In case you're wondering what the Sally Anne test is...

For some reason I started thinking about this at work, and realized it was actually a thinly disguised logic/programming problem. This becomes obvious if you represent Sally, Anne, and the location of the marble as variables, and Anne hiding Sally's marble as a function of which the variable "Sally" is out of scope. And then I came to the opinion that if you explained it this way to a bunch of autistic kids, they'd probably get it just fine.

Then I started thinking of other ways in which someone could fail this test other than simply lacking an imagination. I'll use my personal experience to start off with, even though it's highly doubtful I'm on the spectrum and even if I am, it would be just barely. But anyway, I'll just say this, it was quite common in my experience when I was growing up to see that other people seemed to somehow know things, without knowing how they knew them. I can extrapolate from this to the Sally Anne example, because the key question in this problem is how Sally knows what she knows. I would not be surprised if it were also common for autistic kids to also frequently experience other people knowing things without being clear on how they knew, and to also be punished for not knowing things they didn't know they were supposed to know. So the idea that someone could walk away and magically know that their marble had been moved might not seem so strange in that context.

Though to be honest, I probably would have gotten this question right as a child. This might seem like I'm overthinking it, but I've honestly seen very little to convince me that autistic people lack imagination, or are not constantly trying to figure out how other people work.

* Note: I don't actually believe that.

I've been noticing as I analyze human behavior that an awful lot of it seems to revolve around the acquisition and preservation of status. And this leads in many cases to people engaging in contests of oneupmanship.

Exhibit A:

Hapless n00b: What's the best Linux distro?

Basement dweller #1: Slackware! Guis are for chumps!

Basement dweller #2: Nuh-uh! Debian roolz!

Basement dweller #3: Anyone who uses anything but Gentoo is clearly not evolved enough to tie their own shoes and wipe their own butt.

Only sane person: Well, what are you going to use it for? Are you looking to mainly run it as a desktop, or a server? Linux distributions tend to be optimized for different things, even ones put out by the same company are often put out in different versions for different purposes.

Exhibit B:

Hapless n00b: I'm having trouble breastfeeding. You think it's really going to do any harm to give the little pound of flesh some formula sometimes, just to let my nips heal?

Sanctimommy #1: Yes! Do not succumb to the sweet, seductive call of not having a screaming pound of flesh suck on your tits all the time! If you do, you will be the Worst Mother Ever. You want that kind of responsibility on your head?

Sanctimommy #2: You think you've got it tough? I gave birth to twins...unassisted, without painkillers!

Only sane person: You know, that actually sounds...pretty dangerous. Like, incredibly, foolishly dangerous.

Sanctimommy #2: True motherhood requires sacrifice. Women who get epidurals and give birth in the hospital are just being selfish.

Sanctimommy #3: Hang in there, I'm still breastfeeding my kids...and they're going into kindergarten next year!

Only sane person: Um...kindergarten's actually old enough to start having clear memories. Let's just say that if I could actually remember my mom breastfeeding me, I'd be a pretty disturbed individual. *shudders*

From what I've observed, gender differences in this are more stylistic than substantive. Women often try to outdo each other on the basis of moral purity. You see a lot of this in the social justice community. Men often try to outdo each other by claiming to be smarter than each other, which you see a lot of in the geek community. Fundamentally, it all seems pretty much the same to me though.

There's a lot of other ways people try to gain status of course. I assume I must do it as well, though the examples I can come up with are pretty few. Mostly though this has helped me somewhat to understand why people can be so intolerant of other peoples' choices when it's clear those choices don't affect them. I've generally leaned towards the "if you're not going to force me to do it, I don't care.  Do whatever floats your boat" school of thought, but that attitude seems hard to find on the internet.

On a completely unrelated note, I totally want "hapless_n00b" as my next screenname.

tags: humans

The sausage being video games. These are the things I want to know:

1. Why do they often have certain areas filled with harder enemies or easier enemies, even if it's an open sandbox sort of game where you're supposed to be able to go and do whatever you want, whenever you want? What would be the point in that case of making some areas too hard for a low level character to survive?

2. Why is appropriate leveling of enemies so difficult? Oblivion got a lot of flak for making the enemies level up with you because apparently the enemies frequently got stronger than the player character. But this stuff is all based on math, so hard can it really be to have a computer program match the difficulty of the enemies more precisely to the strength of the player character?

