"more rote than meaning "

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Just to be contrary... I find my obsession is definitely more rote than meaning. (check profile for obsession)

I can't tell you anything meaningful about my obsession, but I can definitely tell you lots of facts and figures about what bones were found where and by whom and how they differ from modern humans. Anything from the Monophyletic group starting with Australopithecus Afarensis.

The only really helpful thing my obsession gives me is an occasional advantage when playing trivial pursuit. Other than its relaxing qualities of course.

I have broadened my obsession in recent years however. But little by little so as to trick my mind into thinking it is part of my obsession. I have recently expanded into human physiology with great success and am starting to pick up lots of facts and figures about various parts of the human body as well. It isn't quite as fulfilling but is nice to trick myself into gaining useful knowledge

Frankly, MANY do that! It seems that is all "paleontology" is aboutm, almost. But I think you probably understand how they relate, etc...

In other words, it might be like my latest interest! I am remembering LONG lists! My current long term goal is perhaps 30000+ items. Sounds narrow. A lot ARE rote! The reason for the items being as they are isn't really known.

So WHY am I learning them? Because it would make me fluent by almost any definition in 5 other languages! Don't ask me WHY I am really bothering with that. I guess that is where AS comes in. It isn't like I am braging, translating, making money, etc.... You see, the items are words. So I don't know why any are as they are. WHO DOES? Most are rote, to a degree, because they don't follow a predictable pattern. But everyone has to learn them that way, and they are used for other things.

Personally, I think a lot of "paleontology" is conjecture, etc... I learned about brontosaurus, for example, and where is it NOW!?!? Still, it has its place. Heck, even language isn't static.

This is a dumb question for me to ask, but do you HAVE to only be interested in a narrow aspect of things to have AS? I generally like knowing how the whole "thing" works and am bothered if I don't understand at at least an overview type level of how a computer or whatever works, even though I couldn't sit down and map out a CPU design or anything, though I understand the fundamentals of how all the "parts" work.

Total tangent, but what 2ukenkerl said made me think how I'm kind of annoyed that it's flash "ROM" rather than Flash RAM. I mean to me, it is random access, and it's rewritable, so to me that seems like RAM is a perfectly acceptable term. Rewritable ROM seems almost an oxymoron. Of course then you've got some kinds of rewritable ROM that can't be written to arbitrarily, and have to be written all at once. And I'm embarrased to say that I don't remember what their names are...the terms NOR and NAND are coming to me but I'd have to look them up to remember all the advantages and disadvantages.

Last edited by Wolfpup on 17 Jan 2008, 10:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

No, just an all-absorbing interest. It doesn't matter what the interest is, just that there's one that you spend an inordinate amount of time on compared to other activities.

It could be a single part of a larger whole, or it could be the whole itself.

Okay, thanks for explaining!

Aye but if you were a paleontologist, or teaching paleontology that would all be meaningful information to have, wouldnt it?

The only way that rom and ram really vary, other than that ram will lose info, once it loses power, is that rom requires special conditions to write.

ROM -->Programmed once, at the factory. Once done, that is IT!
PROM --> Programmed once, and with a high voltage applied to a certain pin. As I recall, flash works the same way, but can obviously be programmed over with a different value.
EPROM --> Programmed once, but can be placed back in a pristine shape generally after UV exposure.
EEPROM --> Same as EPROM, but erased with high voltage applied to a certain pin.
CDROM --> Generally programmed once, but can be left partly unused, or reset through formatting(With the right coating/drive). Besides, CDROMs are not 100% random. You can only access BLOCKS randomly. Each block must be read sequentially. Of course, the driver and OS hide this from you.

OR is true if any are true.
NOR is true if all are false.(Basically NOT OR)
XOR is true if only one is true.(Exclusive OR)
AND is true if all are true.
NAND is true if any are false.(Basically NOT AND)

OK, THAT fits me, and always has!

I think this thread has raised issues that I didn't even know existed... in a good way.

Incidently, I was well aware that interests did not have to appear rote for you to obtain a diagnosis, it just seemed to be a widely held belief that our interests are 'more rote than meaning'.

I like the explanation of how you could be intensely interested in cameras without ever wanting to take a photo, but this interest would still be meaningful, you'd just be interested in the mechanics of the thing and how they worked. It seems that 'narrow' is a better way to describe the majority of our interests, and I would have no hesitation in using that word to describe mine!

Having an interest in music is normal. What I am working on at the moment is creating a magazine that only writes about seven inch singles released on a small number of independent labels I like - which covers pretty much all the music I'm interested in. I have literally no idea what is the number one single or album at the moment and if you told me I probably wouldn't have heard of who it was.

What this criterion appears not to take into account is this: to the person who is doing the collecting, memorizing etc., it may have a meaning which is different from what others might expect, and which is consequently overlooked. I.e., the person who is doing the evaluating assumes there must be no meaning there, simply because to *them* there seems to be none, and doesn't bother to step into the other person's shoes and find out for sure.

In other words, the meaning could well be there, but it could be hidden from others' eyes.

What if I collect photos of moths, for instance, and then get euphoric about how wonderfully each is structured (yes, I'm neither a "structurizer" nor an "empathizer" but some odd inbetween type)? Does this mean that the collecting is meaningless? Definitely not - to me, it has an obvious meaning, though it may not seem this way to others, especially if I don't explain to them why I collect the photos and what exactly I see in them (which is highly likely because this is not something one can easily put into words, and then very few people ask about this in the first place). I could see this happening to a great many individuals who like doing similar things.

