I’m already not sympathetic to extreme-male-brain-theory-of-autism, so I guess I’m not the target of this question. I suppose that if you found the opposite results of what you expect, I would be mildly interested.
Intense World does seem like it could be a contributing factor.
Ironically, despite being autistic, I feel like I don’t really understand how autism is recognized or how it works. So while I do have some theories on it, they feel uncertain/not very crisp.
One of my current main theories (which might be overupdating on my own case, but I guess I might as well put it out here so I can either get corrected or confirmed) is that a core contributor is “falling off” the general “track” of socialization/enculturation. This is kind of abstract, so let me try to explain:
I think as people interact with each other, they get exposed to certain norms and cultural ideas. If they have the appropriate context, they can notice these norms/ideas and parse them in a similar way that others do, “keeping up” with everyone else about what is going on. This probably starts all the way back in childhood, with games, movies, play and other things leading to social experience. If one doesn’t engage in this in similar ways that others do, one might miss out on a lot.
In my case, the missing out seems to be polycausal. I’m temperamentally naturally introverted; my family moved to a new place when I was 3; I have difficulties with sports (a primary activity) for reasons that seem connected to neurological autism symptoms; I have strong unusual interests (mainly computers and science, which of course fits into some variants of the EQ-SQ theory); my family didn’t have many cartoons or shows for children and didn’t keep up well with movies (people keep being surprised that I didn’t watch classics such as The Lion King); I tended to get involved with weird political ideas; and I didn’t make many friends.
There’s a lot of basic norms and purposes about social interactions that I didn’t really learn until relatively recently. And there’s a lot of basic signs that I still don’t understand—people often seem to mention stuff like car brands, cities, clothing brands or other things and have an idea about the relative status differences (and other things?) implied by which brands you use or which cities you come from/live in, but I usually don’t know what people are referring to.
And I think this also contributed to a feedback loop? Like once you’re already behind, you’re gonna be the weird kid who has few friends engaged in unusual activities and who doesn’t “get it” when stuff is explained.
So basically, my lead theory—which I don’t at all feel confident in but which seems reasonable to me—is that autism is due to a variety of factors (neurological, temperamental, environmental, …) which interfere with the enculturation process and creates a feedback loop of being off track.
Unrelatedly, I strong-vote for you to spend more time thinking about cluster B personality disorders. If paying you money would help make that happen, we should talk! (Your recent post on narcissism was already helpful!)
Neat that you like my post! I’d be curious if there’s anything specific you can mention as being helpful? (Maybe in DMs if you prefer?)
As for spending more time thinking about Cluster B, maybe? I think I’m currently evidence-bottlenecked rather than theory-bottlenecked. But this constraint can of course also be loosened through the use of money and time. I’ve also been reading a few case studies, though the case studies typically don’t have the sorts of details I need, so it is kind of of limited value.
(In a way, it’s kind of weird for me to lack so much evidence, since I grew up with a BPD mother. But I think my mother’s conflicts were mostly with my brother, my father, and various people outside the home, not so much with me until later. At which point I think my dabbling in conservative online spaces had made me adopt memes which present a stoic, resistant face to BPD while ignoring the conflicts. So I don’t think I got a clear view of the conflicts. Have been meaning to discuss them more with my brother.)
I currently think there’s kinda a “neurotypical way of relating to people”, which involves having certain involuntary innate reactions in certain social circumstances.
I disagree with the popular narrative that the “neurotypical way of relating” is equal to “social intelligence”, or to “good theory of mind”. In this comment I offer an example where the “neurotypical way of relating” leads to transparently awful theory-of-mind. The “autistic people have less social intelligence” claims I’ve seen are very unconvincing, and seem to be a mix of “autistic people have to work harder to predict/model neurotypical people, and vice-versa (!!), for obvious reasons” [like Ann mentioned in a different comment], and “autistic people tend to have less social motivation, and a great many sloppy scientists will mix up social motivation with social intelligence / theory-of-mind”.
Anyway, “autism” / ASD is a big tent (and getting bigger each year—I have personal experience here as a parent, see 1,2), complicating any discussion or literature analysis. But I think “classic autism” (i.e. historical diagnostic standards, see here) more-or-less corresponds to not engaging in the “neurotypical way of relating”.
