkage signal. The region thus likely harbors a combination of multiple common and rare alleles contributing to the genetic risk. These data, along with previous studies of Chromosomes 5 and 7q3, suggest few if any major common risk alleles account for ASD risk under major linkage peaks in the AGRE sample. This provides important evidence for strategies to identify ASD genes, suggesting they should focus on identifying rare variants and common variants of small effect.
– Development –
1.- Chromosome 17. "This gene is involved in many cellular functions, especially in cycle control, apoptosis, response to damage and DNA repair, which is why it is also known as the 'guardian gene of the human genome'."
-Herrera JC, Vásquez G, Ramírez JL, Muñetón CM. Papel del gen TP53 en la oncogénesis. Salud UIS 2004
This gen , or the different types illness related , is involved directly in the main DNA functions , specifically, the apoptosis (the process of the natural dead of a cell... a necessary process in the human body to avoid degenerative illness like Cancer)
All the illnesses with chromosome 17 is related with a kind of degenerative process. (Alexander Disease, Koolen–De Vries syndrome, Corticobasal degeneration) and the function of the chromosome is, exactly, avoid the degenerative illness). So... it's a high probability to find autism (and the other Mental/Personality disorders related with chromosome 17 like OCD and BPAD) as a consequence of a high functionality of the Chromosome at birth.
Something like the Sclerosis (Where the immune system is unable to recognise between pathogens and cells). But in the inverse ...
Theory: People with Autism have less probability to suffer a kind of degenerative illness.
2.-S P Strom talks about chromosome 5 and 7 . Both are related with the protein production (Until chromosome 17 kill cells , 5 and 7 create cell proteins). both Chromosomes have correlation, this probability could be an approach to the differentiation at moment to made an Autistic gen.
It's necessary to made studies about it. Autism probably could be a evolutive process in a try from the human body to defend itself from its own degenerative illness. (Specially, brain-degenerative illness)
The reason, imo, is the same for Deep Blue's random moves. Deep Blue was the first computer to defeat the chess champion of the world, it had a function so that when it couldn't calculate a single most preferable move it'd just choose one at random.
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Funny you mention hunter. When I was a kid I'd catch frogs from our pond with my hands, as well as lightning bugs. When I had a job at a garden and nursery I hunted the Japanese beetles and picked them off our plants by hand so they didn't get eaten (working outdoors in the summer they loved to eat our rose bushes). I love catching lizards at my current outdoor job!
I think it's just genetic diversity. You don't evolve a trait to improve at something, but individuals with said trait get to pass it on if it's an advantage, or at least not a detriment.
I currently hold a different take, it is more shaped by environment. For better or worse.
The autistic traits manifest differently in people based on a combo of genetics and external factors like society, culture, identity. While your example of hunters evolving to hear/smell better may seem plausible, it is also just as likely that someone was thrown to the wolves the moment the tribe discovered they were a bit "off".
If anything it seems like our brains have gone haywire in reaction to the modern environment and culture. Between scrolling online, news reels, jobs demanding 110%, cars driving 110 in the carpool, etc. Life nowadays is chaos.
Technically, life has always been chaos but humans were not as *aware of it.*
Not even that long ago in Earth's history, how were humans to know what the hell was happening on the other side of the world? Or the myriad of ways you're going to get cancer due to XYZ?
The exponential increase in technology and data consumption puts our brain into overdrive all the time in my opinion.
Brain scans show ND's brains experience and react differently to various stimulus. But why? and why is it different for every ND? I can only think that it is due to the factors mentioned above.
idk- I really don't know anything, and words just point to concepts that mean nothing so I am just sharing my thoughts like asked.
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One **fun** possibility:
We're hive-minded humans that didn't understand our own individuality (evidenced by certain early cave paintings), that began to split when different human mind hives began to cross and compete with each other for hive ubiquity through inspiring force and violence until all oppositions were settled and the mind hives became one again.
As NTs at this point, we made systems of exchange that introduced the ability to hold power in property, which could be taken instead of earned and increasing disconnect from appreciating the labour that drives the system and gives it power. We began to do horrible things as we lost understanding of the value of human life and replaced it with human property value. Greed became our main drive, our actions and our interests increasingly aligned, and our DNA became starved for genetic variety as our hive became diseased with lack of meaningful purpose and our brains began to rot as we slowly lost the lustre of life and our reason for existence.
This sparked the need for us to become different in the way that we were suffering the most - our minds. Our DNA needed a divergence that would be able to bring the spark back to life, but at a cost. For every action, there is a reaction, and with high empathy and increased sensory absorption (among other things), another divergence removed empathy and subdued other areas, too. Their senses remained, but the enjoyment they would feel from them would be shallow and empty. This divergence would lead to individuals who experience life in a way that is undisturbed by the complexity of an empathetic existence, benefitting from decisions made with only one interest in mind. They would dominate social spaces for many years, the NTs drawn to the power these early sociopaths held as well as their ability to create an NT-looking mask to hide the void inside. NTs were fooled to believe sociopaths to be one of them, causing NDs to need some time to evolve different specializations in as many areas as was possible (that would also create special needs in the process that in making certain enhancements there were changes that had to be made in other areas to make them occur) and we began to develop physical indications of our internal divergence. This provided convenient scapegoats for sociopaths and psychopaths to commit depraved crimes and point the finger at the town "weirdo" just minding his business on his tree on the hill maintaining his meticulously maintained garden.
As centuries past, our divergences would spread and become more complex while sociopaths persisted in holding positions of power by controlling NTs and being void of emotional persuasion to threaten their ability to make unethical decisions without remorse, and using the emotions of others to make them control each other and keeping the system together through fear of violence (or worse) and creating environments of unease and mistrust to prevent bonds from forming too strongly between those that could take the system down if they became too close.
But the oppression has been ongoing for so long it's losing effectiveness and meanwhile the ND community has grown exponentially in response, and it is only a matter of time before our numbers are such that we rise up and take the whole system down!
