SuddenDownpour

Monotropism is a theory of autism that posits that the main functional characteristic of autism is a cognitive configuration that prefers to have less channels of attention. Despite the fact that there's very little discussion about it, it is incredibly consistent regarding what we know about autism, and it might help us understand ourselves a little better.

According to this theory, autistic brains are better wired to pour as many resources as possible in fewer tasks to focus of attention on, in contrast to allistic brains that would prefer to distribute resources among more different tasks at the same time.^1^

How well does this theory in more concrete aspects of life? Let's use communication as an example. People typically use plenty of tools to communicate: verbal language, tonality, hand and facial gestures, etc. If you were to define these as physical problems, this is, tasks that must be approached and worked through by a cognitive mechanism through material means, working according to algorithms of some sort, each of these tasks would have to be separated into individual problems, along with other functions such as coordinating the information gained through each of these processes to build a somewhat coherent whole that allows you to communicate back. If your brain works faster through individual tasks, but cannot handle as many tasks at the same time, it will have a tendency towards ignoring the least useful ones.^2^

If you'd prefer a more down-to-earth metaphor, imagine communication is a card game where polytropic players are receiving one card of each category (verbal language, hand gestures, facial expression, etc.) each round, while monotropic players receive as many cards each round, but they can only belong to one category. Naturally, the monotropic player is heavily incentivized to choose verbal language, because that's the main pillar of communication for contemporary human beings. If you were to give this player the form of a human child, you'd get a kid that uses language with a lot of precision and is probably using more technical words than you'd expect at their age, but doesn't look at your face and often has a very unchanging tone. You can even link this with the double empathy problem, and argue that, since communication is a cooperative two-way problem (problem understood as a task to solve), information flows better when both players are using the same channels of communication in similar intensities (this is: using more technical language isn't that useful if the other person doesn't understand it; using facial gestures isn't useful if the other person isn't looking at your face).

Let's get more practical. If the theory is correct, it would likely follow that the very first thing you have to do in order to prevent cognitive delays in autistic babies and children would be to reduce the sensory complexity of the environment. Choosing where to focus your attention is a cognitive task, which is easily understood when you compare how capable of reading you are in your living room in comparison to a disco, where your brain has to work on filtering the music, the conversations, and the lights. If someone's brain prefers to focus on as few tasks as possible, putting them at a place with plenty of noise and lights will collapse the resources of the brain, hindering their development in an optimistic scenario or even provoking trauma in one of the worst ones.

Note that these previous paragraphs of mine are built as narratives. The site https://monotropism.org/ explains the theory at a divulgative level, references the researchers behind it and some relevant papers, and proposes some practical avenues to improve the lives of autistic people by respecting these different cognitive needs and preferences from the experience of people who have worked with the theory at a scientific level - but it should also be mentioned that monotropism has, unfortunately, received very little attention in comparison to previous theories ( mind-blindness , extreme male brain ) that had very little evidence and have since been proven as bullshit, and therefore there's relatively little research on it despite its apparent solid predictive capacity.^3^

Does any of this ring a bell to you? Can you recall experiences that could be explained through monotropism?

1: Because virtually no person focuses all their attention in one single cognitive process at the same time, and no single person places infinitesimally small amounts of attention into an infinite number of tasks, so I think it'd be more appropriate to talk about monotropism-leaning and polytropism-leaning minds.

2: While the human brain is not a computer, the physical infrastructure of the human mind is the brain, and in order to fulfill specific tasks, it must be able to compute the solution to problems in a material way, even if that material way is immensely different from how contemporary computers work.

3: It might also be noted that, as far as I'm aware, the theory of monotropism would explain autism at a functional level, but not yet at a physical one. This is, while monotropism could serve as a central piece to explain fundamental practical aspects of the lives of autistic people, there would yet not be an explanation on what's the specific neurological difference between the brains of autistic and allistic people.

cross-post from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/10264322

Spain’s much-maligned system for evaluating scientists, in which the sole criterion for career advancement is the publication of papers, is set to be overhauled under new proposals from the country’s National Evaluation and Accreditation Agency (ANECA).

