Simon Baron-Cohen's current views.

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I read some of Baron-Cohen's theories, and I think they hold a lot of promise. I agree with what he has to say re empathy and systemizing.

-- Empathy: "the drive to identify another person's emotions and thoughts, and to respond to them with an appropriate emotion."

I don't naturally pick up on or understand another person's emotions and thoughts. I do feel empathy in those certain circumstances when I do understand what a person is thinking or feeling, but I can't say that I often respond with an appropriate empathetic emotion. I tend to respond with logic.

-- Systemizing: “the drive to analyze or construct a system … identify the rules or the laws that govern that system in order to predict how it will behave.”

This describes how I think. My "obsessions" can be described as an effort to understand a system.

This is very helpful thank you.

Thank you capriwim particularly for the link on the intense world syndrome; that the "core pathology of the autistic brain is hyper-reactivity and hyper-plasticity of local neuronal circuits" which "may render the world painfully intense". This certainly resonates for me - having stopped systemising, I feel I am exposed to the underlying cacophony of pain in socialising. I may indeed by 'hyper'-remembering past pain, and over-sensing the pain in others - and feeling I can never make them happy, that they will always be unhappy in social interactions with me.

Alison on http://www.aspiesforfreedom.com/showthr ... 689&page=2 (10/4/08 2.38pm) says
"I think personally that what we have is a lack of the "filters" that NTs use in everyday life. So that *every* experience, sound, sight, etc. has more of an impact on us because we have no way of damping down the experience as an NT can."

Does anyone (please) have any thoughts on how we can turn the volume and the pain down? build some filters?

The problem with Baron-Cohen is that he is a systematizer himself. When you try to explain behavior by fitting it into just two categories (poorly defined ones, at that), you're establishing filters which disregard anything that doesn't fit the theory. I don't know to what extent he is guilty of this filtering, but I find his approach disturbing.

The hyperfunctionality/intense world theory does not work for me as an explanation for Austism/AS (maybe I need to read more about it).

I don't see social withdrawal as the result of excessive neuronal processing alone. I am not picking up the social information that NTs are picking up so this information never gets processed. The way I process information is to understand each piece of information so that I can synthesize it into a larger picture. I understand other people as they fit into that larger picture in my mind.

The hyperfunctionality/intense world theory does make sense to me as an explanation for why I have certain "obsessions." It is overwhelming and painful to try and make sense of the world. I take in too much information and would go crazy trying to make sense of it all. An obsession provides comfort by giving me a place to put and process information where I can develop clarity and understanding of that information.

I like that.

I have terrible sense issues. I am the Queen Of Sense Issues. Quosi.

Well, I also believe that thing with neurons. Preemies' brain do not "prune" like NT's brain do. In the last 2 weeks, a baby brain will prune away neurons. Preemies thus can be neurologicvally different and some are even smarter.

I get you. I don't usually find it painful, but I do sometimes need to escape from the constant intake and processing of information. That's when a temporary obsession really helps. I don't know if it's unusual to be able to pick and choose obsessions and shut them off at will, but that's what I often do. Of course, there are the long-term obsessions that I keep going back to, but those are intellectual interests that are complex enough to maintain my interest, some of them over many years.

Filter tip topic

I use one of my obsessions as a filter. I need the structure of the obsession to make sense of the overwhelming stimuli bombarding my brain at any given moment. Sometimes it feels like an meteorite shower.

My obsessions are clearly, to myself at least, consequence of anxiety. Anxiety is consequence of me not being up to a task. Tasks that I am not up to mainly are: socializing superficially and worthless conversation. Why? Because it makes no sense the effort to me, I guess. How would you answer?

Why does chit chatting make so much sense to NTs? I wonder about it because I am sure most of them need sense too. Or not? How would they be able to live without making sense of what they live? Do you as well need truth and sense whatever the cost?

I am not that good at empathizing indeed, but it is true I can do it when... I can do it. On the other hand, some NTs and ASs are better at it then others.

I rush into systematizing because I am good at it, cause no pain and I really enjoy it more than anything else. I simply need to understand everything. Is it the same for all of you?

Besides, many of us have, like I do, this strange and disturbing sensitivity to touch and noise. Some have different physical oddities. Some probably don't have any.

What is common among all those different ways of being different? What do we share with average NTs?

I write all those questions because, wandering in WP, I could not help noticing that we are all different under many respects. We have developed in different directions, probably moving and moved from the same root. As NTs do.
I understand that getting rid of all those differences, let us say, the background noise, in order to synthesize the common cause, asks for patience and a sound and free scientific research. I agree with Woodpecker about it. Let's don't be scared of hypothesis. Anyway, the last hypothesis, the one able to explain each and every one of us to ourselves, we are not going to have it from nobody out there.

Does it all make sense? I am just trying to say I do not expect the scientific answer to our question be easy nor nice (politically correct) nor appropriate 100%. Thanks God we are all different and probably not really explicable.

I must admit that I'm not very good at empathy. Sometimes I have to consciously try to empathise.

As far as male and female brains go, the thing that I remember most is reading that book, Men are from Mars, and Women are from Venus. I got to a chapter that explained that if you go to a woman with a problem, she will offer you tea and sympathy, but if you go to a man with a problem, he will try to solve it. And I thought: OMG! I'm a bloke! I'm a woman, but I always want to solve problems.