
Systemisers are better at maths - lainon
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30013-8
======
ve55
See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing%E2%80%93systemizin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing%E2%80%93systemizing_theory#Extreme_male_brain_theory_of_autism)
for more information on this concept

~~~
ur-whale
Thanks for the link. After reading it, given the current political climate in
Universities, I'm genuinely surprised Baron-Cohen has managed to retain his
position after publishing a theory like that.

~~~
dan-robertson
He has a permanent fellowship. I think it would be quite hard for Trinity to
get rid of him even if they wanted to (and they don’t really have any desire
or pressure to do that anyway)

------
sophistication
The empathizing–systemizing theory seems to be on shaky ground:

[http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/164069138209/in-
lieu-o...](http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/164069138209/in-lieu-of-a-
longer-post-ive-been-planning-to)

[http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/164123186154/baron-
coh...](http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/164123186154/baron-cohen-
miscellany)

The weirdest result might be that a pathology that one would ascribe to the
empathizing side, borderline personality disorder (BPD), actually _positively_
correlates with measures of systemizing, so there is a strange overlap between
BPD and autism, the pathology one associates with systemizing:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5590952/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5590952/)

What's more, there is no clear sex difference in empathy:

[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0179336)

\---

More reliable and pronounced sex differences have been found on a similar
scale, namely interest in things vs interest in people and that has also been
linked to the gender gap in STEM:

[https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.0018...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00189/full)

Interestingly, some sex differences in cognitive processing disappear when one
simply changes the domain to be more focused on people (e.g. rotation of dolls
vs rotation of abstract shapes):

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104160801...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1041608015001818)

So the underlying difference here might simply be in innate preferences to
process information that is in a social context vs an arbitrary context.

Autists have a lower preference for the social context, which is essentially a
difference in value function, so value from epistemic/predictive accuracy
independent of norms gets more weight.

It looks like systemizing emerges in both extremes of the people vs things
dimension (though more likely in the latter), explaining both the NCBI study
above and the Nature article linked here. Looking only at interest in people
is a cleaner approach IMO (not a cognitive scientist though, so take this with
a grain of salt). Systemizing seems to basically capture something like
abstract thinking, but, guess what, you can also think abstractly about social
problems. The crucial point is rather whether it actually feels pleasurable to
delve into extremely obscure worlds of symbols and concepts, far removed from
ordinary social experience and norms, and here the sex difference is quite
pronounced (about one standard deviation). Notably this sex difference appears
to be fully determined by presence of prenatal androgen (a male sex hormone
such as testosterone), and a preference for gendered toys (dolls vs cars) also
been found in some primate species:

[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1992.tb0...](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1992.tb00028.x)

