1. On Greta’s autism as a factor behind her success, see Steve Silberman, “Greta Thunberg Became a Climate Activist Not in Spite of Her Autism, but Because of It,” Vox, last updated September 24, 2019.
2. Masha Gessen, “The Fifteen-Year-Old Climate Activist Who is Demanding a Different Kind of Politics,” The New Yorker, October 2, 2018.
3. I am grateful to Michelle Dawson for discussions on this point, though she bears no liability for our concept or discussion of disabilities.
4. See Chloe Taylor, “Billionaire Richard Branson: Dyslexia Helped Me to Become Successful,” CNBC, October 7, 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/07/billionaire-richard-branson-dyslexia-helped-me-to-become-successful.html.
5. The report is “The Value of Dyslexia: Dyslexic Strengths and the Changing World of Work,” Ernst & Young Global Limited, 2018.
6. See Darcey Steinke, “My Stutter Made Me a Better Writer,” The New York Times, June 6, 2019.
7. See James Gallagher, “Aphantasia: Ex-Pixar Chief Ed Catmull Says ‘My Mind’s Eye Is Blind,’” BBC News, April 9, 2019. For a broader recent survey on aphantasia, see Adam Zeman et al., “Phantasia—The Psychological Significance of Lifelong Visual Imagery Vividness Extremes,” Cortex 130 (2020): 426–440. More broadly, see Anna Clemens, “When the Mind’s Eye Is Blind,” Scientific American, August 1, 2018.
8. Again, over time, the “Asperger’s” terminology increasingly has been replaced by “autism,” including in the latest version of the DSM, DSM-5. We are not committed to any particular view on this matter and are employing the terms broadly enough so that they may be consistent with varying uses of the terminology.
9. See Tony Atwood, The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome (London: Jessica Kingsley, 2015), 27–28.
10. On the possible social intelligence of autistics, see Anton Gollwitzer, Cameron Martel, James C. McPartland, and John A. Bargh, “Autism Spectrum Traits Predict Higher Social Psychological Skill,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 39 (September 24, 2019): 19245–19247.
11. On Tyler and information (and autism), see his The Age of the Infovore (New York: Plume, 2010).
12. For a variety of perspectives on this topic, see the Behavioral and Brain Sciences symposium on social motivation in autism, led by Vikram K. Jaswal and Nameera Akhtar, “Being Versus Appearing Socially Uninterested: Challenging Assumptions About Social Motivation in Autism,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 42 (2019): e82.
13. See Ellen Rosen, “Using Technology to Close the Autism Job Gap,” The New York Times, October 24, 2019; on Microsoft, see Maitane Sardon, “How Microsoft Tapped the Autism Community for Talent,” The Wall Street Journal, October 26, 2019.
14. See David Friedman, “Cold Houses in Warm Climates and Vice Versa: A Paradox of Rational Heating,” Journal of Political Economy 95, no. 5 (1987): 1089–1097. You will find an online version on Friedman’s home page here: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Cold_Houses/Cold_Houses.html. Outside of economics, one source to consult is Willem E. Frankenhuis, Ethan S. Young, and Bruce J. Ellis, “The Hidden Talents Approach: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 24, no. 7 (March 2020): 569–581.
15. See Michael Cavna, “Dav Pilkey Credits His ADHD for His Massive Success. Now He Wants Kids to Find Their Own ‘Superpower,’” The Washington Post, October 11, 2019.
16. For one survey of these literatures, see Cowen, The Age of the Infovore; more recently, see Rachel Nuwer, “Finding Strengths in Autism,” Spectrum, May 12, 2021. See also Simon Baron-Cohen, “Autism: The Emphathizing-Sympathizing (E-S) Theory,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1156 (2009): 68–80; Francesca Happe and Pedro Vital, “What Aspects of Autism Predispose to Talent?,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 364, no. 1522 (2009): 1369–1375; Laurent Mottron, Michelle Dawson, Isabelle Soulières, Benedicte Hubert, and Jake Burack, “Enhanced Perceptual Functioning in Autism: An Update, and Eight Principles of Autistic Perception,” Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 36, no. 1 (January 2006): 27–43; and Liron Rozenkrantz, Anila M. D’Mello, and John D. E. Gabrieli, “Enhanced Rationality in Autism Spectrum Disorder,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 25, no. 8 (August 1, 2021): P685–P696. For the Ravens results, see Michelle Dawson, Isabelle Soulieres, Morton Ann Gernsbacher, and Laurent Mottron, “The Level and Nature of Autistic Intelligence,” Psychological Science 18, no. 8 (2007): 657–662. On genetic risk for autism and intelligence, I have drawn on Scott Alexander, “Autism and Intelligence: Much More than You Wanted to Know,” SlateStarCodex, November 13, 2019, https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/13/autism-and-intelligence-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/. More specifically on that topic, see S. P. Hagenaars et al., “Shared Genetic Aetiology Between Cognitive Functions and Physical and Mental Health in UK Biobank (N =112 151) and 24 GWAS Consortia,” Molecular Psychiatry 21 (2016): 1624–1632.
