Most Brains Work Fine
A brain works with relative importance versus field.
This means that when doing a task, the weight parameters constantly shift. The brain is a network that is always in motion, shaped by life experience.
ADHD
Someone with ADD/ADHD switches tasks a lot. This causes frequent redistribution of mental weight, because many different things feel important. Learning happens on the go. This is a valid and very playful strategy. There is nothing wrong with this kind of brain.
The frustration often comes from the feeling of never finishing anything—but that is true in a sense. You are not finishing; you are learning while moving.
In sports terms: you are Usain Bolt. You excel at short sprints, and when you enter hyperfocus, you use your whole body at once.
Autism
Someone with autism often (and I am obviously generalizing) assigns deep importance to a single task. The weights are still redistributed, but on a much smaller scale. A person might learn all countries and capitals, and then the number of inhabitants, and then their histories. This too is a valid strategy.
This approach is closer to how a craftsman works.
Long story short: there is no right or wrong way of doing things. If you have ADHD and feel constantly distracted, remember that no one in the world will keep up with you when you are doing what you love. The same applies to autism. I have seen people do unimaginable things with their “autistic brains.”
If we want to label people as having brain anomalies, we quickly run into a problem: we would have to label everyone. Every brain is specific, and everyone deviates in their own way.
Why it’s often better to ask a woman—she already knows
We take a wooden table.
You dig deeper and deeper and you find molecules.
Do you now know more about what the wooden table is? Does that say anything meaningful about the wooden table?
Many things are made of molecules, so the relative importance of “molecules” decreases. Molecules would only be relevant if only that one wooden table were made of molecules. Because so many things are made of molecules, it becomes a meaningless label. Saying that it is a wooden table says far more.
“It’s about what makes it unique,” Mary would say.
The same applies to brains. ADHD and autism are generic labels. You don’t really get any further with them, because if labels can be applied to many people, they lose their value. If only one person had ADHD and one person had autism, then the labels would have been relevant.
I have never met anybody without a psychiatric disorder. Literally.
Sense of Connection
People who walk this earth with a sense of connection to other people run into privacy issues. That is why G exists. It is the thing in between—a safety net that ensures we won’t hear each other’s thoughts.