Glossary

Please always refer to this list. Open to new item suggestions.

I reason from first principles, which is “you boil things down to the most fundamental truths … and then reason up from there.”(Elon Musk). These are the thought models I built, which have internal consistency within my own thought process.

Current items: scopiology, Michael, ASD/C(Autism Spectrum Disorder/Condition), Asperger’s syndrome, nerd, NT(Neurotypical), bias, gaslighting, narcissist(narc), empathy, differentiating factor.

Scopiology: An approach to understand problems by constantly reexamine the overt and covert premises through different scopes, scales, perspectives, and variable combinations. Countless misunderstandings start from lack of scoping. It’s like a Windows user arguing with a Mac user on how to operate on a laptop. Good scoping practice builds on first principles.

An example: we can combine Nassim Taleb’s turkey problem(using past experience to induce the future, a turkey thinks it’s safe before Thanksgiving because it has always been safe) with his criticism on medical doctors’ lack understanding of positive predictive value(see this summary) by asking the turkey to learn Bayes Theorem, which means to look up what happened to other turkeys in a time period longer than a year. The turkey would learn about Thanksgiving.

Michael: Founder of Firmsconsulting. For future reference, this is the only Michael I will mention by first name. Other Michaels will have their family names to distinguish.

ASD/C(Autism Spectrum Disorder/Condition): All developmental disorders(unusual wiring in the brain) minus the ones that have been differentiated such as Down’s syndrome and Tourette’s syndrome.

It is commonly believed that being on the spectrum means having poor social skills. But being socially awkward is the result of poor wiring, which is similar to a country in civil war usually don’t have strong diplomacy.

Most definitions on autism are descriptive – what autistic people are like. This can be misleading because all of those descriptions are symptoms. And there is no mentioning about a unifying core mechanism, such as cancer(abnormal growing cells work only for themselves that take up resources from cells that work for you), diabetes(your body cannot process sugar properly, and sugar becomes poison that slowly destroy your system), or many other brain disorders such as Parkinson’s(nerve cell damage causes low level of dopamine).

I believe the term autism will be replaced by a series of specific neurological conditions/disorders with clear core mechanism. But before that, I am autistic. This disorder means “self”, which implies self social isolation, and was built around a series of commonly seen together traits(very NOT first principle!) nearly 80 years ago, which can be caused by various reasons. It’s like calling a disease “cannot move with legs”, which can be caused by: spine injury, brain injury, muscular dystrophy, bone fracture, congenital deformity(born with no legs), etc.

Asperger’s syndrome: ASD people without speech difficulties. Cannot distinguish between “high functioning autism”. It is obsolete now because it is not a meaningful difference. Some people like to call themself aspies in order to differentiate themself from non-speaking/”low functioning”/”classic” ASDs, because they feel they are superior. I despise this sense of superiority based on biological differences.

Nerd: Obsessive systematic thinkers with great attention to detail and mainly follow fact/logic thread instead of emotional thread. Nerdy people often have autistic traits(note, on the other hand: having autistic traits ≠ being autistic ≠> nerd) and are prone to be engineers. I am a nerd.

NT(Neurotypical): Mainstream people who mainly follow emotional thread. They are often not great at noticing details. This is part of the reason why they are so robust. They are not bothered by seemingly meaningless details, logic glitches, cognitive rigidity, etc. Please remember this word refers to a model of a way of operating, not a category of people. I know NTs with good attention to details, excellent logic, etc. I just cannot figure out how they do it with their operating system. My model is still at its infancy that cannot account for some advanced functions.

Bias: A systematic error or preference that affects how one behaves. Emphasize on systematic. A specific prejudice, such as hating certain fruit, sport, clothes, music genre, doesn’t count. Prejudice against certain situations, methodologies, disciplines, world-views are biases. Racism is a bias. Religion is a bias. Favoring nerds’ approach on understanding the world is a bias, since nerds are not the only type of people. Bias is a strong standing, not necessarily bad, but can be. Bias is inevitable.

Gaslighting: Gaslighting is a form of psychological torture, which by keep changing the description/assertion of reality that makes the victim question and eventually discard one’s own judgement of reality. It is often assumed that perpetrators know what they are doing. But in my experience they just have a very strong filter that only allows favorable information to come to their consciousness, which is built around one and only core – they are always right. Their brains make up new facts/logics like a simulation is built around key players/factors. A narcissist’s “reality” is another person’s hell.

Narcissist(narc): a person with all of these features in their relatively healthy state: low to zero empathy; conflict averse or very easily threatened; talk about oneself at an unusually high frequency combined with strong self emotional validation or emotional validation seeking behavior. Please note that extreme emotional distress can cause empathy fatigue, which could cause temporal symptoms like what’s listed above, but it doesn’t necessarily mean a person exhibits all those features is a narcissist. This is also a model, not diagnosis criteria.

Sometimes narcissist and psychopath are used interchangeably since they both have low empathy and can be harmful to other people. In my understanding all narcissist are cowards and highly self-conscious in core, psychopaths are not necessarily so.

It is important to distinguish between self-absorbed and narcissistic. The former lives in their own mind which often ends up in neglecting other people’s needs. It is often the result of limited computing power. The latter focuses on making themself feel good and cannot(would not) see other people’s needs.

Empathy: a cognitive function that allows one to try to understand other people’s position or feel other people’s feelings. It is a passive ability. Like any other functions it is neutral. For example vision can be used to do both good and bad things. Emphasize on trying. Because the ability to understand other people can be developed through learning, just like with OK vision one can learn to be a painter. But a blind person cannot become a painter* for now. Just like a person who cannot(or would not?) see others(no empathy) cannot understand other people. A narc’s blindspot is other people.

*Let’s wait to see when I turn out to be wrong! A blind person with good spatial perception certainly has the potential to have interesting imaging ideas. We just have to build the technology to help them express them.

Differentiating factor: The root cause can be a chicken and egg dynamic. And it is often assumed that there is only one root cause, which can be difficult to pin down when you are applying different criteria. Sometimes we can take another route by looking for differentiating factors. A differentiating factor is one variable which could make a material difference within certain space/scope. In other words, the outcome or overall dynamic would be very different when this factor presents comparing to the alternative. A system can have multiple differentiating factors.[Insert examples]