How trusting are you (online test)

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Someone gave me a link to the live Drugs Ecstasy Trial over at Channel 4 (which they actually paid for and commissioned btw.) C4 that is.

I listened to the interview with Professor Nutt on the radio a few days ago. I don't have a tv so will have to catch up on youtube or something. Anyway, the surprising thing he said was that when we take these psychedelic drugs, people think the brain gets fired up and all the neurons are firing and all of the parts of the brain that don't normally talk to each other, start conversing. But actually, in reality, major parts of the brain shut down. It is the quieting of the brain that allows certain centres to take hold and allow us to have the psychedelic experience. Psychedelic - literally meaning 'mind-manifesting'.

Anyway. What has this to do with the title of my thread?
Good question. I am about to ask Channel 4 the almost same thing - what has The Live Drugs Ecstasy Trial got to do with How Trusting Are You?


http://www.channel4.com/programmes/drug ... trust-test

Perhaps if someone could answer this for me, before I set pen to paper, or finger to keyboard, it would save some time.


Oh, and in the Brain Imaging tests apparently, Autistic people have raging brains - much more fired with much more connectivity between the 'centres'. So I guess acid or magic mushrooms could be prescribed for ASD. But seeing as they are anti-addictive drugs - that is - the more you take - the less it affects you - to the point where the drugs just don't work anymore - after a few hours or at most days...
It would therefore be impossible to develop a drug with this profile.



Back on track. I did the test. To be honest, I don't know what they were trying to prove. I could have worked it out, but it would have taken more time than I was prepared to give.

Anyway, seeing as ASD people are supposed to have trouble 'reading' faces, I thought it might be quite interesting if some others had a go and maybe could give their impressions.

And to balance that against a result from any NTs would be even better.


Which leads me onto another question - I could read the rules but it is a general question - are NTs allowed on the forum, and if they are, would you say the are welcomed in general? I think it would be quite enriching, but why they would be bothered would be a mystery. So I suppose we should value our borderline friends like me j/k. Sometimes I wonder how borderline I am.

Ever get the feeling you have been under-diagnosed?



Lots of questions...


Main ones are:
What has that personality test got to do with a drugs trial on Ecstasy (MDMA)?
And how much do you find the test credible, and how well did you score?


All the best.

You are fairly trusting.
Overall you trusted 11% more than the average player.

You are more likely than average to trust someone you haven't met before. Is your openness an asset or a risk?


No, I'm not entirely sure what they're trying to prove either.

Bloody hell (can I say that?).

I was looking for a conclusion like that but missed it. I guess I will have to go back and do it again. I mean, there were obviously some very shifty characters there (eyebrows meeting in the middle) j/k..



Still, I'm sure it wouldn't make any more sense.
These people are genuinely weird.
I mean, I know I'm not that far gone, but I do worry sometimes about others...


C4 I mean.



Cheers Filipendula for having a go. Nice one.

I don't trust anyone. They could be lying to me at any time, despite how good I've gotten at telling. Their motives could be false, or they might be trying to get something out of me that benefits only them. This includes loved ones and closest friends sometimes. I mean, I've done it before, of course they must sometimes. I assume everyone thinks I'm stupid or crazy as well, unless they flat out start fawning over my brain. Amphetamines help me not think that people think I'm stupid, but I decided to go off them anyway because I started having paranoid thoughts that people wanted to steal my ideas and publish them as a part of their doctoral thesis. Ok, I thought one person wanted to do that, but I had other unpleasant cognitive side effects that makes it worth quitting too.

I've been strongly considering using MDMA (once I work up the nerve to use tsr) in a therapeutic context after speaking with a researcher about it. I've heard from her that it's good for developing a more trusting personality in patients with high functioning autism, as well as empathy. I hope that doesn't mean it makes you gullible or otherwise impairs your critical thinking, I don't want to assume a door to door salesman is my new best friend and he's trying to help me by getting me to buy his wares.

Last edited by Buttoneater on 25 Sep 2012, 5:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

4% more trusting than average. results neutral.

the quiz is a teaser to get people to sign up for a study to see of MDMA affects level of trust.

I find your story genuinely sad on more than one level.
Level one being: How devious people are generally.
Level two being: How that affects people 'like us' and not trusting hardly anyone.

Maybe I got it wrong. Apologies if so.


