Re: @AC He should have stuck to what he knows
"I think the term you're looking for is high functioning Aspergers.
I don't know if that would apply. Its possible but it would take a board certified psychiatrist to make said diagnosis.
Its one thing to miss the social cues and norms, its another to ignore them."
Speaking as someone actually diagnosed with "an autistic spectrum disorder" (the clinicians prefer to not pigeonhole their patients so are reluctant to be more specific than that: in my case I eventually accumulated an Asperger's diagnosis on the basis that there's a tendency to misdiagnose autistic women as being borderline, which indeed happened, and this should theoretically be mutually exclusive, though whether or not it works in practice remains to be seen. I am not optimistic. "High functioning" is a controversial qualifier for an already controversial term on the basis of the also controversial interpretation of a person's IQ, but probably causes more misunderstanding than it avoids).
Er, where was I? Oh yeah, it's practically impossible to say if a person has missed social cues or wilfully ignored them. That seems to be up there with the assertion that autistic people are the same as psychopaths because of a perceived lack of empathy; AFAICT autistic people tend to miss the communication of empathy but once they get it they often have an enormous amount of it, whereas psychopathic people are often expert observers of the communication of empathy but simply don't care. There's some irony in that psychopaths tend to be much more adept at fitting in socially and are often described as being charming until it's too late, whereas the generally harmless autistic person is seen as being a threat as without any pretence they'll state things as they see them according to their understanding at that moment.
The sad thing is that the autistic person is generally harmless and open to reappraising their views whereas the psychopathic person can be much more malevolent and will talk a good talk about having changed their views. The irony being particularly noted in courts of both law and social media where the autistic person will be found guilty thanks to having left a trail of careless comments everywhere and the psychopath having been more circumspect and typically having more flair at talking their way out of a tight corner will be more adept at getting away with it.
Stallman? I can't say I've ever warmed to the guy, autistic or not, and the subject matter is something that makes me uncomfortable, but in this instance I'm concerned about the way things are going because I've seen how these things can go very badly wrong.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
