Comment by xwolfi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xwolfi | Hacker News Reader

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Depends: I m probably the opposite of someone with autism: I love chatting with strangers, I can dance with girls in clubs until 8am on a whim at the despair of my gf, I m very chatty in general and overshare. I suffer strongly when I see others suffer so I probably have working mirror neurons (empathy). I seek social connections and moved to Hong Kong to be surrounded by dense population rather than feel so lonely in Paris. This immigration adventure was the highlight of my life and I enjoyed tremendously the danger, the unknown, the overloading of things to do and learn.

Yet, I feel connected to monotropism in some way: I can only get interested almost obsessively in one thing at a time and completely forget and disregard anything and anyone else. It s very annoying for people around me and many find me autistic somehow, geeky at best.

All Im saying is, either it s really what a "spectrum" is or it s just a sort of common human traits. Us programmers had to be a bit obsessed with computers to dedicate most of our waking time to it, and everyone here is probably sharing this trait, none of us being really autists and may sound disrespectful or misguided calling ourselves so ?

> I suffer strongly when I see others suffer (empathy)

It might be worth looking more into this. I’d describe myself similarly and I’ve heard it described similarly:

> Many autistic individuals report feelings of excessive empathy, yet their experience is not reflected by most of the current literature, typically suggesting that autism is characterized by intact emotional and reduced cognitive empathy.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9804307/

The rest is very interesting! It might be a bit “exposing”, if you’ll pardon the pun, but there are many “masking” behaviors an autistic person might learn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masking_(personality)

It’s also not unheard of for autistic people to live healthy social lives and even engage socially to varying degrees. I wouldn’t discount it even based on the all-night clubbing given what I’ve read but that’s definitely getting way more into my personal opinion and factually exceptional territory for those who’ve been formally diagnosed.

(Not trying to lead you too strongly. Just offering information in case you haven’t encountered it. You know how you think better than anyone else!)

The point about “spectrum” or “regular” is interesting too. I think that’s kinda why I find this monotropism vs. “polytropism?” idea so fascinating. I want to hear about the other thing more, at this point -- assuming it exists. It feels like a good topic to explore more.

Edit: Just caught this too:

> I m very chatty in general and overshare

This can also describe an autistic person’s social behavior. Generally, I’ve read it manifests as talking a bit too much about a topic they’re interested in, possibly even irritating others with their focus on it. (A lot of “me irl” stuff in this personally.) I’ll even go out on a limb and guess you’ve been accused multiple times of “dominating a conversation”. Correct me if I’m wrong! Anyway, it just makes me wonder more about the real differences in how people think. Why does that sort of disagreement even happen?

Not a clinician or anything, but I'm autistic and honestly you sound pretty similar to me. In fact I'm writing this from Singapore where I'm surrounded by folks haha. I don't think being autistic is really what it's made out to be frankly, and the description of the condition is generally the outsider's view not the insider's view.

Some autistic folks will avoid sensory stimulation while others seek it out. I'm definitely one of the ones that seeks it out and I'm pretty extroverted. It's a heterogeneous condition, and indeed a spectrum. Who knows for your situation, but you may be autistic.

That being said though, I think the important thing isn't the neurotype but rather that you've found what matters to you and what makes you happy. At the end of the day that's what counts, not the underlying neurology.

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