Plasticbrains

Tags

neurodivergence, ozy blog post, speshul snowflake trans

Plasticbrains is a term invented by Promethea to refer to a particular cluster of people who are disproportionately likely to be transgender. “Plastic” is a joking reference to BPAs, an endocrine disruptor in plastics, which some people have hypothesized is linked to transness. (There is no evidence that this is true, and “plasticbrains” is a joke.)

Common Traits of Plasticbrains

Plasticbrains people, as you can guess from the joke in the name, are disproportionately likely to be trans. However, not all plasticbrains people are transgender! While plasticbrains people are much more likely than baseline to be trans, many plasticbrains people are not transgender. It seems likely to me that half to two-thirds of plasticbrains people would not qualify as definitely cis, if you include “would transition in the glorious transhumanist future and but doesn’t want to now”, “happily only out as nonbinary to a few trusted friends”, “girl in the streets and dude in the sheets”, “socially dysphoric in very gendered spaces but otherwise fine”, “on hormones but not socially transitioning”, “I do not want to see or be seen by gender”, “??????”, and so on.

Plasticbrains people are most comfortable in situations with clear rules, consistently applied, which one can optimize within. This is probably why plasticbrains people are disproportionately represented in programming and math. Plasticbrains people often come up with clear and consistent rules for situations that don’t have them and then loudly insist that these rules are objectively correct. For instance, plasticbrains people often adhere to a specific philosophical school of ethics (egoism, utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics) instead of relying on intuitive morality. They often have odd political beliefs which they have worked out from first principles. (Anarchocapitalists and communists are both quite common. Even centrist liberal plasticbrains can generally explain to you why centrist liberalism follows from the basic principles of uncertainty and respect for experts.) But plasticbrains rules can apply to everything from programming languages (“Haskell is objectively correct”) to grammar (“prescriptivism is wrong and evil”) to social rules (“it is never morally wrong to make a request of anyone”).

Plasticbrains people often have a strong interest in optimization. Once they come up with a set of rules and goals, they will often try to optimize for their goals within their rules. Again, this probably explains their affinity for programming. This often leads to very strange behavior: for instance, plasticbrains people may adopt a variety of more or less evidence-based strategies for self-improvement, live on Soylent because that is the optimal way to save time and avoid cooking, or believe it is morally wrong to donate to the Red Cross because other charities use that money better.

There is no consensus among plasticbrains people what rules are actually the objectively correct rules. One would think that the fact that other plasticbrains people are going about saying “anarchocapitalism is obviously correct!” would make the plasticbrains communists think a bit, but as far as I know this has never happened. While in general plasticbrains people are pretty self-aware about their mental health issues, plasticbrains people are usually not self-aware about their rules. They can easily recognize that other plasticbrains people are adhering rigidly to their rules even in situations where there is more nuance, but then they will turn around and say “actually, lying is morally wrong and never justified and if you lie to people I will never interact with you again.” Occasional examples of plasticbrains people having nuance about their rules have been observed, but upon closer inspection these universally turn out to be plasticbrains people who have adopted “nuance exists!” as a rule. (I myself as I was typing this attempted to give “people in the developing world are exactly as important as people in the developed world, and the low level of foreign aid from developed countries is probably as bad as the Holocaust” as an example, but then my soul rebelled. Obviously, my own personal rules are just true.)

Plasticbrains people generally have engrossing and obsessive interests. These tend to be fairly intellectual interests, such as programming, linguistics, and history; however, obsessions with particular pieces of media are also common. The happiness of a plasticbrains person is directly correlated with how much time they spend talking about, collecting information about, or participating in their interest. Plasticbrains people often find other people’s interests to be just as interesting as their own interests, which leads to many happy plasticbrains friendships.

Plasticbrains people often have a hard time interacting with people who aren’t plasticbrains, although if they put time into developing the skill they can sometimes get pretty good at it. If a plasticbrains person has not put effort into the skill, then non-plasticbrains people will generally find them strange, off-putting, and uncomfortable to be around. This is possibly because plasticbrains body language tends to be unusual: for instance, they may come off as emotionless or robotic, or flap their hands when they’re happy or distressed. Plasticbrains people generally have a hard time understanding the behavior of non-plasticbrains people, but usually understand each other fairly well. That said, they have two consistent theory of mind failures which apply even to other plasticbrains people: “My Interests Are Interesting To Everyone And If They Aren’t Then I Clearly Have Not Explained Them Well Enough” and “My Rules Are Obviously Correct And If You Do Not Follow Them It Is Because You Are A Bizarre Moral and Intellectual Mutant.” If a plasticbrains person has adopted social rules that don’t work very well, this may also cause social failures.

Plasticbrains people tend to be introverted, but their level of social motivation ranges widely. Some plasticbrains people feel little to no desire to interact with anyone, while others enjoy regular social interaction. Some plasticbrains people may find interacting with certain people stressful and overwhelming in the same way they find loud noises stressful and overwhelming. Many appreciate quietly reading or writing in the same room as other people. Many plasticbrains people are very lonely, because their difficulties interacting with non-plasticbrains people makes it hard for them to fulfill their social needs.

Plasticbrains people usually have unusual sexualities. They are disproportionately likely to be bisexual. They are not disproportionately likely to be attracted the other assigned sex at birth, but the number of trans people means that many are lesbians or gay. Many plasticbrains people are asexual or low-libido or experience periods of asexuality. Plasticbrains people are often kinky. Many plasticbrains people enjoy and seek out casual sex. Some find touch much more rewarding than most people do, while others find it upsetting or painful.

Plasticbrains people typically find text-based interactions easier than verbal interactions. They like books. They are averse to phone calls. They may have entire relationships conducted solely over the Internet. While savant skills seem to be uncommon, hyperlexia is the most common.

Plasticbrains people combine neophilia with a strong aversion to change. Neophilia is the tendency to loathe tradition, easily become bored, and seek out novelty to the point that it becomes an obsession. Common areas for plasticbrains people to experience neophilia include art, literature, science, ideas, drugs, sex, and personal projects.

Interestingly, plasticbrains people also tend to dislike change. The specific ways in which they dislike change are very individual. For instance, one plasticbrains person may eat the same things for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, while another plasticbrains person may object to working anywhere other than their home office which has been set up to their specifications, and a third plasticbrains person may have a strict daily routine and be distressed by disruptions.

