It gives a superficial facility with social interaction but with no substance behind it.
If you watch this video you can hear a 8 year old girl being asked if she wants to be a “helper”. She replies that it feels like an honor to her.
Maybe she just learnt to say that and doesn’t know what it means, but isn’t that some sort of Chinese room argument? It doesn’t seem that they are unhappy helping others or that it is some sort of impulse reaction without any involvement of higher cognition.
And Willians Syndrome is not just marked by disability but, if you read the Wikipedia article you linked to, “has been described as a “cocktail party” type personality, and exhibit a remarkable blend of cognitive strengths and weaknesses.”
You probably don’t mean to imply this, but your comment makes it sound like that you believe the particular friendliness and warmth exhibited by humans with Williams Syndrome to be somehow unworthy compared to the rational choice taken by an high IQ individual that is exhibiting altruism.
But if a paperclip maximizer can be rational and yet not exhibit any amount of friendliness, then this means that it is ultimately a subjective-objective agent-dependent value exhibited by those who happen to feature a utility-function that assigns non-negligible weight to the unconditional well-being of other agents.
You probably don’t mean to imply this, but your comment makes it sound like that you believe the particular friendliness and warmth exhibited by humans with Williams Syndrome to be somehow unworthy compared to the rational choice taken by an high IQ individual that is exhibiting altruism.
I never said anything about rationality, IQ, or altruism, so I’m not sure where you’re getting that from. I’m saying that friendliness is the only thing that people with Williams syndrome have in their favour—as compared with the general public. It doesn’t outweigh the deficits of mental and physical function.
And among the general public, people can be friendly anyway without general brain damage.
Doesn’t follow. (TL;DR: use the social model of disability, Luke.) This only proves that either Williams syndrome is bad or society is screwed up.
You have legs (probably), but no wings, and you do fine in everyday life. Things often rest on the assumption you have functioning legs—stairs, narrow doors, curbs, floor coverings, and people with no legs have trouble using them.
Yet imagine a society where everything assumes that people have wings (but not necessarily legs). Most buildings have no doors, because of course you can fly through the window. Things are placed high above your head, because of course you can fly up. There are perches you can’t use if you have legs.
You and I would do horrible in such a society, with exactly the same body configuration. Neither we nor the hypothetical legless winged person are “cases of a body gone wrong”, we just live in societies optimised for body types that may or may not be ours.
Likewise, people with Williams syndrome may only need atypical caregivers and institutions because the type of care they need is abnormal in our society (unlike the type of care that consists of paying other people to make your food and bring it to stores near you). If almost everyone had Williams syndrome, maybe we would need supervisers.
Likewise, people with Williams syndrome may only need atypical caregivers and institutions because the type of care they need is abnormal in our society (unlike the type of care that consists of paying other people to make your food and bring it to stores near you). If almost everyone had Williams syndrome, maybe we would need supervisers.
I think that last “would” was supposed to be a “wouldn’t”, but still, I don’t think so. The deficits are just too severe. If everyone had Williams syndrome, we wouldn’t have a civilisation. Not all disabilities are socially constructed.
If average adult height was three feet, or eight feet, we could still have a civilisation like the one we have. Only when you’re a three or eight foot adult in a world of 5 to 6.5 footers does your height make things difficult. But lack of mental capacity is not like that. Mental capacity, not height, is what has given us our civilization, and if we were markedly stupider we would not have the civilization.
Williams Syndrome is not just “increased friendliness”. It is a whole constellation of changes, mostly for the worse. This is the sort of thing that happens when you just hack off a chunk of a chromosome.
If you want the good parts but not the bad, fine, but that isn’t Williams Syndrome any more.
I think that last “would” was supposed to be a “wouldn’t”
I meant “we, people without Williams syndrome”.
If everyone had Williams syndrome, we wouldn’t have a civilisation.
Plausible, but reversal test: there’s a saying among certain autistic groups that if there were no autistics, we’d still be gossiping over a raw mammoth leg in a cave. In the everyone-is-an-autie world, maybe AlternateRichardKennaway is saying “If everyone had neurotypicality, we wouldn’t have a civilisation”. Still, yeah, it’s quite possible that we’re on average just smart enough for civilisation but no smarter. (Also autism isn’t a raw intelligence increase, whereas raw intelligence decreases are common and Williams causes one, so that’s another asymmetry.)
Still, yeah, it’s quite possible that we’re on average just smart enough for civilisation but no smarter.
We evolved to this level of intelligence gradually, not in a single hop. Given that the length of time we have had a civilisation for is pretty much nothing in evolutionary terms, I would guess that we are pretty much exactly at the minimum level of intelligence necessary for a civilisation.
Yup, that’s what makes it quite possible. Not drop-dead obvious, though—there’s nonzero selection pressure for intelligence even now, environment has a huge load to do with intelligence so there are possibly big gains between the beginning to civilization and now, maybe civilization-making magic happens with enough geniuses (genii?) or is prevented by too many too stupid people so variance (and maybe population) matters more than average.
I’m not sure how much you’re agreeing or disagreeing there. To me, the mental deficits of Williams Syndrome are the showstopper. There are lots of other ways in which people can and do vary, and where we happen to be on those scales isn’t necessarily the way we would have to be, to have got here at all.
