How do people feel about the term "Wired Differently"?

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Hi all,

The phrase "wired differently" is used all the time in reference to autistic minds (but not so much for non-autistic minds really). How do people feel about that term? Is it a useful metaphor for helping to explain autism in an easy way? Or does it just add to the 'Othering' of autism by making it sound like something robotic? After all, brains are not made of wires and circuit boards!

David
(@Fantastic_Aut & @DHartleyWriter)

I don't mind it at all.

Back in the 90s, when we were pushing to debunk Lovaas/ABA the first time around, Hubert Cross etc helped with promoting what we were saying - "It's the wiring, stupid". At the time, all the pressure was put on us as the behaviourists tried to blame us for being different.

Good to see it's FINALLY being truly grokked...

It works for me.

I have no problem with the term.

When I first read it (in the handbook they gave me after my assessment) I felt YES! That's it. I don't mind the

robot wording as it's wired differently rather than were wired and they're organic. It suggests all humans are wired,

just not in the same way.

EXACTLY!

Nothing remotely offensive about it.

Its a rather accurate metaphor.

Another way to look at it is that all humans are computers, but autistics use Linux, while most folks are on Windows, which means autistics have a different operating system than do most folks even thought their computing power may be the same.

If you're neurotypical, but are neurotic, and need to see a shrink then...you have the normal hardware, and the normal operating system, but you were fed bad software when you were growing up in childhood. And the shrink is there to correct your software.

In contrast if you're autistic or aspie, you have an unusual operating system. So you need to be made aware of that difference, and you need to adopt new software to help interphase with other computers (ie most people) to translate the output of their operating system into your operating system.

Depends who I'm talking to. I have a PhD in the hard sciences, so this description is one of my go-tos.

I like it.

I like the term wired differently. That's what I am.

Happy "Okto-Bier-Fest," CockneyRebel!

I can speak clinical-ese with the best of researchers, but with lay people, describing our differences is probably best said as "wired differently." The idea of autists having twice as many neurons is enough to convince me that the phrase is accurate.

Have never heard that we have "twice" as many neurons, but I have heard that we don't trim our neurons, and they collect more branches. So that fact alone means that in a literal sense we are "wired differently".

It's a pretty good metaphor; I like that the work used is "differently" not "wrongly."

I like the term. I think it sums up my condition perfectly.

I deem it to be fraudulent. The hardware is the same. The programming is different.
Windows and Linxus obviously behave differently but there is no true difference in the hardware/wiring.
The software-code is the only real difference. The human genome-project was a colossal failure by the way.
Considering how it was discovered that even a number of insects contained more genes in their DNA than humans.

I like it. While brains are not made of circuit boards, they do use electrical signals for processing as do circuits, so I think it's appropriate. Plus, synaptic connections can be thought of as "wires."