Thinking too hard after the brain stops working
So this guy from a few years ago, who I do think is a sociopath… One day I remember him telling me that he thought that all other people were robots. I said “but I’m not a robot”. He told me he had know way of knowing if that was true or not, and I could not prove that I was not a robot.
A few years ago, I was in a really shitty quasi-relationship with the above mentioned fellow. In a class discussion today, something caused a light bulb to go off in my head, and offer another suggestion as to why the other person in the relationship was so unpleasant.
So we were discussing a simplified dichotomy of natural sciences vs. humanities. The prof then mentioned research about autism vs. schizophrenia, and how they can be seen as being on different ends of the spectrum (in regards to a patient’s reaction to an outside agent). He jokingly (?) mentioned that those who think pragmatically, and are often more interested in natural sciences could be found closer to the autism end of the spectrum, while those in the humanities would be found on the opposite end.
(This probably doesn’t make much sense to most people reading this, so sorry for the crappy attempt at describing something really cool)
Going back to the robot discussion, I thought maybe this idea of pragmatic thinking complimenting someone who lacks empathy, but recognizes patterns in different people enough to be able to manipulate them makes sense. By looking at the world in a mechanistic manner, a person is less subject to feelings of empathy — or really, anything.
I’m not getting into the other end of the spectrum and schizophrenia tonight, though.
Ciao.
