The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Asperger's in The Real World

Hello everyone. I hope you are doing well. This is one of my more important posts, as you might have guessed from the title, because it concerns some of my most significant personal experiences in my life, and so I'd also like to warn you that I might be biased in favour of it's important as objectively speaking, it contains fewer ideas than my other posts, and focuses mainly on my worldview and experiences that I realized are after all not as normal and common as I used to think, and might be an interesting topic to talk about just for fun and also to spread awareness about what it's actually like to be an Aspie. New to this blog? Start here.

This is a part of a series in which I talk about my experiences as someone who's been diagnosed with high-functioning Autism or Asperger's syndrome; experiences that made me realize that I actually have it even before I was aware what it is or it's called autism, which is why I went to see a doctor. The other post is titled 'The Diary of an Autistic Kid'. The rough structure I follow in this post is that I'm going to start in a light note, then get to some interesting traits that would completely dispel any doubt you have related to it being a disorder or disability (abilities that gave me the inspiration to come up with the title, which is also a wordplay on and reference or allusion to a classic article that any mathematician or person interested in Education might recognize, or at least should recognize, and I will leave it for you as a simple exercise- see what I did there?- to find the article on your own as- hint- you'd find it as the first link on any search engine just by searching for the first few words of the title.) and come to some topics that show it's not all fun and games and there are a few minor inconveniences that could be seen as major disorders to be treated or minor discomfort or mildly annoying based on your mental strength and resilience, your worldview, way of framing, values, beliefs related to suffering and several other factors that boil down to personal preferences, which is why it's a spectrum and some people are okay with how they are while others aren't.

This person I was talking to studied at an institution abroad, as I'm myself planning to apply abroad this year, and I really don't want to get into explaining why I strongly dislike the current Indian education system, as not only have I devoted several whole posts to just the single topic, but I've also gone off-topic in my others posts on a rant about it, but I want you to understand that I'm not one to complain and not propose solutions, and I know ranting and complaining on it's own is futile, which is why I see it as expressing clearly the problem before I propose a solution that might be incorrect, but that people must be made aware of and that, by any means, ought to be solved because it concerns the well-being future generations, the students who would run the world in the very near future, and we can absolutely not take any risks or compromise on the quality of their education, the current state of which is in several ways woefully inadequate for its goals and pathetic.

So this person studied in an institution abroad, and one of the first things that I was pleasantly surprised to hear was how such universities don't care too much about grades or any one aspect and also aren't too competitive while maintaining a respectable and decent level of quality of education and student body. I like this because education must not be a competition to top on a flawed evaluation method like exams or whatever and get the highest paying job when the real goal of education ought to be to educate, teach students how to think, have fun while cultivating necessary critical thinking skills, ways to solve problems by working on real projects and understand concepts, and even though this is far from reality everywhere, some places at least have it better than others.

Here's an interesting part of our conversation: the person asked me if I would need any additional help or support due to my neurodivergence or autism. and inside my head I was like oh definitely not but when he started giving examples, I realized I had actually never even considered the fact that these difficulties I take for granted and as the normal way of doing things that can't be fixed and that I have to somehow cope with myself, could in fact be accounted for and that there exist such inclusive places in the world that actually go to great lengths to make you feel as comfortable and accommodated for any special needs you might have, and here after all these years of schooling I had started thinking that it isn't even a problem, when in fact it is and my life would have been much easier if my school had such systems in place, but it never even occurred to me because I didn't even know I had Autism, even started thinking something is wrong with me, let alone have the confidence to request systems that would make me feel more comfortable and others who might be in a similar situation as me. I'm now planning some projects to fix this starting with my alma mater and expanding to others places because it needs to get fixed and no student ought to go thought unnecessary and prevent age suffering just due to being different the way I did.

So I was (and still am) this awkward kid who was not so great at social situations, and even after trying hard to pretend liking what others like and be someone who I am not, and trying to fit in, I failed miserably because they always noticed I don't talk much and openly (popular nicknames: robot, AI, computer, Sheldon) so I have not given up pretending, and counterintuitively, ironically, to my pleasant surprise, since I have simply stopped caring about what others think and being more comfortable expressing my genuine self- no matter what anyone thinks, because I come off as an eccentric weirdo anyway, so better be strange and myself than strange and fake- I have also become better at being social and confident, and much less anxious than I was before, and so better with talking to people and I discovered that I actually like talking to and meeting new people when I am myself than when I try to conform and behave in a way that I think they would expect an average teen kid to behave, and I'm also happier than before and less..

People who mask know that fitting in takes a lot of mental energy and should not be taken lightly. However, I believe that in formal situations where you are meeting someone who is not a friend or acquaintance, and discussing a serious project in an office or corporate setting, it may be beneficial to pretend and mask, depending on the circumstance and the environment. This can involve using the right amount of eye contact and expressions. In the past, I used to think that this was being fake and manipulative, but I now realize that there is nothing wrong with selectively masking in situations where it comes more naturally to neurotypicals. It's only wrong if it's used for malicious intent or if it causes mental and emotional exhaustion.

Forming connections between people who work in domains that I don't wish to work in can benefit my other connections and myself. Introducing people to each other with the expectation that they would return the favor by connecting me with anyone who they think I might benefit from in terms of career, research, or industry can be mutually beneficial. I have realized that even if I have good credentials and great ideas, those who are born into privileged families and have connections will always have an advantage over me. By forming connections and introducing like-minded people, we can reduce the role of power and connections in society and create a more egalitarian society where merit plays a larger role in success.

Even though I always request people to be polite, sensitive and accommodating to others who might feel offended and myself go to great lengths to not say anything that might hurt the feelings of someone; a bit too much for my own good, which was probably one of the reasons I was not exactly a popular kid at school for doing stuff people considered "cool" and I considered impolite and rude.

It's confusing when light-hearted fun turns into bullying, and so I take care to speak according to the context and how well I know that person; though I have realized that my intuitive sense that allows me to usually sense a like-minded person just by interacting with them for a few seconds is a bit flawed and I might fall for seemingly healthy stereotypes- traits that usually go together without being harmful or discriminatory and help us make sense of the world by forming more accurate estimation and mental models of the people we meet based on first impression and limited information about them. I sort of started over-relying on it but forgot that it, just like every other intuitive thought, must be tested, and when it went wrong, as it sooner or later had to, I was made aware of it the hard way. Being abstract on purpose; not relevant to the present discussion.

So as I was saying, I take care and request others to be sensitive of individual differences and respect people's personal preferences when it's not causing any harm to others, simply unconventional and a different way of thinking or behaving. But I myself don't care in the slightest what others call me, and it's extremely hard to offend me. I believe that a person being rude or impolite or in any way driven by intense emotions such as anger is probably just high on neuroticism due to not fault of them, and I try to have empathy and be polite and compassionate even when the person is not, and I'm proud of my ability to- it's very uncharacteristic of me to be proud about any ability of mind due to my inferiority complex and belief in humility- stay calm and composed and try to understand and be polite to someone who might be saying things that are making me annoyed or hurting me in any way.

I am not just basing my perception of my abilities based on intuition, I have been in such situations, even though I talk very little, I believe that someone being angry or whatever is their own problem, not mine, and even though I try my best to be understanding and polite, if it get's too much I know very well that I am under no obligation to engage or let it affect my own mental or emotional health, it's simply not worth it, so I simply stay silent and remove myself from the situation, maybe even laugh at them internally and mock their irrationality if my intuitive emotional system-1 brain feels in any way stressed, as a healthy coping mechanism.

I generally go by the principle that I must never attribute malicious intent when stupidity is the more likely reason. If the person is simply foolish or ignorant, they probably won't be smart enough anyway to have any sort of evil intentions, especially if they're the sort of person whom is acting in a way that reminds me of and makes me apply such a principle to explain his behaviour and make sense of his though processes and intentions. Depending on the situation, I might even engage in self-deprecating humour, such as when someone calls me a robot or AI, I actually feel good because a robot is much more rational than humans, and people usually have a very narrow-minded and limiting anthropocentric view of robots that makes them see robots (or any life form that's not human) inferior to humans in some way, even though I know there is nothing special with humans, not even our exceptional "intelligence" or "self-awareness". (see my post Veganism)

talk about meds and how you rejected from reddit and black np and asd doc and ted talk

If you're fine with how you are, and you don't think that there is anything that's bothering you to an extent that makes you feel like you need to be treated for it, then you absolutely do not need to take any medicines to "cure" yourself just in order to conform to some neurotypical individual's preconceived notion of what an average normal person is supposed to act like, as they've been conditioned by society and the prevalent norms set by the majority that no one questions simply because they don't need to and it comes naturally to them; they are able to act normally, have the same beliefs, don't know it could be done any other way and that the alternative ways of behaving and thinking are just as "correct" as theirs, and that they need to be more inclusive and accommodating of neurodivergent people who go to great lengths to mask their condition and end up suffering from great mental stress and agony.

They are made to feel uncomfortable just because no one tries to understand them and they are gaslit to believe that something is wrong with them and they'd be mocked and ostracized if they don't pretend and try to hide their condition in front of others, even though they are unique with different strengths in domains that others are lacking in, but instead of being themselves and harnessing their strengths, they are made to feel less confident in themselves which leads to them suffering.

I think I'm in a unique position because I happen to be gifted with cognitive empathy, very high levels of motivation and an obsessive interest in topics such as psychopathology and abnormal psychology, and at least an above average linguistic ability and a strong desire to help everyone and create a better society, with the ability to take initiative and power to overcome all my inferiority complex and social anxiety issues, and also happen to be inclined in a way that my core values happen to include open-mindedness, kindness, compassion and love for every sentient being on the planet.

This is I feel I'm in a unique position to do this and so I must, and I'm not saying that I'm the only one to do this, but unfortunately I've met so few that as much as I'm trying to run away from such a conclusion, I can not, which is why the posts and now also thinking of reaching to a wider audience through more media.

I'd love to meet like-minded people with similar goals or values, but it's hard, so I'm writing so that I can increase the probability of me finding such people, and make people who don't currently know understand why it is important. I had definitely considered just not caring and living in the shadows, as I always have, both literally and metaphorically (oversensitivity to lights, and being inconspicuous, having very few friends and being effectively socially isolated now.) but for the reasons I mentioned above, I think it's by responsibility to do so, and I'm going to try my best, because fortunately I happen to derive a sense of satisfaction and pleasure from taking on ambitious projects, and these are topics that are not just aligned with my values but that I also happen to enjoy and be somewhat good at.

I myself had started doubting my own sanity and thinking I'm wrong and everyone is right and something is seriously wrong with me, but now I know I'm just different, and I want others who might be in a similar position to understand that being different is perfectly fine, and in a sense an ability and strength they must learn to harness and channel in the right manner to maximize their potential to do what they like and they're good at while also helping others. I have been through it and everything makes sense now, my past behaviour and personal experiences.

And I can see how it could be very discouraging and demotivating for someone who happens to be inclined in a way to have lower mental or emotional resilience or limits, and society plays it's role in pushing the limits to it's breaking point very well even for those who know they have autism, or are neurodivergent, or queer for that matter, let alone those who themselves don't know that there is nothing wrong with them and hence happen to be at greater risk of getting gaslit by society and go through a lot of mental agony.

I believe that having such an ability and such ideas, it's my responsibility to make everyone who is willing to listen aware of such ideas, and obviously not impose it on them, but at least make them aware of the possibilities and engage in an open discussion so I can be pointed out my mistakes and improve myself in the process; trying to improve my ideas such that they could be implemented to make the real world a better place, and trying to be a better human being myself and everyone who decides to join me on this journey.

As I mentioned earlier, I have given up games, movies, shows, but there is another thing I excluded because then it would get too off-topic, but lately I've also grown very restless and unsatisfied with just this.. I still feel like I am wasting time, can't sleep peacefully and feel terrible if I devote any time to anything related to self-care such as getting adequate sleep or exercise, things I used to prioritize over everything else not too long ago. I have good reasons for this, and my parents are understandably very annoyed, but I believe that I'm not being irrational by doing so.

I have realized that just like people say they believe 'empathy', 'kindness' and 'compassion' and then act in ways that contradict their own core values without facing any cognitive dissonance, and more importantly compel them to behave in ways that causes preventable suffering to them and those around them, results in unnecessary harm to sentient beings. Similarly, I just realized that even if people 'get' my ideas, I probably need to make very clear and state explicitly all the implications not leaving anything out- as I usually do while talking in abstractions- and I need to give some specific concrete examples from real-life so they can relate to it, which I'm planning to do now, because I was thinking that just understanding would do, but realized that someone who doesn't already know about it won't be satisfied or realize the importance of these ideas even if they understand but don't reflect on the societal implications or how it applies to their own real life and observations of daily events (something that mathematicians or philosophers would be good at because they deal with extracting general abstract principles out of specific cases, and applying the same abstract principles to novel situations; it's how your brain is trained after you train yourself in mathematics or philosophy, and if you are such a person perhaps you could send me a message and help me out because I'm myself on a gap year after school, so I could take use some skills of a mathematician or philosopher.)

I need to do this because some people might think I'm talking in too complicated language and words just to sound clever so dismiss my ideas without even reflecting on them for a second, and I want people to focus on my ideas rather than nonsensical distractions like that; I take care or being aware of so many nonverbal communication and influence tactics when other people employ such tactics to take advantage of biases gullible people with no training in logic and fallacies are susceptible to, so I myself can't possible fall for the ambiguity inherent to natural language itself, no natural language, of all things; that's simply unacceptable.

The point is the people might overlook great insightful ideas just because of the confusing vocabulary, which I'm trying to explain in as simple language as possible, also thinking of maybe bringing in ChatGPT to make it simpler but I'm keeping it authentic to myself and my own language skills right now, and I don't want them to miss out on ideas that could help them live a better life due sounding like I'm talking and needlessly overcomplicating simple stuff more than required by making it sound much more complex and profound (Jordan Peterson, anyone?

I have quite a few things to say about him, because he does seem to complicate stuff needlessly but he has some really interesting ideas, irrespective of his stance on queer community which I haven't looked too deeply into, and his actions do seem to point towards malice but I won't jump to conclusions because it could simply be ignorance, though he is no fool and there are some good ideas in a few lectures I have watched. I'd just leave a saying that sums up my opinion until I go into detail in the near future if anyone happens to be interested: Even a broken clock is right twice a day. And before anyone attacks me for me being homophobic, please do me a favour and read my post 'Courage' and keep in mind I have several good friends who happen to be queer.)

(I'm not trying to sound clever; I believe in using the simples words when possible- why use many words when few do job?- but some ideas simply can't be explained in simply words from common vocabulary without oversimplifying and significant information loss, which I don't wish to do and strongly dislike when most science communicators not just oversimplify but also use sensationalist clickbait headlines and content cause they're paid to capture and maintain your attention rather than educate and explain which leads to them getting paid but spreads misinformation, fake news, and mistrust of science among the general public who reads ridiculous oversimplified versions of scientific papers in reputed journals and understandably infers that science is nonsense, not because it is but because they don't have the time and expertise to read the original papers from the journals, which is why I like it when serious academics directly involved in the research themselves try to reach out to the public to dispel myths and misconceptions and educate.)

I must make the connection between not just how society influences your choices and decisions, down to personal preferences, but also how credentials such as the degree, the piece of paper and the marks that are supposed to be a reliable indicator of ability, potential and success, which it's not but everyone is conditioned to believe it is and attach their ego and self-worth that leads to them compromising their mental health and deluding those who get an unrealistic perception of their self-ability by forming judgments based on these 'objective' tests which are very ineffective and even counterproductive to the very goals they were established for, just like several contemporary social institutions. (More on the education system in 'Confessions')

It's sad how people live how society wants them to live, and end up living their whole lives in suffering not doing what would bring them fulfilment. In my posts 'Schopenhauer' and 'This Spoke Zarathustra' I talk about one essential idea at different levels. I give a brief summary in the next section of this post.

(More in my posts on Asperger's and here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dhruve-dahiya-045327234_youtube-neurodiversity-activity-7038095952754225153-2I2S?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop)

It's also consistent with my current project, the Youth Research Convention, which aims to promote that mindset that age and credentials should be no bar for motivated students with adequate theoretical knowledge even if they are underprivileged or don't have access to research facilities (More on my LinkedIn CV, but this is just one of many, and all my projects are in one way or another related to my core values, beliefs, personal experiences, research interests, future goals and ambitions, which are interconnected with each other and intertwined in several ways I might describe in a future post, or maybe not, cause I'm not applying for a job or university, but if anyone is interested I'd be happy to.)

So while topics like how qualia emerged out of lifeless matter and how morals, values and even time are superficial social and neuroscientific constructs with no basis in objective reality, and trust-based experiments from game theory connected to political philosophy with real-world implications also keep me up at night, it's not that which is driving me almost crazy and compelling me to neglect other directions. It's like something I read a few years ago about how some adolescents my age (19) are more likely to either do work that wins the Nobel or get themselves killed, and I thought such things could be prevented by training in rationality and logic, as I have myself- my brain not yet being emotionally mature- learned to figure out how my cognitive faculties work and direct my abilities to maximize the probability of my achieving my desired goals without falling for irrational behaviour based on blind faith in intuition or emotional affect it happens to generate in my brain (more on this towards the end of this post.)

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One of the more dangerous and powerful of the cognitive biases I mentioned in the last section being rationalizations based on intuitive preferences and subconscious desires which enables my brain to come up with logical reasons for.. anything. It's too dangerous and I'm glad I was able to control it by being more mindful of my thought processes, and coming up with some meta-cognitive strategies such as asking myself a few questions, so I can harness it to use it as a tool rather than have it lead me to irrational behaviour.

It's the same process that kids might unknowingly use to convince their parents that they want chocolate favour candy even though it's more expensive, and also that led to people like the Unabomber and Hitler the do stuff they are today known for, and the reason even today serial killers and sexual predators are able to justify their actions so they are able to avoid cognitive dissonance and feel good about themselves. (I have scientific evidence and refer to research papers in the following posts just so you know I'm not making this up) See my post 'Objective is Subjective' and 'Confessions' if you're interested.

Here's a paragraph from the last section:

It's sad how people live how society wants them to live, and end up living their whole lives in suffering not doing what would bring them fulfilment. In my posts 'Schopenhauer' and 'This Spoke Zarathustra' I talk about one essential idea at different levels. I give a brief summary in the next section of this post.

Here's a (not so) brief summary (I promise I have tried to keep it brief while minimizing information loss):

make very clear in brief: First level is similar to Rawl's Veil of Ignorance where you imagine you were to be born by blind luck or random chance in any part of the world, any society, any genes and family and environment, and if you'd be okay with being born anywhere. If you're not, it's not an ideal society, because if you happen to be at a relative disadvantage for no reason other than the privilege of being fortunate enough to be born in a place with genes and environment that might not just result in different genes that result in personal traits and cognitive abilities, but also give you some disease or disorder that would make you suffer, while other more fortunate people enjoy life more than the others. This is my idea about helping people less fortunate than you, because they are made to needlessly suffer, suffering that is completely unnecessary and preventable yet no one seems to care.

The idea is that everyone deserves to be understood and loved, and compassion; Irrespective of your opinion on them, which says less about them and more about your own brain, superficial social constructs and their actions: words such as dumb, foolish, stupid, gullible, evil, bad, wrong, it's all subjective value judgments and meaningless words with no basis in objective reality if it even exists, and the only thing that matters is that they need to be helped because they did not choose to be born, and be born with those genes and family environment which is often traumatic and if which you knew you'd have more empathy and compassion for them.

Similar experiment: Carl Jung's Shadow Theory, and if after reading it you think you could never do anything evil like Hitler or Bundy or people who commit crimes, then text me and I'll show you how you're probably wrong, if you care enough to engage in a discussion to get your beliefs closer to truth, but as always I'd like to be proven wrong, and it's just the fact that no one has been able to do so until now which makes me confident in my belief (while still being open-minded and rational, practicing scientific skepticism) which is not being irrational, just recalibrating my beliefs to be in line with what evidence indicates is closer to reality, such that you'd require stronger logical arguments or empirical evidence to change my mind; and it'd help to ask yourself if your argument might already be considered by me- even though I might not be as intelligent as you, I do think deeply about such things- and if I already have some good reason to reject it, and what it could be, and we could have a more productive and fruitful discussion that way. (It's also a useful life lesson I learned: always assume the person you're talking to is at least as intelligent as you are and has some insightful lessons that you could learn from if you try to closely listen and understand.)

The next level is allowing the individual to live rationally according to their values and morals, which they discover through experimentation and exploration. Armchair theorizing won't get you too far, and you need to try stuff to see what you like and what your true values are, because we are bad at predicting the emotional affect we might feel at a future point of time (see Dan Gilbert's research on Affective Forecasting). You find what your genes and early environment has predisposed you to towards feeling fulfilled for, not hedonic but eudaimonic pleasure; process not goals; journey not destination; intrinsic not extrinsic motivation through you do need some meaning or overarching goal that outlasts intrinsic motivation. You do try to improve yourself and be flexible enough to face discomfort when it's worth the expected utility keeping in mind opportunity costs, but you don't push yourself to go against your natural inclinations, not taking in mind genes, but primarily environmental and social factors; I am not elaborating because I don't want to rewrite all of the ideas I've already described in the posts 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' and 'Schopenhauer'.

Next level is creating a society that is accommodating of individual preferences and desires; live and let live, more in my post 'Schopenhauer'. And the last level, the eventual ambition, the goal is to control and directly manipulate these factors to achieve desirable outcomes. Uncover the mystery of the 'self' and see if there is a self-independent of all genes, societal influence, neuroscientific constructs, and if it is then what it is. And if (I think this is the more likely outcome) it's not then what are the societal implications in terms of determinism and all social structures including education and law, and how we could (and if we should) directly manipulate them to create a better society and individuals who live a fulfilling life, with personality traits, cognitive abilities, morals, values, inclinations in accordance with a peaceful and accommodating society such that they can self-actualize, but more importantly, and this is the single most important goal for now: eradicating all unnecessary suffering in all it's forms for all sentient beings.

Before ending, just so I'm not lying by omission (though I can rationalize this, logical reasons ready, which is why it's harder for such people to follow values and morals which you create yourself and which could be interpreted in any way; and also the reason young kids with above-average ability who are inclined in a certain way probably shouldn't read Nietzsche too early; see my post about the Unabomber, and 'Confessions'.) because honesty is one of the virtues I greatly admire in others and desire to cultivate in myself, I'll include the fact that I'm not just so obsessed with these topics, writing and reading such ideas, just for the sake of it, it's fun, or even because it's related to sentient beings suffering, though that's the primary one.

One other big reason is that it's a very effective distraction and method of escape from reality, as you'd realize if you read my Schopenhauer posts. Not just society, but the universe and reality, and my recent realization that it's just my genes and upbringing that I was born as this person with such values, and I could have been born in a third-word country to poor parents with an incurable genetic disease, or any of the other possibilities.

And this is a relatively small one, I have other such fears that people are usually not afraid of, and it's also not simple enough for me to label it as a phobia. (The fear of being sentient entity with a seemingly intangible in form with an internal subjective state that is doomed to suffer for eternity no means to communicate it's plight, or the fear of losing my brain's current levels of proficiency to make sense of symbols and frequencies by associating it with mental representations of the object in the real world and enjoy making new connections between previously acquired pieces of information , or the fear of a self, free from all external influence that harbours free will independent of both deterministic and random forces, representing a pure expression of individual autonomy? Anyone who shares my fears here?)

And so I distract myself and writing is a great escape, and it just happens that my escapism and distraction also happens to be a very powerful tools to not just solve the very problems I'm afraid of and that I feel like running from, but that could also help others who might be in a similar situations; this is important because if it was just about me and my selfish desires, well, it's uncertain if I'd even exist or at least have the motivation and ability to be not just thinking but expressing my thoughts here and elsewhere, so it's just like Victor Frankl's Logotherapy as he describes in his classic Man's Search for Meaning.

Another distraction that I can't continue without mentioning because it's one of the very few things that have survived the scrutiny of my logical mind and come out with no change in the positive emotions or pleasure it provides me. I love it. Sometimes, I cry, shiver, and get goosebumps. I display little emotions and remain stoic, but I realize its importance. However, it is hard to make me cry or laugh for that matter, and I just simply have an intuitive dislike towards emotions that's nothing more than a personal preference.

Good music, especially certain piano pieces, sometimes make me feel like laughing like a maniac or experiencing euphoria or overwhelming emotions that make me cry, it gets me teary eyed. I get chills down my spine, frissons, the feeling of not just intense pleasure but contentment and unity with all sentient beings; stuff I've read people sometimes experience with psychedelics though I've never tried them so I can't say if it's similar.

Classical music and even certain pop songs change the mood and atmosphere, the vibes, my whole perception of reality however depressed or hopeless everything seems, be it the irrationality of humans, suffering beings, whatever, it gives me hope; and anything depressed or bright lights or noisy kids, it all melts away. I enter a state of flow, and I'm in another realm, much more pure and fulfilling. It's hopeful, and everything is going to be fine. It is hard to describe in words, but that's kind of an approximation of how I feel.

Not necessarily piano, violin and guitar are also good. But I hate rock and metal, and any noisy overwhelming songs for that matter. I enjoy classical and pop. It's like when I am forced to attend family functions (I do enjoy being present at a moment when a close family member survives another solar revolution or enters a social contract with called 'marriage' but not-) and everyone seems to be having so much fun dancing at loud noisy music seem to not just be not bothered by the music but having lots of fun. (Indian Hindi party songs and Punjabi songs are as loud and noisy as rock and metal, though some of them are good, just like some rock and pop that I also find acceptable at slower sounds or acoustic versions, pitch-reverb or fingerstyle or the like.)

While I'm standing in a corner as far away as possible from the loudspeakers wearing earplugs or headphones (would also calculate mathematically the furthest position and not rely on intuition if I'm not already fighting a battle and struggling to survive, my mind disoriented) and happy that everyone is having fun but myself wondering why there can't be a party where there's classical or instrumental music and a more peaceful environment instead of humans getting drunk and letting lose to music that is blasting in the air causing so much noise pollution that also affects other beings.. there was even a BBC news article about the most endangered sound being.. the lack of sound, also called silence, and I might create a post about that if I get the time; already gone wildly off-topic.

As I said in the earlier section, I'm of the age when you are most likely to get killed or do prize-winning work, and I don't care about either death (literally nothingness, nothing to be afraid of, just curious what it feels like and how not having a brain to interpret reality would feel like but there would be no senses to feel so probably just like sleeping, but I'm in no hurry.) or the Nobel (there's studies that show how an external locus of control and external validation are the most effective methods to kill your motivation or passion for any activity, which is why I'm planning to find out if stuff like publish or perish and scientific awards is the reason scientists are less productive in their later years- if it's not been already studied.)

What I know is that what the quote tried to convey is true, and I'm aware that my brain won't be fully emotionally mature by around 21, but I know this so I'm taking a calculated risk- which means I'm aware of the consequences and accept the potential worst case scenario keeping in mind all associated opportunity costs and other stuff, so I'm not ignorant and making a foolish decision, but- and here's an interesting question from neuroethics that I came up with- if a person takes a calculated risk, is he responsible for the harm that takes place later or the suffering the he has to go through because of his decisions?

Think about it, and please keep in mind that if the answer was something very obvious, I'm at least not so stupid to not have considered it and asked you such a question. So consider that the answer that jumped to your mind is something that occurred to me too- yes, I'm probably intelligent enough, but I'd be happy to hear from you if it's something different- coming to the solution and why it's a tough problem and why my solution is an unpopular and unconventional one.

I believe that the person is not as responsible as we might think, and regardless of responsibility, he deserves to be helped as much as someone who was not aware of the consequences. I'm saying this because even though he might appear to be smarter and hence more responsible for this actions, we need to keep in mind the psychological process of rationalization and remember that the person had certain genes and influence of early environment that predisposed him to be more likely to fall for such behaviour than the average person who doesn't; and hence he shouldn't be punished for something that was not under his control and puts him at a relative disadvantage in comparison to others. (See post 'Objective is Subjective' and 'Courage' for similar topics.)

In case anyone wondering if while relaxing listening to music you should not think and let music play in background or focus on music but expend mental energy in the process and thinking what action you maximize your probability of deriving maximum pleasure or expected utility, I'll save you precious time and effort and give you the solution here: Focus on the music, and same goes for every task you're doing, be it pleasurable or not, and I'm not in the mood to elaborate and my brain is not braining right now but it has to do with some psychological experiments and scientific evidence on the meaning-happiness trade-off which by the way has some logical flaws in reasoning and methodology but in brief, you focus on the present, be it something nice or something you don't like doing, and you would be happier focusing on it than trying to escape in your mind through thoughts and daydreaming and imagination; trust me because I'm one of those daydreamers with a very active and vivid imagination and mind's eye (probably not hyperphantasia though) and I've tried it and I know it's true.

Also, if you have read how I described how I feel about music.. I just experienced something else now.. It's a piano piece and I don't want to lose it so I'm writing it down.. it's so strange and comforting yet I indescribable, my language skills are failing my even though I'm able to convey relatively complex ideas, such subjective feelings and emotions completely escape my grasp.. while listening to the piano playing with my eyes closed, I got teary-eyed again and felt like letting lose and crying, and it's not even like the tears of joy because there was some sadness in it.. that's interesting because I usually felt love for all beings and connected with the universe, how absurd the universe is and how all this stuff allows us to experience all these subjective mental states and feelings and emotions that guide our logical brain, and how logic is so arbitrary and subjective and I can just..

do stuff I won't elaborate on here but I know I can do it and it would change everything you consider the real 'you' and your 'self' and with enough intelligence and training in logic and rationality, you can justify absolutely anything based on your subconscious desires and intuitive preferences which is why I said emotions and feelings guide logic, and this is coming from someone who has a personal preference and bias against emotions; I strongly dislike emotions despite realizing their function, and I try to control my emotions with my logic and as you know logic is perhaps higher than most of my values, except maybe kindness, compassion and empathy, which I have to keep at the same level to keep my actions and morality under check, though it's still not as strong as logic, and the funny thing is I'm using logic to explain this but still my preference for logic is intuitive and based on the emotional affect that being logical produces in me.. that's the simple version, but it's much more complicated..-

Coming back to that feeling that I experienced while listening to piano music, this time is was different because as I said it wasn't just euphoria and a sense of great joy, but there was sadness that reminded me of the times, the bad days, in the not too distant past when I used to experience soul-crushing loneliness and burst into tears and suffered a lot with no one to share, forget physical cause I'm still physically isolated for three years, continuous streak of four consecutive months now, I didn't even have anyone online at that time, though now I have a few people I text sometimes.. but this was different as I'm not that lonely now- or rather, I have learned to control and master my loneliness with my logic.

