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Secret Life of an Autistic Stripper

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Re: Secret Life of an Autistic Stripper

#71
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen studies that suggest the best war time soldiers are probably ASD or ADHD. Unsurprisingly, great war time soldiers often suck during peace time. If you read a little history, this has long been true. I read a history piece that suggested that we only had one Civil War in the US because the General that accepted Lee's surrender at Appomattox was a chronic alcoholic and ne'er-do-well who learned compassion b…

It was Ulysses S Grant, also the 18th President of United States. Fun fact, they both went to West Point and Lee graduated 2nd in his class whereas Grant was an average student at best, but during the civil war, Grant was the better tactician by most accounts and was willing to take heavy losses. Grant was an alcoholic and his presidency was riddled with corruption and his reputation was damaged by the Lost Cause rev…

Grant was probably a better strategist (or at least he understood his advantages and how to make use of them), but I've never seen it seriously suggested that he was a brilliant tactician. Relentless might be the best description of Grant. There's very little brilliance in the Overland Campaign of 1864; the primary thing that set Grant apart was that he continued pressing on after being bloodied, rather than scurrying back to Washington, feeding men into the meat grinder knowing that he could trade bodies for far longer than Lee could.

Re: Secret Life of an Autistic Stripper

#72
I think high functioning autism is just a DSM-isation (label as disease) of people with high introversion, neurotism and/or disagreeableness. Read "The silent power of introverts" by Susan Cain. People are people. We all evolved traits to fill our biological niche. Highly vocal people with little fears (extraverted and neurotypical) are just that: more "confident" and vocal about how great they are. Corporate sociopaths will say you have a too high feeling for justice to silence you. Realize that this is your strength to realize what is ethical and a blind spot for them and their greatest weakness. Dark triad people will black/white label to control you since you are more prone to be sensitive and isolated. You have to realize that your greatest strength is your greatest weakness. That counts for every person where ever on the spectrum. As highly sensitive individual you are just more focused on the negative of your (in)ability to function in a certain biological niche. You are also more realistic of your and other people's abilities and talents (Dunning–Kruger effect). You are a animal on the savanna that is sensitive to the sounds of the predator approaching. And you survive. And the cycle continues.

Re: Secret Life of an Autistic Stripper

#73
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like textbook example from Pieter Hintjens' The Psychopath Code. [1] [1] http://hintjens.com/blog:_psychopaths

I've read that book and disagree. I don't have a limited set of emotions, I just have a better emotional regulation system because emotions are blunted. Emotions exist in me (I'm not a robot or a predator) and I can extract the information they contain to inform my decisions, but I'm mostly unaffected by them. I don't use this trait to destroy people - I think this is what only weak sociopaths do that are not content…

And there are these people:

> I have killed animals (as a child). Whenever there was a stray animal in my alleyway (cats or dogs usually) I would pick it up and leave it in my trashcan by the side of the house until it got dark. Whenever my parents were asleep, I'd sneak out and take the animal out of the can to torture it. Sometimes I kicked it to death and other times I would suffocate it. This was my main source of entertainment since I didn't have many other things to do.

from [1]. Run if you see people like this, their moral compass is not aligned. Sociopathy is very likely a spectrum disorder like autism.

- - -

> Sociopaths have the neural map of a neurotypical person in an fMRI machine, they are not lacking in, nor do they have differences in the brain that are apparent as psychopaths do, they have the grey matter necessary to experience what empathy is. Here is the massive difference from neurotypical responses, from sociopathic ones.

> When the sociopathy is formed, the person experiencing whatever the causative agent is tends to shut off their access to the emotions like affection, desire for attention, empathy, anything that would make them outwardly dependent and turn insularly. While the pathways are still there, they are no longer used.

> In that regard they probably had a heavier pruning to the bonding section of the brain.

That guy here [2] theorizes about the causes and neurological aspects of sociopathy. And I would like to clarify that my own self-diagnosis and your reference to "The Psychopath Code" is not a reliable source of information for a diagnosis.

