The American Left's strategy for racial equality is self-defeating

The following was written to some close friends and family, after I opted out of a discussion of race issues in America inspired by a book club meeting.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To begin with, let me make clear some things I am in agreement about.

I agree entirely that racial disparities exist, in incarceration, in income, in health and longevity, and many other metrics, and I agree that it is a problem

I agree entirely that the root causes of these disparities,histrionically, are slavery, Jim Crow, racism, etc, which continue to have effects today

I agree also that racism exists, and that some portion of disparities are likely a result of racism.  

While I disagree, I do understand the reasons for the focus on racism and oppression- it really was about 100% of the reason for disparities for 100s of years, and up until very recently.  Most of the people involved in our discussion are actually old enough to have been alive as it was happening in real time (even if not in the actual places it was most prevalent)

But the thing so many of today's Social Justice Warriors and activists and protesters and reporters and authors and commentators haven't seemed to consider is that society actually can, does, and has changed.  Slowly, to be sure, but it does, and like the lobster in the pot, the change may be too gradual to notice in real time, but there is a threshold past where the change is significant.  

Racism is explicitly illegal.  

We have black cops and judges and CEOs.  

And yes, even a president (well, 1/2 is close enough).  

Activists and others who counter the "post-racial" claims, that having a black president does not end the conversation are correct: this fact, these facts, they do not end the conversation on race.  

But they sure as hell should change the conversation!  They should change it a whole heck of a lot. 

Yet the talking points today remain largely the exact same ones heard during a time when a (half) black president was completely inconceivable.

The power structers, the laws, the cultural norms, the dynamics of everything about society have changed.  Its time for the social justice activists to catch up.

Your feelings don't determine ethics

I recently started reading the Odyssey by Homer.

Its always fun to see how entirely different cultures view the world, which things are apparently universal and which things we make assume to be universal but actually are specific to our own particular place and time.

For example, we think of empowered female sexuality as a recent invention, appearing only after modern feminism, but in the ancient Greek story, as patriarchal as any culture, the hero is held captive for seven years as the demi-goddess Calypso's personal sex slave (though in his heart, he wanted always to be faithful to his wife back home).  Another time the witch Circe, having turned all his soldier into pigs for future eating, decides, upon learning that he is the legendary Odysseus, not to turn him into a pig after all - on condition that he have sex with her; which he agrees to only on the condition that she turn his companions back into human afterwards.

But what really struck me was realizing how the worldwide human sense of morality appears to have made a fundamental and permanent change following the creation of the League of Nations (the original UN) and the various Geneva conventions.  They date back as far as 1864, but on the time scale of human civilization that is a trivial time span.

Today, a culture which violates certain specific international agreements is considered by the rest of the world to be the very embodiment of evil - using chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, deliberately killing civilians or captives, or taking advantage of an occupation to engage in theft, rape, or slavery.
Oddly enough, shooting people, blowing them up, and restricting access to food and other necessities is considered entirely normal and acceptable behavior...

A Technique to Terminate Tantrums: Directed Self-Calming via Incentivized Alternative

I'm not totally sure on the name.  I just came up with it this morning, and hadn't spent any time thinking about it before.  I like the directed self-calming part...
How about I actually start at the beginning, instead of the end, eh?


Kids throw tantrums.

By tantrum I mean any combination of yelling, crying, and flailing, which is triggered by a conflict with another person which doesn't allow them to get whatever it is that they want.
Crying because an errant football hit them in the head as they were playing in the park would not count as a tantrum.

Kids, unfortunately, do not come with instruction manuals.

One would think that evolution would naturally guide us to instinctively know the best way to deal with children in a species that instinctively provides "parenting", but for some reason it doesn't.

This technique may have been come up with plenty of times, by many different people, and it may even be written down many places, but I personally have never seen anyone else use it, have never read about it.

Cat Superstition, and the Origins of Religion, Astrology, and all forms of Supernatural Beliefs

A few years ago, my (late) kitty cat friend and roommate Fushi jumped up on the table.
On the table was a large object of some kind - I don't remember exactly what, maybe a book, maybe a pot; whatever it was, it was kind of near the edge.


