Tag: adhd

Predictive processing has a theory for autism.

First, a general review of predictive processing (PP) itself…

According to PP, my brain is always predicting what’s about to happen and what input means. These predictions are called priors (I think of all the priors in my brain as my model of reality). The data coming in via my senses is compared against priors. If it fits (my prediction is correct), my perception feels smooth (I see this as that “autopilot” mode that autistic people envy neurotypical people for in social situations). If it doesn’t fit, I experience a prediction error…and my brain will attempt to update my priors so that I don’t experience that error in the future (or update the world so that it fits my model of reality…but we’ll leave that for now). The experience of a prediction error is experienced as discomfort, or pain, or frustration, anger, etc…

Essentially, the brain has a map of reality that it navigates the world with. Or rather, it navigates the map (the brain is trapped in that dark cavity I call my skull), and updates the map only when incoming data causes an error, forcing it to (and when updating the world to fit the map isn’t an option).

Social priors are the part of the map labeled “other people” and “me, in the world of people”….predictions about other people and me-in-relation-to-other-people.

More than any other part of life/reality, social life is full of ambiguous signals…tone of voice, facial expressions, body language, context-dependent words and actions, irony, “unspoken rules,” etc. The neurotypical person leans on strong social priors (predictions) like, “A smile means friendliness,” “If someone asks ‘how are you,’ they don’t want a literal health report,” and “This situation calls for deference/compliance.” I think of these as learned shortcuts. They smooth ambiguity so quickly that the (neurotypical) person doesn’t notice how much interpretation they’re really doing (think of a game engine rendering details in real time and high resolution).

PP proposes that in “autistic” perception, these high-level social predictions are either less weighted (weaker…signals don’t get automatically collapsed into expected meanings…the brain says “hmm, not sure…keep checking the data) or over-precise (too narrow…the brain locks a prediction too tightly on detail, so it flags even small deviations as error). Regardless of which it is, functionally the result is similar…more error signals, less smoothing.

According to this explanation, as an autistic person, my experience of interacting with other people isn’t the “typical” experience. I need more explicit clarification (because cues don’t self-resolve). Social situations feel volatile or unpredictable to me (because I’m tracking details others are smoothing over). And I need extra cognitive effort to “keep up,” because I’m building my model of reality more deliberately…less automatically.

Imagine me around a campfire with a few (neurotypical) people. A rustling sound comes from a nearby bush and attracts everyone’s attention. One person says something like, “It’s just the wind.” In short order, everyone returns to whatever they were doing. The person who spoke has a strong prior (prediction) that the world is stable and there’s no danger to worry over. And everyone there (other than me) has a strong prior that someone saying “It’s just the wind” means it really is just the wind. A sort of bias where, out of all the data coming in, the data coming from other people is prized most highly. My response is different. I say something like, “It could be the wind, but it could be something else.” I have a weaker reliance on predictions…I weigh sensory input more highly than my fellow campers.

You can see how weaker social priors (predictions/map of social reality) would make it hard for me to collapse ambiguous social input into the “expected” consensus meaning . I see more of the true uncertainty of the world…I don’t have it smoothed away by some automatic internal mechanism.

That’s the gist of it. And I generally agree with this description of how I experience other people. And as an explanation for the frustrations I experience socially, it certainly feels spot on.

But is it only social priors that are weaker (or overly precise) for me? Or is it priors in general? Depending on who you ask in predictive coding circles, the answer is different.

Early accounts (e.g. Pellicano & Burr, 2012) suggested that autistic people have weaker priors across the board, not just social ones. That would mean that I rely less on prediction in all areas of life. Their evidence for this included the fact that autistic people are less fooled by certain visual illusions (like the hollow mask illusion or context-driven size illusions) and the whole savant piece (enhanced perception of detail and irregularities in non-social patterns…sounds, textures, math, mechanics). The story told was that my “weak priors” are my global style of perception…my world is simply less smoothed…more data-driven.

