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Aswad -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/3/2007 4:51:03 PM)
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ORIGINAL: CitizenCane
Thanks for the information on dopamine-related issues.I wasn't aware of this.
You're welcome if you remember to double-check it before you use it for anything. [:D]
But, yeah, both dopamine and PEA are used for a lot more than reward/salience.
If you would like to talk about those bits, I'd suggest private messages or mail.
The mods probably don't want a neurochem subforum; here, it'd be littering.
Besides, I haven't worked actively with it for a while, so some of it's rusty.
I wouldn't want anyone to experiment based on half-remembered data.
When I give advice, I stick to what is clear to me, and look things up.
I'm considering a pdoc study so I can work actively with this stuff.
That way, I could avoid having it "rust" when I'm not using it.
Perhaps even get some kind of research done, eventually.
Few people do the interesting research on aspies.
Mostly, it's about how to make them palatable.
I don't find that particularly interesting.
The pdocs seem to, however.
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As for prion-disease, [...] and neural tissue regenerates slowly if at all,
Neurogenesis occurs in some tissues, depending on stimuli, nutrients, and various other factors.
ISTR that the other neural tissues regenerate, but very slowly, on the order of 70 years.
But, yeah, it makes sense that prion diseases would be affecting neural tissue first.
I was wondering, since fatal familial insomnia seems to hit very specific systems.
Either way, prion diseases should be given extremely high priority, IMHO.
Given the long incubation time, who knows how many have BSE or CJ?
That is why I support the PS3, since it does the bulk of FAH's work.
In the longer term, it will also be useful for amyloid plaques, as well.
I was joking about the PS3 being a solution, though; it is not.
Understanding protein folding is just the first step.
It is, however, a very important first step.
I'd suggest avoiding kuru in any case.
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People are still dying of lung cancer and breast cancer, after all, and the time, money and experience base involved in that research is many orders of magnitude greater than in prion disease.
~nod~
While I would point out that a lot of that money is directed at treatment, rather than a cure, and that almost all of it is directed at patentable solutions, I do agree. There is no reason to assume that a cure for prion diseases will be discovered any time soon. There are good, logical arguments why one should avoid using one's own kind as food, while one imagines it might gain some of the same status as fugu if legalized; anyone inclined to try such a thing should stick to hufu, IMO. And then there are the other arguments.
Slightly off-topic, did you know most cases of lasting spontaneous remission from cancers appear to involve massive infections? Apparently, if the immune response can overcome a near-lethal infection, it will tend to go for the cancer next, causing extremely high apoptosis rates in the cells in that area. Unfortunately, this mechanism has no real potential for patentability, so studies have been very limited.
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Regarding empathy, we may perhaps be using the term differently- it is, after all, a somewhat 'soft' term.
Yes, it did seem that way. I used it in a sense that is slightly broader than compassion, while it appears you use it to cover both emotional reasoning and the ability to follow the emotional reasoning of another on a non-intellectual level. Correct?
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On the other hand, I've noticed that the aspies I know tend to have an abundance of feeling for the feelings of animals other than human NTs.
Definitely.
The reason why this doesn't always carry over to humans is probably because a lot of aspies are bitter at humans; consider that the aspie experience in NT society is pretty much the exact recipe for virtually every acquirable mental disorder, such as PTSD, MDD, GAD, PAD, SAD, OCD, and so forth, and that 84% of all aspies have anxiety disorders by adulthood. When I say "social friction", I'm being quite neutral/detached about it.
For those that are not, however, this same trait does carry over to NT people.
And it does carry over to NT people one cares about in any case.
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Whether this is properly called empathy, sympathy, or a projection of their own feelings is open to debate, but being nice, protective and sympathetic to animals seems to be a very common aspie trait.
An animal is very honest and straight-forward, like most aspies. It isn't very hard to relate to them. Most of them are also devoid of actual malice. Their emotions and their motives are easy to relate to. Much of their body language makes sense, although a lot of species require a fair bit of study to get a feel for that. Their social interactions can be observed from afar, and one can usually piece together their customs and social structure from this. Almost everything they do has some sort of purpose, and that purpose is usually evident on the surface, without the habitual deception that characterizes NT humans.