Plasticbrains people typically have difficulties with executive function. However, their difficulties span a wide range. Some may have relatively ordinary problems, such as procrastination, difficulty planning how long tasks will take, constantly forgetting why they walked into this room, and never knowing where they left their cell phone. Others may have deeper executive function problems, such as “sometimes I can’t stand up because standing up has too many steps.”

Plasticbrains people are typically quite smart and do well in academic fields. Many of them are autodidacts.

Plasticbrains people often have sensory issues. For instance, plasticbrains people may have trouble following a conversation that takes place in a noisy room or when the television is on. They may find car alarms, fireworks, the sound of people chewing, or other noises to be viscerally upsetting. They may be easily distracted by small sounds. They often find weighted blankets comforting.

Plasticbrains people fidget. They may chew on their fingers, their clothing, or random objects. They may pace. They often enjoy playing with Rubix cubes, tossing balls hand to hand, or playing with a toy designed for fidgeting. They sometimes move around a lot.

Possible Plasticbrains Traits

A high number of plasticbrains people I know are Jewish, but I am uncertain if Jewish people in general are more likely to be plasticbrains.

Anecdotally, it seems like many plasticbrains people tend to suffer from generalized shame disorder, but this trend may just be because people who have excessive shame tend to talk to me about it.

Plasticbrains people often experience anxiety and depression. It is unclear to me if this is a product of the underlying brain difference or the fact that plasticbrains people often have awful childhoods because children are much more likely to express their discomfort with plasticbrains people through bullying and assault.

I am uncertain whether plasticbrains people are disproportionately likely to have mood disorders other than depression and anxiety. While I certainly know many plasticbrains people who go through hypomania-like episodes, I am not sure if that is a central trait.

Plasticbrains and Autism

It is very common to refer to plasticbrains people as being autistic, and many of us have autism diagnoses. I tend to agree with the excellent Rethinking Autism (piratable here) that it doesn’t make sense to think of autism as a single condition, or even as a bunch of related conditions. Instead, we should think of autism as being something like fever: a symptom cluster with a wide variety of underlying causes, some of which lead to different associated symptoms. While some ways of treating fever work for all fevers, regardless of cause, it wouldn’t make sense to research fever as a single thing with a single etiology or call the flu a “fever spectrum condition”.

Not all plasticbrains people qualify for an autism diagnosis, or even any sort of diagnosis at all. Many autistic people are not plasticbrains. Even so-called high-functioning autistics are often not plasticbrains: for instance, Temple Grandin is definitely not. However, I expect that this cluster will turn out to have a single underlying cause. I expect (in spite of the name) the cause will turn out to be genetic, because it seems to run in families.

It Does Not Matter If Trump Has A Personality Disorder

Tags

neurodivergence, ozy blog post

I have seen people claim that Trump has “a personality disorder” and this annoys the hell out of me.

First of all, you don’t mean “a personality disorder”. There are lots and lots of different personality disorders and most of them Trump obviously doesn’t have. For instance, he probably isn’t avoidant (characterized by feelings of inferiority, extreme sensitivity to criticism, and a tendency to avoid social interaction even though they are unbearably lonely). It is also quite unlikely that he’s schizoid (characterized by being solitary, secretive, and apathetic, although having a rich fantasy life). I’m also going to guess he doesn’t have obsessive compulsive personality disorder (characterized by being perfectionistic, obsessed with following rules, and a compulsion to make lists and schedules). What you mean is “a cluster B personality disorder”, aka the asshole cluster.

(I’m cluster B, I can say that.)

Second, we simply do not have enough information to diagnose Trump with anything. It’s true that Trump’s behavior is consistent with a cluster B personality disorder. It’s also consistent with bipolar I, an addiction to cocaine or amphetamines, delusional disorder grandiose type, and being an enormous dickbag with a poor brain-to-mouth filter surrounded by sycophants. If I were Trump’s therapist, I would have access to certain information, such as whether he is currently a cocaine user, that we as members of the public simply do not have.

Third, who cares? Trump is an impulsive and criminal person. We do not know if he is an impulsive and criminal person because of bipolar I, a cluster B personality disorder, substance abuse, a delusional disorder, or just happening to be a person who is impulsive and criminal with no diagnosable mental illnesses at all. Would it somehow be a good thing that we have elected an impulsive and criminal president if it turned out he was impulsive and criminal because he has bipolar I? Would we be like “wow, no problems here”? Of course not. That’s ridiculous. The problem is Trump’s behavior, not the mental health conditions that may or may not have caused it.

It seems to me that the most parsimonious explanation of many people’s diagnoses of Trump are not that they enjoy speculating about the mental health conditions of celebrities. (Which is a fun game. I personally am a big fan of the Ted Cruz Is Autistic theory.) If they did, they would probably specify which personality disorder he has, probably some people would be speculating about bipolar I as well, and their speculations would be tinged with empathy for the struggle that people with personality disorders go through. It is because they are using “personality disorder” as a symptom for “evil incomprehensible monster.” As a person with a personality disorder, I object to this.

How To Get A Therapist Who Does What You Want

Tags

neurodivergence, ozy blog post

[epistemic effort: I went to like six therapists that didn’t suit me before I figured this out]

If you’re like me, you’re crazy and prone to researching your own craziness, which means you probably have strong opinions about your psychological treatment.

If you’re treating your craziness with drugs or lifestyle interventions, it’s usually pretty easy to tell whether you’re getting the treatment you want: you just look at the name of the drug you’ve been prescribed or observe whether or not you’re going to a yoga class or sitting under a lizard lamp. On the other hand, in my experience, it’s very easy to get a therapist who claims to be providing the service you want, but who isn’t really.

If you’re looking for a CBT therapist, you might go to Psychology Today’s Therapist Finder and look for therapists who claim to have expertise in CBT. The problem with this is that many therapists are eclectic, which means they use techniques from a bunch of different schools of therapy. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with eclectic therapy: it can offer a lot of flexibility, so that if something isn’t working for you your therapist will feel free to try something else. To some extent, a therapist who only does CBT is like a psychiatrist who will only prescribe one drug. And some people believe the active ingredient in therapy is a kind, empathetic, high-status person who listens to you talk about your problems and helps solve them: eclectic therapists can provide this service was well as anyone else.

