artificial intelligence

I used to feel like I was smarter than everyone else. I had cognitive and IQ tests done growing up and more recently, placement testing for college and the like. It all suggests I'm way up there, at least, reinforcing the way I thought about intelligence.

My interactions with people have gone very differently these last 8 years. I don't think about other people the way that I used to. I don't even perceive intelligence or lackthereof. I'm not sure the very concept of intelligence as an intrinsic attribute even makes any sense, anymore. I'm sure there are physiological variations between different human brains, but I'm not so sure that has any relationship to what we're actually assessing, when we give someone an IQ test or judge them for what they express.

People learn what their lives have taught them. I see everyone as having their own cascading chain of lived experiences and so much of what they're aware of, what they know and understand, is predicated on the life they've lived. What people are capable of can be very different than what they're motivated to do, and that includes how people use their brains. What they think a lot about, what they don't. Our minds develop around how we've learned to use them. As I get to know people these days, I can't compare my intelligence to theirs. I just see people with different lived experiences than my own. 

Unfortunately, this has also meant that I can no longer use my ideas about intelligence to prop up my battered self-esteem. I've practiced a lot of ruminating in my life, but I'm often an idiot when it seems to count most. I think what we call "intelligence" is complicated. Someone else might not think about it at all. One is not more intelligent than the other.

what do you think

I was just noticing a particular common thread to my writing, that I seem to find lots of different ways to care what other people think. From here, I immediately jump to an example, without even trying: who cares what other people think, right? That's not my thought, it's what I know other people think, so then go on to address it. This seems to be how my brain works.

The idea that we should be indifferent to what others think strikes me as akin to suggesting that the best way through a maze is to pretend the walls aren't there. Other people navigate those walls without even thinking about it. I have to think about it a lot. 

It seems to me that what we all think largely defines reality. There may be a physical reality that is completely indifferent to what people are thinking about it, but that's not what gives everything meaning. It's what we think that assigns countless variables of importance, significance, and value to all phenomena. A whole lot of that dynamic wherein we decide what matters is interactive, between people, not simply isolated to our individual whims.

In my understanding of the human condition, what other people think tends to matter a whole lot, in so many different ways.

One might take a more nihilistic approach and ask if this means nothing has any real meaning, therefor who cares about any of it. We might ask what it means for something to mean something and conclude that it doesn't really mean anything. Meaning represents how we're wired. It matters to chemical signals in our brains that have evolved to assess value, to us as organisms and as a species, evolved to value our survival. 

I don't think the most rational view is to imagine ourselves above the whole mess of chemical signals that defines whether we'll be happy or suffering and miserable. That socially entangled mess of chemical signals is us, whether we're aware of it or not.

on being useless

The main reason I suspended my blog was that I've realized that I don't like myself very much. I used to want others to read my blog, to show them that even though I could barely speak, I was actually quite brilliant, right? I think about all the people I know at the gym, and no, I don't want any of them reading any of this.  I don't want anyone reading it, really. It's all just so much drivel. 

Being out in the world has come at a heavy price. I hate who I am in their world, and I've finally come to face that their world is what's also known as reality.

I no longer think my thoughts and ideas have any value and for most of my life, that's all I've had. I can make endless excuses, or we can call them explanations, but it doesn't actually matter. We are all the way we are for reasons. The way I am has been remarkably unsuccessful in just about every aspect of life, regardless of those reasons. 

I am literally disabled, but I am in good shape. I spent an hour rolling around with people half my age again tonight. I'm very much aware that this is not nothing. It feels like the one objective thing I've got going for me, but it also feels like it's not nearly enough to offset the cavernous deficit that is the rest of my life, wherein I do a shocking amount of nothing, and no matter how hard I train, I'm still 52. Nobody blames me for being 52, but it's not exactly helping, socially speaking.