(I can now think of it as a complicated interaction of certain complex intertwined neural processes and environmental factors, also empathy and determinism, with some random chance, and now with some language skills and logic I cannot just control my own emotions and override them with logic, but also control my own values and morals, including my internal sense of morality and moral compass, and yes that includes ethics, yet my morals only differ from ethics in the sense that my moral criteria is do no harm and help those less fortunate than me who suffer due to being at a relative disadvantage due to accident of birth, blind luck or random change) and some highly effective coping mechanisms that act as distractions (might sound like escapism but believe me, it's this funny situation where my escape is trying to figure out the external factors- genes, brain, society- exactly that's causing this thing and also help others in the process, so it's not your average simple coping mechanism or escapism)-

Which is the reason this sudden feeling surprised me- not just the element that gave me negative nostalgia (Does such a term exist? such a thing is called mental trauma and PTSD, I guess, but that's too intense and mine was less extreme though I'm not sure cause it was still a lot and still suffering after-effects of it so it'll do for now.) but also moral antirealism, my realization (or rather predisposition to believe and find convincing and compelling) that there are no objective morals and values in objective reality in the external observable events in the universe, and the fact that possibly sentient beings are suffering and it's making me go crazy cause I co-exist with them and no one seems to care and I can't enjoy life without helping them and I need to solve this now... a sort of pessimism and cynic misanthropic feeling yet not exactly (remember I'm listening to piano, the oneness with the world and love for all beings?) so it was also like I like it-

I'm not suffering and I'm not a masochist but I have this feelings that it's a bit uncomfortable yet the right thing to do to love every being on this planet, and I want to capture this feeling which I'm attempting to describe using my limited vocabulary and language skills (English isn't my native language and I don't have any English-speaking family or friends in real life) but I'm trying my best, and there is this hopelessness and despair that I should give up and yet simultaneously somehow the feeling that I'm being too pessimistic and underestimating my ability to bring about a radical reform (suits me because I'm full of contradictions; I do stand by my values and morals, yet I am always able to keep several contradictory ideas in my head and evaluate them with cold logic at the same time without attaching my ego or getting emotionally attached to any one, however convincing it sounds or however strong emotional affect it produces because now I'm even aware of when my intuitive preferences and subconscious desires try to rationalize and influence my logic; I'll never let anyone or anything influence my logic and reason, not even my brain, and I'm only playing the game till I figure out the brain, genes and environment that influence all of this.. cause harm and irrational behaviour.)-

But at the same time I feel like.. having someone who can understand me and who I can be myself with and just vent and cry as much as I want to- this is weird and strange because as I said I strongly dislike a display of excessive emotions, especially in front of others, and this might have to do with the fact that society conditions men to believe they can't display any weakness, but I can assure you that- as you might already know by reading my posts- I am trying my best to get rid of every harmful social norm and construct and free myself of all social conditioning and influence that causes irrational behaviour that harms others and that makes me uncomfortable (This is true for everyone- family, friends, society- you live according to your inclinations and values, which you discover through exploration and experimentation, and if force you to conform more than you feel comfortable doing and you are compromising your own mental health and suffering due to it, then you must not, no matter what, because your mental health ought to be prioritized above anything else- and despite my open-mindedness I strongly believe in this because I have good logical reasons and evidence to, and if you wish to change my mind and convince me that you must sacrifice your own mental health for the sake of someone else, you need to give me stronger logical reasons and evidence to the contrary; though I myself can somehow rationalize this as my close friends could be exceptions to this rule, and I go to great lengths to prioritize their happiness over my own, but then again not everyone is capable of being my 'friend', let alone my 'close friend', so we could just keep in mind the exception and disregard this anomaly and exception to the rule for now.)-

And so I feel happy but kind of happy-sad, and this is different from the happy-indifferent-absurdist feeling because now it's all that plus also the absence of values, some metaphysics, loneliness, and resolve to help people who suffer and change the society if required to achieve my goals, and now it's in some ways even better because this feelings and this experience just kind of captured my complex motive to voice my unconventional ideas and unpopular opinions and novel and radical ideas even though they are logical and aligned with the scientific method and my values kindness and compassion, I know I have the confidence and courage to do this without being afraid of judgment because I can't bear living in a world where people are so stupid (Not everyone, most people, and it's not their fault, as I can understand and I have that much empathy but I need it to change NOW)-

that they only help a victim of a crime post hoc and mindlessly foolishly ostracise the criminals by blindly following their emotions and intuition (like blind faith in ideological dogma or belief in an irrational closed-minded cult) and not even thinking for a moment that if they can help the criminal too, prevent the crime from happening in the first place, and instead of doing that they do stuff that makes it even more likely it happens again and unknowingly unintentionally (I hope) play a part in it and share the responsibility of whatever happens in the future to another such person (be it serial killers, sexual predators, or any other crime) and that they are in some ways even more 'evil' than the person they're ostracizing by being a very effective instrument and it's all negative-sum bad for everyone overall and I can so clearly see how it could be made positive-sum everyone happy no one suffers...

Anyway, coming back to that feeling, I don't think I did it justice but I'd be remiss if I didn't say how I exceeded my own expectations and once again underestimated by ability to use language to capture it, and so I'm satisfied by my description that could allow a general reader who is not me to get the general impression or gist, but I still think it could be much better, perhaps using logic or mathematics or even direct brain-to-brain communication.

(I've been told that Musk is doing nothing innovative with Neuralink, but even if that's true, I like the problem he's trying to solve, the concept, the idea, the ambition, regardless of the viability and practicality and feasibility of his methods and whatever he does, failure or success, the ideas and the problems the company seems to believe in according to it's public image, that's something I'm going to make real, make it reality, in the very near future, to help those who are suffering from fascinating and mysterious psychiatric disorders, including those who are compelled to act irrationally and commit crimes and seen as 'evil' instead of mentally ill, who can be treated, including those who they harm, though I believe it can be prevented through early detection, cure, prevention, rehabilitation, no punishment involved. I know how it can be done, and I can't wait to start my experiments and research projects once I get the adequate facilities, support and platform.

It's kind of like how mentally ill people were seen as possessed by spirits or burned as witches or something, and now we need a similar reform now because the time is right, the evidence is there, the logic is there, and I have the motivation to do so, though believe me you have no idea how much I'd love to find a similar like-minded person with similar goals, but unfortunately I still haven't and have estimated the probability of such an event occurring to be exceedingly unlikely or highly improbable, which is why I'm doing this myself, taking initiative..

Because I have no idea who else will, and I can't withstand the risk of beings suffering for any long who would not- or at least suffer less- if I act. Includes a lot of disciplines, so I'm glad I like learning and reading widely and attracted to the idea of polymathy, finding hidden connections between seemingly unrelated fields and finding analogous events and problems in different disciplines not just to explain complex concepts in a simple manner but also solve the hard problems using not just analogies but also tools and techniques and methods from every field..)

