What is your opinion about people with Asperger's syndrome?

Aspergers Syndrome is on the Autism Spectrum. It is a condition that one is born with and does not choose. Even within the Aspergers diagnosis, there is variability on how the condition is manifest in each person. Therefore, I have no generalized opinion about people with this condition, just as I have no generalized opinion about people who are born with brown hair, or webbed toes, a penis, or visual impairments, for example.

I take each person as an individual and form my opinions about them based on my experience with them directly. If they are different from me, I might ponder the distinction and how my life would be had I been born with their characteristics, but I certainly don’t judge people based on something which they did not choose.

People who actually “have” it: they’re often very bright and interesting people. I used the scare quotes because Asperger’s has been abolished as a clinically recognized condition, in fact, and now these people are considered to be high-functioning autistics. The result is the same: they are often empathetic, intelligent people with poor social skills.

People who self-diagnose as an excuse to be assholes: they are still assholes. The slang term for these people is “sperg.” This population loves Wikipedia and QA sites.

Over rated. I believe many could be misdiagnosed through members of their families and not by professionals. My sister suggested I had Asperger’s and I reminded her that many of the symptoms she mentioned applied to children, not adults and that many of my alleged symptoms were results of my upbringing in a very Catholic environment and a verbally and physically abusive father who would have been arrested for child abuse these days.

quick question: Is Asperger’s the same as Tourrettes?

@blueberry_kid: no.

I work with a guy who is “on the spectrum”. As long as we all understand his needs, strengths and weaknesses we all get along fine.
I have to tell him what to do – in full sentences with all units. If I say “the temperature is 70” he is lost. I must say the “temperature is 70 degrees Fahrenheit”. He does deep programing for our microcontrollers. If I give him a flow chart he will go away and come back with it done. And it will be perfect.

One thing we absolutely cannot do is allow him to talk with customers (or even strangers). People are put off by his manner and behavior. There is no gray with him. if a system was tested and operates perfectly at room temp and someone asks “How is it working?”, he will say it “does not work” because we have not tested it at high temp and pressure yet. I would say “The unit works at room temp but has not been tested at high temp and pressure.” He says to the customer “It does not work.” When they naturally ask “When will it work?” he explodes.
We keep him away from customers. He does a great job programming. As long as we keep him doing that, everyone is happy.

Side note. As the boss, it does add some work for me. I am considering going to another processor due to throughput limitations of the existing 2 year old design. I am honestly afraid to tell him. I am putting together a timing diagram with data that will prove the exiting processor cannot do the job. This is all for his benefit. Other guys look at the data, know the calculations are taking too long, and are ready to move on. He does not like change so we must convince him.

I am not qualified to answer as I do not know anyone with Aspergers, as far as I know.
Everyone has their challenges, I’m slightly ADD, very bright, great social/people skills but scattered at times. I do love people that are funny and quick witted and have the gift of gab so I probably wouldn’t be a great match for either an Aspie or an extreme introvert on a personal level or in a work environment.

@bolwerk I’ve never been called a “sperg”; that’s a new one on me. Aspie is the one I hear all the time.You’re correct that those that self-diagnose tend to be assholes though. In fact, their “diagnosis” is a weak attempt to justify ddouchebaggery.

@LuckyGuy Now you know why I work in a machine shop instead of something involving customer service. While I’m not thas afflicted as him, I’m awkward and easily flustered enough that your best off just giving me a job list and a stack of blueprints, then just walking away. As far as your side-note, explain the why first, and he’ll probably accept it more readily. Change itself isn’t always bad, but change without logical reason is…. traumatic. Use logic.

@hearkat Quite so. Some of us cannot even hold jobs while others of us can thrive in the workplace (usually in technical jobs). Most are quite intelligent, but how that intelligence shows varies; though most are very adept at something like computers or mechanical engineering, not all of us have a savant-like knack.

I think those so afflicted have a rough row to hoe. Life must be hell (and probably hazardous) when you can’t control what you say. The newspapers are full of supposedly “normal” people tripped up and ruined by an odd outburst. Imagine a lifetime where the tactless outburst is more common than farting.

I sometimes wonder if an the gene that causes autism, long lost in the mists of time, triggered the advanced mental capacities of homo sapiens.

@jerv: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Sperg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperg (one of those rare cases of Wikipedia legitimately being cited!)

In all fairness, the fakers have probably convinced many people they’re the real deal.

It seems to me that it’s the difficulty empathizing and considering the feelings/reactions of others that is a big challenge. The more highly intelligent, the more socially awkward. I don’t believe they are oblivious to being socially uncomfortable, in fact, I would say for many it is troubling because they feel lonely and isolated but can’t fix it.
I just try to take a deep breath, keep an open mind, an redirect myself. You really cannot take being corrected or educated constantly personally.
That being said, people choose to socialize with others because it is pleasant. Finding a good heart in a person who is otherwise difficult to understand doesn’t make it easy or desirable to include them. That’s when, every once in awhile, you should put yourself in someone else’s shoes and do something selfless just for them.

