Genuinely wondering what it must be like to have a brain that works differently from mine

[Lacitlyana]

I am book clever, though not particularly in a science or engineering way, but in an analytical and linguistic way. I am good at reading people and seeing beyond behaviour to causes, and I am good at looking at a decision and seeing a whole flow chart of possibilities and consequences that could arise. I am good at considering options and thinking things through; I guess sometimes that makes me look indecisive.

I was wondering philosophically what it must feel like to go through life with a different sort of brain. How differently we all experience the world. What thoughts a mathematician or physicist might dwell on that are entirely outside of my experience. What it feels like to have a learning disability and how one might navigate decision making with that type of brain. When I look on FB at people's statements on things and I am thinking "where are your critical thinking skills" and actually, where are people's critical thinking skills? What thoughts processes might a person experience who has limited critical thinking?

It's odd to consider how limited a perspective one has on this stuff really.

Do you think in some ways it might be easier to go through life being less "smart" and not perceiving or worrying about world wide scale things as much?

You do you, obviously, but I wouldn’t trade one jot of my intelligence for a contented stupidity.

But do you think "stupidity" is content?

There are many ways of being more or less smart. Self-absorbed people ignoring wider issues and getting on with their lives may look wilfully ignorant to you, but sometimes I wonder what's clever about the stress of seeing all the possibilities of situations unless you're in a position to affect outcomes. I can't stop myself being that kind of person either, but I do envy the more happy-go-lucky types.

Not necessarily but I think that, if you’re a deep thinker, it’s much easier to get depressed about things or have an existential crisis!

Well, you seem to be suggesting it might be when you wonder if it might be easier to go through life ‘less smart’?

I wasn't really meaning to focus on talking about that so much as about the infinite variation of human experience because of our different capacities brain wise. Not just clever Vs not clever but more how an engineer perceives the world versus a linguist or a sportsperson. I was thinking about the infinite variety of humankind really.

There’s just no way of knowing how anyone else experiences the world though, is there? It’s the impossible. Even if they try to tell us or we read their memoirs, we can never really know how they felt at any given moment.

There's a bigger question than just smart / less smart, though. DS has an engineer's brain and is ASC. He thinks about all kinds of things very differently from me. He is in no way less smart than I am (also book / word smart). He tells me that when he is not thinking about anything in particular, he thinks about quite abstract things like the ship of theseus. (So also philosophical, but in a different way to me).

I suppose this is what I was talking about. I wonder what other people wonder about. Or if they wonder in the same way I wonder.

I have wondered this, too.

I was brought up in the countryside and recognise most of Britain's common floral and fauna, because when I was a child, if we didn't know something, we were expected to look it up when we got home. Similarly, we'd have long discussions about the etymology of words and do know.

We were walking round the pond at work and i was getting excited about the orchids being in flower, and my colleagues had no idea what I was talking about. They walk round with no appreciation of the variety of plants and flowers and trees and birds about. They might sometimes notice there's a yellow flower or blue flower, but that's about it, whereas I am always noticing what's in the environment around me. Likewise, they're not interested in the origins of new words we might come across. And they don't care about the historical context of anything.

To be fair, they know more about Formula 1 and football and cricket and Marvel films than I do (though not that much more after all the lunchime conversations I've endured,) but I just seem to have much more stuff in my head than they do - and if I don't know something, I'll go and look it up, whereas they just shrug their shoulders and move on.

I suspect not being interested does make life easier in some ways.

That's interesting @EBearhug

One of my kids has a chronic illness - along the lines of diabetes. I instantly researched all the treatment options, joined an online community, watched YouTube videos etc. DH did none of that and is perfectly happy to just go along with what the doctors say without having any wider understanding of the possible trajectory of the illness, stats around quality of life, etc. That's really alien to me - though DH is an intelligent person. I research everything that affects my dearest and dearest. How can you not?

There’s a famous old rhyme, with language that is unacceptable these days …
See the happy M…n, he doesn’t give a damn.
I wish I were a M….n, my God, perhaps I am!

Minds do work very differently. DH has ASC and has done nothing in the way of reading to learn about it. He’s never read up on my health conditions or the kids’. He’s interested in what he’s interested in. Nothing else.

