People who go on forums in the first place are frequently much less religious than average.
This is definitely true for numerous non-autistic forum as well (I’ve conducted polls). Among online communities I know where an overwhelming majority of the population is non-religious...
HeavenGames
Interesting Nonetheless (INTL), an offshoot of HeavenGames
Reddit
Social Anxiety Forums
College Confidential (though the ratio there is only around 60%)
Digg (the old digg, anyways).
Quora
I’m pretty sure it’s true for Slashdot and Hacker News too
(Of course, LessWrong and Imminst are even more overwhelmingly atheist, but I wouldn’t consider them as reliable “NT” forums to compare with, as their philosophies are philosophies that only atheists would find more attractive—this is not the case for the communities above)
In any case, Go LiveWire might not even be a reliable sample. There’s such an overwhelming presence of atheists on many popular discussion boards (especially Reddit) that a lot of religious people are driven away and end up congregating more on places like LiveWire. Alternatively, they convert to atheism (I’ve witnessed numerous forumers on HeavenGames turn from Christian to atheist).
Plus, forums frequently homogeneize their views precisely because the people with less popular views get frustrated and driven out (this is especially true for anyone who has conservative views—I’ve seen many cases where conservatives get ostracized, leaving only a small percent of them who remain). Anyways, I’m a WrongPlanet poster myself, so I’ll post the study there and see what they say.
Also, wrongplanet is definitely not a representative sample of everyone with Asperger’s. The people there are definitely biased towards more extreme forms of the syndrome (and especially biased towards those who are especially lonely in real life). In terms of severity, my form is more severe than that of almost everyone I know in real-life, yet less severe than many of the posters there.
Another thing: most of WrongPlanet’s posters are adults—most of LiveWire’s posters are teens. They said they wanted to match for age-group, but they didn’t do a good job of doing that.
Despite the study’s flaws, I don’t doubt the conclusion. And I still found the article to be an intensely interesting read, and do want to see more research into this.
Their neurotypical comparison group was golivewire.com. People who go on forums in the first place are frequently much less religious than average....a lot of religious people are driven away and end up congregating more on places like LiveWire
Well, both statements could be true. Most popular Internet forums are over-represented by atheists [1], so the result is that many of the Christians (especially the conservative ones) get driven out and congregate on other forums (which may, in turn, not form particularly representative samples of the population)
Here’s the other nail-biter: I’d actually suspect that Aspies might be over-represented among the highly-religious as well (though not as much among the non-religious). But they may also be especially likely to be driven out of wrongplanet
[1] relative to the U.S. population anyways. But there’s another confounding factor: many forums also have a high number of internationals (there are definitely non-Americans on WrongPlanet), especially Europeans, and they tend to be even more overwhelmingly non-religious. I don’t know about LiveWire’s international population, but I’m pretty sure that it’s less international than many other forums.
Their neurotypical comparison group was golivewire.com…
People who go on forums in the first place are frequently much less religious than average.
This is definitely true for numerous non-autistic forum as well (I’ve conducted polls). Among online communities I know where an overwhelming majority of the population is non-religious...
HeavenGames
Interesting Nonetheless (INTL), an offshoot of HeavenGames
Reddit
Social Anxiety Forums
College Confidential (though the ratio there is only around 60%)
Digg (the old digg, anyways).
Quora
I’m pretty sure it’s true for Slashdot and Hacker News too
(Of course, LessWrong and Imminst are even more overwhelmingly atheist, but I wouldn’t consider them as reliable “NT” forums to compare with, as their philosophies are philosophies that only atheists would find more attractive—this is not the case for the communities above)
In any case, Go LiveWire might not even be a reliable sample. There’s such an overwhelming presence of atheists on many popular discussion boards (especially Reddit) that a lot of religious people are driven away and end up congregating more on places like LiveWire. Alternatively, they convert to atheism (I’ve witnessed numerous forumers on HeavenGames turn from Christian to atheist).
Plus, forums frequently homogeneize their views precisely because the people with less popular views get frustrated and driven out (this is especially true for anyone who has conservative views—I’ve seen many cases where conservatives get ostracized, leaving only a small percent of them who remain). Anyways, I’m a WrongPlanet poster myself, so I’ll post the study there and see what they say.
Also, wrongplanet is definitely not a representative sample of everyone with Asperger’s. The people there are definitely biased towards more extreme forms of the syndrome (and especially biased towards those who are especially lonely in real life). In terms of severity, my form is more severe than that of almost everyone I know in real-life, yet less severe than many of the posters there.
Another thing: most of WrongPlanet’s posters are adults—most of LiveWire’s posters are teens. They said they wanted to match for age-group, but they didn’t do a good job of doing that.
Despite the study’s flaws, I don’t doubt the conclusion. And I still found the article to be an intensely interesting read, and do want to see more research into this.
Que?
Well, both statements could be true. Most popular Internet forums are over-represented by atheists [1], so the result is that many of the Christians (especially the conservative ones) get driven out and congregate on other forums (which may, in turn, not form particularly representative samples of the population)
Here’s the other nail-biter: I’d actually suspect that Aspies might be over-represented among the highly-religious as well (though not as much among the non-religious). But they may also be especially likely to be driven out of wrongplanet
[1] relative to the U.S. population anyways. But there’s another confounding factor: many forums also have a high number of internationals (there are definitely non-Americans on WrongPlanet), especially Europeans, and they tend to be even more overwhelmingly non-religious. I don’t know about LiveWire’s international population, but I’m pretty sure that it’s less international than many other forums.