I Live With Autism
I like to think of myself as an easy going guy, and normally I am. I do have anger outbursts though and I've been trying to deal with them. I am capable of civil conversation but certain things will set me off. Science denial, situations out of my control and illogical people really upset me. Things that do not work the way they should will also trigger me. I wish that schools would teach epistemology throughout K-12 so that people can train their brains to think more like scientists so that they can leave unsubstantiated and illogical beliefs behind. Teach them the difference between inductive and deductive thinking, to not make claims without valid evidence and how to verify information. The anger just happens so fast that I have troubles getting a hold of myself. It happens so fast that I don't even have time to make a conscious decision to calm down. It's hard to talk about with others because I am often just ignored or called names. Don't just dismiss people as "assholes" without understanding where they are coming from. I'm not trying to be. I do have a crude sense of humor and I never intentionally offend people. I think people judge others too quickly and base their judgments from a poor sampling size.
Philosophically, I'm a humanist. I truly care about people and want to help them to see that there is a more reasonable and honest way of thinking. To me, it's not about who's wrong or right because I just don't care. I just want people to care about whether the things they believe in are true or not. I want people to have integrity and be able to admit when they are wrong or when they have no valid reason to believe in something. I hate seeing people give their hard earned money to complete quacks and con artists. But it seems that people don't want to be helped. They don't want to believe in true things, they want to believe in feel good things, things that feel as if they have one easy reachable fix. Scapegoating their problems so that they feel they have control over something. Most of these claims come from a place of incredulity. When people don't listen to or use reason at all, it makes me angry.
I am very much against the belief in the supernatural and Aliens and it's very personal. People often cite the Drake equation for evidence of life on other planets, incredulously I might add. One problematic aspect of the The Drake equation is that it also estimates that there are roughly 10-12 civilizations just in our galaxy alone. We know that the probability of that being true is incredibly low. I used to suffer greatly from xenophobia (Extraterrestrials, not Mexicans) Phasmophobia ( fear of ghosts) and Nyctophobia (fear of the dark) throughout my childhood and teen years. My Parents are to thank for that. We grew up believing that our house was haunted because that was the household narrative. My mom used to watch all kinds of paranormal and extraterrestrial TV shows and would constantly reinforce these beliefs within our household. My older brother would also read The Amityville Horror to me at night when I was really young. It had psychologically scarred me. I spent many nights hiding under my covers just drenched in fear sweat because I had heard something in the living room. My parents wouldn't let me sleep with the light on no matter how much I cried and it often ended up with my dad "giving me something to cry about." I don't like to think about my childhood to often because it wasn't good. My dad was violent and I was autistic. Of course at the time my parents didn't know I was autistic and I was diagnosed/misdiagnosed with ADHD in third grade. I know I was impulsive and a handful but instead of addressing my autism and the problems that come with it, I was verbally and physically abused into submission. Now that I know I have autism, my past makes me even more angry at my parents.
When I was younger, I would have dreams of a UFO crashing outside in our backyard. My mom had me convinced that I was abducted by Aliens and would often tell me that I was gone at nights when she would come to check on me. I still resent them for what they had done to me as a child. No child should have to live in fear of their father or things that don't even exist. That's why I am so persistently against the belief in the supernatural. Well, that and people use the presupposed "evidence" to reinforce their beliefs in the supernatural when in reality, the evidence says nothing. Saw a video of a spooky ghost moving things around in a house? First, demonstrate that the video is real and not just a hoax. Then you have to demonstrate that it has no natural cause. Next, you have to not only demonstrate supernatural agency but also that it was the cause of the event. The problem here is that there really are no correlations without making a god of gaps argument and very difficult to demonstrate any of these things. The supernatural has had a whole lot of fan fiction attached to it over the years and it is all just speculation. Heard footsteps and think ghosts? Demonstrate that they were actually footsteps. Demonstrate that ghosts are real and have agency capable of making those footsteps. Then demonstrate that a ghost made the footsteps that you heard. I heard footsteps, must be the ghosts again. This is an incredible leap in logic and inductive biased thinking. EVP and spirit box results are incredibly prone to being interpreted through the use of suggestion and bias.
Questions for believers in the supernatural regarding the most popular mythos, explanations and presuppositions:
1. Do ghosts have consciousness?
2. Why do ghosts wear clothes? Are they just modest? Do clothes have souls too?
3. Is there free will in the afterlife? If yes, then it creates a lot of logical contradictions depending on your current belief system. If no,
then it also creates a lot of logical contradictions in many popular belief systems.
4. If ghosts do have free will, then why can't they openly communicate with us?
5. Why aren't ghosts every where? Everybody who had previously lived has died, so why do only some of these spirits remain on Earth?
6. Why is it that when ghosts supposedly do communicate, it's always very cryptic, ambiguous and open to individual interpretation?
