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

Show thread

Amras / Sarma

@mordremoth This correlates with a handful of conversations I've had this year; summarizing here.

The conversations started from how useful #dialectics can be. In particular, how useful it can be to hold several contradicting ideas in one's mind while reasoning:

In a complex world, any useful model will find contradictions, and any honest approach should have tools to explore those contradictions.

(1/2)

Show thread

Amras / Sarma Jul 1, 2023

@mordremoth A more common response to observing contradiction is to select a self-consistent model and discard abberant data. If accepting contradictions is useful, why is it rare?

My best guess to date is that reasoning through #cognitiveDissonance is simply exhausting. Compared to the alternative, it requires more time and energy. Maybe (for some) the objective is not honesty or truth, but efficient and consistent reasoning.

But this guess doesn't feel correct or complete yet.
(2/2)

Show thread

Amelia Jul 1, 2023

@amras I think that is a small piece of it, yes, but there is a much more significant missing piece when it comes to why people tend to reject data in this way (selecting for existing understanding).

Under white supremacy culture (particularly in the sense in which Tema Okun et.al. use the term), we are actively conditioned to rely on this specific bias, via what's referred to as "either/or thinking" - aka a fixation on false binaries.

Of crucial importance, many cultures (both in the world now, and historically) embrace plurality of ideas and possibilities when it comes to thinking.

I've written at length about this and the importance of actively rejecting the tendency to boil down everything to simple/familiar options, and how this (natural) neurological desire for efficient understanding is co-opted to serve systemic oppression: https://starshipgender.com/booleans-considered-garbage

Booleans Considered Garbage

I couldn’t resist the title of this post. I’ll take a moment to explain it properly, because it is a silly computer programming joke, but...

Trans-Mission Logs of the Starship Gender