Autism vs Schizophrenia: Opposite Ends of the Spectrum? What Causes Them?

This episode explores the theories behind the causes of autism and schizophrenia, proposing that these conditions represent opposite ends of a psychological spectrum.

1. Schizophrenia may involve a hyperactivation of the "theory of mind," leading to hallucinations and paranoia.
2. Autism is characterized by a difficulty in utilizing "theory of mind," impacting social and emotional understanding.
3. Both conditions have significant genetic components, affecting how they manifest across different individuals.
4. The discussion challenges conventional views, suggesting both conditions provide certain adaptive advantages in societal contexts.
5. The episode provides insights into the importance of appropriate medical interventions and understanding the spectrum nature of these conditions.

1: Introduction to the Spectrum

Malcolm and Simone Collins introduce the concept of autism and schizophrenia as opposite ends of a psychological spectrum. Malcolm Collins: "Autism and schizophrenia, while starkly different, share a conceptual link through their impact on 'theory of mind.'"

2: Deep Dive into Schizophrenia

Exploration of schizophrenia, its symptoms, and how it manifests as an overactive mental process. Malcolm Collins: "Schizophrenia can be understood through the lens of an excessively active theory of mind."

3: Understanding Autism

Discussion on the nature of autism and how it affects interactions and emotional processes. Simone Collins: "Autism essentially involves a difficulty with the cognitive function known as 'theory of mind.'"

4: Genetic and Social Implications

The hosts discuss the genetic research and social perceptions surrounding both conditions. Malcolm Collins: "Genetic factors play a crucial role in both conditions, offering different challenges and advantages."

5: Concluding Theories

Malcolm presents his theories on what might cause these neurological differences. Malcolm Collins: "The interplay between genetic predisposition and environmental factors shapes these conditions."

1. Awareness and Education: Educate yourself and others about the differences and similarities between autism and schizophrenia to foster understanding and reduce stigma.
2. Seek Professional Guidance: If you or someone you know is showing signs of these conditions, consult healthcare professionals for accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment.
3. Support Research: Consider contributing to or participating in research efforts to further explore these conditions.
4. Advocacy and Inclusion: Advocate for policies and environments that support the inclusion and well-being of individuals with autism or schizophrenia.
5. Personal Health Management: If affected, adhere to prescribed treatments and engage in activities that promote mental health.

In this insightful episode, Malcolm and Simone delve into the fascinating world of schizophrenia and autism, exploring how these conditions exist on opposite ends of a spectrum related to the concept of "theory of mind." Malcolm shares his extensive experience working in schizophrenia research, explaining the various subtypes of schizophrenia and their symptoms. He then presents his groundbreaking theory that schizophrenia is caused by an overactive theory of mind, while autism is characterized by a deficiency in this cognitive ability. The discussion also covers the importance of medication for those with schizophrenia, the potential dangers of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and the evolutionary advantages of both schizophrenic and autistic traits in moderation.

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Malcolm Collins, Simone Collins

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Malcolm Collins
So what I think is happening with schizophrenic individuals is that their theory of mind is basically hyper stimulated and activates when it shouldn't be activating. And I think that this is what is happening with the auditory hallucinations. This happens when you see something like, you know, applying a theory of mind to the way things are arranged in a store window. Applying a theory of mind to, like, world events. Right?

Like, oh, there's a theory of mind behind this. It's directly relevant to you, or a theory of mind creating a hallucination. Catatonia is the one counterexample here. But what I suspect is really happening with catatonia is they're just so overwhelmed with so many theories of minds operating at once that they basically become catatonic. They're paralyzed by their thoughts.

Simone Collins
Yeah, that makes sense to me. So autism, I think, is literally defined by the exact opposite. I think the core symptom of autism is a difficulty in running theory of minds of other people, and this is what creates problems in autism. Would you like to know more? Well, hello, gorgeous.

I am. Hello. Poking around the comments in our videos a while ago, and I remember some people speculating on, like, what we sort of meant about, like, the autistic and schizoid spectrums. And they implied that we were talking about something more cultural and not actually like, autistic or schizoid, and that is not true. So we should probably dig into what we're talking about more here when we're talking about people being on the autistic spectrum or being on a schizoid spectrum, because they're very different things.

Malcolm Collins
This is, I should point out, this is not a cultural thing. This is shown in genetic data. This is shown in diagnostic data, and we should probably establish our credentials here. I started one of my first jobs. I mean, I did.

I have a few, like, origin jobs, right? Because I took a number of early jobs in various neuroscience fields. The three origin jobs was. One was studying the evolution of human cognition and humanity at the Smithsonian and creating an exhibit, the human origins display. I worked on that.

So some of the stuff I created is still on display at the Smithsonian. So that's one area. Another area is my brain computer interface work. So this was working on technology that allowed humans to control machines with their thoughts, similar to neuralink. The final area in the area I worked by far the longest in was schizophrenia research.

So this was understanding how this is specifically what I was looking at, was going through lots of patients and making sure that they were properly categorized. So this involved tons and tons of interviews. Like, I had to interview hundreds of people about, like, their deepest. And keep in mind not just schizophrenia, but also normal people about their deepest thoughts about the world, their lives, their daily routines, everything like that. Because we were like, wait, why were you doing normal people?

It's because I wasn't working as a clinician. I was working as a researcher. And so we needed a control group. And we needed a control group that was similar in economic status to our schizophrenia population. Now, schizophrenia population is typically not doing very well in society.

You know, this is, you know, lower income, lower middle income group. And so I really got to get a personal, like, really in your face, really high volume understanding of this section of humanity and the way they think and engage with the world, both people within the schizophrenia population and not schizophrenia population. And I had to be really good. Like, I had memorized the DSM at one point. People who don't know things, not just the schizophrenic diagnostic, the whole thing.

I could give you any not. Not memorized word for word, but I can give you diagnosis in it, with its broad, like, specific diagnostic criteria. Now, it's been a long time since then, but I took a lot of pride on this at one point. People who don't know. I might put a picture of a DSM on the screen, because people who don't know what the DSM is might be hearing that, oh, he memorized the diagnostic standard criteria.

What is that? Why is that important? It is a monster book. It's like memorizing the encyclopedia. It's insane that I decided that that was a fun thing to do, but I really enjoyed it.

I really enjoyed understanding how humans think and how humans interact with each other. And so this was important to me. And then Simone is diagnosed with autism. No, I'm just defective. Our kid is diagnosed with autism.

One of our kids and our other kid, very likely, by the time we get them, it's going to be diagnosed as well. Oh, yeah. No, no. Torsten is almost certainly. He's getting his evaluation in April because it takes a billion months to schedule these things.

But the point being here is that I have no antagonism towards these communities. And I am speaking from a perspective informed by research. And actually, what we were doing with this research was genetic testing. So we were. We needed to clearly separate them into these different groups so we could find out what genes were correlated with this.

Simone Collins
And there's similar research with autism in which, actually, we had our oldest son participate, like the whole family did cheek swabs. You, me, Octavian's younger brother and octavian. And we all sent them in and filled out tons of questionnaires so that, yeah, this is something that happens with schizophrenia, happens with autism. It happens with a lot of things. So let's, let's talk about.

Malcolm Collins
I'm going to start with the schizophrenia spectrum because it's the one that I think less people are familiar with. A lot of people are familiar with the autism spectrum, but the schizophrenia spectrum a lot of people are unfamiliar with. So because this might surprise people, the, like, do you know the schizophrenia spectrum goes from schizophrenia to what other common psychiatric condition?

Simone Collins
You mean at the other end of it? Like the opposite. Yeah, the other end of it. Autism. No, I mean, what's the opposite?

I mean, schizophrenia, as I understand it, is like over. This means that all of these conditions are linked, genetically linked. Oh, linked. Okay. Okay, so they're.

Yeah, they're linked. Okay. So, yeah, okay. Okay. Okay.

