Functional Cognitive Typology: An Introduction

[Ursus Chainus]

For the past 15 years I have been working on a predictive theory of human cognition. It is called Functional Cognitive Typology. The book will be called "A Theory of Mind: Introduction to Functional Cognitive Typology" (Since I am ASD... I thought this would be a funny title since I "don't have a theory of mind")

The base scientific philosophy here is that there is no "order" in nature (order is an abstraction used by the human mind to simplify complex observable phenomenon). If there is no natural order, then there are no disorders. There are individuals who are in dysfunctional states instead.

Life itself is based on Function. Function is how living things survive in their environment.
Humans have types to facilitate this survival. ASD (EC) is actually a gene spreading mechanism (get tortured by NTs (CA**))... leave the tribe... mate with members of the new tribe thus adding fresh genes in order to prevent mutational meltdown in the adopted tribe)

Here is the theory in simple terms:

Humans have a survival strategy similar to Ants, Bees, Termites and Naked Mole Rats (These are Eusocial Animals) I call the human strategy "Pre-Eusocial" in that we do not have a single female producing offspring in the human survival group.

Humans have 4 drives that are related to the types found in Eusocial communities. These are diagnosed as disorders when in dysfunction (because they are types... they might be misdiagnosed). These drives are created through differences in 3 neurotransmitter pathways.

The "Disorder" here is what is most likely (but not always) what might be diagnosed if the type is in dysfunction or is extreme. I see this as fairly inaccurate.

Eusocial Type = Drive = Tribal Function ~ Disorder-Orthography

1. Drone = Understanding=Teacher, Caretaker~ADHD - U (Cannot Process Culture)
2. Worker = Acceptance=Participants~NT, Baseline -A
3. Soldier= Trust=Guardian (of children) General)~Schizotypal -T
4. Queen=Respect=Chief, Queen~Narcissistic Personality Disorder (both genders) -R

1. Feels social pleasure through someone understanding they care
2. Feels social pleasure in a group
3. Feels pleasure on being trusted
4. Feels pleasure when people look up at them (either in adoration or fear)

These have an older kind of type:
Extra-Cultural = ASD -EC (Cannot Learn Culture)
Cultural = non ASD -C

And two even older types
Somatic = Adrenaline Seeking -S (Feels pleasure for adrenaline creating activities, novel experiences)
Cerebral = Adrenaline Averse -C (Feels pain/sickness for adrenaline creating activities, novel experiences)

Respect Driven and Acceptance Driven are the newest types (the modern types) and have a secondary type.
in the orthography:
Respect-Understanding RU ~ Narcissist
Respect-Trust RT ~ Sociopath, Psychopath
Acceptance-Understanding AU = More progressive group joiner
Acceptance-Trust = AT More conservative group Joiner

The acronyms work like this
Culture Type+Drive+(Secondary Drive)+Adrenaline Type (Possible diagnosis)

ECUS = Extra-Cultural Understanding Driven Somatic (this would be ASD + ADHD)
ECUC = Extra-Cultural Understanding Driven Cerebral (this would be ASD + ADD)
CUC = Cultural Understanding Driven Cerebral (ADD)
CUS = Cultural Understanding Driven Somatic (ADHD)
ECRTC = Extra-Cultural Respect Trust Driven Cerebral (ASD Cerebral Sociopath)
CRUC = Cultural Respect Understanding Driven Cerebral (Cerebral Narcissist)
and many other combos.

There is something I call "The Pattern".
If Your Dad is R and your Mother is U
(This is not always exact... about 80 percent of the time it is, just remove the genders that do not exist)
1st Son is likely U
1st Daughter is likely R
2nd Son is Likely R
2nd Daughter is Likely U
3rd Son is likely U
3rd Daughter is likely R
4th Son is Likely R
4th Daughter is Likely U

It is the opposite if the mother is R and the father is U

Anyway... since I don't process and never learned culture... my brain has to built theoretical frameworks to understand the world. It is predicted that I would come up with this kind of theory. Since everything lives on a continuum, we can add + or - to be more accurate.