That would depend on the person.

I used to work with a fellow who had Asperger’s syndrome. This was about 20 years ago, when I was young and had never heard of it before. At first I thought this guy was kind of a weirdo and kind of rude. He would make honest, but impolite, tactless comments. One of the other women I worked with could not stand to be around him, but I figured out early on that he had some kind of a condition, and although a lot of his quirks were difficult, and sometimes unpleasant to deal with, I tried my best to be kind and polite to him. I’m afraid I found it impossible to socialize with him outside of work. I’m a very social person and it makes me upset and tired to be around people who have poor social skills, even if I know they have a problem. That is my problem, though, not theirs.

@jerv You wrote “Explain the why first.” Yep. That is exactly what we are doing. The presentation is 90% for him. The other guys know and accept the calcs are taking about 50us longer than our 500us sample time. We need the processor to operate in near real time and that 50us causes us to lag a little bit every cycle. The more we sample, the more we work, the more we get behind. The limit is memory and processor speed. We can work at optimizing programming and spend months trying to trim it with 5us baby steps or we can just make a quantum leap and go to something 8x faster. Unfortunately that will entail learning a new instruction set. I have no doubt he can do this, it just will be painful for a couple of months.
I will PM you if I have questions. Thanks for your take!

Say you have Asperger’s, but have never been diagnosed with it. How can you tell, in yourself or someone close to you, if it’s present?

@Kardamom I hear you, socializing isn’t easy. I do feel, though, that it is a good gesture to invite them to a social gathering every once in awhile. It’s on them to sink or swim, but imagine if you just really, really had a hard time ever saying the right thing and never hung out with anyone except for at work. If there is a large group then one oddball guy won’t make or break the occasion… Except for that oddball guy. He’d appreciate an occasional invite, and if not, he’ll decline. You may find that inviting him out once every couple of months makes it easier to understand him.

My opinion is that they have a disorder and I feel bad for them. Other than that, they are just human like we all are.

@GloPro After not seeing him for the last 20 years, I bumped into his mother and she told him that she’d seen me, he immediately sent me a Friend request on Facebook. I had to decline. She hadn’t known me back then, only recently, so she didn’t know my history with him (or my other friend being completely disgusted by him) and I didn’t tell her, I only told her that I’d worked with him, and we chatted about the job we did back then. She went on to tell me that he’d been in and out of the mental hospital and was currently unemployed and suffering from depression (no doubt).

I simply found him too difficult (for me) to take. I don’t and can’t be responsible for this particular fellow. He makes me nervous and anxious. There may be other people that can and are willing to take on your suggestion, but I’m afraid I’m not that person. I have enough problems of my own that I couldn’t possibly take that on : (

It’s a sad situation, I totally understand that a person like this fellow has a serious problem, and when I had to work with him, I gave him all the breaks that I could and treated him kindly and politely, but I could not deal with having him around in any other capacity. I’m a rather private person and have a very small group of friends. I certainly could not do anything one on one with him and I’m afraid my group of friends would not want to be around someone like this either. I feel like a terrible person for saying this, but I have to watch out for my own emotional security.

It would be nice if there was some type of organization (maybe there already is) that would provide mentors for some of these folks, so that they wouldn’t have to lead such isolated lives. I’m afraid I would not qualify to be one of those mentors.

I just wanted to pipe in for a sec: Aspergers isn’t a specific disorder. It’s a syndrome. That means there are certain symptoms people have that the root cause can be mostly unknown. People diagnose the behavior and mindset—it’s not just one single thing that causes it. So to whoever wanted to find the gene for autism, you wont. There are multiple causes for autism and many causes are unknown.

There is a saying “If you’ve met one person with Aspergers, you’ve met one person with Aspergers.” This means that the syndrome can manifest itself in MANY different ways and really, no two people with the syndrome are alike enough to be lumped together with each other.

I’ve known many people on the autism spectrum. I have an uncle who is on the far “bad” side. He has Kanner’s Syndrome and is completely nonverbal and has lived in institutions most of his life. He is completely non-functioning to the point that it’s impossible to measure his IQ because he can’t communicate enough to take the test. I’ve also known several people that you can’t tell at all they have it, but you might notice that their mannerisms are just slightly off and seem not quite genuine, but otherwise, you’d have no idea they were autistic.

For some reason, I get along really well with people with all different sorts of autism. Their behavior doesn’t bother me at all and I barely notice the differences. I will spend half an hour talking to a patron at the library and find out that his behavior is too weird for most of the staff and they react like @Kardamom did. While I just naturally adjust to their moods and get along just fine with them.

Trust me, @Kardamom, I get it. I understand. Not everyone has the capacity to tolerate others, nor should you have to.