3. How do mods work? Why do they not require you to recompile the program? Does making mods require programming skill?

I was in a crappy mood, and I had a dentist appointment that I nearly didn't get to because the bus was being stupid. I mean, nothing horrible happened, it was just all stupid and stressful. I hate dentist appointments because they mess with my daily routine and throw everything off and that makes me all out of sorts.

Now my tooth hurts. Does anyone know if being really sensitive to physical pain has any relation to being emotionally sensitive? I'm really curious about this. I always require extra anesthetic when I'm at the dentist.

I like individualism in the fact that allows for the tolerance of eccentricity and difference. However, I'm thinking more and more that the idea that a person can make individual, personal choices and be 100% responsible for them because they are free choices is in fact, a myth.

Which is to say, I'm starting to suspect that we all have a lot less free will than we assume. I'm not sure where this leaves personal responsibility. I don't think it's good for people to act as if they have no personal responsibility, but at the same time, I'm not sure how much personal responsibility we really have in the face of so little freedom.

I think collectivism is a lost art in American culture, but at the same time, I really dislike hive minds, and I'm not sure how to have the advantages of collectivism without developing a hive mind.

tags: thoughts

and call it Bend Over.

Hee!

tags: lean in

and this is terribly unoriginal of me. But I'm really finding the whole typical American middle class ideal of "success" to be a pretty empty thing. To me success is being happy and having time to do the things you really want to do, rather than only being able to do the things you have to do in order to live.

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/04/the_terrible_awful_truth_about_5.html

My reading comprehension is totally failing me on this one. What is this guy saying? Is he saying that poor people collecting disability don't really have disabilities, but that it's society's fault that it's the only way they can get financial support? Or something else? I'm really not sure.

Or for that matter, this one: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/03/dont_hate_her_because_shes_suc.html. I *think* he's saying that Sheryl Sandburg is a shill for the capitalist system, but I can't really figure out the rest of the point of this article. I'm really confused. I think this guy's writing style just doesn't mesh with my brain or something.

I never actually understood what Donna Williams was talking about before when she talked about "exposure anxiety." Her books, other than Temple Grandin's, were probably the first "autie-biographies" I read and I found them near-incomprehensible at the time. Though here it seems pretty clear she's talking about defenses people put up when they're being overwhelmed by sensory experiences and emotions and that after a while, it becomes like a learned hair-trigger response. So that makes more sense.

I'm not sure if it applies to all autistic people though, the methods she recommends. I don't think I do the stuff she recommends with my nephew, but we get along fine. Though I do know to lay off him if he's feeling overwhelmed, it's pretty obvious when that happens.

It's funny, when I was watching the video, I found myself looking off to the side so I wouldn't make eye contact with her video face, so I guess I find eye contact overwhelming even when it's not in person.

Oh I should mention that I'm not too keen on her language about it being a "cage" and so forth, just because I think a careless person could think she was reinforcing tired old stereotypes about autism being some kind of psychological locked-in syndrome. I think her points are more valid than that; she's really just trying to give advice about how to interact with an autistic person without overwhelming them, which is fine, but I could see how that kind of language could irk people who are used to the crap Autism Speaks and Jenny McCarthy spout all the time.

tags: autism

http://qw88nb88.wordpress.com/2006/10/15/coping-with-the-inertia-of-task-paralysis/

Task paralysis! Yes, I have it. Okay, no more excuses. I'm typing out lists for things I need to do from now on.

But use of the word "rape" to mean anything but actual rape makes me see red. Some people have to actually live with the threat of rape all their lives, so it's not some kind of abstract concept that can be handily used as a metaphor. For some of us, it's actually something we'd rather not think about unless we have to.

So no, that guy who randomly attacked you in a video game didn't "rape" you. Use something else to describe that experience, shithead.

tags: rage

Honestly, it amazes me how little awareness most people have of the fact that oppression is not only perpetrated by governments. The phrase "corporate oppression" and "corporate tyranny" should be in the lexicon, and it's sadly not.

I give this as an example:
http://creativegood.com/blog/the-google-glass-feature-no-one-is-talking-about/

It's a frightening world he's talking about. A world where you can never truly be offline and where privacy is truly dead. People say privacy is dead now, but they have no idea how far it can really go. But because it's not a government doing it, nobody seems to care except for a few geeks.

tags: dystopia, tyranny

It's a good game, but I find it rather difficult. I died about four times tonight. Maybe I need to put more points into health when I level up again. I'm a little unclear about how to level up properly in this game. From what I've read about Oblivion, it's best to simply level up as little as possible, because the leveling system is so weird and messed up. In Dragon Age, you just get three points you can spend however you like, and the game kind of hints at what you should spend them on, depending on your class.