I am EC+U+S-

You may see me referring to this theory in my posts, so I felt it best to explain it.

 

[tree]

What does "(get tortured by NTs (CA**)" mean?

 

[Thinx]

This looks interesting, I read your posts on another thread where you spoke about this and I understood on that thread what you meant, better than here. Can you add some explanation and examples. I liked the idea on the other thread, it certainly reduced a lot of medical speak thats applied in diagnoses to it's real driver, NT cultural norms.

 

[All-Rounder]

What does "(get tortured by NTs (CA**)" mean?

C = cultural
A = eusocial type 2 [which is comprised by NTs in the writings and is simplified as A, driven by Acceptance, in a social group]

 

[Moonhart44]

when is the book coming out

 

[tree]

@Ursus Chainus


"Extra-Cultural = ASD -EC (Cannot Learn Culture)
Cultural = non ASD -C"


"Somatic = Adrenaline Seeking -S (Feels pleasure for adrenaline creating activities, novel experiences)
Cerebral = Adrenaline Averse -C"

-C, -S, -EC

What do the marks before the letters mean?
Are they just hyphens/dashes, for spacing?
Or meant to be minus signs?

 

[Ursus Chainus]

C = cultural
A = eusocial type 2 [which is comprised by NTs in the writings and is simplified as A, driven by Acceptance, in a social group]

Correct

 

[Ursus Chainus]

when is the book coming out

Well... getting my brain to focus well enough to write this is a bit like herding cats. What I appreciate most is positive energy my way... that seems to help. What I want most is for people to be helped and heal. Being part of the human survival method helps Neurodiverse people so themselves not as broken.

This is not way I see what I do... it just makes me want to get this book written.

I have a full outline and have bits and pieces written here and there so I need to pull it all together... So I don't know when. Covid pretty much made it even more difficult.

 

[Ursus Chainus]

This looks interesting, I read your posts on another thread where you spoke about this and I understood on that thread what you meant, better than here. Can you add some explanation and examples. I liked the idea on the other thread, it certainly reduced a lot of medical speak thats applied in diagnoses to it's real driver, NT cultural norms.

Sure!

When I get time. I have a busy day so it might take me a bit
Thank you for your interest!

 

[Ursus Chainus]

@Ursus Chainus


"Extra-Cultural = ASD -EC (Cannot Learn Culture)
Cultural = non ASD -C"


"Somatic = Adrenaline Seeking -S (Feels pleasure for adrenaline creating activities, novel experiences)
Cerebral = Adrenaline Averse -C"

-C, -S, -EC

What do the marks before the letters mean?
Are they just hyphens/dashes, for spacing?
Or meant to be minus signs?

The dashes are more like spaces... no meaning. I use - and + after the abbreviations.

Example:
C+AU+S+ = Extreme Cultural acceptance understanding (a more scattered acceptance driven person who participates in many groups) Extreme somatic (Likes skydiving and risky behaviors)

 

[Ursus Chainus]

Here is part of the evolutionary model:
Every person and every tribe is a part of larger humanity which has been highly successful. Humans do not like cooperating with those culturally different than them so there needs to be instinctual level behaviors at a tribal level. Think of tribes as organisms that actually depend on other tribes to survive. In a sense we have different functionalities (The functional cognitive types) that cannot be taught and MUST live outside of culture.

The survival method that humans use is culture. This typically has been in small groups < 150 (Dunbar's number). These groups are called tribes. Often cohesive cultures were even smaller. There are many problems with this.

Human culture is generally aggressive with one culture viewing others as inferior. Often humans in other tribes would not have been considered human. Because of this insular nature... fresh genetic material would be unavailable as humans would not want to mate with someone from another tribe. This is called a deme. After several generations, the tribe would suffer ill effects from in-breading. This would cause a mutational meltdown.