I once met two gray wolves in a reservation. At the time, I was about 12. We weren't really allowed to get too close, but I disregarded that when nobody was looking. They were magnificent creatures, and we connected. It is said wolves, unlike dogs, do not read human body language. From my experience, I wonder if it might not be more accurate to say they don't read NT body language, because I connected better than with most dogs, except for those that lived with me.
Unfortunately, the female of the pair was put down a few weeks ago. Embla attacked the caretaker of the reservation, apparently without provocation, or at least so it seemed to the caretaker. She put it down on the grounds that "it made us think that it might happen again". WTF?
It's a wolf, lady, not a tame dog.
Of course it might attack you one day.
That's why the kids don't get to come close.
If you didn't realize that, why are you caretaker?
The thought certainly never left my mind when I came within range...
Another thing I share, I guess. Not understanding why an evaluation changes after the damage has been done, even if the facts were known up front. Risk doesn't change if accidents happen. It remains the same. My assumption has been that it is something related to the pack trying to restore a sense of normalcy and the illusion of safety being provided by effort, rather than results. I'm normally a very effort- and intent-oriented person, but a society that wants me to sign over risk management to them will have to do a bit better than just effort; there are many processes out there that deliver results, often with even less effort.
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I lean toward the view that this can be explained by a fundamental feeling that aspies have (NTs usually have it too, in many ways) that other people ARE basically like them, despite the observable differences, which creates an expectation that they should act similarly, or at least understand them.
I cannot answer that. I'm not an aspie, I think, just closely related. But nephandi did at one point comment that, as a child, she felt very sorry for Chinese children. After all, she couldn't understand their languages, and it must be horrible with all these people talking languages they don't understand. ~g~
She outgrew that mode of thinking, though, it just took her longer than for the NT kids.
The reason why that thought occurs, I think, is that the cognitive abilities develop at a similar pace, while the "theory of mind" bits develop more slowly and unevenly. Hence, she could not seperate her knowledge from theirs (a classic theory of mind task; similar ones are used in research), but she could sympathize, understand their need for communication, that they had thoughts to express, and so forth.
Both aspies and NTs, and indeed all humans, have some degree or other of assumption that others are just like themselves on one or more levels, along with some doubts about the same. The former is part of why aspies seem so jarring, I think, as I have yet to meet anyone who couldn't, with a bit of patience, relate a lot better, on either side of the coin. The latter is part of why some things are secret, and other things are public knowledge but still not spoken of, which contributes to the learning problem, as aspies are more structured in their learning, but lack the skills to learn in a that way on their own at the early stages of their lives.
I don't think there's such a big gap, intrinsically, as evidenced by what good, supportive and coping-/child-centric training can do. It's just that there is very little good info out there, aimed at helping the child develop according to its own needs, and explaining to it how NTs think and what they can gain from interacting on the NTs own terms. Quite simply, NTs are the dominant "subspecies" in society, and if one wants to interact with the bulk of them, one will need to do so on their terms. Most are willing to go the other way, but there are fewer aspies to teach NT culture than there are NTs to teach aspie culture.
Consider that, if you learn flawless Japanese, but not a single bit about their culture, you would probably seem terribly jarring to them, for instance, and you would have a lot of trouble fitting in. Like the bit about on, as Synergy mentioned, which is unspoken for the most part. It is something you need to study to understand, or have someone explain to you.
The problem with aspie/NT relations, is mostly that NT culture has more taboos and rituals, and that neither side understands the other, while they appear to be the same on the surface, as well as speaking the same language and having much the same manners (coming from similar rearing, after all).
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Dogs, for instance, are obviously not like aspies in fundamental ways, which allows the dog to be read as a dog, not a person, and the empathetic process can proceed on it's own merits, so to speak.
Actually, dogs are a bit special. My aspie friends love dogs, while not all of them feel the same about cats, for instance. I love both, but that is beside the point. The dogs have a mind and body language that is very well suited for interaction with humans. I relate to them on a more primal level than NTs generally do, but the basic concept is the same: they were bred to "get" humans.
I do take care around hostile dogs. For instance, when I stretch out my hand, I place the opposing hand on the elbow or upper arm of the one I am stretching out, so I can stop any attempt at going for the throat. But I do approach them, carefully, at a pace they don't seem to feel threatened by. Most calm down and allow me to pet them. In some cases, depending on the nature of the interaction, I will stare them down instead; they get the picture pretty quickly: I'm big, fast, agile, and not afraid of them (though I do have a healthy respect for them).
With dogs, unlike most people, if they start play-biting or whatever, I play-fight them back, and win. The biting doesn't really register. With most species of dog, the nose is long enough that you can trick them into going for the hand, which you hold palm-up. Then you close the hand around their nose, using the knuckles against their tongue to prevent them from biting hard (this doesn't work if they have long teeth). With a firm grip, the upper teeth don't tear the hand. Dogs find this very uncomfortable, and you don't need to squeeze for them to understand that you can, and that it would hurt a lot if you did. With many dogs, this move alone is enough to make them consider you the stronger party, which is how dogs organize socially (ref. what I said about consent in the creepy-crawly thread). I would not be inclined to try it with an attacking dog, however. ~g~
Apart from that, see the above.
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With NTs, the expectation that the NT SHOULD understand something, say something, or do something in the way the aspie would interferes with this process. Obviously this happens on the NT side of the divide as well.
~nod~
As I said, it's like people on each side of a window, looking at each other, not seeing that we're dealing with two real rooms, seperated by one window, not one real room with a fancy 3D-monitor in it. When in doubt, humans generally pick themselves as the point of reference, the "one real room" if you will; I try to avoid doing that, but don't always succeed.
Like in physics, there can be no fixed frame of reference. Any frame is as valid as any other. We just pick the one that makes it more doable to reason about things. Anyone does that, really. The trick is to bear in mind that the frame of reference is arbitrarily chosen. Few people can do that. Just look back on the debate when Einstein first posited his theories; even now, many don't "get" the bit about no frames of reference.
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I did not mean to suggest that the general run of empathy among NTs is adequate, by any means.
My issue is not with NTs having, or using, empathy. It is with not distinguishing between emotional logic and rational logic. Both are valid and important tools, but for different uses. In the IT field, and probably most engineering fields, a strong concept in those who do well, is "use the right tool for the job". We collect tools in our toolboxes, and pick the one that best fits the problem we have been given. The same applies for rational logic vs emotional logic.
Emotional logic is well suited to picking goals and so forth. It fills in the blanks, and has a lot of utility in this sense. Priorities and motivation flow easily from emotion, and that is something it probably should do, in most cases. This does not necessarily lead to very uniform goals or whatever, but it does lead to a direction that is suited for the individual in question.
Rational logic is well suited to reaching the goal. For instance, if your emotions tell you that life has value, then rational logic is what will best be able to secure life. This is the place where people tend to go wrong, and probably where the proverb "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" originates. Emotions have originated a valid problem, but then NTs use emotion to guide them to a "solution", which often just aggravates the problem, or deflects it temporally or spatially.
Note that I do not sort instinct under emotional logic. If something calls out "there is something wrong here", then chances are there is, and you just haven't found out what yet. Back to the drawing-board, find, fix, try again.
My view is that rational logic should be the tool by which emotional needs are satisfied.
One of the defining traits of humans is their ability to defer immediate gratification.
Using logic, rather than emotion, to approach a solution is an extension of this.
Otherwise, you end up with nonsense efforts that "feel good" but raise hell.
The "national security" efforts in the US at present are a good example.
Much of what we despise in history shows signs of the same thing.
Emotions are good, but they don't solve problems on their own.
Logic is good, but it doesn't do anything at all by itself.
Used in tandem, the two can accomplish very much.
I wonder if this is part of what yin / yang means.
With yang as emotion, and yin as logic.
The interplay as enlightened life.
I could just be odd, though.
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