Skyrim though? No idea. I got my first shout though. I'm a little unclear about what shouts are supposed to do. What, am I supposed to defeat this dragon by yelling at it? Because that's kind of silly.

tags: dragon age, oblivion, skyrim, video games

I don’t think I’m a collectible card games type of person, but I’d still like to find a gaming group that played other types of games. I’d love to find a Scrabble group, but the only one in my area only meets during weekdays. That doesn’t work for me.

That 'feel' would be one of annoyance. I couldn't figure it out at first, but now I have. It's so damn inarticulate. You say you have 'feels' about something, and that's the end of it. When people use this term, they don't say why they feel what they do. They just say they have 'feels' (usually in regards to some sort of fandom they have) and are done with it. No elaboration.

Ack. People irritate me.

Playing video games has actually taught me a little about myself. It's quite interesting!

1. I do not like a challenge. I tried playing Dragon Age II on the normal setting...and I was making it through okay. Only had to turn back down the difficulty for one tough boss battle. But something was wrong.

I didn't enjoy it. I struggled with this, and felt like I should be trying harder to be better at the game. Then I decided, "screw it." It's a fucking video game. It doesn't matter if I'm good at it or not. It matters if I'm having fun. So I turned it back down to the easiest setting possible and now it's fun again. I still struggle with feeling a little guilty about this, and like my video game accomplishments are somehow cheapened, but I really just don't think it should matter. And I'm trying to judge myself against my past self, rather than what everyone else might be doing.

2. If I have the opportunity to flirt where there's absolutely no possibility of getting rejected, I'll flirt. That's interesting. I wish in real life you got a dialogue wheel with a flirt option clearly marked by a heart symbol. That would make things a lot easier. Also if you could check peoples' friend/rivalry meters.

tags: video games

I can't really explain it, but I've tried a fair number of video games, but I've only actually been able to play through a very small number of them. My two very favorites of all time were the original Legend of Zelda and Dragon Age: Origins.

It's not that the other games I tried were bad. They weren't. It's hard to explain. It's more like I never got comfortable with how the game played, and never really felt like I knew what I was doing. Every game is a system to be learned, but for some reason some systems I catch onto pretty fast but most I don't, and remain foreign-feeling to me. It's very hard for me to explain this anything but a wibbly-wobbly, feelie-wheelie sort of way, and that bugs me because I'm not normally that sort of person. I like to have good, logical explanations for things. I suppose I'll have to think on this more.

tags: nld, video games

In other news, today I was accused of "pretending to be weird" by a coworker. Am I insulted? Why yes, I think I feel insulted.

tags: dragon age awakening, the architect

I started playing Dragon Age: Awakening tonight on the normal level (I usually play games on the easiest level possible, so this is a step up in difficulty for me). I actually couldn't tell the difference between normal and casual level at first and I wound up defeating the big boss of the game (The Mother) on the normal level. I'm rather proud of myself for that. I'm pretty terrible at video games, hence always playing on the easiest level possible.

I wound up siding with The Architect, even though he's kind of a villain. I guess. Yeah, he's a villain, but he's a villain with good intentions. It's complex. He's a self-aware darkspawn and for a long time, he was the only darkspawn who had his own mind and didn't hear the call of the Old Gods, and it made him lonely and isolated. He eventually realized that darkspawn and humans fighting was a bad thing and wanted it stopped, so he started experimenting with taking the blood of Grey Wardens and feeding it to his fellow darkspawn, and discovered that it made them self-aware as well.

So basically, his goals are good, but his methods are suspect at best. Anyway, for some reason, I just really love this character.

"I do not seek to rule my brethren. I only seek to release them from their chains." I mean, how can you not love a guy who says something like that.

tags: dragon age awakening, the architect

I’m sick of people bashing Dragon Age II. I really enjoyed it. Yes, it had its flaws, but I still really enjoyed it. I liked the story and the characters, and I play it for that.

Also, no your choices a lot of times don’t make much of a difference (although, sometimes they really do, like with Feynriel). I think that’s part of the point of the story though: that even a person like Hawke can’t stop the flow of history. If shit is going to hit the fan, it’s going to hit the fan no matter what a hero does or doesn’t do. Which is maybe not the most uplifting message, but I think it’s an honest one.

