Aspergers link (was Re: PEP 312 - Making lambdas implicit worries me, surely it's just the name 'lambda' that is bad...)

[Carl Banks]

Michele Simionato wrote:
> If (to make a simple example) you don't enjoy social life and you would
> rather go to the library than to the party, this does not means that you
> have the syndrome: however, if you CANNOT go to the party, then you have the 
> syndrome.
> 
> I agree that there are people that really are on the bad side of the line:
> you cannot say to them "oh, be a good boy, make a little effort an go to the
> party", because they *cannot*. It would denote complete incomprehension for 
> them (and besides, rudeness and stupidity) to follow this approach.
> However, I don't think Carl is addressing his words to the really
> sick persons, that are the minority. I think he is addressing his 
> words to the persons with "a strong introverted and thinking personality",
> as he says, that do not have the syndrome but they think they have.

Just to avoid having my words misconstrued too much, and to nitpick:
if someone can't go to party, then they have agoraphobia, or social
phobia, or avoidant personality disorder, not Asperger's "syndrome."
I don't think Asperger's syndrome exists, period.  If they have a
mental problem, it's something else.

Taking a sociable, energetic, empathetic person, and saying they have
a disease because their nature makes them bad with computers and
checkbooks, is no less ludicrous than Asperger's syndrome.


-- 
CARL BANKS