On Fake Diseases

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What if society had been created differently, what if what was considered to be normal was different to what is considered normal now?

The thing is what is considered normal or functional is a man made concept, within and governed by, the man made norms of society. Just because an NT would not melt down over a glass of milk does it actually make melting down over a glass of milk wrong in the grand scheme of things or just different?

As my mum always used to say "just because someone jumps off a bridge, do you have to follow them and do the same thing?"

As for them not having milk in and having to go to the store, a little thought and preparation would have done them the world of good. And I have seen plenty of NTs sulk because they did not get something they wanted when they wanted it, which is similar to melting down over a glass of milk (although the reasons are different). NTs can tend to want everything their way...they just express it differently.

They actually do very similar things to those with Autism, the only difference is in how it is expressed.

Intentions are all so well and good, and I often take them into consideration, however when it comes to actually helping someone intention is not really always enough, especially if what is done does not help but makes things worse. Sometimes the best way to help someone is to find out exactly what helps them instead of assuming what might help them. The easiest way to do this is to ask them rather than just assume you know, or are supposed to know, the answers.

Don't beat yourself up because you don't know or you can't mind read what someone else wants or what might help someone else. Most NT's don't know either, they just think they do. When people help they tend to give the advice that helped them the most at the time they needed it. However it is not the same for everyone, and what helps one person may not help another. You cannot possibly always know exactly what will help without asking the person and discussing it with them to find the best solution for them; and why NT's think they can do this is beyond me.

In the process of helping people I have seen people get into such intensive debates over who is giving the most useful advice that the poor person who actually needs the help gets forgotten. In the end the ego war and being right becomes more important than actually getting the person who needs help what they need. AT that point it has become about the 'personal and public image' of the people trying to help and is no longer about the person who actually needs help.

It is also very unfair of people to expect people to just be able to read their mind or know what they want without them telling them.

In a way everyone lives in their own world because they all view the world through their own lens, and through their own experiences. No one experiences things or sees things in exactly the same way as somone else. Even things like pain can vary from individual to individual. Therefore you cannot possibly know exactly what their world is like!

Do they see the colour blue in exactly the same way you do? What kind of meaning do they attach to the colour blue, is it the same as the meaning you attach to it or does it depend on their own personal perception coloured by their own personal experiences in a world that they view through their own personal lens?

Believing that you experience the world in the same way as everybody else and can know exactly what someone else is experiencing is an illusion created by the human ego. Most people are lost in that illusion when in reality they can only guess or speculate as to exactly what someone else is feeling/experiencing/thinking.

So don't be hard on yourself if you are honest enough to admit that you don't know.

I would rather someone admit to me that they don't know what to say than to pretend that they do know what to say or that they do know what I am feeling when in reality they don't. That way I can actually tell them what might help me and more progress will be made.

As for depression, a lot of people get that, myself included and it sucks. Although if the world were a more accepting, warmer, tolerant place I doubt I would be as depressed as a I get some days. I get depressed over the state of mankind and the planet more than I get depressed over my own lack of social success sometimes.

Such a shame that people have to be so intolerant of each other.

I can't eat "what if we lived in a different world where we were considered normal" unfortunately.

Autism does have cognitive advantages (I don't mean splinter skills) which are frequently mischaracterized as deficits. But at the same time, autism does cause significant impairments for people all over the spectrum - from the mildest person labeled with AS or PDD-NOS to the most severe person labeled with autism. There's nothing wrong with admitting these impairments are real.

True, but NTs also have impairments of their own. Everything has positive and negative aspects to it, absolutely everything.

Actually in truth, we define what is negative and positive. In reality things just are...we define what meaning they have to us and our world and whether that meaning is a positive one or a negative one or a mixture of both.

Basically a table is just a table but we get to decide what use that table has to us, what meaning to attach to that table and whether that table is a good table or a bad table. At the end of the day it is really just a table. Or more specifically it is a peice of wood shaped into a shape that we chose to call a table when we developed a word in the english language for it...which we also created ourselves and decided the meaning of.