What do we bring to the table, in our interactions with others? Do they feel good about interacting with us? Are we amusing, interesting, amused and interested? Do we give others the impression we care about them (but not too much?) We can be conscientious about how our behavior impacts others and how much that matters. We can work on it. In theory, this should help.

Unfortunately, we can still be limited by how much another person cares. The less they care or value us, the less they're going to care if we're nice to them. If they value us a lot, being nice to someone can put them on cloud nine. How much are we worth to the people around us? What are we bringing to the table as members of a community, society, or humanity?

I've been working on that too, but success has been limited. I've been hiding in my bedroom my whole life. Not writing novels or creating art or doing anything of value whatsoever. Just writing useless blog entries like this. 

Never too late to start, right? Well no, it's not that simple. I don't actually have any idea what specifically I could do. I don't feel like doing anything in particular. I need another person to motivate me, because my motivational system is clearly broken, but finding someone I want that close to me has been difficult given what a failure at life I've been. 

I'm using everything I've got just to keep getting to the gym, doing the one thing that seems to be working for me.

hyper vigilance

As I sat here stoned, ruminating about why I chose to do nothing instead of going to the gym, as I often do, I had an imaginary conversation with Kyle. I get the impression he's stoned sometimes. Maybe occasionally, maybe all the time, I'm not sure. He gets stoned and go does stuff. I wanted to ask him how that works.

In my head though, I did most of the talking. Yep, apparently, I daydream about explaining myself to people a lot. It can be productive though, as my questions and explanations sometimes coalesce around a better way of looking at things, aided by imagining what someone else might be thinking in response.

In this instance, I realized that I can't go out and do stuff when I'm stoned, because I have to be vigilant about masking. Getting drunk or stoned around other people runs a high risk that I'll be uninhibited and express myself honestly, and that could be catastrophic.

I'd love to be a more genuine person. It would make me so much more likable, if not for having the personality that I do. Some people might like me more, but for the most part, I do believe that it would be unbearably alienating. I'm trying to learn social skills here, like asking people questions about themselves, instead of monologuing at them about communism or AI, awkwardly fumbling through as if I have no idea what I'm talking about, because my brain doesn't work well when I'm trying to interact with people. I literally struggle to talk and think at the same time and often just shut down entirely unable to think of anything to say at all #autism

So, one example product of my vigilance being how I avoid talking about anything that involves too much thinking. It's like I have to carefully measure and limit my brain usage, and it's for entirely rational reasons, learned from years of experience being me. Another example might be how it's best that women half my age don't know how I feel about them. My mask is practically asexual. Even when attractive women are my own age, it's never felt appropriate for me to have those sorts of feelings. Maybe I'll just confess to hating everyone. That always goes well. Who knows what I might blurt out if I'm stoned (oh right, I do. That's the problem)

I was thinking about how cannabis is medicinal in some ways, but how that's arguably outweighed by how impairing it can be. It might help me feel good enough to get to the gym if not for my fear of being stoned at the gym. Makes me wonder if it's largely impairing because of fears around how it messes with all my carefully constructed and still very much under construction inhibitions.

conventional

One of the more defining elements of autism is a disregard for conventional values and norms. At its root, this is not ideological, although ideological nonconformity often develops as a consequence. When this inability to connect with others is severe enough, autistic children have trouble even learning to speak. This is because they aren't mirroring caregivers. They don't learn the basics the way others instinctively learn. 

Even for the most brilliant of us, this can be a profound learning disability. It creates a cascade of consequences as the autistic individual progresses through life, learning how to cope, learning how to act normal, but never actually being normal, and coping never becomes easy. Neurotypical behaviors are called mainstream precisely because that's where the flow is the strongest and most common. It's not a choice to be outside the mainstream, so much as the absence of learned behavior that typically draws people into going with the flow.

Autism is a spectrum, not because it varies in severity, but because without conformist instincts to guide us, we learn to get by in our own ways. Every individual's life experiences are different. These experiences then guide development in a wide range of different ways. We don't follow any sort of standard autistic path, but are forced to forge our own paths, and we go in all different directions.

