Black and white thinking

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The grey area in that is when you have the money to buy something but you had intended to use that money to buy something else. So you enter the grey area of deciding which item you need/want more since you can only buy one or deciding if you should buy both given that you will have to use credit to buy them both. This grey area is where people often get into trouble. They will mislabel which is "want" versus which is "need" or they will miscalculate how long it will take them to pay off things they have bought on credit and buy too many things that way. Or they will not investigate alternative ways of purchasing something and fail to shop around- they can afford something but only if they buy it from a cheap but inconveniently located store, for example (convenince can cost you).

That grey area is tricky and can be very tricky to navigate and has gotten people into trouble. Being a black and white thinker can make things safer if you always err on the side of caution and always assume you can't afford something unless you have far more than enough money for it and won't need credit. But that can get you in trouble too. You can wind up not buying something new (or newer) that you need because you don't want to use credit and wind up paying more for repairs than you would have ultimately invested in upgrading to newer.Or you buy the cheaper item because you feel that's what you can afford but it breaks or otherwise malfunctions or is bad for you (certain kinds of food) so you wind up having to replace it and ultimately spending more or you wind up unhealthy (from inexpensive crap food) when you would have been better off spending more than you could afford initially and making up for it buy cutting corners elsewhere in your life.

Last edited by Janissy on 22 Mar 2010, 7:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

My mum tends to think in black and white. She has always been extreme in her points of view. We were having a conversation a couple of weeks ago and I suggested that she might find life easier if she took time to consider the grey areas.

I said to a friend of mine last year that I used to think in black and white, but now I see the world in colour. It was through meeting him that my perspective of everything changed. We are very similar in alot of ways, but we also see the world very differently.

I began to realise that it was my mother's influence (and my father's - they both see things differently, but to her his view is bad and hers is good - bloody confusing for a child and they really screwed up my perspective as from my dad's point of view he was right and she was wrong. But at least in his eyes she was only wrong as he doesn't believe in good and bad.) But I didn't know about colour when I entered the world as an adult and it took me a long time to learn. I have grown to love the song Different World by Iron Maiden. It came out at the time when I was learning how to deal with people's different views and I listened to it alot.

Everybody has a different way to view the world
I would like you to know, when you see the simple things
to appreciate this life it's not to late to learn.

Now that I have discovered the colour in the world I am finding it difficult to find my feet though, it is a new way of living for me and I am trying to re-build my opionions and views on life and I am now bombarded and very affected by differring points of view and it drives me crazy. I maybe naturally think in black and white, and my brain is slightly upset that I am trying to go against the grain. Sometimes I miss how sure I used to be about everything, even if it was narrow minded.

People are always saying I take things to extremes.

Kind of a toughy this one..

Down to basics, the primary learning method for humans and infact a good number of living things is.

The Pleasure/Pain equation, its hardwired, keeps us safe for the most part, if it causes us pain we usually avoid it, if it doesnt, we may do it, if it causes us pleasure we'll do it, if it doesnt cause us pleasure we may do it.

This is Firmware, works before we can even talk, it is however "extensible", we don't stop applying this natural tendency towards Binary thinking (Splitting being an extreme manifestation of this usually on a "one-time" basis per subject), some of us just learn to apply it multiple times in consecutive stages to "build" an awareness of a spectrum effect.

I've yet to met a person who in fact thinks in "spectrum" terms without effort, results of Binary thinking tendency tend to be the nasty stuff, something either good or bad and minimal to no thought is given to the grey between without effort, excellent examples of this sort of thing is Blacks/Whites, Gay/straight, Criminal/Citizen. even in the dominant NT society, the "grey" is missed or shuffled to either "camp".

Being systematically inclined its not at all surprising people with AS have a more NOTICEABLE tendency towards Binary thinking, because, we've learned from birth onwards and as a species, It often works.
however it is present in All the human population so far as historical and current cultural examples suggest.

Its also a huge cognitive mistake once we're capable of "many-time" applications of it or higher order awareness/thought, and can really mess up science and societies developing towards accepting minorities.

My black and white thinking has gotten me in trouble. I think I'll buy some groceries, this afternoon.

That sounds like me. I am obsessed about money and always saving it. I always want to make sure I can afford it. I only buy things I need than what I want. I also tend to be cheap and frugal. Sometimes I will go gray and buy something that isn't expensive and I know being cheap isn't always the answer. Like staying in a cheap hotel isn't always nice so I would rather spend more money to stay at a Motel 6 than at some privately owned hotel and they don't have things you usually expect in a hotel room and the carpets are dirty. So I can think gray. I also tend to buy games used but if I want the game very bad and I can't find it used in the store, I buy it new.

All or nothing, no in-betweens.

That is not black and white thinking though, but rather splitting. There is some overlap but the two can and should be distinguished.

Deductive logic is entirely binary, but you cannot rely on deductive reasoning to arrive at moral conclusions about good and bad. You cannot deduce good or bad unless you already assumed it before you applied binary deductive reasoning. This is an important distinction because black and white thinking is not necessarily normative or inclined to normative valuations (aka "good" or "bad"), whereas splitting is almost invariably normative in nature.

From what ive read (admittedly not as much as on other subjects) Splitting and Black/white thinking ARE very similar, what turns Black/white "thinking" into Splitting (or prevents a person from passing Splitting) is Failure of a developmental task, instead of graduating to more complex and less rigid applications of Black/White thinking it remains in its extreme early years stage. (see Otto Kernberg section of wikipedia entry on splitting) its the same process, just "normal" Black/white thinking is more moderately applied than in Splitting.

