Actually A: Where Did You Hide Yourself?

Probabilities

One of my brains obsessions, for a lack of a better word, is probabilities. Every thought, action, word, movement. Everything has probabilities associated with it. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing. Most people don't think about the various ways word choice can affect the world. Or if they do, they only think about the most likely outcome and lump everything else into a maybe pile.

Not me. My brain tries to follow every potential probability of literally everything. I've learned to focus, but decisions can be very difficult and I will sometimes get lost in the exponential growth of the decision. Add in other people to the equation and my brain gets even more lost.

If I'm deciding just for me, the decision is "relatively" easy. Relative in that I still struggle with it, but it isn't as paralyzing. When I'm in a group, something as simple as what to eat involves me offering suggestions until someone else decides. This isn't a self-esteem thing or feeling like my opinion doesn't matter. It's literally excruciatingly difficult to force my decisions on other people.

If I make a decision for say pizza, it spawns a whole slew of probabilities depending on who I'm with. What are the probability that they'll what pizza? What are the probabilities that they'll like a particular place. Delivery or dine it? Toppings? Drinks? Specials? What if the service sucks? What if the pizza doesn't show up for hours? This isn't worrying. This is my brain trying to find the best potential solution with an infinite number of variables. Most of them being out of my control.

When I was still on the web team at work, it would often annoy my coworkers when they asked if I thought a solution was viable. My response would always be "probably." To which they would get understandably angry. At the time I didn't know I was autistic, so I could tell them what was going on and not have it sound like I was wishy-washy. For me, a probably is about as close to a yes as I can get. From my perspective, I see all the potential issues that could arise from bad code, to network or server issues, to issues with data structures. Oh, and let's not forget that most programming solutions are not cut and dried which requires modifying existing code, etc. Not to mention the issues that can arise when a multitude of third party modules interact. Anyone who has modded Minecraft or any other game can attest to how messed up that can get. When a single misplaced semicolon can destroy a program.

This isn't to say I didn't know what I was doing. I did. However, often this spidering probability web would both help and hinder. It helped in that I would be able to sometimes find solutions very quickly as I pruned off the lower probabilities. Much like a landscaper trims a bush, I would lop off things as I explored every possible outcome. The hindering part was that I couldn't show how I arrived at the solution. To other people, there wasn't always supporting information. It would look as if I just made a random decision.

I've always had this problem. I hate showing my work because most of it is a combination of intuition, intelligence, and probabilities. Unless you can see the world through my eyes, you wouldn't understand my solution. I'm not suggesting that I'm somehow superior in anyway, just that my brain will always do this. Sometimes I can focus and sometimes I get so lost in the mass of tangled probabilities that I freeze.

One nice side-effect to this whole process is that I can often identify the killer in a horror/murder mystery. An example. When I was in college, the movie Scream came out. It was ground breaking and very popular. My roommates and I went with a bunch of other people. I was sitting next to one of our group (someone I'd just met). When Neve Campbell's character's boyfriend crawls through the window to see her, I leaned over to the guy next to me and said, "That's the killer." Once the movie ended and we were gathered outside, the guy I was sitting next to me, told me how mad he was because he had already seen the movie once and hadn't picked up on it. To this day, I couldn't explain what it was about the character that made me peg him as one of the killers. It just happened. I still do this. I'm not always right, but I'm more right than I'm wrong. It all comes down to probabilities.

And in case anyone asks. No, I don't gamble. I know too much about how computers work. But that's off-topic. Also, I'm not some probability whisperer. I'm trying to look at this from a positive angle as I would probably cry if I didn't. There is a 5% chance I'd be totally cool with it.