sunflowers comments on What truths are actually taboo? - Less Wrong

5 Post author: sunflowers 16 April 2013 11:40PM

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Comment author: sunflowers 17 April 2013 08:25:25PM 2 points [-]

I'm hardly a social genius. I haven't kept any childhood friends, and I alternate between making large numbers of friends and months of self-imposed isolation. I read math textbooks at bars for entertainment.

I think most people could do better than me.

At the same time, I'm a socialist atheist living in Tennessee, and I have a pretty thick skin when it comes to sensitive topics. I'll admit the possibility that my disposition could help to make my experiences atypical. But I've seen people have the "typical" experience, and I can usually instantly tell when they've failed and how they could have done better.

Comment author: Jack 17 April 2013 08:38:35PM *  2 points [-]

It's less about being able to make a lot of friends or forcing oneself to be social and much more about being able to calibrate how you're coming off to others and head misperceptions off at the pass.

Quoting from this wikipedia article on autism spectrum disorders.

Two traits sometimes found in AS individuals are mind-blindness (the inability to predict the beliefs and intentions of others) and alexithymia (the inability to identify and interpret emotional signals in oneself or others), which reduce the ability to be empathetically attuned to others.[32][33] Alexithymia in AS functions as an independent variable relying on different neural networks than those implicated in theory of mind.[32][33] In fact, lack of Theory of Mind in AS may be a result of a lack of information available to the mind due to the operation of the alexithymic deficit.[32][33

Edit: Btw, you aren't in eastern Tennessee by chance are you?

Comment author: sunflowers 17 April 2013 08:43:56PM -1 points [-]

I am, near Knoxville.

Comment author: Jack 17 April 2013 08:50:32PM 1 point [-]

Neat, I'm likely moving to Asheville in the next few months.

Comment author: sunflowers 17 April 2013 08:56:32PM -1 points [-]

It's a beautiful, beautiful place. I used to drive through it fairly often in a big, ungainly truck, and it always seemed to be storming. Probably my stare-offs with imminent destruction made it even prettier.

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