Science has not explained why mutational meltdowns rarely happen. Some cultures do have a strategy for this. For example, the Vaupes of Colombia have a taboo about procreating with someone who speaks their language. There are tribal exchanges at this point but this was and is not always the case. More aggressive cultures might not do this.

There needs to be a function within a tribe to both expel native born and accept foreign born individuals. Initially (according to FCT) this function was performed by people I call "Extra-Culturals". This maps into ASD (not exactly because diagnosis is often faulty).

The people that are referred to here as NTs are hostile to Extra-Culturals causing them to leave the tribe. Foreign culture is the biggest threat to any tribe. We call this "tribalism". It makes sense that an individual who upsets the birth culture would either be expelled or leave. By not carrying culture, an individual can join a foreign tribe.

Later, when the cognitive types became more pronounced (the modern types R and A formed), The understanding driven type who may be able to learn culture but do not have the capability to follow its norms, took over the gene spreading role.The understanding driven individual would leave the birth tribe and mate with a leader in the adopted tribe. Half foreign born offspring might not survive due to prejudice. Mating with the leader gives their offspring a better chance. This predicts "The pattern".

Extra-cultural individuals then started forming a new function of tribe splitting. Tribes were larger at this point so new cultures would form. These were often led by ECRT* (Sociopath) in the form of a new religion (religion was culture). The EC individuals would break away at a certain population density as resources would have become scare otherwise. Even though humans were hunter gatherers, we tend to follow patterns in that. A new tribe with a new geological area would have a greater chance of survival.

When I say that being tortured by NTs is a feature, this is what I mean. They do this to kick us out of non-existent tribes because humanity just hasn't changed enough to be fully functional in our new massive nation tribes. We are still following old tribal survival methods.

Formation of a tribe is based on two things, superiority over other tribes and feeling victimized by those other tribes. This forms a social glue. It also is the reason we have racism and war.

The positive side for all of you lonely aspies out there is that by forming relationships with people outside of your birth culture (the more distant, the better). You stand a better chance of having a functional and happy relationship.

 

[Au Naturel]

But there is order in nature. Without order, there would be no predictability. Science is the pursuit of predictability. Burn down a forest and I can tell you exactly what sequence of plants will grow over time until it reaches its climax state again. The progression is quite orderly.

Another way of looking at it is that relationships in nature are ordered, even if extremely complex. Order is just a set of rules. Lions don't have a choice in whether they eat prey animals - that is order. Wildebeasts eat grass. More order. Grass needs CO2, water, dirt to grow in, the right temperatures, and sunlight. That is very ordered.

I'm finding a lot of those other assertions to be dubious. I'll just pick one. Tribes predate humans and probably even primates. The structure was handed down, species to species.

The formation of a tribe is dependent on genetic relationships. Tribes evolved as extended families. My extended family probably has far more of my unique genes in it than I do. The other tribe is comparatively unrelated. In the competition for resources, tribe members typically want to kill them, enslave them, or drive them away in order to secure maximal resources. All the "we're better than you are" assertions are surface justifications for something very deep and primordial. Many human behaviors that are maladaptive in the 21st century were perfectly adaptive in a world where most of our history consisted of famine, disaster and war.

The human tribe is little different from a chimpanzee troop. Every tribal behavior you see in humans is seen in chimps including, love and compassion, murder and war. There's no deep psychology to it.

The difference is the larger human brain that allows us to learn things counter to what our limbic system is saying. It is the species sole hope of surviving.

 

[Ursus Chainus]

But there is order in nature. Without order, there would be no predictability. Science is the pursuit of predictability. Burn down a forest and I can tell you exactly what sequence of plants will grow over time until it reaches its climax state again. The progression is quite orderly.