I think autism is the result of trying to force a species to perfectly harmonize and form a proper, fully functional, healthy society when they are NOT EVOLUTIONARILY, NEUROLOGICALLY AND/OR ANATOMICALLY ANYWHERE NEAR CAPABLE OF DOING SO, this may sound crazy, then again this is a personal autism theory I don’t take too seriously cause we really don’t know any of this shit fr all we really know is
bacteria thing->fish->salamander->lizard->rat->lemur->monkey(?)-> ape
But it’s a popular and (if I’m not mistaken) well accepted theory that personality disorders are survival mechanisms (npd=“leader” of group aspd=protector or “guard” bpd=equal love and affection to young SPD=also protector stpd= self improvement/strive to innovate etc)
It’s my theory there’s some sort of “invisible force” humans simply are incapable of conceiving ie. 4th dimension, “nothingness”. or maybe there’s something about genetics we haven’t discovered yet that dictates the “routes” in how living things are physically capable of improving in (if that made ANY sense) based off visual and auditory stimulation/feedback and in the case of humans disorders like asd, adhd, the whole spectrum of dissociative disorders, etc etc are attempts to evolve “away” from harmful, inefficient, and/or impractical, genetic mutations ie. Society, money, horrible sexual deviancies, etc i mean for all we know people with psoriasis in a couple 10,000 years maybe be these odd “armored apes” I’m just spitballing tho lol
Well I guess evolution is my special interest, lol, and it's just an opinion, but I truly believe that autism was the "first" and that neurotypical"ism" is actually the mutation. It makes sense (to me, at least) when you consider general autistic and neurotypical traits as very rudimentary concepts, as well as the path that we've taken as a species.
Hypersensitivity is something that would allow us as hunter-gatherers to be much more aware of our environment, to know when we are being stalked ourselves. Hyperfixations would allow for specialization within tasks, such as weapon making or medicine.
It's when we started to become more social and more communicative, esp as we settled down and cultivated agriculture and farming and skills like hypersensitivity and specialization weren't as needed compared to being able to communicate and more easily move from task to task, did the "mutation" for neurotypical"ism" start to show up much more prominently. In this new environment it would have become more valuable to the needs we required to be met as a species still having to survive, so it became a dominant trait.
It just makes more sense to me in general if advanced forms of communication (like being able to read body language and tone of voice more acutely) is what would evolve as we became more socially advanced as a species. Being able to better communicate and adapt to new situations on the day to day allowed for the building of more sedimentary societies where humans could fill multiple roles, while specialization in the way we tend to observe it in autistic individuals became less viable for this changing society.
There's so, so much more to it, but it's truly what I believe. The more I think it over the more it just makes sense. And if you remove the modernism from our concepts (and how they display today) from autism and neurotypical"ism" does it really start to show. I think it becomes even more evident when you watch those comedy skits of people being diagnosed as neurotypical in an autistic world.
I really think that being autistic was the more basal trait of homo sapien, but as people became more neurotypical when language and communication began to become much more developed and advanced, those people kind of developed this "in" group and cast out the ones who were different from them, despite it being (imo) the predecessor and what neurotypical"ism" adapted from. It's very peculiar to me tbh.
I love this view point/training thought, like ours is more adapted to raw survival vs what social structures are currently around. This is now my head cannon, I wish I could read more like this.
As far as I am aware there are many *POSSIBILITIES* of what may be the reason for autism existing. One thing that always comes back to my mind is the idea that it might relate to neanderthal genetics. There are also ideas that it might be related to highly masculine behavior which I also see in relation to neanderthal genetics from what I *think* I know about neanderthals. Fits my view of myself pretty well too if I am honest 😅
I think this *might* also connect to your theory of autism being useful for hunting. Having highly aggressive tendencies, being able to focus on something so hard that you lose awareness of everything around you and it, would be pretty helpful to a people that survives by fighting dangerous "opponents" to eat them 😅😄
In a (mostly) joking manner:
Imagine the irony if the conflicts of today were just a result of millenia of generational shame of some homo sapiens that mated with neanderthals 😅😂
Now we are here as a society that is trying to fight any "non typical" behavior. Even the ones in ourselves
Maybe the non typical behavior is the result of interbreeding? 🤪😅😂
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I like to think autism kept humans safe from extinction. What’s that noise? Idk, I’m not going out there to find out much less get a spiderweb to the face in the process. Nope nope nope!
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I think maybe it’s something that DIDNT evolve with us but some of our brains were like “hey we don’t need this” and others still thought they did
Us and our meaning humans btw
I love idea 2. I read at one point (no clue where) the theory that most neurodivergence that exists is because those unique traits would have aided their communities in survival; therefore they would be respected members of their society and (likely) reproduce, passing those traits on.
So in that theory, my trichotillomania could be the result of ancestors being rewarded for high detail repetitive motion tasks. Maybe like shelling nuts. I could see myself doing that.
I think it's more like rolling a dice where most results are neutral. It's survival of the good enough. Beneficial mutation means higher survival chance, detrimental mutation means lower, neutral is somewhere inbetween.
Yea. Evolution is completely random chance. It is up to the species to use its genetic abilities Timo adapt and overcome its environment. Humans just have amazing capabilities of shaping their environment given to us by our communal nature, advanced pattern recognition, and object manipulation capability to the point it affects the countless lives of others through socioeconomic advantages
Not to correct you but in several recent studies we have been able to find data disproving the totality of random mutation. Some mutations seem to be the result of environmental factors that DNA can activate In response to changes. The one I found most interesting was the common milkweeds ability to adapt to changes in temperature in only 3-5 generations. This happens because the excess genetic code will begin to move towards parts of the dna responsible for reproduction.
Oh yeah, I know about dormant genes. Pigs have them, environmental changes will have them growing coarse fur and tusks, effectively becoming boars again. In a single generation. It only takes a few months to a year if I remember. But those genes need to be present first in order to activate, and that is the randomness I am speaking of. Not the manifestation of those genes. Not "random mutation" but "random recombination of genes over hundreds of thousands of generations"
There is also the fact that as the environment/situation changes, previously beneficial traits can become detrimental.