Some people can’t ‘see’ images in their minds, others have no internal monologue.

We are all quite different.

It's not surprising that some people have perpetual anxiety is it? Given that we experience the world in such different terms. I always wished I could be like one of those adrenaline junkies who goes bungee jumping - so fearless - and thought I must just be less brave, but maybe my brain just scopes and perceives the world in entirely different ways.

There's a vulnerable lady near us who walks around talking to herself all the time. I hypothesise that she has no internal monologue and everything she thinks, she says aloud. It's very bizarre to hear someone's thoughts expressed aloud - the mundanity and the way the thoughts jump around. Today's snatch I caught as she walked past mine was along the lines of "oh look that's a nice car, must have Cost a few bob...I have got leg ulcers now, had them 6 months or so.."

Yes I often wonder this too OP. It's not a scale of cleverness but differences in how our minds work. DH and I are so very different in lots of ways, yet in certain key ways of problem solving for example, we're quite similar. I work in the music industry and was flabbergasted when no-one else seemed to notice that the school piano was badly out of tune during an event last week. Yet I struggle to understand many things others find easy. I remember at uni, I asked my friend for advice on revision (same subject). She demonstrated a mind map to me. I had a try, and started writing a neat list in the top corner of the paper. Fascinating really.

Yes, I hate mind maps, much prefer a neat list. They're both dumping into onto paper, just differently formatted.

I am crap at almost every job I do, I find things difficult to learn and have to devote serious time to work them out. I need to be micromanaged. I work on a checkout now and love it because I love chatting and cheering people up. I write rom coms. Dh would love me to go back to my old well paying jobs which he doesn’t get that I was terrible at (I lived in fear and dread and hated them all). He gets everything easily and doesn’t understand people who don’t. I guess I’m in your contentedly stupid category but I’ve learned to be happy here, I think I make the world a slightly better place

Ha! I make mind maps with neat little lists around them. Somewhere in between a mindmap and a table.

DH can’t wrap his head round it being important to do some things properly. Like, I’m happy not to make the bed. Leave it a shambles. But if we’re going to make it, let’s make it properly.

If you use a kitchen cloth, rinse it, squeeze dry and hang up to finish drying. If you use it form something dirty- the floor, raw meat- put it in the wash and get a new one out. But no, he’s happy to use it as the vector to spread germs around the kitchen. Thinks he’s done a good thing by wiping the counter with a soggy, grubby cloth. Like, what was the point? What did you achieve?

I either do it, or I don’t. No smug half assed, performance of having done it when actually you’ve achieved nothing.

Sigh. Do, or do not.

I'd love to know what its like to have an easy, pleasant social interaction, then go home content thinking what a lovely afternoon that was.

Instead of crippling anxiety leading up to it and during. Trying to give enough eye contact without looking like a serial killer. Being able to focus on the conversation and not what reply I can give that will make me sound like a normal human. And then going home and analysing every detail and deciding that everyone secretly hates me.

How easy it must be to have the first brain.

I've just been diagnosed with ADHD and am awaiting my prescription for medication, I have wondered a lot how it'll change my mind as I just seem to struggle with everything all the time, hold my phone in my hand... oh no now it's gone. Call my phone, it's in the fridge, why did I go in the fridge? It's just like living in a constant uncertain nightmare, nothing seems to be fixed at all, not an idea or even physical things as my brain doesn't seem to recognise what i do with them.

I'm quite excited to see what someone's brain might be like when they can just focus and how much energy it must save not to have your thoughts leaping around like ping-pong balls in your head.

I was thinking this the other week. Was doing a lecture on SEND and there was a section on dyslexia. I had no idea thinking in 3D was part of it. I assumed everyone could look at a space, work out how the build a unit in that space and see how it would fit together. I assumed people could look at flat pack stuff and a finished photo and know how it went together.
i do know not everyone can recall whole conversations or read something once and remember it all.
im Good at reading people and seeing outcomes. I wish I could spell and write massive documents without having a panic.
i wish I could focus for hours on end on tasks without being distracted.
i wish i could bake.

the brain is an amazing thing, I would love to spend a day with someone else’s brain but I’m not sure I would swap my learning disability because I think it gives me strengths in different ways.