Superconductivity analogy for the autistic mind

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For those people that might be wondering whether I am sane in analyzing autism from Bose-Einstein Condensate, superconductivity and superfluidity, I can assure you that I am totally sane, ha ha.

For people not familiar with theoretical physics or science in general, my words and ideas could be far fetched. But trust me, it's bread and butter in physics. Don't believe me? Take a look at what I've just found:

Superfluid transport of information in turning flocks of starlings https://arxiv.org/pdf/1303.7097.pdf

Yep, this study applies superfluidity to the motion of ... birds! You guys might think this is a joke, but nope, here is the journal reference: Nature Physics 10 (9), 691-696 (2014). Yep, really published in a scientific journal.

The point is: get used to it. I might be the first one in the world, but more and more research will be going in this direction. As for people that are still using trial-and-error type of approach to study autism (like all the ABA, RDI stuff), what can I say? I've called that approach the "single-bit machine" approach. Guys, the world doesn't stop moving forward. Bacterias and animals use "single-bit machines" to learn. We are humans. We can do better than bacterias and animals.

What I am studying is already going beyond autism. It has consequences beyond the field of autism.

Jason, tell it like it is!! !! ! (I am serious.)

I would need the time or easy-button translation to understand, although you saw I tried to get the gist.

At my workplace I can see an answer, but heck if I can convince others... I try samples, I try percentages, I try impact and cost... humph. I am not in a position of power to implement the idea myself.

Complete tangent, I would love to relate "aura" that people see or feel to physics. Surely someone has done that, but I didn't readily find it the last time I checked.

Here is a better phase diagram of the two-fluid model for autism.



I am going to get a bit technical. Neurons or neural activities are not exactly fluids. They are closer to solids, and location and topology do play some role. So, there is some topological aspects to consider. Let me elaborate.

When you have a cascade of neural activities, and you trace the dominant paths of these activities inside the brain (we will only focus on the visual cortex for now), there are only two possibilities: (a) the paths are open-loop and don't cross a past point, (b) the paths are closed-loop and cross a past point.

In neurotypical people, we will call the open-loop neural activities "ideons," (for encapsulating ideas) and the closed-loop neural activities "eddions" (for encapsulating an eddy, or a process loop).



The neurotypical visual cortex is viscous. That means that real and virtual phonons are constantly being exchanged. The real phonons carry input and output information to communicate with the executive and conscious part of the frontal lobe of the brain, typically operating in the alpha/theta wave frequencies. The ubiquity of phonon exchanges means that the neurotypical brain gets distracted easily, and that the working memory is short-term in nature. Even when "eddions" (process-based memory) is activated, they can't survive for too long. There is a reason why humans made little technology advances in the first 200,000 years of their existence.

After the invention of bow and arrow and the arrival of planned warfare, a new configuration of human brain entered the scene. Due to stronger coupling between neurons in some people, a new form of neural activities can exist, and that is the superfluid phase. In the superfluid phase, the unit of information is no longer single neurons, but a cluster of neurons. Again, depending on the topology, you can have open or closed-loop neural activities. We will call the open-loop version "concepton" and the closed-loop version "vorton." A concepton is a straight segment and couples to many ideons at both ends of its stretch. It's a bit like a fiber bundle. Other analogies are: a multi-lane highway, a rope, etc. When a neural activity propagates inside a concepton, it is not disturbed by phonons. That is, because we are talking about the superfluid phase, there is no coupling between concepton and phonon. Similarly, there is also no coupling between vorton and phonon. Vorton always has some residual hairs of ideons. All in all, even though we say the superfluid phase doesn't react with phonons to first order, via indirect interaction with ideons, conceptons and vortons can still interact with phonons, but the reaction rate is substantially slower. In particular, in the case of vortons, the energy lost to phonon emission can be so minuscule that the vorton can persist virtually forever. That is, if vortons are present, the autistic mind can implement powerful long-term memory. Much more powerful and long-lasting than what's achievable from frontal lobe memories. This explains why some autistic people can memorize other people's phone numbers easily.

The phase diagram only shows the relative density of normal-fluid phase and super-fluid phase, but does not show topological characteristics. In general, in the BAP (broad autism phenotype) region, the super-fluid patches inside the brain are rare enough, that most patches only have room for conceptons. On the other extreme, in the case of classic autism, the patches are so extensive that even large-radius vortons becomes possible. Somewhere in between, in the "moderate autism" region, topology becomes another dimension. That is, depending on the relative prevalence of conceptons vs. vortons, you have two subtypes of autism. The concepton-rich subtype is the "pro-picture" type, and this type of people are good with concepts, 2D images, and tend to be more static. The vorton-rich subtype is the "pro-video" type, and this type of people are good with processes, 3D objects, and tend to be more dynamic or hyperactive. In a sense, classic autism can be viewed as an extreme case of "pro-video", whereas BAP tends to be more on the side of "pro-picture."

