by DrewADesign | 2025-09-29 12:00:48+00:00
(FYI— I’m not trying to be sharp, I’m trying to be direct because many of the autists I know hate people beating around the bush. I apologize if that’s presumptuous.)

> The problem is that we have one set of wiring, one set of instincts, and one set of common social behaviours. These just don’t work in “unnatural” scenarios for which we aren’t evolved, such as pure mathematics or computer science.

Social behavior is so complex that this is not a useful way to frame it. Most people see nonsense when they examine something they don’t understand.

> The maths just doesn’t care about your seniority and a proof is a proof irrespective of the age of the author.

You’re conflating sycophancy with tact. They are extremely different.

> To truly excel in those “hard sciences” the default wiring isn’t optimal. […] The article states that non-default wiring has the downside of also causing autism.

Statements like this are like bubble wrap people subconsciously wrap around their egos to protect it from things they’re insecure about. Most disagreements in the hard sciences don’t stem from people’s feelings obfuscating math. And when you’re trying to organize a team, solicit people’s best efforts to find a creative path forward with a nebulous problem, inspire people about your research to secure funding, inspire people to work on your problem rather than some other problem, mediating conflicts… all of those dreaded “soft skills” are every bit as important to science as the math as soon as your team is larger than one.

If your mental makeup affords you the ability to step back and say “hold on, I think we’ve got the numbers wrong, here,” then that’s fantastic. If you feel compelled to tell people they’re wrong, you’re probably getting something out of that, emotionally, and you just don’t realize how incredibly counterproductive doing so is. Not being able to effectively leverage a team to collaboratively solve a problem is very very bad for hard sciences, no matter how precise the numbers are, because you’re going to generate a lot fewer of them if nobody’s willing to work with you. Beyond that, in my experience, autists can often communicate really effectively together, but it can break down really quickly as soon as a less cut-and-dried conflict arises, especially if one of them has difficulty regulating their emotional responses, or easily feels alienated. Mediating that requires someone that’s able to recognize how and why someone might be hurting someone else’s feelings, and say “ok, let’s hold on for a second.”

And there are so many kinds of non-default wiring that trying to associate one with hard sciences doesn’t make sense. I went to art school with a ton of autists doing tech art: as a non-autist (with a mean case of ADHD,) I was the most technical one there by a mile. My friend’s wife is an autist artist that is absolutely allergic to math.

You should really challenge your assumptions, here. Consider your susceptibility to selection bias, overconfidence in your ability to gage the causes and effects of social motivations, and consider that many of your strengths may be far less coupled to autism than you imagine they are.