Different modes of thinking

Spend any time writing online, and you’ll inevitably run into people, at times, who seem to have an odd understanding of what you published. Some of this is down to laziness – people scan the text and react to what they assume you wrote. Sometimes it’s an actual misunderstanding that’s either down to bad writing on your part or poor reading on theirs. But more and more I’ve had to face the possibility that my thought processes are just substantively different from the way the majority approaches the world. Occasionally, I get reactions from intelligent people who clearly read the text (or watched the video), understood it, but nonetheless decided to reply with what to me is a non-sequitur at best or wilful misrepresentation at worst. It’s only when I started to seriously read up on autism that I began to realise that the issue probably comes down to different types of thinking, which isn’t a misunderstanding per se (though, that might be my literal-mindedness again). I tend to think…