My memories aren't neatly stacked, they're all suspended alone, but with a myriad of links and connections to each other that probably only make sense to me. I can read a sentence fragment in a post, and suddenly I'm in 1972, watching a Brady Bunch episode, because the phrasing or tone reminded me of what Jan said in that one episode...
@markusl@fosstodon.org @cwebber@octodon.social @ginsterbusch @dpnash@mastodon.online @sentient_water @hosford42 @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity
@sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @hosford42 @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity I heard someones refer to it as kinetic and I like that too.
@sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @hosford42 @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity
I think autism is parallel processing vs allistic serial processing largely after watching this ted talk. The right brain (autistic) type parallel, wholistic perception vs. left brain serial hierarchical, individual, ego perception.
Autistics naturally prioritize 'right brain', & allistics naturally prioritize left brain thinking.
https://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_my_stroke_of_insight?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare
@sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @hosford42 @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity
I think monotropism is kind of how autistics with monotropism use the left brain to hyperfocus (details), and how adhd is autistics that see infinite tangents (different details) and struggle with focus.
@JoBlakely @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @hosford42 @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity Wow I didn't see this until I posted the same link. One of the most powerful Ted talks I've ever seen.
In my case, I think I am a visual thinker - or maybe a sensory thinker. I see, hear, and feel things, and they're very vivid, whether they're memories or imagination.
@SQLAllFather @markusl@fosstodon.org @cwebber@octodon.social @ginsterbusch @dpnash@mastodon.online @hosford42 @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity
@sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity What about blending and combining disparate ideas based on analogy? I'm interested in economic systems, forms of government, evolution, the scientific method, machine learning algorithms, etc., because they follow the same underlying pattern of asymptotic optimization. A lot of the ML algorithms and other computing paradigms I invent connect what appear superficially to be very distinct ideas, thanks to some sort of analogy that links them all together. It's a deep source of creativity, which to me is an expression of the associational thinking you mention. I'm wondering now if this creative mechanism through analogy is something other autistic folks might have in common with me. I literally can't think of a system without seeing its similarities to a long list of other systems.
@sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity What I'm working on right now, for example, expresses a deep link between the epistemological limitations of an embodied agent that learns through experience, abstract algebra, and coordinate systems. Actions can be looked at as operations on the state of the environment and its relationships to the agent acting within it, which allows abstract algebra to be applied. And it turns out there are hidden connections between algebraic inverses and dimensionality, and between the orthogonality of dimensions and the commutativity of actions. This allows me to put together an algorithm that allows an agent to discover the dimensionality of its environment by interacting with it, which can then be used for mapping the environment and locating itself within that map (e.g. "SLAM" -- simultaneous localization and mapping).
@sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity And all of this ties right back into my recognition of my own epistemological limitations when I was in late high school/early college, which is intimately tied up with the loss of my religion and my conversion to agnosticism.
@sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity Oh yeah, and the Peano axiomatization for the integers gets linked in, too, thanks to the link between numbers and lines -- aka the number line. Same goes for the rationals, reals, etc. So it turns out that automated latent dimensionality discovery is all tied up with number theory. Weeeee!
That connects to my experience. I once resolved an issue at work, dealing with monocrystalline wafers, by connecting it to my hobby of woodworking.
Hey, don't laugh, there are similarities in processing.
@sentient_water @SQLAllFather @markusl@fosstodon.org @cwebber@octodon.social @ginsterbusch @dpnash@mastodon.online @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity
@ScottSoCal @sentient_water @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity Not laughing at all! But completely clueless about the connection nonetheless.
When cutting wood on a tablesaw, you have to adjust the feed rate and blade speed, or it can damage the wood. We were having trouble at work dicing the wafers - getting edge chipouts and cracks. In the meeting I flashed to my tablesaw, and the difference between feeding it soft pine or white oak, started asking questions and - hey, that's the problem, new crystal format.
