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Autism may be the price of human intelligence, linked to human brain evolution

https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/42/9/msaf189/8245036?login=false
39•ivewonyoung•1h ago

Comments

mikert89•44m ago
Pretty clear theres a tradeoff between social intelligence and other forms of intelligence
ACCount37•31m ago
Is there now?

High functioning autism exists, but autism in general doesn't seem to give any advantage to general intelligence. And the low end of functioning in autism is really, really low.

dyauspitr•23m ago
Einstein seemed to have absolutely no problems with his social life. Newton on the other hand lived and died alone, possibly a virgin.
cultofmetatron•16m ago
Feynman was also very charismatic
mrits•11m ago
It seems like there are a lot more gay guys than asexuals out there though.
hollerith•11m ago
In Western Europe in the 1600s, being a virgin didn't make you a loser in most people's eyes like it does now.

Newton had long friendships with other leading intellectual figures (Edmund Halley, John Locke, mathematician David Gregory).

userbinator•20m ago
Or "there's a fine line between genius and insanity".
jongjong•30m ago
This makes sense. I do feel like intelligence has hard limits. Maybe knowledge doesn't have limits but intelligence definitely feels like it has limits.

If you consider IQ tests, a lot of it is about seeing a sequence and seeing all possible patterns and then figuring out which one is the most certain/obvious based on the limited sample given. One could imagine all sorts of complex patterns beyond the 'correct answer'. But there's a point it loses all utility value. But it's not right either to assume that the most obvious/simplest pattern is always the right one. Not all logic is elegant, especially not when it comes to human matters.

krackers•3m ago
If you believe in the intelligence -> compression thing, then the hard limit would be the komologorov complexity.
pizzafeelsright•25m ago
Is there a blood test for autism?
nickthegreek•14m ago
no.
marklar423•12m ago
There are certain genetic markers you can test for, but not all forms of autism appear in the tests we have today.

Then there's things like the folate blocking antibody (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4783401/) which you can do a blood test for, but again not all people with autism have the antibody.

nerdsniper•10m ago
Why do you ask?
thorncorona•25m ago
> In summary, we introduce a general principle governing neuronal evolution and suggest that the exceptionally high prevalence of autism in humans may be a direct result of natural selection for lower expression of a suite of genes that conferred a fitness benefit to our ancestors while also rendering an abundant class of neurons more sensitive to perturbation.

I don't see how the title "Autism may be the price of human intelligence, linked to human brain evolution" is at all related to the paper?

metadat•17m ago
It is a long paper, so not immediately obvious.

> The study links evolutionary neuroscience with neurodevelopmental disease, suggesting that the unusually high incidence of autism in humans might be a byproduct of selection shaping our brains.

> It suggests that key neuron types in the human brain are subject to particularly strong evolutionary pressures, especially in their regulatory landscapes.

> If valid, it opens a new lens through which to think about neurodiversity: certain vulnerabilities might be inextricable from the very changes that made human cognition distinctive

mavsman•25m ago
Something's off. I didn't see one mention of Tylenol in this paper.
margalabargala•10m ago
The article is about how the fundamental nature of intelligence has certain weaknesses that will manifest.

For example, a species sufficiently intelligent to discover acetaminophen is doomed to also create the sort of idiocy that is the current US administration.

agentcoops•4m ago
There's an ambiguity in the title, reflected in some comments below. It can be understood either as the claim that "in a particular human being, to be intelligent as measured by IQ means that you are more likely to be autistic", suggesting for example a trade-off between social and general intelligence; or the claim that "the evolution of the human brain and so human intelligence as such, which characterizes both those of low and high IQ, entailed those genetic shifts that made autism a possibility for our species but not other primates." The paper argues a form of the latter.

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Autism may be the price of human intelligence, linked to human brain evolution

https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/42/9/msaf189/8245036?login=false
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