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The Spanking Gene
Or
The Autistic and the Blade Appendix F
It’s Alfred Wallace, co-discoverer of evolution two hundred years ago
Appendix F
Miraculous Spandrels
Written on social media:
Thinking about my frustrations with the majority and their quirks (I mostly only talk to the #ND community), first, I read some Pinker, and he has that rap that’s so common now, we can’t do that because our evolution never required it of us in the past, meaning, in my memory of it, we can’t process large numbers or deep time or odds realistically, and first, it’s more of Human Nature, this royal “we,” what do you mean, “we,” white man? 😀
We could surely find him savants in all three of those areas and many more, some people get that stuff. Where is the logic in taking an average and calling it the whole sample?
And I’ve said many times, Steve’s list and Aristotle’s list, intended for everyone, are the closest thing we have to a definition of Allistic people, albeit only the negative half of the definition, but I’m talking today because that train of thought has perhaps finally taken another step.
Of course evolution has given us reasons to understand odds! Are you kidding? Nature, rough in tooth and claw, predators forever prowling, you don’t think prey calculates odds? Predators too? We’re a bit of both so we probably have two ways to do it. And probably large numbers and deep time too.
What if these traits were things all creatures have, after all there are odds and large numbers and deep time in the world, these things have always existed before Pinker discovered them, what if these were powers we had and lost?
I took the leap while writing the book summer before last that the Goddess worshipping, pre-war people of the Neolithic understood breeding and evolution, that fantastical origin stories and the universal, permanent Human Nature are new things in the world, and that goes to odds and deep time. I think this has to be part of my deal. I have perhaps reached dogma stage already, where I have to think it, like it or not if it goes along with the general idea.
Call it spit balling, I guess.
Just an observation that perhaps the meme, “evolution never required it,” makes more sense if you do have an attenuated sense of deep time? If you think evolution has had something less than forever to work on everything, that there is some sort of a time limit?
Ah – sometimes my through the looking glass line of thinking seems so very productive. It’s my joy, what I have of joy.
I mean, what is the theory of savantism in Allistic science?
An occasional mutation that by some amazing series of accidents produces mental miracles, every one a first, a one off? How many of these astronomically unlikely coincidences? I mean, one would blow your mind, and there’s more than one.
As opposed to it being something like a spandrel? Something that was there in the species before and is simply still there in the genome because evolution hasn’t been able or bothered to lose it completely yet? So a complex thing that evolved for hundreds of millions of years, as opposed to an accident, a mutation that somehow groks high math?
The rest of the sermon, I suppose it follows that if these savant traits are evolved over deep time, that they are not superpowers, but basic, and fundamental, not some fancy packaging, but basic and necessary infrastructure that we have all but lost – including the actuarial sense, I think my personal superpower, which I’m always making the case that it’s not optional, that we need to revive it or simply spiral into Hell first and maybe oblivion second. I suppose nothing evolution gives you is optional. If evolution gave it to you, there was a strong case for it, for a long time.
A proper sermon would say now and I do, that we could get these powers back and get our future back, that they are still existent in the archive that is the human genome, but that is not really our current direction.
Other neurotypes’ science looks like a million unconnected factoids if you find your own, like the free floating factoid/mystery/coincidence of the savant. This surely is a major source of school stress for non-Allistics, what they teach has a thread for them, it all maybe falls together for them – but it’s a million unconnected factoids to people like me, with another sort of a brain.
This seemed really good to me.
Come to my school, 😘💜
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Jeff April 28th., 2026
The Spanking Gene 