My dad is afflicted. He is the most intelligent person I know, but empathy or emotion are a total mystery to him. He can not relate to anyone unless he is teaching them something or correcting them, and gets highly agitated easily. If I try to disagree, or explain that he has hurt my feelings, he will simply stop talking to me, sometimes for months at a time. I can definitely tell that being raised by my father has shaped me in ways that can be off-putting socially, too. I have a very hard time forming emotional bonds and therefore long-term friendships. I have too many acquaintances to count, but my friendships tend to stall out when that step to emotional bonding inevitably appears. I hate to sound cold by being honest right now, but I just genuinely don’t feel any emotional investment or empathy. Then it’s on to the next superficial friend to try again. Same with men. I laugh at the “forever alone” memes, but I do realize the problem is within myself.
I have battles with caring inherently about my dad, but wondering if I actually like him. I still choose to put forth that effort, which brings me pain and frustration way more than happiness. In fact, he doesn’t ever make me feel happy. But he loves me, in his best way. And so I try. And when I encounter others like him out there, I guess I try with them, too. And I appreciate when people try with me.

@Kardamom I know enough neurotypical waffle-fuckers, so don’t let that one guy ruin it for you. For some of us, our “poor” social skills are merely chattiness, and a child-like naivete about the boundaries of appropriateness. If you cannot deal with someone like that, then stay away from anybody below the age of 10. While it’s true that there are some things that are cute when kids do them but disturbing when adults do them, it sounds like you have problems dealing with children too.

@Symbeline barring professional diagnosis, it’s actually a bit like “gay-dar”. Sadly, many people have their senses miscalibrated by pop culture (Rainman, Sheldon Cooper, etcetera).
There really is no one red-flag, and AS is particularly tricky as it manifests differently in different people, and has a lot of overlap with other issues; ADD/ADHD/ regular High-Functioning autism (a big difference there really being language skills; most with HFA don’t speak until at least age 4 while Aspies tend to talk sooner than normal kids), schizophrenia, OCD, and more.
But there are subtle patterns of behavior that can tip you off, if you are familiar enough with them. Being somewhat obsessive (especially about hobbies/interests) to the point of talking your ear off, having an odd self-centeredness without actually being egotistical (in other words, the world revolves around them not because they are awesome, but because they don’t even really know others exist), and tending to live in side their head a lot are good indicators.

@keobooks Pretty much. Among the cast of characters we have in our local Aspie club are a gay database administrator, a gun nut/machinist, a car buff/machinist, a gamer/computer geek/machinist (me), a shy girl, a 50-something music lover who cannot hold a job, and an activist. It’s worth noting that more than half the people there know at least enough about computers to build our own systems from scratch in under 20 minutes, three people there have the visualization and skills to make stuff out of metal with 0.001” precision, and most of us have something that we are really into. Some overlap, but not enough for sweeping generalizations.

I don’t have much to add except the guy who came up with and coded Bittorrent has Asperger’s. For a few years Bittorrent was half of the Internet’s traffic.

@jerv You are 100% correct. I’m not thrilled to be around most children. I have chosen, consciously, not to have children. On the other hand, I love animals.

I love and tolerate my own relatives (a lot of little kids), but I don’t babysit and I don’t enjoy being around kids at the store or elsewhere. That being said, whenever I see little kids or toddlers, I always think they are super cute and let the parents know that. I enjoy seeing little kids doing sweet/cute things, but when they have fits, it makes me want to flee. They make me nervous and anxious (and sometimes angry). I’m a totally mellow, social, friendly person, but I can’t stand to be around people that are super-duper needy, self centered or lack social skills, or that have fits of anger. I’m a very polite and patient person, but it makes me depressed/angry to be around people that suck joy out of life. I’m a very compassionate person, but I feel like I’m a poor example of someone that is capable of helping people that cannot feel empathy. I have empathy in droves, and sometimes I feel like that is my downfall.

This one fellow, to whom I am referring, is the only person that I know to have Asperger’s syndrome, and I could barely tolerate him. I think he was an extreme case. I was probably one of the only people that was nice to him.

I remember what I was like as a child, and it would suck for me to know me as I was then. I’d probably tell my younger self to shut the eff up.

Two of the smartest people I know have this. I love them to death. They are intelligent and talented writers.

@Kardamom I often have to tell my current self to STFU, and I know I’m better than I was as a kid. If I met my younger self, I’d probably slap myself so hard it’d cause a temporal paradox.

The wording of this question throws me every time I read it. Aren’t “opinions” reserved for choices that people make?

@Dutchess_III – Perhaps by you and I, but there are clearly people who have opinions about those who are “different”, such as their skin tone or accent or sexual preference.

Mmmm. I would sure hate to be a gay black person from the deep south with aspergers!

@jerv Yeah, I don’t think I’d ever be able to pinpoint Asperger’s in anyone unless I was a professional, and especially not if it overlaps with a bunch of other things I know equally nothing about. :/

I’m curious. I have a grandson with Asperger’s. Are there really clubs for people with this disorder? And, do you all get along well? How would he find one. He is only now turning 18 and we are quite concerned as he begins his life as an adult.

@HenryFussy There’s a few local Meetup groups here in Seattle. Not sure what other cities have.