Supposedly cats are naturally graceful, but that seems to vary as much by the individual as it does for humans.
He bumped into this object, which teetered a bit from the impact, and he jumped right back down.
And the thing tipped over and came down behind him, crashing just barely behind him.
As anyone would, in such a circumstance, he quickly jumped out of the way.



But then he did something more interesting...

He continued to run.
In fact, he ran not only completely across the room, but right out of the room, and kept right on going across the entire house, before finding a safe hiding place in the bedroom.

Now, Fushi was not a particularly skittish cat.  He wasn't bothered by loud noises, he trusted human strangers, and even strange dogs as long as they didn't chase or bark at him.  He stood up to bully cats and went on adventures, sometimes for days at a time.

But this object, set in motion by his own actions, and continued in motion by gravity, had just scared him away.

Or... maybe its neither

I am not really sure exactly what to think or feel about the fact that within the span of a couple months I can be accused of being both a libertarian and a communist.
By different people, of course.
But on the same general topics, and with my stance staying consistent.

As far as I can tell, the reasoning goes something like this:

"This guy [me] doesn't agree with my viewpoint, therefor he must hold the views of those other people".

In discussions I am regularly told, after stating my beliefs and understandings, something along the lines of "I bet you think ___________, too".
Well, no, I told you exactly what I think.
That other part you just made up.

That is always a pretty good sign that the statements the other person is making aren't even really their own.  They are things that person heard, and agreed with, and now they are repeating them.  Possibly in their own words, but unoriginal none-the-less.  It means they have subscribed to an ideology.
There is no "right" ideology.  There is no good ideology.  By very definition, one must accept an entire ideology as is, which intrinsically means not questioning anything.  It is exactly like a religion: all of your beliefs are handed to you, externally.
It is anti-scientific, and it is intended to be.

OUTRAGE! (is to the left as fear is to the right)

I've heard it repeated a few times from different sources recently how people who tend to lean politically "right" frequently have a slightly larger amygdala, which controls the basic fear response.  As a result - so the theory goes - they are more easily frightened, and this leads to a desire to take the safe option in all questions; generally we think the option with the least unknowns is "safest", and so those more prone to fear are more likely to stick with things that are tried and true - in other words, to be "conservative".

Proponents of this theory - the scientists who noticed the trend in the first place, certainly, but much more so activists and armchair politicians - will point out the fear-mongering used by conservative political leaders and media.  Crime!  Terrorists!  Illegal immigrants!  Communists!

And since I've heard it, sure enough, I do notice just such a trend in media and speeches geared toward conservatives.

But then, since I was looking at news reports with the kind of eye you use to catch marketing psychology in advertisements, I started paying attention to what media geared toward liberals always tends to have in common.

Its outrage.

On an objective basis for right and wrong

Many years ago I got into a conversation with someone about ethics outside a Buddhist temple.

They were of the position that, without an external authority to dictate right and wrong - i.e. without Commandments from God - there was no possible way for ethics to have any meaning.

This is an argument I've heard elsewhere, but until then it was only from true believers in one of the big religions (but mostly just Christians).
Of course, if the reason a person does or refrains from doing something is because of the threat of punishment or promise of reward (whether that be in the form of heaven and hell, karma, or 72 virgins), then the ultimate motive is selfish.  If you believe in an ultimate judge or that everything somehow balances itself out, then no action is taken purely because it is the right thing to do.  Moral absolutism, then, is itself actually a-ethical.

This instance struck me because it came from an atheist.  I started to explain the objective basis for ethics which I am about to explain here, but this person interrupted to say that they had explored the debate thoroughly in philosophy class a few years before and they were 100% confident that there simply was no possible alternate conclusion, and so it was pointless to even listen to any response.

So of course I wrote that person off entirely - but the statement did provide me a new insight.