Ecstasy can go beyond the club level of how great it is and how great everyone is.
It can help people come to terms with losing a leg (pretty traumatic) or even coming to terms with being an alcoholic. But it can make some/certain people come to terms with being just a nasty/selfish bastard. There is no helping some people. And you can lead some people to water...

It can help people come to terms with being raped. It is quite common for the victim to try to rationalize the incident by blaming themselves. This gives them some kind of control over the centre of the incident. Rather than the mad idea that they just happened to be the first two girls traveling down a lonely road in the first half hour where and when the rapist parked up. Jolly bad luck. Easier to blame yourself for being bad to the bone. Then you can atone. To let go into the mystery (Van Morrison) of randomness is a bridge too far for most people.

Ecstasy, through the shutting down of certain non-sympathetic parts of the brain can help the individual empathize not just with their attackers, but more importantly with themselves. Very often people can understand why others did what they did to them - they were abused - they are just naturally nasty people. To come to terms with the fact that you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time takes a certain kind of guts....


Anyway... I remember doing some great stuff with my friend who told me he was bi-sexual and had fancied me for years. I was only a little bit freaked out and spent the rest of our little MDMA trip touching each other - I mean, hands on the leg, arms across shoulder... etc... but it did him no good, he ended up becoming a crack head and a smak head....


It was as far as I could go. The MDMA did not make me bi-sexual, it just made me empathise.....



It could only ever be used in worse case scenarios and at short bursts, for a little time. It might allow some to 'pick up their feet'...


Anyway. Rambling again. Going to annoy someone else now.

Thanks for talking anyway.

cheers.

Is trust a recognised issue for people with ASDs then?

I had assumed that both extremes would be represented. One extreme due to naiveté and not picking up on danger signs and the other extreme as a result of life experience knocking you down. Both these make sense, but I haven't come across anything suggesting there can be an innate lack of trust. Is this the case?

I scored as 75% more trusting...I got "very-trusting"...darn; I'm that naive?!

You really do raise a most interesting point.
So Aspies are more trusting.
Humans are bad.
Take advantage of the more trusting.
Humans learn.
Therefore aspies end up being less trusting.


Mmmm.


I think you would have to do a pretty scientific and thoroughly rigorous study to prove/disprove this theory.

Great post. Great point.

In fact, most Aspies I know are extremely cynical. But then again, only slightly more than my NT friends who have been let down.


This is a very interesting point.

Maybe Aspies aren't mugs after all.
Maybe we are the most questioning of us all.


I would imagine if this condition really does exist we would have developed it in early childhood and would have had to develop accordingly...



This is how, seeing as I am supposed to be a little bit 'ret*d', I can guess who of our new found friends is going to f**k us over.


And half the time I am right. That is not a bad average. Is it?
A lot of my friends, when I trust them, can easily get one over on me, because I trust them. But when I meet a new stranger I am cynical - more than they are usually, and end up getting less burned.


Not that I have that many friends.
Depending on my mood, I sometimes say I have none.


This is a really interesting discussion.
Thanks.

Gee, thanks for letting me know that I'm pitied, by a stranger who has never met me and who all I know about them is they post on a forum for people whom the overwhelming majority I pity like they were third world children born with AIDS, that certainly makes me feel good that you're sad for me on multiple levels. I no longer am unable to trust my friends and family, except over little things. i.e. "They don't really like how my shirt looks, damn flattering liars, this date tonight is going to end with her calling the cops on me because she thinks I'm a rapist because of this horrific looking shirt" or "They don't really think this paper I wrote is brilliant, they think it's awful and are trying to spare my feelings, even though their lie will cost me". It's when something is at stake, a grade, a date, whatever, that I feel like they're just trying to placate me, like they used to during my anxiety attacks for hours over the cold war. They were lying when they said the Soviet Union was only something on tv, how do I know they aren't trying to placate me now?

Being pitied is something that sets me off you know, and telling someone you pity them is considered highly offensive and is a tactic for establishing dominance, in case it had never occurred to you. It's another person saying that I am their lesser. They are never right, because I am no one's lesser. Best case scenario, somebody's equal to me.

