Tim Goldstein, Autistic Philosopher of Neurodiversity: Life in the Neuro Cloud™

Listen in as Tim "lectures" his good friend Dr Rhonda More about communication

Tim Goldstein Season 4 Episode 1

No, this is not another podcast that simply ends without getting any new episodes. But I have been dealing with some life complications and as is not unique most of it dealt with ever present drama of being employed. I could go on about the details but will simply say that the company culture I so loved at my job is simply a memory as they have made it clear that employees are just tools to get to the profits that are the only thing that matters. But enough about me for now.

In this special and unique episode I recorded a what was supposed to be a conversation but turned out more like a lecture with my great friend Rhonda Moore PhD The conversation started out with Rhonda mentioning she would soon be giving a presentation on communication and she asked if I could point out any of my podcasts or videos that had some of my insight. Because there are a number of thoughts about communication I hadn't taken the time or had the chance to present or record I took this as an opportunity to finally capture them. So I turned on a recording mic I had sitting on my desk and recorded the audio of our Zoom meeting. Listening to it afterwards as I was preparing to send it to my Ai Tim Clone as additional training of the generative Ai clone I decided I liked it so much it would be a great episode to restart my podcast.

So sit back with your favorite beverage and listen in to my ad lib dissertation on communication and a number of the far less obvious but simple reasons it often fails. A great quote I have posted in my office and like to think about when dealing with communication is from George Bernard Shaw "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion it has taken place."

There's a number of pieces that I see when it comes to communication and a lot of them I talk about frequently and they're on all pile my videos and such. But there's some of them that I talked about, but I just haven't taken the time to put into formal presentations or they get into areas that just take too long and get too deep for a presentation, even though I think they're very important points to consider to start with. I generally start out by saying before I was diagnosed as being autistic, my working concept was the world was stupid, 

period. That's it. The world was stupid. 

Well, it's not all good working concept, trust me. But it did fit the fact if I could see something and understand something and I did my best job trying to explain it and they couldn't get it, what's the assumption when you don't know that you're have any reason that you're different than they are? Right? You just assume they're lacking in capacity. But that was not like say, it's not a good working concept, but it was the working concept. I was using. So once I got diagnosed, I dove into autism as being my special interest, you know, which many of us tend to do once were diagnosed. It's like, Oh, what is this thing? Now let me understand, because from what I've heard, it really does make sense. Now let me understand more about it. And what I came to the conclusion was, it's not that the world is stupid. There's stupid people in the world. I mean, we all do admit there are there's you know, but that's not most people most people aren't stupid. 

But it was very ineffective. Communication was the problem. When I finally really started understanding, it was if we took somebody from Japan and somebody from America and we told them to have a conversation about something, but neither one knew anything about the other person's language, I refer to it as an impedance mismatch, which comes more out of electronics, but it's the concept of the the connection on one side is not at the right level to match the connection on the other side, not that either connection is the right side. It's just that they're not at a level where the two translate to each other and that's an impedance mismatch. 

But it, it is actually far simpler than I think a lot of people make it out to be, 

and there's a number of facets to it also. So we'll start with the simple part. I use very frequently the term bitch, and I just say think of a beach. You know, I've a picture of a couple of bitches up on the screen, that's it. 

