Hypothesise first, test later
Brought to you by me noticing that when I watch Kristen Bell playing an awful person in The Good Place, I feel as stressed as when I have to consciously translate to or from German in real-life situations and not just language apps.
Idea:
- System 2 thinking (effortful) is stressful to the mind in the same way that mild exercise is stressful to the body.
- Having to think in system 2 continuously is sometimes possible, but how long for is not a universal constant.
- Social interactions are smoothed by being able to imagine what other people are thinking.
- If two minds think in different ways, one or both has to use system 2 thinking to forecast the other. Autistic and neurotypical minds are one of many possible examples in the human realm. Cats and dogs are a common non-human example (“Play! Bark!” “Arg, big scary predator! Hiss!”)
- Stress makes personal touches and eye contact unpleasant.
Implications:
Autistic people will be:
- Much less stressed when they are only around other autistic people.
- Look each other in the eye.
- Be comfortable hugging each other.
- Less likely than allistic people to watch soap operas.
- Jokes based on mind state will not transfer, but puns will. (The opposite of the German-English joke barrier, as puns don't translate but The Ministry Of Silly Walks does).
- Reality shows will make no sense, and be somewhere between comedic and confusing in the same way as memes based on "type XYZ and let autocomplete finish the sentence!"
Questions:
- How to interests, e.g. sports, music, painting, fit into this?
- Does "gender" work like this? Memes such as "Men are from Mars, women are from Venus" or men finding women confusing and unpredictable come to mind. Also, men's clubs are a thing, as are women's. Also the existence of transgender people would pattern-match here. That said, it might just be a cultural barrier, because any group can have a culture and culture is not merely a synonym for political geography.
Original post: https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2020/03/02/hypothesise-first-test-later/
Original post timestamp: Mon, 02 Mar 2020 09:29:34 +0000
Tags: Asperger’s, autism, brain science, brains, consciousness, gender, hypothesis, system 2 thinking, testable hypothesis, theory of mind, wild speculation
Categories: Minds, Psychology, Science