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Goth Fairy
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08 Oct 2017, 2:05 am

I read this article https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-space-doctors-big-idea-einstein-general-relativity which someone showed me, which uses the 1000 most commonly used words in the English language to explain Einstein's theory of relativity.

Towars the end, when thinking about the pictures we use to explain something comlicated, it says:

Quote:
When you get answers that don’t fit together, it can make you feel like you’re not very good at thinking. Or, if you’re the kind of person who feels like you’re good at thinking, it can make you think that the space doctor’s numbers must be wrong. But a lot of the time it’s not you or the numbers—instead, it’s the picture that’s wrong in some small way.


It started me thinking about how frustrating it can be when the pieces we are trying to think about don't fit together, and all the different views about Autism or Asperger's or anything that's different. I found it very comforting to think that perhaps when we struggle like this is just because we don't have all the right information, or the picture or metaphor we are using is not quite right. Sometimes we expect the experts to have all the right knowledge and information, but there is so much to learn about everything that expecting one person to have all the answers is too much. We are all learning, about the universe, about ourselves and about each other. And it's too complicated to get the pictures exactly right, but if we keep trying we get closer.


_________________
Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 149 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 73 of 200
You are very likely neurodiverse (Aspie)


Chronos
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08 Oct 2017, 2:41 am

Goth Fairy wrote:
I read this article https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-space-doctors-big-idea-einstein-general-relativity which someone showed me, which uses the 1000 most commonly used words in the English language to explain Einstein's theory of relativity.

Towars the end, when thinking about the pictures we use to explain something comlicated, it says:
Quote:
When you get answers that don’t fit together, it can make you feel like you’re not very good at thinking. Or, if you’re the kind of person who feels like you’re good at thinking, it can make you think that the space doctor’s numbers must be wrong. But a lot of the time it’s not you or the numbers—instead, it’s the picture that’s wrong in some small way.


It started me thinking about how frustrating it can be when the pieces we are trying to think about don't fit together, and all the different views about Autism or Asperger's or anything that's different. I found it very comforting to think that perhaps when we struggle like this is just because we don't have all the right information, or the picture or metaphor we are using is not quite right. Sometimes we expect the experts to have all the right knowledge and information, but there is so much to learn about everything that expecting one person to have all the answers is too much. We are all learning, about the universe, about ourselves and about each other. And it's too complicated to get the pictures exactly right, but if we keep trying we get closer.


Due to the fact that I likely think differently that most people, one thing I frequently encountered throughout my education was people who not only did not understand that I thought differently, but were quick to imply that my way of understanding the world was somehow inferior to their way of understanding the world.

This astounded me because, while I'm certainly not an exceedingly brilliant person, and have my limitations and difficulties, my way of understanding the world yielded some pretty high test scores, and demonstrated to a few seasoned professors novel ways of doing things.

Additionally, I often find that the difficulty in understanding something is often in the way it's explained, and not the thing itself. I had one math book that had so many grammatical errors that it would have received an F if an English professor had managed to get their hands on it. I found this ironic because mathematician love to tout math as a precise and perfectly logical language and mark students down for mathematical grammatical errors, yet they often butcher English.



DataB4
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19 Oct 2017, 8:47 pm

Goth Fairy, great post so I'm bumping it. :)

Chronos, I've had that experience of undue criticism just because my approach wasn't what certain people expected. Instead of asking me about my thought process, they jumped to nastiness instead. So helpful in achieving mutual understanding. :lol: