Book review: A Different Kind of Boy: A Father’s Memoir on Raising a Gifted Child With Autism by Daniel Mont.
This book provides a clear and moving story of what it’s like to have a fairly autistic child. It reinforces my belief that autism (or at least some of the personalities classified as autistic) is one extreme of a range of human personalities. I was surprised at the extent to which Alex’s personality is an extreme version of the personality I had as a child.
The author demonstrates an unusual ability to treat his son as an equal for some purposes (such as logical reasoning) while simultaneously being aware that Alex finds it extremely hard to learn concepts most of us take for granted (e.g. the difference between lying and pretending).
Many of the problems people have interacting with Alex closely resemble the problems AI researchers discover when they try to translate an “obvious” concept into unambiguous language. But just when I thought the AI analogy provides a reliable guide, I noticed an exception – Alex finds long division harder than economic theory.