"A 2010 analysis of autism diagnoses in California did not find that autism clustered preferentially around areas rich in IT industry. Instead, it found that clusters tended to occur in areas where parents were older and educated to a higher level than were parents in surrounding areas."

That makes sense. More social stability, monotony.

That's a comforting thing.

IT systems are just systems that are predictable within some range of expected behavior without extreme variation, or if there is extreme variation, it's fun (usually).

My guess would be much simpler: older parents == worse genes. It is already proved that some disorders happen more often to children of parent aged 35+ (Down syndrome for instance)

Or older parents == better circumstances for kid, and better chances for kid with autism to be successful.

Ability to create stable mental framework.

Yep, this is the most prominent theory for why older fathers, particularly, are correlated with autism.

It's not just autism, a whole range of disorders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternal_age_effect

Thanks for the link. After reading it, given the current political climate in Universities, I'm genuinely surprised Baron-Cohen has managed to retain his position after publishing a theory like that.

He has a permanent fellowship. I think it would be quite hard for Trinity to get rid of him even if they wanted to (and they don’t really have any desire or pressure to do that anyway)

Given Jordan Peterson still has a job, I find that hard to believe.