I don't think in terms of "us vs them" - it's those other people who do that (Part II - real life)

In the Star Wars universe, it is understood that the Jedi are the good guys and the Sith are all evil.
Yet, when you look at their actual behavior, the differences are few, while the parallels are many.  The Jedi act on their own behalf, outside of the government they are supposed to serve, in blatant disregard for democracy, going so far as to internally authorize military and political executions - even the democratically elected head-of-state.

http://biodieselhauling.blogspot.com/2015/05/us-vs-them-part-i-star-wars-analogy.html

Here in the real world, Bill Maher outspokenly calls out Islam, saying in a recent interview:

"The vast, vast, vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists. But here’s the point people don’t bring up: They’re not terrorists, but they share some very bad ideas with terrorists, and bad ideas lead to bad behavior. You couldn’t put the Muslim equivalent of The Book of Mormon on Broadway. You can’t write a book like The Satanic Verses without millions going jihadi on you. You couldn’t have an art exhibit like Piss Christ, which made Giuliani mad in the 1990s. Hundreds of millions of Muslims believe that if you leave the religion you should get killed for that. Try walking down the street in Muslim areas—even in more tolerant places like Amman, Jordan—wearing shorty shorts or a T-shirt that says HEY, I AM GAY. That shit is not going to fly, not at all."

Elsewhere, in the very same magazine that published those words, it is mentioned in passing that in 1988 Christian fundamentalists fire-bombed a public movie theater for showing the movie "The Last Temptation of Christ".
1988 is hardly going back to the time of the Crusades or the Inquisition, it is within this current generation.  The majority of people alive today were alive in 1988.  There have been plenty of other terrorist attacks right here in the US by Christians and far right Conservatives, from 7 murders of doctors and staff of clinics that provided abortions in the 1990s to the Oklahoma City bombing.

The more "other" a particular group is, the easier it is to call them out.

Us VS Them (Part I, the Star Wars analogy)

"There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere. "

So says the opening crawl of Star Wars Episode III (Revenge of the Sith)

Yet this message gets lost and forgotten as soon as it is off the screen.

As a viewer of any of the Star Wars movies, it goes without saying that the Jedi represent Good, and those who practice the "Dark" side of the force are Evil.
The Jedi and their allies say as much explicitly, at every opportunity.

Paying slightly more attention to the politics behind the action, though, it appears the reality is much more complicated than that.

In this Universe, roughly 50 thousand planets have agreed to a broad alliance, the Galactic Republic, roughly equivalent to the UN - each member state retains some degree of autonomy, and each sends its own representative to be a part of the Senate.The Senate is headed up by a Chancellor who gets elected by the Senate.  Each planet's government picks their Senator - if the planet happens to be a democracy, the inhabitants may vote on the senator, but if the planetary government is a monarchy, then it may unilaterally decide who will be the planets representative.  

The roughly 50 thousand planets are divided into groups of 50 (called sectors), with the senate floor consisting of 1000 chairs - some of which are taken by representatives of extra-planetary organizations such as trade federations.

That leaves one not-necessarily-democratically-elected individual to represent on average more than 50 entire planets.

(Much like the US), although they preach Democratic values consistently, the Republic makes no particular effort to practice them in actuality.

The Jedi were originally meant to be a security force that answered to the senate and the Chancellor (much like the CIA answers to the president).  They protected the Republic government (like the secret service), and enforced senate decrees (like Federal police), since the Republic did not originally have any military force of its own.  They were also considered a "moral authority", making them in some ways akin to Mutaween, the religious police that enforce Sharia law in some Islamic nations.  

Megan's Law and The Sex Offender Registry (is a seriously flawed system)

Any sexual contact with a minor is automatically classified as "abuse"

23% of "child sexual abuse" is "perpetrated" by another minor.
Of those, 80% were NOT "forcible" rape.  In other words, it is considered "rape" only because the "victim" is a minor.
In other words, any two children exploring their bodies, playing doctor, or "I'll show you mine if you show me yours", even if everything was entirely consensual, and both were the same age, for purposes of crime statistics, both children "abused" each other, and they are legally both sex offenders. If caught, they can end up on the list.  Sometimes for life.

"Teenagers and even young children who engage in certain sex-based conduct may find themselves subject to sex offender registration, community notification, and residency restriction laws. Some children are on registries because they committed serious sex offenses, such as forcibly raping a much younger child. Other children are labeled sex offenders for such non-coercive or nonviolent and age-appropriate activities as "playing doctor," youthful pranks such as exposing one's buttocks, and non-coercive teen sex." http://www.hrw.org/reports/2007/us0907/7.htm

The registry also currently includes "Internet crimes", in which there is not even a possibility of any physical contact.  All any "victim" would have to do, if they felt uncomfortable, is log off.

