Re:The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age
by threecheese on Saturday September 21, 2024 @05:59PM
(#41612948)
This reminds me of a quote from somewhere: All models are useful, none are correct. I (not OP) make a strong effort to be objective in my modeling of the world (even when it hurts), as itβs the only tool I have to understand and predict behavior and behavioral expectations. I wish we had access to predefined objective mental models, or could share them with each other (copy program structure and state across minds).
Re:The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age
by crazygringo on Saturday September 21, 2024 @08:12PM
(#41613601)
> or could share them with each other
Honestly, I'd say literature and fictional works generally come the closest to that. Sitting down with a novel written by someone from a vastly different background from yours is kind of the closest you can get to seeing the world through someone else's eyes.
Obviously not spy thrillers and the like, but novels that are more about real life.
Another really interesting resource is some of the podcasts that do ~hour-long interviews with famous people and really dig into their childhood, motivations, etc. Dax Shephard is particularly good at this. Discovering how vastly different people's backgrounds are, the big choices they made in life, and the unexpected factors that contributed to those choices.
And I'd like to present you with a different perspective.
You write that "My autistic perspective is that there is only a system of the world".
But it's important to realize that the "system of the world" you've developed is from your perspective exclusively. You are modeling everybody in your system, and you may be doing your best to be 100% objective and not push your own agenda.
However, your model is lacking because you can model your own "role" far better than anybody elses "role" -- you know your own preferences and desires with great accuracy, but not other people's. And you'll likely unconsciously assume that other people's preferences and desires as the same as yours, until proven otherwise.
You write "the aspie tendency to make observations about broad sweeping systems comes off as arrogance". But what if it has nothing to do with broad sweeping systems, but the fact that your observations are extrapolating too much from your own preferences/desires that you are projecting onto others without realizing it?
So the perceived "arrogance" may not be what you describe as an inappropriate reaction that you are bringing an agenda to things. But may actually be an appropriate reaction to the fact that you're making too many assumptions in your "observations about broad sweeping systems" that the systems in your head are reality, when they are not.
When I have conversations with really smart people who come across as arrogant, it's not usually because they are being overly objective. It's because while their logic and deductions may be 100% correct, it's their starting assumptions that are wrong, which usually assume that other people have the same preferences/desires as themselves. But sometimes it's really hard to understand just how different people can be.