99 Year Old Author Still Has Plenty To Say

The coolest thing I've read today: 99 Year Old Man Signs His First Book Deal.

John Archer of Concord signed a contract with PublishingWorks of Exeter to publish his book of verses "Walking Backward Towards Old Age."

Archer said several years ago, he came across some poems he wrote in 1930, and decided to begin writing again. Before he knew it, he had completed several new verses.

"I started writing and the verses get away from me. They turned serious, and then I had to keep up with them."

Archer said he doesn't want to influence people or teach them anything, but instead his book is just his thoughts.

"I've arrived at the point in life when you can ask questions and there are no answers," he said.

Seriously, this sounds super neat. I'm very curious as to what Mr. Archer's thoughts might be. He definitely doesn't sound "bored with life", that's for sure!

Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon

On Saturday, April 26, 2008 I visited the Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Art. I'd been quite excited to go (being a shameless robo-fangirl and all) and the exhibit did not disappoint.



Matt (my steadfast and very patient Significant Other) and I arrived in downtown San Jose shortly after noon, where we joined up with two local friends and proceeded to catch a quick lunch prior to entering the exhibit. A large banner hung on the front of the museum displaying a gigantic image of a metal robot with a clock embedded in its chest. The connotation was unmistakable: here, there be robots.

There were no "No Photography!" signs up at the museum, so initially I had my camera out, and managed to get two or three shots of several exhibits before a museum employee informed me that picture-taking was verboten. I apologized and put the camera away, and do not plan on publicly displaying the exhibit photos I took (in deference to the Lords of Copyright), but you can still view images of some exhibits on the museum's Web site. The museum has also released an online video series which includes a fair bit of exhibit footage and commentary.

First Impressions

The exhibit includes paintings of robots, sculptures of robots, quilted robots, model robots, toy robots, drawings of robots, metal robots, and plastic robots.

Implementations range from the simple line drawing to the highly complex electromechanical avatar.

One of the latter is equipped with two flat-screen monitors, each displaying a large humanlike eye (and yes, the eyes follow you).

Another is constructed almost entirely of small CRT television monitors, each showing an identical animated pattern flashing through endless cycles of decidedly psychedelic imagery. The CRT-monitor 'bot was rather unnerving to stand near -- not because of its appearance (I was actually quite excited at all the power strips and outlets all over it, as I am totally Arthur Weasley when it comes to electrical plugs and sockets), but because of the massively multiplied high-pitched whine chorus emanating from all those CRTs.

I don't know if the artist was trying to make a statement about the pervasiveness of electronic "noise" in the world these days or whether that particular piece was there to keep bats away, but it was definitely one of the more abstract pieces in the exhibit.

Another piece is humanoid in form, mostly metal in its construction, but adorned with a pair of deer antlers, one on each side of its head: a mechanized Herne. In its belly behind a clear plexiglass cover sits a smaller metal humanoid, pumping and pedaling away so as to drive different but coincident motions in the larger figure. That one evoked all kinds of weird associations, but most predominantly it seemed an irreverent wink at the notion of the homunculus. And it was probably one of the most damn-cool looking things I've ever seen in an art museum.

On the "low-tech" side of things, a particularly impressive structure stands nearly ceiling-height (in a room with a very high ceiling); it is constructed entirely of Styrofoam package inserts from actual electronic products. It presides over a circle of surrounding, smaller Stryobots and several tables at which visitors are invited to build their own model robots out of provided Lego bricks.

A quote on the wall reads: We Were Promised Robots, in reference to the contrast between the retrofuturist-nostalgia version of a robot-enhanced reality and the actual present and emerging era of pervasive electronics that, while certainly more impressive in some ways than previous generations could have imagined, is decidedly different from what was imagined.

In reflecting upon that contrast, I cannot help but feel at once that things have turned out better than imagined in many respects (and I'm not just talking about iPods and flat-screen TVs here, but about civil rights, womens' rights, gay rights, etc.), but that we as a species still have a tremendously long way to go with regard to things like resource distribution, respect for our neighbors (regardless of who we are or where we live), and sustainable development. I'm not sure how to feel (much less what to do) about the fact of my having a nice shiny computer, a comfy apartment in a reasonably safe neighborhood, and easy access to art museums, while half the world population doesn't even have access to flush toilets.

Did the futurists of the 1950s and 1960s (who envisioned widespread atomic superabundance) expect fair and ethical resource-distribution systems to come about by magic, or perhaps with the help of friendly robot assistants?

The Robot as Self and Other

In film, art, and literature, robots have appeared to cross all cultural and class lines. Sentient robots in stories have been portrayed almost as a kind of enslaved underclass in some scenarios, even as they've busily worked toward taking over the world in other scenarios.

Iconic robots can serve to reflect ubiquitous anxieties present in modern industrialized culture: perhaps unresolved guilt and fear about the consequences of maintaining an underclass or worker class (whether that be the continued and un-addressed exploitation of sentients, or the classic "robot uprising"), as well as a sense that maybe the collective will of the machinery we construct might be essentially shackling us to its agenda, rather than the other way around.

But just as our machines do in life, the robots represented by the exhibit pieces defy confinement to any one role or position, and instead overlap and inhabit multiple contexts. One universal feature of life (especially human life) is that it co-opts pieces of its environment over time, as is required to maintain itself as a process. Humans are particularly adept at this, to the point where we are not only becoming increasingly able to maintain ourselves in the face of circumstances that would assuredly have killed our ancestors, but also increasingly confronted by the blurring of boundaries between self, tool, and resource.

Fictionalized and aestheticized robots are perhaps the ultimate confrontation in this regard, existing as they do somewhere between extension-of-self (in tool form) and autonomous "other", and frequently muddling this distinction entirely.

The Robots: A Cultural Icon exhibit provides many representative examples of this muddling.

One stark set of line drawings (done in classic Chinese pen and ink style) shows a humanlike figure sailing through the air, borne on the back of a birdlike robot, into which another humanlike figure has been inserted or merged. It is impossible to tell who is calling the shots (pilot, craft, or passenger) and perhaps the point is that it is not necessarily useful to attempt to delineate such things in the first place, at least not in any absolute sense.

On a wall in the museum, a projector plays the Björk video, All is Full of Love on infinite repeat. The inclusion of this video in the exhibit was somewhat surprising to me at first (as you don't exactly need to go to a museum to access a popular music video these days), but in the context of the exhibit, viewers are encouraged to consider All is Full of Love in a mindset which is less MTV and more imagery-focused. I'd seen this video before and found it at once unsettling and gorgeous, and watching through it again my reaction was similar.

However, with this viewing of the video I also noticed a lot more of what I like to refer to as "stuff English teachers love", by which of course I mean "stuff that can be interpreted as having sexual connotations". Nevertheless, there is no human flesh to be seen in the video; the closest we get are the stylized humanlike faces of the two gynoids that move through varying stages of construction and deconstruction and entanglement and separation.

