autism, gaming, and human history
2020-Dec-23, Wednesday 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mellowtiggerWhen I don't even game any more, then you know that my stress level is at a breaking point. Spending far too much time in the hobby, though, is typically a good sign.
I already mentioned that I started playing No Man's Sky about 2 months ago. I didn't mention that I developed this spreadsheet, where I've documented the 679 planets I've scanned, the 150 star systems I've visited, with lookup tables for all of the in-game text used to describe the many biomes, economies, and security levels. I've created formulas that assign categories based on the initial text that I enter. I'm still pondering how to turn hexadecimal codes into visual alien glyphs for easy transcription.
You're probably thinking, "But that looks like data processing. That looks like work." Yes, and I'm having so much fun! I've already found 2 errors in the very helpful wiki that I still need to register on their site to correct. Exploration is fun for me. Discerning patterns in data is fun for me. A procedurally-generated game that already uses patterns to generate that same data I'm exploring is actually a great playground... for me. ;) It's certainly not how other people play the game.
A week or so ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article by autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen. He writes directly about the phenomenon that I've been enjoying for the past 2 months. The whole article is educational, but here is a key point:
The bonus and the deficit are both mine. Look at that spreadsheet I created while playing a game, and it's painfully clear that I am a hyper-systemizer, in their language. Also true are the empathic deficits. I last officially dated anyone back in 1997, I think. I realized even then how much I do not know or even observe in that realm. Sometimes it's a very obvious blind spot.
Yet on this blog I frequently urge compassion and empathy, so what gives? Is it hypocrisy? Not exactly. Again, it's the systems. I understand the systems in use far better than I understand the individuals. I argue passionately for systemic change, because I see the flaws and destinies so plainly! With person-to-person interaction, though, I just don't experience the same engagement. It is rare for me to proverbially "click" with anyone in the usual friendly/social sense, and it is astonishingly rare for it to happen in the romantic sense. I don't pursue individuals, partly because I'm already too distracted by those glaring systemic problems that never go away and are almost always related to fairness and justice. Emotional entanglement is a complication that I do better without.
I first mentioned that author back in 2008, and the same themes were involved then. Autistics may be bad at empathizing individually, but we can understand the systems and very much want them to be fair, just, and consistent.
I already mentioned that I started playing No Man's Sky about 2 months ago. I didn't mention that I developed this spreadsheet, where I've documented the 679 planets I've scanned, the 150 star systems I've visited, with lookup tables for all of the in-game text used to describe the many biomes, economies, and security levels. I've created formulas that assign categories based on the initial text that I enter. I'm still pondering how to turn hexadecimal codes into visual alien glyphs for easy transcription.
You're probably thinking, "But that looks like data processing. That looks like work." Yes, and I'm having so much fun! I've already found 2 errors in the very helpful wiki that I still need to register on their site to correct. Exploration is fun for me. Discerning patterns in data is fun for me. A procedurally-generated game that already uses patterns to generate that same data I'm exploring is actually a great playground... for me. ;) It's certainly not how other people play the game.
A week or so ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article by autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen. He writes directly about the phenomenon that I've been enjoying for the past 2 months. The whole article is educational, but here is a key point:
It happens that inventors and autistic people both love to repeat their observations of such patterns, over and over again, to uncover timeless laws. At Cambridge University’s Autism Research Centre, which I direct, we set out to explore this convergence. Our research found an overlap between the minds of those gifted in invention and the minds of autistic people. Both are more likely to be pattern seekers, or hyper-systemizers, strongly driven to analyze or build systems by identifying and experimenting with if-and-then patterns.
This overlap arises at least partly because some of the genes associated with hyper-systemizing are the same genes that code for autism. We also found that strong systemizing appears to come at a price, most recognizable in autism: The more your brain is tuned to seek such patterns, the less you can engage the brain’s parallel circuit for empathy, another important and uniquely human capacity.
- https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-autism-and-invention-are-connected-11607749260 (no paywall in this archive version)
This overlap arises at least partly because some of the genes associated with hyper-systemizing are the same genes that code for autism. We also found that strong systemizing appears to come at a price, most recognizable in autism: The more your brain is tuned to seek such patterns, the less you can engage the brain’s parallel circuit for empathy, another important and uniquely human capacity.
- https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-autism-and-invention-are-connected-11607749260 (no paywall in this archive version)
The bonus and the deficit are both mine. Look at that spreadsheet I created while playing a game, and it's painfully clear that I am a hyper-systemizer, in their language. Also true are the empathic deficits. I last officially dated anyone back in 1997, I think. I realized even then how much I do not know or even observe in that realm. Sometimes it's a very obvious blind spot.
Yet on this blog I frequently urge compassion and empathy, so what gives? Is it hypocrisy? Not exactly. Again, it's the systems. I understand the systems in use far better than I understand the individuals. I argue passionately for systemic change, because I see the flaws and destinies so plainly! With person-to-person interaction, though, I just don't experience the same engagement. It is rare for me to proverbially "click" with anyone in the usual friendly/social sense, and it is astonishingly rare for it to happen in the romantic sense. I don't pursue individuals, partly because I'm already too distracted by those glaring systemic problems that never go away and are almost always related to fairness and justice. Emotional entanglement is a complication that I do better without.
I first mentioned that author back in 2008, and the same themes were involved then. Autistics may be bad at empathizing individually, but we can understand the systems and very much want them to be fair, just, and consistent.