- Allistic vs. Autistic brain wiring explained via iconographic recognition to explain the trade off between Allistic heuristic governor & Autistic pattern recognition. -

TLDR:
- Allistics brains are wired for "quick & dirty"
- Autistic brains are wired for "slow & precise"

In order to understand some critical differences in the Autistic and Allistic Neurotypes you need to understand that your brain is doing a lot of stuff you are not consciously aware of.

Your consciousness is only a tiny piece of everything going on.

For example, sight.

Eyes actually receive images upside down. The brain takes a pair of upside down images from both eyes and integrates them into a unified image with an awareness of depth.

That is one reason why photos never quite look like what you actually see.

Face pareidolia is another concept that can help you understand the nuances of your unconscious brain.

The brain is constantly processing visual information.

One of the most intensive thing most brains do is recognize faces.

Everything eyes pick up is run against the brain's facial recognition "software"

Check out this picture of "common household receptacles."

Do they look like faces to you?

Like emojis even 😮

Now if a person looks at Ron Swanson (and they know who Ron Swanson is), if the person has typical facial recognition they can recognize Ron not only when he is standing still, but even when he is uncharacteristically dancing.

That is a lot of imaging processing going on. twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Facial recognition is being run on EVERY image experienced, even non-Ron Swanson images.

That is why people see faces in objects.

Because the brain actually tries to see faces all the time.

With Ron it says: "100% human & Ron"

With the outlets it says: "10% human? Not Ron"

Your conscious awareness does not get some kind of analytical data report like Abed Has in Community (probably, you do you), it's generally more like

"oh! look at that, outlets look like faces"

Now the same thing happens when a person looks at iconography, like the letters and words you are, hypothetically, reading right now.

The brain takes in visual information of icons, then processes it against a catalog of known iconography looking for a match. If a match it found, the data associated with the iconography is accessed and the person has awareness of what iconography they are observing.

If there is a break anywhere in this process between observation of the iconography and accessing the memories associated with that iconography, an effect similar to visual agnosia occurs, where a person can see the iconography, but it doesn't make sense to them.

Ok, so we have hopefully given you the basics to understand what we are going to try to explain between Autistic brain wiring and Allistic brain wiring.

Thank you for your patience.

We are going to simplify the human ability to recognize iconography down to one tiny aspect, the ability to identify the letter "f", an "f detector" if you will.

The idea is that if a letter like object is detected it will be sent to the brain's "f detector" and the shape will be checked multiple times to see if it is an "f"

Each sequential check by the "f detector" will reorient the icon and cost 1 unit of time and energy.

So lets check out what happens with this information:

The first symbol is identified as an f in 3 units

The second symbol is identified as an f in 5 units

The third symbol in identified as NOT an f in 5 units.

Overall: 2 "f" are identified out of 3 shapes at the cost of 13 units.

Now, here is the thing, studies show that, relative to a comparable Autistic brain, an Allistic brain is wired to come to a conclusion quicker and more efficiently at the cost of accuracy.

Allistic brains do this by applying heuristics on an unconscious level (it shows up as an unconscious bias in studies).

Heuristics are shortcuts that are *usually* accurate. Not always accurate, they are *usually* accurate.

Now, using our model, a completely valid heuristic for the "f detector" could be:

"Anything that takes the 'f detector' longer than 3 units to process is not an f"

Lets check out how this heuristic impacts the results.

Note that there is a line after the 3rd row, that is represents the heuristic causing a hard stop.

The 1st is correctly identified as an "f" in 3 units.

The 2nd is incorrectly identified as NOT an "f" in 3 units.

The 3rd is correctly identified as NOT an "f" in 3 units.

Overall results:

2 correct
1 incorrect
9 units spent

Directly Comparing the unbound Autistic and heuristic Allistic:

The Autistic brain:

Correctly processed all 3 symbols costing 13 units of time and energy.

The Allistic brain:

Correctly processed 2 of 3 symbols costing 9 units of time and energy.

This is what is meant by:

Allistic brains are wired for "quick & dirty" and
Autistic brains are wired for "slow & precise"

The Autistic brain came up with more correct answers on the edge cases, but it takes more time & energy to do so.

https://twitter.com/AutisticVU/status/1643363250552344576?s=20

Allistics are amazing at operating where there heuristics are reliable.

Autistics are amazing at operating where heuristics are unreliable or even problematic.

Note that there is a very specific reason why we used letter orientation for this explanation.

This can literally explain the ability of Autistic people to read things upside down and backwards with much greater intrinsic proficiency than the Allistic.

https://twitter.com/AutisticVU/status/1640933934035771392?s=20

All of this stuff is subconscious wiring.

When an Autistic person looks at upside down writing it has a higher chance to "click" in their heads because our methodical, high cost brains keep hacking at the "weird" symbols until the brain goes "oooooh! it's flipped!"

Flip it!

When an Allistic person looks at upside down writing their heuristics go "boss ... this is taking way toooo long. There is NOTHING HERE ... it's gibberish... stop it.. you are red lining us!!! She canna' take no more!" and they give up on the task.

Now, here is the thing, an Autists doesn't get to consciously choose to not spend the extra and time and energy processing where there is nothing to be gained, because you don't know until you process the data.

It's kind of like those vases in Zelda.

There may or may not be a rupee in the vase. You can't know without taking the time and energy to smash the vase, and, if you are lucky, there is a rupee.

So, here is the thing. Society is *built* around Allistic Social Norms and therefore Society is *built* to avoid problems where Allistic heuristic thinking is unreliable.

In other words, society dictates that not many vases have rupees in them, for Autists to acquire.

A way of interpreting Allistic heuristic governor is that it's the counterpart to Autistic pattern recognition.

The way Autistic brains are wired they just keep doing unbound processing until ... grokked!

Then the info is given to the consciousness:

"Oh! It's a pattern!"

[Alt text: Spider-Man realizing the The Mirror Dimension has a pattern]

Autistic brains are more precise and accurate than the comparable Allistic brain at the cost of time and energy.

Allistic brains are faster and more energy efficient than comparable Autistic brains at the cost of precision and accuracy.

It's an equivalent trade off.

This is a well established project management principal.
Doing anything is a combination of cost, time, and quality.

At best you can pick two at the cost of the third.
- quality
- fast
- inexpensive.

You can Focus on one at the costs the other two.

Note that this distinction between the two ways that these "operating systems" navigate the world is potentially the key to understanding core differences.

For example, the unbound processing of the Autistic brain, could be part of the cause of overstimulation and fatigue.

A quick note for those Autists who actively use heuristics in their conscious thinking.

What is discussed here is processes that occur below the level of conscious thought.

It's equivalent to the operating system, with conscious heuristics being an executable run on that os.

We have attempted to summarize all of this thread into a single meme:

https://twitter.com/AutisticVU/status/1643380122983223296?s=20

Extension:

How unbound processing could explain Autistic tendency toward routine and limiting of stimuli

https://twitter.com/AutisticVU/status/1643648714307784704