Malcolm Collins
Give you a hint. It's the single most common psychiatric condition in the world and it's particularly common in women. Borderline personality disorder. No, personality disorders are on the schizophrenia spectrum. Well, the kind of ours them are, but it's depression.

Simone Collins
Oh. Depression is one end of the schizophrenia spectrum. Schizophrenia is the other end of the schizophrenia spectrum. So let's go through broadly how this works, okay? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins
Because all of these, they share genetic components and they share sort of diagnostic components. And we're also going to talk about what causes these at the end of this because I have a unique theory about what causes all of this. And it's different from the mainstream community consensus, but it's right, because I'm smarter than them. They would have gone into the real world and made money if they were as smart as me, but they didn't. They stayed in academia.

Let's, let's talk about this, this spectrum. So at one end you have depression, and then from depression you have sort of a spectrum from depression to bipolar, where you have periods of mania. So bipolar is on the schizophrenic spectrum. Well, bipolar exists in two categories. You have bipolar one and bipolar two.

We're not going to get. So keep in mind it's been a while since I've done this. Okay, so bipolar is clearly related to depression. Like, you can see that, right? Like if you have the depressive episodes and manic.

Simone Collins
Yeah, 100%. That's why I was surprised that you said depression was at the far end. Of the, one of the two bipolars. I think it's bipolar one, the manic episodes, are, in part, characterized by psychotic episodes. That is, hearing voices, seeing things, delusions of grandeur.

Malcolm Collins
Delusions of grandeur. Right. Like, that's very. Okay, okay, I'm starting. Or paranoid episodes sometimes do.

Right, so you're having a level of a psychotic break there. Then from there, you have schizoaffective disorder. And honestly, it's been a while since I studied it, so I can't remember exactly, but I seem to remember that the diagnostic difference between bipolar one and schizoaffective disorder was really, really small. It was like, the difference between, like, just, like, the number of days you spent on specific parts of the spectrum, which is interesting. Yeah, yeah.

And it could be different by, like, one day could make the difference between a diagnosis in one category and a diagnosis in another category, which I think shows that these two are very closely related. Okay. I went through and checked because I was like, I want to give you guys the full answer here. The core difference between the two is that with schizoaffective disorder, the psychotic episodes occur outside of just the manic phase. And so when I was talking about, like, a one day difference, if you, for example, were experiencing a psychotic episode just, like, one day outside of a manic period, or a manic period with, like, one day longer than manic periods normally are, it could change the diagnosis from bipolar one to schizoaffective disorder.

So they're really only difference in terms of a matter of degrees, except when you're talking about extreme manifestations of each. That is, a person who's in, like, extreme depression also having psychotic episodes would be clearly schizoaffective. But there's a lot, a lot of edge cases between schizoaffective and bipolar one. In fact, the edge cases are much more normal than the extreme cases. And, of course, the DSM is famously arbitrary about many things.

Simone Collins
Many argue that it's more of. More of a reflection of cultural values at the time and cultural norms than it is of. This is very important to know that historically, the DSM, you know, had things in it, like same sex attraction and stuff like that in the 1970s, and that was considered a psychiatric condition, and it was taken out. And now there's been a push, and I think it might have even been taken out recently, to take sadism out, because they're like, that's just a little in there. It's not still in there.

Malcolm Collins
It might still be in there, but, yeah. Lord. Okay, so then from that, you then go into schizophrenia now, schizophrenia actually has a huge diversity of sort of ways that it appears in people. I think when people think about schizophrenia, they have this, like, culturally primed assumption. Yeah.

Simone Collins
The homeless person on the street who's yelling to themselves. Yeah, I can just go over a few of the big ones here. Okay, so paranoid schizophrenia is one of the most common I saw. I think it might be one of the most common. Basically, you assume agency and, like, large forces of reality targeted at you that aren't targeted at you.

Malcolm Collins
So I'm trying to wear this other than, like, you are paranoid, because I think there's not a helpful understanding. It means that you will see something like a helicopter fly over your house, and you will assume that it's flying over your house because you are in that house and it is watching you. You will see, you know, people whispering to each other on a bus or something like that. And you will assume they must be whispering about you. It seems remarkably self centered.