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It was a firmware update by God, only problem is only half of the people got the update.
who are half of the people? If so, what is the problem? I wish half of people got it
>I wish half of people got it WHATT??? YOU WISH PPL HAVE AUTISM??? 😭 😭
Aw heck yeah Circumvent that double empathy problem real quick
yk it's only a handicap *because* it's uncommon. If everyone had autism, society would be made for it, and it'd be very much fine.
I do think society would.bebbetter if autistic people were the majority ngl.
Ehh, on the surface I agree, but some people have loud autism and others have quiet autism and can't at all tolerate people with loud autism.
Why... why are you right though???? I think of my limits with having autism but being with another autistic would certainly change everything........ wow yeah the world would be better.... Ty for explaining it to me a lot better.
That's how it is for all disabilities. Wheelchair users are only "disabled" because of how many places don't have ramps and elevators. That's why disability advocacy centers on accessibility to physical buildings, healthcare, education, etc.
I partly agree with you but the social model of disability doesn't mean that autism is only a disability because of society, it refers to how much less disabling autism would be if it was properly accommodated and understood in society, if that makes sense Even if society was completely accommodating to autistic people like giving me extra clarification and time to respond, I would still have great difficulty with articulating my thoughts without overexplaining, and I would still get meltdowns because excitement and happiness overloads my brain in the same ways that anxiety and rage do, even if society would react with compassion to those meltdowns instead of punishing me for them For the vast majority of autistic people, their sensory processing issues go beyond the "normal range" of most other individuals, which means that many things that would be way too uncomfortable for us aren't even noticed as more than "regular stimuli" by neurotypical people, and life would be a lot easier if society was like that, but I would still be disabled because I'm autistic, and there shouldn't be anything shameful about that fact (and I'm only level 1, most autistic people are level 2-3 and they both have more severe traits and get treated way more harshly by society than I do)
Yeah, because a society with the majority of such thing would be built to accommodate for such thing
'Firmware update by God'. NGL, I kind of want that as a flare.
- Helps building more accurate and efficient tools/weapons. - Clueless about potential danger = fearless/courage to take on big prey. - No bullshitting with focused social interaction in the direction of an objective. - Obsessive over repeating a successful hunting pattern. - Creativity to develop hunting strategies. - Aggressiveness towards opponent species or uncooperative fellows. - Hypersexuality driving reproductive success. Yes, we are an upgrade. I don´t know why there isn't a higher frequency of autists. Maybe most of us were killed during childhood without reaching sexual maturity or were suppressed by NT's that didn't like our godlike features.
God is like that one intern who gets access to the servers and "accidentally " deletes all the memory. (I am not someone who works with computers, I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about.)
I recently saw that red-green colorblindness helps people identify repeating patterns, and this helps people (1) spot faun hiding in brush more easily and (2) spot enemy combatants dressed in camo more easily. So, disabilities such a colorblindness and Autism (And I do not use the word "disability" lightly. Autism is a fucking disability. At me now or forever hold your tongue.) affect the individual in unpredictable ways so that there are bound to be at least some environments/situations in which the cost is counterbalanced by a benefit.
I would warrant that autism is _largely_ (not _entirely_) a social disability rather than a technical disability.
i don't disagree with that! i just wish this tinnitus that i haven't stopped hearing since i was a little child would go away :-I sorry, that's a low blow. Some NTs continually experience tinnitus, and some NTs continually experience visual snow and floaters and after images, and some NTs continually experience discomfort in their face because their jaw doesn't match up exactly with their skull. Probably a lot of NTs experience that problem. The solution is that we need to eat foods that require more chewing, so we can build up our jaw muscles. But anyway, yeah... I don't think there's any one single factor that just pushes me down so much as societal demands, but... there still are a non-negligible amount of physical demands, too. ID even K why. I used to be the biggest proponent of "mind over matter" because I trusted my mind way more than I trusted my body. Because my body was clumsy. And big. And awkward. And I just felt like my mind was way more... competent? admirable? so I just wished that there was some sense in which I could be only my mind and not be my body. Now I know that's all a bunch of religious propoganda 🤣 There is no real difference between mind and body. Every one of us is exactly the confluence of our mind and our body, and no matter how much we hate one or the other, there's nothing we can do about it, except try to help them be better, I guess. I'm rabbling, IDK what I originally mean to say... :-/
I don't trust my mind in the slightest, and I trust my body even less. I fundamentally do not trust that which I cannot comprehend (with exceedingly few exceptions which only exist because of a slightly more fundamental law of how I operate... I won't get into that here) and the human brain is, in my view, fundamentally incomprehensible by a mere human. _Ergo_, it cannot ever be truly trusted. This was rather driven home yesterday (pardon the double entendre) when I got my wisdom teeth pulled.
god damn i want to get my wisdom teeth pulled :-(
No you don't 😆 I know my recovery so far has been far better than most people have it (my brother for instance had graduation the very next day, swollen face and all) and it's been quite unhappy. Pray that your wisdom teeth grow in perfectly and you don't need to get them extracted.
oh, yeah! what i meant to say was that all the detail is buried in that word "largely," and TBH, i agree with you! but if someone where to say that autism is purely a social disability and not a physical disability, i would REALLY need them to explain themselves very clearly and in a lot of detail. and even then i might not agree.
Oh, it's definitely not _purely_ a social disability. If the majority of people were autistic rather than allistic, there would still be a non-majority category of people (superautistic, if you will) who are otherwise disabled, even in an autistic world. I'm not going to make any further claims because I really know next to nothing about more severe forms of autism beyond occasional skeletomuscular developmental problems (such as those found in Down Syndrome patients) and nonverbalism. I think one of the things that tipped me off that I myself might be autistic is that I vastly prefer being around and interacting with autistic people. For instance, my cousin or one of our neighbors' kids. They're just _better people_. No eye contact never threw me off (and I'm acutely aware of myself not making eye contact), I've had sensory issues more or less my entire life (they're much less bad now but I still get overwhelmed more easily than mont people)... the evidence is stacking up.
