[extropy-chat] autism

[Damien Broderick]

At 10:02 AM 4/24/2007 -0700, Anne wrote:

>And I'm also concerned about the idea that some people would gladly 
>"cure" their children even if the net effect of that "cure" would be 
>that you had an entirely different person than you had before.  Is 
>that ethical?

Is the situation different with people wired for endogenous 
depression or schizophrenia?

On a non-core-identity level: I suffer from (and I *do* suffer, I'm 
impaired by it) a developmental disability, the lack of stereopsis. 
Fixing that now would require perhaps extensive neural rewiring. The 
outcome might be that since my experience of the world suddenly 
bursts into an additional dimension, my writing and perhaps my 
thinking would change at least subtly as well. (This actually 
happened to philosopher David Chalmers; I'm not sure whether it 
modified his sense of self.) I'm not just *non-typical*--I'm damaged, 
experientially diminished. And make no bones about it.

Damien Broderick