> Can we reliably quantify that "weaponized autism", i.e. the aggressive monetization of nerds by capital to squeeze profit out of every possible corner of society

That's not what that term means.

Also that comment wasn't killed directly. That user is banned. Interestingly that was his first (attempted) post since 2022.

That's a redefinition of the term - while there is some merit to your interpretation, it's an already commonly used term that means something else. It'd seem to me that the modern tech is significantly less "autistic" than it used to be in the prior decades and will only continue to move in this direction; and aside of that, I'm pretty sure Netcob's "modern" was meant to mean current thousands rather than tens of years.

I feel there's reason to believe autism is one of the reasons why bits of goodness and democracy are still hanging on so tightly even in the midst of such a depressing present. (Search term: "positive nonconformity")

-> "monetization of nerds by capital to squeeze profit "

Note. In case this is read incorrectly. For the most part the nerds are not profiting. The nerds are sitting hunched over their desk being fed coffee from a feeding tube, to keep them happy while the owners make money.

And. To be more sad, these days you can't even get free coffee. Being fed free coffee and donuts, while others profit from us, is considered the golden age of computing.

We loved our cozy cells, not so much these more uncomfortable ones.

I think of it as a different algorithm to crawl the problem space of the real world.

In a general sense, humanity needs to be generalist (especially in the past) to accomplish all the things you need to do to stay alive. Having all 20 members of your tribe geek out and stare at a problem for 48 hours straight means a bear sneaks up and eats you. But having that one oddball (hey me) fall into a rabbit hole of observation and mental computation can lead the group out of a local maxima into a new paradigm of doing things.

I don't think you're wrong, but I do think that the "modern" world - which I guess I'd label as anything that happened after the invention of writing and cities - really let those individuals thrive, and let their work become very useful for the world at large.

Trying to diagnose people across millennia is a fool's errand, but I'd wager a lot to say that people like Newton & Tesla were at the very least neurodivergent in some way, and they've had wildly outsized impacts on the world.

The Percy Jackson series posited that in their magical world, ADHD is actually a strength on the battlefield, not a weakness.

I wonder what a book series that tried to do that with autism would look like.

(I can think of exactly one book where autism - or something close enough to it - was treated as a serious "what if" plot device, but I don't want to name it because it is a little bit of a spoiler, I guess.)