17. On autism and de novo mutations, see Scott Myers et al., “Insufficient Evidence for ‘Autism-Specific’ Genes,” American Journal of Human Genetics 106, no. 5 (May 7, 2020): 587–595.
18. For Vernon on his own autism, see, for instance, his autobiography, Vernon L. Smith, A Life of Experimental Economics, vol. 1, Forty Years of Discovery (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
19. Temple Grandin, “Why Visual Thinking Is a Different Approach to Problem Solving,” Forbes, October 9, 2019.
20. See Jeff Bell, “Ten-Year-Old Has Pi Memorized to 200 Digits, Speaks 4 Languages,” Times Colonist, December 1, 2019.
21. On some of these deficits, see Mark A. Bellgrove, Alasdair Vance, and John L. Bradshaw, “Local-Global Processing in Early-Onset Schizophrenia: Evidence for an Impairment in Shifting the Spatial Scale of Attention,” Brain and Cognition 51, no. 1 (2003): 48–65; Peter Brugger, “Testing vs. Believing Hypotheses: Magical Ideation in the Judgment of Contingencies,” Cognitive Neuropsychiatry 2, no. 4 (1997): 251–272; Birgit Mathes et al., “Early Processing Deficits in Object Working Memory in First-Episode Schizophreniform Psychosis and Established Schizophrenia,” Psychological Medicine 35 (2005): 1053–1062; and Diego Pizzagalli et al., “Brain Electric Correlates of Strong Belief in Paranormal Phenomena: Intracerebral EEG Source and Regional Omega Complexity Analyses,” Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging Section 100, no. 3 (2000): 139–154. On the question of how bipolar individuals differ, see M. F. Green, “Cognitive Impairment and Functional Outcome in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder,” Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 67, suppl. 9 (December 31, 2005): 3–8.
22. For one look at an extensive literature, see Sara Weinstein and Roger E. Graves, “Are Creativity and Schizotypy Products of a Right Hemisphere Bias?,” Brain and Cognition 49 (2002): 138–151, quotations from 138. See also Selcuk Acar and Sedat Sen, “A Multilevel Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Creativity and Schizotypy,” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 7, no. 3 (2013): 214–228; Andreas Fink et al., “Creativity and Schizotypy from the Neuroscience Perspective,” Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience 14, no. 1 (March 2014): 378–387; Mark Batey and Adrian Furnham, “The Relationship Between Measures of Creativity and Schizotypy,” Personality and Individual Differences 45 (2008): 816–821; and Daniel Nettle, “Schizotypy and Mental Health Amongst Poets, Visual Artists, and Mathematicians,” Journal of Research in Personality 40, no. 6 (December 2006): 876–890. On relatives, see Diana I. Simeonova, Kiki D. Chang, Connie Strong, and Terence A. Ketter, “Creativity in Familial Bipolar Disorder,” Journal of Psychiatric Research 39 (2005): 623–631. On polygenic risk scores predicting creativity, see Robert A. Power et al., “Polygenic Risk Scores for Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Predict Creativity,” Nature Neuroscience 18, no. 7 (July 2015): 953–956. On the genetics of schizophrenia and education, see Perline A. Demange et al., “Investigating the Genetic Architecture of Non-Cognitive Skills Using GWAS-by-Subtraction,” bioRxiv, January 15, 2020.
23. The cited lyrics are from the Kanye West song “Yikes,” from his 2018 album Ye.
24. On the Kanye episode, see Wessel de Cock, “Kanye West’s Bipolar Disorder as a ‘Superpower’ and the Role of Celebrities in the Rethinking of Mental Disorders,” http://rethinkingdisability.net/kanye-wests-bipolar-disorder-as-a-superpower-and-the-role-of-celebrities-in-the-rethinking-of-mental-disorders/, accessed July 7, 2020.
25. For one look at these features of schizophrenia and schizotypy, see Bernard Crespi and Christopher Badcock, “Psychosis and Autism as Diametrical Disorders of the Social Brain,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31, no. 3 (2008): 241–260; in particular, the relevant literature more broadly is cited on 253–254.
26. On how schizophrenics may have exaggerated theory of mind, see Ahmad Aku-Abel, “Impaired Theory of Mind in Schizophrenia,” Pragmatics and Cognition 7, no. 2 (January 1999): 247–282. For a more general look at schizophrenia and theory of mind, see Mirjam Spring et al., “Theory of Mind in Schizophrenia: Meta-analysis,” British Journal of Psychiatry 191 (2007): 5–13.