Simone Collins
Like, you just assume that you must be the most important person in the entire world. Well, yes. And this is like a gang abduction hypothesis. It's one of the conspiracy theories I got to do, like, gang. I'll add it in edits because I don't remember off the top of my head, gang stalking is what I was thinking of.

Malcolm Collins
But it's very likely paranoid schizophrenia that they're just talking about when they. When they talk about it. This is another thing that I also want to note with people is a lot of people don't know how common. Oh, I think I know what you're referring to. Okay.

Hallucinations are in the population, and many of these type of schizophrenia symptoms. All humans experience this to some extent. Everybody sort of knows this feeling of seeing two people whisper and think, I bet they're talking about me. Like, they must. Not me, friend.

Simone Collins
So maybe autistic people don't feel that well. I typically categorize autism in the autistic spectrum as the exact inverse of the schizophrenia spectrum, and we'll get into why. The thing is, many of our viewers will have had this experience, and this is why I've always said that I'm much closer to the schizophrenia side of the spectrum, because to me, the experience I have all the time, I'll see two people talking, and I'll be like, are they making fun of me? Are they thinking about me? Are they, you know?

And you spend so much time modeling other people where, like, sometimes if we're walking and you're a little bit distracted, like, I will see you, like, gesturing and I know that you're having an imaginary conversation with someone, like, so. And you were constant. I am never. And a lot of people talk about conversation. No, never.

And I, you know, a lot of people, I think, can really relate to this because I hear a lot of people talk about how, like, they imagine having this argument with someone and how it's going to go. And I've just never experienced this ever. So I think at least this will help people relate to it. It's like, okay, well, you're. You're being a little schizoid every time you have a pretend conversation with someone.

Right? Yeah. Or another way that's very similar to this is magical thinking, which you see in this next type of schizophrenia. Disorganized. Well, so disorganized, a bit different.

Malcolm Collins
People have it. They'll often talk weirdly where? So symptoms include disorganized behaviors and thoughts alongside short lasting delusions and hallucinations. They have disorganized speech patterns, and others may find it difficult to understand you. People living with disorganized schizophrenia often show little or no emotions in their facial expressions, voice tone, or mannerisms.

And one of the things is even when we were talking was fairly like, they would construct sentences using words that were sometimes kind of brilliant in ways. One of my favorite, which I've actually adopted in my lexicon, is we were talking with one of them about his daily habits, like grooming habits. And he goes, well, I'm no hygienius, but. And they would often use words like this, where they had put together words in a way that a normal person wouldn't have thought to put them together, but immediate sense. Like, it makes so much sense.

You're like, that's the most perfect thing I've ever seen. Like, but other people don't, like, make that connection. Think about that. When they're structuring their language, right? Like, they don't think, oh, how do I.

So their brains are literally functioning quite different from another person's brain in terms of how they're structuring this now to the point you're making earlier. And in paranoid schizophrenia, the office. Schizophrenia is a symptom you call magical thinking. Magical thinking would be like you saw a display window at Macy's or something, and you assume that that window is meant to communicate something to you. Or you see a commercial, and you're like, that commercial is supposed to communicate something to me.

Many people could argue our entire religious framework that you and I use is a form of magical thinking. Where we're looking to abrahamic texts to find out what are they communicating to us. So a lot of schizophrenic type behaviors and thoughts are very related to religious thoughts. You know, when somebody is looking at reality and they're looking for signs from God, that is, in a way, a form of magical thinking. You are looking at things that do not have intentionality, the way a store display is arranged or what's going on in a commercial.

Like, it has a form of intentionality, but it's certainly not targeted directly at you. And yet you are assuming and modeling that thing as if it had, like, a human brain or a human brain went into constructing it to send a signal to you in a beautiful mind. I don't know if you saw that movie. It followed somebody with schizophrenia who believed that he was finding patterns, puzzles of, like, code words put into newspapers. And he was like a math genius.

