Comment by s-shellfish | Hacker News Reader

Comment by s-shellfish | Hacker News Reader

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I read something about autism being processing information removed from 'self'.

I have interest in some people I trust. But 'mind' and 'thought' are generally very fluid. That's just a fact from seeing connections in how minds think - being able to see the connection that creates their connection.

Always have to be delicate with it.

Epistomology is interesting. Predictive, I'm always more comfortable relegating this to machines - is the problem decidable or not. Obviously computer programs implicitly affect people. Cognitive overload because, chaos. Can't predict everything beyond the predefined context.

Math is always perfect. Contained system with rules that define it's behavior.

I understand you are saying things in an overly mutually exclusive way, but for me, if I deeply identify with something, it's hard to understand where you are coming from, because I don't know.

From what I recall, Ramanujan considered math a compulsion. Obsession, it's something that binds everything together. I believe math is discovered, not invented. It has to be, implicitly. Models come from reality.

I can't imagine enjoyment of social systemization. I imagine life long positive experiences would lead to enjoyment. If it's an illness (BPD), suggesting there's enjoyment indicates belief that the intent of the sufferer is malicious. I don't believe this is the case. A disorder comes from negative experiences. BPD is then, always trying to find the right rules to solve the problem. The problem becomes recurrent when the sufferer is identified as the source of the problem, or the sufferer believes they are both cause (and supposed solution) to the problem, but both cause and solution are fundamentally defined in a way the sufferer does not have any control over defining. Therefore, issues predicting, mapping traumatic experiences onto present stable environments.

Problem solving mentality for growth, escape from the negative. It's a compulsion, not an enjoyment to obsess. It's a compulsion to correct everything so everything is stable.

Talking...

> If it's an illness (BPD), suggesting there's enjoyment indicates belief that the intent of the sufferer is malicious. I don't believe this is the case. A disorder comes from negative experiences.

Well, we are also hardwired to like chocolate, but if we eat too much of it, then it becomes a disorder.

I was imprecise about the word "enjoyment". What I meant was simply attainment of reward signals. But reward signals do not necessarily imply happiness. At minimum they shape what feels like the right thing to do. At maximum they cause euphoria. E.g. a person with obsessive-compulsive disorder will repeat the same sequence of actions, say, 100 times a day, and each time it will feel like the right thing to do, but such a person will not find much enjoyment.

I suspect that in neurotypical people, the processing of social information (dominance relations, social status, norms, nurture, grooming, communication, gossiping etc.), always feels like the right thing to do, from birth onward, so their neuronal circuits are finely attuned to computations in that domain.

In the absence of such reward signals, the circuits are not trained for such things, and what remains is epistemic circuitry: Building models of the world by approximating/predicting how it works based on accumulated information.

(All of this ignores, of course, the entire neuroscience literature on this topic, which identified e.g. differences in synaptic density in people with ASD; though perhaps the increased value of non-social things comes from more circuits doing epistemic computation, but I'm just shooting in the dark really…)

> All of this ignores, of course, the entire neuroscience literature on this topic, which identified e.g. differences in synaptic density in people with ASD; though perhaps the increased value of non-social things comes from more circuits doing epistemic computation, but I'm just shooting in the dark really…

Do you have any links to any articles?

From the research I've read, PhD students in the field (was lucky to meet and talk to a few at other mental health care centers), a lot of the research on mental health care is focused on GABA.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1471-4159....

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/343/6171/675

https://academic.oup.com/ijnp/article/16/6/1309/753308

This seems relevant, but likewise, shooting in the dark:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fendo.2013.0005...

https://www.google.com/search?btnG=Search&q=synaptic+overcon...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2001237/

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2007.10.016

The overall picture seems to be local overgrowth/overconnectivity and global/cortico-co-cortical underconnectivity (especially to the frontal lobe). Cortex tissue appears to implement universal epistemic circuits, since they are known to learn arbitrary functions e.g. one can rewire visual input to the auditory cortex in animals and they learn to see. So, too much of those circuits might both imply heightened focus on the details and more intrinsic reward (=reward from pattern prediction/completion for information gain/exploration) which might as well explain the overall difference in value function, deemphasizing reward from social and normative things by relative magnitude. Norms and social stuff is rather processed frontally and subcortically in the insula and amygdala, AFAIK, but there is no reason to believe this is not also partly wired into the cortex too. Evolution has likely encoded most functions all over the place as it likes to do with the genome itself.

