Thinking About Thinking

I saw a TED talk by Temple Grandin explaining how autistic people think in specific pictures, not in vague images or in words or in emotions.

Language, she seemed to say, covers up our visual thinking.

Interestingly, in passing, she was terrible in algebra, but great in geometry and trigonometry – me too. 

There’s a big blurry grey area between medicating illness and muting creativity. You know my feelings on that. She touches on that, too – how her way of thinking makes some things difficult, but other things much sharper and clearer than they would for “normal” thinkers.

Just because people think differently doesn’t necessarily make one way right. As she says, “The world needs all kinds of minds.”