Friday, August 17, 2012

Learning by analogy

I think almost completely in terms of analogies.  Maybe you all have noticed.  I use them all of the time on the blog to explain things.  My mind naturally focuses on the relationships between things rather than the characteristics of the things themselves.  It's how my information is stored in my head, which means that I experience the world differently from people who don't do this.  Different things are obvious to me that aren't so obvious to others.  An analogy (again!) would be a bookshelf.  If you organize it alphabetically by author, you'll focus on that, if you organize it on subject matter, you'll focus on that, and if you organize it by color... the bookshelf will be more aesthetically pleasing.

When I encounter something new, I immediately start spinning through the universe of possible analogies to it, like a safecracker hunting for the right combination, or a picklock feeling for something similar enough to fit, at least in all of the ways that are important (functionally).  I'm one of those annoying people who are always talking about how similar music is to mathematics.  And now that I've been taking calculus courses in my spare time, I think of everything in terms of limits.

I don't know when I started doing this, but I learn this way almost exclusively.  Anything else is the equivalent of recreating the wheel.  What it means as a practical matter is that I either pick up on things extremely quickly, or I'm a complete idiot -- a very flat learning curve, punctuated by sharp inclines.  I am particularly horrible at following directions.  When I eventually do learn something, it's basically because I have finally cycled through enough possible analogies to have hit on the right combination.

This one aspect of my personality has probably affected my life and personality more than any other one trait, even probably more than my sociopathic tendencies.  In fact, it's sort of odd that I have never mentioned it before, I guess because I thought that it didn't have anything to do with sociopathy so why write about it here.  But now I sort of wonder if this type of thinking is more common amongst the sociopathic population than the empathic population.  Perhaps, for instance, because sociopaths are naturally obsessed with power and manipulation, the relationships between things take on a prominence and focus in the same way that there are allegedly many more words for snow among Inuit tribes?

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Theory of empathy

This may sound completely idiotic, completely obvious, completely redundant, or all three, but reading people's responses to the post on using babies to teach empathy, I thought maybe for the first time I have a theory about what empathy is:

  • Empathy is you feeling an emotion you have previously experienced in response to seeing someone else experience something that looks similar enough to remind you viscerally and poignantly of your own experience.  In a way, you are re-living the previous experience, not necessarily feeling what the other person is feeling.  
  • Empathy requires some degree of attention to the emotional cues of others to trigger your recollection of your own experience.  
  • People who are particularly observant of or in tune with the emotions of others and people who have had a greater breadth and depth of emotions are more likely to feel empathy. 
  • To the extent that sociopaths seem to lack empathy, it may be attributed to the fact that they are both (1) relatively oblivious to social cues and that (2) they have a different emotional palette that is triggered less frequently by the emotions of neurotypicals.  
  • Sociopaths do have infrequent feelings of empathy when the stars align and the sociopath is both paying attention to the cue and has previously experienced the emotion himself.  

Thoughts?  It's primarily based on Newman's work with sociopath emotions and attentional issues, but I wonder if I am misunderstanding what empaths (or sociopaths) feel.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Guest song: Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head



As your body floats down Third Street
With the burn-smell factory closing up
Yes it's sad to say you will romanticize
All the things you've known before
It was not not not so great
It was not not not so great
And as you take a bath in that beaten path
There's a pounding at the door
Well It's a mighty zombie talking of some love and posterity
He says "The good old days never say good-bye
If you keep this in your mind:
You need some lo-lo-loving arms
You need some lo-lo-loving arms"
And as you fall from grace the only words you say are

Put your hand inside the puppet head
Put your hand inside the puppet head
Put your hand inside
Put your hand inside
Put your hand inside the puppet head

Ads up in the subway are the work of someone
Trying to please their boss
And though the guy's a pig we all know what he wants
Is just to please somebody else
If the pu-pu-puppet head
Was only bu-bu-busted in
It would be a better thing for everyone involved
And we wouldn't have to cry

Put your hand inside the puppet head
Put your hand inside the puppet head
Put your hand inside
Put your hand inside
Put your hand inside the puppet head

Memo to myself, do the dumb things I gotta do
Touch the puppet head

Quit my job down at the car wash
Didn't have to write no-one a good-bye note
That said, "The check's in the mail, and
I'll see you in church, and don't you ever change"
If the pu-pu-puppet head
Was only bu-bu-busted in
I'll see you after school

Put your hand inside the puppet head
Put your hand inside the puppet head
Put your hand inside
Put your hand inside
Put your hand inside the puppet head

Put your hand inside the puppet head
Put your hand inside the puppet head
Put your hand inside
Put your hand inside
Put your hand inside the puppet head

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Conversation with a friend

Friend: Aren't you ever worried that this site will keep you from getting any government jobs?