There is however a standardized test for psychopathy (do it at [3]) for self-reports. Some of my business friends score very high on this test.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/casualiama/comments/2bk2ra/i_was_re...

[2]: https://www.quora.com/Is-sociopathy-a-spectrum-disorder

[3]: https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/LSRP.php

Re: Secret Life of an Autistic Stripper

#74

> Facial expressions, body language, and eye contact are the bones of communication and it’s quite difficult to build and maintain relationships without the ability to read them. As a blind person this was quite difficult to read (emotionally). I don't have any additional mental needs, but for obvious reasons I'm unable to read other peoples' visual body language, maintain eye contact or gauge their facial expression…

Makes me wonder if you would outperform seeing people in recognizing audio cues, like the tone of the voice to interpret emotion?

Re: Secret Life of an Autistic Stripper

#75

> Facial expressions, body language, and eye contact are the bones of communication and it’s quite difficult to build and maintain relationships without the ability to read them. As a blind person this was quite difficult to read (emotionally). I don't have any additional mental needs, but for obvious reasons I'm unable to read other peoples' visual body language, maintain eye contact or gauge their facial expression…

Taking that throw away comment for all it's worth, are there poker competitions that use braille cards ? [0]

It sounds like you might have a serious advantage? Or is the disadvantage of missing other people's tells too great?

Any poker players care to comment?

[0] http://www.braillebookstore.com/Braille-Playing-Cards,-Plast...

Re: Secret Life of an Autistic Stripper

#76
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably ASD, and military was great, but only in training and deployment to an actual war zone. Garrison was hell, all politics. Tried stripping too. War and stripping are similar: de-personalizing, over-stimulating, immediate flow state rush. Normal social anxieties go away, the rules no longer apply.

I have seen studies that suggest the best war time soldiers are probably ASD or ADHD. Unsurprisingly, great war time soldiers often suck during peace time. If you read a little history, this has long been true. I read a history piece that suggested that we only had one Civil War in the US because the General that accepted Lee's surrender at Appomattox was a chronic alcoholic and ne'er-do-well who learned compassion b…

In his last years, Grant worked with Mark Twain to write his autobiography. It is pretty clear that Grant was anything but a "callous bastard" or a "monster", particularly relative to others in that time period. Indeed, many of his political and personal problems stemmed from being too willing to trust people, many of whom were unsavory characters. (Grant ended up being bankrupted after being defrauded of his savings and had to sell all his war memorabilia, and part of the reason he wrote his autobiography was to raise money for his family before he died.)

It's a really interesting read for anyone.

There's also little evidence that Grant was a drunk during the Civil War; many historians believe that was propaganda spread by the Confederates and by political rivals in the north, which was based on his problems after the Mexican-American war. The accounts of people who were actually with Grant during the Civil War don't support it.

Re: Secret Life of an Autistic Stripper

#77
Damn, the description of problems in social situations feel like it's written about my wife.

She's mostly OK (if a little over-bearing and too trusting) in 1 on 1 conversation, but has huge problems behaving "normally" when there's many people, often answers in detail to throwaway questions and monopolizes the time and focus in a discussion. She comes out as egocentric and a very weird person.

She also does this detailed analysis of really obvious (to me) situations, to the point that it's sometimes frustrating to see her struggle on whether particular thing she did or said was OK or not (when for me it's obvious it doesn't matter and certainly doesn't warrant 40 minutes of analysis).

She worked in like 10 different schools teaching math, each time for 1 year or less. Mostly the problem was - she was unable to play the politics game, especially when it comes to grading kids unfairly well to please the parents so they don't go to the director and demand her gone.

At the moment she's looking for a new job, economically we're ok but it's not very good to be unemployed for years. Maybe someone have any recommendations for a trade that's a good fit? Doesn't have to be very profitable. She's pretty good with math and computers, graduated math and economy, speaks Polish and English pretty well. She was writing books as a hobby at one point but stopped decades ago, I was suggesting trying that, but she doesn't believe there will ever be money in it. I've also tried to teach her programming (she already knew some basic stuff) but she just doesn't like it, or maybe I'm a bad teacher.

