The “signal blind” mental architecture is not defined by struggle with social signals, but by the absence of them. I do not experience social anxiety, sensory overload, or the “social burnout” common in autism. Where others describe a “painful gap” between themselves and society, I perceive a neutral data field. My logic is not a compensatory tool for a broken social sense; it is the primary and only mode of operation.

About Me

This site documents a specific cognitive architecture: Total Social Signal Blindness. It is the functional map of my own cognitive architecture. I discovered late in life that I might be neurodivergent and this is what I discovered.

At over 50 years of age a therapist asked me if I had ever been diagnosed as autistic. I hadn’t and wondered why she might ask. It turns out she had excellent instincts as I have significant overlap on all the Category A indicators, such as Saying The Wrong Thing, but none of the Category B indicators (I can’t experience Shame and have no social anxiety). Typically that might suggest SCD, but it is not that either.

I believe I am unable to process any social signals. I have no Theory of Mind and no Social Salience. Yet, I didn’t even realize I was different than anybody else – sure I had my oddities, but so did everybody else. This seemed well within the bounds of personality. Curiously, the lack of social salience may have played a part in this perception. I couldn’t see the signals and nobody had ever mentioned them. In cases where there were hints, like Double Empathy, it didn’t bother me – the part of the brain that would cause you to care is … you guessed it, the social saliency network. And mine was turned off.

My wife and I were reading Autism Couple’s Workbook and I was struck by how pertinent the book seemed to be in terms of my outward behavior, but then it was a complete miss on things like meltdowns. I kept searching to understand the mechanism and I finally found it when the book mentioned Theory of Mind being a key factor behind several of the behaviors. I talked to the therapist and she gave me the key that unlocked it all: Theory of Mind is not a logic puzzle in NT people, it is automatic and effortless.

From this I was able to build a predictive model that fit my entire experience: I had no Social Salience and thus no social signal. I was signal blind. This is distinct from the Autism Experience where there is often a social signal but it has to be manually processed, though in some cases people experience Hyposalience. I have none and no workarounds. I perceive humans around me as Black Boxes where I can observe their inputs and outputs but have no notion of their inner state (thoughts and emotions). I am not a psychopath, I have extremely rigid Ethics in an Axiomatic Deontology – the first rule of me is do not harm others.

To be clear: I am not a robot, even though it might seem that way. I have long-term friends. I have been married for almost 25 years and have children. I am a successful software developer and have been with a top tier company for over 20 years. I think the interesting thing about all of this is that I made it work – I have a system (see below). It isn’t without flaws, some significant, but many of them I didn’t know about until I started researching NT behavior.

Some starting points:

• My Experience – What it feels like to live without a social “receiver.”
  • why I think this document is a good model for me
  • Benefits – I am a software developer and this fits like a glove
  • I experience no stress and Zero Lag
  • and some drawbacks: Communication
• Functional Cognitive Architecture – the mental stack
  • Axiomatic Deontology / Ethics – why a lack of social “feeling” does not equate to a lack of morality
  • Manual Frame Construction
  • Functional Logic Modeling
  • Propositional Logic
• Emotions
  • I have emotions, and not Alexithymia
  • but I have significant Semantic Divergence in how I experience them
  • some of the social emotions like Shame I can’t experience at all
  • I have no affective Empathy and don’t mirror emotions
• Books / Favorite Authors
  • in researching this I found that LLMs are pretty good at recommending books when you describe what you like

Is this legit? You can read my Disclaimer and FAQ and decide for yourself. This model predicts my behavior and feelings with high fidelity – I think it is real.

Objective

I was documenting my mental architecture for myself – it is hard to find Mitigation techniques if you don’t understand what is happening. That was the case reading books and articles about autism: many of the problems and techniques that were described just didn’t fit. This model does. The jury is still out on the mitigation, but I am already seeing some positive effects with my wife.

As I was researching this I naturally wanted to find other records of people like myself. I can’t be unique in this world and finding a research paper or study that described this would give it some legitimacy and hopefully provide a well of information.

Sadly my quest failed. Where Are My People?

• clinical frameworks focus on disorders (impairments)
• people who don’t experience distress do not seek diagnosis
• I suspect there are many “Stealth ND” individuals in technical fields.

My hope is that someone like me will find this and recognize their own architecture.

Does this sound familiar? I have a Checklist if you want to see what I think might be discriminating factors.

Data Reliability and Provenance

Technical Status

This model is a high-fidelity representation of my subjective cognitive experience. It has not undergone clinical peer review, see Disclaimer.

Methodological Note: Machine-Assisted Synthesis

The frameworks described here were developed through iterative analysis in collaboration with a Large Language Model (LLM) – you can see my System Prompt to understand more.

• Constraint: The terminology used is Functional, not necessarily Standard. Terms are chosen for their descriptive accuracy regarding my internal state, not for alignment with existing psychological literature.
• Risk Profile: There is a known risk of taxonomic drift. The model may use specialized terms in nonstandard ways.
• See Disclaimer for more detailed information.

Success Metric: Functional Utility

The primary value of this site is Functional Utility, not Universal Theory.

• Objective: To facilitate precise communication with my spouse and therapist. It would be wonderful if somebody else like me saw this and discovered something new – it took me over 50 years and happened by chance! Maybe it will be interesting to somebody else.
• Validation: The model is considered “successful” if it accurately predicts my behavioral outputs and reduces interaction friction. It is not presented as a clinical diagnostic tool.