However, eclectic therapists– in my experience– typically list every kind of therapy they sometimes use as a kind of therapy they provide. That makes sense– after all, they do provide all of those kinds of therapy, at least sometimes. But if you’ve done the research and you really think your depression would be responsive to CBT and CBT alone, the profusion of eclectic therapists who say they do CBT means it’s a lot harder to find a therapist who will just do vanilla, manualized CBT. And it’s very easy for a person to believe they’re getting standard CBT when in reality they’re getting eclectic therapy.

How do you avoid this problem?

First, try looking for an organization that advances your preferred form of therapy; they may have a directory of therapists. For instance, Behavioral Tech’s website has a list of therapists they’ve trained in DBT. I currently go to a therapist listed on this website and she does DBT straight from the manual. (It’s great.) Not all therapists who practice a particular school of therapy will be listed on any website; even if the closest person is far away, consider calling them to get a referral.

Second, familiarize yourself with what your therapy is supposed to look like. If you’re going to a therapist for DBT and you’re not in a skills group, you don’t have to fill out a diary card, and you’ve never done a chain analysis, you’re probably receiving eclectic therapy, not DBT. If you’re going to a therapist for CBT and you don’t have to fill out innumerable tedious worksheets, you’re probably not actually in CBT. For manualized therapies, consider purchasing the actual manual– it’s costly, but you’ll know what you’re supposed to be getting and be ready to jump ship if you’re not getting it. If it’s impossible to find a list of therapists who actually perform your favorite therapy, you can brute-force it by going to every therapist who claims to practice [insert therapy here] and then dropping any therapist who appears to not actually do so. (For efficiency purposes, it is probably best to have intakes with two or three therapists at a time; the therapists will not be angry at you for doing this, although it can get really expensive.)

Note that it is likely that non-eclectic therapists will be more expensive, farther away, and less likely to take your insurance than eclectic therapists.

I’d like to reemphasize that there’s nothing wrong with eclectic therapy. It’s helpful to lots of people! That’s why there’s so much of it! But I do think more people should know that just going to a therapist who says they practice CBT/ACT/DBT/psychodynamic therapy/whatever does not mean you will actually receive CBT/ACT/DBT/psychodynamic therapy/whatever.

A Culture of Self-Improvement and Normalization

Tags

neurodivergence, ozy blog post

In this post, I am describing a particular attitude that happens to work very well for me. I expect that this culture will be useless or even harmful for many neurodivergent people, because neurodivergent people are actually different from each other. But I think it is interesting that this culture works so well for me, because it is different from the most common discourses I see about neurodivergence.

I think the attitude has two components: normalization and self-improvement.

Normalization means not seeing neurodivergence as a qualitatively different kind of thing than neurotypicality. Of course, some people are capable of doing things that other people are not, and some people have experiences that other people do not. But it sees depression, suicidal ideation, eating disorders, executive dysfunction, and delusions as not somehow different or Other, but as part of the ordinary space of things that happen to people sometimes. “Can you come over to my place, I’m agoraphobic today” is not fundamentally different from “can you come over to my place, my car broke down.” When you find out someone is neurodivergent, you don’t have to freak out or act like the person is a chaotic evil orc or a fragile and easily shattered teacup. It’s okay to make jokes.

A normalizing attitude treats diagnosis labels as sort of like “I’m an extrovert” or “I’m high in machiavellianism”: a fact about people’s brains, useful for predicting things about them, and shown by psychological research to have a better evidential grounding than, say, “I’m a Gryffindor.” A diagnosis label does not mean that the person is sick or broken.

A normalizing attitude acknowledges that people are different from you. It abjures the typical mind fallacy. While it doesn’t assume that everyone accurately reports their own experiences, it defaults to assuming that people do; when someone says that they experience something, the assumption is “you might be wrong about what causes your feelings, or the framework that you put them in, or what I need to do because of them, but I think it is very likely you are trying to put into words a real thing that happened to you.”

In my experience, the normalizing attitude often applies to odd behavior that isn’t associated with a diagnosis; people who have this attitude are generally polite to other people’s tulpas, respectful of other people’s desires for service submission, and curious about other people’s self-identification as a wolf.

The other aspect that is super-useful to me is what you might call self-improvement or– given the community I interact with– tsuyoku naritai. To quote the essay:

Tsuyoku naritai is Japanese.  Tsuyoku is “strong”; naru is “becoming” and the form naritai is “want to become”.  Together it means “I want to become stronger” and it expresses a sentiment embodied more intensely in Japanese works than in any Western literature I’ve read.  You might say it when expressing your determination to become a professional Go player—or after you lose an important match, but you haven’t given up—or after you win an important match, but you’re not a ninth-dan player yet—or after you’ve become the greatest Go player of all time, but you still think you can do better.  That is tsuyoku naritai, the will to transcendence.

(As far as I can tell, “Japanese works” means “anime”, because Eliezer Yudkowsky.)

Tsuyoku naritai is normalizing. Having difficulty remembering all the rules of Go is not a fundamentally different thing from being the greatest Go player of all time but knowing you can still do better. We are all here, trying to become stronger, whatever that means in our particular context.

That means there is also no fundamental difference between my recovery and other people’s self-improvement. It’s true that I have certain problems (suicidal ideation, delusions) that other people don’t. But it’s also true that many of our problems are similar (excessive shame, excessive anxiety, procrastination), even if mine are more dramatic. And of course many neurotypical people have different problems from each other as well– a person who is having a hard time finding a romantic partner has a different experience than someone who is having a hard time buckling down and studying math.

An attitude of tsuyoku naritai means that people expect me to have set personal improvement goals, to be willing to try different strategies to reach them, and to share what worked for me with others. This unspoken background assumption makes recovery a lot easier for me. Other people might suggest techniques that turn out to be lifesavers for me (pomodoros!). I’m not going to fall victim to crabs in a bucket syndrome. If someone doesn’t exercise, I expect that their response to my exercising is going to be “I’ve been having a hard time getting motivated, do you have any advice?” or “it’s good that you’re doing that” or “the tradeoffs of exercise don’t work for me, but I’m glad they work for you” or “*shrug*”. I don’t have to respond to someone denigrating me for exercising with “exercise prevents my depression” and then half the time get back “but exercise doesn’t ACTUALLY improve people’s depression, unless you’re a fucking neurotypical.”