It’s obvious to me. You might as well wish to have Down’s Syndrome. From PubMed:
“Most patients require full-time caregivers and often live in supervised group homes.”
Williams Syndrome is plainly a case of a brain gone wrong. It gives a superficial facility with social interaction but with no substance behind it.
If you watch this video you can hear a 8 year old girl being asked if she wants to be a “helper”. She replies that it feels like an honor to her.
Maybe she just learnt to say that and doesn’t know what it means, but isn’t that some sort of Chinese room argument? It doesn’t seem that they are unhappy helping others or that it is some sort of impulse reaction without any involvement of higher cognition.
And Willians Syndrome is not just marked by disability but, if you read the Wikipedia article you linked to, “has been described as a “cocktail party” type personality, and exhibit a remarkable blend of cognitive strengths and weaknesses.”
You probably don’t mean to imply this, but your comment makes it sound like that you believe the particular friendliness and warmth exhibited by humans with Williams Syndrome to be somehow unworthy compared to the rational choice taken by an high IQ individual that is exhibiting altruism.
But if a paperclip maximizer can be rational and yet not exhibit any amount of friendliness, then this means that it is ultimately a subjective-objective agent-dependent value exhibited by those who happen to feature a utility-function that assigns non-negligible weight to the unconditional well-being of other agents.
I never said anything about rationality, IQ, or altruism, so I’m not sure where you’re getting that from. I’m saying that friendliness is the only thing that people with Williams syndrome have in their favour—as compared with the general public. It doesn’t outweigh the deficits of mental and physical function.
And among the general public, people can be friendly anyway without general brain damage.
I am sorry, it seems I mixed some of the comments I read together. I should avoid reading comments via Google Reader/be more careful.
Doesn’t follow. (TL;DR: use the social model of disability, Luke.) This only proves that either Williams syndrome is bad or society is screwed up.
You have legs (probably), but no wings, and you do fine in everyday life. Things often rest on the assumption you have functioning legs—stairs, narrow doors, curbs, floor coverings, and people with no legs have trouble using them.
Yet imagine a society where everything assumes that people have wings (but not necessarily legs). Most buildings have no doors, because of course you can fly through the window. Things are placed high above your head, because of course you can fly up. There are perches you can’t use if you have legs.
You and I would do horrible in such a society, with exactly the same body configuration. Neither we nor the hypothetical legless winged person are “cases of a body gone wrong”, we just live in societies optimised for body types that may or may not be ours.
Likewise, people with Williams syndrome may only need atypical caregivers and institutions because the type of care they need is abnormal in our society (unlike the type of care that consists of paying other people to make your food and bring it to stores near you). If almost everyone had Williams syndrome, maybe we would need supervisers.
I think that last “would” was supposed to be a “wouldn’t”, but still, I don’t think so. The deficits are just too severe. If everyone had Williams syndrome, we wouldn’t have a civilisation. Not all disabilities are socially constructed.
If average adult height was three feet, or eight feet, we could still have a civilisation like the one we have. Only when you’re a three or eight foot adult in a world of 5 to 6.5 footers does your height make things difficult. But lack of mental capacity is not like that. Mental capacity, not height, is what has given us our civilization, and if we were markedly stupider we would not have the civilization.
Williams Syndrome is not just “increased friendliness”. It is a whole constellation of changes, mostly for the worse. This is the sort of thing that happens when you just hack off a chunk of a chromosome.
If you want the good parts but not the bad, fine, but that isn’t Williams Syndrome any more.
I meant “we, people without Williams syndrome”.
Plausible, but reversal test: there’s a saying among certain autistic groups that if there were no autistics, we’d still be gossiping over a raw mammoth leg in a cave. In the everyone-is-an-autie world, maybe AlternateRichardKennaway is saying “If everyone had neurotypicality, we wouldn’t have a civilisation”. Still, yeah, it’s quite possible that we’re on average just smart enough for civilisation but no smarter. (Also autism isn’t a raw intelligence increase, whereas raw intelligence decreases are common and Williams causes one, so that’s another asymmetry.)
We evolved to this level of intelligence gradually, not in a single hop. Given that the length of time we have had a civilisation for is pretty much nothing in evolutionary terms, I would guess that we are pretty much exactly at the minimum level of intelligence necessary for a civilisation.
Yup, that’s what makes it quite possible. Not drop-dead obvious, though—there’s nonzero selection pressure for intelligence even now, environment has a huge load to do with intelligence so there are possibly big gains between the beginning to civilization and now, maybe civilization-making magic happens with enough geniuses (genii?) or is prevented by too many too stupid people so variance (and maybe population) matters more than average.
I’m not sure how much you’re agreeing or disagreeing there. To me, the mental deficits of Williams Syndrome are the showstopper. There are lots of other ways in which people can and do vary, and where we happen to be on those scales isn’t necessarily the way we would have to be, to have got here at all.
Williams Syndrome isn’t all or nothing, BTW. Some anecdotal data.
I would rather have wings than legs. I think I might even rather this in our society.