CSotD: Connecting the Social Dots
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(Bizarro)
The Juxtaposition of the Day is, placed in this order, a sort of case study over time.
A third element is this article that has just surfaced, "Fifty psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid: a list of inaccurate, misleading, misused, ambiguous, and logically confused words and phrases," which you can tell is serious because it has a colon to introduce the over-long subtitle.
It's all interesting, but the relevant part today is that, among pop-psych fallacies, they include "Autism Epidemic," noting:
there is meager evidence that this purported epidemic reflects a genuine increase in the rates of autism per se as opposed to an increase in autism diagnoses stemming from several biases and artifacts, including heightened societal awareness of the features of autism (“detection bias”), growing incentives for school districts to report autism diagnoses, and a lowering of the diagnostic thresholds for autism across successive editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Gernsbacher et al., 2005; Lilienfeld and Arkowitz, 2007). Indeed, data indicate when the diagnostic criteria for autism were held constant, the rates of this disorder remained essentially constant between 1990 and 2010 (Baxter et al., 2015).
To which I will add some amateur analysis that would, no doubt … well … I was going to say "drive them crazy" but let's just say, "probably upset them."
Which is that, boy, the Internet has sure "heightened societal awareness of the features of autism" for anyone who has been paying attention.
I say that with affection and regret, because I have had both professional and personal contact with more than a few Aspies.
I like them, and it has caused me to learn a little about it, including that the psychological community has abandoned the term "Asperger's Syndrome" and simply assigns them a place on the Autism Spectrum, one I hope is still regarded as "high functioning."
The Aspies I have known have been highly intelligent within two limitations:
One is that they have tended to focus on very specific areas, which may or may not be a good thing.
The kid I knew who was pursuing advanced degrees in engineering before he was 18 was focused on some useful stuff. Others have been experts on trivial things nobody else values, which is harder (though not impossible) to fashion into a career.
The other limitation is that the value of this intelligence and hyperfocus — even if it has practical applications — can be seriously undermined by lack of social instincts, an issue which seems a lot funnier on TV than in real life, though you really need to read the comments on that link.
Effective early intervention seems to involve making Aspies aware of the disconnection, even if they aren't able to fully overcome it.
For about six years, I ran a Quiz Bowl competition with about two dozen schools, and, rapid recall of random facts being the point of the game, it was a place where you really got to sample the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum.
So I was particularly touched and impressed when, after one school lost a tight contest in the finals, thereby losing a trip to the nationals, one of the seniors came up to my table and said, "Thank you very much, but I can't be here now."
I appreciated his expression of affection and gratitude, and was impressed that his level of awareness included not only making that clearly difficult effort, but also knowing that he needed to take his disappointment private.
He would be nearly 30 today, and I'm betting he is doing well, and has made a lot of those steps more smooth, if no more instinctive.
I can't help but think, however, that for every autistic kid — Aspies and others — who has had the advantage of early intervention, there are many, many who have not, and that the lack of genuine social connectedness on the Internet only encourages their isolation, enhancing the gulf between their intelligence and their ability to interact appropriately, or to place facts in a reasonable context.
I realize this seems to suck a lot of the humor out of Coverly's gag, but dark humor, like dark chocolate, can be a more satisfying, if bittersweet, pleasure.
I was interviewing an expert on sports concussions several years ago, and somewhat hesitantly brought up the classic "Batman" Snickers commercial. His response was that it was well-done and he had laughed at it, but that it wasn't at all funny.
I feel that way about today's Speed Bump: It's well-done, I laughed, it's not funny.
Then, when you get to Bizarro, it's also well done but not funny and that's okay because a lot of Dan Piraro's work is supposed to make you think, not necessarily to make you laugh.
Two things:
The kid in Speed Bump doesn't have to become the guy in Bizarro. That's why we pay taxes to support early childhood programs and effective school counseling, except when we don't.
The other is that, whether you meet that now-hardened conspiracy theorist in a bar or come across him on Facebook, trying to reason him out of his beliefs is futile.
The time for that was when he was a little kid connecting invisible dots, and, even then, the purpose was not so much to talk him out of making connections but to help him place his approach to life in some perspective that would allow him to function in society.
The admonition, "Don't feed the trolls," is good advice, not because they are consciously choosing to be disruptive and to upset people, but because they are not.
Stirring them up only exacerbates things.
The extent to which you should let their misstatements of fact go unchallenged depends on how harmful those misstatements are, and there's nothing wrong with a rebuttal, so long as you don't expect to "win."
Save your arguments, not for those who can't help their disjointed take on things, but to bear witness against cynical demagogues who, as in Steve Artley's cartoon, exploit those who cannot connect the dots.
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