In Praise of Autistics

Here is an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education by the economist Tyler Cowen that tells us to embrace the autistics in society as just another subgroup with special talents to offer us:

Autism is often described as a disease or a plague, but when it comes to the American college or university, autism is often a competitive advantage rather than a problem to be solved. One reason American academe is so strong is because it mobilizes the strengths and talents of people on the autistic spectrum so effectively. In spite of some of the harmful rhetoric, the on-the-ground reality is that autistics have been very good for colleges, and colleges have been very good for autistics.

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In spite of some of the common rhetoric, each year specialists are teaching us more about the cognitive strengths of the autism spectrum. In the 1960s, it was a common view that, except for a few savants, most autistic people were intellectually disabled ("mentally retarded" was the less than felicitous term), and to some extent this stereotype persists today. But a growing body of work pinpoints areas where autistics outperform nonautistics.

A partial list notes that autistics have, on average, superior pitch perception and other musical abilities, they are better at noticing details in patterns, they have better visual acuity, they are less likely to be fooled by optical illusions, they are more likely to fit some canons of economic rationality, they solve many puzzles at a much faster rate, and they are less likely to have false memories of particular kinds. Autistics also have, to varying degrees, strong or even extreme abilities to memorize, perform operations with codes and ciphers, perform calculations in their head, or excel in many other specialized cognitive tasks. The savants, while they are outliers, also reflect cognitive strengths found in autistics more generally. A recent investigation found, with conservative methods, that about one-third of autistics may have exceptional skills or savantlike abilities.

Autistic people usually have a superior desire and talent for assembling and ordering information. Especially when they are given appropriate access to opportunities and materials, autistics live the ideal of self-education, often to an extreme. In my new book, Create Your Own Economy, I refer to autistics as the "infovores" of modern society and I argue that along many dimensions we as a society are working hard to mimic their abilities at ordering and processing information. Autism is a topic that anyone interested in education should be reading and thinking about.

It turns out that the American university is an environment especially conducive to autistics. Many autistics are disadvantaged or overwhelmed by processing particular stimuli from the outside world and thus are subject to perceptual overload as a result. For some autistics, that is debilitating, but for many others it is either manageable or a problem they can work around. The result is that many autistics prefer stable environments, the ability to choose their own hours and work at home, and the ability to work on focused projects for long periods of time.

Does that sound familiar? The modern college or university is often ideal or at least relatively good at providing those kinds of environments.

If you find an interest in autism there are a number of books to read. The books by Temple Grandin, Daniel Tammet, Donna Williams, or John Elder Robison are all excellent. I've worked with on high functioning Asperger's Syndrome person. He was very bright, a bit unbridled, and very unsettling because he couldn't read emotional body language so he didn't know normal social limits. He could be tedious, but he was very interesting because he had scoured the technical literature and had lots of ideas. Ultimately it was frustrating working with him because I couldn't get him to be realistic about schedules and commitments.