Which means that when ever you see some seemingly scary high number of how many children are "victims" of "childhood sexual abuse", that number is ridiculously inflated with things which aren't actually abuse, to the point where the numbers are meaningless.  This is similar to the recent redefinition of "rape" to include any sexual activity that takes place after entirely voluntary self-intoxication.  Have you ever had one too many glasses of wine with dinner, or stayed at the bar just a little too long before going home, and then had completely consensual sex with your partner?  Nope! Because according to the law in most states, the fact that you were intoxicated automatically makes it non-consensual.  You were actually raped, and your partner is a rapist.  Which, incidentally, means your partner, too, "deserves" to be on the registry.

55% of all Americans have sex by age 17.  Legally that means that more than half of all Americans, male and female, were "raped".  23% have sex (consensual) by age 14. When various crime statistics come out, almost never do they make a distinction between "forcible" and "statutory" rape.  They are treated as interchangeable.

Conversations on gender and sex

A collection of 4 emails I wrote to different people within the last year or so.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



[Written to my future sister-in-law, after she emailed a link to a Ted Talk on gender by a friend of hers]


...The real problem has nothing at all to do with sex or gender.  The root issue is the expectation of conformity.

If, instead of moving between archetypal roles, we simply reject archetypal roles completely, this entire issue becomes moot.

A transsexual is a person who has (or would like to) actual physical sex reassignment (whether surgery, or just drugs), one who feels that their actual body is wrong.

The term "transgender" doesn't really mean anything - in fact, it confirms and reinforces the idea that gender is actually a valid concept to begin with, when in reality it is a social construct.

Sex -male or female - IS a binary.  Contrary to what lay people commonly believe, sex is not defined by testosterone v estrogen levels, secondary characteristics like beards or breasts, or even genitals.  It isn't even defined by chromosomes, which differ from one specie to another.
The universal characteristic that defines sex among all sexual species (almost every multicellular life form) is the precesnse of either testicals or ovaries.  Males produce sperm, females produce eggs.  This part isn't social.  Its basic biology.
That part isn't "assigned" by culture.  And there is no spectrum - no one, not even "intersex" born people, produces both eggs and sperm, and there is no hybrid or in-between reproductive cell.

People who reject our mainstream system (such as Carly) still talk about gender as though it were a real thing, as though it had some underlying validity.  

Gender - masculine or feminine - is no more than "that set of characteristics which a particular culture tends to associate with one sex or the other"

Since by definition it is associated with a sex, and sex is binary, gender is also binary.

However!

There is no reason for any individual to accept the roles of gender in the first place!
One needn't be a transexual (pre or post op, with or without drugs, in body or purely in desire) or transvestite to reject gender roles!

Cops are the New Blacks

Go back about 90 years.  And about 350 miles South (from where I am, in N. California).
Slavery has been abolished long enough ago that there has been almost (but not quite) a total generational turn-over; most people alive don't actually remember it, though it was recent enough that everyone is very aware.
Since reparations never actually happened obviously there remains a dramatic disparity along race lines.
Combine poverty, a lack of education in the parent's generation, and unequal public school services for the current generation, and you have not just a wealth gap, but sharp class distinctions.

Whenever there is a sharp disparity of wealth and class, combined with cultural isolation, increased crime is the result.  This isn't a "racial" phenomenon, per say - the same pattern happens within a "race" when the same conditions apply: the "untouchables" (Dalit) of caste system India, the Irish immigrants in mid 1800s America, gypsies of medieval Europe, or the Burakumin of Japan today; people indistinguishable from the main population by appearance, but separate culturally, and substantially poorer.
Predictably crime is higher - driven not only by poverty and desperation, but also by a mutual feeling of "otherness" relative to the main society which makes it easy to rationalize the harm done to the victims - to start with if the victim comes from the "oppressor" class, but resolving the cognitive dissonance of unethical acts against one group opens the door for setting aside morality altogether.

But here's the thing: In all of these examples, while the average crime rate may be higher among the sub-group than it is in the general population, it is never remotely as high as approaching 50%.  Even at it's very worse, rates stay down in the single digits per 100 population - for example, as excessively high as the Black incarceration rate in the US may be, it is only 1.2% of the Black population.