The video is also interesting in that it simultaneously shows robots of an obviously fantastic nature, and robots that are more realistic and familiar to anyone who has ever seen an actual industrial robot. The gynoids look more human than the faceless hydraulic mechanisms disassembling them in reverse, but who built the mechanisms? Which type of machine more properly suggests the usual output of human will? And more importantly, what does each of us want the output of our will to look like?



On a less serious note, the exhibit also provides a set of easels at which visitors can sit and draw their own "robotic self-portrait" with provided crayons. Two mirrors printed with "robot face" outlines hang on the wall facing the easel seat, presumably so we'll be compelled to line up our actual faces within the outlines. This was all a bit silly, but too much fun to resist; I spent about two minutes sketching a (very rough) AnneBot.

The idea of the exercise is to draw a robot and think about how your robot reflects how you see yourself. I'm not exactly sure what my result says about me (if it says anything at all), but it was neat to have the opportunity to sit and play with crayons in a public place. And the exercise did get me thinking about how robotic imagery has historically tended to communicate things about both its creators and the cultures they inhabit.

Robots That Think And Feel

Text painted on one of the exhibit's walls declares: "The bipedal humanoid robot with fully developed artificial intelligence may be realized in the near future".

As is commonly the case with declarations such as this, little is offered in explanation of what "artificial intelligence" actually means, let alone what it means for such a thing to be "fully developed". My guess, though, is that when people make predictions about "fully developed AI", they are envisioning artificial "brains" that function exactly the way human brains do, albeit on some substrate other than biological wetware.

Such "AIs" have existed in literature for quite some time, however, they are conspicuously absent from the real world. My guess is that they will likely continue their absence indefinitely. Even if "artificial humans" were feasible to construct, humans of sufficiently differing internal architecture seem to have a tremendously difficult time communicating effectively with one another -- even the oft-cited human superpower of "empathy" seems in practice often restricted to persons sufficiently similar to the self.

So the question emerges: how do robots, both fictional and actual, reflect how humans think and feel about the very processes of thinking and feeling?

In some depictions, robots are assumed stonily indifferent and consequently feared. After all what could be more dangerous than an enemy who does not see you as an enemy, but as a pile of raw materials to be exploited or recycled? In other cases, the perceived hyper-rationality of the robot is valorized and sought as an ideal, "perfect" state in which the purity of reason might shine forth without the messy complexities wrought by amygdalae and endocrine systems.

As far as I'm concerned, both these reactions are rather puerile. Robots and emotion are inextricably intertwined, no matter how you look at it, and it makes little sense to infuse them with such superlative and impersonal power whether you're drawing them or thinking about actually building them. So it was refreshing to see at the exhibit a range of different depictions, some of which went for direct subversion of the stereotypes.

One piece that compelled much in the way of lingering and staring on my part was a small, unassuming-looking "shadow box" hung on the wall in one room. Its area probably did not exceed a square foot; it commanded attention not by looming over you in the imposing manner of the giant Styrobot in the adjoining room, but by drawing you in like an open window into a miniature world.

A toy robot sits on a chair in this piece, in what looks like a handmade doll's-house living room. Tissues (both boxed and used) clutter the area; the robot also clutches a crumpled tissue in his hand. A portrait hangs on the rear wall of the shadow box/living room, depicting (presumably) the occupant's Robot Grandma. A tiny model television with a real, working screen plays clips from Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

And if you look closely, you can see a tiny lacquered tear on the watching robot's cheek.

Even if we are truly talking about robots as tools -- actually emotionless mechanisms employed in the extension of human intent -- we are still dealing with emotion-infused machines, as the emotions in that case are ours. (Sometimes our machines even prosthetically become parts of us as well, to the point where having someone else touch or take them without our permission feels like a bodily violation, because that's exactly what it is.*)

And if we are talking about fictional robots equipped with some measure of autonomy via artificial-intelligence mechanisms, you would be hard-pressed to find a literary example of a robotic character that has not been anthropomorphized in some way. And a particular challenge for artists and roboticists alike is that of determining how to "blend" mechanical and human attributes effectively for whatever purpose the robotic character or actual robot is being invoked.

On that note, I've been to a few AI-themed lectures and listened to numerous episodes of robot-related podcasts (such as Talking Robots, which I highly recommend), and one thing that seems to be coming up a lot these days is the notion of robots being designed according to [typical] human reciprocity expectations.

What concerns me (a little bit) here is that perhaps the reason why we see statements like "We'll have fully functional artificial intelligence in the near future!" on the walls of art museums is because so many public and popular demonstrations of robotics technology feature creations that set off human "comfort and familiarity" cues.

Of course this is not problematic in and of itself, but whenever I come across an article about how robots are beginning to demonstrate social reciprocity, I can't help but be reminded that actual existing people (who might not show these typical reciprocity signs in easily-recognizable ways, due to being autistic or otherwise atypical) are still being written off as "empty shells".

Don't get me wrong -- I think robotics research is super neat, and I can see how studying human reactions to a robot's nonverbal behavior might yield fascinating insights into multiple aspects of social cognition. But at the same time, I think it is interesting to look at the assumptions behind the display (or lack thereof) of certain "signals", in humans and in robots.

Hence, one of the things I've always appreciated about "robot art" is how it often actually manages to acclimate people to atypical expressions of both emotion and cognition. Iconic robots do not always look or even act typically "human" (R2D2, for instance), and yet, people come to love them anyway.

Closing Notes

Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon definitely lived up to my expectations (which, admittedly, were along the lines of, "This exhibit will contain cool, robot-themed art pieces"). The exhibit was not large (it spanned only part of a single floor in the multi-story museum), but it didn't need to be. I was actually rather pleased at how the setup and structure of the exhibit allowed visitors time and space for reflection on individual works -- the pieces were not crammed or crowded together, and while there was a guided tour option, this was not mandatory. The environment was also quiet and clean and not sensory-overloading (hooray for sensory accessibility!). It probably took about two hours to go through the entire exhibit (and that time span included several instances of lingering a long while to examine particular pieces) -- a pleasant length for a weekend afternoon outing.

I have definitely been inspired by what I saw, not only to write about it as I have here, but to keep exploring the cultural and artistic contextualization of robots in addition to the mechanisms by which actual robots operate in the real world.



After all, we and the robots we build, draw, and create as characters are essentially vectors along which the stuff of the universe explores different avenues of expression. And what is so strange, given that, about the idea that all (whether it be biological or mechanical) could indeed be "full of love", as Björk's video suggests, hopefully without irony? Perhaps the separations we try to enforce between what is "life" and what is hard cold material are in fact, overly facile.

In any case, it will be interesting to keep watching the interplay between real robots, humans, fictional robots, and robot-themed art as the world and its people change over time. And while there is no way to predict what shape this interplay may take in the far-off future, one thing seems likely to remain certain: our iconic robots have (and will continue to have) much to tell us about our individual and collective fantasies, fears, dreams, and priorities.

---

*Before any econ-libertarians get excited, I'm not talking about things like taxation when I talk about people feeling justifiably violated when others touch things that are "attached" to them. Rather, I'm talking about situations where someone is (for instance) using a wheelchair, and someone else comes up and starts pushing them without asking. In other words, symbolic value in the form of money is one thing, but prostheticized objects are quite another.