Conversely, if a strategy doesn’t work for me, I can say it doesn’t work for me without people pushing it on me. And if a goal is just unreasonable for me at this stage in my life– for instance, working full-time– I can tell people that it’s unreasonable and have that accepted. I’m the Go player who’s still learning the rules. It’s not reasonable for me to try to become a professional Go player yet.

Someday? Maybe, perhaps. I think the meme expressed in “yet, growth mindset!” is helpful for me. It is really good for me to be able to say firmly “I can’t do that right now” and have that respected, while not closing off the possibility that I can perhaps do that at some point in my life.

Medication is a specific case here. Many of the neurotypical people I know take some sort of drugs to improve their brains: modafinil for focus and energy; creatine for the IQ points if vegetarian; melatonin if they have trouble sleeping; psychedelics for insight and self-improvement. That means it is normal and unstigmatized to take drugs if you are unhappy with the way your brain works. It’s also normal and unstigmatized to choose not to take drugs; many people find that the tradeoffs of modafinil simply aren’t worth it for them, so of course I might find that the tradeoffs of antidepressants aren’t worth it for me.

Concerning Haidtism

Tags

neurodivergence, ozy blog post

I.

I recently read Sarah’s excellent post about why she has come to be more sympathetic to the ideology of Jonathan Haidt, which she calls Haidtism. Interestingly, her post crystallized my understanding of exactly why I disagree with Haidtism.

I broadly agree with the point that, all things considered, it is better to be able to endure things than not to be able to endure them, and generally better not to be an oversensitive weenie. (Although Ben Hoffman’s point in the comments is well-taken that proper Greek virtue is not stoic or Stoic; the ideal Greek hero might be courageous and strong, but he is also moved by beauty and emotional to a degree that Haidt might find quite repulsive.) However, the precise problem with Haidtism is that it doesn’t work to make students strong.

Sarah gives the example of exercise as something that strengthens people, despite being painful in the moment. This is true! But not everything that’s painful strengthens. Sometimes your leg is broken. Walking on your broken leg will not make you any stronger; it will just make your leg more broken. And saying “I’m taking away this crutch so you can get stronger!” will not actually help. Sometimes you just have to sit on the couch and rest until your leg heals.

Haidtism, as a philosophy, seems to me to fundamentally not realize that some people have broken legs.

Consider a veteran who wants to become a physicist, but who has flashbacks when she hears loud noises. (I would like to thank veterans for having such a common and such an apolitical trigger; it is truly an aid to thought.) I think it is perfectly reasonable for her to email her professors and say “excuse me, if there’s going to be a demonstration in which a loud noise is made, can you film it so I can watch it at home with the sound off?” Meanwhile, she works with her therapist to learn to cope with loud noises.

To me, this seems obviously superior to the alternatives. She could perhaps delay college until she no longer gets flashbacks, but that means that instead of developing two strengths– her ability to cope and her knowledge of physics– she only develops one. She could perhaps go to the demonstrations and have a flashback, but then she’s not learning whatever physics the demonstration was meant to teach, as people who are currently having flashbacks do not generally do a great job at learning physics. Therefore, if your value is people being strong, there are instances where you should accommodate people and– yes– even use trigger warnings.

Haidt’s confusion about this point is shown through him deciding to target his “virtue involves being able to do things that make you afraid and miserable!” message at mentally ill students.

Like, as a group, mentally ill people don’t actually have to be told that we need to do things that make us afraid and miserable. Doing things that make you afraid and miserable is the one virtue mental illness successfully inculcates. Personally, I am made afraid and miserable by leaving the house, going grocery shopping, the fact that my husband has to go to work, and going to therapy, and the thing about being made afraid and miserable by routine activities everyone has to do as part of their everyday life is that you get good at forcing yourself to do things that make you afraid and miserable. In fact, I feel I’ve somewhat reached the point of diminishing returns on the virtue of Make Yourself Do Things That Make You Afraid and Miserable, and would like some accommodations so that I only have to practice it, say, two or three hours a day.

Hell, you could probably make the argument that that’s true of all marginalized groups of people. You can make the case that I, Ozy, should be more tolerant of people who misgender me, and that it is important to my development of strength and resilience that I work on this. On the other hand, it appears to me that very very few cis people get daily practice in strength and resilience through putting up with being misgendered. This seems to be a very unfair gap in their education! I am now imagining a special class for members of privileged groups in which people with rich parents go hungry, native English speakers are asked to constantly repeat what they’re saying because no one can understand their accent, and abled people have to try to enter inaccessible buildings while people constantly tell them how brave they are.

II.

Much like Treebeard, in the college trigger warnings/safe spaces wars, I am on nobody’s side because nobody is on my side. My primary interest is in neurodivergent students having access to an education, which neither side seems particularly interested in.

There are lots of things one could campaign for if one wanted to improve the positions of neurodivergent people in colleges. For instance, one could campaign for teachers to follow universal design for learning best practices, or for improved transition planning for high school students in special education so that every student who should be in college is there, or for better college-provided mental health care, or for better training about neurodivergence for staff, or for not kicking students out of school for suicidality, or for peer-run support groups for neurodivergent people, or for disability services to be less goddamn incompetent. (True story: I once had disability services try to deny me an accommodation the professor had suggested because it would interfere with the educational purpose of the school.) It does not seem accidental to me that the one issue people seem to have picked up on isn’t actually that good at improving the positions of mentally ill people in the classroom, but is good for neurotypicals who would like to show off how upset they are about racism and– in some cases– to not have to put up with emotionally harrowing books.

Part of the problem with the concept of trigger warnings is that they mix up “how do we help people with mental illnesses that lead them to experience extraordinarily strong negative effects from things most people don’t?” with “how do we teach emotionally harrowing material in the classroom?” These are two different issues. If you were trying to warn for things that commonly cause people to have extraordinarily strong negative effects due to mental illness, you’d warn for common phobia triggers (snakes, spiders, heights, enclosed spaces, public speaking), common eating disorder triggers (moralizing eating, diet talk, calorie and weight numbers), and common anxiety triggers (health stuff). Depictions of racism would not show up on the list, because depictions of racism are not actually a common trigger for any mental health issue.

