Don't really think so. I love Pynchon and there's not really a character I'm latching onto when I read that. McCarthy and Pynchon both fetishize a sort of violence. I find McCarthy's writing going there many times for shock value or aesthetic reasons and it makes me take him less seriously. Other people have mentioned Tarantino and I think that is apt.
Autism is not something you have - it's something you are. It's not an illness, it's just a set of characteristics that mean you understand and interact with the world in a way that's not the most common.
Honestly, that sounds slightly questionable. AIUI it's an absence or deficiency of theory of mind. It's something you haven't - it's a lack, like deafness. As to whether it's an illness or not, I suppose it's not but I've worked with an autistic/Asperger's person and was truly horrified when I started to understand the extent of how it affected him, and negatively, in his working relationships with us. From that POV it's a terrible debilitation.
> AIUI it's an absence or deficiency of theory of mind
This is become more and more a dated belief, especially as autistic voices are getting greater privilege to convey their own experiences. Autism may present as processing difficulties around interpreting body language and facial expressions, as a result of, or in concert with, sensory overload. These challenges don't exclude being able to empathize, but they do present obstacles. An autistic person might be confused for being self-absorbed as they're often dealing with these hidden struggles. I think also a lifetime of being misunderstood could manifest in either a combative or inward disposition.
This confusion between autistic and 'allistic' people is described by the "double empathy problem":
> AIUI it's an absence or deficiency of theory of mind
I'm not sure what that means.
> It's something you haven't - it's a lack, like deafness.
Erm, no. At least not necessarily. If you can't accept that, you're part of the problem.
> was truly horrified when I started to understand the extent of how it affected him, and negatively, in his working relationships with us
Guess what, relationships are 2-way. Your behaviour as a neurotypical was just as debilitating in your working relationship with him as the other way around.
From that POV, being neurotypical is a terrible debilitation.
>Erm, no. At least not necessarily. If you can't accept that, you're part of the problem.
Part of what problem? Frankly, this rebranding of mental disorders and disabilities as mere "neurodiversity" is incredibly frustrating an insulting to me, as I struggle with ADHD. My condition definitely stems from something I lack, it's called executive function. I lack, among other things, a sense of time, the ability to prioritize, the ability to concentrate without drifting off, and many other things that affect my life and relationships daily.
>Guess what, relationships are 2-way. Your behaviour as a neurotypical was just as debilitating in your working relationship with him as the other way around.
>From that POV, being neurotypical is a terrible debilitation.
I'm sorry if my comment was somehow triggering to you. It was never my intention to rile up anyone.
> Part of what problem?
Good question! I mean the problem of dividing people between non-autistics and autistics. The problem that causes autistics to mask sometimes painfully in order to not get picked on by non-autistics, but doesn't require non-autistics to behave "like an autistic person" if they're ever faced with such a situation.
Note that I'm not saying I think everyone should mask around people who are different from them. Hopefully the neurotypical behaviours that push autistics to mask can become more obvious and avoidable so the need disappears.
> this rebranding of mental disorders and disabilities as mere "neurodiversity" is incredibly frustrating
Agree. I think ND is too broad a concept to signify anything meaningful.
> insulting to me, as I struggle with ADHD.
Again, fair and I agree. I don't think ADHD should be classified together with autism. ADHD can have advantages if kept under control but generally can be quite debilitating - and keeping it under control can become a full-time job and a very demanding one.
I also think "autism" is too broad a concept. There are too many possible traits, each different in each individual, that aside from certain high-level characteristics.
> > Guess what, relationships are 2-way. Your behaviour as a neurotypical was just as debilitating in your working relationship with him as the other way around.
> > From that POV, being neurotypical is a terrible debilitation.
> This doesn't make any sense to me.
GGP said person A's autism was debilitating to their working relationship with GGP.
I was demonstrating that the reason it was debilitating was because of a lack of understanding and the need for person A to mask behaviour, and that need arises from GGP's and colleagues inability to comprehend person A. Which in turn is the very reason why person A masks: they don't understand the behaviours of the others, and try to mimic as best as they can given certain observed behaviours, actions and reactions, body language, etc. - all of which don't come naturally to person A, in the same way that simply answering to questions rather than avoiding them even when they might affect their social position probably doesn't come naturally to GGP and peers.
