All Aspies Full Of Facts?

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Rubbish.
And actually, everyone is full of s**t, facts or not, since all humans have a digestive system.

Back when Cheers, the TV show, was popular my friends use to call me Cliff Claven because I always new obscure facts about any topic of conversation. I just love to read and understand things in depth, oh well, it's better than watching TV.

I have long had a decidedly scattered mind. This certainly did not preclude my being known as a walking encyclopaedia in primary school. While I learn things of interest to me more readily, at times my interests academically are wide ranging, while other kinds of interests narrow. I sometimes make odd connections between what might seem quite separate areas of knowledge. I have always enjoyed reading, which has both helped keep me sane and paradoxically been a strong factor in threatening this ill-defined state.

Then I seem to learn other sorts of lesson over and over again - this is less "academic" knowledge however.

I don't generally spit out random facts about things, but I do spit out random facts about myself when it pertains to something I'm reading... I also tend to spit out random concepts or ideas about things rather than facts... I can't learn facts for anything really, it either comes naturally or doesn't come at all for the most part.

Once I learn something, I can't spit it back out to others really, or think of it much myself at all.

i was alot more that way when I was a kid and addicted to factoids.
I am alot more mush-headed these days

Facts without foundation bore me, I prefer to learn facts that are connected with my interests.
I enjoy learning not just one part of an interest but everything else connected with that interest, physics is a great example to use.

I'm not a collector of *facts* - I'm striving with getting prime factual, informative, truthful and honest data and transforming that into knowledge, wisdom, understanding - the ultimate in Truth. That's all. It's all I ever wanted.

Last edited by jjstar on 21 Sep 2007, 9:18 am, edited 1 time in total.

My ability to absorb factual material is one of my greatest strengths. People ask me for spelling help and word meanings. I no longer volunteer facts if I'm not asked, as I did when I was younger. I felt that was really one of the few things I had going for me.

Not everyone is full of facts.

Most Nt's don't like to hear allot of facts in conversation. They are just not interested. Just like we are not interested in small talk or idle chit-chat. At least we have the decency to pretend to be interested in what they find so facinating. Me I like to learn new things.

But understanding the concepts makes absorbing huge amounts of factual material easier. I like to understand subjects as a whole, but that means I can expound of specific aspects of them (trivia) quite extensively.

I guess what I’m getting at is there is a stereotype of autism/aspergers that we are trivia savants who parrot vast amounts of facts but don’t have in depth understanding. I don’t think it’s really true. It probably just seems like this because it’s a lot easier to impress people with your knowledge by spouting trivia than to go into in-depth discussions of concepts.

Also I think there’s different kinds of trivia. I would take as an example my interest in weather/meteorology. One kind of trivia would be knowing the exact date that such and such a city broke an all time temperature record. Another would be knowing that when clouds form the water always condenses on tiny microscopic particles (dust, pollen, salt, etc.) called condensation nuclei. The former kind has very little value in understanding the subject. The latter OTOH is something you would have to pick up and remember in order to understand how clouds form.

I can learn song lyrics in a heartbeat. I used to digest dictionaries and love spelling tests...similarly, I used to have books I loved in different species of tree, bird, animal etc and always desired to know how everything worked, from the television(still have issues understanding that concept visually) to the vaster workings of the universe.

But I think one day I realised I wanted to understand everything, and fact is, in the time we have, that is just not possible. And I am hopeless at choosing topics to focus on, and in truth, beyond whatever has caught my obsessive interest at any one time, I am hopeless at taking in and retaining information...but I sure do wish to.

I hasten to add, I, in all probability, have ADD, which I am told will account for my issues remaining focussed on anything...but yeah.
I have so many books... I want to read them and be able to absorb them, but fact is, since quitting smoking and being hit by hypothyroidism...nothing is being retained and my concentration has the worst span you could imagine. Mind all over the place.

Very frustrating.

I have discovered that my cats are extremely interested in my knowledge of amortization tables. Just the other day I was working on my yarn collection, and explaining to the cats the benefits of the 15 year mortgage. They were so enraptured that they couldn't take their eyes off me!

Well, I can pass on what a person said when she saw me after a LONG while, just YESTERDAY in fact!

Still, I wish I knew more. 8-(

Well, i'm one of those fact-spewing aspies, too.

I mostly do space science, computers, nuclear disasters and U-boats, but i'm picking up new topics every day...

Boy, i can tell you, NT's really hate one thing: They talk to me about some subject they consider them experts i i don't know anything about it. After a weekend with my beloved google (and wikipedia) i come in at work and start to quote facts and procedures they missed in their research. They really REALLY hate that. (Not that i care, i can understand their anger only on an intellectual level anyway...). But it DOES reduce the number of people willing to talk to you. Given that i'm also a computer geek, that really narrows conversation opportunities down a little too much...