The reforms, announced earlier this month, would for the first time see researchers at Spain’s public universities evaluated on a range of outputs besides papers, and would also encourage the distribution of findings via open-access platforms. Many scientists are welcoming the move, saying it will help academia move on from a system that has been described as establishing a “dictatorship of papers.”

(...)

Under the new system, ANECA wants assessments to consider a broader range of research outputs, including “publications, patents, reports, studies, technical works, artistic works, exhibitions, archaeological excavations, [and the] creation of bibliographic records.” Assessors will no longer consider only the impact factor of the journals in which scientists publish, but also details such as whether the research reaches nonacademic audiences through news reports or government documents. Papers will also score more highly when coproduced with local communities or other nonacademic authors. And in an attempt to reduce the level of public funds being spent on publication costs, assessors will take into account papers published on noncommercial, open-access publishing platforms that don’t charge author fees, such as Open Research Europe.

There should be no question that oil-based car-centric cultures are unsustainable for the environment, and in some extremes like the US simply result in terrible city layout. No disagreements here, I hope.

But there's something I've never seen addressed, and it's how fucking miserable having to use public transport can get if the people you're sharing it with are simply rude.

You've just finished your 8,5 hours workday. Work was extremely dull, but even if it wasn't you could have barely got anything done anyway because there was were construction works right outside the office, and the hammering and drilling is still echoing in your ears. You need to get home at the other side of the city, and you don't have a car nor the money to take a taxi, so you take a bus. Can you finally relax away from that disgusting noise? Well, there should be no reason for anything being excessively loud, other than perhaps some vehicle's motor. Except that fuck you.

It's the year 2023 of the current era, someone has put 300€ into buying a last gen Xiaomi - but apparently they didn't budget appropriately, because rather than buying earbuds, that someone has decided to share with everyone else the sound of non-stop Youtube shorts. Apparently everyone else seems to have had a more sensible shopping list, because they start taking out their earbuds or headphones. Rather than, you know, have the person being annoying silence their phone.

On a different day, you sigh in relief when you find the bus near empty. Less numbers means less chances for disturbances, of course, you can even go at the very end of the bus to be alone. Someone enters the bus, talking through her phone. She stays near the entrance. There shouldn't be issues here, right? Normal people normally talk through their normal phones all the time. But does she need to SHOUT when she does it? Does someone in the literal opposite end of the bus need to hear all about her annoying kids and her annoying husband and her annoying life? Wouldn't she rather save herself the pain of a sore throat the next morning?

You take the bus again next week. There's a tough looking guy a seat in front of you. He is actually a polite person though, because he is using headphones. Not everyone seems to share the same impression, because two old women have clearly decided not sitting immediately near to him, to the point that one of them will take the seat next to you and the other one will stay up, just so that she doesn't have to share a seat with the other guy. No problem with their dumb prejudices yet. You do have a problem, however, when they start increasing their tone of voice further and further, as if you weren't right next to them, nor trying to read, nor blasting your headphones in a vane attempt to not to hear their rambling. Suddenly, two seats are freed up up ahead, directly facing the tough looking guy. You're finally about to find bliss, you think, as this lady who saw Tutankhamun be born surely needs a seat for her frail, old legs. But no. Their fear of young, fit men with cheap shirts is stronger than their desire to actually sit together, to the point that when you suggest to them to take the seats up ahead so that they don't have to shout to your ear they get offended.

I lived for some years in a city with great bus and subway infrastructure, but very early on I had to stop taking the bus because the people using it were indifferent to the fact that they were sharing a public space, that they don't have the right to make it as miserable for everyone else as they see fit. Do not dare to try and make them behave with some consciousness either, because it'll be a toss up between them actually recognizing the issue and doing better or actively turning into willing assholes.

Almost never had this issue in the subway, though, and I don't know why despite it being far more packed. Only exception was one night when an English football team was at the city, and so were its hooligans. I've used train far less, but I don't remember it being a problem either. People being annoying is obviously a cultural issue, we aren't naturally wired to always strive to be little shits. But when being little shits is the norm, having to share a space with everyone else becomes misery.

What would you do to incentivize good public manners, and to prevent antisocial behavior, at any level or scale?