For example, there’s an interesting report here (I haven’t read the book yet, just bought it!) which I interpret as: a lifelong autistic person was shoved into “the neurotypical way of relating” via brain stimulation. They found this way of relating to be often overwhelming, which incidentally (I presume) is why they were avoiding that way of relating thus far in life. (Presumably this started with a deliberate flinching-away from that kind of relating during very early childhood, which eventually into an unconscious deep-rooted lifelong habit.)
Does the “neurotypical way of relating” develop by practicing a lot as a child? I think some practice is important—completely isolated children have severe issues, for example. But leaving aside extreme cases, I think I’m less inclined to emphasize practice than you do. My impression is that it’s possible for kids to be awfully introverted, antisocial, and oblivious to pop-culture, while being clearly not autistic. Also, the guy from the previous paragraph also seems to be a point against “lack of practice” being central. Another example: when adults immigrate to a different culture, the social norms and conversational norms and cultural references are all unknown-to-them, and they certainly have issues getting by for a while, but I don’t think those transient enculturation issues look anything like autism. I’m open to changing my mind though. And sorry if I’m misunderstanding.
Neat that you like my post! I’d be curious if there’s anything specific you can mention as being helpful?
Another example: when adults immigrate to a different culture, the social norms and conversational norms and cultural references are all unknown-to-them, and they certainly have issues getting by for a while, but I don’t think those transient enculturation issues look anything like autism.
Interesting looked at in reverse—from at least anecdotal data, autistic folk often report being much more comfortable traveling in another culture, because the social norms, conversational norms and cultural references are expected to be unknown to them, and people we interact with therefore tend to be much more charitable about them.
Does this include socially conservative autistic people? I have the impression that the autistic people who are more prominent or coordinated tend to be socially progressive, and that socially progressive people have greater enjoyment of foreign cultures.
(Incidentally, I also have the impression that a lot of the EQ-SQ debate is really about this? Some conservative male autist saying “sex/race differences are real!”, puritanical progressives going “how could you say such a horrible thing?!”, the conservative autist going “I don’t understand what I did wrong, maybe it is because of my male brain being very logical rather than obsessed about social harmony?”. And then a big part of why EQ-SQ theory is so marginalized is because progressive autists don’t want to be associated with sexism/racism, so they go “no, that’s not autism, he’s just a horrible person!”. In a way, this connects to my point in the post; I could respond on an object level to the arguments forwarded by SBC, but if EQ-SQ stuff is really motivated by this sort of drama, then maybe people wouldn’t be convinced by anything other than a response to that drama?)
I don’t know as many probably-socially-conservative probably-autistic people, but from who I do know they seem to enjoy spending time in foreign cultures still? Not very firm data there, even anecdotally, though.
My theory is that in autism the “response feelings” in story (2) are so strong that they’re aversive, and people with classic autism adopt the coping strategy of avoiding invoking them altogether, by avoiding the specific type of mental operation that I call “empathetic simulation”.
This is interesting because it does square with my experience if I understand correctly. Like as an example, as a child my mother explained how she had gotten a teacher’s education because she had wanted to be a psychologist and the government had some thing where you could get a brief psychologist education on top of the teacher’s education, but then they eliminated that and now she had to be a teacher. And I got really sad about that. I guess one difference from your story is that I less suppressed it because of direct unpleasantness and more because of social conformity.
Does the “neurotypical way of relating” develop by practicing a lot as a child? I think some practice is important—completely isolated children have severe issues, for example. But leaving aside extreme cases, I think I’m less inclined to emphasize practice than you do. My impression is that it’s possible for kids to be awfully introverted, antisocial, and oblivious to pop-culture, while being clearly not autistic. Also, the guy from the previous paragraph also seems to be a point against “lack of practice” being central. Another example: when adults immigrate to a different culture, the social norms and conversational norms and cultural references are all unknown-to-them, and they certainly have issues getting by for a while, but I don’t think those transient enculturation issues look anything like autism. I’m open to changing my mind though. And sorry if I’m misunderstanding.