Another way of looking at it is that relationships in nature are ordered, even if extremely complex. Order is just a set of rules. Lions don't have a choice in whether they eat prey animals - that is order. Wildebeasts eat grass. More order. Grass needs CO2, water, dirt to grow in, the right temperatures, and sunlight. That is very ordered.

I'm finding a lot of those other assertions to be dubious. I'll just pick one. Tribes predate humans and probably even primates. The structure was handed down, species to species.

The formation of a tribe is dependent on genetic relationships. Tribes evolved as extended families. My extended family probably has far more of my unique genes in it than I do. The other tribe is comparatively unrelated. In the competition for resources, tribe members typically want to kill them, enslave them, or drive them away in order to secure maximal resources. All the "we're better than you are" assertions are surface justifications for something very deep and primordial. Many human behaviors that are maladaptive in the 21st century were perfectly adaptive in a world where most of our history consisted of famine, disaster and war.

The human tribe is little different from a chimpanzee troop. Every tribal behavior you see in humans is seen in chimps including, love and compassion, murder and war. There's no deep psychology to it.

The difference is the larger human brain that allows us to learn things counter to what our limbic system is saying. It is the species sole hope of surviving.

I find this dubious


There is function instead of order. This is important... plants that grow after a fire do so following the environments that they are functional in. Some grow better in the ashes with full sunlight, others grow better in the shade that other plants create. This is function, not order. If after the fire, you pour herbicide everywhere... will the order happen? It wont... order is simple and predictable, life is not in that way. If I throw a baseball in a vacuum and you know its trajectory and velocity, you can predict where it will be in the future. This is not order but physics. Throw a baseball at a batter in a baseball game... can you predict what will happen? That is not order.


I am very careful about using these terms. There is no natural order... things are not ordered or disordered. Things live, reproduce and grow in environments in which they are functional. Humans are one of the animals that creates their own environment. That is order, I suppose.

When I talk about order, I am talking about a specific way in which the human mind takes complex real world phenomenon and simplifies it for storage. (another kind of memory)

>>The formation of a tribe is dependent on genetic relationships. Tribes evolved as extended families. My extended family probably has far more of my unique genes in it than I do. The other tribe is comparatively unrelated. In the competition for resources, tribe members typically want to kill them, enslave them, or drive them away in order to secure maximal resources. All the "we're better than you are" assertions are surface justifications for something very deep and primordial. Many human behaviors that are maladaptive in the 21st century were perfectly adaptive in a world where most of our history consisted of famine, disaster and war.<<

Please explain this using function. War should only happen in resource poor environments. What about racism? Name some other animals that have wars. Other animals have starvation and disaster... Are humans not animals? Are we special? Are we created in the image of God? Are we part of God's order?

Humans are not chimps... there were many branches of Homo that had different ways of surviving. The theories I am working on show that troop behavior in the primary branch humans originated from was much more similar to that of bonobos.

I am sorry but this is the status quo way of thinking and it is not predictive. I find it very "hand wavy".. it is what it is... we fight over resources... yada yada.

If you were to come up with a predictive theory that explains most of human behavior, what would it be?
Lets talk about your theory... I have already read "Guns, Germs and Steel" and I disagree.

Also, your family genetics today have nothing to do with what was happening even 10,000 or 1,000,000 years ago. There are many way of refreshing genes these days. There were not so many back then.

Wow me with some new thinking Why do we have disorders like ASD, ADD, NPD, Schizotypal disorders?
Why are there NTs?
War is rarely about resources but about differences as is racism, religious intolerance. Why do we have these things? How were they perfect adaptations in even resource rich areas? How are they functional?

Lets start off with a simple question... "What is life?". That is a cornerstone of any scientific study about life. Define this first

 

[Au Naturel]

Heavy sigh!

I'm not sure what you mean by "order." Order is a temporal sequence that follows causality, such as in a system evolving according to natural law. Order means there is the potential for predictability. Natural law is the description of how the universe works and makes predictions and understanding possible. It tells us what relationships are possible and what interactions can happen.