[https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13596-male-monkeys-
pr...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13596-male-monkeys-prefer-boys-
toys/)

~~~
s-shellfish
This isn't strange at all (at least to me). I've been misdiagnosed as bpd in
facilities that were socially chaotic. People who diagnosed me were also
selectively biased to what information about me was indicative of past,
present and expected behavior. It was a very traumatizing experience and the
sad thing is this happens frequently in mental health care across the US to
autistic individuals.

I can understand emotions in a systemized way but it requires watching
patterns of every individual I interact with to learn. It also is very scary
because I don't want to get to know anyone so well I accidentally mistake deep
insecurities for topics to attempt polite conversation over. Thus, highly
selective with individuals and how many (too many is cognitively overloading,
but I've adapted fairly well on my own (somehow)) at my job, which - I'm a
software developer, so although I'm not surrounded by people who have autism,
I am surrounded by people who have a greater tolerance and higher sensitivity
to neourological diversity.

I'm female. My mom dresses me mostly (most of my clothes are her old clothes).
She's a beautician. I'm 32. Mental health care is annoying because of course
BPD diagnosis has historically been highly likely, due to superficial snap
judgements based on appearance. I had a coworker tell me flatly that
appearances don't matter and this was very liberating. I continue to work on
managing to communicate myself perfectly - great irony anticipating peculiar
usage of language. Pedantry, always want to make sure the words I use are
internally definitely correctly therefore used correctly (but I've been able
to simplify the importance of this down to business logic definitions and
computer science / programming languages / software definitions).

I am hoping I find an autism therapist that can actually help me in real life.
At least with venturing out outside of working hours to create some semblance
of a social life.

Systemizing is pattern matching. It's always hard when 2 people's patterns
don't match perfectly. Calling it a willingness to work together or understand
one another is so oversimplified with respect to the delicate balance process
of developing relationships, it's not even funny.

Preference, socializing. I would say I have high preference to socialize where
I have trust for both my expected pattern of behavior and people I trust -
that their pattern of behavior will be relatively stable and neither myself
nor they will be hurtful in any way. It never matters if it's one person or a
group. Emotions run through people in groups in the same systematic way they
do in individuals. Being perfectly calm all the time or just flat affect to
stabilize groups that have related themselves to me in some unknown variant is
really hard, and looping group behavior of 'i have an emotional outburst' \-
implies -> the group does generally, this drives me crazy because I can always
relate it to myself therefore blame myself internally.

BPD is the same pattern mentality assuming that diagnosis was correct at one
point of me (again, relative to social environment), no ability to communicate
self because people have their theories they depend on for their survival
(hostile healthcare centers) or control it (this is taken as hostile behavior
in such places, even though the control element is really only intended to
control myself and my emotions, not anyone else). Stuck in between
contradictory social environments with established rules (that may contradict
or conflict), either deeply ingrained behavior from the past with new context,
or multiple conflicting social environments. It's a stigmatized illness. BPD
is not being able to keep up with all of them, or not being able to
generate/interpret rules quickly enough to manage self behavior in all,
possibily unchosen social environments.

I would never want to go back into the hell that gets me labeled as BPD
because it's one of the worst labels to carry. There's always the expectation
that "I'm the bad one" that gets carried with the diagnosis. But mental
illness labels in general, always seem pointless to me in the long term. Can
always explain them all (except ASPD, that's intent to cause harm) in terms of
individual behavior relative to social environmental expectations and
judgements. This can all be systemized. This is probably why I get labeled as
a hostile element in so called 'cattle mental health centers' (phrase comes
from a PsyD I saw). Intent is never to cause harm. Everything just often turns
into patterns, or systems, to me, I'd prefer to see it as a gift, not a curse.
Hard rules to not systemize individuals are of supreme importance.

~~~
sophistication
It seems to me that BPD means obsessing about the social domain and ASD means
obsessing about the non-social domain. Both obsessions are amplified by social
exclusion due to being neurodivergent. Obsession leads to systemizing.

Baron-Cohen's theory is a fantastic _near-miss_ IMHO. I mean, he was clearly
onto _something_. Women are warmer in temperament, men are more autistic, have
better mechanical and spatial reasoning skills. But what Baron-Cohen may have
missed is that those are _symptoms_ rather than causes. Symptoms of a
difference in innate value function in the degree to which the social domain
is valued. But that's value at a very low, instinctive, perceptual level.
Autists might still like socializing, but they do not get a kick out of
processing social information that neurotypical people do, so their entire
thinking apparatus down to low level neuronal circuits will be shaped by
different optimization constraints, from birth onward.

~~~
s-shellfish
I've personally had both since birth. Obsession with machines and computation,
that understanding maps over to understanding social systems.

I don't like it when it maps over to social systems. Everything gets shifted.
Easier to be a coder, focus on machines, focus on words, symbols, patterns in
symbols.

Math, math is the bridge between both. Isomorphic. Systems are mental graphs
of static points of observation anticipated to be stable/ predictable and
arrows indicating direction and flow.

As a female I really don't like gender binaries. Women generally, sure, but
that's culture - cultural expectations.

~~~
sophistication
I stated this in an overly mutual exclusive way. I suspect the difference is
that people with BPD actually _enjoy_ obsessing about social domain in a
systemizing way, while autists don't. Autists might still engage in such
obsession though, but for a different kind of intrinsic interest (interest in
people vs what remains if you remove interest in people, namely mere
epistemic/predictive interest).

~~~
s-shellfish
I read something about autism being processing information removed from
'self'.

I have interest in some people I trust. But 'mind' and 'thought' are generally
very fluid. That's just a fact from seeing connections in how minds think -
being able to see the connection that creates their connection.

Always have to be delicate with it.

Epistomology is interesting. Predictive, I'm always more comfortable
relegating this to machines - is the problem decidable or not. Obviously
computer programs implicitly affect people. Cognitive overload because, chaos.
Can't predict everything beyond the predefined context.

Math is always perfect. Contained system with rules that define it's behavior.

I understand you are saying things in an overly mutually exclusive way, but
for me, if I deeply identify with something, it's hard to understand where you
are coming from, because I don't know.

From what I recall, Ramanujan considered math a compulsion. Obsession, it's
something that binds everything together. I believe math is discovered, not
invented. It has to be, implicitly. Models come from reality.

I can't imagine enjoyment of social systemization. I imagine life long
positive experiences would lead to enjoyment. If it's an illness (BPD),
suggesting there's enjoyment indicates belief that the intent of the sufferer
is malicious. I don't believe this is the case. A disorder comes from negative
experiences. BPD is then, always trying to find the right rules to solve the
problem. The problem becomes recurrent when the sufferer is identified as the
source of the problem, or the sufferer believes they are both cause (and
supposed solution) to the problem, but both cause and solution are
fundamentally defined in a way the sufferer does not have any control over
defining. Therefore, issues predicting, mapping traumatic experiences onto
present stable environments.

Problem solving mentality for growth, escape from the negative. It's a
compulsion, not an enjoyment to obsess. It's a compulsion to correct
everything so everything is stable.

Talking...

