an Autistic consociety

[Otto Kretschmer]

Do you guys think a society consisting solely of individuals on the Autism Spectrum could survive?

If yes, how?

I generally think it might be possible but today some doubts were sown in me when I saw on one autism support website a 3 pages long (!) instruction on how to order a pizza - how to find the nearest pizzeria and the entire dialogue listed sentence by sentence. I have doubts whether a society could function with this level of dysfunction

[fusijui]

I dunno, the internet is still going strong.

[Otto Kretschmer]

I dunno, the internet is still going strong.

[Pabappa]

if you mean in isolation, on their own planet, then yes, Im pretty sure a society like this would be viable. They would have some things that we do not, and we have some things that they will not, but I dont think autism in and of itself would stop humans from dominating the ecosystem, controlling animals, developing agriculture, and so on.

That said, even among autistics there is plenty of variation, and it may well pan out that in this autistic society, the most charismatic people will happen to be those whose personalities are the furthest from what we think of classical autism, and as such the society would evolve over time further and further away from the characteristic that made it so interesting when it began.

[Otto Kretschmer]

if you mean in isolation, on their own planet, then yes, Im pretty sure a society like this would be viable. They would have some things that we do not, and we have some things that they will not, but I dont think autism in and of itself would stop humans from dominating the ecosystem, controlling animals, developing agriculture, and so on.

That said, even among autistics there is plenty of variation, and it may well pan out that in this autistic society, the most charismatic people will happen to be those whose personalities are the furthest from what we think of classical autism, and as such the society would evolve over time further and further away from the characteristic that made it so interesting when it began.

Such a society would need to have a much higher degree of specialization than our own.

[zyxw59]

You can be sure we'd have an amazing network of trains

[kodé]

You can be sure we'd have an amazing network of trains

I don’t see why a society of autistic people would be problematic in the slightest—you’re really just talking about a variety of humans that is different in a relative small set of ways (relatively small in comparison to, say, other hominids or even other varieties of Homo sapiens. Our societies are the way they are (in part) because 98 ish% of people aren’t autistic. In a society with that proportion reversed, autism would be their neurotypicality.

As a high-functioning autistic person, being in a society built for neurotypical people feels somewhat like how left-handed people describe their experience: everything is just built in slightly the wrong way for you. There’s nothing inherent about left-handedness or autism that requires tools to be difficult to use or customs and communication to be hard to understand.

I imagine a society of autistic humans would be quieter, much less stimulating, less growth-driven, more organized in some ways and less in others. I don’t doubt for a minute that it would be functional, even if it functioned quite differently from our societies. As Pabappa said, it’s not like neurotypically societies have done such a bang-up job of functioning well.

[Otto Kretschmer]

You can be sure we'd have an amazing network of trains

I don’t see why a society of autistic people would be problematic in the slightest—you’re really just talking about a variety of humans that is different in a relative small set of ways (relatively small in comparison to, say, other hominids or even other varieties of Homo sapiens. Our societies are the way they are (in part) because 98 ish% of people aren’t autistic. In a society with that proportion reversed, autism would be their neurotypicality.

As a high-functioning autistic person, being in a society built for neurotypical people feels somewhat like how left-handed people describe their experience: everything is just built in slightly the wrong way for you. There’s nothing inherent about left-handedness or autism that requires tools to be difficult to use or customs and communication to be hard to understand.

I imagine a society of autistic humans would be quieter, much less stimulating, less growth-driven, more organized in some ways and less in others. I don’t doubt for a minute that it would be functional, even if it functioned quite differently from our societies. As Pabappa said, it’s not like neurotypically societies have done such a bang-up job of functioning well.

It'd be nice if someone actually did an experiment like this. Like, take 100 people with Autism and tell them to live on a tropical island for some time.