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Here I paraphrase or quote verbatim comments I have received (by way of the contact information) on A Topological Theory of Autism, together with brief responses. There are also links to questions posted elsewhere on this site. The forum's purpose is to expose weaknesses in the theory and to suggest how some objections might be addressed. I rotate the posted discussions from time to time, and am happy to attribute comments where that is desired. I should note at the outset that I do not think the Topological Theory of Autism is the final word on autism. On the contrary, autism appears to me complex, difficult, and to merit a great variety of approaches to it. I do, however, think that the Toplogical Theory of Autism describes an important and perhaps major aspect of autism's history. Click a sentence to view the discussion.
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Text excluding others' words Copyright 2001-2007 by Gregory B. Yates. All Rights Reserved.
From what I know and have read about the autistic spectrum, I do not imagine we would be particularly favored to survive in a frontier society. Thus I have difficulty subscribing to your topological theory. (judy ‹judy_judyjudy @ yahoo.com›)
This question is likely to recur because severe autism seems so generally debilitating. The question is directly addressed in the section of the theory entitled Maladaptive Autism, and also is the first of the Occasionally-Asked Questions, which the reader may ask here.
It is interesting that the comment speaks of frontier society, because the people at the extreme frontier of humanity -- at the sparse population surface itself -- probably could not be described as surviving in much of a society at all. Think "mountain man", "hermit" and the like. The only society such outliers require in order to pass on their autistic genes is that of a single successful mating.
Plant communities and rocks have sparse surface regions. Doesn't the theory's reasoning imply that the surface elements of plant communities and rocks are adapted to their circumstances and hence relatively autistic?
The theory's reasoning does indeed apply to plants, insects, microbes, and to all forms of life. In the absence of highly-developed brains some of the adaptations to surface sparseness may not precisely resemble human autism. Nevertheless such adaptations are expected. The comparison of traits in sparse- and dense-dwelling members of various species is an important area of study and provides potential tests of the theory's reasoning. Stirring effects must be carefully measured or estimated in these studies.
The theory's logic extends to rocks as well. As in the theory's phalanx example, the surface elements of a rock exist at relatively large mean distance from neighbors: Sparseness-adaptation is thus a trait of rock surface elements. In a sense this is a rock's version of autism. Reflect also that the surface of a rock is generally the region exposed to the most erosion. Weakly-attached particles are more rapidly eroded there. Considering the freshly-eroding particles to be the outermost surface of the rock, the result is that particles with the specific trait of being weakly-attached to others predominate at a rock's surface. Once again basic autistic traits appear even in rocks.
It seems to me that life under harsh physical conditions near the fringes of civilization would favor the survival of small teams rather than individuals. This is perhaps most intuitive in the area of hunting, where the success of groups of hunters (e.g. one hunter driving game toward the ambush, or an animal wounded by three arrows instead of just one...) could well exceed the success of a solitary hunter. Similarly, a division of labor (which implies teamwork and social interaction) could well be more successful (e.g. one part of the group staying in camp, tending fires and children and completing stationary tasks, while another part of the group roams about for food).(eby)
This is a common misconception. Teams survive in extremely sparse areas only when they are transiently hauling provisions from less sparse areas. For a given amount of mobility -- and mobility itself needs energy -- there are areas sparse enough to support one person, but not two. In such areas cooperative strategies cannot prevail. This topic is a bit beyond the scope of A Topological Theory of Autism, but is squarely in the range of the A-Priori-Object Theory mentioned in the autism-theory preface. It is true that immediately within the sparsest regions survival is greatly aided by banding together, but that also shows that the land there is fertile enough to support a group and therefore does not represent the extreme frontier. Even in hardscrabble areas where groups can eke out a living members probably spend less time together than do people gathering vegetables in lush areas.
Group hunting, if I am not mistaken, is usually practiced where animals are large or run in herds -- in other words, in areas fertile enough to sustain large animal populations or populations of large animals. Whale-hunting Inuit people, and seal-hunting polar bears for that matter, do not live in truly sparse areas but at the narrow edge of a fertile one -- the sea. In sparse areas it is probably difficult to surpass the strategy of a skilled lone hunter. Remember that if a hunting strategy requires three times as many people to kill an animal for food, then the strategy must be at least three times as effective as a lone hunter's in order to feed all the mouths involved.