Racism is, however, a very emotionally harrowing issue. Students– particularly black students– may feel a lot of pain when they see pictures of a lynching, which vividly shows how a century ago they would have been hated to the point of their murders being socially acceptable and approved of. Clearly, some emotionally harrowing material does belong in the college classroom; equally clearly, it’s bad pedagogy to suddenly spring emotionally harrowing material on your students as if you were a monster in a haunted house doing a jump scare. As part of good teaching, a professor will contextualize what they show their class, allowing the students to emotionally prepare themselves, which is essentially what the “trigger warning” students are advocating for.

I guess the argument is about whether or not they should be put on the syllabus? Even so, in my experience as a student, it wasn’t exactly difficult to figure out that Jewish History 1000 AD-1945 would talk about anti-Semitism a lot or that the class in which we were assigned the Bell Jar would talk about suicidality.

Conversely, actual triggers are very diverse, are often hard to figure out from the syllabus, and often can be easily removed from the curriculum with no harm to the educational purpose of the course (“a student who is triggered by teddy bears is taking my differential calculus class? yes, of course I’ll remove the teddy bear image I used to decorate one of the PowerPoints”). There are a variety of reasonable ways to accommodate actual triggers– which is something schools can and should do– but standardized disclaimers on syllabi seem to be a uniquely terrible way of doing so.

Negative Emotions Are Like Foot Pain

Tags

neurodivergence, ozy blog post, polyamory

Negative emotions are like having a pain in your foot.

You can have a pain in your foot for a lot of different reasons. Maybe your shoes don’t fit. Maybe you walked too much yesterday. Maybe you have a corn or a callus. Maybe your foot is broken. Maybe you have arthritis. Maybe you have nerve damage in your feet so it sends you pain signals even when nothing is wrong. It’s important to investigate, figure out exactly what is wrong, and fix it.

It is a bad idea to go “foot pain is bad, and only bad people have foot pain! Therefore my feet don’t hurt.” If you try that, the only thing that’s going to happen is that you’re going to hobble around with a corn for the rest of time. Your foot pain isn’t bad. Whatever’s causing your foot pain is bad, but the foot pain itself is useful! It’s telling you that something is wrong. If you didn’t have any foot pain, you’d never find out when your feet were broken.

It is also a bad idea to go “walking makes my feet hurt, so I am just going to sit on this couch for the rest of time.” Maybe it’s actually your shoes, and if you stopped trying to never wear anything but ballet boots you’d be able to walk fine. Maybe you need to do some physical therapy exercises to get your feet to feel better, even though they hurt; sometimes you need to push through your pain. It’s important to push through your foot pain in a smart way, though; some things that are beneficial hurt, but not everything that hurts is beneficial.

So consider, say, jealousy.

You can feel jealous for a lot of different reasons. Maybe you feel insecure that your partner will find someone a lot smarter and prettier and better than you and then leave you. Maybe your partner isn’t taking enough time for you; you feel lonely and neglected. Maybe your partner gets to do all kinds of cool stuff with his long-distance partner, and the last four conversations you had with him were all about the laundry, and you feel annoyed because you bet he never talks with his long-distance partner about laundry. Maybe you’re naturally monogamous, and trying to be poly, and you feel like your partner dating someone else takes away the specialness of your relationship.

(This comes from a polyamorous context, obviously, but I suspect it should be applicable to monogamous people– after all, nothing about monogamy says you can’t be insecure, neglected, or envious.)

And all of those reasons have different solutions. Maybe you need to work on your sense of self-worth and security, so that you don’t worry your partner will leave. Maybe you need to say to your partner “I want to spend more time with you– let’s have a date night once a week.” Maybe you need to remind yourself that you and your partner’s long-distance partner both have an identical amount of cool stuff, it’s just that yours are spread out over a year while his are crammed into a week when he’s in town, and the latter isn’t actually better. Maybe you need to stop being poly.

It is a bad idea to say “jealousy is bad, and only bad people are jealous! Therefore I’m not jealous.” Jealousy isn’t bad. The cause of your jealousy might very well be bad, but the jealousy itself is useful! It’s telling you that something is wrong. If you didn’t have any jealousy, you’d just run around with neglected relationship needs and no sense of self-worth for the rest of time.

It is also a bad idea to go “when you talk to men by yourself I feel jealous, so you can’t ever talk to men by yourself ever again.” You might not be dealing with the actual problem: maybe the actual problem is that your partner never talks to you about his feelings, which– notably– is not solved by telling him not to talk to other men. The actual issue goes unresolved. And sometimes you have to push through the pain of jealousy: maybe you’re afraid he’ll leave you if he finds someone else attractive. Fear doesn’t go away if you try to avoid it; it only grows. To defeat fear, you have to face it. Of course, that’s dependent on the problem actually being fear: if your problem is that your partner dating other people takes away the specialness, facing them dating other people is not going to fix it. There is no point in going about doing every unpleasant thing, but sometimes it’s a good idea to do some unpleasant things.

You may replace ‘jealousy’ with sadness, fear, anger, disgust, guilt, or shame, as you like.

‘Autism Cure’ Is Poorly Specified

Tags

neurodivergence, ozy blog post

The problem with all arguments about whether or not autism should be ‘cured’ is that the definition of ‘cure’ is extraordinarily poorly specified.

One definition is the cure searched for by those looking for a biomedical treatment for autism: a procedure which, if performed, causes an autistic person to become nonautistic. One could have a legitimate debate about biomedical treatments– the very real suffering undergone by many autistic people, compared to the feeling of many autistic people that eliminating their autism would be killing them and replacing them with a neurotypical with the same face– if it were not for the fact that arguing about the ethics of biomedical treatments for autism is like arguing about the ethics of unicorns farting rainbows. There is no single treatment that cures autism, and we’re not going to find one, and the currently available alleged ‘cures’ are unethical for lifting the hopes and emptying the wallets of desperate parents.

Another definition of ‘cure’ is developing a medication treatment for some symptoms of autism: for instance, going nonverbal, severe sensory sensitivities, epilepsy, the inability to eat more than two foods causing one to have nutritional deficiencies, etc. I am pretty sure that not even the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network objects to coming up with better treatments for epilepsy in autistic people.

The only point of contention here is what exactly we’re treating. Many autistic people would object to treatments for special interests, stimming, autistic ways of relating, or other odd but morally neutral traits. But I suspect the vast majority of treatments people would actually investigate would be completely uncontroversial for everyone.

