The First to Fall

Tag: neurodiversity

  • No…autistic people are not rigid thinkers.

    Autistic people have challenges with cognitive flexibility. Autistic people are black-and-white thinkers. There’s no in-between with us…something is either good or bad. We’re rigid thinkers…stubborn. We oversimplify the world. We’re immune to nuance. We catastrophize. We’re all-or-nothing.

    Different words for the same thing…you’ve heard the bullshit. In diagnostic manuals. On YouTube. In therapy.

    You’ve also heard the other bullshit. Autistic people are inductive thinkers. We focus too much on the insignificant details and miss the big picture. We can’t see the forest for the trees.

    Different words for the same bullshit…but the opposite bullshit…?

    So, am I a paradox? Am I both a reductive and inductive thinker?

    If there’s anything I’m allergic to, it’s paradox…contradiction. A feeling rises in me. My bullshit detector starts to ring out louder than usual. And, like every paradox I encounter, I know this one is wrong…the reason it’s wrong simply needs to be discovered. (Incidentally, this is the stage in my thinking at which I look most reductionist.)

    And so I think. A lot. I have no choice. My brain won’t leave contradictions unresolved. And here’s what I’ve been thinking these past few days.

    The contradiction (autistic people focus on the smallest details instead of the big picture and autistic people have oversimplified models of the world and refuse to account for contradictory details) comes from where you zoom in on my cognitive process.

    Let’s look at what I’m accused of first: black-and-white thinking (aka dichotomous thinking, rigid thinking, etc.). It means I come to snap categorical judgments like right vs wrong, fair vs unfair, safe vs unsafe. I see it written in descriptions of autistic behavior everywhere…rigidity, over-simplification, an inability to tolerate ambiguity. In predictive processing terms, it’s framed as a strategy to minimize error fast. The autistic person overweights a clear prior (“this is wrong”) instead of juggling noisy or contradictory signals.

    Confusingly, I’m complimented for being the polar opposite…for being an inductive thinker. In the same conversation, even. Apparently, I’m good at building generalizations from specific instances. I’m good at noticing patterns in particulars. In predictive processing terms, my attention to detail and my ability to detect anomalies (in patterns, like contradictions) is attributed to the fact that I don’t start with strong priors (think of them as expectations or assumptions). I let patterns “emerge” from the ground up instead of forcing a theory I have. In other words, compared to your “average” person, I give more weight to incoming data and less weight to stories (whether my own, or a group’s). Bottom-up signals drive my learning. I have to learn the “hard way.’

    The feeling of this paradox is….it’s like you’re catching me at different stages of my thinking process, and naming the stages as opposite things.

    I’ll do my best to describe what my process feels like, from the inside, as me.

    When I first try to make sense of something, I weight raw input heavily. I don’t iron out inconsistencies with conventional stories. That probably explains why I notice details that you seem to miss. But when contradiction or incoherence (i.e. bullshit) piles up, and disengaging from the situation isn’t an option, I need to force coherence. I need to escape the stress of unresolved error. For example, if I’m among a group of people who are trying to solve a problem irrationally, who won’t listen to reason, and I don’t have the option of leaving? I might snap to a categorical judgment. I have a very hard time persisting in insane environments.

    You can think of me as having two modes, maybe. In my inductive mode, I’m open to raw feedback. I’m pattern-sensitive. In my dichotomous mode, I close myself off to pointless ambiguity. This second mode is protective (especially in incoherent environments, where I can get fucked up real fast). But that mode isn’t final. What you call my “black-and-white thinking” is a first-pass strategy to isolate a pattern. I grab hold of a signal (true/false) before I layer nuance back in. And in coherent environments, nuance does get layered back.

    Let’s keep circling this.

    In coherent environments (where feedback is timely, proportionate, local, and meaningful), my particular weighting of error signals looks inductive and nuanced to you. I follow details, I update my view of things flexibly, and I build very fine-grained patterns. Here, you admire me. You say things like, “See? You’re so smart! I couldn’t do that. Why can’t you apply this brain of yours to _______?”

    What you don’t realize, maybe, is that the ______ you just mentioned? It’s an incoherent environment. In that environment, rules are contradictory, consequences are delayed arbitrarily, and abstractions are layered on abstractions for reasons of control, etc. And in that environment, the flood of irreconcilable errors becomes intolerable for me. My nervous system reaches for coherence at any cost. On my first pass in every situation, if I’m forced to “share my thoughts,” you’ll see me collapse complexity into a binary frame (“this is right” “that is wrong”). That’s what you see. What you don’t see (if you never let me get to it), is that I follow that by testing it, and testing it, and testing it…adding details at each step and adjusting my frame as I go. But that first pass? That first pass looks like reductionism or “black-and-white thinking” to you.

    I think if Andy Clark were here, he would say that I have weak priors and that I weigh errors strongly. (He’d probably use words like “underweight” and “overweight,” which I hate…but forgive him for.) That in stable conditions, mine is as inductive, adaptive and precise process. But that in unstable conditions (unstable as in a room full of flat-earthers, not unstable as in a tornado is coming or a bear is running toward me), my process leads to overwhelm.

    My brain clamps onto the simplest model…and when it isn’t allowed to move on from there (the flat-earthers are trying to solve intercontinental flight, and the lawn-zombies are trying to figure out how to keep their biological deserts green) that looks like reductionism. Those are problems that are so decontextualized they have no resolution. And when resolution doesn’t seem possible, my system is forced into a kind of emergency closure because feedback has become utterly fucking useless.

    Let’s look at the lawn example.