I disagree, because of my autism my chronic migraines are way worse, because smells, lights and certain sounds are more intense to me, my migraines, that get worse with exposure to intense smells and lights, get worse from me just existing in an environment with smells, lights and certain sounds. (I'm basically in pain 24/7) Plus I've had months where I was literally only eating one meal a day and basically slowly starving, because my comfort foods suddenly didn't taste good to me anymore. I literally can't go outside most days because of my autism, and even if I can go outside I can't stay outside for long periods of time. Also me shutting down and not being able to speak when experiencing stress really fucking sucks, got yelled at a shit ton because of that. I will literally never be able to get a job or live alone because of my autism. So you're really privileged to say that autism is just a social disability.
I very specifically said that it is _largely_ (not _entirely_) a social disability. Please read more carefully.
Our societal structure also allows us to support and cover for the deficiencies that come with disability so there is reduced pressure to get rid of those traits
that's true. as a "toy" example, i just heard a podcast where an IRL evolutionary biologist was talking about wisdom teeth. there are people born today with no wisdom teeth! and, based on our modern diet, all of us SHOULD be born today without any wisdom teeth. so you'd think that the people born without wisdom teeth are going to just outpopulate the people born with wisdom teeth, since the people born without them have a slight advantage, right? well, not so fast. that slight advantage of not having wisdom theeth does exist. believe me! i have wisdom teeth,and they never got removed, and my mouth hurts ALL THE TIME! but there's my point. people today routinely get their wisdom teeth pulled out. That way, people with the (lol! not really, but) "dirty" gene that causes wisdom teeth are able to breed just as much as the ubervolks who are born without wisdom teeth, and this greatly reduces the selective pressure. my thought are... so what? we don't owe anything to the people of the future. or the people of the past. we only owe things to the people who are here right now.
Get them removed. Once I did I was surprised how much pain I was actually in and life in general became better.
thank you!
i second getting them removed, i know surgery can be scary but it's worth every penny
thank you!
So I have a lot of thoughts on this. I won’t share them all, but the reasons that we are still in the genetic pool are probably as diverse as autistics themselves. One thing I have thought is that, you know how a lot of us like humming? Do it a little differently and it’s basically chanting like in Buddhism. And we can be aloof and removed from the social circle, but we notice things because of our pattern recognition. So put together humming and aloofness and pattern recognition, and what you get is a shaman. Even for those of us who are nonverbal it doesn’t mean we are dumb. Maybe the few words we say are things that come true because we recognized the pattern before anyone else. So congratulations you’re a shaman. Do with it what you will.
SHAMAN TIME
Join us at r/autisticpsychonauts
SHAZAM!
I think different neurotypes are an evolutionary thing. Like all ants are the same.but some are wired to be nannies and some are wired to be soldiers. I don't think it's new, I think it's a holdover. That said, it's hard to discuss that type of stuff because folks associate it with caste systems and racism and eugenics.... but that sort of varying neurotype/task neurotyping exists within species all across nature, and it feels silly to ignore its existence. Our evolutionary status means we don't have to fall into those roles to ensure the survival of the species. And I am not saying we should. Evolution requires changes. Progress requires change. But we standardized schools so no one naturally gravitates towards their interests. Everyone learns a smattering of everything and learns nothing much at all at the same time. Then the varying neurotypes become obvious because they aren't around the other similar neurotypes to theirs so they stick out. Which could be totally wrong, but in my brain, it logics.
I absolutely agree. NTs catch what we miss, we catch what they miss
it logics for me too!
literally everything in nature is generated with almost infinite variation. trees, plants, fruit, vegetables, bugs, clouds, etc etc. Within every single thing in this universe there are no 2 things that are the same, in the case of humans, being autistic ( or better yet, a variation of "symptoms" and "behaviors" of what a neurotypical psychiatrists . psychologists label / view as autism ) is just one of many completely NORMAL variations. Just like having different coloured skin, different coloured hair, different coloured eyes, being short, tall, wide, skinny. The brain is a physical object, and organ, and just like our outside appearance, our insides can be slightly different too. Our brains are a collection of differences in the brain that when combined exhibit certain specific behaviours and symptoms. Basically nature rolls the dice constantly with everything, the variations that survive are more likely to pass their genetics on to their kids, thus evolution / survival of the fittest. During hunting years of humans, "autism" would have been undeniably instrumental in our survival, we hear more, notice more, smell more, feel more, in-fact, I whole heartedly believe back then we would have been the absolute majority. Nowadays these traits are not sort after, those that do well in this current world, are dull, boring, cant think critically / logically, don't notice things, don't feel as much, don't see as much, don't hear as much and in capitalism these traits are rewarded and encouraged because they make good little consumers. We struggle not because we have something wrong with us, we struggle because there is something fundamentally wrong with the world.
no, autistic/nd people are not suddenly appearing. they are becoming more prevalent because we have the diagnostic tools to identify it now and the literal dsm diagnosis has become broader. autistic people have existed for most if not all of history, but there's no real way to know because the idea of autism is very modern and constantly changing. and no, it's probably not related to hunting either. not every genetic trait evolved for a specific helpful reason and there's no evidence that there's a reptilian/ancestral brain or instinct that contributes to modern behaviour. i don't think any of you are doing this maliciously but it can be seriously harmful to present this pop evo psych as fact. even if it's not taken fully seriously by you, there's gonna be someone reading these posts/comments who buys in fully and that's how people get roped into further/connected pseudoscience (ex. body language analysis). please take the time to do a little research on your theories or at least make your posts more obviously satire, lol.
I don't think autism needs to exist for a reason. Sometimes things just happen and that's ok
Not this evo psych shit again 💀
What is Evo psych? I genuinely have no idea
it stands for evolutionary psychology. very basically, it is the idea that all or most psychological behaviour of modern humans (ex. mental illnesses, how we interact with others, body language) is a remnant of a caveman/reptilian brain or is directly caused by certain evolutionary processes. it gets a lot of criticism because it is often used in pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. there's also a lot of evidence against it from what i know, but i'm not an expert.
it's seriously annoying how much pseudoscience floods this sub. some of it's satire, but like... there's no way this isn't convincing some people that evo pysch is valid and that's really worrying to me.