A third definition of ‘cure’ is better referred to as ‘prevention’: the research into finding a way to prevent the existence of autistic people, most likely through abortion of children with autistic genes. The effectiveness of prevention depends on the etiology of autism. If autism is highly polygenic and environmentally influenced, the way that intelligence is, eliminating autism will be as difficult as only having high-IQ children– which is to say, very hard. This form of autism cure can be safely classified into the unicorns-farting-rainbows category.

On the other hand, it might turn out that autism is actually a bunch of different things. This isn’t actually that unlikely: some conditions, like fragile X and Rett syndrome, have symptoms that are extraordinarily similar to autism; people with Rett syndrome probably would be classified as just autistic if we didn’t know what caused Rett syndrome. The executive function and social responsiveness parts of the brain are quite easy to break; autism may very well be a catchall category for “your executive function and social responsiveness are borked and we don’t know why.”

In a very lucky universe, it would turn out that autism that tends to cause a high level of suffering would be a different condition from autism that tends to not cause a high level of suffering, and thus some autistic people would wind up aborted and Ozys would not.

However, I’m not sure that we’re in that universe. Consider two identical autistic people; the only difference is that one of them is an excellent programmer, and one is not. The excellent programmer gets a job at Google, where no one expects him to talk about anything other than programming. He mostly socializes among autistic and autistic-friendly people, making his difficulty at socializing with neurotypicals irrelevant. Although he can’t cook, drive, or clean, Grubhub, Uber and a maid service get those things covered; his very tolerant girlfriend takes care of the rest. He can afford to live in a nice house in a quiet area; his assistive tech– including a weighted blanket and a top-of-the-line set of noise-cancelling headphones– allows him to live a life without undue sensory stimulation.

The one who can’t program lives with his parents, because he is incapable of living independently. He is tremendously lonely, since no one particularly wants to talk to him, especially since he’s not great at maintaining conversations on any subject other than his special interest, tea flavors. His parents’ house is full of noise, from the cars driving by to the music the neighbors play on weekends; the stress causes him to go nonverbal and, eventually, to self-injure or to attack his parents. Desperate, his parents put him on anti-psychotics, which make him even more miserable and withdrawn, although at least less prone to attacking people. His parents worry about what will happen to him when they die, because he cannot take care of himself; he may wind up in an institution.

‘Having a special interest in programming’ is not exactly the sort of thing that’s genetically coded for. I suspect what will happen is that some forms of autism, like Rett syndrome, will be generally terrible, and others will have a mixed portfolio– some people will be miserable, while others will be better off autistic than they would be nonautistic. The treatment of the latter group is extraordinarily controversial.

Two Corollaries To Growth Mindset

Tags

ozy blog post, rationality

A lot of people I know try to acquire a ‘growth mindset.’ Growth mindset is the opposite of fixed mindset: growth mindset emphasizes that your skills can grow and develop, while fixed mindset emphasizes your inborn abilities. Growth mindset is alleged to improve persistence, motivation, willingness to embrace challenges, and hard work.

I like having a growth mindset. However, I have two corollaries to add, however, which very much improved my experience of developing a growth mindset.

First of all, be careful how you frame ‘growth mindset.’ It is always possible for you to improve; it is not always possible for you to reach a specific achievement. If you are 5’2″, you are probably never going to become a member of the NBA; however, you can most certainly improve your basketball skills. If you say “I can become a member of the NBA as long as I try hard and believe in myself”, you’re lying to yourself. If you say “if I put in a lot of time and effort, I can practice basketball and become a better basketball player,” then this is quite true. There is absolutely nothing about growth mindset as conceived of in the psychological literature which requires that you believe you should be capable of literally everything, but a lot of people wind up thinking that it does, and then they waste their effort in a fruitless attempt at self-deception.

This caveat is really important for disabled people. It might be true that if you worked hard then you would improve your driving skills, but if you have certain disabilities like blindness or dyspraxia it might also be true that no matter how hard you work you’ll never be a safe driver. It’s not fixed mindset to say “given my limitations, it’s dangerous for me to be on the road, and it will be no longer how hard I work at driving.” It’s just good sense.

Second, remember that just because you can improve something doesn’t mean you should. My motor skills are terrible: I continually knock over glasses, run into furniture and drop things; my handwriting is unreadable, I spill food on myself, and don’t even ask about my ability to tie my shoes. If I wanted to, I could improve my motor skills, probably through seeking the services of an occupational therapist. But occupational therapy is time-consuming, I have a lot of things going on in my life, and I can actually get by fine by only wearing shoes without laces, never handwriting anything, and buying the extended warranty on my laptops.

It is true that with sufficient effort people can improve anything. However, it might be that the effort required is unreasonable for you right now (you might not have the spare time to go to occupational therapy). It might be that improving at a skill requires more effort for you than for most people (you might have to practice five or six times as long as another person to be equally good at throwing and catching a ball). It might be that you have limitations that other people don’t have (maybe occupational therapy is very emotionally taxing for you because of being bullied for your clumsiness as a child).

To me, it feels very empowering to say “I can improve, but I don’t want to.” I get to make decisions about my own life! I have agency! I can decide to do things! If I’m bad at something, I can decide to put effort into it without thinking “but I’m so awful at this, I shouldn’t bother”, or I can decide to skip it without thinking “but other people can do this! I should be able to too!” If I’m good at something, I can decide to put effort into it without thinking “I’m already okay at this, I should stop wasting my time trying to get better”, and I can decide to skip it without thinking “I’m wasting my potential.”

There are lots of skills I could improve in my life: spinning poi, speaking Swahili, emotion regulation, poetry recitation, fixing roofs… I only have seventy years on this earth! I have to prioritize! I can’t try to improve literally every skill I could conceivably improve! It’s okay to say “you know what, this isn’t a high priority for me. My energy can be better spent elsewhere.”

Some people will take great offense at people admitting that they don’t want to do things because it’s not worth it. They think “but you just admitted you could have readable handwriting if you worked harder, therefore there is absolutely no excuse for not putting the effort in other than SHEER LAZINESS!” This is particularly common for people who are bad at skills most people have (like handwriting) or for skills that are particularly valued by whomever’s doing the complaining (weight isn’t really a skill, but fat people get this all the time).