    I’m fond of saying that North Americans mowing 40,000,000 of lawn is sheer stupidity. Lunacy, hands-down, from any perspective. When I voice that opinion, intelligent people hear it as an oversimplification. And if they know I’m autistic, they put it down to a difficulty with (or outright inability to comprehend) multi-variable causality. This confuses me greatly. (And I suppose I confuse them.)

    This is probably a case of double empathy. Let’s look at it from both sides.

    I see a signal…mowing tens of millions of acres is, at best, a colossal waste of time, fuel, water, and soil. And I voice it simply: “Stupidity.” To me, that isn’t reductionist. I’m cutting through incoherence to register a glaring error. Something that simply doesn’t make sense. An argument not worth having in this lifetime.

    But when my intelligent (and I’m not using that term facetiously) neurotypical listener hears my opinion, they hear an inability to process nuance. Lawns have cultural history. They have aesthetic value. There are economic incentives involved, municipal codes, homeowner psychology, and so forth. They interpret my clarity as an inability to juggle multi-causality, instead of as a refusal to rationalize nonsense.

    Let’s anchor this gap in neuroscience.

    Neurotypical people put a lot of weight into their priors, which is a fancy way of saying they assume the world is coherent. When they hear “Mowing 40,000000 acres of lawn is complete fucking idiocy on every level,” they automatically begin to search for legitimizing narratives. In other words, they start to search for an explanation for why millions of lawns do make sense (i.e. are comprehendible).

    I, on the other hand, put a lot of weight into error signals, which is a fancy way of saying I can’t ignore contradictions. And from my perspective (and from every epistemic perspective that doesn’t involve human fictions), it doesn’t matter how many variables you pile in to the lawn argument…the outcome is wasteful and absolutely fucking absurd.

    There’s a mismatch here. You see consensus as coherence, and complexity as explanatory. In cases like these, I see complexity as a distraction from the basic error. I collapse your absolute mess of contradictory justifications (shorter grass = less ticks (why grass at all?!?), long grass = an eyesore (what does that mean in reality-terms?), we need to think of neighbors/property value/invasive species (why, why, why among all the things you could “think” of in your 80 summers on this planet, are you “thinking” of those particular bullshit abstractions?). I can process multi-variable causality just fine. But I refuse to let causality excuse incoherence (even typing that makes my head hurt).

    I’m misread, socially. Constantly misread. Neurotypical people equate “nuance” with adding mitigating factors until the critique blurs. And when I resist that, they frame it as over-simplification. I’m the one trying to hold onto the full causal picture. Something can be complex and stupid at the same time. Complexity and stupidity are hardly mutually exclusive in civilization…in fact, they might be positively correlated.

    I can call something stupid without denying complexity. So can you. Try it.

  • Different Maps of Reality

    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.

  • ramble (predictive coding, autism,simulation)

    I have predictive coding (ala Clark, Friston, Vermeulen), autism, Schmachtenberger, Baudrillard, Hoffman, and some recent experiences tumbling about in my brain, desperately looking for synthesis. I feel threads that are impossible to ignore.

    Quick recap of predictive coding and autism.

    In predictive coding models of the brain, perception is made up of prediction and sensory input. “Normal” brains lean heavily on priors (models of what the world usually is) and only update when error signals are strong. Most accounts of autism describe either weak priors (less predictive or top-down bias…meaning each sensory signal hits with more raw force), or overly precise priors (my predictive model is too narrow or rigid…meaning any deviation is a kind of error for me. Either way, in practice, the world feels less stabilized by consensus for me. I don’t get to lean on the stories most people use to blur and smooth reality.

    While listening to a recent interview with Daniel Schmachtenberger, I was reminded that all models of reality are simplifications…they leave things out. Neurotypical perception is itself a model, with a heavy filtering function…a consensus map. From this perspective, if my priors are weaker (or overly precise)…I’m closer to a raw reality where models break down. For me, the “gaps” are almost always visible.

    From there, it’s an easy jump to Baudrillard’s warning, that modern societies live inside simulations (self-referential systems of signs, detached from reality). If I feel derealization…less of a “solid self” (I do)…that’s probably simply what it’s like to live in a symbolic order but not buy into it fully. The double empathy problem is essentially me feeling the seams of a simulation that others inhabit…seamlessly.

    This “self” itself is a model. It’s a predictive story your brain tells to stabilize your experience. And because my priors about selfhood are weaker (or less “sticky”), my sense of “I” feels fragile, intermittent, unreal, etc. In this fucked up place that the majority of people call “reality” (where everyone’s popping anti-depressants and obliterating the planet), my experience looks like “derealization” or “depersonalization,” but to me, it’s a kind of clarity…a deep unignorable recognition that the self is a construct. What becomes a deficit in this place (“I can’t hold reality/self together the way others do”) is a form of direct contact with the limits of models of reality (vs reality itself).

    Which leads me to a burning question I’ve had for a while now: What are the chances that predictive coding’s distinction between “normal” and “autistic” actually points to the neurotypical configuration being one of priors/assumptions about the world that (in contrast to a healthy adaptive baseline) are simply imprecise (overfitted to some inaccurate model of reality)?

    Neurotypical perception leans more on shared, top-down priors (context, expectations, social norms, etc.). That makes perception stable and efficient but extremely bias-prone. (Studies show that neurotypicals are more susceptible to visual illusions than autistic groups.)

    Like I mentioned before, autistic perception has been described as weaker/less precise priors (Pellicano & Burr), or over-precise prediction errors and simply different precision allocation (Van de Cruy’s HIPPEA; Friston/Lawson’s “aberrant precision”). Functionally, both mean less smoothing by priors and more “bottom-up” detail, with (what they say) are costs for generalization and volatile environments. Their conclusion is that autistic people “overestimate” environmental volatility (we update too readily), while NTs are able to charge through with their predictive models intact.

