The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention

"If-and-then" is the key to human innovation and domination. That point is repeated over and over in Pattern Seekers. The second half of the book dives down into the evolutionary history of homo sapiens and analyzes how humans came to dominate.

The first part of the book focussed more on the different types of people and what they excel at. Most people are near the center of the bell curve for systematizing and empathy (with women skewing more empathetic and men more systematizing) However, inventors tend to be very high on the systematizing end. Their brains are often the scientific method in action. Autism is often manifest as high systematizing with low empathy. Studies have shown that children of engineers tend to be overrepresented on the autism spectrum. There was a plan to do a detailed study of MIT graduates to see autism correlation. However, the president of MIT stopped it, for fear that it would cast the university in a bad light. The end of the book includes a short quiz to scale yourself on the two spectrums. (I came up heavily skewed towards systematizing.) 

Our current education system does a great disservice to those on the autism spectrum. The conventional general education system has moved more to the "fuzzy" instruction and away from the more concrete. This often results in very smart students struggling. (Ironically, at the same time, we are super concerned about the lack of people in STEM.)  It would be better for us to focus on the strengths of those strong in the "in-built" scientific method. These people may coast through some classes in school, but struggle greatly with the social interactions. As a society it would benefit everyone to acknowledge the different ways in which people think. Future Edisons may by languishing as we spent effort trying to make them something they are not rather than let them move the human race forward.