Um, yes for most definitions of "rational". That's why [autism] is considered a disability.
Hrm? A disability is a thing that is limits the disabled individual from a socially-recognized set of normal actions. The term 'disability' alone doesn't imply anything about reasoning or cognitive skills. It seems at best un-obvious, and more likely false, that "rationality" encompasses all cognitive functions.
Some people have dyslexia; that is certainly a cognitive disability. It would be strange (not to say offensive) to describe dyslexic individuals as per se irrational. I suspect similarly for, say, dyscalculia. Or for that matter, short-term memory problems.
Autism is a big complicated bundle of traits and behaviors. Why are those behaviors "irrational" in a way that dyslexia isn't?
Autism is a big complicated bundle of traits and behaviors. Why are those behaviors "irrational" in a way that dyslexia isn't?
Autism isn't just a behavior, it affects one's ability to reason socially, which in tern is "fed back" into other mental processes causing downstream problems, e.g., an inability to form models of social situations.
For example, what would be inappropriately off topic to post to LessWrong discussion about?
I couldn't find an answer in the FAQ. (Perhaps it'd be worth adding one.) The closest I could find was this:
However "rationality" can be interpreted broadly enough that rational discussion of anything would count, and my experience reading LW is compatible with this interpretation being applied by posters. Indeed my experience seems to suggest that practically everything is on topic; political discussion of certain sorts is frowned upon, but not due to being off topic. People often post about things far removed from the topics of interest. And some of these topics are very broad: it seems that a lot of material about self-improvement is acceptable, for instance.