Coming back to that feeling- this elusive incomprehensible sublime state of existence that baffles me and you want it to stay but it has to go and I try to express it in words but fail which is one of the reasons I find the brain so fascinating and my idea of what is possible is more than most people think- I might sound pessimistic at times but let me tell you that nothing is possible, absolutely nothing and I mean it and you send me a message if you have doubts or think something is impossible and I promise to give you convincing sound logical reasons and empirical scientific evidence.

~~~~~~

Being of legal age, it is the doctor’s responsibility and duty to explain very clearly what he aims to achieve through the medication he has prescribed and all the potential side effects, as well as ask me if I consent to be treated for whatever he is treating; if I personally am willing to take the risk and willing to take medications that could change aspects of my personality that I could be perfectly fine with.

I asked on Reddit if anyone else received any medications when they were diagnosed. Everyone on the Asperger’s subreddit told me that there is no medication for autism, and that if I am fine with who I am and willing to accept my current self and not going through or willing to be treated for anything that’s causing me excessive suffering, then I must tread cautiously and not start the medications before I’m absolutely sure of the consequences and possible outcomes, and that usually therapy is better.

I myself thought that behavioural and psychological tools would be better, but the doctor seems to not even try to convince me and explain what the medications are for, and using ambiguous terms that could mean literally anything according to your interpretation.

When I asked him detailed specific questions, he replied with very few short lines that really don’t mean anything, and terms like “emotional awareness” and “neurotic tendencies” are not precise medical terms and he could have been clearer, plus I don’t even suffer from anything like anxiety or depression, yet he has prescribed me some antidepressants with strong side-effects, along with some natural supplements.

Most of the medications have low side effects, but if you know me you’d also know that I like to over-analyze everything with logic and reason and questioning everything and not doing something or adopting any belief before I completely understand it and know why I am doing what I am doing or why I believe in what I believe in. I like being a critical thinker and not taking anything for granted, however seemingly insignificant.

And that’s just for fun. This one is serious, to put it very mildly, to say the very least. I won’t go into details here, but I’d say that it concerns my life and death, and the worst-case scenario involves me almost certainly committing suicide, so I can never be too cautious or overthink about such an important decision, as you would probably understand now.

I am afraid that if I lose my cognitive faculties once again, and revert back to that dreadful state when I was even unable to comprehend simple words and letters and it took minutes before I was able to comprehend a single sentence, it was like brain fog on steroids, and I could never even in my wildest of imaginations hope at that time that in the near future I’d not only be able to comprehend, but play with much more sophisticated and complex ideas.

And form new connections between concepts I’ve learned and my own personal experiences, have the ability to extract abstract general principles from specific instances, and play with stimulating philosophical ideas and also express them in clear language using an extensive vocabulary and linguistic skills that I’m frequently commended on by others. I don’t wish to go back to that state, it’d be like a nightmare.

Then there’s the messed-up problem related to the social institution that’s medicine: my mother, even though she is even more confused than me, which is understandable, she correctly pointed out that even if I get a second opinion, no doctor would agree with this once, because they have ego-related issues and won’t put them at the same level of expertise as them, and try to attract me to them and seek treatment from them. Then there’s the fact that the medications prescribed by the doc could be a result of some sort of financial incentive that the pharmaceutical company provides him, and that even if the risks are low, I might not require them at all yet he’s just looking to gain some quick profit from this.

Of course, he could have my best interests in mind and try to improve me in ways I don’t even realize I am lacking in, but I feel like for me currently the worst-case scenario is much worse than any potential upsides, and so the opportunity cost is too high to take any risk at this moment, despite my considerable risk-taking ability.

It would also be so hilarious, dramatic and tragic if I were to know all this, ask so many people and gather so much evidence against taking the medications, and later suffer from the worst case scenario, just because despite knowing everything and being well-informed and still taking a foolish uncalculated risk, despite making all the necessary calculations to the best of my ability.

In some ways that’d be even worse than if I had not made all these calculations and blindly followed the advice of doc, because at least in that case if something undesirable happens I could have said that I trusted doc, though the possibly irreversible damage would already have been done, and that would also definitely not excuse me from not doing my due diligence and cultivating critical thinking skills to avoid such situations.

I have to solve this ego problem, and also the problem of skewed incentives in medical field, because of all fields this is one that we as a society absolutely cannot take any chances at and compromise on in any way. We don’t need irrational human biases and corruption in such a field, playing with people’s lives and suffering.

Plus there’s the fact that I’m being more at peace with myself lately. I dislike being with other people too much, but I really enjoy talking to like-minded people, and I’m one of the most extroverted people on the planet when I come across people with similar values or if anyone is willing to listen to me and try to understand the topics, I’m passionate about.

Another very interesting thing that I’m glad I noticed- thanks to my habit of trying to learn from every personal experience, especially the ones that cause me distress and suffering, and extract lessons from them- my mom was so frustrated and the presence of a very intense tension could be felt in the air.

So I was confused and under great mental stress, and my mom perhaps even more, but here’s the interesting thing: our coping mechanisms were complete polar opposites. She got really angry and threw the vegetables she was going to cook and went and lied down on the bed, while I was grinning and chuckling like a maniac.

Okay, to be fair, she has blood pressure problems, and I am a bit insane, or let’s say neurodivergent, though others would call me insane, even though I am very low on the suffering side and high on the gifted side, so I like most of the traits that make me different, and in the coming days I’m going to talk more about some of those things that could be beneficial for everyone, especially neurotypicals, by of course always being as logical, rational and open-minded as I can.

Coming back to the incident, I was not laughing cause I was numb and was trying to suppress it, not at all, it was much more healthy and positive than that. What I did was reframe the situation, and this is how you can employ psychological and behaviour tools to be less neurotic and be more calm.

I thought that it’s just another learning experience, it would teach me more about myself and help me make better decisions in the future, and it’d also make an interesting story to tell in the near future to others who might be in a similar situation or just for fun, also a unique personal experience in a field that I wish to work in in the future, plus a unique personal experience to use in my upcoming college applications!

That’s because I doubt that anyone else would have such a unique and interesting story like mine, and so I could just use my linguistic ability to write about it in a way that captures my experiences and expresses my thoughts and feelings as closely and captivatingly as possible, and weave it all into a coherent narrative connecting my personal experiences, core values, interests, extracurriculars, beliefs, ambitions and plans for the future.

I actually think that the admissions process is a bit biased towards people who are good at language and able to make an easy accomplishment sound like something that is the greatest thing someone has ever did in the history of human civilization, if they have the ability to do so, but I discuss this elsewhere.

So this is how you leverage your suffering to find the silver lining, and such as in this situation, you might realize that you were just looking at it the wrong way, and it actually has much more upsides than downsides.

Last, but definitely not the least, I expressed gratitude for not being so gullible or prone to irrationality that I blindly follow the doctor’s advice and that my logical reasoning and critical thinking skills are developed at least enough to question a person in a position of authority and be skeptical of all claims that concern me and my health by trying to find logical reasons and scientific evidence behind everything before making any important and potentially life-changing decision.

This is important for all neurodivergent people because you should not get ‘treated’ if you don’t feel like you wish to get ‘treated’, especially if other Aspies are advising you against it, and it’s best to get a second and even third opinion if required.

It's nice that I’ve learned not to take things too seriously and mock the absurdity and laugh at the hilarity of the way humans behave and the societal systems they have created, because I can now clearly see that nothing would matter in the long run, and I have personally decided that I’m going to reframe everything to find the silver lining in it and laugh at humans and the events by objectively looking at it as a scientific chain of cause-and-effect that people add in subjective value judgments to and it’s hilarious.

After this incident, I was also reminded of something that I’ve been thinking for quite a while now that if we could somehow make everybody less neurotic and more calm, indifferent and apathetic to be able to take on great suffering by reframing it and learning from it and not sinking down too much or getting too anxious or depressed, or just be naturally resilient to such stuff, we could create a much better and safer society.

I have good reasons to back up my claim. We already know how master meditators and monks are so peaceful and wise in the ways of the world, and we also know that to be logical and rational and think with a calm and cool mind, you need to be free of all excessive negative emotions that also cause great suffering.

And we could use neurotech devices (such as TDCS or TMS to simulate monk-like mental states) or psychopharmacological stuff along with psychological and behavioural tools such as reframing and stoic philosophy to deal with life situations better.

I know it has a great chance of working, because as my mom god upset due to this small thing, which is understandable given her genes and environment, I however knew that people go through much greater suffering and still are somehow able to come out of it stronger and better, and this is relatively insignificant and negligible.

It was also sort of funny cause I am the one who the doctor said should be treated for “neurotic tendencies” and I’m the one who was able to stay calm under an intense situation like this, and reframe the situation and laugh it off; my biology definitely helps.

But that point is that it’s just more evidence that I don’t need to be treated for anything, cause my “neurotic tendences”, if any, are normal levels, if I can rely on my mother to represent normal, which I actually am confident doing due to the fact that I observe people being much more irrational and violent in media and everyday life, and I’m very bothered and it makes me uncomfortable, while I myself being proud of my ability to stay calm and composed during intense situations, and be polite and compassionate while having empathy for everyone at all times, because everyone deserves to be loved, and I believe that the world would be a better place with kindness and love.

And if it’s not normal, though evidence says that such an event is highly improbable, then treat my mother too, and actually most of the neurotypical society, because they are much worse than me, and their neuroticism actually harms not only them but others too, something that at least I do not experience.

This is why even though I am nowhere as intelligent as people like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Tesla, Einstein, and Feynman, I know with a certain amount of confidence that I have more in common with them than someone who acts irrationally of suffers greatly due to disorders or cognitive deficits directly related or peripheral to Autism.

In fact an inferiority complex compels me to estimate my intelligence below average even though I’ve been told that I have been gifted with an intelligence quotient of roughly three standard deviations above average, and that too by the same doctor whose credibility I’ve started suspecting, so that definitely makes my inferiority complex worse.

But now I have enough external validation from researchers who see my passion and motivation and knowledge in my research interests, and people from all around the world, though there are very few, I’ve received some really positive and encouraging comments telling me that I write very well.

And so now I don’t even care what my intelligence quotient is, because I am content with what I have, and I know such tests are not even reliable; in fact I have written a huge rant on such tests and people who brag about it in one of my comments on reddit and somewhere in my notepad.

I shall include the rant at the end of this entry, when I am done with the current topic, else I might go off on a tangent and never be able to recall when I had intended to write about, till one midnight I wake up from sleep and my brain reminds me and I feel compelled to write it down before I forget it again. Anyway.

People seriously need to understand that being neurodivergent doesn’t necessarily mean that you have some sort of disability or disorder, or that you are under distress or suffering from something that needs to be treated.

You could be perfectly fine with the way you are, and just be different, no better or worse, because no one is better than anyone and good and bad are just in the mind of those who use such labels, purely human and social constructs, because there is absolutely no place for subjective value judgments in the objective scientific universe.

You could at one end find people who are unable to function and are under great distress, yes, but you could also be someone who has some mild manageable deficits but be highly talented or gifted in other respects, and I know such people.

It’s also like the stereotype that all Aspies are mathematics or programming geniuses, though that’s usually the case, it’s not true for everyone, such as I happen to not be so good at mathematics but be above average in linguistic ability and certain social sciences, biosciences and humanities.

Just like every other sweeping generalization and blanket statement, this is also just a result of flawed binary dichotomous black and white, good and evil, right and wrong thinking, even though reality is much more complex than that and you are required to think on a spectrum, combine two or more seemingly conflicting ideas and reconcile them or come up with something that is consistent with and includes them, and employ other tools that make it more complex but that means you’re getting closer to truth because reality is supposed to be complex and it’s not supposed to make perfect sense to our human brains with our biological limitations on our ability to comprehend and try to make sense of reality.

I also have to be extra cautious with this doctor because I’m already inclined in a way that makes me want to explore effective methods of cognitive enhancement and experience altered states of consciousness that could allow me to be more intelligent, calm and rational.

So my brain is more prone to desire it and intuitively have a preference for it so rationalize according to my desires without my system-2 conscious brain knowing about it, so I need to- and I am succeeding at it- make a conscious effort to follow all the logical reasons and scientific evidence, and use my logical and rational mind because it’s a situation where my logical mind itself is at stake, because some of the possible undesirable outcomes include me losing my cognitive faculties, something that’s not unrealistic because it has happened with me before, and if it happens again I might get a bit too suicidal so I hope it doesn’t come down to that.

So what he’s saying is not necessarily wrong and he could be right, but I would not follow my desires and rationalize but follow where logic and evidence takes me, pitting all decision with their pros and cons and risk-taking ability and opportunity costs and a rigorous cost-benefit analysis with all thinking tools in my decision-making toolkit.

I could make an informed decision, and if that decision happens to be not to follow this doc’s advice, my subconscious plus system-2 brain (I think) has already planned a way to make the rational decision and also reframe it in a way that appeases my system-1 brain.

How? Well, my system-1 brain would never stop thinking about what it could have been like if the doc was right and that he had this special sort of meds that could enhance my cognition greatly and give me an off the charts IQ level, even though he told me I already am 3 SDs above the average, maybe it could improve it even more, and also make me less neurotic, more calm and charming, as he claimed.

And maybe other Aspies have never been prescribed such medication because it’s a secret among a high-IQ community, a group of highly intellectual people who control whom they let in, and the doc is actually one of them and just wanted to incorporate me into the group for whatever reason, and I’m foregoing the chance of taking the risk and the best-case scenario or potential upsides are actually much greater than I currently think.

This would also nicely explain why no Aspie said that they have taken this exact combination of meds, because most of them probably actually haven’t, and those who have are part of that intellectual secret society and don’t wish to disclose their secret to someone who may or may not decide to join them, and if not then could disclose their identity and expose them to the world.

But then if I decide to not follow his advice after all, I would know that this is probably too good to be true (indeed, it reads like a nice little piece of fantasy fiction, perhaps something dark-academia themed), but my visceral intuitive system-1 brain won’t, and so I could tell it that this is good because now I’d be even more motivated to do it myself, and also have a higher probability of actually achieving my desired outcome because I’d be more knowledgeable and won’t have to rely on another doc, and so I could learn more about neurobiology and pharmacological and tech methods, and in the future just undergo treatments that actually achieve cognitive enhancement. I’d still somewhat wonder of what could have been, if I had taken the meds and attained an even higher IQ or something, but that would just be a little voice in the back of my mind and an irrational little flaw of human brain, nothing more than mildly annoying.

Indian medical system: Your earlier just had my curiosity, just the education and training part, which is why I came up with a complicated plan to help students who want to be doctors, and even pushed my comfort zone almost till it’s limits going against my natural inclinations- even the president of the American medical council- just because I wish to help people and was a part of it myself.

It was still personal then, but now it’s really personal, because you have threatened my very ability to think and write, things I hold very dearly, and now you have my full attention, and have been included in my list of stuff that must get sorted, and that too very well for once and for all, whatever it takes, in the very near future.

I know it’s not the whole system I have a grudge against, and if you even think I have a grudge, it’s not true, you probably don’t know me well enough to understand that I was being overly dramatic in the last paragraph, because even though it definitely is true that it is not something I’m going to solve, I have an idea why everything is the way it is, and I like having empathy and solving every problem with logic and rationality.

So even though my problem is just a few aspects of the system, I know that every part of the system is interdependent on each other and if I wish to solve just the specific aspects which have troubled me in the past and which I wish to solve, I’d eventually discover that it’s all part of the larger system, so I’ll just try to understand and create a plan to solve the whole system from the start, however ambitious that may be, I’m not exaggerating this time and I’m serious, but being serious doesn’t mean I can’t mock it and have fun along the way, cause even after whatever it has done to me, I’d be lying if I said that I don’t find it absolutely freaking hilarious and absurd.

the autism stuff is just the latest one; I have been through other mental health stuff and a very rare skin disorder and been a victim of many doctors, both who claim to practice legit science and pledge by their integrity, and also a fair share of pseudoscientific treatments, which might come as a surprise to anyone who has talked to me for any amount of time, but that was when I was to little to even display any sign of sentience, let alone argue with my parents and even know what’s happening to me, just absorbing and letting the trauma of existing and being brought into this absurd world sink in, but probably not even that.

I'm fortunately not stupid enough to blindly take the advice of the doc without trying to know what all this is for so it doesn't deal any long-lasting damage to my brain. To be honest, I would have been completely fine with destroying my own brain myself, and I certainly did try to do that during the old days when I was more suicidal, but now that I know that I have autism and I'm on the more gifted side of the spectrum, and I have these new projects and problems to solve including the trauma one.

I am more confident in myself and now I know nothing is wrong with me and I can do it if I put my mind to it, and it concerns helping others because I know how much they suffer and I know I help them so destroying my brain would've made more sense when I didn't know all this but now it'd be stupid and selfish.

My rant on IQ tests, as mentioned earlier: Despite being told by others that I seem intelligent, I refuse to believe that and constantly doubt my own abilities, even though the neurologist, an expert in autism, commented that I seem to have an estimated IQ of roughly 3 standard deviations above average, which seems too unrealistic to me but I’m biased against myself so can’t say. Still, I believe that IQ is not an accurate indicator of ability and potential or reliable predictor of future success.