Later accounts (e.g. Van de Cruys, Lawson, Friston) argue it’s not globally weaker, but misallocated precision. In other words, overly precise priors at one level (rigid routines, intense interests), too little precision at another (ambiguous social interference), and sometimes overly precise weighting on prediction errors (making every mismatch I feel seem urgent). This would explain why some autistic people are incredibly good at pattern-based forecasting (weather models, coding, chess) but struggle in fluid, implicit social contexts.

Both camps agree that social priors are a “special case,” I think. Social environments rely heavily on very fuzzy priors like shared norms and implicit meanings. In the predictive coding model, those are exactly the kinds of priors autistic perception would likely either underweight (“I need to check the data”) or overweight in detail (“I expect exactly X, so any deviation throws me”). In other words, social priors are where my difference shows up most glaringly…but the difference itself might apply everywhere.

Ok, the neurotypical neuroscientists have had their turn. Pass me the mike now, please.

My first reaction to all this…well, anger. And perplexity. I simply don’t understand how, given all the forms of data you can base your map of reality on, that you would choose….other people? With their confusion, and duplicity, and moving moralities, and drives, and, and, and….Why? Why that?

It’s not that I don’t “get” what social priors are. They’re about shared assumptions that keep groups coordinated. What counts as polite, what role you’re supposed to play, what’s “normal” in a given social setting, which explanations everyone in the group nods along to, even if they’re flimsy….that all makes sense to me so long as there is a group goal. As a sort of necessary evil in service of achieving an objective that requires group coordination…I get it. But as a way to live your life? Intentionally mapping your reality on the fuzziest, most contingent, and most contradictory signposts you can find? That confuses the fuck out of me.

Let’s take a closer look at social priors (the part of my reality map that has to do with other people). They’re arbitrary…different from group to group, era to era. They constantly shift…flipping overnight (today’s taboo is tomorrow’s norm). They’re completely detached from ecology…attached instead to abstract concepts like appearance, hierarchy, interpersonal signals. And they leave the door open 24/7 to gaslighting…if everyone else insists the emperor has clothes, the “consensus” is real enough to punish me even if it’s bullshit.

Why not map your reality on data that makes sense? Ecological priors like gravity, cycles of day/night, seasons, and biology are stable, and are directly tethered to reality (what happens predictably and significantly for survival). Embodied priors like the way your body predicts balance, hunger, threat that are constantly and deeply tested through feedback loops that are largely transparent. Social priors? The least tethered? The most prone to drift and self-reference? Really? Really?

On a theoretical level, I try to understand why neurotypicals lean exclusively on this messiest area of the map. Social priors smooth uncertainty, which must feel good. They also enable fast coordination in groups…and those neurotypicals sure like being in groups. There, they’re rewarded…”getting along” matters more (socially, professionally) than being right. But treating them as reality itself? To the point where questioning them is seen as dysfunction rather than discernment. Jesus Christ.

I know this is the double empathy problem at work. I’ll never be able to truly empathize with the neurotypical condition. And if I had to state my position in relation to theirs, as dispassionately as possible, I’d simply say that I’d rather my anchor my sense of the world in ecological and embodied feedback than in fragile, shifting group models. And that this position of mine (it’s not a choice) is not dysfunction unless group coordination is forced upon me as my only means of survival. That my position is arguably closer to “baseline life” than the civilizational overlay.

I’m working on a section that explores neurodivergence and artificial reward systems. I’m looking at how modern society’s “treats” affect neurodivergent people…especially compared to neurotypical peers, who function as a control group.

You just don’t want to shower.
You just don’t want to stop drinking.
You just want to scroll, play video games, snack, sleep in, give up.
You don’t want responsibility. You want excuses.
You’re not “neurodivergent.” You’re just impulsive. Lazy. Weak.
Grow up.

That’s by far the loudest voice in my head.