    And I have a real problem with this interpretation that I’ll get to shortly. But first, let’s explore the trajectory of the sort of consensus reality that I consider most neurotypical people to be living in….that set of strong priors/assumptions about the world that civilization shares. Because I have a hunch that its divergence from reality is an inevitable feature, not some sort of “bug” to be tweaked for.

    If we treat civilization itself as a kind of giant predictive-coding system, its “life story” looks eerily like the brain’s, where the priors are consensus itself.

    I see consensus reality as a stack of expectations or assumptions about the world shared by enough people to make coordination possible. Religion, law, money, the idea of a “nation”…these are all hyperpriors (assumptions so deep they’re almost never questioned). They make the world legible and predictable (people can trust a coin or a contract or a census).

    And just like in individual perception, civilization’s priors aren’t about truth…they’re about usefulness for coordination. A shared model works best when it ignores inconvenient detail and compresses messy reality. Divergence from reality is a feature…the system actually becomes stronger by denying nuance. For example, “grain is food” (simple, measurable, taxable). But reality is actually biodiversity, shifting ecologies, seed autonomy, etc. See how that works?

    This divergence from reality deepens in a few ways, the most obvious being self-reinforcement. Once a model is institutionalized, it defends itself with laws, armies, and propaganda. It also suppresses signals…inputs that contradict priors are treated as “prediction errors” to be minimized, not explored. And, back to Baudrillard, the model (that is civilization) refers increasingly to itself than to external reality (markets predicting markets, laws referencing laws, etc.). The longer it runs, the more this consensus model fine tunes and solidifies its own reality.

    From a civilizational perspective, divergence from reality is coherence. If everyone buys into the strong priors (money is real, my country is legitimate, my god demands I go to church), coordination scales up and up. The obvious cost is that the model loses contact with ecological and biological feedback…the “ground truth.” Collapse shows up when prediction error (ecological crises, famines, revolts) overwhelm the significant smoothing power of the priors.

    The bottom line is that civilization’s consensus model requires detachment to function. Life-as-it-is needs to be turned into life-as-the-system-says-it-is. In predictive coding terms, civ runs on priors so heavy they no longer update. In Baudrillard’s terms, simulation replaces reality. And in my own lived experience (as a “neurodivergent” person), derealization isn’t some kind of personal glitch…it’s what the whole system is doing, scaled up.

    This whole thing gets even more interesting when I think more deeply about the term “consensus.” It implies something everyone’s contributed to, doesn’t it? But that clearly isn’t the case. What’s actually happening is closer to consent under conditions…most people adopt civilization’s model because rejecting it carries penalties (exile, poverty, prison, ridicule). It seems to me that the “consensus” is really an agreement to suspend disbelief and act as if the shared model is real, regardless of who authored it.

    Whose model is it, then? It depends when and where you’re living. It could be state elites…kings, priests, bureaucrats historically defined categories like grain tallies, borders, and calendars. It could be economic elites…merchants, corporations, financiers shape models like money, markets, and “growth.” It could be cultural elites…professors, media, and educators maintain symbolic order (morality, legitimacy, and values). I don’t think it’s contentious to say that whatever the model, it reflects the interests of those with the leverage to universalize their interpretation. Everyone else gets folded into it as “participants,” but not authors.

    The commonly accepted narrative is that homo sapiens won out over other human species due to our ability to coordinate, and that nowhere is this coordination more evident than in the wonderous achievement we call Civilization. But why isn’t anyone asking the obvious question…coordination toward whose ends? Because coordination certainly isn’t “for humanity” in some neutral sense…it’s for the ends of those who set the priors. Grain-based states are coordinated bodies for taxation, armies, and monuments. Modern market democracies are coordinated bodies for consumption, productivity, and growth. The “consensus” isn’t valuable because it’s true…it’s valuable because it directs billions of bodies toward a goal profitable or stabilizing for a ruling class.

    Now we come up against the double bind of participation (as an autistic person, I’m intimately familiar with double binds). You may not have authored civilization’s model, but you can’t opt out without huge costs. Not participating is madness or heresy. I’m a dissenter and so I’m “out of touch with reality.” The pathologization of neurodivergent mismatch translates to me as: “You’re wrong. The consensus is reality.” To which I say, not only is consensus reality not reality…it isn’t fucking consensus, either. It’s a cheap trick….the imposition of someone else’s priors as if they were everyone’s. Calling it consensus simply disguises the extraction of coordination.

    I want to talk now about Vermeulen’s (and others’) conclusion that the weaker (or overly precise) priors that characterize autism come at the cost of not being able to navigate volatile environments.

    To me, this is just another example of the decontextualization rampant in psychology and related fields (I see it all grounded in a sort of captivity science). And, in this case, the context that’s not being accounted for is huge. I think Vermeulen and others falsely equivocate volatile SOCIAL environments and volatile environments in general.

    It’s been my experience (and that of others), that autistic people perform quite well in real crisis situations. When social smoothing has no real value (or can be a detriment, even). But Vermeulen seems to think that my ability to function is impaired in the face of volatility (he makes some stupid joke about how overthinking is the last thing you want to do if you cross paths with a bear…ridiculous). I find the argument spurious and context-blind (ironic, considering he defines autism itself as context blindness).

    The argument is as follows:

    Because autistic perception is characterized by weaker or overly precise priors, each signal is taken “too seriously” (less smoothing from context). In a volatile environment (fast-changing, noisy, unpredictable), this supposedly leads to overwhelm, slower decisions, or less stability. Therefore, autist priors are maladaptive in volatility. B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T.

