What I've understood on the AS mind and its consequences

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Well, that's my first time on that forum, so let's just say I have been diagnosed with AS two years ago, and that I am a good student (I'm entering postgraduate education), but really uneven depending on the subject (I'll say why). Also, English is not my native language, so... please, pardon my French.

What I'd like to share with you is how I've come to understand the AS mind works comparatively to the NT mind, and what it means. There are probably a lot of redundancies with previous writings, but at least I'm going to put it in my own words, and I'm trying to get an overview of the subject, so I hope it can be useful.

In a nutshell, NTs work by pigeonholing everything, data and people, in categories they've learned before. The benefit of that process is that, when something has been pigeonholed, the matching behavior can be applied. That's what give NTs their "practical sense".

They work the same way socially, except they collect cues on the people they meet mainly through their "non-verbal language", and their verbal language. They tie in both "versions" and get quickly a multidimensional picture and, once again, pigeonhole. Obviously the picture is never perfect, and probably the faster it is taken the worse it probably is.
However, by pigeonholing people they can match them easily with built-in behaviors, and therefore start to interact. That's what I believe we call the "social sense".

I believe the way NTs behave with data is cast on the way they pigeonhole other people. That's why I say the construction of abstract categories for data is a social process, meaning it is done through primary and secondary socialization : mainly in the family, and then during education. People behave with data, material information the way they do it with other people, and when something (data, people) doesn't fit, they may either discard it or try to reform their categories, but it's hard to foresee which option they will choose.

Obviously, "dominant" social institutions have a vested interest in building and maintaining categories that fit with their interests. Let's take a political example : Liberal democratic countries will benefit a set of categories which praises individual responsibility and regards relying on each other contemptuously. However, not all liberal democracies have got these categories, and other... let's drop the bomb, "cultures", might value what I'd call "groupism". (Nordic countries, for instance)
So you understand "social institutions" does not always mean "political institutions".

Now, let's go back to the AS mind.
Someone with AS, like me, collects massive amounts of data, some kind of raw material that everyone (AS or NT) might come to see, but that NTs sort, handpicking some and forgetting the rest. They do it according to these categories I've yet mentioned, that you can understand as "social conventions".
Because we don't know how to read non-verbal language, we have never learned how to "criss-cross", and we see data and people with only one dimension. Because we haven't got these social conventions, we don't know "where to stop" and therefore keep every single thing on our minds.
That's a pain, socially, because we need an eternity to get into ease with somebody else, or alternatively trust them directly, putting ourselves at risk of being fouled.
However, that CAN be very beneficial intellectually, because it potentially gives us an infinite creativity. We have indeed an ability to store huge amounts of data and to make juxtapositions so as to draw links where other people can't, because they're "hoodwinked" by non corresponding categories. In fact, most of the time they are only able to infer conclusions from the tallying of data from a single category, and reject as irrelevant the other options. (they've been trained to think it's a loss of time)

I would like to say that this has been very beneficial to me sometimes. I am mainly studying social sciences and humanities, with a very broad (sometimes loose) programme, and I have sometimes got outstanding results.

I've said "that CAN be very beneficial" because there are THREE downsides with this.
The first is procrastination. Because we don't know where to stop when gathering data prior to, let's say a dissertation or a report, we may either "drown" ourselves in data by never being confident that we've gathered enough information to make the "leap of faith". The other way to procrastinate is by simply not knowing from where to start.
Also, there's the fact that time is something abstract we struggle to understand, maybe because it's in fact an elaborate social construct.

The second is "Not fitting". Correct me if I am wrong, but some subjects rely totally on a social construct. Law, for instance. Law is an infinity of categories that are only a crystallized form of social conventions. You just CANNOT infer these social constructions from an accumulation of facts. The worst case is Roman law, where you have only codes providing you with categories and the matching response. Law stemming from jurisprudence is a little bit better for us, since we can manage to memorize those cases based upon facts, but we'll still struggle when it comes to organizing them in general categories.
I have been unfortunate enough to start European law (which is jurisprudential by the way) this year, and that's just really, really, really dreadful. And still, that's not continental civil law, for instance.

The last one is "Not knowing how to work". Categories help NT people build a pattern of actions related to tasks they're given. They may not be very creative, but they manage to get the job done.
Categories being defined through a few general ideas, NTs can manipulate several of them simultaneously, while we have to get "stuck" deeply into something to work from it, and thus cannot do more than one thing at a time.
In addition to not being good at time management, we will really take much more time than NTs to get even "simple" things done, since we may have to "scroll down" all the data, experience we've accumulated, before coming with something more or less fitting.
"Epiphanies" (as I've read in another WP topic) still are useful when you're a student, but I'm not sure they come in handy when you're in a cubicle.


***

Now that you've been brave enough to read all of this (thank you !), I'd like to know your opinion on this, whether you're AS or NT.
Tell me if you believe I'm right, correct me if I'm not.

Secondly, I would like to have more specifically your point of view on two things.
- First, how is it that we, AS people, have a lot of difficulties with abstract ideas, and NEED examples to understand them almost all the time. (which is why we cannot manipulate them autonomously and therefore cannot juggle with them like NTs)
- Second, and that's a correlate of the first, how can we get rid of that specific difficulty with time management ? It seems possible to memorize several social cues, but understanding time as an autonomous things seems like an intractable problem for me, as of now...

Your points are intriguing.
The lack of categorization fits me well, as does needing examples in order to understand things. In fact, I would love to have an example of one of the categories that you're referring to.
I can't organize people into specific categories, because we all have our own personalities with more similarities than we think, and it all looks like a big colorful pile in my mind, and that's how I prefer it. I don't think we deserve to just be compartmentalized like files in labeled boxes.

