Neurodiversity

As someone who falls in the "Beautiful Mind" end of the spectrum I find it insulting and abhorrent that people would do anything OTHER than cure us if they could.

Beneath superficial success and contribution, my life is a nonstop Munchian scream. I find it less insulting when people say everyone on the spectrum should be exterminated, than when people say some of us should be allowed to continue existing because our particular end of the spectrum happens to write pretty code / invent pretty theorems / etc.

Pale skin is thought to have evolved as a rapid (last ~5k years) and crude adaptation to avoid vitamin D deficiency shortly after farming was developed and allowed non-animal-based diets at the very high latitudes of northern Europe.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/04/how-europeans-evolved...

It is reasonable to think that there the significant drawbacks associated with that hacked-together solution are no longer necessary because modern diets easily give adequate vitamin D.

Normally "genocide" is considered bad because it results in living people being killed. I think we can all agree that killing a living person against their will is bad.

But with what you describe as "genocide," not a single person is harmed. To me, an African American person has the same intrinsic value as a white person or anyone else. Therefore, I can't see any particular reason why I should care if we have more or fewer African Americans in the world.

I'm familiar with the argument made by deaf people. But those advocates never seem to address the reversal argument; why shouldn't we also produce new deaf people (e.g. by sedating some children and painlessly puncturing their eardrums) in pursuit of this goal?

Skin color is a relatively minor component of race, race describes the clustering of a whole host of traits and characteristics in a group of individuals.

Yellow-skinned Africans would still be Africans, purple-skinned Asians would still be Asians, and green-skinned Europeans would still be Europeans.

I spend the rest of the year in places that are not Norway or Sweden - places where even the darkest African or Tamil does not suffer vitamin D deficiency.

I find it very entertaining to be accused of PC signalling a few days after being accused of white supremacy.

Perhaps I can chemically supplement myself to have the same powers that my African and Indian friends are born with. Why wouldn't I want my children to be born with that power?

Similarly, I'd like them to be born intelligent and naturally athletic.

> until you tan

Not all of us have your superpower :) I've managed to tan 1/32 of my summers.

TBH I have no idea. Just mentioned the Arthur C. Clarke as an amusing related anecdote.

The adage 'birds of a feather flock together' is a true one. Our ability to communicate with each other relies most strongly on shared experience esp. with regard to normative behavior, thoughts.

I would not advise you to act as neurotypical but to seek out your own kind. That might not be easily found in collected pools of humans but to take a leaf out of the Major's book: 'The net is vast and infinite.'

How many of us have mentioned an obscure topic in passing on HN, and then been surprised by an erudite observation? Of course this does not always prevail, but it happens with enough frequency that I am convinced for each person there are companions.

To be less academic, if there are conventions for furries, then there are places in the world for you too!

It is frequently noted that geeks do much better at themed events with a purpose than at generic social outings. Less night club, more book club. The more object oriented the activity, the easier geeks get along. If you've been to a Hackerspace you'll know there is a wide range of interesting people at such places.

P.S. Every line cook I've known does claim to be in their own screaming hell.

You sound like someone who could benefit from 300μg of LSD to think his life through and perhaps make major changes, alternatively psylocybin. No offense, but it seems like you're mindlessly executing a social script meant for someone completely different. Like a Westworld host's loop (a tv series).

Regarding parties, if you want to make yourself social, try MDMA with selegiline. Selegiline is to prevent MDMA from being neurotoxic [0].

>BTW, during that seduction community time I spent endless hours at bars and clubs, surrounded by people having fun and pretending to have fun myself. I never had any fun there. It was more of a war zone which I tolerated in pursuit of a goal.

You weren't alone. Most, if not all, men go to clubs in hope of getting laid. Those that have fun find the whole process fun; a game. They are the most extroverted ones so it may seem like it's the normal way to spend free time, but in reality they're a small minority. Nothing weird with not liking it, or not getting along with those that like it.

>I did that because I was tired of being a virgin

Literally, or do you mean combined with being single? If literally, why all that work on seduction instead of paying a prostitute?

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17881526

You remind me of a friend. We don't talk to each other anymore, though, because he found a way to focus his mad drive for computers. He's a brilliant programmer and a bit narcissistic. By getting into college I think he found a way to have his skills valued despite what other people might have to deal with regarding his personality. He's not always an ass, but he can be difficult. I'm quite sure that he's going to be lonely in the future, just like you, if he doesn't find friends able to cope with his most shiny traits.

OTOH, I'm the polar opposite, the complete loser, much like the stereotype of a fry-cook can come to be, and I have to say that being lonely as I am, I would trade places with you in heartbeat. While I don't inflict in other people and keep most things to myself, to have to deal with the minor incompetence of others in exchange to be completely isolated sounds great.

God, divorce the poor woman - whom you clearly think of as property anyway - and let her find someone who isn't misogynist.

That sounds really awful. You've followed the recipe, gotten the killer career, the fat stacks, and the hot wife, and there you are, still miserable.

Please try your best not to read this as being condescending - I have a weakness for making valiant, often vain attempts at reaching out to and helping people who are miserable, because I've been there myself.

There's good news, and bad news.

The bad news is that the things that are supposed to make us happy are cultural constructs, illusions and soporifics that for whatever reason, fail completely to bring any happiness or meaning to the lives of people like you and me. We're born, we try feverishly and frantically to grab onto the happiness and meaning that seem to come so easily to others, and when we die it's a stillbirth - we've never really lived.

The good news (which may also sound kind of bad, depending on how you feel about certain things), is that humans throughout history have run up against this, and some of them have sat down and tried to solve the problem. Like all the best solutions, theirs were counter-intuitive, paradoxical to the ignorant, and easily mocked by those who had no need for them. These were of course the philosophers, mystics, and many of those who we think of today as religious figures. What they discovered was essentially the technology of human happiness.

I should stop to point out here that I'm not suggesting that you can fix your ASD stuff. What I am suggesting that it's not the proximate cause of your unhappiness. Sure, being excluded and lonely may be the result of your condition, but lots of people have that experience for other reasons and go on to lead happy lives. It's your reaction to your situation that's causing you pain.

I don't want to be prescriptive about where to start, but as intellectually appealing as philosophy might be, the bullshit to insight ratio is extremely high compared to what people generally refer to as spirituality or religion. Approaching the technology of happiness through Plato is a bit like trying to learn how to program by reading Turing's papers on computing - everything you need is theoretically there, but it's going to require a herculean effort before you can make software. It's better to revisit it once you have something that works in your life.

I'm not saying you have to believe in god, jesus, or magic. Some religious traditions leave these out entirely - for example in Buddhism offers an accessible path involving reincarnation, Bodhisattvas (saints), and miracles, and an alternative one in the Zen and Theravada traditions in which these things are taken as symbols rather than the signified. Buddhism is, to the best of my knowledge, the only religion in which this bifurcation is explicitly acknowledged, although some Christian and Muslim Neoplatonists constructed similar arguments that never became part of the broader doctrine.

Another commenter has suggested psychedelics. I've had earth shattering spiritual experiences on them, and I've also had less intense but much clearer and more lasting ones in the more traditional pursuit of understanding. YMMV.

Finally, if by some (figurative) miracle you've made it this far, it's important to note that learning about this stuff does nothing. You have to practice it, engage in it, and be changed by it. This is deeply fucking uncomfortable process, and it takes time. Best of luck.