I suppose it goes to show, yet again, just how subjective all this is, and how strongly people are inclined to judge on appearances. It also makes me wonder sometimes who is it that really has difficulties understanding another person's perspective - the ASD people themselves, or those who create stereotypes about them.

Triangular_Trees, Danielismyname - I agree.

No, it's not. The people making these diagnosis aren't qualified (in my area's of expertise) to determine what is rote learning and what is not. That makes it rather useless as criterion.
Maybe there's a reason why this is not in the DSM criteria.

I have been getting a version of this all my life. I read non-fiction, mostly science. If I want to learn about soil, or rocks, or weather, someone will come along and ask what that is good for and why I am wasting my time on something i will never get a job at. Annoying people who are reading for personal reasons seems to be fun.

Now I just tell them it is how to poison annoying people for fun and profit. Sand is easy to dig but will preserve a body, a good active loam, and there is nothing left but teeth in a year.

The fertility of soil has less to do with it's rock parent, than with the microrganisms living in it. A good soil has a pound per square foot, of life, which is short, and the death and decay cycle is what makes plant food available. Spreading manure feeds the microrganisms, but their waste that plants use, nitrogen, is toxic to them. So nitrogen spread will feed plants, but kill the microrganisms, destroying long term fertility, and making frarming dependant on continued use of nitrogen.

I learned, but do not farm. Hence my knowledge of the formation of rock, it's decay, the soil forming process, the sucession of life, that lead to the plants that feed the animals, and produce the atmosphere, is rote, for I do not work there.

My complaint is it is broken ito fields, that do not talk to each other. There is a very real number, a ratio of active topsoil to life supported. Loss of topsoil by bad practices is killing the planet, where we live.

All of my knowledge is rote, for I do not run the world.

I could be doing something useful, like learning to polish psychologists cars.

As a writer, a broad base of knowledge is needed. I reasearch, and get the same, well why do you want to know that?

There seems to be something lost.

The reason for getting an education is not because that is all, it is supposed to teach you how to learn on your own.

My study of geology, soils, mocrorganisms, plants, did not mean anything in parts, but the whole does.

So what I see is all non-short term goal directed activity, which covers most of life, is considered wasted, as judged by someone who went to school for psychology, so they could get a job and make money. The only people who are bigger wackos are the ones that listen to them.

Our learning style is self directed, and no one can teach me what my next patent will be, for that is new knowledge. It is seeing the connections between what were unrelated fields that produces new knowledge.

What to them seems random, useless, to me seems something related to my other obsessions. It is hard to see the key truths in one subject, or how they connect to other fields, without knowing both well.

I have also gotten better at it, my base of knowledge shows me things in new fields. Blind learning to start with, then comparing, then having the martrix of of the Universe reveiled. Now the important thing stand out, I see where the same principal works in other things.

The mature autistic mind is a troubleshooting wonder. The principals of knowledge take over, and the relationship of parts and wholes is shown. I can fix machines that I do not know what they do, for I do know they must be consistant to themselves, and I can spot the malfunction.

The other side of that is I can see connections yet unmade. I look at all of business, and see unserved markets. Now how can one see nothing, that does not yet exist?

It happens every day. New patents are filed, new products planned, for a world that will not exist for years. Before discovering WP and autism, I wrote about inventors. What is with these one in five thousand minds that produce everything new in a constant stream? My classic inventor was Tesla, now I say inventors are a sub set of autistics.

Tesla credited it all to watching water flow around rocks in a creek, the rest he said was applying the same knowledge to what could not be seen, electricty.

From his description of his childhood, any psychologist would have drugged him, and we would would not have an Internet, Tesla, Computers, Tesla, or 60 cycle current.

I say there is a very useful purpose to the way we learn, think, and there are examples of how it works, and the value of it.

Psychologists are leaches that can only make a living off of the defective, so they label and treat what they do not understand, for they know all about the mind, while knowing nothing of history, culture, or real science. They are quacks and frauds.

Yeah, if I was. But I am not.

It's actually in the DSM-IV-TR:



See: facts.

I think Zwerfbeertje was talking about the idea of not understanding what you were learning.

The piece you mentioned about interests is, obviously, in the DSM. I think it always has been! Asperger at least implied it. It makes sense. The average adult doesn't REALLY study language or even their "profession" that much, so it DOES give a kid a chance, with superior memory and interest, to do FAR better!

Anyway, my interests HAVE been inordinate. Being on WP is taking things away from other things, but when I am not here, I AM trying to study languages. And with languages, it seems I am more interested in vocabulary than anything else. 8-( For a long time last week though, I did REAL well, and studied the right way. Maybe I had too much wheat, etc, but the effect wore off a bit.

When I was a young kid, I drew schematics all the time. I probably should have tried to patent some of my ideas. Many are used today, even though they DID seem almost impossible 30+ years ago.

One thing is for SURE! My interests can keep me so occupied, that time can pass fast, and I have to watch that I eat and sleep. So it IS inordinate.

To me that DSM thing doesn't actually say "more rote than meaning". Learning stuff about an interest (which is all that seems to be saying) doesn't mean you don't understand what you're learning.

I suppose to someone not interested in it my knowledge about computers could seem large, I don't know. I didn't "memorize" any of it in a traditional sense though.