I am a male whose experiences you describe are incredibly congruent. I am 1 year older than you and honestly struggle to find any differences in the details you share. The one is that I do dress myself but that might be because I am male and can get away with wearing the same thing every day for about a month at a time. I have a regular aspergers coach who helps quite a bit but mostly by compiling their understandings from working with others and relaying them to me.

I have always been obsessed with humanities, art, art theory, art history, etc. and have had to internalize this almost entirely. It’s hard to articulate all the problems I have had related to this but they all seem to boil down to an issue of an intensely systemized approach at pretty much every level. For one example, I started out making films, but that was short-lived because I had zero interest in working with people or actors. I was very good with camera and lighting, and planning in pre-production. My film projects were always completed in my mind and fully documented before the start of production. This drove collaborators nuts. I could always see the film in my mind so it made no sense to leave things to chance. I didn’t realize that was the problem until much later. I did identify my habit of using actors as mere props but I made the mistake of trying to overcome that and it led to giving the wrong impression of my skills. Things like navigating curation and promotion were a challenge but making good work generally cancelled them out. Nonetheless, still too many people skills required. Relatedly, I also love critical theory and articulating social organization. I cannot discuss or collaborate with other academics on these subjects. It’s not a problem with disagreements, but that I cannot tell whether they are actively being self-centered or just lack conception of systematic imperatives. In return, they find me to lack empathy for whatever is right in front of me. As such, I don’t want to judge them but I am too bothered to continue associating. All of this stuff is harmful to my well-being but letting the problems go unsolved is not an option, so I aim to occupy myself with other things. I do programming now, every day, whether I am getting paid or not.

My happiest moments are when I can fully immerse myself in activities of technical implementation and technical problem solving, as I do when I am programming. My whole body becomes healthier and happier, but the moment I am not doing that, I compulsively identify social chaos and get anxiety. This is a problem in the mornings and evenings. I can get thrown off easily and it will interrupt my ability to start working or going to sleep. I identified this a long time ago and my first solution was to just not stop working once I started, and only sleep when my body forced me to, but that was of course problematic. I have to ask: do you experience something similar? Is there anything you do about it?

My former PhD advisor said lots of exercise, adequate sleep, and good eating are of supreme importance.

Otherwise, whatever you want to do, bind yourself to that.

Sleep deficits add up. Think conservatively about your mind.

Yeah, that’s what I try to do. I think I revised and added to my comment after you replied. Sorry about that. I added some more of my unique experiences.

I have been sleeping better for years but it causes me to have to perform the morning and evening transitions twice as often.

EDIT: I guess the thread is too deep but I can’t reply. By “transitions” I just mean all the stuff I do between doing the stuff that occupies me. It’s common that I find another problem and start compulsively trying to fix that instead of getting back to work on the thing I would rather be doing. When I work in an office it’s not really an issue but I am trying to develop patterns that allow me to not work in an office, mostly for career progression. I want to work in a different industry and can only get freelance work in it for now.

I also tend to find I ultimately fix my own problems in my own way, but finding corrolaries can be useful in the decisions of what to try next.

Replying too frequently puts a timer on your reply. This can either be good to learn impulse control with explaining or to control heated argumentation.

For problems that lead to identification of other problems, taking notes is useful. Mentally imagine setting aside each problem to maintain focus on one at a time.

I understand the compulsive mentality where it feels like you created a problem and you need to fix it, where the steps leading to the solution of the problem lead to identification of other problems.

Any way of recording each one to maintain focus on solving one at a time is useful.

Finding connections, patterns. Decision problems.

I understand sort of the transition word, but more like, 'trend' or 'direction' or 'flow'. I tend to analyze my own behavior to meticulous detail, and correct, over and over.

I also used to be an artist (am planning phase from art theory / music theory / mental abstractions / code influences / painting) to computer, mind, code, pure computational proof, etc.

I have to have my mind organised very precisely for this, that's something I have to accept as fact for stable mental trends.

But I am putting my email address in my profile if you want someone to get in touch with about art. I have been identified by others as an artist for much of my life, I have put a ton of work into it and I have created a lot of art. I have a lot of beliefs about art. Bounce ideas, etc.

Always trying to solve your problems mostly yourself.

Shortcut is trust others, but be selective. Of critical importance.

I don't know what you mean by transitions, but that's fine. I have my own words too.

Sometimes I just dream of wht my life would be like had I chosen to be an engineer to begin with.

I don't know. I went to school for engineering for 4 years, I did some engineering design courses, but I identify as a computer scientist and software developer.

Software engineering is where you do 80% now assuming that 20% will turn into another 80% for yourself or someone else in the future. I talked to my stepdad today about 80/20 philosophy.

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