@sentient_water @SQLAllFather @markusl@fosstodon.org @cwebber@octodon.social @ginsterbusch @dpnash@mastodon.online @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity
@ScottSoCal @sentient_water @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity Awesome! Out of left field, an analogy to something that seems totally unrelated that leads you straight to the answer. Yeah, this is similar to what I'm describing. Sometimes I explain it to people like this: I don't just look at the problem. I walk all around it, kneel down, stand on my tiptoes, turn my head sideways. But instead of moving around it physically, I'm moving around in idea space. Often looking at it from a novel perspective causes things to line up just right and then the answer just pops right out with minimal thought. And with a lot of practice, I've gotten good at finding those useful perspectives really quickly.
@hosford42 @ScottSoCal @sentient_water @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity
I experience this a great deal.
I've said that one of the reasons I lose nouns first in my language abilities is because I don't rely on them in my private thoughts.
In here are largely choreographies, patterns, chords, allegorical harmonics, behaviors, resonances, shapes, affinities ... nothing that gets retained in my brain is noun-like (an opaque container). It's much more similar to verbs and adjectives.
I have to look at everything holistically, and then apply whatever strategies, tools, orientation seem appropriate, according to their properties instead of their categories.
Nothing is a THING in my understanding. They/we are all collections of attributes that interact dynamically with context.
@anomalon @ScottSoCal @sentient_water @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity Wow, I never considered that explanation for why I (too) lose nouns first, but it makes sense! Like you said, nothing is an opaque container in my mind. I just never thought about whether other people might experience those concepts differently, in such a fundamental way.
@hosford42 @ScottSoCal @sentient_water @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity
Coarsely, some people map buildings, and some map streets.
From conversations, I've gathered that many people hold nouns, and then subgroup each noun with a collection of attributes and purposes. For those people, it is not intuitive to undo a lightswitch cover plate with a butter knife. They'll look for a screwdriver. (as an aside, in my experience, most screwdrivers are too fat for this purpose and a butter knife is my go-to, though honestly what I look for is *strong *thin *flat *narrowish)
@anomalon @ScottSoCal @sentient_water @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity Okay, this confirms it for me. Also, I'm confused by the existence of folks who would think of a screwdriver but not a butter knife. I always thought they were just giving up early. Not that they literally didn't know of more concepts to search.
Also, interesting analogy about the buildings vs streets, which I will be stealing.
Here's a question: Can telling someone that it's possible to map buildings ever affect the way they think about things? Or do you have to be a building-mapper in the first place?
And another: Is there an advantage to being a street-mapper? Why else would so many people work that way?
@hosford42 @ScottSoCal @sentient_water @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity
To be clear, in this rough binary, I see myself as a street mapper. There is a choreography to certain journeys, a relationship to the terrain, an awareness of proximities and context. Some streets move quickly because of their context, some more slowly. It's not a place where many things ARE in any permanent sense. It's a place where things are within a moment, for purposes personal and often undeclared. There are varying levels of rules, but my favorites are the ones where the main rules are PHYSICS. Like in India. It's a bit terrifying from a natal perspective of THERE SHOULD BE RULES, but once the luxury of being surrounded by other creatures that are paying attention to physics rather than rules becomes understood, it feels safer. The security privileges that small vehicles lack, they make up for in nimbleness. Diversity is to be expected. Roads can change names, but that alone doesn't change them at all, because their attributes and relational positioning is what makes them what they are.
It is easier for me to find a specific building by imagining the streets that lead there.
(Thank you for the impetus to write stuff. It's an energy boost my day needed.)
@anomalon @ScottSoCal @sentient_water @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity Huh, I took the analogy in a very different way. From the streets, the buildings are opaque like the object view of reality you mentioned. But I go inside them, as well. So from my interpretation, mapping the building would be analogous to breaking objects down into their attributes and properties.
@hosford42 @ScottSoCal @sentient_water @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity
In this map of mapping I've initiated here, in my version (lovely things about maps is how subjective their creation is) mapping the buildings would be more like THAT'S A HOME DEPOT: it's where the tools are and they don't sell eggs! (or that person was born with a vagina, they should defer authority and make less money and not really be important in medical research)... Having KNOWN OBJECTS with known things in them and known purposes. You can walk into the majority of buildings and all but expect it's going to have a place to put poop and a place to get water and ready illumination anytime of day. Buildings allow for expectation/categorization in a way that roads don't, and attention to your surroundings and your orientation to them is less of a requirement.