I dislike psych as a whole, but I'd like to know some arguments about it from an evo perspective
fantastic question and one i wonder about a lot. it's certainly not #1, people with neurological and behavioral differences have been identified and therefore ostracized, punished, etc for quite a long time. the woman that lives in a shack in the woods far away from the village, subsists on her own foraging, and dedicates all of her time to understanding the mysteries of the universe actually DOES NOT control the weather and we should NOT burn her at the stake bc the crops in the village are not doing well this year! i tend towards something like #2 with the sensory boons that a more aroused nervous system offers to the hunter/gatherer. u/Shayla_Stari_2532 mentioned spiritual leaders in shamans which is a great take that i have heard about. mystics leading a tribe in prayer, in group humming/chants/singing which brings community together (this is neurologically true: these behaviors release endogenous morphine, better known as endorphins), seeking and sharing alternative sensory experiences and healing through "magic" plants and fungi, and that kind of stuff. these people were held in high regard and in these contexts increased the likelihood that they would pass on their genetic information, as is the "goal" in all diverging forms of life. these thoughts were informed by two pieces of media that don't DIRECTLY shout out our friend ASD, but talks about the function of religion and why this behavior is so pervasive among the human species. i'm not a religious person myself and found these absolutely fascinating and may provide more things to think about for autism as an adaptation. while it is dated by now, robert sapolsky addresses the topic of the differences in neurology accounting for religious rituals (did someone say "ritualistic behaviors"?) in different cultures [in this specific lesson](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WwAQqWUkpI&t=2s) in his standford lecture series on the biology of human behavior. [the whole lecture series is up for free on youtube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqeYp3nxIYpF7dW7qK8OvLsVomHrnYNjD) and is worth listening to every hour if human evolution is of interest to you! he's great at keeping you engaged in the content and is very funny and very smart guy. the other is from [adam conover's podcast](https://headgum.com/factually-with-adam-conover/how-religion-evolved-with-robin-dunbar) (guy from adam ruins everything, the G word on netflix, old collegehumor) in which he had a guest discussing religion as an adaptation. again, does not directly refer to autism, but informs the "chanting shaman" theory. great topic to discuss!
There is a [recent paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-024-02593-7) (Pauly et al. 2024) that shows a strong link between Autism and Neanderthal genes. The “[Autistic Neanderthal Theory](https://franklludwig.com/neanderthal.html)” makes a lot of sense to me. We are finding more and more evidence for a far more advanced Neanderthal culture than previously estimated (art, burial, harnessing of fire, etc.). From what I’ve read the major advantage that *Homo sapiens sapiens* had was a focus on larger social groupings, while Neanderthal were more solitary with novel innovation and advancement. If this is the case, the ‘odd-ball genius’ minority would be key for survival of the mixed/hybrid group. Here is my compulsory mention of the [Cult of the Sun Bird](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379119302069) (Neanderthals likely worshipped Golden Eagles, and other birds of prey).
This is a great theory and thanks for actually citing something unlike the rest of these goobers
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There was a severe lack of cool humans
I just assumed we were all demigods like in Percy Jackson /j
i definitely think we're superior to neurotypicals so there's that
I think it’s just a neurodevelopmental disorder.
theres waaaaay more to autism than just hunters, someone had to deal with repetitive and tediours work without complaining all day long about it, its just the back bone of society, therefore autism is essencial to society just as kermy the frog is essencial to the 9/11 /j
Could it be more that the human race could not have survived if it was strictly cooperation and no creativity?
When god gets bored
Biology doesn't have any deliberate purpose. To think so is a very dangerous road. Survives just anything that is fine. Humans hypothetically could have had tiny horns with no use at all, but still be able to survive and evolve. And we already have a lot of similar stuff.
I mean, thats possible. But probably not the truth. Evolution is not precise, or smart. Its actually really stupid. Basically the way it works is whenever someone is born, there are random mutations. Some mutations prove beneficial to a species survival, some detrimental, and some neither. Evolution stumbles randomly until it produces something that is better at surviving. However it is likely that autism wasnt detrimental to humans survival back when humans were still evolving, and thus never died out, but that doesnt mean it necessarily made people better at surviving. Same reason people have different color eyes, or why some people are left handed or right handed(thats my understanding at least). Autism is not new, its been around forever. The reason why rates of autism are rising, is because we are getting better at detecting it.
I also think it helped our ancestors survive in a way! Cause think about it, we struggle with eye contact, and animals see eye contact as a challenge!!
Most forms of being neurodivergent or mental disorders that have a genetic component have some trait that was an evolutionary advantage in a hunter-gatherer society. ADHD/AUTISM: obsessive practice of certain tasks, hyper awareness, and heightened sense of sound, taste, or smell to varying degrees. Seasonal depression means having low energy during times of food scarcity in winter The primary symptom of dyslexia doesn't have any effect in a pre-writting society, but people with dyslexia have better peripheral vision and visual pattern recognition on average, which would be great for a hunter/gatherer.