M.E.: I don't ever want a government job. They're going to find out about me anyway, and I don't want to be the poster child for some political scandal.

Friend: Ha, probably better that way, particularly for someone who can't smell a lynch mob from 10 cm away.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Moral codes, boundaries and food allergies

I think empaths' brains work differently than mine. There are certain things that they consider sacrosanct that I just think are normal, or even silly. Luckily I was brought up in a religious household, so I learned that some invisible things actually mean a lot to other people: love, patriotism, god, goodness, etc. I learned that the general rule to avoid unwanted conflict is to respect those beliefs in others, even though they do not mean anything to me. This is sort of a hallmark of a modern, civilized society. When we walk into holy buildings, we remove our shoes if that is the custom even though the god of that temple may not be our own.

That is what we are socialized to do, but there is some debate regarding how much respect we should give other people's beliefs. For instance, if you believe cows are sacred, I'm fine with your boycotting beef, but your beliefs won't stop me from eating a cheeseburger in front of you. If the average person is willing to take off his shoes in your temple but eat a cheeseburger in front of you, what will he do about your belief that abortion is murder or your beliefs that the female labia is dirty and needs to be cut off or the vagina stitched up to ensure the purity of the woman? What is legitimate?

To me it seems like random line drawing: sodomy between two consenting adults is legitimate, sodomy between an adult and a child not legitimate. Public nudity is wrong, but so is a woman covering up from head to foot. There are reasons, sure. I have heard reasons. But many empaths will criticize dolphin slaughter while eating animals raised in deplorable conditions. (By the way, stop eating octupus. They are very smart, precocious creatures.) How do they reconcile this? What makes them freak about one thing and be so permissive about another?

I am a very tolerant person. I attribute this to my sociopathy. Unlike empaths, who are so hard-wired to believe whatever their culture has programmed them to think, I can look at something from a blank slate point of view. I guess this is also why I'm a libertarian -- I don't believe that my ideas are so right that they should be imposed on others, even if those other people disagree. In other words, I am as skeptical about the beliefs I hold as I am about the beliefs of others. And I don't play favorites like empaths who say, "Imposing my beliefs on others is fine because mine are supported by (fill in the blank pet reasons: science, religion, logic, tradition, etc.), but you can't do the same because your beliefs are only supported by (fill in the blank hated reasons: science, religion, logic, tradition, etc.)." So I trend away from imposing my beliefs on others, and I don't necessarily think that one basis for beliefs is better than another. That doesn't mean I don't respect people's beliefs, though. To keep the peace and as a courtesy to others that I expect to be reciprocated, i will almost always take off my shoes when walking on someone's sacred ground.

Does that make me not a sociopath? Ha. Well, the process of how I do it sounds at least Aspergian. How do I know when to take off my shoes? It's like discovering a food allergy. Maybe you eat something at a restaurant and get sick. Other people from your party ate the same thing and did not get sick. Maybe you just caught a flu bug, you think. A few months later you eat something else and get similar symptoms. The symptoms seem the same, but you don't know what could be the common ingredient. You keep collecting info, eliminating this, eliminating that, keeping a mental log of what you could possibly be allergic to. It is clear to you by now that even though you cannot see what is making you sick, can't even identify it, there is certainly something wrong because you keep getting bad reactions. Maybe your boss periodically gets angry at you in the same way. Maybe your spouse can't stand to be around you when you are like _____. I am in those types of situations all the time -- people are mad at me and I have no idea why. chances are, though, I am encroaching on someone's moral code and/or sense of personal boundaries. I have learned that either I keep doing the same thing and getting the same adverse reaction, or I figure something else out. otherwise I'm in for a world of hurt, because it's like a moral/personal boundary minefield out there. Right aspies?
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