Admittedly feels kind of hard to square with Against Against Autism Cures, e.g. “One study investigated how many autistics have at least one friend and found it was just under 50%.”. Not sure what makes the difference here; I’d be inclined to say that maybe a lot of autistic dysfunction is for nonsocial reasons (e.g. “locked in a sensory hell without the ability to explain their problems verbally, and maybe having seizures all the time to boot”?) and my method filters away the cases that are this severe, and autistic people can basically function fine socially if neither oppressed (which I’d conjecture goes together with being an adult in practice?) nor disabled by sensory sensitivities? Possibly it’s also just that my measurement is too bad.
Intense World does seem like it could be a contributing factor.
Ironically, despite being autistic, I feel like I don’t really understand how autism is recognized or how it works. So while I do have some theories on it, they feel uncertain/not very crisp.
One of my current main theories (which might be overupdating on my own case, but I guess I might as well put it out here so I can either get corrected or confirmed) is that a core contributor is “falling off” the general “track” of socialization/enculturation. This is kind of abstract, so let me try to explain:
I think as people interact with each other, they get exposed to certain norms and cultural ideas. If they have the appropriate context, they can notice these norms/ideas and parse them in a similar way that others do, “keeping up” with everyone else about what is going on. This probably starts all the way back in childhood, with games, movies, play and other things leading to social experience. If one doesn’t engage in this in similar ways that others do, one might miss out on a lot.
In my case, the missing out seems to be polycausal. I’m temperamentally naturally introverted; my family moved to a new place when I was 3; I have difficulties with sports (a primary activity) for reasons that seem connected to neurological autism symptoms; I have strong unusual interests (mainly computers and science, which of course fits into some variants of the EQ-SQ theory); my family didn’t have many cartoons or shows for children and didn’t keep up well with movies (people keep being surprised that I didn’t watch classics such as The Lion King); I tended to get involved with weird political ideas; and I didn’t make many friends.
There’s a lot of basic norms and purposes about social interactions that I didn’t really learn until relatively recently. And there’s a lot of basic signs that I still don’t understand—people often seem to mention stuff like car brands, cities, clothing brands or other things and have an idea about the relative status differences (and other things?) implied by which brands you use or which cities you come from/live in, but I usually don’t know what people are referring to.
And I think this also contributed to a feedback loop? Like once you’re already behind, you’re gonna be the weird kid who has few friends engaged in unusual activities and who doesn’t “get it” when stuff is explained.
So basically, my lead theory—which I don’t at all feel confident in but which seems reasonable to me—is that autism is due to a variety of factors (neurological, temperamental, environmental, …) which interfere with the enculturation process and creates a feedback loop of being off track.
Neat that you like my post! I’d be curious if there’s anything specific you can mention as being helpful? (Maybe in DMs if you prefer?)
As for spending more time thinking about Cluster B, maybe? I think I’m currently evidence-bottlenecked rather than theory-bottlenecked. But this constraint can of course also be loosened through the use of money and time. I’ve also been reading a few case studies, though the case studies typically don’t have the sorts of details I need, so it is kind of of limited value.
(In a way, it’s kind of weird for me to lack so much evidence, since I grew up with a BPD mother. But I think my mother’s conflicts were mostly with my brother, my father, and various people outside the home, not so much with me until later. At which point I think my dabbling in conservative online spaces had made me adopt memes which present a stoic, resistant face to BPD while ignoring the conflicts. So I don’t think I got a clear view of the conflicts. Have been meaning to discuss them more with my brother.)
I currently think there’s kinda a “neurotypical way of relating to people”, which involves having certain involuntary innate reactions in certain social circumstances.
I disagree with the popular narrative that the “neurotypical way of relating” is equal to “social intelligence”, or to “good theory of mind”. In this comment I offer an example where the “neurotypical way of relating” leads to transparently awful theory-of-mind. The “autistic people have less social intelligence” claims I’ve seen are very unconvincing, and seem to be a mix of “autistic people have to work harder to predict/model neurotypical people, and vice-versa (!!), for obvious reasons” [like Ann mentioned in a different comment], and “autistic people tend to have less social motivation, and a great many sloppy scientists will mix up social motivation with social intelligence / theory-of-mind”.