And I say, you know, say anything about beach. And then I just ask him what? Give me give me an idea what comes to your mind when you think of a beach and the vast majority of people And when I say vast majority, I mean like almost all people name something that is blue water, palm trees, tropical light breeze, you know, nice thinking, chaste vacation kind of breeze. Well, the other beach that I have up there, and they're both kind of comical. You you've seen my graphics. I use very comically kind of graphics, because just because this is a serious subject doesn't mean we have to act like somebody just died yesterday. You know why I bring a little humor and lightness to a subject that needs to be discussed? And I grew up in upstate New York. In upstate New York, as in the entryway to the Adirondacks, Canada was closer than New York City. So when I say upstate New York, I mean like way upstate New York, right? Very rural. Grew up on a farm and the city that I well, we call it a city at the time, it was, you know, 50, 80,000 people or something. And it's gotten bigger. But very small city was referred to as the gateway to the Adirondacks because the only main highway that went up into the Adirondacks area went through the city. And as a Boy Scout, I went and did a lot of camping in the Adirondacks and I did a lot of canoeing. It's got some of the best canoe waters in the U.S. There's always big debates, whether Minnesota and the Boundary Waters or the upstate New York and the chain lakes and such are better canoe waters. So we won't get into the argument. It's one of the two best canoe waters in the US. And I did a lot of canoeing. And I remember one time going camping, canoe, camping and staying on this little island that had a circular beach around it. And it took about 8 minutes to walk all the way around. So we're not talking very big island or a very big beach, but it had pine trees on the island and it was sitting in freshwater and it was surrounded by forests and mountains. 

Okay, that's very valid as a beach also. Right. I mean, it meets the definition of beach. If we look up the definition of beach is interface between water and land, often involving sand. That's basically the definition across a number of dictionaries. So they both meet the definition of being a beach. And if we were at work and it's Friday and I tell you, I'm going to go to the beach on the weekend and you tell me, well, you know, take some sunscreen and make sure you don't go drowned in the water. It would be probably good advice regardless of what beach I'm going to wear. 

Doesn't matter. I mean, just generally good. You know, when you're near the water, the sunlight reflects up. You get burned all out easier. And I mean, water safety's probably an important thing to always consider to matter whenever you're around water. So that's fine. I mean, at that point in that level of communication, it doesn't matter that the term beach to you means something totally different than the term beach to me, because the interaction 

either one was fine and the advice was generic across any type of beach you go to. But now if we're on a project, then we have to do something dealing with beach, 

whatever it is. We got to build a lemonade stand. We have to set up a data collection unit and it doesn't matter. Whatever it is, we had to do something together that's dealing with the beach. It's probably important to figure out that my beach is sitting somewhere that has absolutely no resources going to it. In the middle of a freshwater lake surrounded by mountains and pine trees and your beach is tropical. Could that very well could have a major resort sitting right behind you that has every amenity in the world. 

Those would be important things to know if we want to do something at this beach, what is the resources that are available? Well, so now we have to get past the word beach. But most people, when they say beach, the assumption is you have the same picture of a beach as I have because a beach is just such a basic concept. 

So if we can screw up the communication on beach, which is a very basic concept, 

what happens when it starts to become a complex concept 

and we don't go through and we don't validate with fact of 

my beach, what does my beach look like and what does your beach look like so that we can get on the same page and work on this, you know, appropriately based upon what it is. We just plunge into it with me thinking, I know what we meant by beach and you're thinking what you meant by beach. And the end result is the person who is in power assumes you are an idiot because you couldn't see their beach and whatever you did that was wrong because it won't work. And their beach is because you have lack of capability, i.e. the world is stupid 

when it had nothing to do with stupidity of the world, it had to do with ineffective communication because we didn't validate that these two are this single term we use can have multiple definitions 

or the definition can be the same, but the details of it are very, very different from each other. I mean, the definitions are the same. It was an interface of water with land that involves sand. You don't have to have sand to have a beach, but. Yeah. You know what? You're at Waikiki. It's black sand, and there's every amenity you want in the world versus you in a you're on an island in the middle of the Adirondacks that even if you went as fast as you could between hiking and the canoeing portions, it would be 3 hours till you got to anywhere. 

