Mastodawn

Amelia Jun 25, 2023

So one of the things that has always confused and frustrated me about the autistic experience (even long before I knew I am autistic!) is the way allistic people feel, to me, like they are constantly over-simplifying everything.

The past week or so, I've been kicking around a hypothesis with my partner (they are also autistic), and I think together we've stumbled onto something big.

We're beginning to suspect that allistic brains do this as a protection mechanism, automatically and unconsciously, much like our heartbeats. It's a way to avoid overwhelm.

Just like we might rely on noise cancelling headphones to not get overwhelmed by sounds, I think allistic brains naturally reduce ideas to simpler forms to prevent getting overwhelmed by details and complexity.

(This is really a much bigger thing than fits into a single post, but that's a good preview of the larger cascade of understanding we've been unleashing lately.)

#ActuallyAutistic

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anilmc Jun 25, 2023

@mordremoth I'm probably almost totally allistic but i think you're onto something, specifically "delegation to subconscious" which happens with physiological processes like breathing, and heartbeats, but also taxonomies and categorisation, muscle memory, rules and habits, etc etc. I guess I wonder whether it's effective at the purpose of preventing overwhelm, and whether the function itself is better performed as a result. I play basketball, and the auto pop shot is much more accurate!

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Amelia

@anilmc I think it depends! (Lol, that's a very autistic thing to say, I know.)

For *many* aspects of day to day life, I think this efficient, automatic, simplified approach *is* an advantage. It saves energy (brains are notoriously expensive to operate, biologically speaking), it saves time, and in a lot of situations, the details actually don't matter that much, if at all.

There are of course *some* situations where this is a liability, but I suspect that they are fairly rare, even though my own personal autistic inclination is to always care about the details.

I think the real win comes when we find ways to get allistic brains handling the stuff where the details don't matter, and autistic brains on the complicated/nuanced bits.

In other words, I bet all of us work better together... if we can find ways to play to our respective strengths!