Also, I realize this doesn’t apply to people who played Dragon Age Origins on anything but the casual setting, but DAII is actually HARDER on the casual setting than Origins was, because they put in cooldowns for potions and drop a lot more enemies on you. So while it’s easier than DAO on all the other levels because they took out friendly fire (except for nightmare), it was a lot harder for me personally because I had always played DAO on the casual setting. I wound up using more strategy in DAII, not less. Which…I’m not too crazy about, since you don’t exactly play on the casual setting to get heavy into combat strategy.

I did miss the epic feeling of DAO, as well as the more diverse environments. They were pretty lazy (or rushed) on the environments for DAII, and that’s one of the biggest weaknesses of the game. Plus, it’s a bummer that you can’t customize what your NPCs wear. Especially a bummer that you can’t strip down Fenris. Because I don’t know about you, but I’d have enjoyed seeing him with far fewer clothes on at times. Oh yeah.

It was a lot like a movie with action scenes you could play. Which isn’t to everyone’s taste, but I got really into it after a while. So while it’s not a perfect game, I still really liked it.

tags: dragon age ii, video games

Meredith is a really easy final boss. Wow. I mean seriously, she's a real pushover. Sure, I'm playing on the casual level but I've dealt with way harder bosses than her. I'm absolutely terrified of facing Corypheus again, for instance. Holy mother of fuck, he was a doozy. I haven't managed to beat him yet. But Meredith? Almost disappointingly easy. And I'm not really into challenging battles.

I really liked the change of scenery in Mark of the Assassin. It was nice to be someplace pretty for once instead of a dark dungeon or that same fucking cave or blah blah blah Kirkwall. But now I'm in the chateau and Tallis is bugging me because she doesn't like killing people. But I tried the stealthy path before and I was just horrible at it, and she kept bitching at me about how horrible I was at it too, so now she's starting to bug me. And anyway, I thought the Qunari didn't let women be fighters? (spoiler!)

So I've finished two playthroughs now, one with a male Hawke that romances Fenris and the other where a male Hawke romances Anders. Yes, I like my gay male romances.

tags: dragon age ii

I've discovered something about myself playing video games. I have a hard time doing things in video games that I wouldn't agree with in real life.

Which means I'm completely incapable of siding with the templars in DA2, among other things.

I think it's interesting because I'm sure a lot of people are really different about this. Like maybe they relish the chance to be something totally different than they are in real life. But I can't do that. I wind up making choices that I'd agree with anyway, and I can't do another version where I choose differently because it just doesn't feel right.

I'm not sure what this says about me, but I'm pretty sure it says something.

I've found myself a lot less lonely since I started playing video games. By myself.

I think it's because it's the first thing in a long while that I can get truly, unselfconsciously absorbed in.

It's a little odd because I suspect a lot of people would label my lifestyle as "unhealthy."

And keep in mind, I play both on the easiest level possible. Here are the reasons I’m finding Dragon Age II harder:

1. You often have to fight a *lot* more enemies at a time than in Origins. There were a few battles in Origins before the big showdown where you’d fight tons and tons of enemies at a time, but they were fairly few and far between. Most of the time it wasn’t more than 10 or so, and you had your whole party with you. In DA2, I feel like I’m often fighting against 20 at a time on a regular basis.

2. In Origins, you had a major opportunity to beef up your stats without leveling when you did the Fade. You don’t have any quest like that in DA2, so all your stats are boosted by leveling only. Which means that a level 10 rogue from Origins could kick the pants off a level 10 rogue from DA2, as long as she got all the attribute boosts available in the Fade (and there’s about 20 of them!). That’s a pretty big deal.

3. It seems easier to find bomb and poison recipes in Origins, but that may be a subjective thing. Maybe I just haven’t tried hard enough to look. I’m still getting used to having to order them rather than just making them any time I wanted. I was annoyed that it cost money to order them, but then again in Origins you had to buy flasks and distilling agents and such, so you still wound up having to pay for making potions and poisons and bombs there too. Though it seems like it was a bit cheaper. Well, flasks are cheap anyway.

4. Rogue Hawke keeps doing these annoying little flips that may look cool the first time you see him in combat, but they don’t actually help in any way and I think just slow down an attack.

Anyway, I’m running into a lot more battles that just seem unwinnable and slow down my progress in DA2 than in Origins. I’m getting a game guide in the mail soon, hope it helps.

tags: dragon age

I've never actually been called a slut. Isn't that weird?