And Then There Were Five...

ABFH of "Whose Planet is it Anyway?" has tagged me with a "5 things" meme. I don't often do these meme-things, but considering my prior entry was a bit on the "serious" side, something a bit less serious seemed like a rather refreshing idea.

5 things found in your bag:

(1) A tiny computer (Lately, an HP Jornada 720 -- more on that below).

(2) Chapstick. Currently melon-flavored. (I am allergic to actual melons, but melon chapstick is fine as it contains no actual melon!)

(3) A .04 tip fine-point black rollerball pen. (I am a total pen fiend, and very much enamored with the fine-point variety.)

(4) My wallet, which is made of duct tape. (Another random hobby of mine is making duct-tape wallets. I do not have any interest in selling them, though -- each one takes something like 6 hours to make, and it makes my fingers all sticky, so...not exactly something likely to be lucrative).

(5) A very simplistic cellular phone. Probably one of the few remaining ones on Earth without a built-in camera. I basically use it only for monosyllabic conversations involving transportation and other utility-oriented concerns, as I am not a fan of phones in general (I prefer e-mail, IM, etc.).


5 favorite things in your room:

(1) My collection of horrendously ugly polyester shirts. They're brightly colored and will probably outlast most of the human race, as most of them were actually constructed in the 1970s and still show no sign of fading.

(2) My original AT-AT Walker toy. I swear, it's as big as a dog! Now, if only I could actually get it to walk...

(3) Several rolls of duct tape, in colors ranging from classic silver to red to blue to green to plaid.

(4) My soft, fluffy Hello Kitty blanket (Wow, that is quite possibly the girliest thing I have ever written on this blog...)

(5) Those cool magnetic toys you can build things out of by attaching little sticks to little metal ball-bearing things


5 things you have always wanted to do:

(Mind you, these aren't things I think I WILL be able to do, necessarily -- some of them are straight-up fantasies. But I've still always wanted to do them!)

(1) Go to outer space on a big, huge, comfy, super-fast ship and explore the universe looking for weird natural phenomena and evidence of possible alien civilizations.

(2) Work as a researcher of some kind, in either physics or biology.

(3) Live past age 120 in good health and help others do the same if they so desire.

(4) Become a published author of science fiction.

(5) Grow kitten ears. Yes, on my head. (I think it would be cute.)


5 things you are currently into:

(1) Babylon 5 (the TV series). I am currently watching through the whole series on DVD for the first time, having originally dismissed it when it first came out as full of "boring political talk". And I am mightily impressed -- I might have some posts at some point inspired by some of the series' philosophical aspects.

(2) Robots! I collect small robot figurines, I build robots out of Lego, I draw robots, and probably half the t-shirts I own have pictures of robots on them. I am also writing a science fiction story right now wherein the two main characters are robots. I have always liked robot characters in science fiction. Robots are neat and generally awesome, and often cute. Hooray for robots! Ahem.

(3) Photography - I was lucky to receive a very very nice digital camera for my birthday in December, and I have discovered that I really like taking pictures of things.

(4) Tiny computers! I am a total geek for "obsolete" hardware, particularly when it comes in the form of small portable computers. My current darling is the HP Jornada 720, which is basically a fancy-for-1998 PDA with an adorable tiny keyboard. I bring it with me everywhere, as it has a battery life of about 9 hours (seriously!), and fits right in my purse. The Laser PC6 is another favorite -- it's perfect for long seminars, etc., as it can go about 20 hours on a charge.

(5) Longevity-related stuff (a longstanding thing for me that isn't likely to change anytime soon!). Biogerontology is extremely interesting, and I help out as I can with the Methuselah Foundation.

5 people you’d like to tag:

I don't tag people, but anyone who wants to do this one can. It's a free Internet. :P

"Autism Awareness" and the Dangerous Futility of Hype

How Hype Hopes to Help, but Hurts

April is "Autism Awareness Month". I have mixed feelings about this, and I am not the only one.

For one thing, "awareness" these days looks rather uncannily like socially acceptable apathy. Slap a ribbon ribbon magnet on your car, or wear the right lapel pin, and you are subsequently excused from actually doing anything real to change things for the better in the world. Sure, some people displaying the plumage of their favorite cause(s) are actually engaging in helpful action, but it seems to me more and more that the plumage has become an end unto itself in some contexts.

And even worse: a lot of people seem to be mistaking "hype" for "awareness".

Case in point: the vaccine thing. It is literally impossible these days to look at a comment thread on any mainstream article about autism without seeing at least a third of the folks in said thread crowing about "vaccine injury" and how the "answer" to autism is to stop vaccinating, how "Big Pharma" is relentlessly poisoning children's brains on purpose, and how anyone who isn't using the latest biomedical supplement whoozywhatsit is falling short of their parenting duties.

Now, I personally don't believe in a vaccine-autism correlation of any kind. The evidence just isn't there as far as I'm concerned. But that's sort of beside the point, because even if vaccines had some minute chance of "affecting the developing brain", the diseases that vaccines are designed to prevent have a heck of a lot greater chance of not only "injuring" a person, but actually killing them than the vaccine itself does.

End of story, right?

Unfortunately, not quite.

As I write this, I find myself dreading releasing it for public consumption because I know it's going to come up in some antivaccinationist's Google search, and that I'm going to end up fielding endless, repetitive, and thoroughly ridiculous comments about how I don't know what I'm talking about, and how don't I know that Jenny McCarthy cured her son, and oh my goodness haven't I read Evidence of Harm? (All such comments will be summarily deleted, by the way -- there are plenty of places online for people to engage in that kind of argument, and I am under no obligation to host such an argument here).

That, I think, is a problem.

And it's not even just the vaccine hype causing the problem. The vaccine hype itself is actually, for all its wide-ranging (and undoubtedly destructive) rhetorical force, merely a symptom of the fear that underlies it. This fear isn't new, either: "changeling" mythology (in which a real child is thought to have been "kidnapped" and replaced by an elven or faery child) has been invoked in descriptions of neuro-atypical persons for years, and it seems very likely that the original mythology may have actually been established in response to the existence of "abnormal" children. The "refrigerator mother" hypothesis also predominated for a while (according to this hypothesis, autism was the result of "cold" and distant parenting, which caused the child not to develop normal social relatedness).

And in recent years, autism has been attributed to everything from the aforementioned vaccines, to television, to cell phones, to French fries, and even to demonic possession.

Now, most of the above are actually probably dismissed by most without so much as a second thought -- I don't actually run into very many people harping about cellular phones as a potential cause of autism -- but I have seen a surprising number of people who really, really ought to know better pandering to the antivaccinationists in their public remarks. And even among people who don't accept the vaccine hypothesis or any other crack-brained theory, there is still plenty of hype to be had -- plenty of assertions that autism is a "public health crisis" and that it is "imperative" to find a cure, a way to make autistic people nonautistic and prevent anyone else from being born autistic.

