I've understood how Autism fundamentally affects you

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I agree with you. Self-interest was meant in the most technical sense. The reason why aspies (myself included) can sometimes perceive it as self-interest/selfishness is only because of our own less intuitive awareness.

I'd say people's actions are rooted in self-interest on a local scale, and rooted in altruism on a global scale. Locally people fight for their lives, globally we are all interested in solidarity, altruism and surviving together.




Yes! This "unawareness of oneself" I'm talking about is probably just the lacking theory of mind. It's just a quite abstract concept, so I thought it might be easier for people to grasp "unawareness of oneself/others".



No, you're right, and I don't think we can. However, by relating the things in the world to your own life, it might be easier to feel that you actually belong to this planet (that this planet is not that wrong after all). Feeling that you don't belong in your own life is awful.

And yes, it's really important to be able to connect to NTs...after all, when you meet a person it's most likely he's NT.

You're right in that this will mostly be relevant to relatively high-functioning asperger individuals. I do, however, believe it describes all kinds of autism in the sense that autistic people believe their thoughts to be reality ("In their own worlds" = being intuitively quite unaware of their own existence in the physical world), while neurotypicals believe the immediate surroundings to be reality (being intuitively very aware of their own existence in the physical world).

But for asperger people, I'd think this could be relevant to know.

Last edited by qawer on 12 Apr 2013, 5:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm still looking forward to the response.

That's in fact my point. If you're autistic you are more aware of your own mind/thoughts than neurotypicals, but less aware of your own existence in your immediate surroundings.

It's the difference between believing that time is finite or infinite. When you are autistic you believe your thoughts to be reality (i.e. "I know the universe still exists after my death, so time must be infinite"). When you are not you believe your immediate surroundings to be reality (i.e. "If I die, there is no more time, because I'm dead, so time must be finite"). These are the extremes, it's definitely a spectrum. This example is only to illustrate my point.




But it doesn't just happen by coincidence that you see things differently. You see them differently because you compared to neurotypicals perceive the thoughts in your mind to be more reality than your immediate surroundings in the physical world. You still see your immediate surroundings in the physical world as reality - just not as much as neurotypicals.

Last edited by qawer on 12 Apr 2013, 5:45 pm, edited 2 times in total.

They are less aware of their existence in their immediate physical surroundings than neurotypicals. The immediate physical world is not completely as much reality to them as it is for neurotypicals. I'm not saying autistics believe there is another reality than the physical world. But they are less aware of it (and their own existence too), because they are more aware of their mind and thoughts. When you get more aware of your thoughts/mind, you get less aware of you immediate physical surroundings. You cannot do both at the same time.

You can also see it this way. Asking an autistic about whether they exist, they could actually begin to doubt their own existence. Am I alive? Then they could continue along the lines of René Descartes: "I think, therefore I am". So we do know we exist (at least we can deduce that we do)! It just isn't as intuitive to us as it is to neurotypicals. They would more likely answer: "Whether I exist? You mean to say I look dead?". They cannot doubt their own existence in the same way. They are not dead yet, so of course they are still existing. They are so integrated in the physical world that there could not possibly be anything else.




Yes. Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder, so it's permanent. But you can use the technique of being more aware of yourself in your immediate physical surroundings as a coping technique.

Last edited by qawer on 12 Apr 2013, 6:05 pm, edited 3 times in total.

What parts do you disagree with?

That is, if you agree with any of it

Gawer: IMHO it looks like an excellent start which could be expanded by 1000 pages. There's many different how's and why's and what nows.

I have to say I'm of a similar opinion but there are some aspects that make sense

They won't for everyone though as it depends what your general world-view is

people with a similar world view to qawer will probably have already worked out what he says for themselves anyway
so he'll mainly be preaching to the converted as the rest will be in severe denial as they don't think like him and why should they - we're all different

Hey, don't say my thread is all in vain, I didn't figure this out completely until recently myself


I'm surprised this seems so weird to you. But I am a non-visual thinker, as opposed to the many visual-thinking aspies.

I didn't say it was in vain, just that only certain types of thinkers are going to relate to it

Plus there's no hard and fast rule as to how anyone thinks - people aren't that predictable - they aren't machines

People can act and think differently from one day to the next

Plus Autism isn't an exact science and Asperger's even less so - it's an arbitrary set of traits that anyone can potentially have

Society determines who is autistic more than the individual in my opinion

Last edited by nessa238 on 12 Apr 2013, 6:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I'll have to do a closer reading of some of the things you wrote, but it did seem like the definitions of objective and subjective were wacky or even reversed in places. Or half right and half wrong. It was confusing enough to make it hard to tell if you got the definitions messed up or not, but it would possibly at least lead people to think you had.

Was just meant in fun

And yes, you are right.

oh ok, I'm not as good at fun as telling people they're WRONG!

I found this quite helpful actually. I think you have a good point.

I sense some resistance in myself to accept that I fit into the larger world, which is interesting. But of course we all do.

Thank you

I see.

What I mean by subjective/objective is not meant to be very complicated.

For instance,

Subjectively, Water is important for people because otherwise, they would die out of thirst.
Objectively, Water is not important, water just is.

Subjectively, if I think life is good, life is good. If I think it's bad, it is bad.
Objectively, life is neither good nor bad, life just is.

Subjectively, the sun is big, hot, yellow and shiny.
Objectively, the sun is a star with a given distance to the Earth.

Subjectively, time lasts as long as I am alive.
Objectively, time lasts as long as the universe exists.

I'm glad you did.

Yes I sense that resistance too. As if you aren't willing to "give yourself" to this world completely.

You're very welcome.