Yeah, it's like major wilderness 

sounds. Oh, it is beautiful, except it's full of black flies and things they want. They don't have very little snakes. You don't worry about like. Like I was out hiking this weekend and, and I had to stop and take picture of one of my friends at the side of the trail, which was a probably about a six or seven year old rattlesnake that was poised to eat me. And so I actually stopped, took a video, took some pictures and went up. So it doesn't have those. But I have run into quicksand up there where you step and you just start sinking into it and it looks just like solid ground. And it's one of the densest forests that's around because of the high levels of humidity and the mix of deciduous and and evergreen type trees. So when people get lost, a lot of the infrared seeking stuff that they use to find humans lost in the middle of nowhere don't work because they can't penetrate the the leaf covers the canopy

Oh, it's it's severe wilderness. And it is real, honest to God, you know, real wilderness. Not not as rugged as the wilderness here in Colorado. The wilderness here in Colorado is much higher altitude and much, much more rugged, steeper. But as far as the ability to get totally, lost, yes, they're equally easy to get totally lost and, 

will depends upon your preparation and your survival skills as to how you're going to come out of it. 

So that's another area that I get into in in communication. Karen had given me shown me a couple of videos that were on, I don't know, an Instagram or what it is. She likes the little short video things. And there was one that this woman that was sitting in a car and she had the windows rolled down and there's a police officer standing next to her. And now I don't read Face as well, but this was so over accentuated I could pick up. He had the you have three heads and your obviously an alien look on his face and she's pointing to a sign in front of her car and the sign says fine for parking. 

Well

what does fine for parking mean. But if it doesn't contextually say something about a monetary value, you've now left it totally up to the person's interpretation. If it said $50 fine for parking. Okay, we just established the context by putting a number in front of it. But if the sign just says fine for parking 

and of course the officer, you know, being in law enforcement is thinking this person has three heads because they're pointing at the sign saying, but it says it's fine for parking, meaning like. Not only but okay, it's beyond fine. It's like a step beyond okay. It's like that's a good thing to do. 

And the officer is thinking, of course you're going to get a fine if you park here. So what do you do? You're like, absolutely crazy trying to say that sign is the reason you're parking here because he already has pre-conceived in his head. Fine. As in violation. So there's another very easy example showing of what seems like it should be very simple communication that is totally ambiguous without the context defining it. And if I just come in with my context based upon my background and upbringing and all of those things. So the intersectionality is where this is coming in now. So depending upon what your, you know, your upbringing, your experience is how you're going to interpret it, and each person is going to be 1,000% sure that their interpretation is correct because they are right. It is correct. 

So it's not that one of them misunderstood the word. They both had 1,000% correct interpretation. 

So another one along that lines, you know, so these are the two these are the two easy ones is another one Karen showed me was there's a sign that says 

green cars only. 

Okay. So parking green cars only, 

well, parked in front of this sign that says parking green cards only was like a, you know, 1968 barracuda with the rear end jacked up headers coming out of it, you know, four barrel car sticking up through the the hood and it was a green colored car. 

Well green cars only. Well green is really kind of a slang term for meaning environmental. So the person who park the rip roaring seventies muscle car that got half a mile to the gallon 

was probably technically more correct because their car actually was green as opposed to saying green, meaning it was an easy or, you know, a hybrid or something. you know, potentially small car. You know, I personally would say if you're going to say green, we're probably meaning more to the extreme end of TV or hybrid, but small car could certainly classify, too. So just another case where that seems like it should be so simple to understand. But if we were to go to take somebody that's in the, you know, the backwoods of, let's say, North Carolina that just got wiped out, how many of them when you said a green car are going to probably think about a Tesla or, you know, fill in the blank of whatever it is? Yeah. Chances are, no, they're going to think about the green, you know, colored whatever car, 

because in those communities, the environmentalism is a completely different view of environmentalism. I mean, they live from the land and off the land. So environmentalism to them is very different than global environmentalism. the last one I give is an example, and this one's a little more complex, but but it is, again, a very real world scenario because it is a real world scenario. So I was down in Houston. No, Austin, not Houston. They're close to each other, but I was in Austin at a conference and I was staying at a residence in 

and I went to a grocery store to pick up some things. I'm staying at a residence in goes. I kind of like to have my own stuff my own way and you know, those work better for me. And there were all the normal kind of stores. There was a Whole Foods that was close by and there was a, I don't know, whatever version of Kroger's is called down in Texas, I can't remember. I mean, regionally, they use different names. There was Albertson's, Safeway, version of whatever they call their version down in that area nearby. But there was also an H-E-B, and I don't know if you're familiar with H-E-B, They're a regional chain. I mean, they're quite big regional chain, but nonetheless regional as opposed to Kroger, Albertsons or there are Safeway ones and Safeway is actually part of Albertsons these days are national chains. So I've never had been to one, but I knew that they had a neurodiversity program. So I said, Well, I'm going to go there because they have a neurodiversity program to help support them, and I've never been to one. So, I'm not looking for anything special so I can get it at any grocery store I want. I go and I start picking up kind of the things that I wanted to have, some juice and some some cheese and, whatever stuff. And I'm convinced of course, that when you're traveling, calories don't count. So you can eat junk food. When you're on a traveling trips, it's 100% zero calorie When you travel. So I'm going down the junk food aisle. And I love barbecue potato chips. So they had a bag of barbecue potato chips. It was a H-E-B brand. So I said, well, I'll try them. And I grabbed the barbecue potato chips and throw them in and I check out and go back to the hotel and, make up some some dinner. Actually, I think I had them make me a sandwich at the deli. I think I can't really remember. But whatever, I go back, I eat and I'm working on the computer that night and I'm I'm eating some of the barbecue potato chips. And of course, I opened the top because there's a top and there's a bottom and you can't open the bottom. It's it's totally against the law. To open the bottom, you have to open the top. The you know, that's my artistic interpretation. That's why they call it the top, because it's the part you're supposed to open. And then of course, there's the label and there's the back side. So if you're going to set the bag down, you don't want to set it down on the label. You want to set it down on the back side so that the labels facing up, right? I mean, this is just, you know, this this just standard artistic things of, you know, there's just certain ways things have to be done. So I'm munching, you know, barbecue potato chips as I'm working on the computer. And I'm looking at the bag now at the label upside down because the top of the bag is facing me. So I'm looking at the label upside down and you're trying to notice things when things are in different orientations that you may or may not catch when you're looking at it in the standard orientation. So it says at the top, H-E-B Underneath it says barbecue potatoes. Yeah, it's or barbecue flavor, potato chips. I think that has to be technically correct. And then it has a box in slightly smaller letters, but it's inside of a box and it says No certified artificial colors. And I read that and I just burst out laughing 

because I'm thinking to myself, This is so cool. All the artificial colors I'm getting are the good old fashioned non-certified kind said No certified artificial colors. It didn't say what they thought it said, which was certified no artificial colors. It said no certified artificial colors. Simply. That means that they didn't mention anything about ones that were not certified. So I'm assuming every artificial color that's in there now has to be them. Good old fashioned non-certified never know what cancer it's going to cause for you type apply instead. 

How many bags of these chips I mean, you know, you're from Texas, you know, H-E-B, while this regional is a pretty big chain. And I'm sure that it says this exact same thing on every varied variety of their flavors of, you know, the pickle flavored potato chips and, you know, whatever. I'm sure they all have the same box that says no certified artificial colors. I mean, first off, how many people signed off on that, that it was actually expressing what they meant, How many shoppers have bought, how many hundreds of thousands of bags of these things, assuming it's telling them that there's no artificial colors when what it's actually saying is we just don't use any certified artificial colors, which is not what I think that they actually intended. I think they actually intended to say certified. No artificial colors. Not no certified artificial colors. 