~~~
sophistication
> If it's an illness (BPD), suggesting there's enjoyment indicates belief that
> the intent of the sufferer is malicious. I don't believe this is the case. A
> disorder comes from negative experiences.

Well, we are also hardwired to like chocolate, but if we eat too much of it,
then it becomes a disorder.

I was imprecise about the word "enjoyment". What I meant was simply attainment
of reward signals. But reward signals do not necessarily imply happiness. At
minimum they shape what feels like the right thing to do. At maximum they
cause euphoria. E.g. a person with obsessive-compulsive disorder will repeat
the same sequence of actions, say, 100 times a day, and each time it will feel
like the right thing to do, but such a person will not find much enjoyment.

I suspect that in neurotypical people, the processing of social information
(dominance relations, social status, norms, nurture, grooming, communication,
gossiping etc.), always feels like the right thing to do, from birth onward,
so their neuronal circuits are finely attuned to computations in that domain.

In the absence of such reward signals, the circuits are not trained for such
things, and what remains is epistemic circuitry: Building models of the world
by approximating/predicting how it works based on accumulated information.

(All of this ignores, of course, the entire neuroscience literature on this
topic, which identified e.g. differences in synaptic density in people with
ASD; though perhaps the increased value of non-social things comes from more
circuits doing epistemic computation, but I'm just shooting in the dark
really…)

~~~
s-shellfish
> All of this ignores, of course, the entire neuroscience literature on this
> topic, which identified e.g. differences in synaptic density in people with
> ASD; though perhaps the increased value of non-social things comes from more
> circuits doing epistemic computation, but I'm just shooting in the dark
> really…

Do you have any links to any articles?

From the research I've read, PhD students in the field (was lucky to meet and
talk to a few at other mental health care centers), a lot of the research on
mental health care is focused on GABA.

[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1471-4159....](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1471-4159.2010.06858.x)

[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/343/6171/675](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/343/6171/675)

[https://academic.oup.com/ijnp/article/16/6/1309/753308](https://academic.oup.com/ijnp/article/16/6/1309/753308)

This seems relevant, but likewise, shooting in the dark:

[https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fendo.2013.0005...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fendo.2013.00059/full)

~~~
sophistication
[https://www.google.com/search?btnG=Search&q=synaptic+overcon...](https://www.google.com/search?btnG=Search&q=synaptic+overconnectedness+autism)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2001237/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2001237/)

[https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2007.10.016](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2007.10.016)

The overall picture seems to be local overgrowth/overconnectivity and
global/cortico-co-cortical underconnectivity (especially to the frontal lobe).
Cortex tissue appears to implement universal epistemic circuits, since they
are known to learn arbitrary functions e.g. one can rewire visual input to the
auditory cortex in animals and they learn to see. So, too much of those
circuits might both imply heightened focus on the details and more intrinsic
reward (=reward from pattern prediction/completion for information
gain/exploration) which might as well explain the overall difference in value
function, deemphasizing reward from social and normative things by relative
magnitude. Norms and social stuff is rather processed frontally and
subcortically in the insula and amygdala, AFAIK, but there is no reason to
believe this is not also partly wired into the cortex too. Evolution has
likely encoded most functions all over the place as it likes to do with the
genome itself.

------
Leary
"The WAIS-R arithmetic score also depended on sex, being higher for men than
for women (12.1 vs 11.1, t149 = 2.4, p = 0.02), and on occupation, being
higher for participants in biological/physical than in social fields."

Is this allowed?

~~~
ckuehne
What do you mean by 'allowed'? Why should it not be allowed?

~~~
red75prime
Probably the lack of "These results should be interpreted with caution and do
not necessarily indicate genetic causes of the differences."

~~~
solarkraft
I would interpret it as a sarcastic comment on the perception of reporting of
sex differences.