This often makes it very difficult to relate to others and form healthy relationships. Even other autistic people can be so different from one another as to make connection feel impossible between them, never mind connection with neurotypicals. When people don't share similar values, and have lived our whole lives accordingly, it can result in a devaluation that goes both ways.

A basic example might be materialism. This is simplistic and people are more complicated, but to illustrate the point, someone who doesn't value wealth or owning stuff will probably go through life with very little. Work is not only more difficult for such an individual, but their incentive to work is also greatly diminished. The importance they place on this basic measure of social value might not only be diminished, but negative- it's not something we're going to value in others, either.

Another example might be vanity. This one applies less to myself, but I know it's also common. A person who is indifferent to appearances will not put effort into their own appearance, nor value anyone else's. They might go through life being judged for how they look while judging others for caring about something perceived to be meaningless.

Autism is strongly correlated with social deficits, such as difficulty making small talk and other related conventions. So, even our personalities can be seen as lacking, while we might find those same social behaviors to be irritating, and worse than worthless. We may try to mask these differences, because this whole dynamic can make life so alienating and difficult, while on a deeper level, hating the prospect of being more like everyone else.

When such differences are framed as disability, that is a devaluation. This is why there's often controversy around framing autism as a disability. We do not bring to the table what others are looking for, and that they place importance on things we deem worthless can make them seem like idiots. We go through our lives struggling to find our way in a society clearly built by idiots. If we fail to connect with others who share our values, it can be a very lonely journey.

reeling

I'm not feeling super optimistic about the trajectory this recovery is taking. I was not at all aware of just how much of my psyche was being held together by this. I could always see everything that's wrong with it, and yet, feel I made the best possible choices given the reality I'm dealing with. I'm desperately trying to figure out how to make my life work; how to make my brain work.

What was the alternative, to be less ambitious, to lose interest in training all together and go back to doing nothing? Motivating myself has not been easy. I've had to develop so many strategies and hacks to overcome a rather profound deficit in my ability to do much of anything. Nothing is more motivating to me than an attractive woman.

The whole reason I left my apartment eight years ago was to embark on this quest for human connection, and this is how it plays out.

reciprocation

I used to hate people for not liking me. In driving myself to go out into the world to be around people all the time, I decided this was wrong. I look at myself from their perspective, taking all the reasons for their perspective into account. I understand, and can't hate them, because how they feel only makes sense, given their own lived experience, what they've been exposed to, and what they're entirely reasonable for caring about.

We're not supposed to like people who don't reciprocate. That isn't connection. It's a normative and natural defense of our egos to reciprocate negativity. If we don't do that, if we like people who think very little of us, we can start thinking very little of ourselves. Especially if we like them way too much. This is what I've been struggling with for the last eight years.

Why can't I be someone better appreciated by my peers? That most of my peers are half my age really compounds this problem, although I don't relate to people my own age any better. I don't know of any good ways to meet people my own age, so I don't know how much of a difference that would have made.

In order to become a more functional successful person, I allowed myself to lean into fantasy. I knew it was irrational, delusional even, but I let it carry me. I let myself be motivated by it. I let myself believe on a level I tried not to think too much about, that if I trained hard enough, I could become worthy. I could defy both aging and neurodivergence to find my way to a place in life where I might stand a chance of winning over a heart like hers.

Deep grooves form in the monotropic mind, as I allowed this fantasy to dominate my thinking for years. This winter has been really difficult. I wasn't consciously aware of why. The news itself was merely the confirmation of what I've feared since November. Something has been missing at the gym. Training hasn't been rewarding. I've been pushing myself to keep going, only to go home feeling sad, after every class. Now I know why and these painful thoughts flood the old obsessive grooves that riddle my mind.

I have nothing but the same old loneliness laid bare again, the protective layers of fantasy stripped away. I hate myself for being this way. I hate the world for making me like this. I hate everyone else for not understanding any of it.