This might have been confusing - it's early morning for me. :)
If we stick to the OP, why is the autistic's behaviour in responding to authority problematic? Why is it not the unwarranted authority that's considered the problem?
>> It's something you haven't - it's a lack, like deafness.
> Erm, no. At least not necessarily. If you can't accept that, you're part of the problem.
Just saying No is not a response I either accept or can start to understand. Please explain why No, then maybe I can start to learn.
>> was truly horrified when I started to understand the extent of how it affected him, and negatively, in his working relationships with us
> Guess what, relationships are 2-way. Your behaviour as a neurotypical was just as debilitating in your working relationship with him as the other way around. From that POV, being neurotypical is a terrible debilitation.
Of course relationships are two-way, and he couldn't understand enough of other people to modify his behaviour i.e., the office was freezing every morning, don't come in and open the windows in winter, people don't like that. But he wouldn't change, windows opened, people freezing, rinse, repeat. As such, it wasn't really a proper two-way thing.
Or with a different person, thank you but I'm not interested in talking about your bicycle. Or with another person who would walk you backwards into a corner while unloading her problems on you, unable to appreciate that she was messing up other people's evenings, and that she was being shunned for it.
Autism is a disability. Society should definitely be more tolerant of it and more understanding, but regrettably we weren't and the guy suffered for it. He suffered, we didn't. That makes it his disability, not ours. In hindsight I hugely regret the way he was treated, but he didn't try to 'mask'and I don't believe he had enough insight to be able to. It is a terrible thing and I do not wish it on anyone. Don't try and make out that it is our problem because it wasn't, it was his.
Your constant view that it's a shared problem is about a helpful as a zebra complaining to a tiger that things really aren't equitable in their relationship. True, but...
> If we stick to the OP, why is the autistic's behaviour in responding to authority problematic? Why is it not the unwarranted authority that's considered the problem?
to be fair Dennis and Carl could put out some amazing work, like the Carl produced all i wanna do or dennis penned Forever. But I don't think it negates your point just wanted to add to it.
I'd be pretty surprised if good verbal communicators aren't usually good writers. I think politicians persuade people not by the clarity, conciseness, or coherence of their speech, but by the substance of their speech. If communication itself could be abstracted from the substance of what is communicated, then it wouldn't be true I think to attribute the success of certain politicians to their ability to communicate so much as their ability to choose what to communicate.
A writer has to be interesting though, every piece of writing we consider well written has a quality of gripping the mind. I'd argue then, that politicians though they may not be in the habit of writing long academic style treatises or "interesting" articles, perhaps it can be argued in the past they largely did, still if they are in part elected on the basis of their speech, must possess the same ability in writing.
If you don't believe me then how is it that Trump's tweets are works of art, "I have never seen a think person drinking Diet Coke,"The Coca Cola company is not happy with me--that's okay, I'll still keep drinking that garbage.", etc... Crude, in bad taste, whatever you say. Another example is Obama, who honestly has a gift for writing in the conventional sense.
I think it depends who you ask. If you watch most populist speeches, it’s all in the performance. How they move their hands, their bodies, they create an almost theatrical narrative by how they get loud and quiet throughout the speech.
You can also have incredibly skilled orators where it’s all in the substance, but you can really only do that if you message actually has substance to it in the first place.
GPT-4 can answer test questions, but could it have come up with what Einstein published in 1905 if it had all the information about the world up to say, 1902?
Is “can develop theories otherwise unknown to anyone but one of the most accomplished scientists of all time” really a logical bar to have to meet for “an artificial intelligence that could equal… human intelligence”?
Music is abstract. When we talk about visual art we can almost always be on the same page. If I say I need garden gnomes parading around a Bavarian village, the amount of variation between my internal idea and what a visual artist returns will mainly come from the lack of terms I use regarding aesthetic sensibility. Will they return something abstract or neoclassical? I would then be more specific etc...
For music we could present such an image but it would then suggest I'd argue much more possibilities. We could narrow down by genre you would suppose but even then there are too many possibilities: genre's are not as strong categories as are the stylized "era's" of visual art, I would also claim. Moreover, we can "port" a fundamental structure like a melody over all sorts of strains of music. In visual art, any motif is bound to be changed depending on the era and the style we'd put it in, that is, I think that in music, there are elements that are stronger in visual arts and elements that are weaker in music, and vice-versa, with regard to a description we could give in English. It's probably more natural and more possible to ask about what a sort visual representation should be than what a piece of sound should be.
