mindblindness paradox

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CockneyRebel
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23 May 2010, 7:27 am

I'm as mind blind towards society people, the way that they are mind blind about misfits, like myself.

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b9
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23 May 2010, 9:19 am

katzefrau wrote:

if you recognize that you are mindblind, or someone makes you aware of it, and from that point on you take that into consideration, then are you no longer technically mindblind?

other peoples minds are invisible. they do not reflect light and i can not make out how they are shaped.
if someone tells me i can not see something that is invisible, then it does not make me see what is invisible.

people think from a place that is unknown to me, and i can not calculate what they think.

other peoples thoughts are like leaves on a tree being suddenly blown off their twigs and into the air by an unexpected gust of wind, who knew? who knows?

their leaves land on the ground and they are forgotten and trodden on by others like me who gave no thought to how they got there.

i am not sad that i can not see minds. i do not need to see them because they have no substance that can cause me damage if i collide with them.

bee33
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23 May 2010, 9:54 am

b9 wrote:

i am not sad that i can not see minds. i do not need to see them because they have no substance that can cause me damage if i collide with them.

That's true, and I like the poetic way you put it, but there is emotional damage that other people can do with their minds, by bullying for example, that can be extremely painful,. That's something that can come from not understanding how other people think, when we can unwittingly make ourselves an easy target.

pschristmas
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23 May 2010, 11:02 am

bee33 wrote:

There's also the emotional damage that we essentially do to ourselves when we miss-identify responses as negative when nothing negative was intended. I assumed that many people either didn't like me or were being mean to me when, now, I have to wonder how much of that was them and how much was me not responding appropriately to them.

Lazenca_x
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23 May 2010, 11:15 am

I read somewhere that schizophrenics have an overactive theory of mind while autistics have an underactive theory of mind. It explains why schizophrenics may infer that people are after them or rude to them.

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23 May 2010, 11:26 am

Chronos wrote:

I was never entirely "mind blind". It's not as if I ever didn't know that smiles indicated happiness and frowns indicated anger, and personally, I always thought mind blindness was over stated.
Rather, I just has more of a tendency to "miss things" in social interactions, and didn't know what things were expected of me in social interactions.

You said it with the same words I'd have used. I can usually see the obvious, but I fail miserably on those tests where you evaluate facial expressions. I have no idea when looking at someone's face, whether they're agreeable, or think I'm someone they'd like to meet, or if they need to go to the bathroom. It has to be fairly obvious for me to tell. Probably the biggest effect it has on me, is that I can't tell when I'm boring someone, or not being descriptive enough, or if they're following or losing me. I couldn't tell if they're sizing me up to rob me, or if they're going to ask me where the nearest gas station is.

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23 May 2010, 12:47 pm

pschristmas wrote:

bee33 wrote:

My experience has been more of misidentifying people as being my friends when they were actually being catty, and then feeling devastated when they suddenly showed their true colors and were nasty to me, and I was completely blindsided. (Though I suppose that perhaps I could have misidentified their final, hurtful behavior as being intentionally hurtful when perhaps it was not? I find that unlikely, to be honest, but I don't know. It's a situation that has left me utterly bewildered.)

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23 May 2010, 1:07 pm

dyingofpoetry wrote:

I'm aware of it and I am still mind blind.

I am, in fact, MORE mind blind now that I am aware of it... and I am not being facetious.

Part of the problem is finally realizing how much of what others see that you do not.

Its like putting on glasses with the wrong prescription, you still can't see, but you see enough to realize that you are not where you think you are.

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23 May 2010, 1:18 pm

bee33 wrote:

I've had this experience as well. I ended up leaving a job in which I'd been successful for years after a group of women who I had thought were friends suddenly turned on me and started talking behind my back to my boss. They'd been smiling to my face all along and telling me everything was fine, and yeah, it hurt a lot to discover the truth. The thing is, I can't control that. All I can do is try to eliminate as many of the honest misunderstandings that result from my own skewed perspective as possible and let others do as they will.

I discovered philosophical stoicism as a teenager through Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus (Stoicism-lite, maybe, but still useful to me) and have tried to take that perspective towards life ever since. The jist is that we can't see into another's mind and know their motivations or desires, nor can we control their actions or words. The only thing we control is ourselves and our reactions and words. Since others can't control our thoughts, actions or desires, they can't truly harm us either, even through physical violence, since they can't touch our true inner essence. I emplement this by trying to be the best version of me that I can and leaving others the room to be themselves as well. If they decide to hurt me, that's their decision, just as it's my decision not to deal with them further.

marshall
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23 May 2010, 1:34 pm

I don't understand. If NTs have such great mindreading abilities why do they misinterpret things so often? I'm not talking misinterpreting people with AS either, they misinterpret other NTs as well.

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23 May 2010, 1:47 pm

marshall wrote:

I don't understand. If NTs have such great mindreading abilities why do they misinterpret things so often? I'm not talking misinterpreting people with AS either, they misinterpret other NTs as well.

Breakdown in communication occurs in NTs most often due to ego-centered expectations (no, this not an anti-NT rant; I'm just talking psychology). Everyone, both NT's and ASDs tend to project their thoughts onto others when it is the most desired expectation. Often the opposite occurs; they assume a miscommunication and don't bother to proceed or clarify.

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katzefrau
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23 May 2010, 2:39 pm

Lazenca_x wrote:

interesting.
then "overactive" obviously doesn't mean "accurate"

dyingofpoetry wrote:

marshall wrote:

I don't understand. If NTs have such great mindreading abilities why do they misinterpret things so often? I'm not talking misinterpreting people with AS either, they misinterpret other NTs as well.

if NTs are projecting their thoughts to "understand" others, doesn't that indicate that they are mindblind to an extent too?

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dyingofpoetry
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23 May 2010, 2:43 pm

Not usually. I am just talking about the times when miscommunications occur. NTs have far fewer problems with it. Projecting is really just a way of trying to connect, but it's very ineffective.

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katzefrau
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23 May 2010, 3:07 pm

dyingofpoetry wrote:

Projecting is really just a way of trying to connect, but it's very ineffective.

huh.
i can't even grasp this by thinking about it.

times like this i wish i was one of those aspies with a bizarre obsession / coping strategy, like launching an internal monologue on the etymology of the words you just used, or finding patterns in license plates .. and it would swoop in and save me from feeling like i have an IQ of two and someone is asking me to put together a four piece puzzle but i can't figure out which ones are the corners.

i guess i have to really admit to myself that in some situations, logic is useless.

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marshall
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23 May 2010, 3:21 pm

dyingofpoetry wrote:

Not usually. I am just talking about the times when miscommunications occur. NTs have far fewer problems with it. Projecting is really just a way of trying to connect, but it's very ineffective.

Hmmm.... I'm skeptical that any kind of empathy or "mindreading" is anything more than projection. Psychologists call it "empathy" when the conclusion is accurate and "projecting" when the conclusion is inaccurate. There's no way to truly "know" what exists inside someone else's mind outside of our ability to simulate it within our own mind.

dyingofpoetry
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23 May 2010, 3:43 pm

marshall wrote:

dyingofpoetry wrote:

Not usually. I am just talking about the times when miscommunications occur. NTs have far fewer problems with it. Projecting is really just a way of trying to connect, but it's very ineffective.

But that is exactly the point. NT's ARE correct and very often (probably more often than not). We, by contrast, are right only because we guessed correctly (or that's the theory. Not being an NT, I have no idea what the heck they do).

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