For years, I’ve tried to hide the fact that I can’t tolerate environments, stimuli, contradictions, etc. that others seem fine with. But I’ve also had to hide what seems to be an inability to resist what others do. I can’t have games on my phone without playing them excessively. I can’t have junk food in the house without eating myself sick. So I don’t have either. I have to keep the phone game-free and the fridge can only have whole foods. It’s embarrassing to admit. And this feeling isn’t a hindsight sort of thing. I feel it RIGHT NOW. Being overwhelmed by modern society’s excesses will probably ALWAYS feel like a personal moral failure to me (no matter how I tell myself it might be something else.

What makes me special? Why wouldn’t people assume when I say I’m autistic or ADHD, that I’m trying to cash in on some behavior lottery…one that gets me out of doing things no one really wants to do, and grants me freedom to do whatever the hell I want?

If that’s how you see me, “Nice try, asshole,” is probably the correct response.

My own particular mask doesn’t help…the one I’ve worn most for the past ten years or so. It could best be described as “interesting redneck.” A bit of me peeked out, of course. The permaculture methods I like to use on my property. The odd opinion I shared…on how nice it was to have deer in my fields again (during Covid lockdowns), for example. Or repeating (a little too often) how grating the sound of the increased traffic on my road is. But by and large, I masked as what you would expect to find in a middle-aged man in a rural area. Work hard, play hard, don’t give me excuses, and all that bullshit.

My diagnosis was like a chair to the head for that mask. None of the literature I was reading, none of the data I was seeing, could possibly allow it to survive. It didn’t just get heavy…it was putrid. It reeked of stupidity, and I knew I’d never be able to pick it up again, let alone put it on. The same proved to be true of all my masks. The studies, books, and data exposed them all for what they were. 

I’d convinced myself, but how can I convince others? Put aside the fact that I’ve never been good at that. Let’s say, for a moment, that I was somehow able to articulate myself in a way that would cause people to listen. Well, even if I managed to quell the straw-man argument hell I was opening myself to (“What the hell are you on about? My 5-year-old autistic son has yet to speak a word. He needs help getting dressed. And you’re trying to sell me the idea that autism is some sort of biological advantage? Fuck you.”), anyone with an (indoctrinated) brain in their head isn’t going to listen to me then explain how me not taking a shower or having a beer at 9 in the morning might not purely be a personal failing. These are big bloody obstacles. The feedback I got from the few people I shared my ideas with was nothing but confirmation.

I knew I would need an insurmountable amount of data to even have the slimmest chance of reaching a mere fraction of the most open-minded readers.

I found it.

I didn’t just find it…I found it with ease. (The comparative studies are everywhere. Meta-analyses. National surveys. Neuroimaging. Behavior data. It’s not subtle.)

It needed minimal organization. It formed its own framework. And for someone like me, that’s….sheer ecstasy. An explanatory model that not only survived months of scrutiny, but instantly encompassed my hunches, my experiences, and my conclusions? How often does that happen, really? I’m a bottom-up thinker, an inductive thinker, my very nature precludes the possibility of cherry-picking data for a theory, no matter how attached I am to it. Devil’s advocate isn’t one voice among many in my head…it is the voice. I can’t “let things go.” That isn’t a flex…it’s just the way I am (and gets me into all sorts of shit). But this research was turnkey. It formed its own coherent argument. One that made me physically excited. Happy dance-flushed-stimmy excited.

I’ve known for a long time that modern civilization doesn’t run on real signals. It runs on engineered superstimuli—“food” that’s sweeter than food, screens that flicker faster than your brain evolved to track, validation loops designed to mimic love, stimulation, and safety. In 2025, everyone knows that, really. It’s common knowledge—almost trite. And for most people, not a minority, these things are hard to resist. But for some of us, it borders on impossible.

My experience isn’t a story of addiction or lack of willpower. It’s a story about susceptibility. The susceptibility of a feedback-sensitive brain to systems that were built to extract something from it. Clicks. Likes. Data. Energy. Money.

