Not addicted to information?!

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I am a member of a mental health website and 99% of the people there are not autistic. A lot of them fail to understand my addiction to knowledge. How can someone not want knowledge? To not want to research about something like an illness they have or a medication they take, or a natural phenomena that they see? They think my addiction to knowledge is unusual and excessive. What do they do with their free time if they rarely research things?

Most of them spend the bulk of their time with aspects of socializing or the effects of said socializing: raising kids, seeing friends, going out, etc. To them, the desire to seek knowledge is too time consuming and unimportant compared to their social obligations.

I'm an information sponge.

That is very strange, what NTs do.

As a child and teenager, I read any book I could get my hands on, no matter what the subject matter was. As humans, we have only our brains to enable us to survive, since we lack the senses, speed, strength, etc of other animals. We need to think to make clothing for warmth, fire and tools for hunting. Well, you get the picture. A brain is useless if it has no information and cannot process it. I firmly believe that it has always been those of us with A.S. who have moved our species and the world forward. The NT's just want to sit around and talk, leaving all of the real work to us. Unfortunately, they are in the majority and they temporarily rule the world. Perhaps we should go on strike, or better yet take over ourselves.

I can spend hours reading my textbooks (I have 124 textbooks in my bedroom, all science-based university-level) and scouring the internet for any information I can find. Right now I am reading as much as I can find about general anaesthetics.

Information = good; I need it to survive.

I used to be like this as a kid. I won the district spelling contest based on the sheer knowledge of reading everything, even nutritional labels and fine print on all literature. Now, I don't care for it though. I read only what I am interested in, what I find useful. IMO, space used for useful information > space used for less useful information. Kind of like filling your harddrive up, and deleting stuff when it is full. What are you going to delete? Stuff you might use, or stuff you haven't used in years?

Nice to know that other Aspies have a thing for information and knowledge.

I love reading technical information. one of the first things I do when I get something is read the manual.

Yes. You are absolutely right. As a BAP person (I assume), I stand between these two extremes. I love and am addicted to information but also feel the pull of socializing. I could never be as immersed in information as somebody with Aspergers but also need it far more than many NTs. The in-betweener zone is academia. Academic NTs can talk for hours (and will) about all sorts of information but also will be quite happy to do so in a noisy bar with many loud people milling about.

I do get the information addiction though. I always research things that affect me to a heavy extent. Thank goodness for the internet which makes it free and the kindle which makes it take up less space.

Where do BAP people and Aspergers people diverge? We both are addicted to information but I think the BAP people are also addicted to socializing enough to use other people as a source of information. "Picking somebody's brain" is a constant source of amusement. I do it whenever I can. I have found that I can feed my information addiction pretty much anywhere with other people since they enjoy having their brains picked.

I don't think the human brain is designed for seeking knowledge. It's programmed for survival and survival doesn't require extensive knowledge of "useless" things. Why bother knowing anything about medicine because there are doctors for that. Why bother about math because there are engineers. Why bother knowing anything about computer because "there are aspies around to fix them". (I have a feeling that this sounds sarcastic but I'm not sure.)

I think NTs are constantly seeking for knowledge but their view of knowledge may not be the same as yours. NTs may gather social knowledge. Casual conversations, gossip, pointless chatter (at least for many autistic people), sharing feelings etc may be the same as "knowledge".

The austistic mind may be defect and it may seek for extensive knowledge without any purpose. It may sound good to be able to soak in information, but is it really necessary? Sometimes but now always. Even in science and in the academic world this kind of behaviour may not be optimal because there is too much information. By being addicted to seeking knowledge and obsessed over information you may spent (or waste) time on things that are not important.

Or maybe knowledge and information just don't stimulate the NT brain and thus they may find it boring. Neurochemistry is often the explanation to every human behaviour. This may not sound very insightful but the reality is most likely "dull, concrete and controlled by chemistry".

Myself, I'm addicted to information and research too and I cannot understand this behaviour of not wanting knowledge that you are discussing.




Btw, what is a "BAP person"? I'm sorry, this is totally unrelated to the topic but I need to know the answer. When I google the term it say "black american princess" (or something else that makes even less sense). Otherwise the only BAP I know is British Association for Psychopharmacology.

Broader Autism Phenotype. It's people with some autistic traits but not enough to qualify for a diagnosis.

It is interesting that BAP people would use moar social methods to acquire knowledge. That is true in academia for sure. Eberryone in academia is constantly picking each other's brrrainzzz. That's the eggsac term they use too. I was confused by this concept at first, because I have always engaged in the solitary pursuit of knowledge. I like to learn about things on my own rather than ask or talk to people about things. I don't feel the pull of socializing at all.

I like learning things alone, too. Having other people around just makes me stressed or distracted. I can never ever understand study groups. I can't do group brainstorming, either. My mind freezes when everyone's throwing out ideas every minute. I need peace and solitude to work things out and think of ideas.

As a generality, I would say that people with Aspergers/Autism are more predisposed to be interested in acquiring knowledge, often just for the sake of acquiring it. This would go along with how our brains are wired and our focus on special interests.

"They think my addiction to knowledge is unusual and excessive."

Well, that's what Autism is all about, especially special interests. I've always been addicted to information and learning more. I've read more books than anyone else I know. I'm always studying something or other, and can't imagine not. I certainly see it having to do with lack of social abilities and a lack of desire to be social. I'd much rather read a book than be social.

I'm another person who is somewhere between BAP and AS and I too love knowledge. In the past, everything I did was self-taught but I learned that not everything could be learned from a book. Some things require practical knowledge that only comes from other people and experiences. What I had to learn was that sometimes it is best to let others speak and learn from what they know. Everyone you will ever meet in life has a lesson to teach you, you just have to be open enough to learn it. Doing so expanded my horizons within my special interest of cars so that I was able to learn to do good body work and paint cars as well as a lot of the little tips and tricks for doing mechanical work. Nowadays I teach others to do what I now know to do. However, I also listen to those I am teaching since I have learned that sometimes it is the student that has something to teach the teacher. Once I got past always needing to be right, I found that I got along much better with other people.

Now, what got me thinking about doing life this way? Some of it comes from a tangent off of my special interest in cars. I studied the history of the Japanese auto industry and how they came to dominate. They used the writings of Sun Tzu where he basically said that you let your enemy brag about things and he will give away his secrets. In essence, this is what happened as the executives of these companies humbly toured the factories of the world's major auto makers and were not afraid to be quiet and learn. Doing so gave them knowledge, even if it came at the expense of pride. This knowledge turned the student into the teacher and turned the tables against the giants of the industry.

In the end then, I do not only study technical facts but philosophy, history and human beings as well. Having a knowledge of all of them gives me an edge over other people in many situations. Now if it could only get me a girlfriend...