Of course, if you are an adult, you get to make your own tradeoffs about what you do or don’t care about. Other people may certainly get to object or even stop talking to you (if, for instance, you decide one of the things you don’t care about is their happiness). But other people’s shitty handwriting is what is technically referred to as ‘none of your fucking business.’

To people who are like this: I would propose that you consider how much better you could get at playing wastepaper basketball if you put three hours a day of practice. If you’re like “but I have things to do! I don’t want to become the world’s best player of wastebasket basketball!”, then maybe you should consider that other people have priorities too.

If you’re around a person like that, feel free to say “I can’t” whenever you mean “I have done the cost/benefit analysis and it is not worth it.” Growth mindset is an internal reframe that doesn’t have to be applied to hostile outsiders.

Parable of the Skills Gap

Tags

neurodivergence, ozy blog post

Alice grits her teeth, preparing herself. She bends over, aiming her head at a weak spot, and starts to run, picking up a good speed. She bangs her head into the wall as hard as she can and collapses back. The wall remains unchanged, but it seems to have a little air of mockery.

“Ow,” she says, rubbing her head. “It’s no use. I’m never going to be able to get into my living room.”

“Doesn’t it have a door?” you say. “Most living rooms have doors.”

“No, they don’t,” Alice says. “You get into the living room by bashing your head against the wall until it breaks down. Duh.”

“I found this door over here,” you say.

It swings open easily.

“…I feel kind of stupid,” Alice says.

—

Bob grits his teeth, preparing himself. He bends over, aiming his head at a weak spot, and starts to run, picking up a good speed. He bangs his head into the wall as hard as he can and collapses back. The wall remains unchanged, but it seems to have a little air of mockery.

“Ow,” he says, rubbing his head. “It’s no use. I’m never going to be able to get into my living room.”

“Doesn’t it have a door?” you say. “Most living rooms have doors.”

“I’m just going to have to accept that I have to bash my head against this wall for the rest of my life,” Bob says, “or never get to enter the living room.”

“I found this door over here.”

“There’s no such thing as doors,” Bob says condescendingly. “I have been trying to get into this living room for twenty years. Don’t you think I’d know if there was a door?”

“No, seriously, I just walked in the living room.”

“That’s just because you’re lucky,” Bob says. “Privileged people like you assume that everything is easy for everyone else. Well, it’s not. Some of us have to enter the room by breaking down the wall with our skulls.”

“You can enter through the door too,” you say helplessly. “It’s right here.”

Bob is ignoring you as he begins to bash his head against the wall once more.

—

You’re talking to Charlie on the phone. “I just don’t get it,” he says. “I don’t understand why I can’t go to my living room like normal people. I think I’m going to stop trying.”

“You can’t give up,” you say. “Quitters never win and winners never quit, you know? You just have to try harder. Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, after all. The harder you work, the luckier you get. The price of success is hard work.”

“That’s a good point,” Charlie says. “I really should try harder.”

There is a loud crash.

“What happened?” you say.

Charlie’s voice is broken and weak. “I think I have a concussion.”

—

You’re talking to Dani on the phone. “I just don’t get it,” she says. “I don’t understand why I can’t go to my living room like normal people. I think I’m going to stop trying.”

“There’s a door.”

“No, there isn’t,” she huffs. “I’ve checked.”

“Look, I’ve been through this with Alice, and Bob, and Charlie,” you say. “All of their living rooms have doors, even though they didn’t know it. Yours does too.”

“Other people’s living rooms might have doors,” she says, “but mine definitely does not have a door.”

“Yes it does,” you say. “You’re just not looking hard enough.”

“I have looked through EVERY SECTION OF WALL and there is NO DOOR HERE,” she says.

“Maybe there’s a place you’re not looking.”

“I called the builders! They said they fucked up!”

“No one fucks up that badly.”

“Well, this time they did.”

“You’re just in denial,” you say. “You just need to look harder for the door. Here, I’ll come over tomorrow and we can look for the door together. I’m sure that’ll help you find it.”

“No, you won’t,” Dani says, “Because there is no door! You are solving a problem that is different from the one I have!”

When you go over to Dani’s house, you can’t find a door. But she has to have a door! Everyone does! You wonder if maybe she hid the door in order to protect her self-image of not having a door.

Dani bangs her head against a wall. It does not seem to be an attempt to enter the living room.

—

Edgar has hired a bulldozer.

“You know,” you say, “there was a door in the wall you just knocked down…”

“Doors are a myth,” Edgar said, “made up by Big Architecture.”

“You destroyed half your house,” you say.

“Yes, but I can finally get into my living room!” Edgar says.

“So can the rain,” you comment.

Edgar waves a hand airily as if to dismiss minor details.

The bulldozer, not properly braked, reverses two feet and runs over a cat.

—

“It won’t open,” Felicity says.

“Some doors get stuck,” you say. “You have to put your back into it and try a little harder.”

“I’ve tried that,” Felicity says, “and all that happens is I get a concussion.”

“Well, this time you’re doing the right thing,” you say, “rather than the wrong thing. That’s bound to make a difference.”

“I suppose,” Felicity says dubiously, and pushes.

The door swings open.

“…holy shit I’m in my living room!” she says. “Am I going to have to do that every time?”

“Probably,” you hedge. “Most heavy doors don’t get much less heavy.”

She looks around, basking in the interior decorating she never before got to see. “Totally worth it.”

Assorted Thoughts On Scrupulosity

Tags

neurodivergence, ozy blog post, scrupulosity cw

[Attention conservation notice: Navel-gaze-y.]
[Content warning: brief discussion of eating disorders.]

I.

This essay is very personal. On scrupulosity, even more so than on other issues, I am acutely aware of the reality that different things work for different people, and that the advice that saves and soothes me is poison to someone else. We do not have best practices for dealing with scrupulosity yet. And for scrupulous people even more than for other groups, advice may be easily taken as orders; if the things that work for me don’t work for you, you can conclude that you are evil because they don’t work for you. This is not my intention. If my strategies work for you, excellent; if they do not, try something else. Write about it. We need more people who deal with scrupulosity talking about the techniques that work for them.

II.

I recently read an essay by Peter Singer, Ethics Beyond Species and Beyond Instincts, in which he defined the moral as that which is universalizable, in this sense: “We can distinguish the moral from the nonmoral by appeal to the idea that when we think, judge, or act within the realm of the moral, we do so in a manner that we are prepared to apply to all others who are similarly placed.”

