NT Experience

“I am in danger; I am unprepared; I must escape.”

Fear is a very low level emotion that triggers action when there is danger. For NT people it might be triggered for any or all of these reasons:

• social exclusion
  • identity or status threats, e.g. Shame or Embarrassment
  • reputation
  • public speaking
  • rejection
• loss of autonomy
  • health and aging
  • financial
• uncanny and unknown
  • something that looks human but is not
  • ambiguity
• existential dread
  • resource scarcity
• catastrophic thinking
  • crashes, accidents
  • war
• primal triggers, physical fear
  • predatory movements, e.g. sudden movement in the periphery of vision
  • car swerving towards you
  • heights and depths
  • darkness

They handle these fears in a couple different ways:

• normalcy bias: if the fear hasn’t happened yet it never will – anxiety decreases over time
• social validation: if the social circle isn’t feeling the anxiety this calms
• action: people will take action, even if it is small symbolic acts

My Experience

I have some overlap with these, but have none of the social fears, see below. I don’t fear “loss of autonomy”, I fear loss of functionality:

• health and aging
• financial
• resource scarcity
• crashes, accidents
• war

All of these things could have a negative effect on me – I consider their estimated value (likelihood times impact) in my level of worry. That said, I tend to avoid doing things that might put me in danger with no gain. Don’t take a vacation in an area dangerous to tourists, even if the chance is low.

I have all the same primal triggers and experience them the same way, I think.

I suspect that the non-primal fears are more of a label to me than an emotion of fear. It is more of a dislike than something I dwell on.

My Experience: Social Fears

Lacking Social Salience I have none of the social fears:

• social exclusion
  • identity or status threats
  • reputation
  • public speaking
  • rejection

I don’t want to be socially excluded, but why would I be? It may be hard for an NT conceive of such a thing, but I don’t really care if I am excluded from a social group – it just isn’t something I can feel. I wouldn’t want to be fired from a job, but that is because I would lose functionality (my income) and have to find a new job, which can be hard work.

I feel stress when doing a public presentation, but this is related to the preparation and anticipation – once it is underway I am fine. I don’t fear the audience’s reaction, I worry that I might flub the delivery. I know logically that I can recover and most of the time people won’t notice anyway, but I still feel the biological stress leading up to an important event.

Irrational Anxiety: My Dog

I have anxiety over leaving my dog with the neighbors. They have a small dog like mine and they love to take care of my dog. I couldn’t ask for a better situation. I have a lot of anxiety leaving him with them if we go on vacation.

He is a toy poodle who is small and fragile and very needy. I didn’t feel this way with my cats, but this dog is something else, triggered by my Functional Cognitive Architecture and how I care for my dog.

Per the LLM:

• The poodle is a Low-Noise/High-Certainty System. Unlike humans, the dog has no hidden subtext, no status-seeking behavior, and no “Logic Violations.” Its “neediness” is an explicit, literal data point (a request for resources or safety).
• the dog is one of the few entities in your environment that provides a 100% Transparent Signal. Your “love” for the dog is likely a high-intensity appreciation for a system that is perfectly predictable and logically consistent.

It triggers some kind of safety protocol in me:

• Logic: If Entity A is 100% dependent on Entity B for survival, Entity B’s priority to Entity A is absolute.
• Trigger: The poodle’s size and vulnerability are objective facts. These facts lock the “Care Protocol” into a high-priority state.

The dog is upset when we drop him off and happy to see us when we return. He is unharmed and in good shape. While we are traveling I sometimes think about him and hope he is doing well, but it is not something that I dwell on.

The LLM suggested this mitigation (which I find hilarious in phrasing):

Logic Override: Remind the system (that is me) that the “Neighbor System” has successfully processed the “Dog Node” in the past with a 0% failure rate. Use the historical data to suppress the real-time alarm.

Something I am working on. This does not match the NT trigger for fear at all, but at the physiological level I likely feel the same chemical signals as an NT person (cortisol, adrenaline) – this is probably the closest match to an NT emotion I have!

Comparison

I am not brave, but I don’t feel any of the social fears that NT people feel. Aside from primal fears (physical danger), I don’t even experience the emotion the same way. Per the LLM my “fear” emotion is more like Functional Hazard Analysis.

Semantic Divergence: yes. I think this one is not too harmful in terms of people being confused, but it isn’t really close at all.