Sorry for another long post. Sometimes when I write I have no direction or overall structure I'm going for, just need to get some things off of my chest and hopefully bring some understanding as to who I am and why I act the way that I do. I'm still learning who I am. Feel free to post whatever you like. Advice and criticism is always welcome. I just want to know what I am doing wrong. I'm trying to learn how to be a better person and connect with people because I've been pretty isolated my whole life. I'm not much of a people person but I'm trying to be because I ultimately do care about others. Maybe I just waited too long? I find myself sometimes emulating other's personality or sense of humor just trying to figure out how others build relationships so easily. I'm married but to be honest my wife and I don't spend a whole lot of time together. Mostly due to work scheduling and such but also because I know I'm hard to talk to. I live inside my own head and sometimes she will have to yell to get my attention. I also tend to zone out while she's talking to me.
Philosophically, I'm a humanist. I truly care about people and want to help them to see that there is a more reasonable and honest way of thinking. To me, it's not about who's wrong or right because I just don't care. I just want people to care about whether the things they believe in are true or not. I want people to have integrity and be able to admit when they are wrong or when they have no valid reason to believe in something. I hate seeing people give their hard earned money to complete quacks and con artists. But it seems that people don't want to be helped. They don't want to believe in true things, they want to believe in feel good things, things that feel as if they have one easy reachable fix. Scapegoating their problems so that they feel they have control over something. Most of these claims come from a place of incredulity. When people don't listen to or use reason at all, it makes me angry.
I am very much against the belief in the supernatural and Aliens and it's very personal. People often cite the Drake equation for evidence of life on other planets, incredulously I might add. One problematic aspect of the The Drake equation is that it also estimates that there are roughly 10-12 civilizations just in our galaxy alone. We know that the probability of that being true is incredibly low. I used to suffer greatly from xenophobia (Extraterrestrials, not Mexicans) Phasmophobia ( fear of ghosts) and Nyctophobia (fear of the dark) throughout my childhood and teen years. My Parents are to thank for that. We grew up believing that our house was haunted because that was the household narrative. My mom used to watch all kinds of paranormal and extraterrestrial TV shows and would constantly reinforce these beliefs within our household. My older brother would also read The Amityville Horror to me at night when I was really young. It had psychologically scarred me. I spent many nights hiding under my covers just drenched in fear sweat because I had heard something in the living room. My parents wouldn't let me sleep with the light on no matter how much I cried and it often ended up with my dad "giving me something to cry about." I don't like to think about my childhood to often because it wasn't good. My dad was violent and I was autistic. Of course at the time my parents didn't know I was autistic and I was diagnosed/misdiagnosed with ADHD in third grade. I know I was impulsive and a handful but instead of addressing my autism and the problems that come with it, I was verbally and physically abused into submission. Now that I know I have autism, my past makes me even more angry at my parents.
When I was younger, I would have dreams of a UFO crashing outside in our backyard. My mom had me convinced that I was abducted by Aliens and would often tell me that I was gone at nights when she would come to check on me. I still resent them for what they had done to me as a child. No child should have to live in fear of their father or things that don't even exist. That's why I am so persistently against the belief in the supernatural. Well, that and people use the presupposed "evidence" to reinforce their beliefs in the supernatural when in reality, the evidence says nothing. Saw a video of a spooky ghost moving things around in a house? First, demonstrate that the video is real and not just a hoax. Then you have to demonstrate that it has no natural cause. Next, you have to not only demonstrate supernatural agency but also that it was the cause of the event. The problem here is that there really are no correlations without making a god of gaps argument and very difficult to demonstrate any of these things. The supernatural has had a whole lot of fan fiction attached to it over the years and it is all just speculation. Heard footsteps and think ghosts? Demonstrate that they were actually footsteps. Demonstrate that ghosts are real and have agency capable of making those footsteps. Then demonstrate that a ghost made the footsteps that you heard. I heard footsteps, must be the ghosts again. This is an incredible leap in logic and inductive biased thinking. EVP and spirit box results are incredibly prone to being interpreted through the use of suggestion and bias.
Questions for believers in the supernatural regarding the most popular mythos, explanations and presuppositions:
1. Do ghosts have consciousness?
2. Why do ghosts wear clothes? Are they just modest? Do clothes have souls too?
3. Is there free will in the afterlife? If yes, then it creates a lot of logical contradictions depending on your current belief system. If no,
then it also creates a lot of logical contradictions in many popular belief systems.
4. If ghosts do have free will, then why can't they openly communicate with us?
5. Why aren't ghosts every where? Everybody who had previously lived has died, so why do only some of these spirits remain on Earth?
6. Why is it that when ghosts supposedly do communicate, it's always very cryptic, ambiguous and open to individual interpretation?
Sorry for another long post. Sometimes when I write I have no direction or overall structure I'm going for, just need to get some things off of my chest and hopefully bring some understanding as to who I am and why I act the way that I do. I'm still learning who I am. Feel free to post whatever you like. Advice and criticism is always welcome. I just want to know what I am doing wrong. I'm trying to learn how to be a better person and connect with people because I've been pretty isolated my whole life. I'm not much of a people person but I'm trying to be because I ultimately do care about others. Maybe I just waited too long? I find myself sometimes emulating other's personality or sense of humor just trying to figure out how others build relationships so easily. I'm married but to be honest my wife and I don't spend a whole lot of time together. Mostly due to work scheduling and such but also because I know I'm hard to talk to. I live inside my own head and sometimes she will have to yell to get my attention. I also tend to zone out while she's talking to me.
46-50, M
