But what happens if you create a concentration of left brain thinkers? Imagine if an industry sprang up that relied on such people, resulting in a dense population of super-geeks. So dense that they started breeding little geeks. If autism is genetic, as it we are starting to believe it is, would this not cause an increase in the cases of people being born with traits from the autistic spectrum?
This theory was proposed in a paper by Simon Baron-Cohen (ref: http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news/Systemizers-Have-A...). His study showed that children of "high-systemizers" were more likely to be autistic. If this is true, it would explain quite a bit. The rise in autism rates seems to match the growth of the tech industry and the value of "knowledge workers."
Autism is more complex than that. See for example http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=vitamin-d-a.... One of the big mysteries is that Somali immigrants to the US and Sweden have a much higher rate of autism than their native counterparts. Other factors implicated include increasing parents age at time of birth(mother's and father's), more frequent ultrasounds, more chemical environment, etc. Once you start to think through each factor, the N^2 effect of geeks marrying other geeks is unlikely to explain the 5-10X increase in autism over the last 20 years.
> One of the big mysteries is that Somali immigrants to the US and Sweden have a much higher rate of autism than their native counterparts.
Given that Somalia lacks a government, I would imagine health care there is rudimentary, and it's likely that autism (and other conditions) is under-diagnosed.
This theory was proposed in a paper by Simon Baron-Cohen (ref: http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news/Systemizers-Have-A...). His study showed that children of "high-systemizers" were more likely to be autistic. If this is true, it would explain quite a bit. The rise in autism rates seems to match the growth of the tech industry and the value of "knowledge workers."