It is not at all obvious to me why this is being voted down. Anyone care to illuminate me?
It is the kind of comment that I expect to get a few initial downvotes but to earn those back over time and end up net positive.
Two factors which I would expect some individuals to object to:
I did, as Eugine noted, support leaving part of the territory unmapped just because some can't handle the truth. We really do want to avoid making such compromises too often. Yet since the approach of being cautious when discussing matters of human social behaviours work is already in place I like to acknowledge it.
Huh. I didn't parse it that way at all - I read it as saying that social behavior is something that we can't usefully talk about here, for a variety of reasons including the low average skill level, and thus we need to be doing independent study on the subject.
Suppose that you're a bee. Perhaps, even, an extremely rational bee. And yet, as you go through your life, you can't shake the feeling that you're missing something - the other bees live so effortlessly, alighting on flowers bursting with pollen as if by chance. Try as you might, you can't seem to figure out the patterns that they're unconsciously drawn to. Are you overanalyzing? Are you overwhelmed by sensory data? But the others seem to defy thermodynamics in their ability to extract useful information, all the while wasting so much effort on suboptimal patterns of thought.
Perhaps they have access to different data? Perhaps, where you see a uniform field of yellow, they see bullseyes.
Less Wrong seems to have a problem with socializing. Not just an unusual share of the people, but the community's character (as if it were a person). We should suspect ourselves (as a collective) of overlooking the ultraviolet, those facts about the world that are so easily accessed by some others. We should be suspicious of simplistic or monolithic explanations of social reality that don't allow sweeping social success on the same scale as their claims. We should be suspicious of dismissals of social concerns.
Am I off the mark? Am I worried over nothing? Am I overreaching? I am tossing this idea out into the sandstorm of doubt so that it can be worn down and honed to the razor edge at its core, if such a thing exists. I ask you to be my wind and sand.
Disclaimers: I don't intend this as an insult. It's a reminder - as a collective intelligence, we have a blind spot. We shouldn't conclude that there's nothing behind it. I myself am pretty dang "manualistic" (or whatever the other side of neurotypical is called). I am not an apiarist.
Edit: I've removed the focus on Autism. I was wrong, and I apologize. The post may be further edited in the near future.