In other words, the vast majority of the marginalized population are ordinary ethical law-abiding citizens, even despite the prejudice they face.

On not posting many blogs anymore

At first it was work. Was working as the manager of the building I lived in, along with all my other jobs.
And filling most of my free time with dating.

Then I actually ended up finding her.
Not even somewhere I was looking.  A series of very random and fortunate events.
I'll probably write more on that later.

So she's been getting most of my free time ever since figuring out that that was settled.
But she works full time, and I most certainly don't.

I have had just about as many thoughts, but been much less motivated to take the time and effort to actually write.

I think I may slowly be getting to that final stage.
Acceptance.

Maybe there is so little writing from the wisest because they realize how little impact it would have, and so don't bother. (Or at least, that's what I'm going to keep telling myself.)

As the robots say: "all of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again".
The more I learn, the more I start to believe that.

Protective or patronizing? Framing people as victims is anti-empowering.

A) A few guys, hanging out at the shared apartment of one of them.  Watching the game, drinking some beers - maybe a couple too many, but noone here has to drive anytime soon - bag of chips, maybe order a pizza later.  Talking about girls and work and the latest news during commercials.
A couple of them get into a minor dispute about some stupid thing, and its not the sort of thing that can be settled by checking google, and so the only reasonable way to settle it is with a wrestling match.
There is one dissenting voice - one of the guy's who lives there, who owns most of the furniture and electronics in the room - but everyone else thinks this is a great idea, and helps clear some space in the middle of the living room.  One of the two has the weight and strength advantage, but the other has more experience, and its up for debate which is more drunk, so it seems fair enough.
Everyone is really friends here and no one is seriously trying to hurt anyone, but it's fun sometimes to see who can force the other to say "uncle" and concede defeat, thereby winning not just the wrestling match, but also the original argument as well.



B) A guy walks out of a bar.  He realizes he has had too much to drive, and decides to take a walk. He's stumbling just a little, but he can walk. He first stops in the corner store to get a soda and snacks; he's slurring his words, but its not too hard to get the gist of "I want to buy these items" and the cashier gives him his change and sends him on his way.  But as soon as he leaves he notices a McDonald's, throws out the soda and snacks, and buys a burger and coffee.  Still just as drunk as when he left the bar twenty minutes ago, and out of ways to kill time, he calls a cab and heads home for the night.



C) Your friend has clearly had one too many.  You decide to get him home before he gets into any trouble.  He doesn't want to go, but everyone agrees it's for his own good, and besides, he's in no state to put up any serious resistance anyway.  You bring him to your place because it's closer, you won't have to go through his pockets for his keys, and hell, you're doing him a favor, you may as well not go more out of your way then you have to. You leave him in a pile on the sofa, clothes and shoes still on, and head to your own room to get some sleep.



D) Jimothy needs a ride home.  He knows it.  He asks Robin for a ride.  Robin isn't ready to go just yet, and besides, they live in opposite directions.  Jim offers to pay for gas money, plus a little extra for the favor.  $20 is almost as much as a cab would cost, but he'd just as soon the money go to a friend (and besides, he doesn't feel like waiting a whole 30min for a cab).  Robin gives in, drops Jim off, and heads back out for more fun.  Unbeknownst to Robin, Jimothy was so drunk that he had "blacked out" a while before he wanted to go home, and has absolutely no memory of having asked for a ride, nor of actually getting the ride.
When he wakes up in the morning, he has no idea how he got there.

Women are not "naturally" submissive

Thousands of years of misogyny has created an internalized narrative of women as inherent victims that we all on some level want to continue to believe, and keeping women weak on purpose helps to keep the illusion alive.

It appears that the potential for physical dominance of men over women has only very small roots in biology, that instead the vast majority of it comes from culture. 
In my last post I showed that, at least in terms of physical differences, male dominance in the modern western world is not something men are forcing onto women, as much as something women are seeking out.

The common explanation for this relies on the assumption that our nomadic hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in nuclear families with male "bread-winners" (mastodon-hunters?) and female home-makers.
There is no reason to believe this has ever been true.
The one place anthropologist don't see female selection for height and strength in mates is primitive nomadic societies, which is where we should expect to see it the most, if the popular theory were true.