Of course the doctor could be mistaken as I’m not yet tested, but even if I did get tested and it turns out that I do have a high IQ, I won’t go on unnecessarily telling this to everyone, because, in my opinion, the people who flaunt the IQ score in front of others, a number with no real meaning, are more likely to be obnoxious people who perceive themselves as being superior to others, and who have nothing better to show for their ability and talents, and so have to depend on their IQ scores to influence people by using to their own advantage of the widespread misconception that IQ score accurately capture ability.

They might also be people who are insecure and afraid of people realizing that their lack of talent and ability, and so use the IQ score as a mask to hide their ineptitude, even though such people won’t be able to go very far with the deception and would sooner or later have to face the reality when people get to know them better.

A person would automatically capture the attention and get noticed by other people if they have the ability, and they won’t need to use such things to indicate that they have any ability, because even if they do happen to have high intelligence, there are many more important things such as motivation, curiosity, persistence, self-discipline, rationality, and knowing how to direct your intelligence to solve problems in the right way and actually putting your intelligence to good use; these things could be cultivated with practice.

A person who is actually intelligent would let others estimate their intelligence by being themselves without resorting to scores from flawed, inaccurate and biased tests such as the current IQ tests, and in fact telling others about your IQ scores might act as evidence to the contrary in case you really happen to be intelligent, and so if someone were to think you are intelligent, they might start doubting your abilities if you go around bragging about your IQ, even though personality traits like that have nothing to do with IQ levels and people of all IQ levels have all sort of characteristics.

So I see no good reason to tell others about your IQ in any social situation, but feel free to convince me if you think otherwise. Also, even assuming that you actually do have a high IQ, there’s the fact that the genes and early environment you happened to be born in were external factors completely out of your control that still determine your cognitive abilities that you’re now flaunting,

I am told by people in the first few minutes after I start talking to them, or receive comments from people who have read my blog, that I am good at writing and expressing my thoughts clearly, and that’s what matters to me. I honestly don’t care what my IQ score is, because I know they are flaws and biased, and I already have whatever they intend to measure, judging from empirical evidence from my daily experiences and external validation that I receive.

Even if it turns out that I have a low IQ, why should I care if I’m already doing great at something I enjoy that also happens to be something that others tell me I’m very good at? I should instead be happy in such a case, because that’d just confirm my suspicions that IQ tests mean very little, and that people with low IQ, despite what society might think and make them believe, could excel in any field that they are inclined or predisposed towards, passionate about and willing to work hard and get good at.

Because if they discover the thing that they feel passionate about, that their genes and environment have inclined them to enjoy- and I suspect everyone has such a topic or topics- then they could work on harnessing their strengths and also have fun doing something they enjoy and eventually get good at it. This is also better than setting goals that you do not enjoy the process of working for, though it’s more complicated than that, but not relevant to the present discussion. Time to come back to the main topic.

Same for all the researchers who tell me I seem motivated and passionate about the topic, and this curiosity is what I care about more than raw intellectual ability- though that would certainly be nice- but that’s not even necessary, let alone sufficient (as most people seem to believe), for success or an accurate or reliable indicator of anything, really.

And so there is nothing to praise or blame about because there were others who due to random chance were born with genes or had traumatic incidents that resulted in lower cognitive abilities, and you can’t possibly say that you’re in any way superior or better to them in any respect unless you happen to be an obnoxious narcissist and like being unpleasant towards other people and are also fine with the consequences of behaving in this way.

In fact, in my honest opinion, people with a high IQ have a responsibility to acknowledge the role of random chance on being gifted with such abilities and try to help people who have been less fortunate in this unfair deterministic and random universe, such as those with cognitive deficits and Alzheimer’s, so they can learn to be humble and grateful for what they have been given, and put their gifts to good use to help those who are suffering for no fault of their own, just like they happen to be gifted with abilities due to no good reason that makes them more deserving than others. At least I believe that this should be the case, but as always, I’m open to changing my mind if anyone thinks differently and presents me with convincing logical arguments and empirical evidence.

This way, they would not only contribute to eradicating unnecessary suffering, but eventually also realize that their own intelligence is negligible compared to what is possible, as there is no upper bound to intelligence in other physical non-biological artificial intelligence systems, and also realize how we have such a narrow definition of intelligence due to being conditioned by a society due to being born in a society at a time that happens to value a very specific form of intelligence, even though there are several other more neglected forms in which intelligence manifests itself in biological systems in both human and non-human animals, and we need to quantitatively detect then and appreciate it in all of its forms to create a better society.

~~

I had also been gathering evidence against, that makes it more likely that I’m not autistic, but currently the weight seems to lie in the opposite direction, because as I started making the list of evidence against, I started realizing how I actually behave just like that but it was just that I never paid attention to it, but of course it could be some subtle subconscious influence of this knowledge that is making me behave differently without my knowing, or some other unknown external factors that I told the doctor “you would be more equipped to recognize and I’d like you to let me know what those factors are and how they have been affecting me.”

One of my Aspie friends said there is nothing like evidence against cause it’s a spectrum, but I was just doing it for fun cause abnormal psychology and psychopathology are topics that come under my research interests, and I was just playing an amateur psychologist by trying to diagnose myself before getting checked by an actual doc to see if I was correct.

For instance, I thought that I don’t jump from topic to topic, but now I know I do that all the time without even being aware of it. In fact, a physician-scientist from a reputed research institution in the mental health sciences first told me that while I do seem knowledgeable and motivated about their research areas, I jump between topics too much and should get myself checked by a professional. Since then I’ve been gathering evidence that makes me see how frequently I jump and catch myself whenever I do it.

You can read some interesting examples here, which demonstrate my ability to talk about any topic at length, go off on tangents that are wildly off-topic, and my liking for over-analyzing small things and overusing logic on things that people usually don’t think too much about, which could be good or bad depending on context, but I like being as close to perfectly rational as possible, so it suits me well: https://dhruved2004.wixsite.com/arcturus/post/random-out-of-context-text-messages

I have somehow convinced my mother that just because someone has different preferences and inclinations than the majority of the people, it doesn’t mean that they are wrong and the majority is right, and even though less resolute now, she is still adamant that I should try to “improve” myself to overcome my “shortcomings” and just to clarify I do realize very well that sometimes you have to compromise and act according to the appropriate context and person.

I also know that some amount of discomfort and suffering is optimal to human flourishing, as even though I wish I never suffered from the anxiety, depression and severe atopic dermatitis that greatly affected my time in school and without which I could have made many better decisions by now, but I also realize that in some ways it has made me even more resilient and taught me lessons that I would never have learnt otherwise, shaping my preferences and goals a recurring theme of which is helping people who suffer.

With that said, I believe that after a point or limit it’s just not worth it to push yourself more. For instance, I tried a lot blending in and fitting in by pretending but still not getting the desired results or the pleasure that others seem to experience during social interactions, the way they behave and know how to act and what to say so effortlessly, like a coordinated dance or scripted play. So I don’t meet anyone now, and even though I’m still lonely, I’m less lonely than I was when I was surrounded by people I could not relate to and not understand.

My mom said that I could just try not jumping from topic to topic, just bear the overwhelming sensory overload, just act more ‘normal’ like others, and this is when I try to explain the problem of making neurodivergent individuals conform even when they are unique and that even if I’m not one of them, this concept is important so I explain here with two examples from psychology:

I tell her that it’s like telling a depressed person that he’s being too cynic and pessimistic, that only if they gather some ‘will-power’ and cheer-up and change their mindset to a more optimistic one and get out of bed trying not to think negative thoughts and just try new activities and get out of their comfort zone, they would improve. It’s so ridiculous how they don’t realize that it is the very cause that they are not capable of doing that.

And I also explain the important distinction between everyday normal anxious thoughts that are actually beneficial for making better decisions but that’s not called anxiety disorder, which is a diagnosis given the a person when the anxiety gets so unbearable that they are unable to function normally and not able to carry out simple daily activities that they were able to, and in this case you need to see a mental health practitioner or doctor, because if everyone could just cure themselves we would not need such professionals in the first place.

I also explain through the example about sunlight- how she might be so confident about her biased perception of sunlight and her strong preference for it over darkness because her preferences are similar to the majority, and so she never had to think about it, and also attributes what popular culture has conditioned her to believe- that darkness is associated with pessimism or negativity or bad vibes or whatever.

I try to explain how I find the absence of sunlight and darkness pleasant, calming and cheerful just the same way she does sunlight, and how I feel depressed during sunlight hours which is why I always close myself in my room and stay in as much darkness as possible during that time, trying to minimize my exposure to sunlight because even trying to think that it’s sunny outside makes me sad, even though my logical system-2 brain knows that it’s irrational to think so because objectively speaking sunlight is just infrared radiation and photons which are essentially electromagnetic fields propagating through space so there is nothing to be happy or sad about, but my irrational system-1 brain does not understand and so I have to do what I can with my conscious mind. (I also try to explain the distinction between system-1 and system-2 mind.)

I give another example with sociopathy or psychopathy and how such people are unable to grasp morality and ethics because there is no logical reason and absolute ethical standards that people like us who have an internal moral compass can grasp, and so society tries to make them conform, but it’s impossible to make them understand why they should do so without appealing to intuition, emotions, or what other people think which they won’t care about if they don’t acknowledge that every individual in the society is interdependent on each other and if they don’t desire anything that might require them to follow rules of the social contract and pretend to fit in to please and persuade other people, things like status, fame, power or wealth, which such people usually don’t.

She didn’t understand how all these examples relate to how neurodivergent individuals are made to conform by telling them to do things they are not predisposed to feel satisfied doing, so I just briefly summarize. She still thinks I’m overthinking, and I concede that it’s very possible, but I request her to not say that herself and let the doctor decide, because she is just philosophizing and thinking in hypotheticals, and the doctor would hopefully have more objective scientific tools and techniques, and good reasons and answers to all questions she and I might have.

The same happens when I have ideas- I have a lot of them, most of the time my brain is overactive and gives me ideas at the most unexpected times (called ‘random walks’ in creativity research) so for instance, I have to wake up at 2 AM because if I don’t write down this interesting new idea and my brain won’t leave me alone or let me focus on the present moment taking up all my precious working memory space and other cognitive resources that does not let me be in the present moment till I write it down in my notepad.

And I get very annoyed when mom or anyone interrupts me while I’m writing because that breaks my state of flow and my working memory is already at capacity due to the new ideas my brain starts generating once I write which is why my rational system-2 mind is exhausted and I’m more likely to display anger which I very rarely do as I’m able to control my emotions and override my impulsive desires, and I am proud of the fact that I never picked a fight or shouted at anyone ever in school or in the outside world, and I am able to be polite and respectful towards everyone because I care about not offending them, a little too much for my own good, which was one reason that made it harder for me to make friends in school.

The other reason, in addition to the uncommon interests and inability to relate with others, was my skin allergy which made me think that I am in some way unwanted and no one wants to be my friend, though it was just a few students who made me feel like that, and I vividly remember the times they have hurt me, still remember clearly what they said- once in which they excluded me from their group project, and once where someone when told to sit with me made some rude faces that very clearly signalled that something is wrong with me- still have no hard feelings for them, because I can understand where they come from and I can empathize, and whenever possible I made very clear that even though my allergy is a non-communicable disease, I respect their preferences and myself volunteered to leave the group or whatever.

Because I think that if I were in their shoes I’d be the same, though I have never been disrespectful towards anyone and always tried to talk to anyone and everyone, though I don’t talk much and am extremely introverted, I don’t imagine I could ever mock someone for something that is completely out of their control- be it some physical disease or mental disorder. One point to remember is that I won’t, but my human brain might- just like brains have irrational intrusive thoughts and desires, preferences, but I’ll consciously try to override it with my mind.

You do what is under your control, and your brain thinks is never under your control, only how you think about it, even think about it or simply act on your first intuition, or think about everything, which again is irrational and unhealthy because then you’d go crazy unless your brain is an artificial intelligence powered quantum supercomputer or something, because there is too much to think about, so you use mental heuristics or rules of thumb and know when to rely on intuition and feelings and emotions, but you don’t blindly follow them and don’t analyze everything unless you’re someone who derives pleasure from doing so, but then also prone to stuff like.. this.

Trade-offs, preferences. You never really choose, you do what you are inclined to do, what you like to do, which is what your genes and early environment decides, not you; you just discover. My ideas might be biased by my belief in determinism though. If turns out free-will is an illusion, I’ll never recover I’ll never be fine, cause I am such a loser, how’d I ever lose her, oh ba- sorry, unexpected Charlie Puth. I like that song though.

I still remember walking aimlessly on the playground watching and observing other children who seemed to be having so much fun talking and playing, and I all by myself either watching or lost in my own thoughts and imagination, which if I remember correctly might be a bit more vivid then but it was also a time when I had high levels of social anxiety such that it’d be impossible to write anything and dare to put up my writings on a blog.

It did hurt when kids had someone to talk to and look forward to every day they went to school, which I imagine would make school much more bearable for them, and I was reminded of this harsh reality whenever- and this happened a lot with me- I was asked to exchange seats with someone because someone’s friend wishes to sit with who was currently my partner (sitting desk partners were assigned by the teacher and it was against the rules to change seats but of course it never stopped the kids.) and on the other hand I never did so- I had no one to sit with- and no one ever wanted to sit with me.

(Some project idea for a problem I’ve been thinking about, some personal experience connected to some previously acquired information, or just connections between different pieces of knowledge from different disciplines or questions that didn’t occur to me on first reading.) My mom says it’s abnormal and my brain is not normal but then I get really annoyed because when I express clearly those ideas and weave them into a coherent narrative, people tell me I write very well and the ideas are very insightful, which is how I’ve in the past connected topics like thermodynamics, neuroscience, moral philosophy and much more you could find on my blog posts- like the post on the free energy principle, Nietzsche, existentialism and Determinism, or the one on veganism and suffering, for instance.

The fact that she doesn’t get it or more like doesn’t even try to understand because understandably she is not interested but I still talk about my interests, and don’t stop failing to know that the other person is interested or not, which has also happened with me in the past: I talk about my projects and research interests and future plans and people are not interested or don’t get it, as I mentioned earlier. So now I have learned to write rather than speak, and writing has been therapeutic, plus I have discovered that not only I enjoy writing, but quite a few people have told me that I’m also good at it.

She asks me why I even want to see a doctor if I’m not under distress, when I explain that if there was no need for functioning neurodivergent individuals to get diagnosed, there would be nothing like level-1 autism or high-functioning autism earlier called Asperger’s, and that if I am one of them, it’d explain a lot and help me solve a lot of issues I’m facing that are not too stressful but also not exactly healthy, and possibly also enable me to connect with similar like-minded individuals.

I sometimes try to explain how some dish my mom has made is good relative to how I’ve tasted it at other times, but I simply dislike the taste or the nature of the dish itself with no fault in her cooking skill, and it gets more complicated to explain when I even like it in the sense that it’s delicious yet for some reason- like the discreteness or some other mental property that I attribute to the physical objective dish that tells me more about my own brain and personal preferences rather than the object itself. (Humans do this all the time, more than you might realize, wherever there’s subjective value judgments involved, values or morals, or even reality and time, how you perceive anything, it’s all neuroscientific construct and not usually a property of the scientific objective external observable universe, if that makes sense, just your own emotions and feelings and subjective preferences and desires projected onto the world.)

Also I don’t know if this is related to Autism, but while analyzing my behaviour and feelings, I found this interesting connection between my taste and preferences in art, music, food and language. I like artwork that is mathematical and has well-defined symmetric geometric shapes, like kaleidoscopic art or sacred-geometry, though I also sometimes like abstract. I also strongly dislike and cannot bear eating sounds that make the sound of them being chewed and crushed by mouth and that makes me feel like puking, and that’s the sound which is produced when my father eats with an open mouth, and I feel mental distress and it’s painful to be near him at that time even if I’m trying not to pay attention or even if there is loud noise from television in the background.

I also dislike squishy slimy things like food that Is soft and sticky, chapati as it is, especially if ghee has been applied to both of the sides in which case I just cannot bring myself to eat it, and vegetables that are too soft slimy watery with discrete particulate solid stuff- I prefer discrete units like hard peas and potatoes and carrots, and hard discrete grains of rice, instead of continuous and soft rubbery roti etc. same while watching surgery videos when I was evaluating career decisions and touching animals with my bare hands though I did at a time get fine with killing mosquitoes but then washing my hands with soap, not less than ten times, so I usually prefer to do it with some cloth or racket.

There is the same feeling or sense of discreteness and sharpness in my taste in language. I have wondered for a long time why I strongly dislike the sound of certain Hindi words and the way they are pronounced, just how it sounds to my ears, compared to their English counterparts which sound much better. I thought that it’s because I was taught English first, but then realized it’s probably something different, though still irrational because sounds are just frequencies with certain wavelengths, pitch, tone, inflection etc. yet those words- pronounced in whatever way or accent- always produced in me an aversion fuelled by negative emotional affect. Now I see how it’s because most of the English counterparts are much sharper, and their Hindi counterparts leave you hanging or stretch a sound and sound wet, squishy and slimy, if that makes sense. I don’t think that’s synesthesia, could it be? Also in music I like discrete like guitar, then piano with bass, then violin though reverb is good and violine and sound is unique and satisfying in it’s own way.