As a street person, I think of buildings with the element of time also. Just because a structure had one purpose at one time doesn't mean it does anymore. Because I'm used to assessing my environment constantly, I notice the small variances in otherwise stable scenes (and am thus never bored). I still have responses when things are distressing, but my expectations are so lightly held that I don't experience the pain of having expected a Home Depot and instead it's a Best Buy now and I need caulk and fuckfuckfuck. Natively, I just imagine the streets that eventually arrive at caulk if that's what I need.
@hosford42 @ScottSoCal @sentient_water @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity
Best thing about analogies is they aren't set in stone, either.
@anomalon @hosford42 @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity One quote which I often think about is
"I appear to be a verb." - Buckminster Fuller
It's just objectively true & that we constantly think of & refer to ourselves as nouns is the cause of much of our unhappiness.
@sentient_water @anomalon @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity We are more like the flames of the fire than the wood that fuels it.
@sentient_water @anomalon @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity This idea of myself as a process instead of an object helped me come to terms with my own mortality. It changes the ending from something unnatural, to be avoided, to something normal and inevitable. I still don't like it. But I understand it better and can accept it.
@hosford42 @sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity
O man, I don't think I have the focus to fully elaborate my delight with fire (I have to put on pants and hang a soffit) but briefly:
Fire is, in my experience, the most tangible representation we have of "beyond the veil". We can summon it, in a quantity that depends on the fuel/adversity ratio in the environment we summon it to. We can very often banish it. It is neither created nor destroyed, just brought into and out of our experience. It behaves predictably, though according to factors that may be beyond our comprehension. It is generous and dangerous. It is to be, above all, respected. It is infinite, eternal, and nowhere in particular unless it is there specifically. It's fuckin cool. /rant
@sentient_water @anomalon @hosford42 @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity tbh, this is why I want to learn anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe language) I started learning about it because my partner is reconnecting, and I thought our kid would benefit. But learning it's mostly verbs sparked an intense curiosity for a lot of the same reasons mentioned in this thread. Now I just need to find the time to really dig into the resources...
@sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @hosford42 @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity
If I had to describe my thinking process, I would use a visual metaphor:
A computer chip sitting on a PCB, with a lot of connections going outward. Or maybe a computer network.
Or... well, not a neuron, because they have only one output, AFAIK.
But it feels like this is just a "visualization" of my thinking process, not the process itself.
Another analogy/metaphor would be the "workbench". This is the stuff I am currently working on/with. I might pick more from the shelves (long time storage), or put something back.
Again: A metaphor. Not the process itself, which is more or less a breadth-first search with a bit of hashing and a bit of caching.
And I think that is closer to the truth: The way information is connected.
@sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @hosford42 @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity
I do not remember or construct images in my mind. When analyzing a problem or situation I experience it as a set of components having spatial positions and orientations with interconnections between them, like a schematic.
My profession is computer science, which I consider to be a branch of mathematics. I've never suspected myself of being autistic.
@weaselx86 @sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity I have a similar thing, I suppose. And I do think it's related to being a programmer.
@hosford42 @weaselx86 @sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity
[carefully going slightly off-topic]
The "spatial relationships" I think about when programming have little to do with what I draw on a whiteboard when explaining e.g. an architecture.
I would be very interested in experiences regarding "thinking about programs/architectures/code" vs "drawing stuff on whiteboards" vs shudder UML.
In the past, I thought about if some better (visual?) representation of this mental map (schematic?, graph?) could actually be useful for documentation or communication.
But maybe the representation in my head is not really translateable/describable.
@wakame @weaselx86 @sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity Same. I know that the relationships are captured, but it's hard to pin down the encoding because whenever I see it I'm busy *using* those representations. Stopping to contemplate them interrupts them, so whenever I'm doing that, they aren't there to look at anymore.
@hosford42 @weaselx86 @sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity
I... didn't even consider that part.
You are totally right. My "picture" of a program/structure is more like a (slightly abstract) movie.
In a way like this "I walk around it, kneel down, look at it from different angles" description on how you analyze problems.
Maybe even "movie" is wrong. First-person-shooter (with less shooting and more thinking)?
@wakame @weaselx86 @sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity Movie is probably the right word for me. But it's one that's live, and that I'm directing.
@wakame @hosford42 @sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity
I would characterize my mental schematic representation of objects in a program as "moving parts" in how they interact with each other.