Across all species, sexual dimorphism in size and strength is inversely proportional to paternal investment.  In other words, in species where males are much larger and stronger than females (much more than the naturally occurring 10% in humans), the males never stick around to help raise young.  In more egalitarian species, where both parents invest in the offspring, the males and females tend to be the exact same size.
Sexual dimorphism in size and strength is not a natural result of a predestined male role as protector and provider.  Those roles are relatively modern cultural ones that likely developed tens of thousands of years more recently than the times of our savannah roaming ancestors.  It is more likely to have developed because of our (small) natural dimorphism than in order to facilitate it.

Or perhaps biology is just a convenient excuse, and female preferences for a partner who is able to physically overpower them may be entirely an extension of the misogynistic cultural dynamic of male dominance in general.

Just as women enforce the physical differences within couples, there is plenty of evidence that it is actually largely women, not men, that enforce male dominance in interpersonal relations as well, at least in modern Western society.

That suggestion is, of course, the polar opposite of most normal thinking on patriarchal society.

For most of recorded history, in most parts of the world, civil society has been male dominated.

Given that, it has always been reasonable to assume that the roles of dominance and submission were enforced by men - since, after all, they had the power to enforce roles.

Biological based differences in strength by sex are insignificant - its all culture and choice

If I had to guess, I would say that you would say that you don't believe that women are weak and helpless by default, by virtue of the consequences of their chromosomes.
However, I suspect you do actually believe that.  You are probably being sincere when you claim not to, it's just that you can't see it, because everyone believes it, everyone takes it as a given, so much so that the assumption is invisible, like the water around a fish.

I feel its important for us all to realize that this universal assumption exists because it has a huge impact on the strategies we use in trying to bring about greater equality and egalitarianism, to give people freedom not to conform to constructed gender roles, to enjoy love and sexuality in whatever way suits them (so long as they aren't doing harm to anyone else).
It has a huge impact on the approach to take if the ultimate goal is having all of society, male and female, look at women as being humans.  Not a special subset of humans, just humans, period, just like everyone else (where "everyone else" is assumed to be "men" - even though women make up half of all people).

There is a lot of stuff feminist activists say and do which is counter-productive to that goals - and as a result, to all of the other goals listed before it - because of the unfortunate fact that they, just like everyone else, hold the misogynist view that women are naturally weak, and are therefore inherently victims.

I suspect that some of my arguments are going to come across to some people as sounding like something along the lines of "men's rights" advocacy.  But my point here isn't to say "aw, poor discriminated against men".  My point isn't that we should change anything to make men's lives any easier.  My point is that in each example the way we treat women differently is patronizing to women.  We assume they are physically helpless, or lack agency, or are just plain stupid, and need to be protected (including from themselves) in ways that men aren't.  And that patronizing itself is problematic.  When we make certain assumptions universal and even frequently codify them into law, we are strengthening sexist stereotypes that then go on to influence individual people's opinions and from there their behaviors.

It shows up in literally every aspect of how society views sexuality and gender, and just as strongly among feminists and advocates for women as it does among traditionalists and chauvinists.

The downsides to empathy

"You have a SNP in the oxytocin receptor which may make you less empathetic than most people. 
When under stress you may have more difficulty recognizing the emotional state of others which impacts loneliness, parenting, and socializing skills 
Lower levels of reward dependence (reliance on social approval). Lower autonomic arousal while perceiving harm to others." 

Indeed, I've been told by many people that I am not empathetic enough, and I have social skills only slightly better than someone with Asperger's. 

But I object to the characterization of this as "dysfunction". It is different than the norm, sure.
Does empathy imply more morality?  Is lack of empathy a pathology? Not necessarily


Just because I can't tell how you feel from your expression doesn't mean I'm any less likely to care. It just means I need more explicit communication - which is generally a good thing anyway. 
Combined with good communication, I bet it makes for less misunderstandings: while I do worse than average on "Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test", I KNOW when I'm not sure, while people who do better are often confident even when they are wrong. Therefor I'm more likely to ask. 