I don't know why we have trouble with abstract ideas (assuming that's even a common trait), but in my case, it's due to a desire to be completely precise. I must not have errors in thinking.

I would say everybody has its own set of boxes, dissimilar in numbers, sizes and labels.
But there is something to help us : socialization, and social mimetism, drive them together so that people from similar socio-economic origins (for instance) may tend to think similarly.

Let's just take one abstract idea, "socialism".
In most Western European countries, a socialist government upholds civil liberties, with some part of intervention in the economy, and a comprehensive social system.
Eastern Europeans may think that "socialism" means a totalitarian form of government. A lot of Americans as well, except part of them believe they are actually under it, while most Europeans would say they aren't, not even under the Western European definition of socialism, since their social security system is outdated. (even Canada does better)
Eventually, according to a May 2010 poll from the Pew Research Center (sorry, I can't post any link, just google it), there are more and more young Americans who believe "socialism" is a positive thing.
I'm convinced that this is because they simply see Socialism as "what is NOT the present system", and because they think the current system is wrong, they want "the opposite".
As a conclusion, American people mainly define "socialism" as "not our system", while other people have other "boxes" for that abstract idea.
That's how it works for abstract ideas. It also works for people : just take some categories that have been quite well constructed by Hollywood on the university campus, such as "the jock", the "frat-boy" or "the geek". These are simply boxes that are widely shared. Just consider that the boxes I'm talking of are more "personal versions", with a much bigger diversity, of these.

I understand that you like that "big colorful pile" and that you want to be completely precise. In fact, I hate inaccuracy as well, but I've come to understand that if I want to be listened to, I have to be more synthetic in my thinking. What I like in the English language is that when you're not synthetic enough, you can feel it because it's rickety. French, for instance, as an opposite, values more the analytical preciseness of the analysis. (but not everybody feels it)

I do not like to be categorized as well, and I would love a world with no label, but since we're a minority, we must learn how to enter the good boxes first. Hard stuff for sure.

NT

I think you are scratching the surface of it, but haven't gotten deep enough to see a whole new world that NTs live in.

There isn't anything magical about abstract thinking. Numbers are considered abstract, and most Autistics know numbers. Some primitive cultures don't have numbers beyond 5, and some beyond 32, yet they still manage to live for decades without any use of larger numbers or calculus or other abstract mathematics. But they can easily learn numbers if taught correctly. So even some NTs don't use some abstract concepts but can learn to. ZERO is a recent abstract invention and many people have learned to understand it.

When one abstracts, we want to know what is the broader category that something belongs to.

for your example, you did the opposite of abstracting. You broke down "socialism" into specific examples of it's practical application.

If we want the abstract concept socialism, we have to ask ourselves: What is socialism an example of. Note the opposites, concrete reasoning means we take an abstract concept and break it down to specific examples. In abstract reasoning, we are doing a sort of calculus, we want to build socialism into a broader category. We know that socialsms involves government + people + economy

Your mind map:
Socialism => government (civil action to) people
=> people (receive benefits from) government
=> government (intervenes in) economy
=> people (make up) economy
=> government (control people) by controlling economy
..................................examples: EAST:totalitarianism West:Not our System


My mind map:
Socialism => government + economy + people
=> government (control) economy + (civil supportl) people
=> government sets and regulate people and economy
=>people and economy follow rules of government
...................................examples: past: anarchy; past: Former USSR communism; present: Chinese Communism

The abstract concept of socialism is a means by which humans organize their economy and social system. While you ended up with examples how people implement or think of socialism, I ended up with why socialism exists, which is a more abstract and sometimes useful answer. And that is the key word: answer. When we abstract, like the game show Jeopardy, we want to know the question or reason of why this thing exists. The abstract concept of socialism is an answer to the reason why socialism exits, not a specific implementation of socialism.
communism and anarchy are other forms of humans using rules (or lack of rules) in order to define a set relationship between business + people +economy.



another example

social gestures: blinking an eye

abstract: what is blinking an eye an example of
A) eye hurts
B) dust in eye
C) OCD or Tourette syndrome
D) social sign of trust and affection

if we know the person doesn't have OCD or Tourette syndrome and he/she doesn't appear to be in pain as if something is in his/her eyes, then blinking an eye is an example of how humans show trust and affection with body language.

Last edited by pascalflower on 26 May 2011, 9:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well done! Incredible how close this is to my own observations.

And what makes them appear automatic because they seemingly dont know that they make up their minds due to the short time elapse between affection and reaction.



"the worse" you mean "the different the mutual picture is?" I dont know if it has something to do with the speed how "bad" it is, but something to do with individual differences, which I think is adjusted by how much time people spend together; they start matching each other from the moment they meet.



Maybe they neither discard nor reform the categories, but make a brand new category each time...?



I can read non-verbal language, but still I have trouble determinig how to deal with it because the expected categories dont apply to my thinking system and so I dont just catch whatever is thrown at me because Ive got my own brain. I can deal with it instantly, but then I have the feeling that Im using a foreign language and more important: that Im fooling the person Im bodylanguaging with. Its also scary to be categorized, in any box, positive or negative, because I cant control it, and so dealing with it becomes a matter of disregarding it all, which maybe means stepping over the line of insanity. Disregarding what you understand?



People want and expect to be categorized and thats where I start the eternity thinking process.



Unsure... because with a plan I get a job done perfectly well and in no time, and I do certain things at once for perfect efficiency. But always knowing what time of the day it is.. is.... impossible

Im sorry I cant answer your questions, but they are interesting. Do you have any examples for question 1?