Now, you might say: "But what about the ones who are truly struggling? Who can't type on the Internet the way you do? Who might be aggressive, unhappy, angry, and frustrated all the time? Who break things and hurt themselves?"

What about them?

I do not deny that people who "really struggle" exist.

And I most certainly do not claim to "speak for" (or write for) anyone who cannot speak or write at all.

But I think I can say with full confidence that hype helps no-one. No, not even the people with "severe issues". (In fact, people with more limited communication skills are probably some of the ones who stand to experience the most harm from all the hype going around these days, as they are the ones likely to be assumed to lack personhood, making it easier for some to justify a "by any means necessary" approach.)

When are people going to get it into their heads that describing people as "empty shells", "vaccine-injured", "train wrecks" and "dead souls in live bodies" is not a good way to assure that they get whatever help they need to live the best possible lives?

When are people going to get it into their heads that you don't express concern for someone by completely dehumanizing them?

When are more people going to figure out that stuff like this is dehumanizing to begin with, and not just "common sense"?

I recognize that some people deal with very tough realities. I agree that there ought to be better services and more in the way of clear, accurate information for parents, autistic persons, educators, and caregivers alike. But right now the hype is standing in the way of those very worthwhile goals.

Ranting about the "horrors" of autism will not help any autistic child get a proper education.

It will not help an autistic adult get a job, or make friends, or live in a maximally self-determined manner.

It will not add anything useful to the cognitive and neurological studies that actually have a chance of figuring out how autistic brains work.

And it will not help counteract prejudice, bullying, or lack of understanding in anyone.

In short, it is the antithesis of what "awareness" is supposed to foster.

The "Emergency Mindset"

There's a difference between drawing attention to actual horrors and abuses that might not be very well-known for whatever reason, and trying to take something and make it sound as horrible as possible in order to get it on people's "radar", so to speak.

Drawing attention to abuses is important, as many abuses really do exist. Rooting out "sweatshop labor"? Definitely helpful. Helping teenage girls in a village avoid being forced into motherhood at 13 with their 40-year-old "husbands"? Again, a worthwhile thing to do.

But stating your suicidal-homicidal ideations in front of your autistic child in order to "raise awareness" of autism?

Not good, and not likely to help, and quite likely to actually hurt.

I can see how some of the stuff that eventually gets subsumed by hype actually starts out with worthwhile goals in mind (e.g., "We need more funding so that autistic children can get better educational services").

But over time, statements expressing worthwhile goals are replaced by alarmed headlines about what a terrible "health crisis" autism is, because of the need to fund services/education more suited to persons who think and perceive and function differently from the norm.

What it looks like, based on what I've observed in doing a lot of reading and following the media on various subjects of interest to me, is that quite often people start out honestly and sincerely searching for a way to help their child, their community, or humanity-at-large. Nobody can solve every problem in the world on their own, and no individual has the bandwidth to even think on a daily basis about all the things they might potentially be able to help out with. So what most people (at least the ones who are compelled to "do something" for whatever reason) end up doing is picking a thing, or a small set of things, to focus on.

There is nothing wrong with this. The impulse to help is not a bad thing (well, unless you're a big Ayn Rand fan, but that's neither here nor there). Basic compassion is one of the wonderful things we have: its existence is one of the things that ought to give at least some hope for a future not only worth existing in, but in which all persons can live and love and dream without such a spectre of fear as many today still know. But that precious impulse must be watched and examined. Good intentions and fear can actually coexist in the mind as very close cousins, and figuring out where deep, passionate care ends and abject terror begins can be fraught in the best of circumstances.

(I've personally wrestled with this a lot in looking at my approach to longevity advocacy -- I started questioning over a decade ago whether I was truly motivated by love of life and concern for others or by bottomless existential horror. I do love live, and I do not fear nonexistence, as in nonexistence there is no self to experience fear. But I know that as a human being with an evolved survival instinct, I am always going to have a twinge of dread associated with the idea of actually dying or watching loved ones die.

And I think it's important to coexist with that twinge of dread, rather than ignore it, pretend it isn't there, or imagine that I can somehow wash it away with sufficiently "pure" intentions. What I'm trying to do with it is use it to help me see when exuberance edges into hype, so I can avoid getting caught up in the self-defeating, harmful kinds of activities that characterize hype and its effects. Because when one truly cares about something, one cannot afford either pity or flight into fantasy.)

I've seen people in all the "causes" I've come across using hype. This is understandable in the sense that hype is terribly seductive.

I would think that if any culture actually valued a particular subset of its citizens, it would consider providing appropriate care and education for those citizens a matter of course! Calling the "costs" associated with autism a "public health crisis" is as ludicrous as calling the costs associated with raising any child a "public health crisis", in my opinion. Services are not a zero sum game, despite what the purveyors of hype would have you believe.

And I don't believe for a minute that dehumanizing and scaremongering can be rationalized by the "well, at least it gets funding" defense -- even if you do get funding via drumming up apocalyptic visions in people, it's more than likely that funding will be applied in ways that don't actually address the very factors that would likely lead to better outcomes for all.

But the thing is, once you can feel justified in declaring a situation an emergency, everything feels clearer and easier. Decisions can be made more quickly, with less input. Sacrifices can be made with less thought for what is being lost. The "mundane" details of daily living can be brushed aside. Regular people take on the guises of heroes and villains and martyrs. In short, everything starts to feel just a little bit more like an action movie.

Sure, it's exciting. Sure, it can make a person feel secure in the idea that they are Doing The Right Thing.

But it doesn't work. At least not when misappropriated to apply to situations where outcomes in the absence of drastic intervention are far less certain.

The world is full of risk, and a mistake I see being made more and more these days seems to be rooted in the assumption that the world is supposed to be a "safe place" by now. But since the world obviously isn't a totally safe place (goes the logic), we need to start responding to more situations as if they were grave emergencies. In other words, people are clamoring for more hype, because hype gets attention. And attention can lead to help, funding, and yes, "awareness".

But the problem in using hype as a vehicle for "awareness" or anything else is that hype tends to devour the worthwhile goals right from under you, sometimes almost imperceptibly. And then people suffer for it, only this new kind of suffering is seen as more acceptable than the kind that the hype-driven inteventions were supposed to rectify. (And sometimes, the "new suffering" is even seen as further manifestations of whatever the "interventions" are supposed to be helping with, which leads to more hype and fear, which drives the cycle crazily forward.)

In Summary...

Believe me, I do actually have tremendous sympathy parents of autistic children right now, as there's so much crazy and hype and hysteria and confusion and fearmongering surrounding the subject of autism right now that it's a wonder anyone can navigate through it without coming out more alarmed and perplexed than when they started seeking information.

But the thing to remember is: not all autistics are children. We do grow up, and we are affected as adults by how autism is presented in the media, how autistic children are talked about and responded to, and what assumptions are made about what kinds of lives we have the potential to lead, or that we are actually already leading.

That makes "autism discourse" very much our business. It makes it my business as a person on the spectrum. We are stakeholders in all this, just as parents are, regardless of what "functioning labels" or spectrum sub-categories we've been assigned to (Asperger's, PDD-NOS, etc.) or assumed to belong to.

