(Epistemic status: I don’t have much background in this. Not particularly confident, and attempting to avoid making statements that don’t seem strongly supported.)
I found this post interesting and useful, because it brought a clear unexpected result to the fore, and proposed a potential model that seems not incongruent with reality. On a meta-level, I think supporting these types of posts is quite good, especially because this one has a clear distinction between the “hard thing to explain” and the “potential explanation,” which seems very important to allow for good discussion and epistemology.
While reading the post, I found myself wishing that more time was spent discussing the hypothesis that IQ tests, while intelligence-loaded in general, are not a great way to analyze intelligence for autistic people. The post briefly touches on this, but “mutations positively correlate with intelligence but negatively with test-taking ability through some mediator, meaning that at first, increased intelligence outweighs the negative effects, but depending on exact circumstance, intelligence is not possible to express on a standard IQ test after enough mutations accumulate” seems like a natural hypothesis that deserves more analysis. However, upon further reflection, I think that the neglection of this hypothesis isn’t actually an issue, because it conceals a regress: why does intelligence outweigh lack of test-taking ability at first, only to bring eventual significant costs? I think there are several just-so stories that could explain an inflection point, but I’d prefer not to posit them unless someone with more background/knowledge in this subject suggests that this is viable so as to prevent harmful adoption.
I think a more serious issue is the selection bias mentioned in the discussion of autism. Because IQ is positively correlated with good outcomes writ large (https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection, see an early section), including functionality, and autism in the DSM-V is defined as requiring various deficits and significant impairment (https://www.autismspeaks.org/autism-diagnosis-criteria-dsm-5), it would be somewhat shocking if autism was not negatively correlated with IQ. If we assume the two variables are completely independent, it would still be less likely for higher-IQ people to be diagnosed as autistic, because they are nearly definitionally less likely to meet the diagnostic criteria. This suggests a much simpler model, given the apparent correlation between autism and IQ: autism mutations push up intelligence in the vast majority of cases, and lower IQ autistic people are far more likely to be diagnosed. I wonder whether this could even explain some of the diverse harms associated with autism—if autism mutations push up “technical” intelligence/performance on iq tests relative to general intelligence, then could i.e. social skills appear to suffer because they’re correlated with a lower general intelligence (obviously way over-simplified, and entirely speculative).
Overall, I’d appreciate if this post was more comprehensive, but I think it’s a good category of post to promote as is. I’d weakly advocate for inclusion, and strongly advocate for inclusion conditional on editing to spend more time discussing selection effects.
(Epistemic status: I don’t have much background in this. Not particularly confident, and attempting to avoid making statements that don’t seem strongly supported.)
I found this post interesting and useful, because it brought a clear unexpected result to the fore, and proposed a potential model that seems not incongruent with reality. On a meta-level, I think supporting these types of posts is quite good, especially because this one has a clear distinction between the “hard thing to explain” and the “potential explanation,” which seems very important to allow for good discussion and epistemology.
While reading the post, I found myself wishing that more time was spent discussing the hypothesis that IQ tests, while intelligence-loaded in general, are not a great way to analyze intelligence for autistic people. The post briefly touches on this, but “mutations positively correlate with intelligence but negatively with test-taking ability through some mediator, meaning that at first, increased intelligence outweighs the negative effects, but depending on exact circumstance, intelligence is not possible to express on a standard IQ test after enough mutations accumulate” seems like a natural hypothesis that deserves more analysis. However, upon further reflection, I think that the neglection of this hypothesis isn’t actually an issue, because it conceals a regress: why does intelligence outweigh lack of test-taking ability at first, only to bring eventual significant costs? I think there are several just-so stories that could explain an inflection point, but I’d prefer not to posit them unless someone with more background/knowledge in this subject suggests that this is viable so as to prevent harmful adoption.
I think a more serious issue is the selection bias mentioned in the discussion of autism. Because IQ is positively correlated with good outcomes writ large (https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection, see an early section), including functionality, and autism in the DSM-V is defined as requiring various deficits and significant impairment (https://www.autismspeaks.org/autism-diagnosis-criteria-dsm-5), it would be somewhat shocking if autism was not negatively correlated with IQ. If we assume the two variables are completely independent, it would still be less likely for higher-IQ people to be diagnosed as autistic, because they are nearly definitionally less likely to meet the diagnostic criteria. This suggests a much simpler model, given the apparent correlation between autism and IQ: autism mutations push up intelligence in the vast majority of cases, and lower IQ autistic people are far more likely to be diagnosed. I wonder whether this could even explain some of the diverse harms associated with autism—if autism mutations push up “technical” intelligence/performance on iq tests relative to general intelligence, then could i.e. social skills appear to suffer because they’re correlated with a lower general intelligence (obviously way over-simplified, and entirely speculative).
Overall, I’d appreciate if this post was more comprehensive, but I think it’s a good category of post to promote as is. I’d weakly advocate for inclusion, and strongly advocate for inclusion conditional on editing to spend more time discussing selection effects.