    Let’s pull the curtain back on Vermeulen’s hidden assumption.

    When researchers say “volatile environments,” they clearly mean volatile social environments. All you have to do is look at the nature of the studies, where success depends on rapid uptake of others’ intentions, ambiguous cues, unspoken norms, etc. In that kind of volatility, having weaker social priors (not automatically filling in the “shared model”) is costly. But it’s a category error to generalize that to volatility in all domains.

    In environments characterized by social volatility, strong priors (the ones neurotypicals rely on) smooth out the noise and let them act fluidly. I’ll grant you that. But what the fuck about ecological volatility? Physical volatility? Hello?!? Sudden threats, immediate danger, technical breakdowns, real-world crises…where over-reliance on priors blinds you to what’s happening (“This can’t be happening!!”, denial, social posturing). Here, weaker/precise priors are a fidelity to incoming data and clearly convey an advantage.

  • The Predictive Brain: Autistic Edition (or Maybe the Model’s the Problem)

    There’s a theory in neuroscience called predictive processing.

    It says your brain is basically a prediction engine that’s constantly trying to guess what’s about to happen (so it can prepare for it). In other words, you don’t just react to the world…you predict it, moment by moment. The closer your model (of predictions) matches reality, the fewer surprises you get. Fewer surprises, less stress.

    The model applies to everything…light, sound, hunger, heat. But also to something far messier: people. From infancy, we start modeling the minds of those around us. “If I cry, will she come?” “If I smile, will he stay?” It doesn’t need to be conscious…it’s just the brain doing what it does (building a layered, generative model of how others behave, feel, and respond). Social expectations become part of the predictive model we surf through life on. (nod to Andy Clark’s Surfing Uncertainty)

    From the predictive processing perspective, autistic people aren’t blind to social cues. (That’s outdated bullshit.) But we weight them differently. Our brains don’t assign the same precision (the same level of trust) to social expectations as most people do. So we don’t build the same nice, tight models, make the same assumptions, or predict the same patterns.

    For example, I can read derision just fine. But I don’t use it to auto-correct my behavior unless it directly impacts something I care about. For better or for worse, my actions aren’t shaped by unspoken norms or group vibes…they’re shaped by what feels real and necessary in the moment.

    If you sat me down in front of Andy Clark or Karl Friston (smarty- pantses in the predictive processing world) they’d probably agree. I think. They’d tell me I’m treating social priors as low precision. That my brain doesn’t update its models based on subtle social feedback because it doesn’t trust those models enough to invest the effort. And that my supposed “motivation” is actually baked into the model itself (because prediction isn’t just about thinking, it’s about acting in accordance with what the brain expects will pay off).

    Ok. But something’s missing…something big. Context.

    Implicit in the predictive model is the idea that social priors are worth updating for. That most social environments are coherent, that modeling them is adaptive, and that aligning with them will yield good results.

    But what if they’re not? What if you turned on the news and saw that the world was….kind of going to absolute shit? And that, incomprehensibly, people seemed fine enough to let clearly preventable disasters simply unfold and run their course?

    What if the social signals you’re supposed to model are contradictory? What if they reward falsehood and punish honesty? What if they demand performance instead of coherence?

    In that case, is it still a failure to model social cues? Couldn’t it be a refusal to anchor your behavior to a bullshit system? A protest of the organism rather than a failure?

    Because from where I sit, if social information is incoherent, corrupt, or misaligned with ecological / biological reality, then assigning it low precision isn’t a bug…it’s a protective adaptation. Why would I burn metabolic energy predicting a system that specializes in gaslighting? Why would I track social expectation over reality? “Why do THEY? ” is the question I ask myself every day. (Just when I start to accept that people simply love the look of grass instead of nature, they go out and cut it….then just when I start to accept that people love the look of grass that is a uniform height (rather than actual grass)…they go out and cut it under clear skies when it’s 35 degrees, killing it…just when I start to accept that people are born with some sort of pathological compulsion to mow landscapes, they replace a portion of their yard with a pollinator garden…because enough of their neighbors did.)

    In predictive processing terms, maybe we (autistic people) are saying, “This part of the world isn’t trustworthy. I’m not investing in modeling it.” or just “I don’t trust the model you’re asking me to fit into.”

    Of course, saying that comes at a real cost to me. Exclusion, misunderstanding, misalignment. I can sit here all day telling you how principled my stand is…but that “stand” is clearly exhausting and has resulted in long-term adaptive disadvantages (in this place).Systems (“good” or “bad”) almost always punishes non-modelers. But that doesn’t make me wrong. Reality is reality.

  • Social deficit? Or social defi…nitely-don’t-care?

    Don’t get all worked up. This is just me thinking out loud.

    I have problems with social settings. I really do. But I often find myself wondering if it’s less a deficit in social awareness, and more a different motivational structure (a different why, not a failed how). Let’s pull this apart.

    The standard narrative is that autistic people struggle to social cues. But, hell, I do read them…especially the negative ones (derision, exclusion, mocking). What I don’t do is monitor them constantly as a way to regulate my behavior. Because I don’t think my behavior is rooted in alignment with other people…it’s rooted in functional or internal need.

    When I was a kid I got bullied a lot. A psychologist might say that I failed to perceive signals from the group that would have allowed me to integrate successfully…and that bullying is a sort of result of failed integration. But I’ve come to realize that it’s not that I failed to perceive the signals that led up to being punched in the face…it’s more like those signals weren’t previously relevant to my goals. I had a different value hierarchy, maybe.