(And it's not all just some problem with "labels", either: undiagnosed autistic adults and children alike are still vulnerable and susceptible to discrimination, bullying, and the unrelenting stress of dealing with unrecognized sensory sensitivities and cognitive differences. Yes, labels can carry a stigma with them, but the kinds of stigma that really need to be addressed have much more to do with how people actually are (and how they are treated and responded to as a result) than about what people are called.)

In my mind, "awareness" (if the concept of such a thing can even be salvaged) ought to be geared toward encouraging people to open their eyes to difference and acknowledge that every future worth building must be a more flexible and inclusive one.

Awareness should mean actually being aware that different people perceive, think, and function differently and that "displaying a behavior" (or not displaying a behavior) doesn't mean the same thing for every person.

Awareness should mean understanding that if a person seems to "fixate" on one subject, it doesn't mean they are "too lazy" to learn about anything else, or even that they are necessarily "missing out" in any way. (The complexity of existence goes "all the way down", as far as I can tell, and I'm guessing many people would be surprised at just how much content there is in even things that look "simple" on the surface.)

Awareness should mean acknowledging that some people perceive visual information, sound, and touch differently than you do, and that they might not be able to just "ignore" stimuli that you can.

And finally, awareness should mean an openness to the very existence of different kinds of people, rather than an assumption that we only need to be more aware of certain kinds of people so that such people can be more readily changed into other, more valued kinds of people (and bemoaned as "tragic" or "limited" if this doesn't turn out to be possible).

What Each Of Us Notices

I.
When I draw, I usually start with one small area or bit of detail. Sometimes my aim is to draw a particular thing; other times, I just want to draw shapes and patterns representing the parts of reality I tend to see and notice.

When I am not trying to draw anything in particular, I seem to use a lot of "tree branch" and vine motifs, along with things that resemble steam and smoke and cracks and shine accents on the surfaces of amorphous shapes.

When I draw a picture such as the one below (which is really only a portion of a larger picture), I tend to hone in on one tiny area, and fill it up with detail. Only when an area has been appropriately saturated with inky curves do I move on to the next area (which may be adjacent, or which may be on a different and wholly empty part of the page).



Eventually, the paper I started with is covered with shapes and lines. Sometimes the whole thing resembles a kind of surreal "scene", other times it does not. When I look later upon pictures such as this, my eyes wander and track and follow from one small area to the next. I like to get lost when drawing, and lost when looking, in the microcosms of each small area of the whole.

This is very much the way I actually look at the world. I didn't realize that until relatively recently, but when I did, my own drawings suddenly fell into a kind of context.

My parents tell me that my very first questions about the world around me involved parts: I wanted to know about the holes in the telephone receiver, the insides of rocks, the mechanisms that made the hot water come out of the tap hot, and the composition of my hair.

II.
What does it feel like to walk into a store or other environment you have never visited before?

For me, it feels rather like walking into a kaliedoscope.

I see shapes and colors all around me -- raw shapes and colors, not "objects" or things invested intrinsically or instantaneously with symbolic meaning. The symbolic meaning-layer must be consciously or at least semi-consciously applied.

This does not mean I cannot see patterns or functional/aesthetic attributes of things -- it just means that, for instance, if I know I want a place to sit down and I walk into an unfamiliar room, I am just as likely to sit on the floor or on a windowsill or some other flat surface as I am to sit on a chair.

It means that if I am watching a movie, I might be looking at something off to the side of the actors, or the pattern on someone's shirt, or at something in the background, rather than at the aspects of the foreground the camera is directly focusing on.

It means that I am drawn to particular patterns and collections of shape, color, and light, and hurtled into confusion by others.

It means that right when I enter a new environment, I am uncommonly clumsy and vulnerable. I walk into people and walls. I scamper and run away from too much input, too much light, too many moving hands and the shadows they cast.

Perhaps this is a "constraint".



But do not ask me if I would rather be "free" of it, for such a question assumes that there is nothing but loss in such vulnerability and gracelessness.

And believe me, that is not the case.

Something To Leave The House For: Robot Art!

I am so going to this: an exhibition of robot-themed art at the San Jose Museum of Art. From the web site:

Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon examines the development of robot iconography in fine art over the past 50 years. In 1920, the term robot was coined from a Czech word robota, which means tedious labor. Since then, the image and the idea of a robot have evolved remarkably from an awkward, mechanical creature to a sophisticated android with artificial intelligence and the potential for human-like consciousness. As robotic technology catches up with the wild imagination of science fiction novels, movies, and animation, dreams and fears anticipated in these stories may also become reality. Artists included in the exhibition have responded to the technological innovation with optimism, pessimism, and humor, presenting work that ultimately explores our ambivalent attitudes towards robots.

I'm not sure when I'm going yet, but I will be sure to write a report here once I've been. Yay for robot art!

About

My name is Anne Corwin. I was born in 1978, in New Haven, Connecticut, USA.



I now live in California, where I share a home with my significant other Matt, four awesome cats, and one giant goldfish.

My professional field is Electrical Engineering. My specialization is Electromagnetic Compatibility. I am especially interested in the grounding, bonding, and shielding aspects of this specialization.

I am also very interested in biogerontology, and am currently (as of 2010-2011) assisting researchers at the SENS Foundation's local lab facility toward that end. Mainly I do fix-it type stuff at the lab, which I love, as it lets me learn fascinating things about biotech whilst allowing me to apply my engineering experience on a practical level.

When not engaged in engineering or lab pursuits, I enjoy reading, building stuff, painting, drawing, writing, video games, photography, and observing the aforementioned four awesome cats I reside with. Oh and I am a major sci-fi nerd (shamelessly and not the least bit "ironically").


This Blog

I don't keep a blog because I think I am super important or noteworthy in any way, it's just something that sort of happened. Existence is Wonderful is essentially my "house" on the Internet, sort of a central base I can go to no matter where I am in offline-space.

I started Existence is Wonderful in April 2006 in response to a rather intense and lengthy discussion on the subject of longevity that happened to be occurring on a BBS I belong to around that time.

Initially, I figured this blog would just serve as a sort of repository for what I saw then as "basic, logical arguments" in favor of human life extension. Longevity has been a strong interest of mine for years, as it grew out of a combination of several childhood interests (medical technology, time travel, etc.) and a general feeling that all lives are valuable, and that merely being old should not make a person's life any less worth trying to save.

However, over time I came to expand the range of blogged-about subjects here. Longevity is still of course a priority for me, but in exploring the world, learning about the way various things in existence connect to others, and just generally living I find that there are in fact many things worth writing about.

Therefore, in addition to longevity-oriented pieces, you will find writings here on:

- Robots/cyborgs/artificial intelligence
- Science Fiction (I am a lifelong fan and a wannabe writer)
- Retro-Futurism
- Bioethics (and ethics in general)
- Brains and Cognition
- Autism and Autistic Advocacy
- Disability Rights
- Morphological and Cognitive Liberty

...along with various social/political/philosophical things I am not entirely sure how to classify.