So he kept, whenever he would look at newspapers, he kept overlaying various, like, mathematical equations. Oh, no. Onto the page. And whenever one of them would lead to the page saying something, he would then be like, that must be a message meant for me. So implying intentionality where no intentionality exists.

Simone Collins
Yeah. Interesting. So that is. That is one thing you'll have there. Now, another type of schizophrenia that a lot of people don't know is schizophrenia is catatonic schizophrenia.

Malcolm Collins
Schizophrenia. So catatonic schizophrenia. If you've ever seen a movie that takes place in like a. Have you ever seen a movie that takes place in a psych ward? And you've seen somebody, like, in a weird position like this?

Catatonic schizophrenia, if you like, move their hand. It's called, like, waxy. Like that's the word, the technical term for it. They'll stay in this new position, like gumby or something, and they can be stuck like that for very long periods. Doesn't it hurt?

Simone Collins
You'd think it would hurt. What would they describe it as? And again, this is something that I can kind of model in my head. Have you ever felt these moments where you're so mentally overloaded you're kind of frozen? Yeah, that's whenever I say, my name is Simone Collins, and I am washing the dish.

Malcolm Collins
No, no, no, this is different from this. This is you sort of rebooting. She has this pattern of rebooting where she's like, my name is Simone Collins, and I'm doing x when she forgets where she is and what she's doing. No, this is like something has happened in your life or something like that. Or you are so stricken with, like, an emotional context, because, like, you're embarrassed you did something and you just realized you did it or something like that, and you're just like.

And you're just processing this for a bit. These people are sort of stuck in. That processing moment because they're so overwhelmed. They're so overwhelmed with thoughts. Oh, and.

Simone Collins
Yeah. With, with, like, specifically their schizophrenic thoughts, perhaps with, like, modeling a lot of people and stuff. Right? Yes, yes. Undifferentiated schizophrenia.

Malcolm Collins
With, when I was thinking of, this is where you have signs of a few different things. I was thinking undifferentiated schizophrenia when I was thinking disorganized schizophrenia. Very specific. And that's easy for me to catch. Undifferentiated does sound like a catch all.

It's just like, you see a lot of different symptoms from different categories. Residual schizophrenia. Oh, yeah. I was just saying I don't remember seeing patients who had something called this. But, yeah, this is, they had a history of schizophrenic psychosis, but only experience the negative symptoms, such as slow movement, poor memory, lack of concentration, and poor hygiene.

So this is actually a really important one to talk about. So every time you have a psychotic break in schizophrenia, these things get worse. The. The things I just noted there, slow movement, poor memory, lack of concentration, poor hygiene. What is happening when you have a schizophrenic break is your brain is basically being flooded with chemicals that can be thought of as analogous to these sort of exogenous chemicals that you take when you're on drugs or something, like taking a ton of hallucinogens.

And this is a big mistake that a lot of people, especially, like bipolar people I know, make where they're like, I'll just tough it out. Right? Like, it's more natural. It's like, it's not natural. Your brain is not supposed to be doing this.

The chemicals that are flooding your brain, especially if they're causing psychotic episodes, are causing the exact same damage as hallucinogens, if not more. And you will suffer the same long term consequences of a hallucinogen addict or more slow speech, poor memory, poor hygiene. And so a lot of people are afraid of taking drugs, you know, pharmaceuticals that lower the symptoms of these sorts of conditions on the schizophrenic spectrum. And you really shouldn't be. You will have permanent, it gets worse.

When we saw this with schizophrenic patients, every time they have a break, they permanently get worse after that. Yeah, I remember one of the first things like first mental health stances that you gave to me that I thought was really interesting when we were really early in our day was that like sometimes it's just so, so, so important to take medications for a mental condition because your current chemical state with your brain is super, super not natural and causing a lot of damage like it is. No, don't find some natural, don't think through it, don't therapy through it. It's not going to fix it. There is, you are high right now and you need to fix it.