I read that, sat back, and said to myself: “I cannot do morality.”

I cannot do it in the same sense that an alcoholic cannot drink, and a person with an eating disorder cannot go on a diet. I am incapable of engaging with universalizable morality in a way that does not cause me severe mental harm. While I can reject a universalizable moral claim on an intellectual level, I am incapable of rejecting them– no matter how absurd or contradictory to other things I accept– on an emotional level. If I fail to live up to such a claim, I will hate myself and curl in a ball and be utterly nonfunctional for a few hours, causing harm to both myself and those who have to put up with me.

So (with much backsliding) I have started to make an effort to weed out the universalizable morality from my brain. I do things I want to do, and I don’t do things I don’t want to do. I do not mean a simplistic sense of ‘want’ here. If a person is trying to kick the caffeine habit, they may deeply crave a cup of coffee, but they can still be said to “really want” to not drink caffeine. Notably, this does not require that we create a universalizable moral rule that no one ought to drink caffeinated beverages.

This resolution may prompt the question of why I’m an effective altruist. Well, I want to. It is nowhere written that I am not allowed to have preferences about states of the world, and as it happens I prefer worlds in which fewer people die horrible painful deaths to worlds in which more people do. I do not care about it as the most important thing in my life, but as one of perhaps half a dozen equally important goals. I would, of course, prefer that more people become effective altruists, and I will act in such a way that more people become effective altruists, but that does not require any justification other than my own preferences.

This is the reason, I think, that I am triggered by so much discourse around scrupulosity. It is not engaged in the project of stepping away from universalizable morality and learning to live without it; instead, it is engaged in the project of coming up with a form of universalizable morality that most people can achieve, and (often) of criticizing other systems as unrealistic and inhuman. (See that fucking Moral Saints essay.) For me, this is sort of like going up to an anorexic and saying “look, that diet you’re on is very unrealistic! You need to get on Weight Watchers instead.” If the anorexic could get on Weight Watchers and not have this predictably result in eating-disordered behavior, they wouldn’t fucking have anorexia anymore.

(People actually do give that advice, because people are the worst at putting themselves in other people’s shoes.)

Also, like, what if I want to be more morally saintly than Susan Wolf prefers? At least utilitarianism has the advantage that when it’s telling me to do shit I don’t want to do, it’s telling me to prevent children dying horrible deaths, rather than telling me to be someone Susan Wolf wants to hang out with. Why do I care whom you want to hang out with, Susan Wolf? I have literally never met you!

III.

One of the most useful techniques for me in coping with my scrupulosity is training myself to respond to universalizable moral claims by adopting the attitude in this picture:

BDSM is disrespectful to the dignity of the human person? Literally no one asked for your opinion!

Effective altruism is wrong because we should help people in our own neighborhoods first? Remind me again why I care?

Promiscuous women are being unfair to men because they only have sex with attractive men and not with the unattractive ones? Uh, who asked you?

Being fat is morally wrong because of the burden on our healthcare system and because people should be physically fit? I don’t recall asking for your input!

I am working on trying to parse universalizable moral claims as people having opinions about their own preferences which they then choose to extend to me. “I want there not to be any promiscuous women, therefore you have to want there not to be any promiscuous women!” No, I don’t. In fact, I am generally in favor of the existence of promiscuous women. It is an argument as absurd as saying that because you like dark chocolate therefore I must like dark chocolate.

(I know this isn’t actually true– universalizable moral claims are actually different than statements of preferences– but it’s sure as hell useful.)

A notable exception to this technique is moral philosophy, where I simply extended my eyes-glazed-over “why does anyone care about this bullshit?” attitude to metaphysics to normative ethics as well.

IV.

Part of my problem, I think, is that I don’t feel guilty enough.

This is an odd problem for a scrupulous person to have, but I think it’s true. An observation that comes up a lot in dialectical behavioral therapy is that for people with severely dysregulated emotions, an emotion that you have too much of is often a result of using that emotion to cope with another emotion you’re afraid to feel. For instance, a person who feels angry all the time might be shutting down their natural feelings of sadness at a loss, because they feel like if they start crying they might never stop.

Whenever I’m in a situation that should logically prompt guilt, instead I feel shame. I do not recognize that I have done something that goes against my long-term desires and acknowledge that I want to do better in the future. Instead, I think that I am a bad person, that others will hate me, that I am inherently evil and nothing I can do will wash the impurities away, that I will never be approved of or praised…

Of course, this is not right. The usefulness of guilt is in pointing out when I have violated my own standards; the approval or disapproval of other people does not particularly matter, except that they have an outside view and might be able to tell when I am being too hard or easy on myself. But, like I said, I care about my own preferences; while I do care about other people’s happiness, I do not give a flying fuck about their thoughts on whether parents should sacrifice everything for their kids or whatthefuckever.

But my brain slides, so subtly that I don’t even notice it, from the question of “did I do something that I don’t really want to do?” to the question of “does everyone hate me? am I inherently evil?” That first question is scary. It involves things like ‘taking responsibility’ and ‘making amends’ and ‘self-improvement’. All of that sounds like work. On the other hand, if you’re inherently evil, you don’t have to try to get better; you just have to try to stop existing, which is much easier. And if most people don’t care about me failing my own standards (which they don’t, because they don’t even know me, and also my standards are higher than most people care about), then I can determine that they don’t hate me, and never address the question of whether I’m failing to reach my goals. Because, you know, that would be hard. Self-flagellation is easy.

V.

Recently, I was having a conversation with an acquaintance who’s a negative utilitarian. He asked what my particular brand of morality was, and I began my usual “well, it’s kind of handwavey, but…” spiel, bracing myself for an argument about why I cared about things other than suffering and didn’t I realize that suffering was the most important issue and blah blah. Part of the way through, he interrupted me, smiled, and said “oh! You have complex values!” and the conversation moved on.

This made me feel really nice. Part of the reason, I think, is that I didn’t have to defend my position. He was a negative utilitarian. I was not. There were ways in which we could benefit each other: after all, I don’t particularly like suffering either, and so we could help each other on the common project of making there be less suffering in the world. Agreement on normative ethics or on ultimate goals was not necessary.

It felt freeing. He had his own morals, but (at least in that conversation) they didn’t have to be universalizable; he was comfortable with me believing differently from him. I didn’t have to be ashamed. It was great.