• MantidSys@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    It’s times like these that I’m glad I am autistic. You neurotypicals really over-complicate things and make life difficult for yourselves.

    How to flirt as an autistic person: make a friend over shared interests, spend time together sharing that interest, realize they’re enjoyable to be around, communicate clearly “I enjoy spending time with you, let’s do it more often”, slowly morph into a relationship out of convenience. Done.

    I cannot understand NT mind-games and obsessive preening. Don’t you get frustrated with it? And to think - someone who puts that much effort into judging you upfront is likely to keep judging things about you all your life, with no end to playing games… Stressful, no thank you.

    • cole@lemdro.id
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      11 months ago

      neurotypical people do this too lol. everyone is a bit different. although I’m not neurotypical so I guess take that with a grain of salt

      • mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        If humanity can make it another 100k years I think the spectrum and NT people will diverge to the point of being separate species, and if anything about hominid history tells me, one branch will club the other to death at some point.

        I was thinking what a functioning society of people all possessing Down’s Syndrome would look like if human history had taken a strange turn at the bottleneck, or the same circumstance for conditions like Tourette’s.

        Personally I think that neurodivergent people may be evolutionary solutions to very specific survival hurdles, and that we have not been facing these hurdles long enough for natural selection to smooth out the side effects. It’s all very confusing at the individual level in a species specialization event as none of us will live long enough to see even the glimmerings of whatever shift in human existence that our daily struggles will initiate.

        • cole@lemdro.id
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          11 months ago

          I think nothing has ever been enough of a hindrance to be selected out evolutionarily which is why non-neurotypical people exist. Just my head theory though

          • mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            I feel that’s one-sided and doesn’t take into account evolutionary benefits from being non-nt. The thing is, the last 6k years of human history is such a tiny blip in our time as humans that it’s largely a mistake to take survival evidence of such a short span and apply genetic drift to it.

            And considering the survival benefits of technology are exponential, I would see having focus driven non-nt people in your populace would result in great and frequent survival benefits.

    • mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I know, I’m on the spectrum too. This data is really the results of years of studying and a minor in psych to fit in.

      And it isn’t NTs making things difficult, it’s our biological drives. We have them too, just we find fitness tests exhausting and unnecessary and are far more motivated by good conversation than full lips or wide limbal rings.

      It’s a sad truth that most people don’t follow the ‘getting slowly to know each other’, and it is true that this kind of method works well with some, not just autists, but the majority of people are swimming in a sea of ten thousand little unnoticed fitness checks. Again this usually isn’t conscious, it’s not like NTs have a list of things they consciously tick off.

      It’s more of an aggregate result, and is of course intensely subjective.

      Yes it is exhausting to keep up with it, but once you understand the biological foundation, you start to feel a bit more sympathetic to NTs that they are a lot more beholden to these biological drives than we are.

      Let me use the butterfly metaphor:

      So butterflies have a very limited time to reproduce, and since they only get one stab at it, it is very much in the best interest to quickly find the best possible mate.

      This is where mating dances come in. Both butterflies want the best possible mate, and for those species that usually means someone who is a really good flyer. Flying takes a lot of energy and is a great indicator of general health. I’m sure coloration comes in as well but that’s not so much the focus here.

      They keep chasing and fleeing each other to see how good and fast a flyer the other is. In my mind they are getting more and more turned on by how good their partner can dodge and chase until if both butterflies are satisfied then they share genes and go off to lay eggs before they die. It may seem exhausting but it serves a very important purpose of making sure your kids have the best chance at life. It’s also likely not conscious, just a triggered series of behaviors.

      My hypothesis for spectrum existers is that biologically we ‘know’ that the best possible survival tactic is being smart, and that this rates higher than any amount of full hips, large lips, limbal rings and physique. So in-depth conversation on complicated topics are major turn ons for us.