bondage_and_tea, logical cognitive models for autism

[gusl]

I just had a long email thread with bondage_and_tea about the feasibility and desirability of logical cognitive models for autism. It took us 24 emails.

We were talking past each other for a while, because:
* we have different goals (e.g. I'm happy with models that predict, whereas he requires models to give developmental explanations)
* we use different language (e.g. the words "suspect", "explanation")
* pragmatics doesn't come across well through the text medium (e.g. it's not always obvious when a question is rhetorical). At some points, I was frustrated and tempted to be rude, but I held it back. He probably felt the same way. The smiley faces helped keep the discussion amicable. (being rude in person isn't as big a deal because you can see the general attitude in the person's face)
* I was being socratic, while he was focusing on concrete examples, asking if I had any references to back up my claims of possibility.

This is an example of successful email communication. And probably the one that took the longest to resolve for me. It was hard, but we finally understand why the other person believes what they believe... although it would have been easier on IM.

I've been meaning to write about Internet communication and its dangers, but that will have to be another time.

Just remember: Great Minds Think Alike (GMTA), and if you give people the benefit of the doubt, it may turn out that you agree afterall. I know that most pairs of people have tons of persistent disagreements, but most people are just not great minds :-) (seriously, I wish this combination of critical thinking + charitable argumentation were taught in school).

Comments

phraseology

[troyworks.livejournal.com]

great minds do think alike...but only if they are NT's will they eventually converge on the same solution :)

Re: phraseology

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

GM = NT

Re: phraseology

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

can you recommend any scientific (or semi-scientific) resources about MBTI typology?

I'd like to see correlations between job choice / happiness / marital status / IQ and type.

Re: phraseology

[troyworks.livejournal.com]

not really. MBTI isn't an exact science, human behavoior is far to vast to boil down to only 16 metrics.

Re: phraseology

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

MBTI isn't an exact science
that's why there's statistics

human behavoior is far to vast to boil down to only 16 metrics.
you seem to be saying "so we might as well give up!"

Re: phraseology

[troyworks.livejournal.com]

a) I'm not saying that correlations can't be drawn, if you look on some of the type related sites you see some of this. e.g. there is a tendency for NT's to friend other NT's and be information workers of some sort or other NF's in relationships.

no i'm not saying we should give up. But I doubt that a system that could capture the accuracy would be portable. The reason why the MBTI is effective is it's portability, only four letters that are almost selfevident (unlike the enneagram), that can give you the gist of how a person percieves. It's a bit like astrology.

I have quite a number of NT friends, and the variance between them is pretty noticable, e.g. one is a hard core surfer/snowboarder and does quantum physics, the other abhors exercise and spends lots of time on ai, another isn't particularly good with math or science or engineering, but is good at interrogations. Another continually drums on his leg (former musician) while managing projects. Externally just watching them it's not immediately apparent they have anything in common.

Re: phraseology

[troyworks.livejournal.com]

it's a bit like astrology meant as a shared vocabulary (astrology having weaker definitions of type).

Re: phraseology

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

You could create dimensions based on how people are perceived socially.

Mathematical ability, musical ability, enthusiasm for music... all of these can be dimensions.

What I want is a supermultivariate database of people and their scores on these different traits, so that I can do data mining on it.