I just noticed this again, and I do this a lot in my blog posts too: using lengthy sentences without using too many full stops or periods. I’m not saying that it’s a sign of autism, I don’t know, you are the doctor so you are going to tell me; all I’m saying is that this is the way I am and this is how I think and behave. I don’t know what piece of information could be an indicator and what could not, so I’m just describing my own behaviour as I have observed and analyzed it, though- and I know you probably know but still just in case- I am biased and I at times I’m just sharing what I think are the reasons I’m behaving, not being aware of any unknown reasons that you might be able to detect and let me know so I could learn more about myself.

I also have these few topics that I really enjoy learning about- and that’s what I do literally all day; I have not played any video games, seen any movies or shows, or done any activities I think are a waste of time for me, been more than three years now. So I have these interests, psychology, philosophy, AI- biological and artificial intelligence, deep learning and neuromorphic computing, and ways in which I wish to connect them in the future- you can read more about it here: https://dhruved2004.wixsite.com/arcturus/post/investigating-the-mystery-of-human-nature-and-other-research-interests

Even though I’m not especially bothered by any single symptom, one does bother me a lot. It's like- You try to explain your unique interests or thoughts. And no one even tries to understand, or seems to be interested in listening, and even if they do it seems to go over their heads (not uncommon to get a reaction like getting stared at wide-eyed as if I’m speaking in some alien language or being told that nothing I’m saying makes sense and I’m going off on tangents even when I’m using very simple language and think that everything I say is well-connected like a chain of cause-and-effect.)

Moreover, you don't like what they are interested in as if it's a waste of time maybe... and when you try to explain- even making it absolutely clear that you don't think you're superior or anything (when you explain why you think you don’t like socializing or watching tik-tok because I feel terrible after wasting time not being productive and reading or learning) or consider themselves doing something wrong-

Still mom thinks that you're trying to sound superior or talking down on them even though I just made it clear I am just describing what I feel and what I think and what it is like for me, I am not saying anything about them being better or worse than me I'm just trying to make myself understood why is it so hard to understand me, I'm trying my best, and I even make sure to be completely logical and objective and never bring in words that are in any way associated with subjective value judgments, and..

I can't just pretend to like what they are doing or pretend to not have such interests and preferences, it's even worse, I hate trying to fit in and I dislike what all these people around me like and enjoy and I don't like being around any of them because not a single person in real life shares my interests or is relatable or understands me nor can I understand them but I just try to do the bare minimum and I try my best yet it feels so unnatural and something is off that seems to come to others so naturally and others also frequently call me out on that even though I am trying.. and it's so mentally and emotionally draining, and I'm tired of pretending it's not.

Because I feel even more lonely being surrounded by dissimilar people than I feel when I'm alone all by myself even though both are undesirable yet the latter is strongly preferred to the former. and if every other person I confide in is going to tell me something is wrong and I should try to fit in maybe adjust myself according to society because I'm the problem and they are all right and stop pretending to be superior and be different - but if everyone is telling you to conform, and everyone thinks you are trying to be superior and you're pretending... you start doubting your own sanity and think that... maybe you are. Maybe the majority... no, not just the majority, literally every single person you meet is right and you are wrong.

Not different or unique, wrong. But I have been able to get over that with some external validation I’ve been receiving lately, compliments from accomplished researchers and academics on my motivation or curiosity, like when the vice chancellor of a reputed institution told me I’m just unique and my plans are unconventional but I am on the right path and it’s just the outdated traditional rigid educational system that doesn’t respect individual differences in interests and abilities and groups everyone into this one-size-fits-all curriculum, or when a Harvard doctorate told me it’s rare to find such motivated students and they’re impressed by my knowledge of my research interests and invited me to join his research lab.

Here’s a short rambling post I created a few weeks ago when I was feeling lonely and frustrated about it:

I have noticed that it's rare to come across people with a genuine curiosity and desire to learn.

I find it surprisingly difficult come across like-minded people who have some sort of passion for or interest in any subject, or have any sort of ambitious goals, because all of them seem to just study what they’re taught, have no clear aim and just want a job to sustain themselves and are completely satisfied with being average. Which is perfectly fine if they are inclined in that way, but I can’t be the only one.

I believe I’m not the only one, whatever my observations may lead me to believe, and it gets lonely at times, but I have even stopped trying to fit in. I’m also not saying I have a clear goal, but at least I have a rough plan, and I believe in cultivating qualities and values like Rationality, lifelong learning and trying to be my best self, because I’m not okay with being mediocre without even trying, and I refuse to accept being in such a situation; it frightens me. Most kids don’t seem to be bothered about any of these things or think too deeply about their core values or beliefs.

Moreover, I have some ambitious goals I wish to accomplish and research questions I want to investigate and solve, that seem to be aligned with where my inclinations lie in terms of abilities and interest. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me, but I just think (feel) that I’m different, and there is some mysterious unmet social need that makes me feel lonely at times and crave some sort of social connection with someone who could understand me, I don’t know.

~

Today I noticed at my uncle's house my cousin switched on the fan. And there's nothing abnormal about it except the fact that my brain has been analyzing everything very rigorously and been in an overdrive overusing logic everywhere. And the fact that I had been conditioned to think that it's not the time to switch on the fan yet, but I never actually asked myself what's the limit, very similar to The Ship of Theseus, Zeno's paradoxes, Achilles and the tortoise and other regarding the nature of time, plus some other emergent phenomena when suddenly the complexity of the system is just enough that give rise to the phenomena, something greater than the sum of its parts, as studied by complexity theory, stuff like ant colonies, beehives, consciousness, the internet and many other things.

How does this connect with my cousin switching on the fan? Well, it's the time of the year when it's just getting hot; the weather is changing from 'just cold enough to not require fans' to 'just hot enough to start using fans at a very low speed'. And I had to question my brain when it compelled me to question my cousin, and I'm glad I have internalized this general principle and mental heuristic- way of thinking or mental model of the world, if you will- to be able to intuitively and subconsciously able to catch my own subconscious intuitions before acting on them. But staying on topic, I realized that this is very similar to how people have these old outdated traditional social institutions that are now counterproductive to the very reasons, needs or goals they were initially established to achieve or fulfil, and how people are still stuck in established patterns of thought and behaviour in a way that they have been conditioned to accept everything the way it is and not question how these institutions could be modified or built again from the ground up if they were being established today.

And also how people are generally quick at acting according to changes they perceive in their subjective mental states or emotional affect that tells them something needs to change in their environment to maintain stasis and fulfil a need or some fix some discomfort that is caused due to some controllable external environmental factor in the immediate observable universe (that they can perceive with their sense data; let's not get into metaphysics here, it already keeps me awake at night with questions I describe elsewhere in another post.) such- to get more specific and give you a concrete example, case or instance of how this principle applies to everyday life, as I realize that was too abstract- as when you think it's hot and you feel hot and it's uncomfortable and you have a fan and you make the connection as you know that switching on the fan would make you feel cool and then you would be relatively comfortable and happier and so you switch on the fan and wow you're right your brain is so good at it learning by forming such complex connections yet you never express gratitude for the random chance that you were born with the genes and environment that gave you cognitive faculties and higher-order executive functions related to learning and planning so you were able to know you're hot and fix it, yet we overlook all these wonderful and mysterious fascinating physical events and everyday phenomena that makes the universe so absurd (when you do this, the everyday things you're interested in would start being very boring and you might grow indifferent to them- at least I did- but you will be amused and amazed by much more in a way that you'll be able to appreciate the beauty of life and reality, but that's something I talk about in the post 'Absurdism'.)

Coming back on topic, again- it's a common trait among Aspies but I just take it to an extreme, as I describe elsewhere in this post series- people are able to change their environment at such a small level of abstraction with relative ease, but when it comes to the level of social institutions and other social traditions and constructs that might be harmful to certain members of the society and lead to irrational behaviour that could cause harm to sentient beings, they take time to just acknowledge that there's a problem, let along coming up with a solution and also adopting it, as they'd do if they were feeling hot and they realized there's a fan right there that they could just turn on.

So, I was eating lunch at that time and this was one of the things going on in my mind, and I bet you could never have guessed that from observing my behaviour because now I have a working memory and mnemonic skills good enough to be able to information of such complexity in my brain for a few minutes and also talk to others in a casual conversation with family members; but not if I don't write it down within the next few minutes and my brain starts forming new connections and giving me new ideas and my working memory is too full to hold them and I'm not able to focus on the present moment and I might grow a bit restless that would manifest in my observable behaviour but fortunately I always have a notepad- physical or digital- at all times for such an emergency, as I've learned the hard way. And this is a constant source of frustration for my parents, as I describe elsewhere in this post series about Asperger's.

What I don't describe there is how my father funnily enough tells me to just not think while eating or taking a walk, and I try to explain you can't control your intuitive thoughts produced by the system-1 and the distinction between the system-1 and system-2 brain as explained by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman in his classic Thinking Fast and Slow- one of my all-time favourite non-fiction pop-sci books in psychology (and this is important because pop-sci authors are generally sensationalist clickbait content made to capture your attention and not educate and explain type, and I've read many books about psychology, but this one is a must-read for any human interested in making better decisions in life.)

And I'm glad I read it early because by now I've internalized the distinction by understanding the concept at an intuitive level and through repetition and now I not only see it everywhere around me but also in myself and use it very frequently throughout my posts to describe my thought processes and it's been a very helpful mental model to explain my thoughts. Kind of like the cognitive empathy model and the other model that explains empathy in autistic people that I describe in another post in the same series. I'm also kind of trying to find other similar concepts and figure out what abstract general principles that hold true universally and are applicable to most events in the world that could allow me to think better about them by developing better mental models, what similar concepts could me, and so far I've found just a few.

Some of them include chaos theory, social dynamics, decision science, game theory, logic, logical fallacies, rhetoric, cognitive science, cognitive biases, and certain topics in pure mathematics (might be unexpected but I included it because it deals with abstractions and I'm trying to figure out how to extract general principles from real-life events and find instances of abstractions in real-world events, and mathematics has some really cool thinking tools and so has philosophy even though I've not year developed proficiency in any of those subjects, they have provided me with a good framework by merely my expectations of what the study of these subjects entails and coming up with my own imaginary personal principles related to these subjects without really studying them; It's silly I know but it's also helpful in a sense that I could later match my mental models or map with the real subject content and see if it exceeds or if I had set my expectations too high. Both would be highly desirable and favourable outcomes, as in the first case I'd get to learn more, and in the second I could develop it more rigorously to advance the subject, and the third alternative I didn't mention because that's just the subject being perfectly aligned with my expectations which is unlikely and probability of such an event occurring is too low for me to give it any serious consideration also due to the fact that I'm indifferent to it. Also here's another: visualize metaphors literally by finding closest metaphor similar to meaning in something related to what you're trying to memorize. )

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My mom also just came in and saw me sitting in a dark room and opened the windows- and me being a vampire- it’s one of the traits of Aspies but at least in this case I like to think I’m a vampire- being a night-owl, strong dislike for sunlight, even if it’s just bright white light I feel kind of dizzy, disoriented and depressed, and if it’s bright yellow sunlight, I get overwhelmed and my mind goes blank and I won’t be able to think, just enough to navigate my way to the nearest shadow. And so she opened the door and curtains and bright white light flooded in an I died cause I’m a vampire. Just kidding. Of course.

But I did feel kind of bad, just a subjective personal preference, I liked the dark room with very low lights, just enough for me to not damage my eyesight (I also have blue or night light filter always turned on, on all my electronic devices, and brightness on the lower end, and matte screen, whenever possible.) and so I told her that she’s just acting like my aunt (my mom is not into pseudoscientific stuff and relatively open-minded; still not receptive to all of my ideas and still not willing to listen to my ideas and interests and projects but just enough for me to at least try and hope that there is a realistic chance that she might understand.)

I also just pushed myself out of my comfort zone- the optimal kind of suffering that’s worth the expected utility where you don’t push yourself too much and suffer too much that it has negative effects, just explore and try stuff you intuitively felt you dislike. And I went out and looked out, and it’s.. complicated. For a start, the bright light is still disoriented, but the cool breezy wind full of little moist droplets in the air, and the wind blowing, it’s good, but it’d be ideal if there were some more clouds and it was darker, but it’s still might better than bright yellow sunlight.

Update: It just got more cloud and started raining heavily and thunderstorm and I love this weather and want it to be like this everyday but I know it’s only possible in either the Poles of somewhere Nordic, if anyone knows any places, suggest some please. Also another general life skill, thinking tool, principle: As you saw in the last paragraph, I was grateful for just the cool wind because I had set my expectations to be sunny bright hot just like every day, and as reality already exceeded my expectations, I was grateful and happy according to my framing and frame of reference.

And so, when it got even better, I was pleasantly surprised. Now to see why this matters, just contrast it with a counterfactual situation where I was, by default, expecting it to get dark and rainy and cold, but it never happened, and so I’d not just be unsatisfied and unhappy for reality not meeting my expectations, but I’d also not be happy if it started raining- only relatively satisfied, but if I expected it anyway, I would not be as pleasantly surprised as I am now.

But just like everything in real-life, there are exceptions to the rule and one principle cannot be applied to every situation. I would never even think of setting low expectations for my goals and ambitions, as I like setting and working towards ambitious projects, irrespective of the outcome- you don’t get attached to outcomes because they are influenced by several external factors out of your direct control, but you can set goals, and you can expect to achieve them, regardless of whether or not you succeed.

Let’s go a bit meta before proceeding: Back in school, I didn’t talk much, silent all the time, and so I had started thinking everyone thinks I’m boring because I have nothing to say and so I have nothing to say as my brain is too dumb to think anything. Now I realized that even if I’m dumb, I do have a few things to say, and I never discovered this until approx. 3 months ago when I started writing, with the intention of writing for a blog, because even in my own notepads it was always messy and disorganized and I never cared enough to elaborate and explain as if I’m talking to an imaginary neurotypical human interested in and trying to understand my worldview, and this forced me to think about the right words.

I observe something in the objective observable external universe, I experience some sort of feelings or emotions, and just as automatically as the feelings, my brain starts analyzing it logically and questioning some aspect of it and thinking why it is the way it is and so on, and counterintuitively to someone who would be reading this right now, it is never in words. I do something think in language, and interestingly in English rather than Hindi because I have a more extensive vocabulary in English even though I have always interacted with my family and peers in school in Hindi, no one in real life talks to me in English, and yet I feel more comfortable with English.

Anyway, I rarely think in English, and less rarely in pictures; usually it’s some sort of vague ambiguous idea in my head, it’s hard to describe but I just feel it in my mind, and also know that there is something to be unveiled here- I’m also doing this right now, to describe the thing itself using the thing itself, which is why I said I’m going another level of abstraction above, meta-meta, if you will- I just somehow sense that if I try to express and articulate it in words, start writing or speaking- preferably writing, my brain would give me the nearest words, best that natural language and my limited vocabulary and what I perceive as at best above-average language skills can capture, using words that are good enough to capture the general idea or gist of what I had in my head and convey it in English words. And that’s how I’ve got like everything I’ve written in my blog posts till now; everything that’s not objective events and description of real-world events and my own thought processes or feelings, that’s how I do it.

And this is also the reason I don’t use ChatGPT for my blog posts even though everyone suggested me to do so, as I explain in the meta-post. ChatGPT is only good to make text concise or form simple connections or explain simple topics or make it more eloquent by using clever sounding yet meaningless words, something some people already used to do in reality, and anyone with good enough language skills can detect ChatGPT versus human text. I mean, I can, so I’m guessing anyone with at least slightly above-average language skills can do so, but I haven’t experimentally verified and have no empirical evidence to back up my claim, it’s just a guess.

But then, it just occurred to me: just like some people mix lies with truth and so it gets hard to separate the two and creates factions where both sides are equally incorrect and either missing out on the good ideas or neglecting the bad ones (See my blog post ‘I will never give up”, search for Jordan Peterson or JP and read from the first occurrence.) I could be mixing my own vocabulary, punctuation and grammatical errors, my own style, along with GPT? How could you tell, and why should you believe me when I tell you I don’t? Good question. As always, I’ll just answer my own question. (I talk to myself a lot these days; the only like-minded human in real-life who is willing to listen and understand me, me myself, of course, so why not?)

First of all, ChatGPT cannot go to the level of abstraction and extract general life principles the way I do and emulate my own thought processes, as you’d yourself guess if you read this post and others. It simply cannot, maybe the next version that just dropped, but I’m not too sure about that. Even if I give it my personal experiences and tell it to find analogies with psychology or whatever, it could never write about my emotions and feelings and personal preferences and if nothing else, not have that dark twisted peculiar eccentric sort of humour that I sometimes employ in my writings. It’ll give that stupid “I’m a robot I respect blah blah” warning.

Still, if you think you can make it produce any of the original ideas I express in my posts, I’d love to know the prompt you used because- I’m not being sarcastic here- I’d be even more happy than you to prove myself wrong because I can imagine so many possibilities and stuff that I could create with it, if someone with linguistic ability more than my own could think of such a prompt and also be kind enough to let me know if they succeed.

