I was diagnosed with the Syndrome Formerly Known as Asperger's a couple of years ago (at 64) and I'm curious about whether it might be an impediment in getting a PPL and possibly a commercial cert. It's funny to read the replies from people who do not have this condition, and remark from how it appears to them from the "outside". A lot of questions show up on Quora where people without Asperger's ask, "What is it like for aspies to ...?" Most of the questions are totally idiotic and non-sensical. They might as well be asking "What is it like for blondes / short people / old people / women / kids / foreigners / blah blah blah to ...?"
The problem with eliminating the diagnosis of "Asperger's" is that the "political-correctness bigots" have eliminated a key distinction between previously identified people with autism versus those with Asperger's, which is their IQ. Now, I say that fully realizing that most of modern society absolutely HATES to discuss the topic of IQ. But in this case, it's relevant for one basic reason: the metric Dr. Asperger used was simple: those with IQs below 100 (average) had "autism", and those above were people he was interested in. You might think, "So what?"
Well, it turns out that the average IQ of those labeled as "autistic" with IQ < 100 is around 70, while the average IQ for those with IQ >= 100 is ... 130. You can call it a "spectrum" all you want but there are TWO distinct peaks, not one. And characterizing people with the phrase "smart idiots" ... oh ... sorry ... "high-functioning autism" (implying their IQ may be a little bit above 70, on average) is just ... I don't know ... STUPID!
We have a lot of gifts that mostly fall through the cracks because people can't really see us beyond our poor social skills. And that's sad. Aspies who are into flying are the kinds of people who'd be able to rattle off the critical flight characteristics of virtually every aircraft ever made, along with how much fuel each can carry, the average burn rate per hour, their stall speeds, how to correct from a stall or spin for any given aircraft, and tell you the different approaches normally used for most of the airports in the country. We don't need a stinking iPad, we just KNOW this stuff! Our minds are like sponges!
The problems are most likely to arise when an Apie is flying a plane that's on approach and is given information from ATC that's clearly WRONG -- our inclination is to just say that! Using the most terse, blunt and logical wording that comes to mind; not to be offensive, just ... that's how we think.
Also, we're constantly battling hyper-focus against problem resolution, as the two can counter-act each other. Yes, we're aware of that. And yes, we can get tunnel-vision, and it helps to have someone there to poke us to get us out of it. In a tight situation, we can quickly back-off to look at things from a bird's-eye view / more global perspective and consider alternatives that others might miss.
We're gifted with the ability to recognize patterns that most others often don't see. In a pinch, we'd be more likely to realize we can avoid a problem in a highly unorthodox fashion that everybody else will totally freak out about, but we see it as the least-risky option at hand and carry it out successfully. I've done that many times in my life, and people are just stunned. It's just how our brains work. And most of the time I've gotten chewed-out for it by someone who thought it was just insanely risky -- to THEM.
Unfortunately, from the outside perspective, it just looks like we did something that no "sane" person would do, and we probably just "lucked out". It's amazing how others rationalize what they see us do and trivialize it as if it's just dumb luck.
These are GIFTS we have, only "neurotypicals" don't see them that way -- they see us as "extreme risk-takers" and "unpredictable" and "rule-breakers". Sorry, but given a choice between breaking a rule or possibly dying, I'm going to choose the former every time. But neurotypical arm-chair quarterbacks always seem to carry the day in these disputes, because they cannot grasp how we think. They see US as the crazy ones, not themselves with their much more limited vision.
If there was ever an homage to Aspies, it would be Apple's Think Different ad:
Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them,
glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
While some may see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world, are the ones who do.
Except when dealing with narrow-minded government officials and people designated to enforce rules designed for neurotypicals who ... well ... don't or can't Think Different. Because we're seen as a threat to them, when all we want to do is make things better, safer, simpler, and more reliable. We get fired from jobs after arguing with the boss that the QA procedures aren't sufficient, that the design neglects to take certain situations into account, and that certain critical user comments were ignored.
Remember that the Columbia Space Shuttle exploded because upper management preferred to ignore the warnings of certain engineers who said that because of the unexpectedly low temperatures the night before may have damaged some of the rubber seals in the engine assemblies. Who thinks of stuff like this? Aspies! Who thinks they're being "overly-cautious," "trouble-makers," and "OCD" when it comes to technical specs? Managers who don't see the GIFTS these people were born with!
Who committed suicide after the shuttle accidents? The engineers who recognized the problems, who were told it was their job to alert the team when they saw any serious problems, and when they did everything they could to avert what they saw was an inevitable disaster, they were ignored. I've been in situations like this, and I won't say what it made me feel like doing, but people in management roles that lie like this should not be employed there ... or anywhere.
Standing outside as a passive observer, it's impossible for others to grasp how we think, or even begin to understand us. People say we "lack empathy". We do NOT! What we lack is the ability to express it the same way others do.
I may not be a pilot, but I've avoided dozens of car accidents throughout my life, and I credit that to how I think differently than most people and was able to react almost automatically in a way that dodged a bullet.
They should be testing us to learn advanced ways of automating threat detection and response logic, not preventing us from accessing things out of fear that we might instead cause an accident.
This is the problem stemming from lumping Aspies into a "spectrum" that no longer accounts for any way of identifying that we have GIFTS that are amazing. That's what happens when you combine one cohort with really high IQs with another cohort that's five times larger but has really low IQs, and call that some kind of "spectrum" as if everybody on that "spectrum" is more-or-less equally skilled. One thing they all have in common is that those who can communicate verbally tend to sound more like Mr. Spock from Star Trek fame than your average neurotypical person.
