Intelligence Vs Autism Spectrum

whos to say we are intelligent anyway?
when i was a kid my parents had some person assess me for "learning difficulties" and that person said nothings wrong with me and im actually above average intelligence, ofcourse this was the issue in the 90s, anytime you had clearly something mentally wrong with you everyone just only knew the word learning difficulty and had you seen for that instead of anything else like a disorder or anything like autism. that was at that time, times moved on, i maybe below average intelligence for my age now if we tested intelligence again anyway. it doesnt stay the same. and not that intelligence matters as its actually knowledge we are tested by and whos to say the general knowledge we have is actually worthless while someone elses knowledge is more usefull?

this is where intelligence is perhaps misunderstood or tested wrong. or perhaps it just doesnt exist, and all it is is memory and repetition. which makes us kinda virtually intelligence instead of actually intelligent, as we require input instead of coming up with things ourselves.

This is snobbish probably. And bias because I’m a creator and less of a consumer. But in my eyes intelligence is not just watching tv and accepting low quality entertainment. Like reading Hello magazine or something. I’ve been through times in my life where I’ve watched tv for hours of the day, chat shows and read rubbish magazines about celebs. So I include myself in that. But I also read books and watched quality films too. 

I think misdiagnosis is rife in Psychiatry and it’s part Pseudoscience, although some conditions do exist. They just know something’s wrong and attach any label they want but can’t admit that they don’t understand at that moment because they still need to get paid. So they have to tie up loose ends. 

This is snobbish probably. And bias because I’m a creator and less of a consumer. But in my eyes intelligence is not just watching tv and accepting low quality entertainment. Like reading Hello magazine or something. I’ve been through times in my life where I’ve watched tv for hours of the day, chat shows and read rubbish magazines about celebs. So I include myself in that. But I also read books and watched quality films too. 

I think misdiagnosis is rife in Psychiatry and it’s part Pseudoscience, although some conditions do exist. They just know something’s wrong and attach any label they want but can’t admit that they don’t understand at that moment because they still need to get paid. So they have to tie up loose ends. 

How about an iPad for audible? You could read books on there too. I’m going to get my dad one. His phone is really basic too. 

firemonkey said:

I can never get the swiping right on a smartphone

Have you tried a stylus? My mother uses one as her fingertips are not picked up reliably on her smartphone or tablet (poor circulation seems to have that effect).

Something like this worked for her:

https://www.amazon.com/MEKO-Universal-Including-Computers-Acessories/dp/B08HCNHPS2/

Audiobooks would be good, but unfortunately I only have one of those very basic senior phones. I can never get the swiping right on a smartphone. My daughter says I'm heavy handed because of the 'dyspraxia'

Wow, what do you do with all these wonderful thoughts? Write them down? Make Art with them? 

Have you seen The Witcher? I feel like that’s Game of Thrones with much more magic of the imagination added. There are parts that remind me of what you describe. Where whole scenes in rooms are just figments of a person’s imagination. Their fantasies made concrete. 

I used to love fantasy books as a child, particularly The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blighton. Wow, imagining those lands that appeared up the tree, changing each time, was like heaven to me. 

Could you listen to audio books? Or do you prefer real books? I have a big audiobook library on my phone. It saves space. 

I was a perfectionist and obsessive with my homework at school, I think that got me through. Would spend 50 hours working on something. But then these other kids were naturally genius, not even having to try and getting A*s. 

Sounds like 'hyperphantasia'  The opposite to what I have.

blogs.exeter.ac.uk/.../

Nothing wrong with good non fiction. I've just not  read any books for quite a while. Plus there's not much space in my 42 sq M  flat for books. I have a very small bookshelf.

I was fairly mediocre academic wise. A similar child nowadays to how I was, he/she would be labelled as 2e with EF difficulties. Back then though(1961-1975) there was nothing like the level of help and support available now.

im more visual imagination, i often get lost in my own thought and become blind to whats infront of me as my eyes suddenly are transported to whatever my mind is thinking of. this can result in me seemingly staring forward maybe at people or through them, but im not seeing them, im seeing whats in my mind, images, thoughts, memories, sometimes fantasy, sometimes landscapes. sometimes ideas and plans.

my mind is visual, daydream like.... i start reading a book and eventually the words seem to fade as i instead start seeing the imagery in my head. game of thrones the sky series was pretty good because alot of it actually did match what i saw in my head. although obviously with alot of missing parts....although the book was more emotive, especially the red wedding, that was more sad in the books and in my mind as i guess i could empathise with them more as it was direct playing in my mind as i read it and easier to feel what they feel and put myself in their shoes from my mind.

sometimes the image breaks though and i end up seeing the words in the book again and then stall a bit and have to keep reading back at parts for my mind to catch up, or my reading to catch up... there seems to be a stall i guess between reading and imagining/seeing in my mind, perhaps my mind goes too fast and leaves the reading behind, consider it mental buffering where it gets disjointed and then loses the connection and has to reconnect.

Do you like non fiction at all? I’ve started to prefer it. Even though I have an insane imagination sometimes I just think ‘what’s the point in hearing someone’s fantasy about society rather than the actual facts?’.

That sounds very interesting with your quizzes. See yours to me is an intelligence that I’ll never reach. I was average in terms of knowledge at school. As and Bs but my peers were getting A*s. I did very well at Uni but that was Art. 

I was anti psychiatry for a while but then sometimes now I’ll look back on my time at college when I was on anti depressants fondly. Life was a breeze back then. If I hadn’t stopped taking them I might have ended up like one of my peers who became a multi millionaire. I would ways stop the pills and become reclusive again. So part of me wonders what would have happened if I’d have taken them for say 5 years just to play at having a normal life for that time. Then once success came I could have stopped them and gone back to being me again. And it wouldn’t matter because I’d be rich enough to stay in the house forever. 

I was an avid, and eclectic, reader of books during my school years. That stopped when I became mentally ill.  I'd always thought other people were like me, couldn't visualise characters and scenes from reading a book. That was shattered doing guided imagery ,via the mental health centre, to reduce anxiety. Others were finding it helpful, but it did nothing for me. Fast forward almost a decade later and I came across 'Aphantasia'.  I have total aphantasia. Knowing that other people can imagine characters and scenes from books- and I can't-that has put me off reading fiction. 

Because I'm useless at a myriad of things I wanted to find something I was at least reasonably good at. That lead me, through my autistic interest in low to highbrow quizzes and tests, to  high range IQ tests.   I'm no way a genius, but have managed to get a few reasonable scores.  I did fluke my way into being a  member of https://president2205.wixsite.com/foursigmasociety/members, but quit after a short while . Why? Basically because I was taking the p*ss. I'd used an outlier of a  score to join, and was nowhere near the intellectual ability of the other members.

As for psychiatry, despite my less than positive experience(though 2017- has been fine) I'm 'critical of' but not anti psychiatry. I have little time for the Robert Whitaker's of this world.