Trying to Understand Autistic Bias towards Reality

[Gerald Wilgus]

Something to keep in mind, and what I think a great deal of people dont spot, is that scientists as a whole are NOT as "scientific" in their approach to things as they definitely want you to think. Rather, they absolutely DO have bias, and in plenty of cases can approach things in such a backwards way that I daresay they hit a point of what I'll just refer to as "anti-logic".

Dont get me wrong: Many scientists are incredibly skilled and smart. Yet still, the problem remains.

As an example: Let's say that you were off on a walk or whatever. And you ran into, say, a ghost. A genuine ghost... spirit of the dead. And it made it VERY clear that it was real. Doesnt matter how or what it wanted or anything, those details are irrelevant.

Now, let's say you then go to your friend, who is a very traditionally scientific person... dealing in logic and hard facts. You know the sort I mean. You tell your friend about your experience, you give him plenty of detail.

Chances are... he'll declare it to be a giant pile of nonsense. He wont ACTUALLY approach it in a scientific or even logical way: to do so would be to NOT discard any possibility at all simply because you yourself have never seen one, or because you have never seen "evidence" (which, note, is often collected by equally biased individuals). A real scientist would approach ALL situations with a totally unbiased view... yet your friend there is absolutely not doing so.

For instance, one possibility in that situation is that perhaps one day scientists COULD use various tools and gadgets to truly discover the existence of such things... yet the current level of scientific advancement is simply not close to that yet, and thus cannot. As many supposedly scientific people do though, he has this frankly silly assumption that all that stuff IS already known (despite rather primitive tools not being able to even touch the concept). Challenge that assumption and you will merely be scoffed at. I think many of us here have encountered this.

To quote a character from one of my favorite books: "The last thing the 21st century wants to admit is that it might not know everything". And that's how a lot of "scientific" people really do think.

Now, I used the concept of "ghosts" simply to exaggerate the point and illustrate it better. But take that out and throw autism in there, and indeed, it still works just fine. These researchers are dealing with something that is *barely* understood at all, with tools and techniques that are frankly far too primitive to REALLY approach the problem. Someone like Cohen, though, cant/wont see that. Likely, the guy absolutely believes in his approach just like the guy who scoffs at the ghost does. Challenge that and he'd likely do anything to refute you. He is biased... and that's what creates the problem.

I actually find that the people most likely to avoid this sort of bias are, in fact, on the spectrum. Why exactly this is, I cannot say... that's just what I personally have observed (and note that this is merely an observation, it does not actually prove anything).

Anyway, just wanted to say all that. I find this "scientific bias" to be rather fascinating, in an absolutely baffling way.

I hope I actually made sense here, I'm not sure I did.

Yes I understand. But I think some of what you say comes from K-12 teaching of science as facts, because little is done to understand the observations from which those facts are derived. Then the real learning starts. In my training I had to learn how to question nature and develop those tools to answer those questions. Then there is the understanding that our knowledge is provisional and requires an understanding of uncertainty. In that respect the view of reality that science provides is frequently self-correcting of error.

Many have the naive view of science as a collection of facts, a bias in itself, but the true bias in all of science as natural philosophy is that the Cosmos is materialistic and naturalistic.

 

[Kevin L.]

I'd like to make a few points about this that may clarify this apparent dichotomy . . . and please note that I'm only speaking about myself from the inside-out, and I don't claim to be a psychologist.

I think the idea of "literalness" comes from the lack of social insight, and can be compared to how a blind person might navigate the world, and not from a lack of imagination.

I--personally--often get into trouble with my job and personal life because of my literalness. A blind person can't tell when the room has been rearranged and--as a consequence--bumps into furniture and knocks over plants and knick-knacks from tables and shelves. In autism, I can't tell when a social situation has changed . . . so I unknowingly commit social blunders.

It is my feeling that this "blindness" may be what causes people to think that we have no imagination, as we don't change and adapt in the way that a "sighted" person would . . . if you follow my metaphors (I have problems communicating, so it's my fault if I've lost my readers).

 

[dragonfire42]

I have always loved playing pretend. I still do it often in my head, though usually just spin-offs from something(s) I’ve read/watched with characters and scenes I create, I don’t really like having to come up with absolutely everything myself. I particularly enjoy reading/watching fantasy/sci-fi/horror. Never really been into Star Trek, and I only like Godzilla movies because my mind latched onto King Ghidorah the instant I first saw him as one of those random mini-obsessions I get (hence my current avatar). I don’t actually even care that much about Godzilla himself. But I am female (though my autism presents itself in far more of a “masculine” manner). Pokemon is about the only primary interest I’ve had that’s really popular (at least, at the time I have the interest; according to my interests, I should have been born about ten years earlier than I was), my other primary interests are insects (though that one has waned a bit) and the supernatural, or some subset thereof.

 

[Pieceofmind]

Like others noted a lot of the observations made by "autism experts" are often way off the mark and just paint a theory they also desperately want to be true to provide people answers as to what I going on but I suggest everyone just goes to this forum instead and reads all of the topics because this place provides the most unbiased variation of perspectives from the people themselves.

I for one loved playing pretend in my head when I was younger I could also create entire worlds in there but if you for example put a notebook in front of me and told me to pretend it's an air plane though I could I probably wouldn't because it's completely uninteresting to do being well aware of the fact that I'm purposely doing that. I get nothing out of that and it's extremely boring, why bother? Because of my vast ability in perspective I actually understood people very well but can't grasp or execute the details of how neurotypicals interact with the world. Below I'll quote a perfect example..

I'd like to make a few points about this that may clarify this apparent dichotomy . . . and please note that I'm only speaking about myself from the inside-out, and I don't claim to be a psychologist.

I think the idea of "literalness" comes from the lack of social insight, and can be compared to how a blind person might navigate the world, and not from a lack of imagination.

I--personally--often get into trouble with my job and personal life because of my literalness. A blind person can't tell when the room has been rearranged and--as a consequence--bumps into furniture and knocks over plants and knick-knacks from tables and shelves. In autism, I can't tell when a social situation has changed . . . so I unknowingly commit social blunders.

It is my feeling that this "blindness" may be what causes people to think that we have no imagination, as we don't change and adapt in the way that a "sighted" person would . . . if you follow my metaphors (I have problems communicating, so it's my fault if I've lost my readers).

I can being as little biased as I can compare the way neurotypicals use social interaction like some kind of cryptic code they are born to be able to execute perfectly and if you don't abide by they react in many strange ways. I'm good at reading their body language and expressions though and often they are not happy with me especially like you said at work sometimes and I have no idea why they reacted like so since I didn't do anything directly offensive or hurtful but apparently somehow made some grave social sin. With many customers I get the same thing, it's infinitely perplexing to me. I like to observe others interacting with each other and what I notice is that normal people always do some mirroring thing with each other where they sync of their emotions and views even if somewhat different with the other person. Now what goes on in the middle of that is what I don't understand, they seem to have these automatic programs running in their heads for lack of a better description that socially fit with the other person and allow a continued flow, when they interact with someone running a different one they basically human BSOD in their minds and have no idea how to react leading to normal peoples many reactions to not just autistic people but others very different than them altogether. The thing is though I don't have a hard time interacting with them since though I don't have that program they are running I understand their what they are communicating well but I don't know where its coming from when they don't seem to mean what they are saying completely. It's all very deceptive and strange to me which brings me around to normal communication between people having some sort of encrypted algorithm that you can only be born with the ability to understand and fluidly interact with.