"That's Academic" -- The Connection Mystery

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So I've been reading Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality books, and I really like the way they use this term "that's academic." It's what they say when something is true, but of no consequence. "Academic" facts are something that Satan frequently uses as tools of deception, using information that's true, but doesn't pertain, to make things seem different than they really are. (Ok, these are fiction books, whether or not you believe in God and Satan is, er, academic. I don't want this to turn into a religious conversation, Piers Anthony books are mostly Fantasy and Sci-fi. The Incarnations are Death, Time, Fate, War, Nature, Good/God and Evil/Satan. Turning this thread into a religious debate would be like turning a thread about a phrase used in Star Trek into a debate about the existence of extraterrestrials) I think the reason for the term is to acknowledge that something is true, if you're interested in facts, but that there's no other reason besides pure interest in facts to have that particular piece of information. Hence, it's academic.
So anyways, I think this is something that particularly pertains to autistics and aspies, how we can have so much information, but so little ability to apply it. It's something that therapists don't seem to realize, or if they do they understand it only, er, academically. Therapy is about gaining insight, but what do you do if that insight doesn't help you, because you can't use it? I tried to explain this to my therapist, but she just didn't get it. She seemed under the impression that if I only gained the RIGHT insight, that would do it. (of course, she was also sure that she knew what bothered me and what didn't, even though she got it backwards.)
So, if everything is all about gaining insight that will help us, but we're unable to actual connect the insight/information to a practical level and apply it.. What do we do? Professionals keep trying to convince me that if only I learn the RIGHT tools, I'll get better... how do I explain that learning things isn't the problem? It's applying that matters, and they don't seem to know how to teach that.. or if they do, I can't apply it.

I get what you're saying.

For instance, I have a profound obsession with plant taxonomy (see signature).
If I were better able to connect this purely academic knowledge with some practical application... why hell... I'd have a doctorate in botany and horticulture, and a well-paid job doing something I love.

But like so many others here, this bounty of information in my head remains strictly "academic". I seem to be lacking the executive functioning and social skills to turn this stuff into something useful. I have a chaotic collector's garden, but that's about it. I remain frustrated and underemployed.

Anyone here ever managed to take this sort of "academic" stuff and use it constructively?

Reminds me of a story about about Brazilian street children. These kids had never been to school, they made their living by buying and selling bits and bobs on the street. A professor noticed that they were actually performing some quite advanced mental arithmetic in the course of their trade and thought he'd try to help them get a classroom education in maths. However, when confronted with the sums written down on paper, they were completely unable to understand them, even though they were a great deal simpler than the calculations they used in their trade. Seems that the context in which you learn things is essential to your understanding of them.

The problem I think we have is that we don't learn language in context when we're children, so that the gap in communication always remains there. Occasionally I feel that I've overcome this, but only with huge effort and even then, what I've said has been childishly simple: something like "I feel x."

It's the same with executive functions. If I don't have to think about it, I can make decisions fine. But as soon as language becomes involved, whether to think through the options or to consult another person, I get confused.

For me, this is a very interesting topic.

Acacia, you explained to an online friend her own desert trees, so I think your knowledge has been put to practice. You could also connect to others on the web who are into trees, and/or write articles for their websites. You could teach yourself a bit of Photography to photograph the trees you love around you for the articles. When you think in terms of helping others with your knowledge, you realize that you have a practical treasure. This is what happened to me with my special interest of Jerusalem (see my photos on the thread about "roaming alone"). When you share your knowledge in a helping attitude, the world sometimes opens up to give you opportunities you didn't think of. Many businesses and friendships started as a desinterested desire to share one's expertise.

Psiri, loved that example! It explains why, at the market, the vendors here know so much English and Math when it comes to their work only.

A bolded context topic

Bang on. A mazing insight

This is the the reason for my disconnect with reality, work, and any applied situation.

I have barely been able to turn my obsession into something consctructive...shure it molds me as a person but there is no occupation entitled goth.Through some readings it has lead me to want to become a sociologist.but what shall i do for a job now while i am sixteen.Especially since directions & time awareness is barely feasible.

The more I read what people have to say here, the more I'm convinced that ASDs are more about trouble making connections than anything else. In young children, autism is seen as lacking a theory of mind, but it seems that most of use have plenty of theories of mind, we just can't apply them. (of course, having multiple theories of mind may very well, by definition, mean not having a single, cohesive theory of mind) What everyone here keeps saying is that same thing I've been attempting to tell psychiatrists and therapists for years... That knowing something simply doesn't matter if I'm unable to connect that knowledge when I need to use it.