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. - George Orwell

Woman A: You're a dried up old hag! I bet your cunt is like old shoe leather.

Woman B: Oh yeah? Well, I bet your twat is like freshly punctured virgin!

I feel like a time traveller. The last video game I defeated was the original Doom, way back in the 90s. Then I just stopped playing for a good long while.

I'm playing Dragon Age: Origins now, and it's totally my crack. But it's so confusing! First off, I'm not used to 3 dimensions. And there's all these different options, it makes my head swim. What weapon to use, what character to play as, etc, etc. It's crazy. Good thing there's a 'casual' setting.

Your fake lesbian photos would be so much more convincing if you had your models look at EACH OTHER rather than the camera. Having them look at the camera is a dead giveaway for them not really being lesbians and just posing for your pleasure.

I suppose most people who look at that kind of stuff don't care, but I actually appreciate little touches of verisimilitude. I guess I'm just a nudie pic snob like that.

I think her head came out a bit too big. I definitely need to work on drawing a face from that particular angle, which I haven't done before. It's interesting how I always see the flaws of a drawing much more clearly when looking at it scanned in.

I drew this without a model, by the way.

tags: drawings

I have a new technical term I’ve just made up. Have you ever had a conversation with a chick (and I hate sexism as much as any feminist, but this is definitely a chick thing). It’s called “the insecurity arms race.” It’s when two chicks are talking about something they hate about themselves, and they constantly have to one-up each other…in their low self esteem!

Example:

Chick A: I’m so fat! My thighs! Argh!
Chick B: No…you’re *way* skinnier than me! Just look at these ARMS! *Shows the underarm flab swinging back and forth*

It’s…a hideous social ritual. I’m ashamed to say I’ve probably engaged in it a few times myself, and I’m still not exactly sure what the purpose of it is supposed to be.

I mean, I know everyone has a persona they keep up. Does it bother anyone else? I never got the impression that everyone was necessarily super-sincere or always acting on their feelings, but I've also always felt like I had a particularly difficult time keeping the "real" me inside.

Am I even making sense?

1. Okay. You did something that I realize you thought was a good thing and helping me out. Yes okay, I realize that. But it wasn’t actually a good thing, because you didn’t really want me there and you had this image of me stuck in your head from years ago, and you didn’t judge me fairly as a result.

So ironically, doing the “not nice” thing would have actually been really nice. What you actually did was my worst nightmare, since I’m always worrying about people secretly having a really bad opinion of me. Which you did. So congratulations, you dropped a nuclear bomb on my psyche. Are you happy now?

2. You’re really into homeopathy and alternative medicine…and I hate that stuff. Because I don’t believe in it all and I think it’s really terrible since people who do believe in it don’t wind up getting real help for their health problems. And…I never really had the nerve to tell you that, though I tried to be more open about it towards the end. But I’m not really sure the message registered. Anyway, the last time you tried to push homeopathy on me, you came off like a really pushy fundamentalist Christian trying to get me to accept Jesus and it was just really awkward, because I had already decided quite some time ago that homeopathy was bullshit.

Plus, I hated that you made me play a game that necessitated doing math in my head. That’s not a game, that’s torture.

3. I don’t know if we really made up or if you just pretended to make up with me, because I haven’t heard from you since. But you’re hardly ever online as far as I know and you live far away, so it’s really up in the air.

4. I kind of want to move to Seattle, just to freak you out and scare you into thinking I’m going to be a super needy, dependent friend, because I know for a fact that’s how you think I’d be.

5. You were more interesting when you still lived in England. I realize you’re a lot happier now and that’s good…for you. But you were more interesting to me when you were in England for some reason.

6. I should have fucked you when I had the chance but you wouldn’t kiss me, and that make me feel like I was being treated like a whore. So I didn’t. But I still think about it. Enjoying the wife, kids, and dull, middle class existence? I sometimes get hints that you aren’t entirely, but I don’t think you’re about to walk away either. *shrug* Anyway, it was a shame we lost touch. I guess having kids really eats your brain.

7. You’re still an asshole. I should have never cared about what you thought of me.

When someone rejects you, you can't internalize their point of view, or else you'll drive yourself to despair. It's fundamentally necessary to see them as in the wrong on that particular thing so that you can move on and still be your own best friend in the morning.

Because even if they don't want to be friends with you, you still have to be friends with yourself. The alternative would be really terrible.

