[TexanFeller]

From decades of experience and lots of reading it's exactly this, and this is the important detail that most neurotypicals including many doctors are missing that would allow them to understand instead of being dismissive.

I find monotropism an apt way of understanding it. A normal person's attention is like a flashlight they control that illuminates much of a room at once. Autistic brains are a tight beam flashlight, almost a laser for some, with its aim difficult to change. ADHD brains are more like a tight beam flashlight on a motorized mount that swivels in all directions, but you're not always in control of where it swivels to...it's like an AI constantly overrides your direction inputs and points the light at what it deems most exciting or urgent at the moment.

[pdpi]

> but you're not always in control of where it swivels to.

If we're going with that metaphor, I'd phrase it more in terms of that mount being prone to jamming. My attention doesn't go to completely random places, it only goes to places I want it to, but then gets stuck on things that wouldn't hold the attention of a neurotypical person.

[TexanFeller]

> If we're going with that metaphor, I'd phrase it more in terms of that mount being prone to jamming

> but then gets stuck on things that wouldn't hold the attention of a neurotypical person.

Indeed, attention is frequently held for many hours or even days on the current subject of hyperfocus. I too have great difficulty deliberately directing my attention toward a subject I don't find exciting, but find it easy to get locked in on my natural interests. Hyperfocusing on one of my passions is delightful, even if it detracts from other important things.

> it only goes to places I want it to

That's true for me in a sense, but I've had so much trouble from hyperfocus states that I don't think about it quite that positively. I hyperfocus on a new hobby every week and buy tons of stuff for it that I abandon for the next week's hyperfocus. I get locked into politics and flame wars that make me stressed and sad the whole time, but waste hours on them. I would like to get locked into one of my passions that I always enjoy and that also enrich me in some way, but I end up spending hours hyperfocused on researching some esoteric topic of the day instead. Or worst case I hyperfocus on potential sources of doom and how to prevent them, but maybe that's not due to ADHD alone. All of those are things I "want" to focus on in some sense, but in many senses I very much don't want to.

That's why lack of control of the focus' subject seems one of the most important aspects to me. In my metaphor I guess I'd say something like the focus of the AI that's overriding my direction inputs is what's getting stuck on a subject.

[pdpi]

> that I don't think about it quite that positively.

I don't think about that in a positive light, it's just factual information that helps me understand the shape of the problem. It's about recognizing that the places my focus goes to aren't random and arbitrary — I've never gotten stuck on, say, the intricacies of tap dancing, because I have little to no interest in tap dancing, and no reason to care. I did get stuck on knitting for a short while because I bought some pattern books as a gift for my mother, and had a peek inside — I _wanted_ to have a peek inside, what I didn't want was to lose a few hours to it.

[pfannkuchen]

Is it possible that autism is like a mode that gets switched on by the environment and in modern day it doesn’t switch off?

In many parts of the world during tribal times, feeling like you didn’t have control and feeling like the world is unpredictable is probably going to lead to death. Hyperfocus on getting things under control (in specific areas) would be useful, for example hyperfocus on shelter before winter if you feel like that is not under control, or hyperfocus on the food supply if that is not under control.

In the modern world it’s plausible to me that the conditions are just so out of control of the individual that the mode never turns off, and you get random seeming intense focus and irritability around lack of control and lack of focus on social fluidity (which in the tribal environment was basically N/A since everyone was basically the same as each other and you didn’t need these flexible protocols for socialization) etc etc.

I’m not diagnosed with autism but I feel like I have a lot of the classic traits and when I pay attention to my environment a lot of things bother me and I feel better when I fix them. But so many things bother me that it’s basically impossible to fix them all and then I disassociate from them. The things that bother me are like “this design is bad, fix it” but I can’t change all the objects around me like one could in a tribal setting where everything was made in house. Same with routine that is impossibly complex compared to tribal life.