I disagree with the notion that Deductive reasoning cannot be a means to arrive about moral conclusions.

1st evaluatory pass > Yes(good) | No(bad) (Splitting "causes" process termination here)
2nd evaluatory pass > Maybe(not quite good) | Maybe Not (not quite bad)
3rd > 1st pass + 2nd pass > Yes(good) | Maybe(not quite good) | Maybe Not (not quite bad) | No(bad)
(can be ALOT more passes)

have to remember this process occurs at the speed of thought not speech, consciously there should be little to no awareness that this is being done, one simply perceives the 3rd.
This process can for many just keep continuing until, with a little bit of thought on a matter an individual passes from a binary perspective on an issue("is this good or bad?") to a spectrum evaluation(Best option selection of 3rd) of the issue, also in terms of moral conclusions MOST (not ALL) can have a slight Bias due to empathy or experience of one of the factors involved in the moral issue, hence a difference in perspectives on things like Teen sex (between parents and teens).

As essentially a biological "computer" with I/0 as the only options (like a normal computer) the brain should not be capable of anything but Binary processing/thought, however it may seem it is because of the complexity of the brain, computers today with quad-core processors can do data/stimuli processing, evaluation and then re-computation at phenomenal rates (and simultaneously), but they still cant match the processing power and speed of the human brain (that and we have the advantage software/firmware wise too).

Proviso: Of course, i could be totally and completely WRONG here XD

The unconscious mind makes 200.000 calculations a second.

I think in binary.
I think it is always wrong to commit a crime.
Is it wrong to kill to save someone? Yes
Is it wrong to lie to save someone? Yes
I like when everything is in a Yes/No format and the reason for something is given and the time.
I hate tomorrow, I hate soon, I hate vagueness.
I like mind games, if they are meant to make you think cleverly.
I hate mind games, if they are actually mine games, where you have to metaphorically watch out for mines when you talk.
This will happen with a loaded question.

Uh yeah, "splitting" and ASD related black and white thinking aren't the same thing. At all.

Splitting is about extremities, about being manic and then catastrophising without being able to find a medium. Aspies tend to live in the medium.

ASD black and white thinking refers to the inability to generalise OR the inability to see another persons side of a story. Aspies (for the most part) can not generalise, everything must be specific, it's black or white...no grey area. Aspies (for the most part) can only relate to another person through relating back to themselves first....they are black you are white (or vice cersa) and never the twain shall meet.

I do not see that I need to read the article. So far as I can tell, I am aware of the relationship, hence why while I stated that the two are distinct I have both stated in this thread (in my first post) the potential for black and white thinking to influence the development of a "splitting" mentality, and (in the post you are responding to have explicitly refered to) the existence of some overlap. That said, vegetables and junk food are not entirely dissimilar; junk food often contains vegetables and potatoes are a cause of potatoe chips. I still think it is very useful to distinguish between potatoes and potatoe chips and to make other distinctions between various kinds of food, which despite some overlap and some similarity, are characterized by various significant differences.

I did not state that it cannot be used to arrive at moral conclusions, but that it cannot arrive at moral conclusions without prior assumptions about morality. Any deductive process that produces a moral conclusion relies on a moral assumption prior to the application of deduction.

I do not even know what this means. It bears no resemblence to any valid argument that I have ever encountered. It's clearly not deductive logic. Note that there are three possible truth values above, whereas deductive logic is boolean in nature.

The speed at which one thinks does not alter what constitutes a valid argument or a sound argument. It does not alter the fact that only two truth values are possible in deductive logic, nor that unless one assumes morality prior to applying deduction, it is not possible to reach a moralistic conclusion or valuation using deductive logic.

The brain is not a biological computer with only I/0 as the only options. The brain is analogue.

I tend to be a black and white thinker, but I also tend to be very very skeptical towards things. The two impulses balance each other out a lot, as one will tend towards strong conclusions and the other will doubt these strong conclusions. The issue though is that this kind of thinking manifests itself more socially with an intense stubbornness.

The way I think can be very binary. It only bothers me around morality. I describe my conscience to others as an angry IRS agent that always audits.

I find that when I can't figure out if something is right or wrong etc., my mind goes into a mad frenzy of thought and this can be really stressful and bring on a meltdown. I sometimes just can't deal with grey areas where there is no right or wrong or where right or wrong is not at all important at that moment, and it's a case of choice between one thing or the other with no real reason to prioritize.

Regarding black and white thinking:

+ vs - (plus sign vs minus sign)

Light vs Darkness

It seems to me that some black/white thinking is based on the idea of sorting.

Many persons will put a 1 inch nail in one jar and a 2 inch nail in another jar to keep them separate for different purposes.

Pepper is in one container on the table, salt is in another container on the table.

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Some persons will make a list and put the benefits on one side of a page and the disadvantages on the other side of the page, then add them up. (2 categories)

I tend to use 3 categories:

- a Benefits column
- a Neutrals column ( - 0 - )
- a Disadvantages column

I use the Neutrals column as ~ the grey area.

+ vs - 0 - vs -

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Within the idea of voting for something as on a ballot, the choices can be:

- Yes
- Abstain from voting
- No

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There is a kind of black and white thinking which is real, for example:

A horseshoe magnet attracts or repels iron objects.

Drinking water can be pure water or polluted water.

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Some philosophies use ~ black and white thinking (saved vs unsaved).

Some philosophies use ~ black, grey, and white thinking (Yin-yang).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang

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Many political groups use black and white thinking: Them vs Us.