Division of labor is discussed in A Topological Theory of Autism under the general heading of symbiosis. Where division of labor requires a group the foregoing arguments apply. Notice, though, all that is implied by the logic of dividing labor: It means that one who survives alone at the extreme population frontier must be capable of all the labors that would otherwise be divided. The effectiveness of labor division in less sparse areas thus underscores the adaptive pressure to trade social ability for ability with objects and non-human species at population frontiers.
The human brain confabulates, and some of its fables are false. Great care must be exercised in assessing what are the actual prevalent behaviors at extreme population frontiers. Brains spinning tales from well-protected vantage points always near food are likely to underestimate the harshness of conditions at true population frontiers.
At the [dense] end of the spectrum, there's the phenomenon of being lost in the crowd. Big-city residents like the anonymity of living in a large population, as opposed to a small town setting where everybody knows everyone else's business. So autistics might in some ways have a better time living as strangers within a large population.
The phenomenon of being lost in a crowd had little influence on the course of brain evolution, of course, as essentially all of brain evolution occurred prior to the existence of crowds. In any case, the theory points out that "without technology people living near others may be socially disconnected, but people living far from others must be." May and must differ critically in this way: What may be so occurs with a probability of less than 1, whereas what must be so occurs with a probability of 1.
I don't quite understand how some of the arguments fit into a context of what has been established in the field of genetics, evolution/coevolution, just plain variability of manifestations in behavior, etc. ... The references are also sparse and that makes me wonder about the robustness of the theory. (bc)
I developed the present theory independently of existing theories for two reasons: 1) Brain theory needs fresh ideas, and 2) I am mildly autistic: I naturally work independently of convention. Inevitably I reinvent wheels, but that simply suggests to me that the wheels exist. I am happy to attribute ideas where clear precedents can be found, however. I ask for readers' help in reporting any such precedents. I must say that if precedents for the theory's main conclusions do exist, then their authors seem to have been either blind to the helpful implications -- for example to autistic people -- or insensible of a responsibility to report the conclusions in a way obvious to those they might help.
There is a further reason that A Topological Theory of Autism largely ignores scientific precedent, and that is to avoid suggesting the theory rests on precedent where it does not. The theory notes, for example, that "The Topological Theory of Autism is more concerned with the fact [and persistence] of adaptation than with its underlying mechanism. As a result the Topological Theory of Autism is compatible with Darwin's theory but does not rely on it." The basic ideas of A Topological Theory of Autism are simple, testable through insight and everyday observation, and do not much rely on scientific precedent. Sometimes the challenge in science is to cultivate taste in simple ideas.
"Autism is a major feature of brain evolution." Doesn't this mean more evolved? ... Autistic people are more evolved ... More white people are autistic. This could be taken as a Hitler argument.(sl)
A Topological Theory of Autism does NOT say that autistic (or any) people are "more evolved" than others. In fact, if anything the theory says the opposite -- that the expectation is that autistic abilities will on average complement rather than globally surpass others. The reason is simple: Population topology fosters a loss of abilities as surely as it fosters gain. Brains persisting long in sparse regions lose social traits even as they gain traits adaptive to lone existence in a world of objects and other species. This complements exactly the expectation for brains dwelling on average far from the population surface. Thriving of the human species depends critically on both social and non-social traits.
On the matter of autism and race A Toplogical Theory of Autism concludes this: "Adaptation to sparseness should render autism more prevalent among people with ancestral homelands near the poles. There has long been a latitude-correlated racial spectrum on Earth. However unpleasant it is to contemplate human differences, some correlation of the autism and racial spectrums seems inevitable." Overall the theory says in effect, "We're in this boat together." The warning in its Afterword bears repeating: "Any attempt to use the Topological Theory of Autism to demonstrate the global superiority of a group is a patent misuse of the theory."
Text excluding others' words Copyright 2001-2003 by Gregory B. Yates. All Rights Reserved.