Screw you, I open up about having trust issues and I'm told I'm pitied, well I pity you for still having difficulties when I don't. Being in public is wonderful and eye contact is a pleasure. There's few things I enjoy more than meeting and conversing with new people. Most people like being around me and they say so. I've been told "I love you" by a girl, who meant it and showed me. Christ, you're rude to tell another person you pity them, I've had to hold back so hard to keep from saying it in every thread in every subforum here. Would they not realize I had just insulted them if I did? It wouldn't surprise me. I mean, you people just keep saying weirder, and more pitiable things like I had stopped saying before I was even diagnosed, I have a hard time not laughing sometimes because I think "They have to be making that up, nobody can be that much of a freak, or not realize that it makes them look like a freak. I mean, don't they know people are reading this, and judging them for it? Didn't anyone try to teach them how not to embarrass themselves like my family did for me, years before they ever knew was AS was? If I was like that as a kid, maybe the bullies were doing the right thing when they ridiculed me for hours, if I'm not like that anymore".

I am not someone to be pitied. I am set to be comfortably rich when my parents are gone, I'm highly intelligent, capable of empathy, charismatic in person, able to easily express my thoughts and feelings, and handsome as long as I shave. No one has any reason to pity me because I worry whether a compliment is backhanded when it comes from a total stranger. If I'm banned, I hope at least you take away the fact that telling someone you pity them is a worse insult than telling someone you hope they die soon. Because it is. There are tons of people who I would tell them I'd be glad if they died (only after being insulted by them first), but I would never tell them I pitied them or the equivalent "I feel sad for you on many levels", because that would be discounting everything they have managed to accomplish and all the ways they've grown in their lifetimes, and I wouldn't want to inflict that kind of pain on them, even though I hate them.

edit: The only reason I even came to this forum is because I wanted to convince people with AS to use mescaline after I did it and the next day all of my difficulties were simply gone and didn't come back for a month. Shoulda remembered you're all totally closed-minded, and will never do drugs because you dogmatically adhere to the words of a low budge anti-drug PSA you saw as children.

edit2: Every last one of you should use 400 mg mescaline every two weeks until the day you die, and tell everyone with AS who doesn't do it to start doing it.

Last edited by Buttoneater on 25 Sep 2012, 6:53 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Ask anyone who associates with me in any manner whatsoever if I'm trusting, I guarantee that they will all tell you "no." I am by far the least trusting person on the planet. There are simply far too many thieves, schemers, traitors, murderers and rapists in the general populace...

You are fairly cautious.
Overall you trusted 51% less than the average player.

You are less likely than average to trust a stranger. Your caution may be wise, but does it affect the way you work and socialise with new acquaintances?

Well I don't think one should take acid or magic mushrooms every day, then yeah they would lose much of their effect.....but if one spaces it out then that is not such an issue. The tolerance does go down again after about 3 days after a trip. So I am not sure where that bit came from it sounds kind of inaccurate from everything i've read.

But yeah using psychedelics all the time probably is not the best thing to do...and as much as I love mushrooms I can't deal with them in my current mental, and I don't know about acid but I don't think I'm going to chance that even if I did get the opportunity.

Eh, cool your boots man.
pathos and bathos.
I've got better things to do than pity you.
Did you honestly think I was sat here in my chair feeling pity for someone i never met?

Get a grip.


It's ok, this is like my 20th attempt at trying to connect with so called kindred souls - either most of you on here don't have aspergers, or I don't what ever.


all the best - i will try again in a bit.


In fact i have a weird theory - it is more difficult for people on the spectrum to communicate with each other than it is with nt people..

oh well..


all the best.../.

Of course I didn't think you pitied me, I thought you were trying to insult me for whatever reason. Many people enjoy insulting strangers, very few enjoy reaching out to them. Yesterday I had to drop university this semester due to being sick a bunch this year and having my seizures come back, so I'm feeling a bit sensitive. If I was going to be insulted then damn it they were going to get a giant wall of text about it. I mean, I said that I assume the worst about what people say to me, and you tell me you're sad for me? I just told you I was gonna take it badly!

edit: I fired my first neurologist because he dared to say "I understand you have some social difficulties along with the seizures". I don't care whether he meant it rudely, it was rude, I wasn't there for that and he was a jerk for mentioning it.

edit: I apologize, I don't know you so I can't pity you either. It's just, I expected someone to say "Yeah I feel that way sometimes to", not "I feel sad for you", which in my head is translated to "I'm gloating because I'm better than you, like everybody is, loser!"

eh man, I can see why you might be a bit touchy. No probs.
I never directed anything personally at anybody, let alone you.
Still, I am sorry to hear about your misfortune.


I spent five years at college got into 30,000 dollars of debt and never got my degree, but i was a module or two short - I had firsts in every assignment I ever did.

So, be touchy, be feely...


It'll be ok.