This is all too abstract. Yes, of course, everything is arbitrary, but we live in a world defined by a specific set of arbitrary rules, and in that world I am not able to function as well as neurotypicals. What good does it do to imagine some other world that doesn't exist where I would be more functional? One of the problems I deal with every day is living with people who assume I can do things that are very difficult and treat me like rubbish I don't go out of my way to do many of those things.

I am not claiming to be inferior, nor am I claiming that NTs lack weaknesses. But I do have to admit that simple cooking instructions can leave me utterly confused and frustrated, and that impacts my ability to eat - I buy food that is simple to prepare, which is often both less healthy and more expensive just to avoid having to organize cooking anything more complex than a hamburger or a chicken breast. I mean, sure, I have a lot of strengths, and I won't even attempt to deny that, or claim that anyone who has a disability lacks any strengths or positives. But I don't see the point of minimizing the negatives. I think you're reaching toward this:

http://www.livingwithcerebralpalsy.com/ ... bility.php

But even the social acknowledges existing, real barriers and removing them. The social model may say that the way I process recipes means I need more verbose instructions. That would be correct - I need more verbose instructions or perhaps someone to clearly tell me what to do at each step. So my barrier to cooking can be removed, but the barrier is a consequence of both my neurology and a lack of accommodation for my neurology.

Normal is normal for a good reason.

I agree that AD/HD and the autism spectrum are real neurological differences, but I think the basis for "ODD" seems rather flimsy. I recently found out that I was diagnosed with this as a child, primarily because of my meltdowns but also because I sometimes didn't want to do things that I was told to do because it didn't seem fair to me or didn't match up to what I thought would/should happen. Which often led to meltdowns.

I think it is extremely problematic to label a child as "oppositional defiant disorder" without finding out WHY they are upset and why they don't always follow instructions from authority figures. As a tool to actually help people, the label seems rather useless, and it rather seems to be promoting a problematic cultural idea that children should just do what they're told without question. I had little trouble doing what I was told when it made sense to me and seemed fair, but when it wasn't I had trouble. I have a big problem with that being labeled simply "ODD," and I wonder how many other people labeled as such as children had underlying developmental differences (particularly autism and AD/HD) that weren't being recognized and understood. Additionally, I have not heard of actual neurological evidence distinguishing ODD brains from "normal" brains, unlike the cases of AD/HD and autism.

That's what I thought after I saw the link.

The mother also mentioned her son would tear the whole house apart if he doesn't have his glass of milk. Sure the mother could sit on him to hold him down until the meltdown goes away but that take hours and hours and she won't get her sleep. Plus tying him in bed wouldn't do because that be child abuse.

I often annoyed others by doing things to get peoples reactions, I always asked questions and wanted to know why to everything, I didn't always listen, I was seen as a trouble maker and as having behavior problems. I can imagine I would have been diagnosed with ODD as a child if the school knew about it. But I know my mother wouldn't have bought it because she tells me I never had behavior problems.

I remember reading on here how some aspies are misdiagnosed with ODD. I can already see why. But I know I don't have it because they are worse than me so I know I don't have it. I can remember my shrink telling me I have some oppositional defiance in me but I don't have ODD. That was back when I was trying to have it so I get my way because my aspie mate sure did and he had it. I had never tried getting my way as a child using manipulation and violence like they do.

A lot of times, what looks like a child "using manipulation and violence to get what they want" isn't really that. It's a meltdown. People thought I was doing this, but I really had no intention of manipulating anyone. I just could not cope with whatever the situation was.

I think its ironic that *mental illness* is synonymous with *mental disorder*.

Disorder means a deviation from *order*; which means *chaos*. So the term suggests that chaos is bad (undesirable). But chaos is actually good.

On another note, sociology and today's society in general is always trying to pigeon hole us into the middle of the bell curve; the middle 80% lets
say. So the middle 80% are normal. They are order. Ordered people are easy to manage and fit into society.

So the bottom 10% and the top 10% are abnormal. They are chaos. Chaotic people are hard to manage and fit into society.

If Einstein was *normal*, then we would not have General or Special Relativity. Is this desirable? Heck no.

This is one of the reasons that labeling *mental disorders* is pointless. It clearly shows that society is viewing the mind and psychology in the
wrong light.