What's the characteristic of a pro-picture person that is concepton-rich? Well, these people can find analogies across very different domains. I know that experience personally. For a reason I can look at superfluidity and link it to autism. "Auguries of Innocence" by William Blake is also a good example:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

This is why I often say autistic people can see things that no one else can see, and solve problems that no one else can solve. Compared to neurotypical people, a person that is concepton-rich (pro-picture) tends to be able to discover unusual relationships.

(continues in the next message)

Now coming to vortons. First of all, in the zero pseudo-temperature case (extreme interaction between neurons), the totaly entropy or information content of the brain would be zero. That is, unless some vortons are involved, you will have a non-responsive autistic person. That's the paradox of autism: a person with the most powerful brain is a person in vegetative state. Some manifestations of vortons are:

(a) repetitive or stimming behavior (attractive vortons)
(b) sensory/rigidity issues, tantrums (repulsive vortons)
(c) savant-level long-term memory (able to memorize pi to 20,000 digits in 5 hours, like Daniel Tammet, or draw pictures of entire cities from memory, like Stephen Wilshire.)
(d) noticeable lack of social/verbal skills, since in near the zero pseudo-temperature regime, there is very little interaction with phonons, even if there are vortons.

Now, how do we develop autistic people in general? Well, let's start with neurotypical people first. Neurotypical people learn by reinforcement learning (a very popular topic in modern AI, by the way). What happens is that the ideons will grow virtual phonons now and then, and link one ideon to another. Via reinforcement learning process, those virtual phonons are rewarded or punished. Gradually the brain becomes less plastic, and permanent connections are established. That how a neurotypical person manages to develop their brain. In autistic people, for people rich in conceptons, they can attach more and more ideons to both ends of the conceptons. That's how a giant sequoia tree is grown inside the brain of an autistic person.

The tricky part is how to develop pro-video children and their extreme case: the classic autism children. The failure of our society is two-fold. (a) We pay all too much attention to negative aspects coming from repulsive vortons. (b) We don't know that we should develop these children from their attractive vortons by attaching and grown more and more ideons. A bit like how you make a cotton candy.



The thing about repulsive vortons is: they are repulsive. You throw phonons/ideons at them, and nothing will stick. Yet, our society does not learn, and generation after generation, people attempt to solve negative issues (sensory, rigidity, tantrums, anxiety, etc.) by dealing with these issues when they happen. Of course people end up going nowhere.

At the same time, our society ignores the attractive vortons. Parents/educators don't know that they need to develop the brains of their children from their interests and stimming behaviors, and grow their skills like growing a cotton candy. You need to attach more and more cotton candy to the spinning paper cone. That's the way how autistic children grow, particularly pro-video and classic-autism children. Matter of fact, the way to solve negative issues, is by starting from the attractive vortons! Tantrums issues are not solved when tantrums happen, but rather when the children are happy and doing their favorite things!

Once you grow the cotton candy, part of the fluffy part becomes your ideons, which now can interact with phonons and connect to the conscious and executive parts of the frontal lobe. There is no mystery on how we can successfully educate and raise our autistic children.

I have posted this picture a few times (see also the thread in https://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=377845)



I see this picture and I get alarmed, whereas nobody else in the world gets alarmed. Nope, it's perfectly fine for children to play with sand. I don't get alarmed because of that. I get alarmed because none of the adults around the boy does a darn thing to leverage his interest to teach him more skills. The paper cone is spinning, but zero cotton candy is being attached. So, of course the boy never gets developed. By the time the boy gets into classroom, he's already switched to repulsive vortons, so nothing the teacher throws at him will stick. And that's how we manage to create low-functioning autistic children in our society. So sad.

Thank you. My primitive takeaways: I am the dynamic type and I need to get off WP and expand from the paper cone of my Aspie-like daughter's interests.

Fascinating! İ love the analogy, although you may be getting a tad carried away with it. But İ can see why. İt is elegant and thought provoking and is doing a wonderful job of communicating a set of complex ideas.

I wish I still had your confidence that every autistic person could be reached. I threw myself heart and soul into reaching my eldest son and failed entirely and lost myself in the process. I am gradually rebuilding myself out of the ruins of that failure, tapping into my superfluid to take myself out of my emotional mind where everything hurts too much to that place where answers just appear when you need them and life flows along merrily if only in the present moment. I am like that engineer someone mentioned putting patches on patches. I can cope with the present but throw time and other people into the mix and there are too many variables to come up with a solution, especially as in real life the goalposts keep moving and terms keep getting redefined and people keep doing unhelpful things.

I shall read what you have written about anxiety as it has been a huge problem for me although one I feel I am finally pinning down and identifying the boundaries where a solution becomes tractable.

This is all very interesting, fascinating even. Someone posted something about savants have the one thing they excel at and another where they are equally poor at. That is me with one thing that I naturally excel at and another that I simply suck at. It makes ones life more than a little turbulent.