    Your average neurotypical person is conditioned to constantly scan for social matching, conformity, “sameness” (gestures, interests, tones). They seek safety in blending in…self-protective group behavior built on the belief that sameness = acceptance.

    I don’t do that…thing. Not by choice, anyway. I act based on what makes sense to me in the moment…functionally or internally. I’m constantly baffled by people’s need to ‘check in’ with each other. I really don’t know what that’s all about. It seems an awfully wasteful use of limited energy considering what else you could be doing. But I digress. People seem to think I act “differently” to stand out. BUT I HATE STANDING OUT. I act…based on needs. Not social mirroring. And I guess it only becomes “wrong” to me once someone points it out (over a lifetime, of course, I become able to anticipate what others think is wrong and sort of shape my behavior according to some invisible and shifting standards that I wish I’d never become aware of).

    In any case, this confuses people. They think or say something like, “But you could tell we were uncomfortable!” Right, probably. But I didn’t prioritize your discomfort over my own need…or, it didn’t register with me as something needing immediate modification (until you named it, punished it, or laughed at it).

    This is where the mythology of “mindblindness” fails…I’m not blind at all. Think of me as being non-compliant with unspoken conformity protocols…until I’m forcibly reminded. Then I mask, try to adjust, do my best to match your shifting standards and needs…but it’s reactive, not internalized. Please hear me when I say: I don’t mask because I want to be same (but don’t know how)…I mask because I’ve learned (the hard way) that you demand sameness.

    Let’s say I’m right about this. Let’s say that, as an autistic person, I don’t actually have a problem reading social cues at all…I simply don’t allocate any time or energy to the task because, on some fundamental level, the cost/reward ratio doesn’t add up for me.

    Then that would open the door to a radical reframing of how autism is interpreted within the predictive processing (PP) framework (which I’m a huge fan of).

    In the dominant PP interpretation (e.g. Pellicano & Burr, Friston, Van de Cruys, Clark), autism is characterized by:

    1. High precision prediction errors (Autistic brains assign more weight to sensory data (bottom-up input), and less weight to prior beliefs (top-down models)…which leads to a reduced ability to generalize, filter noise, or tolerate uncertainty.)
    2. Low tolerance for ambiguity (Unexpected outcomes cause larger error signals in the autistic brain, leading to discomfort, rigidity, or repetitive behavior.)
    3. Excessive demand for model updating (Because priors aren’t stick enough (i.e. I leave my model of the world more open to adjustment to real-time data), everything feels novel, and the brain is constantly working to remodel the world.)

    From this lens, autism is seen as a kind of overactive reality-checking mechanism…hypersensitive to mismatch between prediction and perception.

    But back to me. What if I can perceive social cues, but don’t automatically adjust behavior to match, and only respond when the consequences are made explicit? Well, then maybe it isn’t about being overwhelmed by error. Maybe it’s about being uninterested in minimizing certain kinds of social prediction errors (until they become functionally relevant).

    In standard PP, error minimization is assumed to be globally prioritized (that’s my understanding of it). But what if I simply don’t care about being socially in sync unless it affects my access to something I need? So I don’t treat social mismatch as important prediction error?

    That would mean some sort of hierarchy of predictive concern. Maybe my brain isn’t trying to minimize all errors…only the ones that interfere with internal coherence or functional outcomes. Maybe social expectations only matter once they constrain resources, safety, or autonomy. That would mean autistic perception may not be about error overload, but about prioritization mismatches (neurotypical brain treats social alignment as a high-priority prediction task but autistic brain treats functional clarity, pattern integrity, or sensory truth as higher priorities).

    I’m almost definitely wrong…but if I’m right….if I’m right!!:

    Autistic predictive systems don’t globally overweight prediction errors. They assign selective precision to biologically or perceptually grounded domains (e.g. sensory input, moral consistency, physical logic)…and lower precision to social expectations unless those expectations become explicit and consequential (like a punch to the head or being fired from a job). A different optimization strategy…more ecological/biological than performative. And “severity” would be the slider on that scale.

  • So what is “neurodivergence,” really?

    We know it isn’t a disorder.

    Based on everything we know about human self-domestication, it’s hard to argue with the theory that neurodivergence is a retention of traits that were less attenuated by domestication…preserved in pockets where selection for tameness (compliance, suppression, abstraction) was weaker or more variable. And that during times of civilizational incoherence (when systems break down, contradictions multiply, symbolic structures fail), less “domesticated” people seem to appear in greater numbers (despite always being there), or become more visible because the gap between civilization and reality widens, or finally start to make sense, because their traits are adaptive in collapse.

    Let’s build this…

    Domestication selects for neural crest attenuation (compliance, docility, symbolic fluency, sensory tolerance).

    But not all populations or individuals experienced this equally (geographic, cultural, environmental diversity produced pockets of lower attenuation…these groups retained more feedback sensitivity…emotional reactivity, moral alarm, sensory intensity, literalism).

    Civilization pathologizes these traits (labels them as autism, oppositional defiance, “hyper-sensitivity,” etc.).

    But during periods of systemic incoherence or collapse, these individuals become more noticeable. Their “maladaptive” traits now map reality more accurately. They begin to show up in number…not because they’re new, but because the system’s illusions are failing.

    Fast-forward to 2025, and you have an apparent “epidemic” of neurodivergence.

    The explanation seems simple to me. We have greater exposure to feedback-inverted environments, a reduced ability of symbolic systems to contain contradiction (literal minds become more visible), more diagnostic categories and more surveillance (capturing traits that were overlooked), and a spike in environmental toxicity and noise (which dysregulates people with low attenuation).

    We don’t fit civilization because we weren’t (as) shaped by its full domestication loop.