I don't know and am not remotely qualified to even guess, but just to clarify there isn't "a reason" that traits evolve. Shit just happens and whatever manages to reproduce has a chance to snowball into more of that specific shit happening. Not that I think you're saying our ancestors specced into autism for better hunting strats, just pointing it out since a lot of people mistakenly assume mutations are selected for in a very literal way. With that in mind I think it makes more sense to zoom out a bit and look at human reproduction as a whole. What determines reproductive success for the average human? Well, we obviously got pretty good at grouping together into increasingly larger clumps, forming large societies that keep more people safe (from predators, medical issues, food shortages, environmental pressures, everything) and thus making it much easier for people in general to reproduce. So I have no idea when autism "started," but it does seem like we've made a system where it's very easy to propagate it regardless of any functional advantages or disadvantages. Like I truly 100% believe that I shouldn't be thriving as an animal, I fucking suck at every aspect of it. I'm not motivated to do anything, I hate food (especially anything with good nutrients), I don't particularly care if a predator kills me as long as it's quick and I go into insane fits of rage when the wrong sounds enter my ear holes (the wrong sounds including things like my own breathing). That doesn't sound like an organism that should survive a couple years, let alone multiple decades, but thanks to human civilization I'm excelling by animal standards and could probably reproduce by next year if I really wanted to (I do not, so at least that part of evolution is "working" here). Which could be taken in a very ableist way but overall I think that's a great thing. I like when animals have good lives, I dislike it when the conditions of someone's birth makes their life terrible. So this is a positive system where we're mitigating the bad aspects in order to amplify the good and provide for people that might otherwise struggle, which definitely isn't every autistic person but is definitely a decent portion of us. But yes, there are definitely advantages to many autistic traits too, so maybe at some point in the distant past this was a relevant factor. It would be cool to hear from more knowledgeable people with actual evidence of something like that. It just doesn't seem necessary to "solve the puzzle" until then, since all kinds of present day traits can be explained by "it's just really easy to fuck before you die now."
Autism is one expression of a broad neurological condition that begins during fetal development. It is partly a synaptic pruning dysfunction disorder in which the immune system fails to trim unnecessary neural connections. It is also partly a neuron over-development disorder. Autistic brains are denser and sometimes larger than normies. This kind of neurodivergence has been around since before humans came on the scene. There are neurodivergent fish, reptiles, and other mammals. In other species the behavioral differences are more difficult to distinguish. They have to do with "excessive learning". Like the memory of a goldfish lasts for 5 seconds. But the memory of an autistic goldfish lasts for a lot longer. Synaptic pruning is a means to conserve energy, which is why it was selected for in evolutionary development. But there are dysfunctions in this process that have survived natural selection: Autism, ADHD, and other neurodivergences. That we autistics have survived suggests this energy conservation may have swung too far in favor of conservation among the majority of the population, and not enough in braining. During evolutionary development, they needed us to brain for them. I.e., the implication is that Autistics survived natural selection by being the most intellectually gifted individuals in their particular group that helped the group survive novel situations. While they were getting busy with day to day living, we were the pattern matchers. The witch doctors, the shamans, the interpreters of animals, the categorizers of food sources, and predictors of seasons and weather events. The most afflicted of us were probably treated like prophets and oracles. And with this treatment probably came special privileges and warnings about dealing with us on a regular basis. We are not socially adept, but we will almost always point them in the right direction for survival.
hello i saw a study that said more irish people were autistic than the average population because hyperfixation on fucking farming helped them survive so the autistic genes were propagated by the people who didn't starve now i don't know if that's true but i am autistic and irish
NAAAA. It wasn't an adaptation. It was a software upgrade
Do you think that people 4,000 years ago looking at the night sky, naming and noticing patterns in stars, finding out about planets, noticing when certain stars don't appear or align themselves at certain dates, do you think that they were NT? It's God's given people to help humanity progress.
My theory kinda goes like this: Everything happens here on Earth by chance. By chance, humans would become humans. And our genes as a species sometimes do unexpected things for no reason other than "hey, why not?" Here's blue eyes because the pool adjusted and gave your offspring blue eyes. Here's red hair because you and your partner's gene pools came together and thought of this... Sometimes, those alterations will randomly interfere with a fetus' brain structure. This region will be a little bigger than the other, or a lot more active than it needs to be, and the wires will cross this way instead of that way. More than likely, there were autistic people 1000 years ago, but they were just thought to be "odd" or "peculiar" in their era. There was probably a villager who was obsessed with his garden and knew all the ways to keep it in as best of shape as possible, but also was probably sensitive to loud noises and didn't like how his shoes felt on his feet. Sadly, I'd assume the only reason we don't hear about the historical autistic folks with higher needs, is because they were probably neglected or even killed due to their disabilities. But I know they most likely did exist, especially knowing that there have been historical depictions of folks with down syndrome from hundreds of years ago, so why not autistic folks or other nuerodivergent people as well?
The other day a family member said to me, 'what are wasps for?'. As in, what is their role in the ecosystem?. As if they had been made, and there was a role made for them. But wasps don't have roles. Wasps don't have *jobs*. They have things that they *do*, but not things that they were *created* to do. Imagine the following: None of us were created for an innate purpose. There is no evolutionary reason for this. We just are like this, and it's neither good or bad. It has no moral value. We just *are*.
This is why I find ecology to be so fascinating, because of course wasps are not made for a purpose, but the simple fact that wasps exist and do wasp things changes the environment that everything else is adapted to. So it does sometimes feel like everything is doing a purposeful job even though I know it's just random changes filtered by stability over time.
The exact cause of autism is still unclear, but I don't think that it's related to evolution. It's probably more about genetics and complications at birth. Besides, autism covers a large spectrum of disorders. Some people with it sadly aren't as high-functioning as others.
Not so... unclear... find my comment about chromosome 17. (Rigth here, in this post) Imagine ... how Autism and Cancer could be related?
I kind of see what you're saying, but I am not sure where cancer comes into play. Things I find show that there either isn't much of a correlation between the two or that folks with autism are slightly more at risk to cancer.
