He contends that autism is brain damage that limits your max IQ and that all the smartest people are neurotypical -- the genius brain is almost necessarily a normie brain, but better.
I think that what's closer to the truth is that extremely high intelligence is itself a form of neurodivergence, which is likely to be comorbid with other forms of neurodivergence. Eric himself I believe to be neurodivergent (in some non-autistic way) with 95% confidence: one of the tells is his choice of desktop environment: a minimalist tiling window manager (likely i3) with Emacs full screen on one of his displays -- anything else he deems too distracting and a drag on his brain. This sounds very ADHD and in any case is an almost archetypal Weird Nerd setup. Neurotypicals love their Windows and Mac style UIs, and every NT software engineer I've met has no problem managing -- and mousing through -- multiple windows: Visual Studio Code for coding, Postman for making HTTP calls, DBVisualizer for database interactions, etc.
NTs also love what people like Eric (and I as well sometimes) dismiss as "monkey socio-sexual games"; and if you are smart as well, you tend to get really, really good at these. Having been around extremely intelligent people who otherwise seem neurotypical (in particular, having married one and thus gained two more as in-laws), they tend to get less into hard science fields like math and physics, and more into fields where they can wield their impressive social skills for maximum benefit such as law, psychology, or entertainment. (Great actors, like Orson Welles or Sir Patrick Stewart, fit this profile to a T, though there are some great actors -- like Dan Aykroyd -- with autism!) My in-laws were legal professionals for the entertainment industry; after that long and successful career they retired, went to seminary, and joined the clergy of the Episcopal church!
Eric's observation that all the best scientists are neurotypical-ish may be a result of what's described in TFA: in today's world, being a prominent scientist selects very hard against Weird Nerd traits because at that level, beyond a baseline level raw skill in the discipline doesn't correlate well with success; schmoozing and marketing do. The same has been true of professional software engineering for at least a decade and a half or so.
> Eric's observation that all the best scientists are neurotypical-ish may be a result of what's described in TFA: in today's world, being a prominent scientist selects very hard against Weird Nerd traits because at that level, beyond a baseline level raw skill in the discipline doesn't correlate well with success; schmoozing and marketing do.
I definitely think so. If Eric had gone to tea with faculty at the Institute of Advanced Study back when Einstein and Gödel were top dogs he may well have had the opposite impression.
https://x.com/esrtweet/status/1795088812944584781
He contends that autism is brain damage that limits your max IQ and that all the smartest people are neurotypical -- the genius brain is almost necessarily a normie brain, but better.
I think that what's closer to the truth is that extremely high intelligence is itself a form of neurodivergence, which is likely to be comorbid with other forms of neurodivergence. Eric himself I believe to be neurodivergent (in some non-autistic way) with 95% confidence: one of the tells is his choice of desktop environment: a minimalist tiling window manager (likely i3) with Emacs full screen on one of his displays -- anything else he deems too distracting and a drag on his brain. This sounds very ADHD and in any case is an almost archetypal Weird Nerd setup. Neurotypicals love their Windows and Mac style UIs, and every NT software engineer I've met has no problem managing -- and mousing through -- multiple windows: Visual Studio Code for coding, Postman for making HTTP calls, DBVisualizer for database interactions, etc.
NTs also love what people like Eric (and I as well sometimes) dismiss as "monkey socio-sexual games"; and if you are smart as well, you tend to get really, really good at these. Having been around extremely intelligent people who otherwise seem neurotypical (in particular, having married one and thus gained two more as in-laws), they tend to get less into hard science fields like math and physics, and more into fields where they can wield their impressive social skills for maximum benefit such as law, psychology, or entertainment. (Great actors, like Orson Welles or Sir Patrick Stewart, fit this profile to a T, though there are some great actors -- like Dan Aykroyd -- with autism!) My in-laws were legal professionals for the entertainment industry; after that long and successful career they retired, went to seminary, and joined the clergy of the Episcopal church!
Eric's observation that all the best scientists are neurotypical-ish may be a result of what's described in TFA: in today's world, being a prominent scientist selects very hard against Weird Nerd traits because at that level, beyond a baseline level raw skill in the discipline doesn't correlate well with success; schmoozing and marketing do. The same has been true of professional software engineering for at least a decade and a half or so.