    Why the hell is this so controversial or offensive? Clearly, some dog breeds retain more wolf-like traits. Clearly, some animals resist captivity better than others. And clearly, some humans retain more ancestral (feedback-sensitive) traits. Why? There’s only one explanation…and it’s the same one that explains why any “minority” trait persists. Their lineages were less selected for it (tameness), or more recently disrupted from (feedback-rich) contexts.

    For fuck’s sake, neurodivergent traits aren’t “new conditions.” They’re old configurations that make sense, especially in systems that don’t.

    So, what’s next?

    In evolutionary biology, we have to challenge the assumption that domestication is purely beneficial or benign. We have to reinterpret human evolution not as progressive refinement, but as selection for attenuation. We have to connect neurodivergent traits to ancestral or undomesticated configurations (if you insist). And we have to invoke runaway selection, neural crest theory, and feedback-driven adaptation when we do it.

    In neuroscience and developmental biology, we have to leverage the neural crest hypothesis to explain multi-trait shifts in domesticated species. We have to run with the theory that neurotypical traits are a developmental cascade triggered by early suppression feedback responsiveness. And we have to embrace the fact that what we classify as “autism” or “ADHD” probably reflect less attenuation of limbic, sensory, or integrative functions.

    In anthropology and archaeology, we have to reframe the civilizing process not as moral evolution, but as feedback severance and systemic control. Otherwise, we’ll continue to idealize it and our endpoint will be collapse. Again. And again. We have to challenge the dominant narrative of the “agricultural revolution” and the idea that domestication was progress. We have to recognize the fact that cultural and cognitive diversity in prehistory was shaped by differential exposure to domestication pressure.

    In psychiatry and psychology (it’s hard to be nice here), we need to reinterpret diagnostic categories as misread adaptive traits in maladaptive systems. We need to frame neurodivergence as a mismatch with an incoherent system, not as dysfunction. We need to challenge (or just burn) assumptions about “normalcy” and “functionality” in the DSM framework. And we need to wipe the slate clean and open the floor to all questions regarding moral injury, masking, and performance pathology.

    In systems theory and cybernetics, we need to look at feedback inversion as the main civilizational process. We need to apply runaway selection and closed-loop dysfunction to human cognition and culture (as painful as that will be). And we need to define neurodivergent distress as diagnostic error signals in failing systems.

    In cognitive science (and philosophy of mind), we need to challenge predictive coding’s assumption that accuracy is the goal…it needs to be acknowledged that civilization selects for predictive stability over truth. We need to demonstrate the link between literalism and feedback sensitivity to uncompromised model updating. And, come on, we need to admit that what we call “neurodivergent” cognition is closer to epistemological integrity (reality).

    In collapse studies/political sciences, we need to recognize that what we call “civilization” consistently suppresses the very traits that can correct its course. We need to see that collapse isn’t an anomaly, but the endpoint of systemic feedback suppression. And we need to say this: “Neurodivergent people are early responders in this collapsing feedback loop we find ourselves in.”

  • Letters to Family after a Late Autism Diagnosis

    I hope this note finds everyone well. I’m writing today with a personal request regarding my father, __________.

    I’m currently working on a book that explores autism—not just in clinical terms, but in how it shapes lives, relationships, and histories. As some of you may know, my father, __________, was autistic, and is a central part of this story, and yet, in many ways, he remains the least known person in my life.

    Knowing that he was autistic, as I am (I was “diagnosed” last year), helps make sense of many things I once could not understand. Unfortunately, I know very little about the first fifty years of his life, only fragments of the two decades that followed, and mere glimpses of his final years.

    I’m reaching out to all of you because I suspect there are memories (perhaps small ones, perhaps difficult ones) that might help me piece together who he was. Any story, however brief, however second-hand, however unsavory, is welcome. A childhood impression. A family photo. A moment observed. Even a sentence your parents once said in passing.

    I understand that not everyone may have had a positive experience with my father. He could be very, very difficult. He hurt people. I’ve spent much of my life coming to terms with my own grievances. I’m not asking anyone to excuse him…but if there’s a way to understand him more clearly, I would like to try.

    When I asked questions growing up (and even in adulthood), the most consistent answer I received was, “Your father isn’t well.” I believe that was said with care. But it left a silence I’ve lived with ever since.

    So this is me, asking gently: If you have something to share, no matter how small, I would be grateful.

    _____________________________________

    Many of you have reached out to me with stories. I appreciate you so much. Apologies if I missed someone in my replies. 

    Thanks to your help, I’m coming to grips with parts of this story I didn’t even know existed. Not small pieces, either. The sort of pieces whose absence was….incomprehensible? The sort of pieces that, when missing, result in a completely incoherent story. That result in a completely incomprehensible person.

    When I’m done, I’d be happy to share some insight into my father with the interested among you (no need to reply here, but you can send me a private message). My father didn’t exist in a vacuum. He was part of a family. Most of the story will be upsetting, but if you ask for it I’ll assume you know yourself well enough to handle that sort of thing.

    Because this week of your help alone has yielded so much important information, I’d ask that you continue sharing details with me, as you remember them. Maybe you feel resistance at the thought of sharing them. I understand. No one has an obligation to share anything they don’t want to. Maybe you think some things are better left alone. That is something I have a harder time with. And if you ever read this emerging story, you’ll know why I have a hard time with that. Because a lot of the upsetting parts of this story are the result of just that tendency: a control of narratives and knowledge that presumes one’s own worldview is superior to that of others. We’re talking about some serious generational trauma here…allowed to persist under the guise of good intentions.

    No need for a polished email…single sentences with no punctuation, etc., are just fine. It doesn’t have to be a story, even. It can be a feeling you had or an impression you never fully explored.