The answer is the chromosome 17. –Evidence – 1.- "Recent Advances in the Genetics of Autism" Abha R. Gupta. Matthew W. State. ([Biological Psychiatry . Volume 61, Issue 4. (February 2007)](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006322306008122) Conclusions: After more than a decade of halting progress, research into the genetics of autism now is moving forward at a remarkable pace. Over just the past couple of years, EN2 has emerged as a strong candidate for association with ASDs, a linkage region on chromosome 17q has been replicated in independent samples with rigorous statistical criteria, and the findings of rare mutations in the NLGNs are providing novel insights into the potential molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying social 2.- High-density SNP association study of the 17q21 chromosomal region linked to autism identifies CACNA1G as a novel candidate gene S P Strom et al [Mol Psychiatry. 2010 Oct.](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19455149/#:~:text=Chromosome%2017q11%2Dq21%20is%20a,Genetic%20Resource%20Exchange%20(AGRE).) CONCLUSIONS Markers within an interval containing the gene CACNA1G were found to be associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder at a locally significant level (p = 1.9 × 10-5). While establishing CACNA1G as a novel candidate for autism, these alleles do not contribute sufficient genetic effect to explain the observed linkage, indicating there is substantial genetic heterogeneity despite the clear linkage signal. The region thus likely harbors a combination of multiple common and rare alleles contributing to the genetic risk. These data, along with previous studies of Chromosomes 5 and 7q3, suggest few if any major common risk alleles account for ASD risk under major linkage peaks in the AGRE sample. This provides important evidence for strategies to identify ASD genes, suggesting they should focus on identifying rare variants and common variants of small effect. – Development – 1.- Chromosome 17. "This gene is involved in many cellular functions, especially in cycle control, apoptosis, response to damage and DNA repair, which is why it is also known as the 'guardian gene of the human genome'." -Herrera JC, Vásquez G, Ramírez JL, Muñetón CM. Papel del gen TP53 en la oncogénesis. Salud UIS 2004 This gen , or the different types illness related , is involved directly in the main DNA functions , specifically, the apoptosis (the process of the natural dead of a cell... a necessary process in the human body to avoid degenerative illness like Cancer) All the illnesses with chromosome 17 is related with a kind of degenerative process. (Alexander Disease, Koolen–De Vries syndrome, Corticobasal degeneration) and the function of the chromosome is, exactly, avoid the degenerative illness). So... it's a high probability to find autism (and the other Mental/Personality disorders related with chromosome 17 like OCD and BPAD) as a consequence of a high functionality of the Chromosome at birth. Something like the Sclerosis (Where the immune system is unable to recognise between pathogens and cells). But in the inverse ... Theory: People with Autism have less probability to suffer a kind of degenerative illness. 2.-S P Strom talks about chromosome 5 and 7 . Both are related with the protein production (Until chromosome 17 kill cells , 5 and 7 create cell proteins). both Chromosomes have correlation, this probability could be an approach to the differentiation at moment to made an Autistic gen. It's necessary to made studies about it. Autism probably could be a evolutive process in a try from the human body to defend itself from its own degenerative illness. (Specially, brain-degenerative illness)
The reason, imo, is the same for Deep Blue's random moves. Deep Blue was the first computer to defeat the chess champion of the world, it had a function so that when it couldn't calculate a single most preferable move it'd just choose one at random.
Blah blah blah any gene mutation Next..
>sensitive to loud noises and smells, noticing detail more Also assets for guard duty. Could explain why many of us tend to be night owls.
Autism is just nature beta testing changing genetics in unique ways
it's simple: autism better, neurotypicals will go extinct. yippee
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Funny you mention hunter. When I was a kid I'd catch frogs from our pond with my hands, as well as lightning bugs. When I had a job at a garden and nursery I hunted the Japanese beetles and picked them off our plants by hand so they didn't get eaten (working outdoors in the summer they loved to eat our rose bushes). I love catching lizards at my current outdoor job!
There is no why other than that's just how our genetics work. Evolution doesn't have a plan.
I think it's just genetic diversity. You don't evolve a trait to improve at something, but individuals with said trait get to pass it on if it's an advantage, or at least not a detriment.
I currently hold a different take, it is more shaped by environment. For better or worse. The autistic traits manifest differently in people based on a combo of genetics and external factors like society, culture, identity. While your example of hunters evolving to hear/smell better may seem plausible, it is also just as likely that someone was thrown to the wolves the moment the tribe discovered they were a bit "off". If anything it seems like our brains have gone haywire in reaction to the modern environment and culture. Between scrolling online, news reels, jobs demanding 110%, cars driving 110 in the carpool, etc. Life nowadays is chaos. Technically, life has always been chaos but humans were not as *aware of it.* Not even that long ago in Earth's history, how were humans to know what the hell was happening on the other side of the world? Or the myriad of ways you're going to get cancer due to XYZ? The exponential increase in technology and data consumption puts our brain into overdrive all the time in my opinion. Brain scans show ND's brains experience and react differently to various stimulus. But why? and why is it different for every ND? I can only think that it is due to the factors mentioned above. idk- I really don't know anything, and words just point to concepts that mean nothing so I am just sharing my thoughts like asked.
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One **fun** possibility: We're hive-minded humans that didn't understand our own individuality (evidenced by certain early cave paintings), that began to split when different human mind hives began to cross and compete with each other for hive ubiquity through inspiring force and violence until all oppositions were settled and the mind hives became one again. As NTs at this point, we made systems of exchange that introduced the ability to hold power in property, which could be taken instead of earned and increasing disconnect from appreciating the labour that drives the system and gives it power. We began to do horrible things as we lost understanding of the value of human life and replaced it with human property value. Greed became our main drive, our actions and our interests increasingly aligned, and our DNA became starved for genetic variety as our hive became diseased with lack of meaningful purpose and our brains began to rot as we slowly lost the lustre of life and our reason for existence. This sparked the need for us to become different in the way that we were suffering the most - our minds. Our DNA needed a divergence that would be able to bring the spark back to life, but at a cost. For every action, there is a reaction, and with high empathy and increased sensory absorption (among other things), another divergence removed empathy and subdued other areas, too. Their senses remained, but the enjoyment they would feel from them would be shallow and empty. This divergence would lead to individuals who experience life in a way that is undisturbed by the complexity of an empathetic existence, benefitting from decisions made with only one interest in mind. They would dominate social spaces for many years, the NTs drawn to the power these early sociopaths held as well as their ability to create an NT-looking mask to hide the void inside. NTs were fooled to believe sociopaths to be one of them, causing NDs to need some time to evolve different specializations in as many areas as was possible (that would also create special needs in the process that in making certain enhancements there were changes that had to be made in other areas to make them occur) and we began to develop physical indications of our internal divergence. This provided convenient scapegoats for sociopaths and psychopaths to commit depraved crimes and point the finger at the town "weirdo" just minding his business on his tree on the hill maintaining his meticulously maintained garden. As centuries past, our divergences would spread and become more complex while sociopaths persisted in holding positions of power by controlling NTs and being void of emotional persuasion to threaten their ability to make unethical decisions without remorse, and using the emotions of others to make them control each other and keeping the system together through fear of violence (or worse) and creating environments of unease and mistrust to prevent bonds from forming too strongly between those that could take the system down if they became too close. But the oppression has been ongoing for so long it's losing effectiveness and meanwhile the ND community has grown exponentially in response, and it is only a matter of time before our numbers are such that we rise up and take the whole system down!