So you can say the complexity of communication is even if we have all the right words and in this case, we had all the right words. But just by switching the order, it means a completely different thing. But most people will take it based upon the assumption of what it means. And the assumption is going to be, oh, they're saying there's no artificial things in this Which is not what it's saying. And I don't think that they were trying to be mischievous or, you know, deceiving. I think they just plain fucked up, to be honest with you. And nobody at all caught the fact that it didn't say what they actually thought it was saying. I don't think there are any artificial colors whatsoever, 

but that's not what it says

they weren't bad. I mean, they were, you know, come on. If barbecue anything in Texas actually sells, it's got to be at least halfway decent. It's, you know, it's not like getting barbecue up in, upstate New York where, the idea of barbecue up there is definitely not the idea of barbecue in the South, you know, I mean, so, 

yeah, barbecue tends to be it as you go further north. Barbecue, well, a little different as you go north and west, because we see so much influence from Mexican culture. So you tend to get a lot more heat and flavor and such in them. But Northeast barbecue tends to be this, and it's a little bit bolder than ketchup, but it's not. It's not particularly real. Like, you know, I want a barbecue that grabs me with some flavor. Yeah. Yeah, well, let me see if I can find. I got one more thing I'll tell you about communication. So I don't know if those helped you any, but just pointing out those little things that when you point them out to people, it becomes very obvious that, wow, this communication, it's really a lot more complicated than we thought it was. let me see if I can find a slide right here, because this one now starts involving emotional interpretation versus actually what was said, which is a big problem for many autistics. I mean, you tend to have a fair amount of emotionality in your voice. I was taught to have emotionality in my voice. I didn't used to. But we both know that in the autistic community, it's fairly common to have that very flat monotone, prosody of the voice where there's no emotional expression in in their speaking voice. 

it's really funny, even in communications, my daughter's degrees in communications, they don't speak about and teach these little things, which are what trips up communications. I'm just a always basis. I mean, these are always tripping points in communication and that's not what they, they teach

Here we go. Okay, let me share this. 

to explain, this thing is divided into two halves. So the brackets here in the middle we've got in the center the two brackets with the little dotted line between them. Well, that separates the two sides of the conversation. So in the right hand side of the conversation, we have a neurotypical, whatever the hell that really means. 

Speaking to an Aspie. And in this case I did it based upon how I interpret communication. But talking to a lot of autistics, it is fairly common. So I am 100% convinced that most humans communicate using three modes of communication simultaneously and they have at the bottom. If you could actually see these kind of rainbow kind of thing, those are actually words. So they're just all in different colors, but those are actually literal words. So people use literal words obviously, but do you see the little notes here, speakers and notes and whatever? Well, that's indicating the tonality, the musicality of their voice, and they use tonality in their voice. And through tonality, you can completely flip what the meaning of the words are. 

And then of course, there's the little faces are representing facial and body expressions, and they use facial and body expressions also. So most people speak using all three of these modes simultaneously and they don't recognize they're using all three modes simultaneously. They just use all three modes simultaneously. 

I as an ask me, it's almost as if there's a brick wall sitting here and there's a window. And in that window the literal words come through. But the tonality, I don't catch it doesn't, I don't pick it up, it just doesn't come through to me. So even though I was taught to put tonality in my voice, because that's what the speakers need, I don't process it very well unless it's at a real extreme. I just don't pick it up. 

And conversely, body and facial expressions. I am horrible at picking those up. I'm there. I say again, they are really, you know, in the 99th percentile range, in which case, dead people can even pick it up. It's so obvious. So all I get is the literal words. So the story that I give and you can put a lot of stories around this was I had a manager and it was my first day of vacation and I get a message from her that says, I need to meet with you. Well, I already knew this was a bad thing from being fired. Enough times that when your manager wants to meet in your first day off, a vacation is not a good sign. Just not. Not good. So we set up the meeting, and in the meeting she proceeded to tell me everything that I did wrong the last couple of days. And here I thought I was being a very good and conscientious employee by communicating with the people that I'm sorry I couldn't get this accomplished today, but I'm going to take care of it tomorrow. I have some time set aside and I will get you taken care of. I thought that was being conscientious. I actually said I got overwhelmed with the number of things I had to wrap up and apparently in her mind saying overwhelmed is reflecting poorly on the company, although I didn't say the company made me overwhelmed. I merely said I just had more things I had to get done and get done. 