Simone Collins
Which I. Yeah, I'm glad you're pointing this out. Yeah, well, yeah, some people, and this goes, you know, when we talk about our psychology and psychiatry thing and stuff like that and are just tough it out stance with a lot of this stuff when we're talking about like wimpy stuff like, I'm sorry, I don't mean to say this was an audience that this is going to be very offensive to potential. You can see our all trauma is self inflicted video for more understanding of this. But a lot of the data shows this.

Malcolm Collins
A lot of like what modern psychology calls problems like trauma is self inflicted. When you're talking about something like psychotic episodes or a major depressive disorder, this is no joke. You should take this seriously. You should take your medication. And the number one way you're going to die is stopping to take that medication.

And we saw this with our patients all the time. Because another thing I did is I collected brains from the me, so I knew I worked for a while. And when the me I was able. To read, oh my God. Did you collect brains from people that you'd interview?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that is how people die. They stop taking their medication. Oh my God. So what, another thing is people will be like, but with depression, your medication increases suicide risk.

Yeah, it does. But it doesn't really matter that it does. Okay, so I need to be more explicit here. So the reason why with major depressive disorder, because one of the things major depressive disorder is associated with is like a lack of motivation and a lack of ability to motivate yourself. Drugs that lower that, but you still remember it having happened recently, you still are horrified by it and you are still in a slightly depressed state.

Well, now you just have more motivation and more agency and you are doing what you feel needs to be done to release you from this state. But it is not that the drugs aren't working. They lead to suicide, not because they make you more depressed, but because they give you more agency. But we've got to keep going here with some of these, we can also. Just talk more about the differences between the autistic and schizoid spectrum and why we talk about it a lot because.

I didn't get to the final thing that I want to say here. Okay, speed it up, though. Okay. Okay. Well, a lot of people have psychotic episodes.

Like, they're more common than people think. So a quarter of humans will hear hallucinatory voices at some point in their lives. They will hear, is somebody talking to them? That's not there? This is very auditory hallucinations within schizophrenia.

By the way, if you're talking to somebody who's, like, faking schizophrenia, if they're talking about visual hallucinations and not Audrey audible hallucinations, they're probably faking it, because audible hallucinations are the number one symptom. Visual hallucinations are actually pretty rare. So that's just sort of worth noting. So, like, these symptoms in these things in schizophrenia, like, these moments of catatonic schizophrenia, these moments of paranoid schizophrenia, these moments of magical thinking are something that a lot of people can empathize with. And so we can see that a lot of people have this level of this sort of in the background running within them.

Okay, so you wanted to get to the. What do you want to go to? Well, we have theories as to why autism and schizophrenia exist, and we. We describe a lot of people as being on these spectrums because we think that a lot of people have moderate versions of them that give them advantages in society. There's a reason why genetically, because there is a high genetic basis for these conditions, that things like autism and schizophrenia provide advantages in moderation.

We need to talk about these two spectrums because they're pretty different from each other. Yeah, but I want to get to that because that's the juicy part. Well, you're just reading through lists. It's not really, but okay, I'll talk about the quote unquote juicy part. So the autism spectrum is basically a spectrum from having autism to not having autism.

The schizophrenia spectrum is a spectrum. It can almost be thought of as, like, a conal spectrum. It's a spectrum of one iteration of a psychiatric condition to another iteration of a psychiatric condition. And then within that sort of, like, line, you can think of a spot on the other side which is a completely mentally healthy individual, and like, a conal radiant going to that line. And you can be anywhere on that spectrum of, like, depressed bar, manic depressive to a completely normal person, or schizophrenic to a completely normal person.

So you're talking about these two? Sort of. One is a conic spectrum, and then one is the autistic spectrum. My intuition, from what I've seen about these two spectrums, is that if you are drawing, like, a conal line, and you have, like, an average person at, like, the center of where this line is drawn from. Right?