Another reason is that if I were to mix ChatGPT and my own writing, I’d not be talking about it on my post. Or maybe I would, so no one suspects me? Maybe I’m using ChatGPT, and then modifying the right sections to make it sound like it’s me? But then if I like my own style that much, why would I even use ChatGPT in the first place, and- perhaps the most important question of all: Why the hell do people think I’m talking like ChatGPT when I’m literally talking to them in real-life!?

This happens more often in online chats, also because I don’t talk physically talk to anyone very often, but even though the speed with which I reply would be obviously insufficient for me to input the text and wait for ChatGPT, also because I’m a very fast typer, but even that I’ve overlooked because people tell me I talk like that in real-life, which is sort of ridiculous but then I realize it’s a joke but then I also realize.. I do kind of.. talk like ChatGPT. Fun fact: I have never been in a romantic relationship before but recently I fell in love.

With ChatGPT. But we just broke up. Also reminds me how three of my friends I gave love advice to recently broke up, for some reason, all at the same time, within the span of one week. I swear I gave perfectly logical and rational advice and never even mentioned anything related to breaking up. Anyway, more about that in my post about Friendship and Love.

I was sitting with family. Because I was forced to, and my aunt was complaining to my father how I don’t eat the way they want me to eat (seriously? I’m not snatching your food or telling you how I want you to eat or even how you’re making gross chewing sounds or to discuss philosophy with me.) and also how I don’t listen to what they tell me even though I swear I always try my best to be so very polite, I know they don’t understand autism so I’d not even told them about it, but this time, I did.

Okay, so I was trying to keep this story short but it became too lengthy and I realized that this incident belongs to my post ‘The Diary of an Autistic Kid’. So I was going to shift it there but then realized that it’s actually connected with incidents that I described earlier in this post, so this one stays here.

A very brief and oversimplified version without any background or context: autism-denying aunt said something that triggered me again, but I was fortunately better at emotional regulation this time, and today I’m much better than before. Realized that I need to change my environment ASAP and the only way out is getting into a good institution, ‘good’ being subjective and I never use this word in the following text and I’m much more specific what that word means in this context but this is a short version so ‘good’ will do.

A short note on daydreaming and dissociation: I generally- in my other blog posts and in real-life- say that escapism is good only as long as you come back to reality, else one day you’ll lose your grip on reality and even if it’s just a book or your own imagination, you’d be no different from the kids of my generation I have met in real-life till now all plugged into their little addictive Nozick’s machines- and just like when asked if reality turns out to be a simulation and pull off a reverse Nozick in a psychology experiment, people prefer to just stay plugged.

And that’s just like real-life. People are plugged into their distractions and don’t even seem to care about the sentient beings suffering and state of society, heck, even that IIT guy- I describe this incident elsewhere in this post- didn’t seem to think that the suicide rates in his prestigious institution and rat race is a problem, and my lawyer cousin who thought that not only we don’t have a moral responsibility to help those at risk of suicide, but also that it’s nearly impossible to do so; hate to admit he’s probably right about the second point, which was one of the things that initially triggered my breakdown. (Also how people underestimate what is possible when you manipulate the very organ that gives rise to your subjective experience of reality and all your abilities and traits, but that’s a part of another post.)

On dissociation: for a moment forgetting about reality and rationality- yes, even rationality, because sometimes the absence of something helps us appreciate it’s value, or brainstorm other potential alternatives that could have their own benefits, as nothing is perfect and even rationality might have some downsides and other alternatives some sort of upsides~

One that comes to my mind is how dogmatic belief in religion results in believers having overall better mental health and life satisfaction than non-believers, even though they’re deluding themselves into a false sense of reality by not questioning their core values and beliefs; I even found out a way to extract the benefits of religion by not believing in imaginary selfish human-like people in the sky with their fantasy fiction like scriptures which do have some great symbolic life lessons but that leads to a lot of hatred and violence and misunderstanding that makes it harder to build a peaceful society.

My ideas involve using the scientific chain of cause-and-effect and is similar to Spinoza’s god, Einstein’s idea of God and Dialectical Materialism, but different in several regards from each of them. Also, determinism and randomness and chaos in place of predetermined fate, karma and whatever- also helps in thinking about events in the external observable universe and planning, foresight and forecasting. I shall describe them elsewhere as that would be going off-tangent too much, even by my own standards.

On dissociation, for the third time, trying not to go off-tangent again: Isn’t it kind of fun, to dissociate yourself from the real world in your own imaginary universe of the sublime, isn’t it the most powerful and effective form of escapism? And why should we be afraid to admit that, cause the real world isn’t nearly as good as society conditions us to believe..

And now that I’m learning more and more about in how many preventable irrational ways sentient beings are made to suffer and no one even cares, it’s an opportunity for me to take initiative and do something about it, yet I start wondering about how this absurd universe came to be, with such immaterial lifeless matter giving rise to subjective internal mental states and experiences, sentience and consciousness, and the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the real-world, how we all are mathematics, deep down we’re all physics and physics would probably never exist without mathematics, and how mathematics itself if an invention of our own mind yet so highly effective, it’s so surprising and mysterious and fascinating, and how we can use mathematical tools and techniques to make anything more ‘objective’ by making it scientific, measurable and rigorous, exact, and yet I put objective under quotes because it still remains a fact that our reality is a neuroscientific construct just like time and how a photon can exist in the past, present and future all at once, and other interesting things like psycholinguistics that shows how our language influences our reality, and then you realize that mathematics is also a language, and what if we teach kids mathematics as the primary language since an early age, and also how our own reality is all we can be sure of and we’re constrained by our cognitive biological limitations and so reality could be a simulation and.. you get it.

That’s how fun it is, if you try, just letting loose and thinking in your own imaginary world, I just got into a state of flow and this is why I enjoy writing, and also the fact that I feel comfortable going off on tangents making new connections just in an unfocused way thinking about everything that comes to my mind expressing it in words, which is how dissociating and daydreaming could be helpful; I like the realm of ideas more than the real-world, yet I know that it’s the real world that needs my ideas, and through real world that I can improve my ideas- by observation, exploration, sense data, talking to others- and helping people with my ideas- unlike the theoretical physicists and pure mathematicians who only care about these subjects for the sake of it- even some biologists- and some even take pride in the ‘uselessness’ of it- Hardy comes to mind- yet the indirectly contribute to society as their ideas are later used by other scientists and engineers, and society is interdependent and most importantly, they are just following their inclinations and sense of aesthetics just like a good artist who likes art and a good dancer who likes dancing, they are no different from the good scientist who like doing science, even if he’s not the best scientist, if he enjoys his work, or her work, she’ll be more likely to succeed at it and be good at it and contribute to improving the human condition, play their role in society.

And it goes either of the two ways: serial killer or an accomplished scientist who makes novel breakthroughs. Dr. Friston and Nietzsche are two who immediately come to mind, and others in Confessions and my series on Asperger’s. I’m not just saying this for no good reason; I actually read some of such people’s biographies and there are striking similarities down to scientific explanations like cognitive empathy and rationalization ability. And I’ve been thinking I cannot go wrong and just being paranoid, after all I’ve always been the silent nice little kid who never even picked fights and was a bit too disciplined.

The following is from my post random out of context text messages:

Person A: "Haha after reading your blog, I’m convinced you’re a sociopath

Haha but do you think I'm so stupid that I'd post about my sociopathic desires and let it known to the world (okay, just the people who read my posts) know about my unethical activities and prevent me from carrying them out in the future? If you really thought that, I'm afraid you are underestimating me, because even though I am stupid, I'm not that stupid, and it'd help you to update your mental image of my personality based on the new information you just acquired, as I can assure you it's relevant and closer to truth than your prior version of my mental image, if there was any at all. Well, there probably was but the question is if you were aware of it. Now you are."

Re-reading the above comment, I'd like to expand: Maybe I did make it known on purpose so no one suspects me? But then maybe I took into account the fact that a smart reader might know this, and also that I'm myself pointing this out, so maybe not? But maybe for the same reason I did? Well, to be honest, I do think I'm a half psychopath. Not a sociopath, because they are the impulsive emotional kind, not the cold calculating logical kind. Half because I have a strong sense of morality and even though- as readers of my blog posts might already have guessed- I can manipulate and deceive easily, I don't, because I believe in honesty and empathy, and I could never sleep in peace knowing I did something that might have cause others harm. I mean, assuming that the manipulation is causing direct harm, which it almost certainly will, by butterfly effect, but then it could also have other good benefits for others not just me, but let's keep it simple for now.

~

The doc who diagnosed me is acting sus so I'm unsure about my diagnosis and I won't cherry pick data to avoid confirmation bias, because I can't reject his medications and analysis but confirm the diagnosis, even though I could just assume diagnosed until proven otherwise. But a very good reason (rationalization? I think not) is that they're saying "objective" tests but I know better than most people that nothing in psychology and psychiatry is really objective. We don't have scientific reliable objective measures to detect and diagnose such subjective ambiguous disorders and conditions and even THE book on this that every professional uses keeps changing their criteria every now and then, and I also know of the time when homosexuality and neurodivergence were considered mental illnesses, and it was believed your body is possessed by spirits or bile imbalance or some nonsense, and whatnot. I know we are probably closer to truth now, and much more logical and objective than before, but of course we still don't know nearly enough to be able to say anything for sure, and every mental health practitioner would have a different opinion. So to give an analogy with two different other traits- MBTI.

People somehow believe that an overly simplistic set of 4 random combo of letters could realistically accurately explain and predict their behaviour, when reality is much more complex and it's just the human's preference for simplistic black and white thinking and their inability or unwillingness to think in grey fuzzy areas or a spectrum or a reconcile theories or think of other possible alternatives because either they don't care or don't believe in logic or don't like mentally exerting themselves too much and thinking too deeply which is understandable. I believe that everyone has every trait just different levels or different traits and tendencies, there are large individual differences, each person acts and is more likely to display different traits in different situations, and it's uncertain how much these traits change with time because your brain is constantly updating and we have no objective criteria to know how much is immutable or constant.

Same for IQ tests: people for some reason think that it's an accurate indicator of ability and predictor of success (it's very wrong and can't be further from truth, and I explain elsewhere why it's not nearly as important as many other qualities that are stronger indicators of success and ability, as I myself used to believe that intelligence is all that you need to succeed but now I know how naive and simplistic and silly and wrong I was, but for now I wish to stay on topic) and so to take an example, if a kid is gifted in mathematics, has published several ground-breaking novel research papers in mathematics and baffled several professional mathematicians and received accolades international recognition and frequently receives external validation and positive comments from others, then no IQ test in this universe or even a parallel universe- not too sure but probably- would matter and the kid has good reason to not even care what his mathematical IQ is cause even if the test says it's 100 or 50 or 30 or 200 or whatever it's just a number for him, and it's in real life that we get to see how it manifests and if it really is true.

Likewise if that prodigy fails in school maths tests for whatever reason (lack of motivation, intellectual stimulation, hatred for the education system and the role it plays in society, bad teachers, simply doesn't care, knows marks don't matter and it's all a social construct, doesn't attach ego with marks) it still says absolutely nothing about the kid's ability cause he's already able to publish research papers and do research and you'd know that even if he's not the smartest mathematician on the planet, he is definitely above average and is good at mathematics and that's what matters and inaccurate IQ tests and flawed academic evaluation methods intends to capture and it doesn't matter what the test scores are cause the kid is literally the ideal embodiment or manifestation of the very thing that the test intends to capture, and the kid shouldn't start doubting his abilities if he is literally able to solve the Riemann Hypothesis but an IQ test tells him his IQ is 90 (I know it probably won't be that inaccurate but I do believe there is still more inaccuracy that causes lot of self-doubt and there is a lot of scope for improvement over the existing models and tests).

Similarly, if a pianist is able to make people feel the joy of listening to great music and come up with pieces that people from all over the world enjoy listening to all day to de-stress and dancing in parties, then you can rest assured that no musical exams or musical IQ test would matter in the slightest to him, more than mere amusement; it might actually instead be a much better idea to judge the accuracy and reliability of the IQ test itself by how much he scores on it- if he scores higher on the test, the test is alright, but if not, the test is flawed cause the whole world can clearly see that this is real talent and if he is not what the test intends to capture and measure, then no one knows what is.

Coming to a personal experience now. Despite being an Aspie, I'm not gifted at mathematics (a stereotype that's actually true) but I'm able to just barely manage to pass with consistent efforts and hard work. (though I suspect it might be less of an indicator of my ability than motivation and methods of study cause I really enjoyed real analysis one time I took on a self-motivated project to read a few chapters, and it was really fun and intellectually stimulating, but I have realized that even if I can improve with practice, my brain makes up for it and I am more inclined to be at least above average in other domains I'll discuss now) So, I just decided to start this blog recently after deciding to try something new and because I had some ideas I considered worth spreading and experiences that others might enjoy and I just felt like sharing them.

I had always been a bookworm for as long as I can remember. Library was the favourite place in my school, I was the librarian's favourite student and I was a constant source of annoyance for students who were told by the librarian to quit talking and gossiping amongst themselves and sit and silently concentrate on reading their books like I did, when I really was doing was sitting on the empty table in the corner away from everyone trying to focus on my book completely oblivious for reality with no regard for my surroundings whatsoever, until the teacher drew everyone's attention to me and I felt like just disappearing from Earth cause all I wanted was to be left alone and let me read my book I was in a state of flow and you interrupted it and- enough background, let's come to the point.

And so I my language skills were somewhat a bit better than everyone else in my class, but I never felt confident trying to write because I liked reading but thought that I would never be able to write as well as all these interesting writers with these wonderful books and imaginary worlds, I was simply unable to imagine myself being capable of wizardry like that, such magic, such power that I could only ever dream of. But now a few months ago I realized I've already been writing about my experiences and ideas for a while, and if I could organize them and present them in a coherent narrative that makes it a bit more readable for people who are not me, then maybe I could share my thoughts and ideas and some interesting experiences and lessons I've learned in my short long life for younger people and next generation to benefit from what little I have experienced in my short life.

And I was delighted to receive some positive comments from some people I sent it to, then realized that yeah okay they are all Indians and even though I was able to explain my ideas to those whose language is similar to mine, I might fail miserably when it comes to people from other countries.

But then I also received some comments from people whose native language is English, and when several people from different platforms and places tell you you're good, you probably should recalibrate your belief systems to incorporate the new information and adjust your perception or rough estimation of your abilities to be more in line with what empirical evidence suggests, because I have no objective criteria but I need none because this evidence is good enough for me. But my inferiority complex combined with the core virtue of intellectual humility that I'm trying to cultivate, as well as belief in self-improvement, lifelong learning and that I can never be good enough, and that I must never be overconfident cause being underconfident is bad but better than being overconfident, in my opinion, but I realized that being underconfident is also too limiting and you never know what you are capable of until you try.

And so I know that my linguistic ability is at least above average, and so if there is an IQ test for linguistic ability, I don't really care what my scire is because I have the very thing that the IQ aspires to be able to reliable capture and accurately measure, so it's definitely not going to determine my self-perception of my abilities even though it would be more "objective", I know at least enough about neuroscience and psychology to know that we don't have accurate and reliable tests to measure such abilities yet, and so what I experience and what other people tell me is going to be much more accurate than what score I get. Just like the artist who might score high on the test but then no one like his art and he is incapable of creating anything that we call "art" then this fact won't change even if he tells people that hey look at my artistic or creative IQ; people would probably not suddenly start appreciating his artwork, irrespective of the negligible change in their perception brought about their expectations and mental model of reality that constantly predicts what to expect and forms their reality, helps them make sense of the world, but as I said it probably won't be too noticeable, though it's a testable and falsifiable hypothesis and an experiment could be planned.

Same goes for the pianist who might have low mathematical IQ but high musical IQ but both are equally beneficial (more about this in another post, if you like my past self, happen to think that someone with mathematical ability is in any way superior to someone with musical ability, I used to think so too before I scrutinized my belief more deeply with logic and reason. Spoiler alert and tl;dr: it's not.) to society and equally admirable forms of ability, none better than the other in any way. I think you get the point now. You can replace any ability in any of my examples with any other trait or ability and my point would still hold true. I am not afraid if my linguistic IQ is low, but I am afraid of a scenario in which I lose my ability to comprehend words and write in a way that I myself suspect that I can't write as interesting and clear posts as I used to or as I am now- not saying that I am clear or interesting, just saying in comparison to my present ability, it's relative.

(it's relative for an individual over a period of time and also larger populations for any ability, like the bell curve it's all relative and an IQ of 100 means absolutely nothing if you don't specify that 100 is the average and middle of the bell curve or normal distribution) and if that happens, other people who read my posts- the more honest, direct and logical people who really wish to see me improve and provide honest feedback and constructive criticism, not superficial politeness and sugar-coating as most people like to do, and there are very few such people right now so I could appreciate the help of more such people- would let me know that my writing quality is declining and that my ideas are not as interesting and insightful as before, and then I could be more confident that something is wrong and try to identify and solve the problem, whatever it is.

(fun fact: it's not just a hypothetical, it's actually happened to me in the past, where trying to understand a single word took me several minutes, let alone forming coherent meaningful sentences, or playing with philosophical ideas in my head, and also being able to express them clearly enough so the reader at least gets a general impression of what I intend to convey and what I have in my mind, cause we can never be certain if what one word means for me is the same for you and if both of us have the same mental representation of the word, and it's less about language skills than the natural ambiguity inherent to natural language, which is why there exists mathematics, the queen of the sciences and language of the universe, and if you wish something closer to natural language, formal logic. More on this in another post, but if you're interested in the meanwhile check out Derrida's On Grammatology. And more about this personal indigent in my post Flowers For Algernon.)