    None of these details will ever be published. The book I’m writing necessitates an understanding of the interplay between an inherent nature (that we call ‘autism’…along with a few other diagnostic labels) and its environment, but it isn’t about my father. My father’s story is a case study that I’d really rather not have. But here we are.

    _____________________________________

    Thanks for your kind words. To be honest, I still know embarrassingly little about the subject matter of my book. And I’m a bottom-up thinker, so my learning process is SLOWWW….

    Your email is the first thing I read today and it made me feel good. And when I feel good, I overshare. That might be autism. Or it might be what an autistic person does when safe opportunities to share feel so rare. Or it might be that a diagnostic label like autism only makes sense in a certain system…a system where certain traits that are normally quite adaptive are pathologized. My book is an exploration of the last. It’s a giant footstomp against being told: “Good news. There’s a name for the way you are. It’s a disability. So just throw that name around and people will have to accommodate you.” But I don’t want to be accommodated. I never have.

    Oh boy. Here is an early morning rambling I’ll almost certainly spend the rest of the day beating myself up over. 

    You may know most of my ideas already. I have a hard time guessing how the things I say will be heard…so I either 1) over-hammer points (the way my father would feel the need to explain the history of juice before telling you he’d switched to the newest Five Alive, maybe); or 2)  go straight to a level of abstraction that presumes you know everything in my head already (which is how I adjust my behaviour when my over-hammering tendency gets brought to my attention enough times). In any one conversation, you’ll almost certainly get both from me.

    Part of the autistic ‘experience’ is is the constant performances, and one of those performances is pretending to know what one’s talking about until one does. This is one of many behavioral patterns that emerge from the struggle to make sense of social models in which you’re presented with a set of rules that no one else seems to really follow. When you follow these rules you’re ridiculed. Don’t be so literal. When you break them you’re punished. You KNEW the rule. Everyone around you navigates this terrain with far less friction. It starts to feel like they have the real rulebook in their back pocket. Unlike others, I can’t seem to ‘let go’ of that friction. It constant agitates me. But on the outside, you perform. And when the majority of your life is a performance, eventually everything you say feels like a lie. But occasionally, a few days or months later, you’ll realize something you said was true. And you’ll be surprised. Very. You realize that these performances have become as much for yourself as they were for others. 

    _____________________________________

    Ugh…here is some more over-hammering.

    As I was going through my morning routine, my mind kept going over how these things will be read by the family. Until I have the fullest story I can have, I’ll be purposely vague. But being vague invites all sorts of potential misunderstandings or objections. 

    My father had a reputation for ruining the few family gatherings he attended. He would bring ugliness. I think those of you who lived through that might be feeling the same about me. He is his father, after all. Here’s this beautiful online family community we’ve created, where we share news of baptisms, memories of loved ones who’ve passed, and other uplifting news…here’s this guy hijacking the group as some sort of platform for his mid-life crisis. I hope no one sees me like that. I’m painfully aware of the impression I can make. It’s this awareness that partly explains my historic lack of participation with family (but I read everything!). Only partly, of course…there isn’t enough time in the day to explain all the reasons I tend to avoid group settings. And none of those reasons are a particular individual, etc.

    There are huge elephants in the room that I have to address. 

    First, I want you to know that I know my father’s behavior was, in many cases, grossly offensive. If you know what I mean by that, then you…already know. His behavior wasn’t harmful only under a certain light, or without a particular understanding…it was harmful, period. 

    Second, I recognize the very real efforts made by family to help him. What I have to say is in no way a unilateral dismissal of those efforts. 

    Next (and this is the hardest to address, by far), there are external circumstances of my life (in fact, probably most of the on-paper circumstances of my life) that make anything I have to say very easy to dismiss. I’ve come to understand that a big part of being a ‘high-functioning’ autistic person (i.e. an autistic person with lower support needs) is that you can blend in just enough to do some incredible damage to not only yourself, but others. I have two failed marriages under my belt, and three awesome children who understandably have some very mixed feelings about me. The behaviors I engaged in, the ones I engineered in order to access love and a feeling of belonging, meant making commitments that were well beyond my ability to keep. And if that sounds like self-serving bullshit to you…well, all I can say is that most days that’s what it sounds like to me, as well. 

    The parallels between my father’s life and my own are tragic to the point of being comical (almost). We’ve both caused damage. I’ve arguably caused more than he did. I functioned ‘better’ and longer. When you’ve caused damage like that, you lose the right to speak. When you open your mouth, people expect sickness. It’s dismissed, wholesale. 

    So a huge challenge (insurmountable, even) in explaining yourself as a late-diagnosed ‘high-functioning’ autistic person is the very real danger of having everything you say interpreted as self-serving bullshit. After this past year of corresponding with countless other late-diagnosed autistics, I can tell you this is an almost universal experience. The damage is already done. The collapse came too late. You managed to do X, so you sure as hell can do Y like the rest of us. Grow up. All you can do is shrink yourself and hope that the relational debts you (or, more accurately, the persona you created for others) incurred before your diagnosis will be somehow…forgiven? But you know they won’t be. Because you certainlywouldn’t forgive them.

    The other challenge is that autism is largely a difference of degree, not of kind. When you try to explain it, people default to their own experiences. Using our own reference points, we assume everyone experiences the world the same way we do. If I were to present my challenges to you in a list, you’d relate to just about all of them. I don’t like loud environments, either. No one does. I have a hard time with hypocrisy, too–who doesn’t? I have a difficult time with change, too. I’ve felt awkward in social situations, who doesn’t? I do best with a routine, everyone does. But life simply isn’t like that. It really sounds like you just want to avoid challenging yourself. It sounds like you’re trying to rationalize avoiding what everyone would like to avoid, but is mature enough to tolerate. Etc. Autistic adults are 7 times more likely to commit suicide than your ‘average’ person. It’s a bit harder to explain stats like that away as laziness or immaturity or irresponsibility.

