THINGS I LEARNED ABOUT THE AUTISTIC SPECTRUM. Here are some things I learned from the articles I linked to yesterday: 1. Temple Grandin says that “The thing about being autistic is that you gradually get less and less autistic…because you keep learning, you keep learning how to behave.” 2. Temple Grandin compares this learning to acting: “It’s like being in a play; I’m always in a play.” Interestingly, Tyler Cowen cites a psychologist who says that “acting is a profession well-represented on the autistic spectrum.” 3. Temple Grandin thinks in pictures. Bari Weiss calls this “the defining characteristic of her mind.” 4. It is very important to recognize that there is a spectrum of autistic characteristics. 5. Tyler Cowen has a long list of cognitive skills—I counted ten of them in one paragraph—that people in the autistic spectrum are better in. 6. Cowen views “higher (and lower) education as teaching people to be more autistic in many of their basic cognitive skills.”
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Are you referring to intense concentration? That makes many things possible. But it also can be an evil spell if the human voice or some kind of human contact can’t break the subject’s total concentration on THAT ONE THING.