So she says, Tim, I think you should look for a new job. 

Well, that to me sounds like I'm getting fired, right? I mean, plus, it's the first day of my vacation and she wants to talk to me. I mean, you know, so the whole contract seems to be it's not going to be a good outcome. So my immediate response back to her is, isn't this what we should call an h.r. And she had one of those. So extremely obvious facial expressions that i even picked it up, perplexed like 

this isn't making sense, but she says, oh, okay. And we then proceeded to call it h.r. And pick up conversation at a different point. Well, h.r. Did all of their investigation like they should and talk to me and talk to her and back and forth and multiple things. And what they came back and told me was if she had said it and expressed it in better words, she would have said something along the lines of tim. I think this role is causing undue stress on you mentally and physically and maybe finding a different role would just be healthy for for you in the long run, 

which is very different than Tim. You. I think you should look for a new job. But what I missed and they told me was she expressed this with a tonality in any facial expressions of concern that she was showing concern for me. But I don't process the tonality and I don't assess the facial expressions. And it happens to be because I'm autistic, but it's also an intersectional kind of things. There's different cultures that the tonality and the facial expressions are different for what we would use as Americans. So it could have just been somebody from a different culture, not just somebody that was autistic. 

this is showing how the communication, if you are going to apply tonality in facial expressions in your communications, many people are not going to get it and they're only going to get the literal words of what you said. And if your tonality in facial expression was modifying that in an extreme case would be you went to a meeting and the meeting was the worst meeting you've ever been to your life. And afterwards somebody else that was in the meeting goes to you. Hey, Rhonda, what do you think of that meeting? And you go, Oh, man, that was just the best meeting I've ever been to. Obviously, the tonality in the facial expressions is such as saying, this was the biggest waste of my time I've ever had in my life. 

But many people will not process it. And particularly that is a very cultural sarcasm is a very cultural thing. 

So that's one way that communication goes wrong. I got the totally wrong impression because I didn't pick up two of the modes and she was putting most of her meaning in those two modes, not in the mode that I was receiving. Flip over to the other side. Here I am speaking and this was before I was taught to put emotional sounds into my voice. So I spoke like you're stereotypical autistic and I went really, really fast and all the words were exactly the same, like they were all exactly on the same note, and they were all exactly the same pitch. And I was really, really boring to listen to. And Karen will tell you that I also spoke at a higher octave and I had a real edge in my voice. So it was like kind of grating on your even better to make it make it even more fun. 

So here I am saying something to a neurotypical and I'm just using the literal words. Well, the neurotypical and actually this should be expanding because it's not just the neurotypical, it's a much broader cross-section. There's many neuro distinct individuals that don't have this challenge with language. So it's not just neurotypicals, but for ease of explanation, I would say neurotypical. They are expressing three channels of communication because they use three channels, they're expecting tonality to be in there to help inform how to interpret the words, and they're expecting facial expressions to be in there, to know how to help interpret the vocabulary. I am giving pure literal words like you were reading it out of a book and there is no cues or hints coming along in my facial expressions or in my tonality. So what they do, they manufacture the tonality and say, Oh, somebody who talks like that with a monotone and a very even steady pace and no ups and no downs, that's disengaged. They're bored, they're not very interested. They really don't want to be there. They're not very connected. So they're manufacturing the meaning. For me, that was not in my meaning whatsoever. And again, if I don't have problems with eye contact, but you know what? If I have problems with eye contact, so my facial expressions and such as I'm not making that connection with them, I'm looking down at my toes while I'm talking. Well, I just reinforce what they're going to interpret that I am just not in to be in there. In a matter of fact, I would rather be doing almost anything than talking to this idiot that I'm talking to at the moment. 