A study published in the journal Science by Dr. Hillel Aviezer of the Psychology Department of the Hebrew University, together with Dr. Yaacov Trope of New York University and Dr. Alexander Todorov of Princeton University, confirms my theory: "viewers in test groups were baffled when shown photographs of people who were undergoing real-life, highly intense positive and negative experiences. " (as opposed to the typical "Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test" which uses actors). "When the viewers were asked to judge the emotional valences of the faces they were shown (that is, the positivity or negativity of the faces), their guesses fell within the realm of chance. " 
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6111/1225 
Nobody can really "mind read". But people rated more empathetic absolutely believe they can. Sounds like dysfunction... 

Reliance on social approval is a terrible thing! 
This study http://mic.com/articles/92479/psychologists-have-uncovered-a-troubling-feature-of-people-who-seem-too-nice isn't really about "niceness" as it claims, so much as about the politeness that stems from a high reliance on social approval. In other words, ASDs are a lot less likely to hurt others in order to fit in or be accepted.
The typical human will deliberately choose what they know to be a wrong answer, just so they can fit in with everyone else: http://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html
 Reliance on social approval is the basis of peer pressure, of group think, of failure to act in crises (if others are around), of the negative feelings of shame and low-self-esteem. And as the study above shows, it makes people more likely to be evil. I'm at a loss for what positives come from it. It sounds an awful lot like dysfunction to me. 

Lower autonomic arousal while perceiving harm to others is probably a trait you want in, say, a rescuer (USCG Search and Rescue, for example, which I am, or a firefighter or cop or paramedic) - similar as I said above, the fact that I don't have a strong emotional reaction to your distress doesn't mean I don't care. It means I can stay calm and collected during your crises, which makes me more effective at helping you. Do you really want your rescuer to be so sympathetic that they freak out or start crying when they see how much pain you're in? 
A highly sympathetic pediatrician would develop lots of stress from continually causing children pain, even though they know the shots are in the child's best interests. Again, that sounds like dysfunction to me. 

Aspys and similar folk tend to be more intelligent and better at all sort of tasks. The fact of being less common doesn't automatically imply pathology - if it did, being overweight would have to be reclassified as normal, and a healthy BMI would have to be considered disfunction (at least in the US). 
Evolution has gone from pure stimulus response to instinct behavior to emotional reactions to higher order reasoning and logic. I propose the rise of the Aspys, who are less emotional and more logical, is another step in that direction!

Healthcare: the last mainstream superstition

Question:

Have you ever taken a drug that you know for sure works, because you could feel the difference it made?

You trust yourself WAY too much

Think about all the stuff you know, on all the millions of topics there are to know stuff about - numbers, names, relationships, science, history, skills, where you left your keys...
Now think about how many times in your life you have been mistaken about something you had been pretty sure of.

Of all the stuff you "know" right now, a fair percentage of it is wrong.

For some strange reason, nobody seems to notice this, and everyone goes on being sure about all manner of things - frequently including things that there is no possible way they could know for sure.

We (humans) have figured out a fair bit about our own minds.
Our awareness, perception, and recall are all very, very bad; yet we almost all almost always remain confident that our own perception accurately portrays the world outside our heads, that our memories accurately reflect what actually happened.

But you don't have to take my word for it.


The following 3 documentaries are really fun. They are interactive - if you have any doubt about your own limitations, if you don't doubt your self as much as you should - these videos should cure you of that, and grant you some humility.
And they do it in a totally entertaining way.

Watch 'em!!!

Quote on Consumerism from the founder of Early Retirement Extreme

"The problem is that most of us have become utterly dependent on this industrial-technological  system  for  all  of  our  needs  and  wants.  Shopping is as important as oxygen to us. Close down the malls for a few days and people go crazy. We no longer think of ourselves as citizens but as ”consumers”, a descriptive term that I've always found kind of derogatory. This dependence  is  so  fundamental  that  it  goes unseen, much like fish don't see the water they swim in. Consequentially, the only solution we can think of whenever we struggle with unfulfilled needs or wants is to ”earn more” and start a side-business, negotiate a raise, and gamble on some more education – it's an investment in your future (ha!). The only perceived way to a better so-called standard-of-living is to work harder and smarter and earn more. However, what this often results in is more environmental damage or at best reshufling money from suckers to scammers." - Jacob Lund Fisker