Weaponized Autism

Vox Day had recently posted on the controversial teaching methods of a certain college professor who has some rather controversial teaching methods involving anti-free speech rioting and bike locks. It was noted how it was the 4chan guys at /pol/ that tracked down the professor from various images of the event.

Two comments I found interesting.

/pol/ = weaponized autism

I f*cking love these guys.

Their ongoing persecution of the Le Barf fool, and the ease with which they've run rings around him, is just ... delicious.

May they never grow up.

This is of course referring to the earlier exploits involving "actor" Shia LaBeouf who had created a livestreaming "art" project centered around how Trump "will not divide us."

It was promptly crashed by various alt-right and alt-white types, some of the funniest being non-white minorities. In response, our intrepid "actor" had taken to hiding his installation. At one point in the middle of some field with the camera point straight up.

So /pol/ used a combination of real-time shots of the starfield and airline schedules cross-referenced to planes observed in the FOV to pinpoint the location of the camera.

Weaponized autism.

Then:

Autism has been weaponized for a long time, it's just we used Ivory Towers and Monastaries before the internet. Remember, the old polite term for it is "touched by god".

A core premise of the novel Anathem is that the monasteries were created to keep the "odds" and geniuses isolated and undistracted by real-world concerns. It's not just to keep them safe from society, but to also keep society safe from them and the consequences of what they discover. Not only are they restricted in how much they can "own", but very restricted in the kinds of modern, especially nano-based, technology they have access to.

As it turns out, that wasn't as much of a limitation as would have been hoped. Weaponized autism will find a way.