Democrats organize to fight back

[Warren Dew]

(11-20-2016, 09:03 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-20-2016, 05:22 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(11-20-2016, 01:30 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: ...in some cases, aiding people in getting along with certain disabilities would keep people from becoming public charges  over longer times.

Heck, if society had adapted to my Asperger's, like retraining me, then I might have had a long and successful career doing something useful, highly remunerative, and suitable for me becoming an above-average tax-payer. To be sure, there is no medical treatment for Asperger's; it is as damaging as alcoholism. I am sure that anyone can tell much about my verbal skills and mastery of formal logic through my posts. That's not bragging. I am humble about the rest.

I'm borderline aspie, I definitely wouldn't trade it for being neurotypical.  I did have the luck to get into a university, MIT, which was majority aspie, and then collecting a resume that was strong enough to get me hired without sucking up to the interviewers.  And I tended toward jobs where attention to detail and getting things correct was important, helping balance the scales with more voluble but less persnickety coworkers.

So basically, I disagree that Asperger's is damaging at all.  It's just different and makes one suitable for a different - and admittedly smaller - set of jobs.

I was not quite in that rarefied zone, so people interviewing me saw the eccentricity and not the attention for detail. I ended up in the pack, competing for entry-level opportunities and doing badly at them. Maybe I am not so borderline.

Unfortunately interviews are a terrible way to assess attention to detail.  One needs a bit of luck first getting positions where attention to detail is more visible and  important than neurotypical relationship bonding.  Granted such positions are not that common.