Another reason that labeling *mental disorders* is pointless, is that the mind is impossible to measure.

Now people might say, "But what if there is a measurable brain damage". Well then this is a *brain disorder*, not a *mental disorder*.

The brain and the mind are not the same thing. The brain is biology. The mind is consciousness.

Yes the mind is affected by the brain. But the brain is only one part of the mind. The mind also has knowledge.

Humans are universal creators. Therefore each mind has the capacity to create/learn knowledge and therefore *change* its own mind. And I don't mean changing decisions. I mean literally changing ones own mind; ones consciousness; ones neural pathways.

The mind has a mind-bogglingly awesome capacity to rewire itself. Each wire is a neural pathway. Each pathway is a learned concept. So how does one rewire her own mind?

BY LEARNING!! !

Btw, I'm Aspie and ADHD. These are strengths more than they are weaknesses. And I've learned how to minimize the negative effects of my weaknesses. And all without medication. How did I do it? Knowledge!!

--Rami

I just read your last two posts. WOW YOU ARE GENIUS!! !

Please join me at a philosophy discussion forum at http://groups.google.com/group/beginning-of-infinity

Just to entice you, I'll include one of my posts regarding pure math abstractions in the meta-physical space versus math in the physical space.

A few days ago I read BoI chapter 5 titled _The Reality of Abstractions_ which helped me figure out what happened in this thread. But I didn't write anything until I ran across a thread titled _The "Influences" Model_ which lead me to jumping to BoI chapter 13 titled _Choices_. I skimmed until I read the part about that math is fallible; which is what you have said in this thread.

In your explanation [not quoted], you've discussed both the physical and the meta-physical spaces but I only meant to refer to the meta-physical space. So as an example:

There is the pure abstraction about 1 + 1 = 2, and I think its accurate to call this meta-physical, and then there is the physical idea of 1 hole + 1 hole = 2 holes. I conjecture that the meta-physical one is objective truth. And that the physical one is not; and an example of how the physical can be false is if the holes are next to
each other thus making only 1 big hole. Hence 1 + 1 = 2 in the physical space is fallible while 1 + 1 = 2 in the meta-physical space is infallible.

So the example given in BoI chapter 13 is about math in politics and Deutsch says that it is fallible. And *math in politics* has 2 components which exist in the physical and the meta-physical spaces.

1> the pure math, i.e. the pure abstraction, i.e. a meta-physical objective truth, i.e. infallible, which exists in the meta-physical space, and

2> the reason [and way] in which to apply the pure math to politics, which exists in the physical space.

I think that #1 is meta-physical objective truth while #2 is physical knowledge and thus is fallible.

#1 is theoretical math and applied math, and I think both are infallible.

#2 is philosophy and methodology, and both are fallible.

So the theoretical math is 2nd order meta-physical. And the applied math (formulas) is 1st order meta-physical.

And the reason(s) in which to apply the math is the *philosophy*, which is 2nd order. The way in which to apply the math is the *methodology*, which is 1st order.

And as I stated in the thread titled _What is intelligence?_:

> I first employ philosophical logic before employing symbolic (math) logic. Philosophical logic provides the initial high-level aim while symbolic logic provides the zoom-in feature. Note that symbolic logic is less useful when viewing from far away, i.e. viewing a large portion of the knowledge network, and that philosophical logic is less useful when viewing from very close, i.e. viewing a small portion of the knowledge network. They must be wielded together like a sword and shield; the sword represents symbolic logic while the shield represents philosophical logic.

So my above paragraph involves the physical and the meta-physical spaces.

The _What is intelligence?_ thread is here:
http://groups.google.com/group/beginnin ... 452f06b6dc

---

On a related note, my original meta-idea that I should read BoI in order by chapter was very wrong. Jumping around is way more useful for me. And my new meta-idea makes more sense since it coincides with my way of thinking as I described in the thread titled _Deutsch's way of thinking IS methodical_:
http://groups.google.com/group/beginnin ... 400231cf10

The thread titled _Theory of Knowledge: How the mind learns_ is here:
http://groups.google.com/group/beginnin ... this+group

All knowledge is connected!! !

Everything must reconcile!! !

--Rami