Signal Blind

Emotions

I do have emotions, but if you met me you might wonder:

That said, I don’t have all the same emotions and I experience some of the emotions in a different way.

Extra Disclaimer: as a person who can’t experience some of these emotions and experiences other ones in a different way, these descriptions of the NT experience are best effort. I used an LLM to explain them to me but they are largely in my own words as I understand them. Not all NT people will experience them the same way and I might be wrong. I think the descriptions of my own experience are correct as far as I can introspect myself.

As far as I know autistic people experience roughly the same emotions as NT people.

Social Emotions (Missing)

The self conscious emotions require a feedback signal for you to understand how the self is perceived by an external observer – you guessed it, provided by Social Salience. I can’t experience any of these emotions:

This one is a stand in for several of the negative emotions:

That isn’t to say I don’t feel things that I would label with those words. For example, I might Regret some action that I did and call that “shame”, but it is a distinctly different feeling from the NT experience. This is a conceptual heteronym – two words that look and sound the same but have different meanings (not the typical use of that vocabulary, but it fits).

Heteronyms

I think I learned a lot of my vocabulary through reading and thus by context. In books when somebody is “ashamed” I can see the inputs (situation) and any description of the outputs (corrective action, future avoidance). I picked up Shame as something like regret, maybe strong Regret. It was compatible enough that I never noticed that my definition was off – in fact it wasn’t until I discovered I was ND that I even became aware of this. In playing with LLMs they picked up on the fact that my descriptions for emotions were inconsistent.

Even before I knew that there was a Semantic Divergence in definition, I think there were problems with using these words incorrectly. I can see that retrospectively where the words I used were taken as judgment but to me they were just descriptive words used in constructive feedback. Now I am more aware that my words are askew.

For example, I might say I Hate somebody, say a corrupt politician. To me this is indicating high magnitude dislike – they are violating my ethical standards for their own gain. I don’t know them, it doesn’t affect me. I just want it to stop. To NT people this means something else: moral disgust, evil, and some feeling of ill will (I think).

Primary Emotions (Biological)

Finally there are some emotions where I think my feeling might be similar to how NT people experience them. The triggers are likely different and any social experience is likely missing, but these are probably close to the NT standard.

These are the primary/biological emotions that are amygdala-driven and physiological:

Internal Well-Being

There are some other physiological emotions regulated by Dopamine (reward/anticipation), serotonin (stability/well-being) that are similarly triggered differently but likely experiences similarly. However, there are social aspects to some of these that are not present.

Note: in NT people oxytocin (bonding/trust) can amplify the social signal. Although it is likely that I produce the hormone, I have nothing to amplify due to lack of Social Salience. This further impedes the social emotions that might improve social harmony.