An analogy for Asperger's Syndrome.

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Yes exactly, the supposed aspie superiority is my pet peeve. If you think like that, you're never gonna be accepted by anyone.

I think a better analogy is that an aspie is a foreigner and everyone else can speak the language and learn the customs. In order to succeed, you need to at least learn the language and basic conventions. You'll never truly fit in, but you will succeed in making at least 1-2 friends and you will be able to get a job (in theory).

Here's an analogy: Imagine being in a box. Well, let's say Iron Man's armor to make it something most people could relate to. The eye sensors scramble facial information, like a malfunctioning facial recognition software package, so you don't know what other people are thinking - are they friendly, enemies, wanting to harm you, helpful? You don't know. You often can't even recognize them. The auditory system scrambles what you hear, like a radio being switched on and off rapidly, so you have to ask people to constantly repeat. The voice modulation amplification system often malfunctions, so you hear yourself saying something you didn't intend to say. The gloves are thick and have little tactile feedback, so you often drop things. The armor is bulky, and you often bump into things. The eye slits are so narrow that you find yourself focusing on only one thing, and don't notice what else is going on.

Now imagine living your routine life wearing this armor.

Not a perfect analogy, but maybe one that other people could understand.

The door to illumination is open for those whom all other doors are shut.

Quit this world
Quit the next world

Quit quitting

I've never had the problem of other people calling me brilliant. My maths teacher once called me a mathematical genius, but he was simply confusing 'above average' with 'genius'. I know what it feels like struggling to fit in, but I'm not sure what you mean by dumbing down. Do you mean like Sam Sparks in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, where she pretends to be less intelligent than she is? Sorry if I'm getting this wrong.

Not a problem -- I do not do all that well in describing this.

I used to be an out-of-control drinker, and I finally sobered up in 1981. At that time, I was working with a man who had a past very similar to my own, and one day he asked, "Why did you used to drink as much as you did?"

In response, I said, "To come down to a level where I could feel like I might fit in with other people."

Behind all of that, of course, was the fact of my drinking to simply try to socialize, but that "second factor" also played into my drinking.

That man laughed loudly and considered me quite arrogant, of course, but I had only given him an honest answer.

You own mileage may vary there, of course , but I do hope that makes some kind of sense to you at least as my own response to your question.

Personally, I also think "brilliant" is a big word to use here, so maybe "occasionally appears gifted" would be more fitting such as commented by your teacher.

Brilliant is indeed a big word. To me a brilliant person has actually DONE something brilliant, not just shown flashes of great intelligence. So when someone implies I am 'brilliant' my first reaction is that I've never actually done anything brilliant so they don't know wtf they're talking about. But this is a very negative stance and something that I'm thinking I need to work on.

Yes, I sometimes just so "brilliantly" do the same!

Thank you for taking the time to write that

I think now that I was probably taking you too literally

I've had problems with drink in the past too. I also used it to try to fit in and to try to enable me to have the sorts of conversations that other people have. In my case it just made me stand out even more and made me do and say lots of things that I regret.

I don't think you were being arrogant when you were being honest with that man. I think it's almost a truism that most people use alcohol as a social leveller.

I'm also probably guilty of what wavefreak58 said about being quick to deny anything clever I do. That might have something to do with my family thinking I was 'backwards' (their word) as a child.

It gets better with age. I met one girlfriend at a chess club of all places! Which is funny because relatively speaking very few women play chess. An average chess club might have like 18 men and 2 women. Just going to show you that luck is a big, big factor. Oh, and she was a stone fox, and personable and bright, and accepting of people different. Didn't work out but glad I got to meet her.

As you get older, women are less interested in superficial characteristics of popularity.

To me, it's that I'm interested in intellectual topics. For example, when I was age 24 and 25, I got way interested in the ethical theory of utilitarianism (including such subvarieties as motive utilitarianism). To me, it was fascinating stuff. I couldn't believe other 'regular' people weren't interested in it. In part, it answered some questions I had from my Christian period at age 14, my open to mysticisim period, my being an atheist period, my golden period in 10th grade, my crash in 11th grade due to family issues and OCD, etc, can you have a logical system of ethics without religion? Yes, you can.

Actually, later years, academic writings on ethics, so abstract, so focused on 'dilemmas' almost to the exclusion of everything else, that one movie like Schindler's List is worth three journal articles. Of course it is. And really, it didn't be that big an example. Almost any positive example is worth two journal articles, that kind of thing.

Yes. My own "travels" have not been as broad as yours, but it is that all-encompassing perspective we almost come to take fro granted that our people seem to (even if mistakenly) find "brilliant" or whatever.

People sometimes think I am being ambiguous, but sometimes it just takes a while to finally get something worded well enough by any one of us to get all of us somewhere!

I actually think the "wrong planet" analogy fits me best. I wouldn't say that I'm trapped inside or outside something, really, it's just difficult for me to understand society. My way of thinking is just a lot different than most people; it's as if I'm from a totally different species just trying to blend in. I don't think I'm behind a glass wall looking into a room full of humans socializing; I'm standing next to the window glancing in wondering why they look like they're having a good time, and wondering why they think I might want to join them.

Mine is a computer-related one, too, incidentally, though I usually use it to describe my attention span, though I think I can relate it to autism as well. My mind is like a 12 gHz six core processor when everyone else is running a 4 gHz single core processor. A single core processor would only have one core responsible for all tasks. The six core processor, on the other hand, is made up of six 2 gHz processors, and, depending on the program, can run all 12 gHz at once or can only run 2 gHz at a time.

And in this example, of course, we're running a lot of old, inefficient programs here, because they are the ones society tells us to run (programs like smalltalk.exe, for example). The old programs don't use multithreading, so they are more efficient on the faster 4 gHz processors than on any of my 2 gHz processors. As a result, I experience longer load times in mundane tasks than the average person.

However, due to other programs I have that are actually designed for my hardware (some of which are preinstalled, others are self-developed synthesizations of other, less efficient software), I can complete many tasks at 1/3 the speed of everyone else. And of course, the more I code for myself, the more efficiently I can complete mundane tasks, as well. So while I am naturally bad at english.exe, I have developed a grammar patch for it that is derived from logic.exe and math.exe, both native programs to my system, and I have since excelled at language (especially when I can increase my virtual memory).

Anyone else experience life in this way? =/

All I feel is just as though there's a thick but crystal clear glass wall between me and the rest of the world.

This is my analogy:

I feel because NTs seem to know all the little social cues, body languge, ect., they are part of an exculisve club. No matter how hard someone with AS trys will will never be part of that club because even with lots of practice, those things don't come natural to us and we seem to give off a vibe of being "off".