Do you ever feel like a philosopher who can’t speak?

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Yes I can totally relate to this. My thoughts can be very abstract sometimes. I see connections between things but have a hard time explaining how or why. I'm always connecting one thing to another to another and finding patterns. Sometimes it's as if I suddenly get a "package" full of thoughts and it takes me awhile to unpack it and process all the information.

Just like ice cream, I think autism has many different "flavors" and I call this version of autism the "data-centric" flavor. You're not alone, it's a common variation. If you train yourself right you'll find that it's easy to learn new information and skills-- one great benefit of this flavor. Your mind finds these connections because they are there: most things are repetitive patterns, you see those patterns in the world Matrix style and everyone else just sees the outward illusion. This is also the downside to the flavor-- trying to explain the Matrix to someone still plugged in is like communicating with a completely different species at times.

I used to write down some of my more sophisticated thoughts in a journal but ended up throwing it away in fear of someone finding it and think of me as a condescending jack***.

I definitely feel this way, especially when I do speak and people either don't pay attention or don't understand me. I'm sick of constantly trying to explain things to people, so more often than not I just end up mute.

Brilliant thread!

Yes, patterns and connections are everywhere, and whilst they can be visualised in the mind, they have to be distorted and artificially ripped apart to fit the linear language that we use.

I rely heavily on visual diagrams of abstract concept graphs for communication. Whilst not perfect, the approach has many advantages over using linear language. The challenge lies in the need to label elements of the graph, and to ensure that others can relate to the intended semantics of the labels. There are techniques for addressing the labelling and semantics challenge, but communication of mental models via concept graphs and reaching a shared understanding remains a relatively slow process.

This means that new mental models are continuously piling up, with only a few of them being shared in the form of diagrams. Over time the mental backlog only gets worse.

Not only do I feel that I can't speak what I think, I know that the limits of linear language make it impossible to speak what I think. Communication of intent is impossible. And yet humans speak, and most have the illusion of understanding each other by doing so.

With lots of effort it is possible to jointly validate nuggets of related or similar understanding. That's as good at it gets.

Quality over quantity.

It's the backlog - so much unsaid. And undone, because I don't have the powers to persuade anyone that I might even have ideas in the first place. I've probably wasted too much time and energy just trying to be understood and fit in with ordinary mindless chat and need to focus on quality over quantity! Because, meanwhile, I feel like a seething mass of ideas/questions/visions...

philosophy just means "love of thought", and i do love thinking, but what i like to think about is generally of no interest to anyone else.
i follow trains of thought from morning to night that lead me through all forms of speculation and observation, but i know that what i am thinking about would instantly fall out of the minds of anyone else who stumbled upon those thoughts. they would just shake their head and forget it immediately.

i can well describe what i want to say, but i rarely want to say anything much, and so i never bother to put my own private considerations into words.

some people consider philosophy to be a vital ingredient to the development of understanding, but i consider it to be just something to do while i live in my ongoing life.

no one will ever come up with something that is world gripping in it's relevance and profundity.
those greek philosophers like plato and aristotle (i wrote a song called "aristotle's axolotyl hit the bottle" once (heh)) all are now dead and their minds are dormant and they do not feel any different now i guess than they would feel if they had lived lives of stupid ignorance.

i mean, all those old men with their knuckles pressed into their sides of their faces gnawing the inside of their cheeks agonizing over the real meaning behind things died before they even found out. how many anonymous aristotles in history have debated and fraught their minds looking for meaning when there really is no meaning in the end.

i am not an atheist, but i think the questions that people aim to answer are not of any cosmic significance.

This has little bearing on what you just said but I love words with the ending: 'tle' - so pleasing to say... I'm sure I'd love your song!! !

I often have read things of note only to think I'd arrived at that particular conclusion years before. But instead of thinking "I could have been famous" which is what people usually say when they boast about such things as I have done - I question the nature of fame or I wonder how many people have had simultaneous thoughts...? Is it a sort of race memory, collective unconscious.. Etc... And off I wander/wonder... It's all lots of fun if you can afford the time to philosophise!

yes it was a song about his pet axolotyl who was driven insane by the incessant rantings that aristotle bestowed upon it which it had no hope of understanding. i have it somewhere, but it is mainly focused on the "otyl" rhyming thing. i used many "otyl" words that i forcibly strung together with a loose contextual relation to the idea which i wanted to be quasi-nonsensical.



i also have thought that i have arrived at the same conclusion as some philosophers ideas that i have read (as an adult) back when i was a child.
some things are obvious to anyone who ponders them. maybe that is a collective reality that all can see but fewer can describe in a widely appreciated way.

take aristotle for example. i think there have been many people in history of all manners of mental capacity who have personally arrived at some of the same conclusions as aristotle did without ever hearing about him or reading his thoughts.
maybe aristotle was the first person who actually knew how to write it down and so, like the first footprint on the moon, he became immortalized as the father of that thought, and every subsequent privately arrived at iteration of it is seen as simply a copy of what aristotle said.

people idolize inventors as being somehow crucial to the actuality of a state of industrial being, when those inventors were just the first people to get to the mark (with some social clout needed as well).

it is absurd to think that there would be no airplanes today if it were not for the wright brothers.
someone would have invented it soon enough if they did not exist.
it also would have taken the same path inevitably to lead to identical planes that fly today.

some people have the fame of being "the first", whereas others like mozart have the fame of being unique.

who knows?

I am constantly alienated from the other students, and as such I have no one to talk to about the things that interest me. No one seems to be interested in New Age stuff, Mythology, Spirituality, Supernatural stuff, or my favourite video games/books/anime/manga/movies/tv shows, so I simply stay silent.

I'm sure you'll find lots of people here that are into the above but also you could try and see if there are any student clubs dedicated to your interests...Even an Aspie group. You may find some like-minded students after all!

^Most of the student clubs are athletic. Actually, all of the student clubs are either athletic or something that I'm even less interested in.
I often don't talk about my specific interests on this site since a lot of people here can be quite mean when it comes to other people's beliefs, so I mainly stay in the game threads or general discussion threads.

Oh dear. I'm sorry to hear that... Perhaps you could find something in your area...?

^There's no one really in my area like that, since my mum and I tend to keep to ourselves. I did write a fantasy book, so many when I publish it people will want to talk.