I'm probably in the minority with this opinion, but I think for non-homeschooled people (and especially the male kind), taking time off between high school and college can be a really good idea. It can be a period of discovering the self. Rediscover the love of learning. Mature socially. Do. Be.

I did such a thing (took time off in the middle) and found that even the meager 3 years in age between me and my fellow classmates made a huge difference. My ability to really think and focus was miles what it was before I took a break. I was also less affected by social pressures. Before my break I went to classes reluctantly when I went at all. Afterwards, I really really wanted to be there. What professor wouldn't prefer the latter student?

Many people are not ready for college right away--and it could be argued that this is more the case for the exceptionally bright. The education industry can be an unforgiving factory-like process. And, of course, there are people that do quite well without prolonged schooling at all.

I realized that I could lose a lot by not making the effort of trying to reach out and meet people.

post upvoted for this initiative.

Define "sane". The main problem is that unless the other person is themselves an experienced meditator (or maybe very good at rationality), they are pretty much useless and might easily make it worse.

By far, the most typical reactions to someone stuck in the Dark Night or going through a peak experience are alienation, attempting to engage their psychological waste[1] or treating it as a mental illness[2]. Neither helps, only more practice and calming down does.

Overall, I don't necessarily disagree with you, but actual help requires either personal experience or sanity that would reasonably pass LW standards, and those aren't all that common (or easy to identify when you're stuck). I had enough negative experiences in that regard that I have a personal "shut up and practice" policy.

[1] Meaning, trying to engage the content when you should be engaging the thought pattern. It's like the difference between psychoanalysis and CBT.

[2] I know several people who had an early peak experience, thought they were Jesus for a few days and who got institutionalized. They typically didn't mind (Jesus doesn't care about wards) and it never lasted long, but that's the kind of response you get from most professionals when weird shit happens.

If you haven't already seen it, this might interest you, it's a pretty cool story. Also, this.

That seems useful. It might be good to have a notes-to-self field, too.

Make it acceptable to skip a good portion of classes. Yes, some attendance at some classes may be important, but there are many cases when we just zone out and get absolutely nothing out of class (this is especially important for foreign language, although my university has been kind enough to give me a foreign language requirement exemption), even though we would do perfectly well (and learn even more efficiently) if everything was just distributed outside of class.

Some of the accommodations are not especially helpful - tape-recording lectures, for example, means that you often have to listen to the entire thing again and use up even more time, when in reality, we could learn the material in a fraction of the time (at a time when we are alert - the problem is that it's hard to predict periods of alertness and periods of unalertness, and their periods vary from day to day) if we were given written access to the material at a time when we were alert.

My problem may be more related to ADD, but I have both, and there is said to be a large comorbidity between Asperger's and ADD.

==

Also - more class discussion over class forums and less class discussion in class. Also, a school-wide online forum (or mailing list, or at least one for particular majors) would REALLY help for making connections (I know that some schools, like Wellesley, have school-wide forums, and other schools, like Caltech, have house-wide mailing lists). I have no friends here, and part of the reason for this is because there's simply no online way for me to approach anonymous people in my major or school. This is especially relevant when you have the social skills to only be friends with, say, 0.01% of the population, and are trying to find ways to identify that small percent. Also, people with social anxiety also partake better in forums, and it would make it easier for us to meet those with social anxiety.

Basically, make as much content online as is practically possible. That is the single-most important thing, IMO.

Modernizing classroom instruction as well (more emphasis on interactive simulations when available, rather than on blackboard). I've made a list of them here: http://physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=470676

==

Also, some system to control variance in GPAs. A lot of us have higher GPA variances than others. The problem with this, though, is that an isolated 0.0 could totally destroy our GPAs (a 0.0 does far more damage than a 1.7, even though there is really little difference between the two), even though we may otherwise have very strong grades. And autistics are probably more likely to get these isolated 0.0s due to issues that arised in one quarter, or communication breakdown between student and professor.

This is exactly the kind of post that I'm at LW for. I am asked about 20-10,000 questions as day, the majority of which I have to answer "I don't know" for. (How anyone parented before google is beyond me.) Often I use "I don't know" as a replacement for "I don't have the confidence to answer your question adequately[1] in the 15 seconds that I have before you ask another question."

I understand that conversations with children might seem trivial to most here or that this post was never intended to be used in the context I've taken it. Also, it seems that "X" may be a non-rationalist and children usually are. (I think that its very possible that we are all born as rationalists.) So, although I may be beyond hope, my children are not. This post reminds me that along with answering questions I'm not only passing along what I know, I'm passing along my thinking process. I'm also directly transferring all my biases.

So what has come to me after reading this is that it's far better for me to vocalize the process I'm going thru to find an answer rather than to try to just come up with one. And that my knee-jerk reaction to thinking "I need to answer" is a bias in itself--probably the result of decades of schooling and testing.

1: Often explanations are simplified to the extent that they become misleading or just wrong. eg: any non-local news story or a history textbook.

I would add another reason: Writing Quality.

Some people just have a gift for writing. They make the process enjoyable so I don't want to skim. It's much like how I wouldn't want to fast forward thru a good movie. A good writer could write a book about a subject i have little interest in, lets say sports, and I would want to read it -- word for word.

Zero promotion? Really? I guess the main reason I was looking for a publisher is laziness, in that I know I personally won't do any promotion. I'll check out those websites though.

I concede that the front page shouldn't be overrun with vague self-helpy stuff. But I read your original comment as a request to not allow that kind of content on LessWrong at all and I think that would be going too far.

This all hinges on the estimated worth of sharing speculative self-help advice. I think there are insights to be shared that can't simply be found by reading research literature and the potential benefit of gaining such insights outweights the additional cost of mentally filtering unwanted content. I also think that on LessWrong such content will be less vague and of higher quality than on dedicated self-help sites so I'd prefer to keep it, though perhaps relegated to the discussion section.

Not sure if this has been mentioned before, but I think that this Aspie Quiz is more thorough than the one in Wired.

IMO these kinds of quizzes do have their drawbacks as many aspie traits can be compensated for with time and practice. Female aspie traits (or the special nuances in them) may also be overlooked.