So now they are going to interpret what I said in a totally incorrect manner because they've applied these emotional elements to it first and then they process it based upon the emotional. they created them for me. So being in the in the absence of them, they created what the emotional elements they thought I was putting in, which truly were not even there. So that is the three channels of communication problem of 

you can communicate things you don't mean and people can interpret ways that you don't think. And then the last part and then actually, unfortunately, I have to go to I have another meeting. 

but the last piece is 

I think that there is 

a couple of ways I approach it. I think that that 

emotions are instinct speaking. 

So when you think about it, people's emotions. I think, you know, most people don't think about instincts in humans, but I'm convinced in humans have instincts. And I think the way that instincts speak in humans, it comes through the emotional channel and you get the something's wrong. I panic, fear, you know, I better be careful. I mean, that's an emotional signal that you're being told that instinctually was probably built into us to keep us safe. Now, as autistics, we tend not to have that connection to that. 

So I think emotions are instinct speaking. If that is true, and I'm convinced it is, and there is enough science studies to show that emotional interpretation happens before a logical interpretation happens, 

which would make sense because if it if it is instinct, instinct is cooked into us at the base level, it's going to happen before the cognitive processes kick in. So we're all going to have the coloration of the instinct telling us what how we should look at this and interpret this. So 

if you are communicating in a manner that trips up an instinctual norm and, one of the instinctual norms is, that if I'm speaking with you, I should be looking at you and engaging with you when we should be having. Well, if I violate that instinctual norm, the instinct is this person is a little shady and not necessarily trustable. 

You were by your violating an instinctual norm. In the instinctual norm, there is as tribe members in not saying, because this Afro-American tribe members are just being picked, you know, whatever tribe, you know, member of your I mean, yeah, I've a Jewish last name. I was brought up Christian by the Jewish last name. So you know it's multi right You know the member of the tribe 

you are violating the tribal norm though of we acknowledge members of the tribe because we have to stick together as the tribe. So we need to acknowledge that we do have this cohesion together as a tribe. And, you know, whites do it. And, you know, all different kinds of groups have their tribal recognition mechanisms. so, you know, vile you violated an instinctual norm, because I think it's those instincts that allowed civilization to develop. Because if you didn't. 

Would allowed you to survive. But it also brought people together that started building civilizations. So it really was something that was very important to create. What we have today is have. But it's also important that we have some people that aren't fully locked into that because what if we didn't have the traders? And I don't mean traders like turncoats, they did the wrong thing. Traders as in merchants that went that went from village and town and city and, political entity to political entity that went from the Arab world into the African world, into the Asian world and spread the culture around. So it was important to have some people that didn't connect to that, but it was important to have that to create civilization. But those are instinctual norms in the problem with instinctual norms is if you were to ask why that person was turned off by you, they probably could not have even told you why, because you violated instinctual. They didn't even realize that. Not saying I'm part of the tribe by saying hello 

was what really made them put off by you. They just knew that somehow you put off. You put them off because it was instinctual. Norm, you violated. because they were more tuned in to these instinctual norms, because those were the emotions that are speaking to them. They're saying that this person should have said hello to me. That was the thing that is expected. But to you, it wasn't part of your instinctual norm, because I think as autistics, we have a disconnect between feelings and I think of it as meta senses. we have all of our five senses. Our five senses work perfectly well, but somehow they're able to take those five senses subconsciously and turn it into something. Speaking. Are their brain going, Be careful, Watch out for this person. And you and I just go, Huh? I don't know. You know, my shoulders are stiff. My well, whatever you know, and it doesn't it doesn't translate to this. Speaking to our brain of that anxiety, you are nervous about this person because if something about him is not quite right. 

So I hopefully hopefully that gave you some some ideas you can sprinkle on If you just think of some. Yeah, well, I mean, a lot of this has to do with belonging because belonging deals with a lot of meeting the instinctual norms because people then have this 

subconscious sense of connection to you. But if you violate the instinctual norms, they don't have this subconscious sense of connectivity. 

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