The problem with psychoanalysis is that it is the study of "finger that points at things", and not the study of "the things the finger is pointing at". They can identify that there is something wrong with your behavior, that is the finger. They can even tell that your particular set of issues are a finger pointing straight at your brain. But they don't have the sensory organ necessary to see what it is about your brain this metaphorical finger is pointing at. Autism is lacking an INTUITIVE theory of mind. If you have to explicitly think about and write down the theory of mind and find ways to apply the theory to reality, THAT is autism. There are some suspected to be related to this traits that get tossed in to the Autistic Range(AR).

Baron-Cohen suggests the Extreme Male Brain Theory in which the lack of intuitive ToM is a potential symptom of a shift away from the emotional and towards the systematic. ToM is a trait derived from areas of the brain responsible for Socio-emotional relating within the humanity herd. In the Extreme Male Brain shift, this area is instead being used for the systematic processing of sensory data. It doesn't actually have to be an all or nothing thing. You might still have intuitive theory of mind causing you to intuitively smile when happy and laugh when amused and emote in all the proper standardized ways, but you don't pick up on it when those same things are emoted back to you. The part of your brain that was supposed to be deriving visual data about peoples faces into emotional states is instead processing the data coming in from your eyes more intensely, resulting in a far above average visual acuity.

I wouldn't say visual acuity but analysis acuity.

So I was thinking, and while this is a trait of autistics, I'm not sure if NTs are any better at it or not. It may be just another thing they're good at faking. Like how professionals are so quick to SAY that different people express emotions differently, but will still claim someone has inappropriate affect for expressing something differently, even if they have the "right" emotion.
But maybe that's a slightly more isolated example? *scratches head*

Maggiedoll wrote:

I am sorry that you believe that you lack the ability to apply your knowledge in a practical manner, but I very much disagree that this is characteristic of AS in general. It is generally acknowledged that many with AS work in the fields of computer programming and engineering, both of which are practical disciplines. Personally, I had an excellent career, mainly as a result of my ability to apply my knowledge, and I often came up with unique solutions stemming from my natural inclination to think outside the box. It seems to me that AS difficulties generally stem from social or sensory issues, and I wonder if your difficulties are not more in these areas. What type of knowledge do you possess that you are unable to apply?

Acacia wrote:



I disagree that this particularly pertains to autistics and aspies, and believe that many with AS use their knowledge to great benefit. Vernon Smith, who is openly AS, won the Nobel Prize for economics and Tim Page, also openly AS, won the Pulitzer Prize. Although not openly AS as far as I know, Bill Gates seems to have done quite well for himself. My son is completing his PhD, and I am sure that he will end up as a tenured professor. Is it too late for you to pursue a PhD in botany/plant science? If you don't already know this, you should be aware that PhD students normally receive a stipend that more than covers their living expenses. Of course, if you don't have the appropriate undergraduate degree, gaining acceptance to an excellent graduate program will be difficult.

I was specifically referencing the sensory related aspects. NT brain that uses an area for visual ToM awareness, ND that uses same exact area for vision, but it comes blank rather than containing a genetic description of visual cues to expect from other humans so the ND brain manages to write their own information in. NTs have more pre-written ROM areas of the brain, while autistics have more RAM areas of the brain, but just because it is RAM doesn't mean you were born with the drivers installed for writing to visual RAM to create a phenomenon described as "visual acuity".

High functioning to me is like saying "has more drivers installed" whereas the lower functioning has the underlying physiological hardware, but lacks the required drivers to create functionality. You can explain to them the software programming all you want, your programming is expecting a driver to be present to act as the go between for your software and the hardware to carry out functions that simply isn't there, and NT therapy is rewriting the software of an NT hardware mind, it doesn't even consider the possibility of drivers as a part of the model and has a hard time recognizing that ND minds are often the powerpc architecture to the NT x86. People use the wrong compiler to interface with us then act like it is our fault for being born with an incompatible instruction set. You gotta port this stuff over to a language we can actually read. You have to write drivers and APIs and all that fun stuff, you can't just cut and paste the version the guy who had your job before wrote, he was writing for a different system.

Vision is not the only place I have seen evidence of this difference and sensory information in general is not the only place either. So yes, analysis acuity is probably a more encompassing description. Or maybe I can get away with just saying autistic minds have better scalability, but require more front end programming, and come in low endian and high endian models? I guess this whole post is pretty much nonsense to anybody not vaguely familiar with computators.