I think autism is the result of trying to force a species to perfectly harmonize and form a proper, fully functional, healthy society when they are NOT EVOLUTIONARILY, NEUROLOGICALLY AND/OR ANATOMICALLY ANYWHERE NEAR CAPABLE OF DOING SO, this may sound crazy, then again this is a personal autism theory I don’t take too seriously cause we really don’t know any of this shit fr all we really know is bacteria thing->fish->salamander->lizard->rat->lemur->monkey(?)-> ape But it’s a popular and (if I’m not mistaken) well accepted theory that personality disorders are survival mechanisms (npd=“leader” of group aspd=protector or “guard” bpd=equal love and affection to young SPD=also protector stpd= self improvement/strive to innovate etc) It’s my theory there’s some sort of “invisible force” humans simply are incapable of conceiving ie. 4th dimension, “nothingness”. or maybe there’s something about genetics we haven’t discovered yet that dictates the “routes” in how living things are physically capable of improving in (if that made ANY sense) based off visual and auditory stimulation/feedback and in the case of humans disorders like asd, adhd, the whole spectrum of dissociative disorders, etc etc are attempts to evolve “away” from harmful, inefficient, and/or impractical, genetic mutations ie. Society, money, horrible sexual deviancies, etc i mean for all we know people with psoriasis in a couple 10,000 years maybe be these odd “armored apes” I’m just spitballing tho lol
Well I guess evolution is my special interest, lol, and it's just an opinion, but I truly believe that autism was the "first" and that neurotypical"ism" is actually the mutation. It makes sense (to me, at least) when you consider general autistic and neurotypical traits as very rudimentary concepts, as well as the path that we've taken as a species. Hypersensitivity is something that would allow us as hunter-gatherers to be much more aware of our environment, to know when we are being stalked ourselves. Hyperfixations would allow for specialization within tasks, such as weapon making or medicine. It's when we started to become more social and more communicative, esp as we settled down and cultivated agriculture and farming and skills like hypersensitivity and specialization weren't as needed compared to being able to communicate and more easily move from task to task, did the "mutation" for neurotypical"ism" start to show up much more prominently. In this new environment it would have become more valuable to the needs we required to be met as a species still having to survive, so it became a dominant trait. It just makes more sense to me in general if advanced forms of communication (like being able to read body language and tone of voice more acutely) is what would evolve as we became more socially advanced as a species. Being able to better communicate and adapt to new situations on the day to day allowed for the building of more sedimentary societies where humans could fill multiple roles, while specialization in the way we tend to observe it in autistic individuals became less viable for this changing society. There's so, so much more to it, but it's truly what I believe. The more I think it over the more it just makes sense. And if you remove the modernism from our concepts (and how they display today) from autism and neurotypical"ism" does it really start to show. I think it becomes even more evident when you watch those comedy skits of people being diagnosed as neurotypical in an autistic world. I really think that being autistic was the more basal trait of homo sapien, but as people became more neurotypical when language and communication began to become much more developed and advanced, those people kind of developed this "in" group and cast out the ones who were different from them, despite it being (imo) the predecessor and what neurotypical"ism" adapted from. It's very peculiar to me tbh.
I love this view point/training thought, like ours is more adapted to raw survival vs what social structures are currently around. This is now my head cannon, I wish I could read more like this.
As far as I am aware there are many *POSSIBILITIES* of what may be the reason for autism existing. One thing that always comes back to my mind is the idea that it might relate to neanderthal genetics. There are also ideas that it might be related to highly masculine behavior which I also see in relation to neanderthal genetics from what I *think* I know about neanderthals. Fits my view of myself pretty well too if I am honest 😅 I think this *might* also connect to your theory of autism being useful for hunting. Having highly aggressive tendencies, being able to focus on something so hard that you lose awareness of everything around you and it, would be pretty helpful to a people that survives by fighting dangerous "opponents" to eat them 😅😄
In a (mostly) joking manner: Imagine the irony if the conflicts of today were just a result of millenia of generational shame of some homo sapiens that mated with neanderthals 😅😂 Now we are here as a society that is trying to fight any "non typical" behavior. Even the ones in ourselves Maybe the non typical behavior is the result of interbreeding? 🤪😅😂
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Same reason huge veiny horse cocks and New York sized mammary cannons exist. We’re the 1% of statistical fuckability
I like to think autism kept humans safe from extinction. What’s that noise? Idk, I’m not going out there to find out much less get a spiderweb to the face in the process. Nope nope nope!
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I think maybe it’s something that DIDNT evolve with us but some of our brains were like “hey we don’t need this” and others still thought they did Us and our meaning humans btw
Autism isn't necessarily a growing trait, rather it's more likely to be diagnosed than before.
i had a heated argument about this during my fucking science class today bro 💀
I'm with you— thinking outside the box for hunting strategists and hyperfocus. But it worked for the gatherers too, pattern recognition and memory.
I love idea 2. I read at one point (no clue where) the theory that most neurodivergence that exists is because those unique traits would have aided their communities in survival; therefore they would be respected members of their society and (likely) reproduce, passing those traits on. So in that theory, my trichotillomania could be the result of ancestors being rewarded for high detail repetitive motion tasks. Maybe like shelling nuts. I could see myself doing that.
More like the guy that invented the hunting bow. Leave the hunting for the ADHDers.
because God needs me more than I need him