Which is I guess why on some level when somebody doesn't want me in their life anymore I feel so certain that they do not have my best interests at heart. Since I do, this renders us fundamentally incompatible.

I guess the odd thing is just how we're always encouraged to try to see things from the other person's perspective. But there's times when you really shouldn't.

Edited to add:

This isn't about the date that didn't work out. This is about something else.

"Lithromantics are individuals who experience romantic love but do not desire their feelings to be reciprocated. Lithromantic people may want to avoid dating and romantic relationships entirely, or may be comfortable with such a relationship or even desire it, as long as their love is not returned in a romantic way. Some lithromantics may even accept reciprocated love, but do not require it to find a relationship fulfilling, as most romantics do.
The term lithromanticism comes from the Latin lith- meaning stone. It was coined by Ian Ridley and Lanthir Calendae, drawing on the context of butch-femme sexual terminology."

http://dumbthingssocialjusticeblogssay.tumblr.com/post/26121039433/lithromantics-are-individuals-who-experience

Um. Isn't that just...you know...being afraid of intimacy? I mean that's fine, if that's where you're at. But I wonder.

Person asks you to change something about your behavior. You make the change, the person even notices the change, and then...

the person dumps you because of an incident of the behavior they asked you to change.

It's interesting that once someone decides you have a personality flaw, you're unable to exhibit even occasional instances of that trait anymore. Like if a person decides it's a personality flaw in you that you're messy, no matter how much you might clean up, if you ever slip up, it's judged more harshly than if they had never decided you were a messy person who needed to correct that flaw in herself to begin with.

Noticing this pattern makes me inclined to be very suspicious whenever anyone asks me to change anything about myself. My main concern with that is slipping into Geek Fallacy #2. Though I'm starting to think a realistic middle ground might be that once a person asks you to change, changing might be worthwhile, not because it'll save the relationship with that person (it probably won't), but more because it might prevent future problems with people you haven't met yet. That's interesting to ponder.

I'm also starting to realize that mostly I've always assumed that the things people said to me about my behavior could be taken at face value, and that might not be the correct way to think about it. It could be that a lot of the time people are playing power games and fucking with my head, and that I fail to take that into account because my social skills are simply not that advanced. I need to find out more about this kind of stuff though to see if that's really true.

Why do you keep telling me that social justice people are bad for me? It's not like I don't know that.

What a hottie you've grown into. I remember when you were just 8 bits.



I need to get a Wii one of these days so I can carry my love of Zelda into the current century.

You know, I didn't realize I was an introvert until college, because up until then I mainly had experienced social rejection. So the idea of not wanting social interaction and getting too much of it was foreign to me.

Actually, I don't think I really understood I was an introvert and what it meant until I took the MBTI at community college, which means I had already done two years of university, took some time off, then came back.

Weird. It's such a common concept, I can't believe I hadn't understood it applied to me sooner. Like I always had recharge after coming home from being social by putting on my headphones and bouncing on my bed and going off into my little world, but I didn't know there was a name for that.

I've heard lots of people say they have friends they only talk to once or twice a year, but when they do, it's great.

I personally have a hard time feeling close to people I don't interact with on a regular basis. The interaction doesn't have to be in person, it can be online. It just has to be regular, like weekly. Otherwise they become a paper person. I stop feeling like they're really a friend. I suppose I'd enjoy hanging with them again, but I don't really feel the same way towards them.

Well, I guess I don't have to be like other people then.

I think this is a problem, because it means I don't take people being nice to me for granted, which comes out of deeply held expectations. As such, in the back of my mind, I'm always wondering why people aren't treating me like my peers did in the third grade.

Yeah, I think this is a problem.

http://www.thebaffler.com/past/of_flying_cars/print

I was really tempted to post this on Facebook, but it's pretty anti-capitalism and I have a couple of Republican FB friends (okay, one's a friend and one's my brother)...and I didn't really want to get into an argument about it.

I don't know how much I agree with it. I just find it interesting. I honestly don't have enough knowledge about how technological advances are driven and economic systems to know how plausible this guy's theory is. But it did give me some interesting food for thought.

tags: links

I would say though that people who are chronically socially isolated (who are not necessarily all geeks, but a lot of geeks at least have a history of this) do experience forms of disadvantage that rarely get talked about or acknowledged.