Let’s be clear: not all of this is about chasing pleasure. Sometimes, it comes from avoiding pain. The sensory chaos of a grocery store. The moral incoherence of workplace small talk. The emotional friction of living in a world that doesn’t return clean, proportionate feedback. Many neurodivergent people withdraw from that world…not because we’re lazy or disinterested, but because it costs too much (neurologically) to stay in it. But withdrawal comes with its own costs. You’re not going to the farmer’s market. You’re not joining the running club. You’re not cooking a family meal. But you seek what you need (quiet, stimulation, reward) somewhere. And modern society is more than happy to offer it: in bags, in bottles, on screens.

Still, that’s not the core argument here. Avoidance doesn’t explain how precisely these systems seem to exploit my wiring.

This isn’t just about being boxed in by circumstance. It’s about how the system itself is built. It’s about the intensity of the signals, the distortion of natural feedback, the way those signals strike differently in the more sensitive among us. It’s about the fact that even when the external stressors are removed, the engineered signals often still hit harder, register deeper, and dysregulate faster.

It’s about what happens when a feedback-sensitive person is exposed to artificial reward systems.

Do you know what happens?

When the signals get too loud for a feedback-sensitive brain to filter or resist?

28% of adults with ADHD are obese. That’s not about chips being available. That’s about chips being formulated…saltier, fattier, more dopamine-releasing than anything in the ancestral record. The average? Sixteen percent. This is a feedback-sensitive brain lighting up “more,” doing its job. It doesn’t let go.

Children with autism? 41-58% more likely to be obese than neurotypical peers. Are they less able to comprehend what is healthy? Do they have less willpower? Are their parents less caring or strict? Or is it because engineered food is built to override satiety? To turn feedback sensitivity against itself?

25-37% of teens with ADHD meet clinical criteria for internet gaming disorder. Not “likes games.” Disorder. Autistic children? 3.3 hours of screen use vs 0.9 hours/day for neurotypical peers. Autistic adults? Statistically higher scores on gaming addiction tests (9% higher than clinical thresholds). Why? Structured environments. Rules. Possibility of mastery. Variable-ratio reward schedules. Sensory immersion. Linear feedback. It’s everything a feedback-hungry person wants. These are conditions they are starving for…rarely present in that place we now call the real world.

Social media hits harder too. Each like, each comment, each notification…engineered to simulate social connection. For ADHD, it becomes a loop. For autism, it becomes a need. These are two sides of the feedback-sensitive coin.  Both are pulled deeper, faster, and stay longer.

Pornography? Another biological drive hacked: reproduction, bonding, pleasure. But louder. Faster. On-demand. Zero ambiguity. Anyone might get addicted. But for ADHD brains (for a feedback-sensitive person living in a system that lacks biologically-significant novelty), it’s dopamine on tap. For some autistic people (feedback sensitivity in a system that’s full of distorted signals and contradiction), it becomes a ritual. Not because of what it is, necessarily (pornography), but because of how it behaves as a signal.

Substances? The brakes and accelerators we use to reshape society’s feedback into something comprehensible, or at least dull it? 23% of people with ADHD have a co-occurring SUD. Autistic adults are nearly 9 times more likely to use recreational drugs to cope with the consequences of distorted feedback (anxiety, sensory overload).

Compulsive shopping, binge-watching, substance abuse, overuse of screens: same pattern. Not lack of restraint. Not moral decay. Signal distortion.

These systems engineer signals based on how the human brain picks up and processes information. They’re not bloody well accidental. They’re designed to strike the nervous system where it’s most receptive. They’re practically a case study in human feedback-sensitivity (funded by consumer / tax dollars).

The more sensitive the person is to feedback, the better these signals “work.” It isn’t complicated. So why? Why is it contentious to say these things? Why, despite everything, do labels of dysfunction continue to accumulate on this side of the equation?

At this rate, we’ll need to expand the English language. The words don’t exist yet for the number of labels we’ll need. Because this is the gradual pathologization of life itself.