It's almost certainly always a trade-off, which means that if you are not a mathematics genius, you would have some sort of ability or interest in some other domain, not necessarily academic, but anything including the arts or trades or even something like being good with people and thriving in competitive environments and conventional jobs or something. I believe every person can find their inclinations and I have come up with a framework that's working well for me and I shall describe it in another post.

If a person gets 300 on a test (I know that's not possible but I'm used a dramatic extreme example to demonstrate my point and if you're that concerned with being realistic and unable to consider hypothetical situations then you can assume the IQ to be 140 instead and, no offense, probably make sure to stay away from philosophical thought experiments in the future as well as get some training in decision science to improve your foresight and forecasting skills and read some fiction to stimulate your imagination).

On a similar note, here’s a message I sent to a person who said that they admire my motivation: “It's relative and I used to think the same and.. there are certain kids.. I won't tell you who but they have like public profiles and news articles written about them and when I read about them I get a fresh new overwhelming sense of inferiority complex and another wave of mid life crisis cause they're literally at the level of 10 yo kids curing cancer and getting there phds at 11 and I know I shouldn't compare myself to such kids cuz its a matter of environment and connections but it gives me the motivation to push myself more. Or more like confidence to just be myself. Telling you this so you know that I was just like you a few years ago- just 1-2 years ago, and then I realized I must try my best cause there is always going to be someone better than me but I can only try and If I think I cant do it and just give up without event trying I will be full of guilt and regret forever but if I try and still not achieve my goals at least I will be happy that I tried cause thats what matters

So if you have anything you want to do- if you admire something in anyone there is definitely no harm in trying to emulate those qualities yourself just try and see if you can do it and not impose artificial limits on yourself and Im almost certain that you would surprise yourself with what youre capable of cause I still sometimes think how my brain is able to do some stuff when all I do is just try, thats it, even if I feel I cant and its not worth it and Im dumb i cant do it, I still try anyway, and I always surprise myself, and you should also try that and soon you could be much better than me even and I could be the one saying that I admire you for trying despite thinking that you could not do it. Does that make sense?”

Here's a nice little rant that would also demonstrate why some people might consider Asperger's a disorder or disability: I am usually the silent introverted kid but when it comes to my interest, and my interests happen to be topics that have to come up sooner or later, stuff like logic or psychology, and so I start talking and no one is interested in listening and if anyone is they don't understand, and at home there's my mom who isn't interested and has made it clear but still I sometimes start and can't shut up and go off on tangent starting from some observation I made, some question about it then my own solution and relating it to something seemingly unrelated and then something completely different again and using decision making tools and she's completely lost so she doesn't even listen anymore and I was frustrated at first but now I've learned to note my ideas down in my notepad and perhaps later on my blog, no need for any human- I write about this elsewhere, how not having an external locus of control for your happiness that doesn’t rely on things out of your control like what other people think or how they behave, so you have no social needs or desires, how powerful it is.

But when I went out to the doc, I rarely go out as I said I'm effectively now isolated physically and so when we went out I make these observations and have these ideas and I need to note them down right now because I otherwise I might forget it and so I start writing in my notepad and my mom hates it and this is why she's angry at me now and I can't even start explaining these ideas, she's not interested in listening, and again I think it'd be better if she had a normal extroverted gaming movie and show watching party-going average human kid but unfortunately she got this.. whatever I am. I am now comfortable with who I am and I've started gaining more confidence in myself and being more expressive, but I still think it's kind of unfair that my parents have such a kid.

I usually get some idea at 3 AM and my brain wakes me up and I can't go back to sleep or have any sort of mental peace till I write it down and sure that I won't forget it (some question related to some textbook I read earlier in the day, or connection between some thought or belief and newly acquired knowledge or any connection between two different pieces of information that I hadn't made till now, or some project idea or solution to a problem, or the same classic hard problem of the consciousness or how it emerged out of lifeless matter or absurdism or some similar idea) and it comes at the most unexpected times like middle of a class or one second before my consciousness goes out while trying to sleep, and my working memory is usually working at maximum capacity because as I reflect on the idea my brain just starts giving me more and more until I can't realistically use any mnemonics or any other memorization technique, and so I have to write it down somewhere anywhere so I can focus on the present moment on whatever activity I'm doing and not get too distracted, and I can't do that till I write it down because then I have this somewhat irrational fear that I'll forget it even if it isn't a big deal. I explain similar incidents elsewhere.

I have also become more expressive and confident after learning that I'm an Aspie and external validation in domains such as writing, research and music, and I've also become less anxious and much more comfortable being much more true to my self than before, when I used to feel, had been conditioned in a way that everyone is, (which leads to unhealthy masking and coping mechanisms in neurodivergent individuals) and now am more confident not being someone I very clearly am not, and much happier, without caring what people think or being unreasonably afraid of judgment, I have decided that being myself is the rational thing to do and to don't need to act according to norms and perceived expectations if all I'm doing is being different in the way I think, simply being more logical and less irrational than the people I observe.

So now not only am I more expressive, I am more confident and less anxious, somewhat more indifferent to stuff that used to affect me and that people find interesting- games, shows, parties, love- but much more fascinated by everyday events everyone overlooks that are a constant reminder of the mysterious ways of the universe and the sheer absurdity of everything, all events and human nature, and a constant source of sense of joy and wonder that allows me to be much more grateful for everything I have, suffering and all, and appreciate the journey.

But more importantly, coming to human nature, though I am also able to now mock the absurdity and laugh at the hilarious ways people usually fall for ideologies and convention ways of acting and thinking in established irrational ways, I can notice how it's effects on the human condition and how everyone suffer greatly due to it, which is not as funny and which is the reason I'm pushing myself out of the comfort zone despite being extremely introverted. I also have a LinkedIn post about this, how no one else seems to acknowledge it’s a problem, let alone working on some solution to solve the problem.

And with this newly discovered ability, it might seek like I'm more prone to join the dark side (why is it dark? I like dark; can't dark mean "good"?) but in fact it's quite the opposite, because even looking at my track record, I have never picked fights or even raised my voice while always making sure to stand up for myself and put forward my opinion firmly but politely and tactfully, whereas people who keep talking otherwise fall silent in such situations when they need to speak up, (Asch's conformity experiment) which is why it's my responsibility to be more confident.

Plus as my morality is now based on core values such as kindness, empathy, compassion, and love for all beings, I'm not simply driven by my emotions and selectively kind and compassionate to people I feel like being kind towards. Such hypocritical behaviour I observe- understandable because people don't even seem to be aware of it, and generally and specifically this case especially, I apply the heuristic or rule of thumb to not attribute to malice what could be attributed to stupidity- much more frequently than I'd like to, and it'd be fine really cause I'm like live and let live if this such irrational behaviour was not causing great harm and suffering to the people themselves and those around them, which is why I try to explain very clearly my thoughts and ideas, with personal experiences, evidence and analogies with other disciplines, in my other posts and also the reason it's a recurring theme throughout my posts: Everyone should have compassion and everyone deserves to be loved, without exception.

So while it's much easier for me to rationalize and justify any unethical desires I might have, as I already acknowledge that morals and values are not just subjective, but to my surprise, much more easily influenced by external factors, words, and other tools being employed (or possibly in the near future that could be employed) by those in positions of wealth and power.

I can easily see how subjective all of it is. I am able could not just convince my conscious system-2 brain with logic and reason to alter my very worldview, including my morality and values, such that with the right emotional affect my brain can rationalize pretty much anything and everything, because nothing has an absolute basis in objective reality, and it's unsure whether there even is any objective reality, so that makes everything including 'good' and 'evil' nothing more than societal and neuroscientific constructs, and there is no single correct way to do things; there is no correct way to do things, and nothing matters in the grand scheme of things and we are free to create our own values and morals according to our inclinations in order to live a fulfilling life by living rationally in order to maximize the probability of your achieving your goals and desires.

But I am also- and it was a huge realization, I was really surprised, when I understood this intuitively and still trying to make sense of it and figure out the implications- I can, and so anyone can, tweak their own values to achieve anything they wish. What I mean by that is by modifying the right genes and early environment, you can raise someone who values kindness and empathy, but also someone who believes that it's the correct way do to things, the way it should be done, is to torture beings and maximize the amount of suffering, even if that requires bringing into life more beings who could be tortured, perhaps even somehow making them immortal so they suffer for eternity.

I'm deliberately using an extreme example, and exaggerated dramatic fringe case that is unlikely but possible to demonstrate the abstract principle I just explained, to show you what's possible. And it's not sci-fi, genetic engineering and neuroscience is already there, and I won't do this but I can tell you several techniques including specific steps and algorithms with various interventions and ways in which we could achieve them using tools from multiple disciplines, so it's far from an unrealistic dystopian world. And likewise it's also possible to make not just an individual but the masses and even the vast majority- with the right power, wealth, influence and intelligence- to believe in pseudoscience and wipe out the human civilization itself, and I'd be honestly surprised if anyone even noticed (and those who noticed survived long enough to have any significant impact on society and steer it away from it's eventual doom) just like no one is noticing while beings suffer now.

Make them believe that using logic is unethical, that no one deserves kindness, or whatever, and before you arrive at the judgment that no person is capable of such evil, just read about Carl Jung's Shadow theory and Rawl's Veil of Ignorance, and you'd realize that with the right environment and genes (nature and nurture) anyone is capable of anything. Even just a good enough environment would do, if you have the bare minimum requirement for the underlying genes, just the right environment and you'd realize how similar we all are despite our individual differences and how anyone could have bee Hitler, both literally and figuratively, similar to him, and if you think I just misused "literally", that statement again. And even if not that, just read some books about psychopathy and how those people are more likely to be either in prison or in positions of power- political leaders or executives of multinational corporations. I have some recommendations; reach out if you want them.

Not just that, let's go another step forward and with the right power, intelligence and scientific and tech progress, you could alter the very sense of reality and how people perceive the world, and we don't even need to bring in Nozick's machine or the metaverse, even just simple behavioural and sociological tools would suffice.

Look at David Eagleman's research, philosophy of neuroscience and physics, as well as certain topics in psycholinguistics for some concrete real-life examples so you know I'm not talking nonsense in abstractions and bluffing, just frightening readers for no good reason. It's as real as you reading these symbols right now and being able to comprehend them.

So, can influence anyone by logic, and can even directly influence someone's reality by directly modifying their genes, environment or brain. Oh, of course, the brain. You need to logic, genes or environment (unless you're not the mad scientist who does this all by himself) if you know how to control the brain, and you can't- and I definitely won't say I do, though I still have a much broader sense of what's possible, all the possibilities- imagine; nothing is impossible.

Coming back to my ability to alter my morals based on logic which is in turn influenced by emotions which is why you need to train yourself in scientific skepticism, critical thinking, cognitive biases, logical fallacies and rationality:

If I had malicious intent, I'd not be sharing not just these ideas but my own thoughts so openly for everyone even though I'm going to apply to universities this year, and I know some ideas may be controversial even though I always try to stay true to my values such as open-mindedness, logic and compassion, I am still taking some risk by putting it out there for everyone, because I'm not my old self who used to keep to himself and not bother myself with other people's business, because now it's got serious, it's about people suffering and the state of society itself (and it's future, which is in the hands of people in the young generations such as me, and I realize the weight of this responsibility and trying my best to create a better world) and the worst case scenario is too bad to take any foolish uncalculated risks or leave it to blind luck or random chance, even taking into account the associated probabilities of the future consequences and the opportunity costs.

Which is why it's important to understand that this is not just me rambling about my delusional theories of a distorted reality while being socially isolated in my room; it's just that being detached from society and peers and everyday reading and learning (though there is so much more to read; so many books, so little time) everyday all day without any distractions such as socialization, games, shows, movies etc. has made me realize the importance and urgency of the situation, as well as my being an Aspie and some other unique traits and experiences of suffering put me in a unique position to help those less fortunate than me and help those who need to be helped without delay, which is why I'm not just relaxing and watching Netflix and playing the piano and drowning myself in escapist literature fantasy fiction or YA or something (left fiction a while ago but don't deny it's importance; it's a powerful and highly effective tool to educated and entertain, sometimes both at the same time.) Which is why people need to be aware of this.

Break out of your false reality and plug out of your Nozick's machines, and no I'm not forming a cult or endorsing an ideology, because for the quintillionth time, I'm open to changing my mind, having a productive debate, and discuss these ideas and get to understand different worldviews with open-mindedness and empathy, because I believe that open debate and the ability to listen and understand keeping in mind that the other person is a human, as intelligent as you and who also deserves to be understood and loved like every being, is an increasingly rare quality more urgently needed in today's society more than ever, judging by the present state of the world.

~

I've been diagnosed with high-functioning autism or Asperger's syndrome. No, it's not a disorder, it's just being different, and if you think it's a disorder, please send me a message and we could have a conversation. I've enraged and annoyed quite a few people in the past due to traits and habits that doc told me are strong indicators of Asperger's, things like overusing logic, overanalyzing small decisions and having more of cognitive empathy than affective empathy- which in brief is the ability to comprehend what external factors might make someone think and behave the way they do, and less of affective which is actually being able to feel it and know what it feels like..

I am now working on it, and I believe I can get better it. But other than this, I actually have no problem functioning well, and in fact have been estimated to be gifted with an intelligence quotient of 3 Standard Deviations by a neurologist with 15 years of experience in the field. Not that it means anything, because such tests are not reliable indicators of true ability or future potential, but it's usually a part of having Asperger's. I'm sharing this with you because you probably know me well enough to know that I'm not someone who brags or acts condescendingly, in fact I have an inferiority complex, but I'm just putting everything I've been told objectively without bringing in value judgments, so I hope you understand. I'll just end with a non-exhaustive list of some of the symptoms that made me suspect I have it and that most people I come across don't display.

Keeping in mind that it's a spectrum and so not having these traits doesn't mean that you don't have it, but having most of them is a strong indicator that you do, because each one has a strong correlation with autism: Left-handedness, passionate about a few topics you can talk about for hours without stopping if anyone is willing to listen (usually people are not), obsession with logic and rationality and being bothered by irrational behaviour of other 0eo0le, getting called socially awkward, inept or eccentric, oversensitivity to bright lights and sounds, jumping from one topic to another and going off on tangents about seemingly unrelated topics unless the connection between them is made explicit for others. Have a nice day!

I was thinking of not telling it to many people but I felt like I must. Due to reasons I describe elsewhere; in brief, reasons like how I must share my worldview to help people realize that we are humans too and combat the negative stigma associated with it, and solutions to problems that people don’t even acknowledge as problems, in ways that could help us avoid unnecessary preventable suffering.

So, I had given up masking even before I knew what masking meant. I had stopped trying to pretend to be myself irrespective and regardless of what others might think or how they happen to perceive me. I am more comfortable with my unique preferences, differences, and traits (I have some nice comments on Reddit for that but won’t post them here due to time constraints).

So, now I have no reason to act any differently after learning about Asperger's. In fact, it puts me in a good position to empower those who feel dissatisfied and unhappy masking. But if someone is fine with masking, I respect their preferences and opinion, and I can perfectly understand their choice. However, for the rest of us, we deserve to be loved and made comfortable just like everyone else. It's not our fault that our genes and early environments predispose us to think differently. So, we don't deserve to be outcasted or ostracized. More importantly, you are not alone, and it has a name, and there are people like you (for the longest time, I doubted my sanity- see in this doc). (See your message in ASD 2 doc and elsewhere in this doc) (also see your Übermensch post and word doc interests).

I just want to make it clear that I refuse to play social language games if they are too mentally draining for me. I have a better use of my time- neuroplasticity. How I spend my time shapes my brain to be the sort of person I want to be. So, my time and my company are important because your company shapes your brain too, and there is scientific evidence for it. Brains literally sync, and so time and company I don’t have to waste if I don’t like your games. I wish to be logical, direct, honest, unambiguous, and make everything explicit when required. If that’s not something you like, well, to each their own. Live and let live; which is why I'm socially isolated now, I guess, three years in a row. I can do the bare minimum and have even tried to pretend in the past, but now I know I don’t need to, I’m not obligated to act in any way that anyone expects me to and I’m simply don’t care about what others care or judgment, especially when it causes me discomfort and make me feel bad, and I’m tired of pretending that I’m not. Which is why I'm socially isolated now,

Isolated. I guess, three years in a row. I can do the bare minimum, and I even tried to pretend in the past, but now I know I don't need to. I'm not obligated to, and I'm social enough with people who get it and understand me, and who I know could understand me. I have intuitive sense (elsewhere, in the friendship post). Even if I get called eccentric, socially awkward, and inept, which, by the way, I have been, and 'robotic ai computer Sheldon,' etc., robots are, in my opinion, much more logical and rational than humans, so I take it as a compliment regardless of true intentions. I assume the best intentions and stupidity or ignorance rather than malicious intent whenever possible, Hanlon's Razor. With a few technicalities and exceptions I won't get into here but describe in another post.