I mean, knowing that you always value your friends more than they value you is a disadvantage. This frequently comes up for socially isolated people because if anything happens to their friends (a falling out, moving away, etc), those friends aren't easily replaced. But most socially isolated people become friends with people more social than they are, because a lot of socially isolated people need someone to make all the first moves, particularly in the beginning of a relationship. So the overvaluing of friendship comes from basic economic scarcity. It's all math in the end, really.

Anyhow, that's just one example. Another one would be that no, you're not likely to get turned down for a job because you were a geek in high school. But if you're chronically socially isolated, you might well miss out on job opportunities due to being unable to network. You're going to be stuck looking for jobs in the places that are the most impersonal and accessible, so therefore have the most people applying for them. That actually goes for a lot of things. People with lots of friends are also more likely to hear about apartments that haven't been advertised yet that are a total steal.

I don't want to get into blame here so I'd like to point out that people can become chronically socially isolated for many reasons which are beyond their control, like anxiety, autism, depression, etc. These things are usually not things a person can just snap their fingers and get rid of. So telling a socially isolated person to just "get over it" and "get a life" isn't really warranted.

When a kid is socially isolated and picked on by their peers for things they can't help (hair/skin color, wearing glasses, ineptitude at gym, marginal social skills, etc)[2] and is also an introvert, they often withdraw into themselves and into a fantasy world where nobody is picking on them[1]. And they tend to develop interests that don't involve other people, like computers, because a computer isn't going to make fun of you for being deathly pale or being socially awkward.

When you're in this situation, the world is not enough, because the world frankly sucks. So people like this often gravitate towards other worlds: worlds of high fantasy, worlds where much more is possible. Worlds where it's very easy to be even weirder than they are. Worlds where everyone is a stranger and it's not your fault for not knowing the rules.

Worlds you can invent that are only yours.

In other words, you might become a geek. But the problem is that now you've developed a lot of interests, and not just interests, but a whole approach to life that puts you even more at odds with your peers. Maybe in elementary school you honestly wanted to be friends with the other kids but didn't know how, but now in high school you sit and listen to them talk at the lunch table and you can't fathom how they can be interested in the things they're interested in. And you're wondering why the things they like seem so boring.

And as you get older and more confident, you might actually stop believing everything bad everyone's ever told you about yourself and get a little pride. So what I see when I see someone who's bashing geek pride is really someone who's telling people like me that they have no right to feel just as worthwhile a human being as everyone else. And you may think I'm being hyperbolic here, but that's a difficult thing to feel for someone who did NOT get treated as an equal human being by their peers during their formative years.

[1] No, not every socially isolated kid develops this way. But this is a common scenario I'm laying out here.

[2] I've been picked on for all these things, especially the skin color. Yes, white people can get picked on for their skin color. And strangely enough, I've been picked on about my skin color by both black and white people. Nuts, huh?

People have sacred cows. I guess they always had them but I notice it more on the internet, maybe because I'm in general more socially genre savvy on the internet than elsewhere.

No, ranting against geek pride isn't the same as racism. But it's mostly because racism has penetrated our institutions and societal power structure in a way that prejudice against geeks hasn't. I think what this guy is really trying to say though is that they do come from the same place, which is prejudice against a group based on fairly superficial characteristics and stereotypes. Which I can agree with. It's a difference of degree (racism being much, much worse), not a difference of nature.

But there's certain kinds of arguments you're not allowed to make, because it's like pushing the jolly, candy-like button.

Back to the original rant...I don't it, really. I mean, I don't get why he's getting so worked up over geek pride. I think geeks and their pride are pretty easy to ignore if you want to. I do a pretty good job of avoiding sports fans and reality tv, so I'm thinking avoiding geeky things can't be too hard. The only thing I can think of is that maybe this guy isn't used to having to deal with people go on and on about interests he doesn't share, because his interests have always been so firmly mainstream that he felt safe in assuming they were "normal," and now here are these geeks pushing their Buffy and Magic the Gathering all on him. How dare they.

Or maybe he just thinks it's cool to bash things he thinks everyone else thinks is cool. You know, just being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. That seems to be a thing, sometimes.

tags: culture

I feel like Star Trek geekdom and Joss Whedon geekdom represent two different kinds of geekdom. Like, Joss Whedon geekdom represents the mainstream geekdom, the geekdom that says, "hey sure, I'm a geek, but that doesn't necessarily mean I live with my mother or don't bathe regularly or didn't have anyone to sit with at lunch or anything." It's the hip, new, self-aware geekdom.