Planetary orbits are extremely ordered. They are "forced" into this order by their characteristics, positions, and momentums. The relationships are described by natural law and can be calculated for millennia in advance. At one time we'd have said it was Newton's laws of gravitation but today we know there are tiny imperfections that were resolved when Einstein imagined his theories of special and general relativity. (Newton still works for most things.) Maybe someday we'll find even tinier imperfections to be resolved by yet another improvement of our understanding of natural law.

If you know the position and momentum of a planet and a star and any other local bodies you can predict exactly what their relationship will be for a very long time into the future.

I see order everywhere.

 

[Au Naturel]

Why do we have disorders like ASD, ADD, NPD, Schizotypal disorders?

Because nothing is perfect. All bell curves have tails. And it is possible that having a subclinical dose of these things is advantageous but having enough to be noticed is not.

War is rarely about resources but about differences as is racism, religious intolerance.

War is always about either dominance or fear. Who is in charge. And who is in charge gets the resources. The same reasons chimps go to war.

Ditto racism. Individuals may have varying reasons but it always comes down to who is in charge. People do like to think they are in charge and that means having people beneath them. Everything else is just a rationalization. Dominance is a very important drive throughout the animal kingdom. Politicians stir up this need by setting poor and working-class whites against blacks or immigrants or whoever. Or liberals against conservatives and vica versa. But they don't create the drive, they only take advantage of it.

Religious intolerance is also about dominance and fear. All these and others, be it homophobia or misogynism or extreme partisanship or nativism or hypernationalism, ect., are all about who is in charge. Who is dominant. Who is the in-group and who is the out-group. Who gets to lay down the rules and keep the resources. It doesn't even matter what silliness we divide ourselves over. Today's billionaire is using his corporation as his tribe and expressing that alpha male need to dominate. Over and over and over and over.

Humans seem to have an innate need to do this and even when there is not an actual difference we'll make them up over the tiniest things. Freud called this the "pathology of small differences." I think it is inherent to human nature to do this and it goes all the way back to prehumans instinctively needing a group to belong to for protection against the others.

 

[Ursus Chainus]

Sigh...
Quantum Physics and Chaos theory?

Science isn't about knowing everything and thinking you know everything.

Yes... Newtonian physics are predictable (to a degree)... can I predict you? What are you doing next? is life Newtonian physics? Is it chaotic? What is life? What is function?

Of course you "see" order. That is how the human brain works.... We build ideas around everything we see. Those ideas are most likely incorrect. I don't see order how you do... this is a manifestation of my place on the so called "spectrum".

Please define life... what is it? You have not proven to me that "order" exists (outside of human cognition) and that disorders exist. (outside of human cognition)

Can I predict you? I can predict the orbits of planets... been there and done that.

Gut feel or what you have read or been told is not your theory.

After this... I find your view uninteresting. I want people to challenge my theory! You are not challenging it in any way.

Start by your definition of life, please. If you cannot define what life is, there is no argument here.

Do you have your own ideas? Do you understand well enough to either confirm or deny this theory I have? This is a useless discussion and unhelpful otherwise. I will simply continue expressing this theory.

I will ignore your responses after this if you can't answer the question. What is life?

 

[Au Naturel]

Sigh...
Quantum Physics and Chaos theory?

Science isn't about knowing everything and thinking you know everything.

Yes... Newtonian physics are predictable (to a degree)... can I predict you? What are you doing next? is life Newtonian physics? Is it chaotic? What is life? What is function?

Of course you "see" order. That is how the human brain works.... We build ideas around everything we see. Those ideas are most likely incorrect. I don't see order how you do... this is a manifestation of my place on the so called "spectrum".

Please define life... what is it? You have not proven to me that "order" exists (outside of human cognition) and that disorders exist. (outside of human cognition)

Can I predict you? I can predict the orbits of planets... been there and done that.