(Also, I should note that I tend to write in "spurts" and I also tend to get "tracked into" particular blogging topics for periods of time, which means that there might be phases in which I seem to write lots of posts on brain-related stuff (autism, neurology and video games, etc.), on longevity, on science fiction, or on some other semi-specific subject from the fuzzy and potentially expanding list above. So I wouldn't be too quick to classify this blog as a single-subject platform -- it's not, even though it might look like one from time to time.)

I have so far been very surprised that anyone at all is interested in what I write, and I do not expect that of the people who do read, everyone will be interested in everything I write.

But of course if anyone does happen to be reading, comments are always welcome, so long as they adhere to the comment policy.

Why "Existence is Wonderful"?

My profile on this blog has contained the phrase, "I am a small piece of the universe observing itself" since its inception.

I don't remember where I first heard that phrase, or when I encountered the idea of individually conscious persons being the fractionated inner eyes of a gigantic, wonderful, terrible, awesome superstructure of matter and energy attempting, on some level, to understand itself. To quote Ambassador Delenn (of the science fiction series Babylon 5):

'We believe that the universe is conscious in a way we can never truly understand. It is engaged in a search for meaning. So it breaks itself apart, investing its own consciousness in every form of life. We are the universe, trying to understand itself.'

I rather like the idea of interpreting things that way. And it is largely from that interpretation, or something like it, from which I normally write. I don't necessarily "believe that the universe is conscious", but it is clear that living, conscious beings are all PART of the universe and made of the same "stuff" -- from trees to stars to asteroids -- regardless of how we differ in form and function.

While I am an atheist (meaning I lack belief in personified, supernatural superbeings), I am by no means cut off from the ability to experience tremendous awe at the myriad wonders of existence. Quite the opposite is the case!

So, in other words, I titled this blog "Existence is Wonderful" as an expression of my sense that the very fact of existence is wonderful. I know that not everyone experiences life as wonderful, and I am particularly concerned about certain barriers in this regard (abuse, social injustice, bigotry, etc.).

But in my estimation it is the intrinsic potential for joy in all people, everywhere, in response to different facets of the complex space we inhabit, that make abuses and injustices worth fighting in the first place. This is why I focus in my writing both on things that fascinate and delight, and on things that stand in the way of such things (and in the way of survival itself for some).

[Another thing to note: I do not subscribe to any formal philosophical "system", despite the fact that I occasionally come across aspects of such systems that resonate with me in some way. I don't have any desire to program some abstract algorithm in my head that tells me how I should view every situation or what decisions I should make -- I like to take the real world on its own terms as much as possible, and my natural tendency is to apply abstractions sparingly, even though I can see their usefulness in delineating certain concepts at times.

The stuff in my head that feels like "personal philosophy" to me is sort of a mish-mash of direct observation, sensory data, and parts of books/quotes I've come across that have seemed to point at the same things I've tended to notice about life. E.g., when I read books like Momo by Michael Ende, or Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quartet novels, or like Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter, I get a strong sense of "correspondence" between (at least some of) the ideas/images expressed therein and what the world feels like from inside my head.

This is not something I do in order to be "cool", it is something I do because it's the only way I can actually approach and participate in discussions about ethics, philosophy, social justice, etc. So if you think something I'm describing sounds like [whatever]ism, you can certainly mention it, but don't be surprised if I don't immediately jump to identify with [whatever]ism, or if I have difficulty explaining what I think is good or bad about a particular -ism you either subscribe to or don't subscribe to. I have a lot of difficulty with the kind of "top-down" thinking that seems to dominate Internet discussion space, which seems frequently to consist of warring representatives of different fixed ideologies, even though I'm very good at noticing details and looking at things from a more "bottom-up" perspective.

(And if you're wondering why I'm going on about this here, mainly it's so I can point people to this explanation if they ask me things like, "So, what do you think are the major flaws in utilitarianism/capitalism/anarchism/socialism/Pastafarianism/etc.?" and find themselves wondering why I can't seem to give a "straight answer".)]

On Labels

I figured labels were worth writing about here, as one thing that happens to me sometimes is that people will see me writing about a particular facet of who and what I am, and then decide that I need to be told not to "define myself" by that one facet.

And...that confuses me, because not only do all people have the potential to end up in any number of "categories" depending on who is looking at them and what variables they are being assessed according to, I am generally reluctant to accept any labels to begin with (for cognitive/information-processing reasons, as alluded to in the Personal Philosophy section above).

As far as I'm concerned, all labels are merely shorthand -- while language is a part of reality, language does not and cannot encompass all of reality. So even if I choose to use a given label, there is no way I am going to let that label "own" me or tell me who I am.

For me, labels are functional and contextual -- labels I have accepted were accepted on the basis of their usefulness in describing why my body works the way it does ("female"), why my brain works the way it does ("autistic"), what jobs I am qualified for ("electrical engineer"), what taxes I need to pay ("California resident"), etc.

So if you see me calling myself X or Y or Z in my writing, please don't take it to mean that I think X, Y, or Z is EVERYTHING about my person. Labels X, Y, and Z may point to aspects of myself I do consider to be very important/fundamental to my being in some cases -- but it isn't the label itself that's fundamental.

Anne Corwins Who Are Not Me

So far this hasn't come up, but just in case anyone ends up coming across these other individuals, I would like to state for the record that I am not this person (a woman named Anne Corwin who appears to be some sort of child development psychologist). Nor am I this person (another Anne Corwin who apparently co-authored a book entitled "Miss Emily: The Yellow Rose of Texas").

I have no association with either of these individuals and they are not relatives or dopplegangers or anything of that sort -- they're just random females with the same name as me.

I would love to someday be well-established as a science and science-fiction writer (and I'm excited that I got to co-write a chapter in Damien Broderick's Year Million: Science At The Far Edge of Knowledge essay anthology -- that one is actually me), but my goal in that regard is motivated by a desire to keep learning, exploring, and improving my writing for the sheer joy of building skill in the craft.

The Empathy Conundrum: Ethics, Emotion, and Autistic Cognition

Two Capacities, One Word?

The word "empathy" gets bandied about a lot these days in popular media concerning brain and behavior-related topics.

Specifically, I've noticed that articles about either autism or sociopathy and criminal behavior tend to discuss a supposed "lack of empathy" in autistics - and in the sorts of people who like to torture animals for fun.

It is of great concern to me that the notion of particular kinds of people lacking empathy is so often brought up in a muddled, careless manner. I realize that most people writing about empathy and "mirror neurons" these days probably don't mean any harm by it, but that doesn't make the potential consequences of their writing any less worth pointing out and discussing critically.

First of all, I have noticed that when most people use the word empathy, they're actually referring to one of two very different things:

(1) The capacity of a person to "read" culture-typical social signals, respond in expected/predictable ways to common situations and experiences, and engage in a certain amount of "social learning" via particular kinds of imitation.

(2) The capacity of a person to feel emotions "on behalf" of others, to care about others, and to feel compelled toward ethical behavior.

