Quotes from Simon Baron-Cohen

Other reasons have been postulated for why Neanderthals died out, but my contention is that the combination of the new Systemizing Mechanism, enabling complex tool-making, and the Empathy Circuit, enabling complex social interaction and deception, led Homo sapiens to become unrivaled.

part of what is needed is a theory not only of how we invent, but why we invent. Recall that Edison was inventing for the pure pleasure of inventing. He worked on many of his inventions, not to meet an unmet need, but just to see what happens and what's possible. The Systemizing Mechanism is what drives curiosity.

When our empathy is switched off, we are solely in the "I" mode. In such a state we relate only to things or to people as if they were just things. Most of us are capable of doing this occasionally

the hope is that laying out what we understand about essential differences in the minds of men and women may lead to grater acceptance and respect of difference.

Stereotyping reduces individuals to an average, whereas science recognizes that many people fall outside the average range for their group.

We all value social relationships, but are there differences in what each sex values about other people? Women tend to value the development of altruistic, reciprocal relationships. Such relationships require good empathizing skills. In contrast, men tend to value power, politics, and competition. This pattern is found across widely different cultures and historical periods, and is even found among chimpanzees.

I'm not satisfied with the term 'evil.' We've inherited this word... and we use it to express our abhorrence when people do awful things, usually acts of cruelty, but I don't think it's anything more than another word for doing something bad.

Inspiring children at an early age is key, and perhaps we need to put technology in a more social context.

Maybe because I had a sister with a disability I was already sensitised to and fascinated by people who think or develop differently.

Empathy is a skill like any other human skill - and if you get a chance to practice, you can get better at it.

Empathy is a necessary step for truth and reconciliation.

Because people with autism are also strongly obsessional, meaning that they pursue their current interest to extraordinary detail and lengths and in great depth, they can develop 'tunnel vision' that prevents them from seeing the bigger picture, including the repercussions of their current actions.

Everyone recognises that genes are part of the story but autism isn't 100% genetic. Even if you have identical twins who share all their genes, you can find that one has autism and one doesn't. That means that there must be some non-genetic factors.

Empathy is about two people - two people meeting, getting to know each other and tuning in to what the other person is thinking and feeling.

Brains come in different types and they're all normal.

Well, in the general population, we find differences between the typical male and typical female. For example, males seem to be more interested in systems and females seem to be more interested in people and particularly people's emotions.

The E-S theory does not stereotype. Rather, it seeks to explain why individuals are typical or atypical for their sex.

If we think about the autism spectrum as involving a very strong drive to systemize, that can have very positive consequences for the individual and for society. The downside is that when you try to systemize certain parts of the world like people and emotions, those sorts of phenomena are less lawful and harder to systemize.

My theory is that the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy, and that the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems.

People with autism flourish in domains where the information is consistent and predictable, and struggle most in domains where the information is ambiguous and unlawful.

I try to keep an open mind.

A diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome can be useful to help a person understand why they have had difficulties.

If you have high-functioning autism, you may well have a lot of autistic traits but if you've got a particular lifestyle where it's possibly an advantage to be leading a solitary lifestyle and be quite obsessive, you're clearly able to function and maybe even make valuable contributions in your work, so arguably you don't need a diagnosis.

Difficulty empathising translates into a whole set of hurdles. You might be last person to get the point of a joke, which can leave you feeling like an outsider. You might end up saying something that another person finds hurtful or offensive, when that was the last thing you intended.