From: Colin Hales (colin@versalog.com.au)
Date: Fri Dec 14 2001 - 17:59:43 MST
I thought I'd put my little bit in here...in my own simplistic fashion.
Autism popped out of a recent analysis I did (I think - If I understand
autism from what I have been told). Imagine a human's continuous sensory
streams non-stop associating with a gigantic number of stored 'items' (for
want of a better word) subsequently called into a working area - a sort of
foreground representing current real-time situational focus.
If you want to make any sense of it at all, you have to define a 'region of
interest'. This is fairly easy to imagine in a visual sense. Currently it's
this screen your looking at. Now I ask you to 'become aware of your left
foot'. See? It works across all the senses. It's automatic. Thank god I can
shut the noise of the kids out when I want!
Now imagine that the 'region of interest' capacity was mal formed or broken.
I can't imagine how awful this would feel. Somehow you would have to act to
reduce the impinging flood so that you could function. The strategy for
doing this- to the non-autistic - appear fairly weird when viewed from
outside. Emotion would have to go - you'd go nuts if you had all X'000
emotional flavours associated out at once.
On the other side - the capacity of an 'expanded' region of interest could
be very beneficial in enabling associations that would otherwise be
avoided/lost. We see/relate this as a 'higher IQ' function. In this list - I
suspect - the XNTX - factor - I think there's ...shoot me if I'm wrong....a
few neurons on the IQ++ side and that if there was another "outer square" on
the Meyers Briggs classifier I think the XNTX's would find thenselves next
to the autistic/savant area. How many of you out there ever looked at the
same 'scene' as others and saw so much more? I look out my window at the
biology and these days I see a heap of fractals (along with all the stuff
that others see).
I think this list and the extropian mindset is a product of that very
process. Seeing more when presented with the same data. It's a little scary,
however, being so close to the edge of the Meyer's Briggs box.
Just as an excercise, try and imagine if you had a 'region of interest' that
could only take in 1 or 2 or a few associations - ie. overly expressed -
what sort of person is that? You have all met them. They are still capable
of acceptable analysis when they get the input, they just don't get the
input. You may have been like it a while yourself. I think I've identified a
few, but I'd like someone else to have a go. No, not politicians! No Bin
Laden jokes either.
cheers
colin
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