I hardly think the two capacities decribed in (1) and (2) above could really be confused for each other, or assumed to mean the exact same thing, by anyone putting any actual thought into their discussion of what "empathy" means. And yet, it is not unusual to find people switching from talking about capacity (1) to talking about capacity (2) without any explicit indication that they are doing so, or any apparent understanding of what it might mean to conflate the two.

For a particularly egregious example of this, consider the Empathy Quotient quiz. Based on some of the theories and writings of British autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen (not to be confused with his cousin, comedic actor Sacha Baron-Cohen), the Empathy Quotient quiz includes such items as:

- I can easily tell if someone else wants to enter a conversation.

- I am very blunt, which some people take to be rudeness, even though this is unintentional.

- I can pick up quickly if someone says one thing but means another.

Notice that the three quiz items above all pertain to interpretation (1) of what "empathy" means.

Rather than having anything to do with whether a person actually cares about other people (or animals), these items all have to do with how someone might "operate" in the social arena. These items may indeed suggest areas where someone might experience social difficulty as a result of not functioning, thinking, or perceiving in a culture-typical manner, but they don't say anything about a person's capacity to respond emotionally to situations affecting other people. Nor do they say anything about a person's capacity to behave ethically or hold and adhere to principles.

Now, consider the next example set of items from the quiz:

- It upsets me to see an animal in pain.

- Seeing people cry doesn't really upset me.

- I get upset if I see people suffering on news programmes.

These items, in contrast to the previous three, are directly concerned with a person's internal, affective response to the suffering of others. Not with how the person "comes across" socially, or how good the person is at quickly noticing and responding to indirect communication and/or typical social cues. And that's a very important distinction to be aware of.

But the "empathy quotient" quiz doesn't make this distinction. Nor, apparently, do many people who write articles about autism in the popular press.

The Empathy Quotient quiz designates scores of 0 - 32 as "low", and suggests that "most people with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism score about 20".

I took this quiz this evening myself, and scored 18. So, while I don't put any actual stock in this quiz as a diagnostic instrument (its wording is extremely ambiguous in some places, among other problems), I certainly can't deny that my score does correlate with what my ASD diagnosis would supposedly predict.

But what does that actually mean, if anything?

My Own "Empathic Deficit"

I initially encountered the concept of "theory of mind" (and how it supposedly pertains to empathy) back when I was in the midst of the evaluation of my developmental history and cognitive/behavioral style that ended up leading to my diagnosis. At first, the idea that I might have "empathic difficulties" seemed to make sense and explain a lot of things about my pervasive and ongoing social difficulties.

After all:

- I have been called "insensitive" and "oblivious to other people" on numerous occasions.

- I was reprimanded at the first two jobs I worked at for such things as "sweeping the floor too much" (meaning I was focusing too intently on cleaning and not intently enough on greeting customers), and coming across as aloof or even rude.

- I have trouble spontaneously answering questions like "How are you?" (I actually have the comic below posted outside my cubicle at work).


- I have often been accused of missing the "emotional tone" of a conversation or situation -- e.g., my third grade teacher was once lecturing me about something (I can't remember what), and at one point she used a funny word, at which point I burst into laughter. I was then made to write "I will not laugh while I am being reprimanded" on a piece of paper multiple times.

- I have always found most social situations to be overwhelming and confusing (particularly if there are large groups involved).

- I have trouble keeping track of which people of my acquaintance know which pieces of information, and sometimes I get confused at the fact that things that seem "obvious" to me are not, in fact, "common knowledge".

- I also remember one of my childhood nicknames being "Miss Contrary", as I often appeared to "insist" on doing everything in my own way as opposed to a way I was shown or told -- and while I will certainly admit to stubbornness as a character trait (it runs in the family), the fact of the matter is that I often can't match people's movements in learning to perform tasks. (I'm a lot better at figuring out how to operate devices and accomplish physical tasks by studying and experimenting with the relevant objects myself than by watching other people performing the tasks and copying their movements, and I often find that the presence of other people when I'm trying to figure out how to do something hurts more than it helps.)

In light of all that, it seemed perfectly logical for me to figure that the popular literature conflating autistic cognition with a "lack of empathy" made sense. Until I was identified as being on the autistic spectrum, I'd tended to assume that I was "normal" and that other people were all weird and unpredictable. But learning that I might have "empathy deficits" turned the tables on that assumption, and for a while I found the notion that my social difficulties were due to such deficits quite useful as an explanatory tool.

Carelessness and Confusion

But as I read more (in seeking to learn how to better function in the world given the particulars of my neurology), I started to realize that empathy was a massively important and significant topic in the estimation of numerous scientists and laypeople. Empathy, according to many, is a key part of what makes humans "human" -- or perhaps more generally, what makes any sentient creature worthy and capable of membership in civilization.

So while I was (and am) perfectly okay with acknowledging my difficulties, I found myself becoming more and more distressed at how autistics were described in the media, particularly with regard to how tragic and horrible (or "bad for society") our existence was supposed to be, largely on account of our supposed empathic failures.

What's more, I observed that in quite a few of the discussions of autism I came across, "having a conscience" was being conflated or confused with "demonstrating and rapidly being able to interpret typical social signals".

I don't think this is the kind of linguistic carelessness anyone can afford to just ignore or brush aside, regardless of how naive it might be. Ignorance, and the perpetuation of misconceptions about what it is actually like to be and experience the world as a certain kind of person, can have real and serious consequences for people who actually happen to be the kind of person in question.

My concern is that if autistic people are culturally defined as "lacking empathy", and if people aren't exceedingly careful to define their terms (which they often aren't), and if "empathy" is widely considered to be a precursor to conscience, then we're basically being written off straight from the get-go.

And when people are written off, there's very little motivation to think about extending basic human rights to them, let alone (gasp) learning to better accommodate and integrate different sorts of people into society.

An example of what I mean by the confusion/conflation of "typical social skills" with "emotional response" can be found in the words of a commenter on a recent BoingBoing post referring to the Online Movement for autistics' rights. This commenter states that:

Mirror neurons allow us to literally feel someone else's pain. When we see someone hurt themselves, or see someone who is clearly emotionally upset, mirror neurons are triggered in the observer's mind that are analogous to the other individual's mental process.

This also allows us to learn through observation. You see someone going through a step-by-step process, and mirror neurons allow us to learn by having analogous neurons triggered.

But since autistics don't have the same mirror neural activity, they don't learn the same way, and they also don't have the same empathetic response.

The commenter quoted above is making what I see as the essential mistake in his appraisal of what it means to be autistic. He takes a particular mechanism by which learning may take place, notes that this mechanism may be difficult for (or inaccessible to) autistics, and jumps seamlessly to the conclusion that this has something to do with "being able to feel someone else's pain".

And it is my assertion that this assertion is invalid and scientifically untenable.

Different, Not Ethically Bankrupt!

A lot of discussions about autism, regardless of where they occur, seem to get stuck on the central dilemma of what autism actually is -- that is, what it means for a person to be autistic.

Do you go strictly by the DSM-IV definition? The ICD-10? What about all those people claiming that autism is caused by vaccines, or television, or French fries, or "yeast overgrowth"? Is autism a "set of behaviors" that, if a person can suppress them, will indicate that the person has been "cured" (this is certainly what the behaviorists would have you believe)? Are autism and Asperger's the same thing, or two different things? Does Asperger's even exist? Is autism more easily identified according to a person's weaknesses, or according to a person's strengths?

Truly, the sheer range of questions on this subject boggles the mind. I can certainly see how people end up getting confused, and believe me, I was pretty confused myself about the whole thing when I first started learning about what it meant for a person to be autistic. But over time I've come to settle on something of a cogent idea in this regard. And that idea is the fact that as near as I can tell, autism isn't so much about what a person does as about how a person does it.

It is quite apparent that autistics do tend to learn, think, and perceive differently than nonautistics do. There's good solid research backing this stuff up in the cognitive science arena, and I would dearly love to see it get more attention, seeing as the field of autism research has too long been dominated by the ghosts of radical behaviorism and psychoanalysis (and has of late been further polluted by opportunistic quackery, antivaccination pseudoscience, and homeopathic nincompoopery).

I agree very much with researcher Michelle Dawson (who works with the University of Montreal) who frequently and firmly asserts that autistics deserve the same high standards of science and ethics as nonautistic people can generally expect to enjoy. And this, to me, means that "deficit model" biases have no place in serious research. The best ways to help autistics -- who can certainly sometimes have extreme difficulties with daily living and other skills -- are much more likely to be found if corners aren't cut scientifically or ethically, and if the focus is on understanding the autistic brain as opposed to merely "remediating" it or trying to "prevent" it.

This is not an attempt to be cute. This is not an attempt to "romanticize" autism or the lives of the many individuals who fight in vain to find a place, a community, a school, etc., that can balance their needs with the needs of the cognitive/perceptual/functional majority. This is not "political correctness".

This is, frankly, concern. And a little bit of desperation, perhaps, as the assumptions frequently made about the capacities (for thought, for feeling, for happiness, for a worthwhile existence) of autistic people appear to run so deep at times that I can scarcely imagine how we as a culture might effectively root them out.

Empathy is only one area where particularly damaging assumptions tend to get made. There are many, many more, and I don't know if I could ever effectively cover them all in the depth they require. But empathy is an important subject -- an important word -- to hash through and define and consider in the relevant contexts.

The Bottom Line

I'm almost beginning to suspect that some folks might actually believe that in order to have an internal, affective response to another person's suffering or delight, and in order to engage in ethical behavior (which should never be confused with, or conflated with, "nice" behavior), a person must also consistently display the ability to read and respond to typical social cues in expected ways very fast in real-time.

And if anyone gets anything at all out of reading this, I would hope that it's some degree of reassurance that this is not, in fact, the case.

Autism is not a "personality type", and it is certainly not just another word for "being a jerk". It is a neurodevelopmental difference that, according to the best science I can find, primarily affects the cognition and processing of low-level information. This difference in turn can influence what skills and types of interests a person might end up having, and it may make a person aware of different details in the environment than the nonautistic person would notice, and it can also contribute to documented patterns of strength and weakness.

It can mean we use body language differently, that we don't make typical eye contact, and that we push the boundaries of social norms as far as how we express happiness, distress, or other emotions. It can mean we use and relate to language in an idiosyncratic or peculiar-seeming manner. And so on, and so forth.

Consequently, the autistic person can sometimes appear aloof, uninterested in social interaction (and may in fact be uninterested in culture-typical dominant forms of social interplay), unpredictable, "difficult", insensitive, or any of a number of other adjectives that skirt around the notion of "empathic deficit".

But this does not mean that we hate people. It does not mean we see people as disposable objects, or that we are somehow like sociopaths.

I'm not saying all autistics are going to seem "nice" or "sensitive" once you get to know us -- I can be a pretty harsh character myself on occasion, particularly if I encounter people whining about how all the evil "disability extremists" and "political correctness zealots" are conspiring to take over the world and drain Your Tax Dollars(TM) so they can sit around all day watching sitcoms and producing hordes of deaf, autistic, and possibly even gay babies. If you insist on expressing racist, pseudoscientific, sexist, homophobic, or ableist attitudes, you will raise my ire, and the results will not be cute.

I may not be able to tell when someone is "mildly irritated" or "subtly upset" easily (particularly if I'm trying to keep track of a conversation I'm having in real-time with that person), but if someone is crying or obviously in pain, I am powerfully (sometimes overwhelmingly) affected by it.

Heck, I can't even stand to see robots (fictional or real) being smashed or otherwise abused. I used to hide my eyes as a kid while watching Short Circuit 2 during the scene where the robotic protagonist is beaten by a group of thugs (which you can actually watch here if you're curious, but be warned that it is extremely upsetting and may very well make you cry).

So, I don't personally have any doubt that I at least have whatever basic circuitry is necessary for a person to care about other beings. I don't have any inclination to believe that autistic neurology, regardless of whether you want to talk about "Asperger's"-labeled people, or "PDD"-labeled people, or those with labels of "Autistic Disorder", in any way, shape, or form negates a person's capacity for care, for love, or for ethics. And I firmly believe that if the future is to be an open, welcoming place for all the various forms that may come about due to choice or accident or experiment, it is vital not to confuse charisma with conscience.

---

Links: Autistics (and Family Members of Autistics) On Empathy

- Bev at Asperger Square 8 describes her experiences in Empathy Class, and illustrates a few scenarios that aren't necessarily what they might seem.

- Autistic self-advocate Joel Smith discusses how it is certainly possible to be autistic and a caring person at the same time.

- ABFH at Whose Planet Is It Anyway? offers an "alternative" version of the Empathy Quotient -- one might perhaps say a revised version!

- Autistic self-advocate Jim Sinclair offers Thoughts About Empathy.

- Amanda Baggs writes quite a lot worth reading here regarding bullying, exclusion, and the "we're not like those people!" phenomenon that underlies so much of the actually pernicious empathic failure that is not constrained to any individual or named pathology, but endemic throughout society in certain manifestations.

- Temple Grandin, an author and professor of animal science who also happens to be autistic, notes an interview on NPR how she is "frustrated by the inability of normal [nonautistic] people to have sensory empathy. They can't seem to acknowledge these different realities because they're so far away from their own experiences."

- Special education teacher (and parent to autistic son) Mike Stanton discusses a pair of autistic artists and muses, "Why should there be a connection between [neurotypical] social cognition and moral values?"

- Lisa at Life In The New Republic describes how her 12-year-old autistic son, Brendan, upon realizing that the stuffed animal he'd just picked up did not light up when squeezed (as it was advertised to do), asserted that he did not want to return the toy because "...he was worried about what would happen to it if he took it back, that no-one would love it."

(NOTE: Links have been listed here to provide a range of perspectives on empathy as it pertains to autism and human morality/conscience/cognition in general. Please note that the opinions expressed by the individuals linked are theirs alone, and my listing them here does not imply that I always agree with all these people on everything. I probably agree with many of them on a lot of things, but there is no person I agree with 100% of the time).