Anyway, “autism” / ASD is a big tent (and getting bigger each year—I have personal experience here as a parent, see 1,2), complicating any discussion or literature analysis. But I think “classic autism” (i.e. historical diagnostic standards, see here) more-or-less corresponds to not engaging in the “neurotypical way of relating”.
For example, there’s an interesting report here (I haven’t read the book yet, just bought it!) which I interpret as: a lifelong autistic person was shoved into “the neurotypical way of relating” via brain stimulation. They found this way of relating to be often overwhelming, which incidentally (I presume) is why they were avoiding that way of relating thus far in life. (Presumably this started with a deliberate flinching-away from that kind of relating during very early childhood, which eventually into an unconscious deep-rooted lifelong habit.)
Does the “neurotypical way of relating” develop by practicing a lot as a child? I think some practice is important—completely isolated children have severe issues, for example. But leaving aside extreme cases, I think I’m less inclined to emphasize practice than you do. My impression is that it’s possible for kids to be awfully introverted, antisocial, and oblivious to pop-culture, while being clearly not autistic. Also, the guy from the previous paragraph also seems to be a point against “lack of practice” being central. Another example: when adults immigrate to a different culture, the social norms and conversational norms and cultural references are all unknown-to-them, and they certainly have issues getting by for a while, but I don’t think those transient enculturation issues look anything like autism. I’m open to changing my mind though. And sorry if I’m misunderstanding.
I’ll reply at that post. :)
Interesting looked at in reverse—from at least anecdotal data, autistic folk often report being much more comfortable traveling in another culture, because the social norms, conversational norms and cultural references are expected to be unknown to them, and people we interact with therefore tend to be much more charitable about them.
Does this include socially conservative autistic people? I have the impression that the autistic people who are more prominent or coordinated tend to be socially progressive, and that socially progressive people have greater enjoyment of foreign cultures.
(Incidentally, I also have the impression that a lot of the EQ-SQ debate is really about this? Some conservative male autist saying “sex/race differences are real!”, puritanical progressives going “how could you say such a horrible thing?!”, the conservative autist going “I don’t understand what I did wrong, maybe it is because of my male brain being very logical rather than obsessed about social harmony?”. And then a big part of why EQ-SQ theory is so marginalized is because progressive autists don’t want to be associated with sexism/racism, so they go “no, that’s not autism, he’s just a horrible person!”. In a way, this connects to my point in the post; I could respond on an object level to the arguments forwarded by SBC, but if EQ-SQ stuff is really motivated by this sort of drama, then maybe people wouldn’t be convinced by anything other than a response to that drama?)
I don’t know as many probably-socially-conservative probably-autistic people, but from who I do know they seem to enjoy spending time in foreign cultures still? Not very firm data there, even anecdotally, though.
This comment inspired me to collect data on autistic social functioning, and I was surprised at how basically similarly good it appeared to be to allistic social functioning.[1] Probably worth investigating in greater detailed, but yes very good to take into account.
This is interesting because it does square with my experience if I understand correctly. Like as an example, as a child my mother explained how she had gotten a teacher’s education because she had wanted to be a psychologist and the government had some thing where you could get a brief psychologist education on top of the teacher’s education, but then they eliminated that and now she had to be a teacher. And I got really sad about that. I guess one difference from your story is that I less suppressed it because of direct unpleasantness and more because of social conformity.
Good arguments, I’m convinced.
Admittedly feels kind of hard to square with Against Against Autism Cures, e.g. “One study investigated how many autistics have at least one friend and found it was just under 50%.”. Not sure what makes the difference here; I’d be inclined to say that maybe a lot of autistic dysfunction is for nonsocial reasons (e.g. “locked in a sensory hell without the ability to explain their problems verbally, and maybe having seizures all the time to boot”?) and my method filters away the cases that are this severe, and autistic people can basically function fine socially if neither oppressed (which I’d conjecture goes together with being an adult in practice?) nor disabled by sensory sensitivities? Possibly it’s also just that my measurement is too bad.