@weaselx86 @hosford42 @sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity
It feels as if e.g. object-orientation or (the part of UML that people actually use) try to capture the rooms of a house, while the interesting part is the people walking around and interacting with each other.
@hosford42 @sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity
My theory is that it's related to abstract thinking, which would apply to mathematics and programming.
@weaselx86 @sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity Oh, definitely math, too. I'm very intuitive about math, despite kind of sucking at its formal use and at explaining what I'm doing. I used to get in trouble in high-school for giving the right answer but not showing my work, but there was literally no work to show. It was just a bunch of pieces that slid around till they snapped into place, usually in under a second, and then the answer was there for me. With coding, it's slightly different when I'm writing the code than when I'm designing it. The design is where the visualizations we've been describing happe for me. During coding it's more like I have some sort of mental vacuum chamber corresponding to the function or block of code, and I can feel the air leaking wherever an error might happen. I just intuit all the ways things might go wrong, kind of like the math problem solving itself.
@weaselx86 @sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity When I think about mathematical curves and function graphs and asymptotic behavior, on the other hand, it's closer to the same feeling as when I'm doing program design work, but less like a DAG and more continuous and fluid instead.
@weaselx86 @sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @hosford42 @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity ". I've never suspected myself of being autistic." Famous last words. you might wanna try taking a few online tests.
@hosford42 @foo @sentient_water @ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity
I tried this one last night and it gave me a 36.
https://embrace-autism.com/autism-spectrum-quotient/
That test provides a single number for a result. Is there one recommended that provides more detail as to different aspects across the spectrum?
@weaselx86 see how you get on with this one (which is just a single aspect of the autistic neurotype but it might be illuminating) https://dlcincluded.github.io/MQ/
I think this is telling me I'm significantly more monotropic than the average non-autistic person (easy to believe) but not as monotropic as the average autistic person.
Monotropism Score: 190 / 235
Your Average: 4.04
This score suggests that you are more Monotropic than about 38% of autistic people and about 93% of allistic people based on data from the initial validation study.
@weaselx86 I got a similar score (slightly lower in fact). Deep work and hyper focus are particular abilities of mine (I was going to say "gift" but there are always 2 sides to these things). I'm currently awaiting an autism assessment and self-diagnosed in the meantime which even later in life is proving helpful and the fresh awareness is illuminating
@foo
Hyper-focus: I can sit in a chair in the same position in front of a keyboard and screen for six hours before suddenly noticing I should attend to bodily needs.
@weaselx86 @foo This definitely sounds neurodivergent, at the least. (I think ADHD folks often have a similar experience.) I learned as a kid that have to avoid certain games because I can lose an entire day and part of the night. I've forgotten to eat, drink, or use the restroom for 16 hours straight thanks to Civilization. Finishing the game, I'd suddenly become aware that I've been wiggling in my seat for hours, that my blood sugar has bottomed out, and that I've missed the first 5 hours of my usual night's sleep. Then I'd *very gingerly* walk myself to the bathroom, careful not to exert myself to avoid having an accident on the way.
Bodily needs go at the bottom of the alerts list, while the focus-related ones go at the top. And sometimes they come in fast enough that I never get to the ones at the bottom.
@hosford42 @foo
Oh, I got an ADHD diagnosis back in my late 40's. Hyperfocus is one of the hallmarks, and I've always had that.
@weaselx86 @hosford42 it's also an ASD trait. (Along with love of maths/patterns and Unix).
@weaselx86 @foo Pretty solidly in the central hump of the autistic bell curve and pretty far out on the tail of the normie bell curve, in other words.
@foo @weaselx86 not surprised in the least. 🤷🏽 thanks for posting. Was interesting to do!
@arisummerland @weaselx86 I don't quite go along with all of the ideas but this list is very helpful to describe me.
All of those. I really, really can only do one thing at a time.
@ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @sentient_water @hosford42 @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity this hits bullseye for me as well
@ScottSoCal @SQLAllFather @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @hosford42 @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity I've heard this unique autistic form of memory described as 'associational thinking' by Temple Grandin in the book 'The Autistic Brain'. She corrects her previous mistaken idea that all autists were visual thinkers. I'm not. I'm a linguistic thinker.