Re: Secret Life of an Autistic Stripper

#78

Damn, the description of problems in social situations feel like it's written about my wife. She's mostly OK (if a little over-bearing and too trusting) in 1 on 1 conversation, but has huge problems behaving "normally" when there's many people, often answers in detail to throwaway questions and monopolizes the time and focus in a discussion. She comes out as egocentric and a very weird person. She also does this deta…

Accountancy? My cousin is a year or two into that career (still training at this point) but it seems to be a good fit for him.

Seems to fit the Maths/Economics background too.

Re: Secret Life of an Autistic Stripper

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have links for the studies? They sound like an interesting read.

Sorry, no. It was some years ago. My recollection is that they concluded that the hypervigilance and paranoia common to such people was an asset in battle. My father spent 26.5 years in the army and fought in WW2 and Vietnam. I spent most of my life hearing "He's paranoid because he survived two wars." My mother said that a lot because, for example, she couldn't step outside the house to turn on the sprinkler without…

He's your father, but I guess it's probably both. War makes you hyper-vigilant (PTSD) , and being more vigilant probably increases your survival chances.

Re: Secret Life of an Autistic Stripper

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read that book and disagree. I don't have a limited set of emotions, I just have a better emotional regulation system because emotions are blunted. Emotions exist in me (I'm not a robot or a predator) and I can extract the information they contain to inform my decisions, but I'm mostly unaffected by them. I don't use this trait to destroy people - I think this is what only weak sociopaths do that are not content…

And there are these people: > I have killed animals (as a child). Whenever there was a stray animal in my alleyway (cats or dogs usually) I would pick it up and leave it in my trashcan by the side of the house until it got dark. Whenever my parents were asleep, I'd sneak out and take the animal out of the can to torture it. Sometimes I kicked it to death and other times I would suffocate it. This was my main source o…

> And I would like to clarify that my own self-diagnosis and your reference to "The Psychopath Code" is not a reliable source of information for a diagnosis.

Fair enough.

> Sociopathy is very likely a spectrum disorder like autism.

I'd say we're starting to understand disorders in general are. At the very least they're not binary. Even something like sexual preference such as homosexuality isn't binary.

> I have killed animals (as a child). Whenever there was a stray animal in my alleyway (cats or dogs usually) I would pick it up and leave it in my trashcan by the side of the house until it got dark. Whenever my parents were asleep, I'd sneak out and take the animal out of the can to torture it. Sometimes I kicked it to death and other times I would suffocate it. This was my main source of entertainment since I didn't have many other things to do.

I killed ants as kid, cause they didn't follow my traffic signs. I used a catapult to throw stones on a cow because I thought it was funny. I've also been a vegetarian and vegan.

Most people are still omnivore. They can't watch a video of a cow getting slaughtered, but they'll happily eat the meat. Yet when some kind of animal which is commonly a pet such as a dog or cat is ill or gets killed they get super emotional. I don't understand that; and I dislike dogs (they smell, they poop on street, are noisy, and demand attention). I can imagine that dogs/cats on the street can be a nuisance. Especially if poop on your property or make noise at night. Been there. Had a couple of street cats for years on my premises at night.

> Your score from primary psychopathy has been calculated as 1.9. Primary psychopathy is the affective aspects of psychopathy; a lack of empathy for other people and tolerance for antisocial orientations.

> Your score from secondary psychopathy has been calculated as 3.3. Secondary psychopathy is the antisocial aspects of psychopathy; rule breaking and a lack of effort towards socially rewarded behavior.

Hardly surprising for someone with ASD. I'm actually sensitive, but IRL I tend to carefully hide that so I don't seem too vulnerable (become a victim of the narcisist/sociopath/psychopath). I have a moral compass. Its values are different from the status quo which might make it seem like I am amoral, but I know very well I have one.

Perhaps you'll enjoy The Mastermind [1] a series about Paul Calder Le Roux by Evan Ratliff.

[1] https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind

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