Gut feel or what you have read or been told is not your theory.

After this... I find your view uninteresting. I want people to challenge my theory! You are not challenging it in any way.

Start by your definition of life, please. If you cannot define what life is, there is no argument here.

Do you have your own ideas? Do you understand well enough to either confirm or deny this theory I have? This is a useless discussion and unhelpful otherwise. I will simply continue expressing this theory.

I will ignore your responses after this if you can't answer the question. What is life?

I note you haven't offered a working definition of order other than how the mind organizes things. The mind can imagine order that isn't there or it can find order that is. Good science - and logic - strives for the latter and predictability is the test.

Life has many definitions. My favorite is whatever one does to fill the space between being born and dying. But it is a personal definition that treats life as a conscious experience rather than a biological phenomenon and it is only one of many perspectives. Fixating on that as the sole test of the validity of a person's posts is somewhat counterproductive.

To start throwing out ad hominem arguments and accuse people of not thinking or not having any original ideas will not win friends and influence people. I'm not at all interested in "challenging" anything although a friendly discussion might have been nice. You are uninterested, so I'm signing off.

 

[Ursus Chainus]

Yes, I do want a friendly discussion with you but...

I started this thread to explain this theory and I am not finished.


Please, Ask questions so you get where I am coming from... then challenge it on its merits. Offering a competing theory without trying to get mine is simply too much for me to deal with in this thread.

I have a similar discussion so many times that I find it personally difficult to re-argue (the aggressive chimp/ ape fighting for resources theory explains all human behavior and disorders are "imperfections"). I am sorry if I come across as irritated by it. I disagree with Raymond Dart on this. It is oversimplified.

The animals that have warfare closest to humans are ants, bees and termites. Chimps have troop skirmishes and bonobos generally make love not war. Homo and Pan come from a common ancestor but we have a different survival method at this point which I call Pre-Eusocial. There is no consensus on the behaviors early homo, so we cannot makes assumptions based on chimps. Functional survival methods do not indicate what came before. As environments change, surviving species adapt. I am saying that the human adaptation involved cognitive types.

I cannot see how one type of brain (NT) could have survived.
We would still be in the trees planning a committee to discuss having another committee to explore the option of leaving the trees ... as the forest canopy turned into grasslands.

My theory is very different than the others that came before it. I see it as more probable.


So...
We are stuck on order vs function. I see order as an abstraction. I do not feel there is a "natural order". I feel that human minds place order where function belongs. Categorization is just that.

Anyway:
I want to take you through my thinking and how I see these things. It starts with the definition of life:

Life is a kind of "stuff" that stores and records environmental information and "uses" it for continuity (survival) of that storage.

This storage happens on many levels (RNA, DNA and its expression, Instinct, Culture, Sensual Memory (That berry tastes good to me), Experiential Memory (last time I petted a lion, I nearly died) and Hierarchical Memory (words, order, culture, abstractions, categorization, rules)).

Function is memory is life.

I apologize to Au Naturel for being reactive here. I have worked on this theory for 15 years and I am trying to explain it in words to help me get it in to a book form. If anyone wants to have a friendly discussion on their theories, please start a new thread and let me know. It is too difficult for me to try to explain why I agree or disagree with other theories until I have finished explaining this one.

 

[tree]

So the theory is basically Us vs Them?

 

[Ursus Chainus]

So the theory is basically Us vs Them?

That is a way of putting a small subset of the theory

It predicts how badly ASD people suffer being around NTs. Even though it is functional part of the human original survival strategy. It is more dysfunctional now in that we do not live in smaller tribes. We do not have the option of leaving our birth tribe in many cases.

I hope that if the theories are validated, It would help with acceptance and understanding of a dysfunctional dynamic that needs to change between what I call Cultural and Extra-Cultural (ASD and NT). NTs are also in a dysfunctional situation with the rest of us.