It's interesting how we can generate images I'd argue in stunning faithfulness to some prompts but we don't seem to be very close to the same standard, for some prompts, at generating music.
Having been a seminary class president, scout, priesthood holder, just not a missionary or really active member, born and raised in Utah, I will tell you one interesting contradiction about Mormons is the extent to which they disown their past and at the same time still have many ideas from that time circulating around in a particular way. I would think it's similar to say how some Catholics may be down with the whole thing right now and yet still aren't "up-to-date" with the Catholic church's official position on things, for instance post Vatican II. Some not all.
I would doubt that this sort of prophesy is a genuine front-of-mind-concern today by the people running this operation at the church. Preparing for the second coming could be a more sincere answer coming from them, but if such an event were to occur I think it would make money worthless, so that doesn't make sense to me.
> I would doubt that this sort of prophesy is a genuine front-of-mind-concern today by the people running this operation at the church.
The concern is keeping the tribe going, and doing whatever it takes to optimize the tribe’s performance. Holding contradictory thoughts is just an inconvenience that can easily be tolerated, or even serve a purpose to weed out those less committed to the tribe. Note that even within the tribe, there can be multiple tribes, for example those of the leaders and those of the followers, who might have different goals.
> I will tell you one interesting contradiction about Mormons is the extent to which they disown their past and at the same time still have many ideas from that time circulating around in a particular way. I would think it's similar to say how some Catholics may be down with the whole thing right now and yet still aren't "up-to-date" with the Catholic church's official position on things, for instance post Vatican II.
As I don't know what you mean about the LDS in your first sentence, I don't know what you mean here. Where the Catholic Church is concerned, no change in doctrine can occur; it would invalidate the Church's claim of religious and moral authority. Doctrine can develop, of course. Analogically, I like to characterize this as something like an increase in clarity and depth of prior teachings, or deductions that follows from them, but never anything that innovates or contradicts prior comprehension. We could say that development is monotonic. However, doctrine is one thing, but things like liturgical practice and canon law are another (and still another are the private opinions of prelates, which less educated people may confuse with magisterial Church teaching). These can be adapted in changing circumstances, though obviously not with infinite flexibility.
In the case of Vatican II, it was a valid council and nothing taught in that council contracted what came before the council. Rather, historical circumstances, the cultural turmoil of that period, the resulting confusion, disorientation, corruption, etc. led to all sorts of secondary effects that seized on the fact of the Second Vatican Council. This left many people thinking the Church had changed in some essential way when it had not. Opportunists both inside and outside the Church happily used the appearance of change to promote fashionable nonsense and notions among the ignorant that were never taught by Vatican II. But from a historical perspective, one of many crises in Church history. No historically aware Catholic is freaking out, as dismayed as he may be.
I don't disagree. It's not a perfect analogy. The Mormon's I describe are a lot like Sedevacantists except that they aren't openly out "against" the official church.
There is a segment in the 60 minutes piece where they clearly show a church document, which shows something like 1.3 billion dollars being invested from Ensign Peak, the church hedge fund, into City Creek, a mall in downtown SLC, that Nielsen (the whistleblower) says his boss showed him.
In Utah it was well known and a topic of conversation so to speak that the church had invested so much money into a commercial venture. There also a segment in 60 minutes about the church bailing out an insurance company they control using these funds. It can really get under your skin coming from Utah, where I saw kids from my high school go off to central Africa essentially to convince people to pay tithing to the church, which we'd ostensibly see as not so bad given that it will help people. If it is the case, and if you've ever met some rich boomer Mormon dudes I can assure you it doesn't take a lot of convincing, look how they run our legislature, that the church took people's money, made a hedge fund, and now starts businesses which benefit... only they really know the completely details of... then it does not take much to feel outraged.
But I also the think the church at the very highest echelons consists of what are probably some very distinguished people who've seen a thing or two or feel a higher calling, that also does not seem far-fetched. I'd imagine being in charge of all that money is really something, having a little bit of a persecution and chosen-people complex is also something, as usual there are interesting social dynamics with Mormons.