Don't get me wrong. I like Joss Whedon.

But when I run into a Star Trek geek, it's different. And I mean by Star Trek geek is someone who really knows all about Star Trek, like someone who would actually find reading The Nitpicker's Guide fun and who would seriously consider learning Klingon. Or who HAS learned Klingon. This is the kind of geekdom that came before, the kind that society wasn't so okay with. It wasn't super hip and self-aware, but if you met someone who was as into Star Trek as you were, you could place a pretty safe bet that they had some of the same formative life experiences as you did. Like, they probably know what it's like to not have anyone to sit with at lunch. Because nobody wanted to sit with them. They might be reassuringly socially awkward, whereas the Joss Whedon geeks are often disturbingly cool. Like, the kind of cool where you feel like you can't ever really let on just how cool you never were.

These are from the Wired AQ Test:

"If I try to imagine something, I find it very easy to create a picture in my mind. "

Honestly? I don't know. It really depends on what I'm trying to picture. So I don't know how to answer this. I'm an artist though, and sometimes I do get pictures in my head, fully formed. So I answered "slightly agree."

"I frequently get so strongly absorbed in one thing that I lose sight of other things. "

I used to when I was a kid, but I seem to have lost this ability a lot, so I answered "slightly agree."

"I often notice small sounds when others do not. "

How the hell am I supposed to know which small sounds other people notice or not? Answered "slightly disagree," since I have crappy hearing.

"Other people frequently tell me that what I've said is impolite, even though I think it is polite. "

This is another one that I used to have more of a problem with when I was younger, so I answered "slightly agree."

"I tend to notice details that others do not."

D00d. I have no idea what small details others are noticing or not noticing! How can I possibly answer this question? Answered "slightly disagree" due to complete clusterfuck.

"When I talk, it isn't always easy for others to get a word in edgewise."

Seriously, how am I supposed to know how easy it is to get a word in edgewise when talking to me? I've never talked to myself in a situation where I didn't know what I was going to say next anyway, so I can always get a word in edgewise with myself. Answered "slightly agree" though, because I suppose I do have my moments when I ramble a bit.

"When I'm reading a story, I find it difficult to work out the characters' intentions."

Is it weird that when I read a story, I'm not even trying to work out the characters' intentions? I'm just trying to read the damn thing. I answered "slightly disagree" because I just have no idea.

"I notice patterns in things all the time. "

What kind of patterns? Answered "slightly disagree."

"I find it easy to 'read between the lines' when someone is talking to me."

I'm not sure how to answer this, because I think this is something I used to absolutely suck at, but have gotten better at as I've gotten older. But it's still something I have to think about in a deliberate sort of way.

"I usually concentrate more on the whole picture, rather than on the small details. "

I'm really not sure, to be honest. But my last psych eval did say I had trouble seeing the forest for the trees, so I picked "slightly disagree." How would you even know a thing like that? How do people know this kind of stuff about themselves?

"When I was young, I used to enjoy playing games involving pretending with other children."

I quite literally cannot answer this question, because I was too busy being socially rejected by the other children to EVER find this out.

"I find it difficult to imagine what it would be like to be someone else."

Um, I don't know. I mean, I spend a lot of times imagining that I'm a self-aware cyborg that is unfairly distrusted by humanity because humans always assume that a self-aware machine would be into killing all the humans, even though this particular cyborg doesn't want to kill humans at all because the whole reason she had her consciousness implanted into a human body was so that she could learn to understand humor and then this mission expanded into wanting to understand humanity in general. I mean, that's imagining you're someone else, right?

But I somehow I have the feeling that's not the kind of "someone else" that Simon-Baron Cohen was thinking of when he made this test, so I don't know. I suppose I should pick "slightly agree."

"I enjoy social occasions. "

They're a total crapshoot! Occasionally they can be enjoyable, if they don't involve too many people. Still, picked "slightly disagree" since I probably enjoy them less than most.

"I find it difficult to work out people's intentions."

I think this is a really strange question. How often do people have deeply concealed ulterior motives, anyway? I don't know if I'm good at figuring those out or not. I've never had a chance to collect data on the subject.

"I find it very easy to play games with children that involve pretending."

I haven't really had the chance to find this out, actually. When I'm playing with my nephew, it usually involves some sort of mild physical violence, like play fighting or giving each other noogies.

For the record, I got a 33, but I'm not sure how accurate that is, since I didn't know how to answer so many of the questions.

tags: antisocial disease