  • I Can’t Express my Ideas Properly

    When I write, I either spend too much time explaining things people already know (which frustrates them) or I say things without explaining them properly (which frustrates them). I can never find find a happy medium.

    I’ll try to explain what I mean by “feedback sensitivity.”

    When I was diagnosed, I spent months watching the same videos and reading the same books most people watch and read after a late diagnosis. I had the same feelings (probably).

    I wanted to know WHAT MY AUTISM WAS. At its core. People say these particular traits are not really autism–they’re co-morbidities. Ok. Let’s put those aside. Therapists say these particular thought / behavior patterns are the result of layered trauma (i.e. decades of being autistic in a “neurotypical” world). Fine. I can see that. Let’s put those aside, as well.

    What’s left? What’s at the CORE of this label people give me (autistic/ADHD/OCD/etc.)?

    I was left with a pretty short list of what I started to call core traits. Black-and-white thinking, a need for routine and predictability, a need for a certain level of novelty, deep focus, etc.

    But lists don’t do much for me. They never have. They taunt the part of me that needs to reason inductively, to find a larger explanatory model. I wanted to know what was common to all of those traits. Where do they come from? What explains them?

    (Like anyone would, I applied my own existing knowledge, biases, and frameworks to the task. I’m heavy into permaculture, ecology, evolution, anthropology, and a few other fields. These have always been my “special interests,” as the clinical lingo goes.)

    I went down a lot of paths. Some of them were just wrong, and I had to double back. Some led me to the ideas you read about in my book work as it stands, but they sounded different at the time.
    They weren’t completely wrong, but they were juvenile or incomplete.

    For example, I toyed with the idea that I have a DRIVE and a NEED to seek out species-appropriate stimuli and environments (things that are good for humans, in general), and the extent to which I succeed…I’m FINE. The extent to which an environment or stimulus is NOT species-appropriate (not good for people, in general), I’m NOT fine. In fact, the parts of me that were just fine, strengths sometimes, in healthy environments, became disabilities. I still believe this…but I wasn’t happy with “species-appropriate.” Because it didn’t take long for me to realize that what I was talking about were things that were good for ALL forms of life (animals, plants)…not just people.

    In the end, what I found to be common to all the traits on my list was: sensitivity. They were all forms of sensitivity. More or less sensitive to change than a neurotypical person. More sensitive to contradiction. To unpredictability. To sounds and smells. Still with the species-appropriate idea firmly in mind, I felt strongly (and still do) that the change I was overly sensitive to wasn’t a level of change that was good for any person…those people were just somehow less sensitive to it. The same went for contradiction. Contradiction doesn’t benefit anyone…it leads to most of the problems we see on the news. The sounds and smells I was “overly” sensitive to? They were the smells and sounds of activities that are harmful to all people (and all living things, really)…engines, synthetic perfumes, etc. So I’m sensitive to harmful things. But shouldn’t I be? Why isn’t everyone else?

    I started to think about what allows a living thing succeed in an environment, and what causes it to fail. And I came back to a pretty fundamental principle: an animal succeeds depending on how well it can figure out the rules of a place. The better and faster it can understand the rules of a forest/prairie/pond/etc., and the better it can change its behavior to match those rules, the better it will survive and reproduce.

    Break the “rules” of the forest, and you will be “corrected.” Walk through a patch of poison ivy, and you’ll be in discomfort for a week. Go out at the wrong time of day, and you’ll be eaten alive by mosquitoes. These “corrections” the forest is giving you are known as feedback. It’s sort of a strange thing to say because we think of “feedback” as something a person gives to you. Something that’s given to you on purpose. But in ecology, the consequences of your actions in a certain ecosystem are just that: feedback / correction.

    So, on the whole, the more sensitive you are to that feedback, the better you’ll survive and reproduce. The better you can read signals and adjust your behavior by them, the more success you’ll have. It’s evolution 101.

    With that in mind…I came back to my experience in the world as an autistic person. I’d established (in my mind, anyway) that my level of sensitivity is the right level of sensitivity for a living thing. I didn’t have to come up with hypothetical scenarios to prove this to myself, I spent a lot of my early years at my uncle’s or grandfather’s…remote off-grid places where I just…lived.

    But here in this place….I AM dysfunctional. It doesn’t “feel” like I’m dysfunctional, I really am. And it’s that trait, that feedback sensitivity, that is doing the disabling. But that’s ridiculous, isn’t it? How could THE trait most responsible for a living thing’s success lead to disability?

    So I tried flipping the narrative. What if it’s the place? What if every single one of my core traits are really just indicators of what’s wrong with this place? “Deep” focus? There’s nothing deep about my focus when I’m in the woods. It’s just focus. “Black-and-white” thinking? In nature? Are you kidding? That’s the only kind of thinking there is. Something is either true or it isn’t

    I knew that this wasn’t a very nuanced argument. I knew there were holes. I knew that it was based on my own particular autism, my own particular need for supports, etc.

    BUT….core traits, right? CO-morbidities, right? Trauma, right? These are NOT autism. They’re either something that occur with it (they can occur in people who are not autistic) or something that is the result of my “autism,” that core trait of feedback sensitivity, playing for a long time in a very dirty sandbox.

    I hope this helps someone, somewhere.

  • Overstimulated by Bullshit

    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.