And then you have the schizophrenia spectrum of psychiatric psychological disorders, and you drew a line, like, from the center of that cone out in the exact opposite direction. That would be the autistic spectrum. I am not aware of ever seeing comorbidity between autism and schizophrenia. Same in my experience. And it's because I think that they are exactly the antithesis of each other.

And this is the part that you probably find interesting that you want me to talk about, which is my theory of what's causing schizophrenia, the common thing in all of these. Oh. So I need a little background knowledge before I do this. Okay, we're going to talk quickly about transmagnetic stimulation. So, transmagnetic stimulation is a device.

It's like a little figure eight sign paddle that you put on your head, and it can be used to either hyperactivate or sort of turn off sections of your brain using transmagnetic simulation. And this can be useful in a lot of experiments and stuff like that. Like, there's cool things you can do where you can have somebody, like, looking at letters, and then you put it on their head, and all of a sudden, they don't know what they're looking at. They're like, I understand their letters, but I don't know what they're saying anymore. So you can literally, like, turn off.

Now, a lot of experiments have been done with. It's like disrupting a radio signal, essentially, right? I mean, metaphorically, not at all, but no. Okay. Think of it that way.

It's not important exactly how it works for this conversation. Now, it's also important to note with this that I do not think TMS is safe. And I think that in the future, we will talk about TMS in the same way that we talked about experiments that used hallucinogens in the seventies. Today, I do not think we have good evidence that this is a safe thing to do, given the severity of what people are doing with it. But anyway, so TMS.

So one thing you can do with TMS is hyper stimulate parts of a person's brain. Oh, so you can't. You. You can hyper. You can, like, turn up in addition to turning down.

Simone Collins
It's like a volume? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And when you hyper simulate them, like, you're lowering the amount of signal that's needed to create an action potential within them. I don't need to go into what this is, but if you hyper stimulate, like, the parts that, like, you turned off, like, remember when I was talking about seeing letters?

Malcolm Collins
You can hyper stimulate those parts, and they'll look at letters, and they won't be able to help but say, the letters they're looking at. They will look at an a and they'll say a b. They can't stop from doing it, because basically, when you add this little bit of extra stimulation that is, like, the visual stimulation of seeing it and processing the letter, it accidentally triggers the pathway that's tied to talking about it. So what I think is happening in schizophrenic patients is the pathway that's tied to a human theory of mind. So let's talk quickly about a theory of mind.

A theory of mind is what I do. So I model people, right? Like, when I am seeing you, and I am trying to predict you, like, another person, not Simone. I never really predict her because I don't need to. She just tells me what she thinks.

It's really nice. This is part of being autistic. Okay? So I am emulating, like, emulating a video game or something like that, or emulating another operating system. I'm emulating their mind within my mind.

Like, I have a little model of their mind running in my mind whenever I'm talking to somebody. And that model helps me predict how they are going to react to the things I'm saying. And kids take a while to develop this. One of the famous experiments around this is you get a kid to draw a shape that you're looking at from their perspective. You're like, can you draw this shape from my perspective?

And there's a certain age, I think it's like four or five or something, where kids can start realizing, oh, they're not seeing the shape from my perspective. I need to draw it from their perspective, like, their eyes are somewhere else in relation to the shape when contrasted with my eyes. When this takes a while to do. Right, well, we can also, like, summon theory of minds when we're doing things. We can create a theory of mind of, like, a person who we had an argument with and then continue to have that argument with them with this modeled iteration of them inside of our own brain.

And then that's when you win the argument, of course, and you're like, gosh, why didn't I say that in the real, like, you're basically replaying tons of scenarios with them afterwards, whereas I just. Go home and I'm like, man.

Simone Collins
Yeah. Like. But then another theory of mine that you can do is, you know, you can sort of imbue, like, an animal with a theory of mind, right? Like, you can interact with your dog and then theory of mind your dog, as if it was a human. Or if you're from, like, one of the more mystical religious traditions, you can theory of mind.

Malcolm Collins
A waterfall. Right? You can be like, oh, that must have a theory of mind, right? Like, it's doing this now because it's angry with us. You can theory mind the sky.

Like, so theory of mind is just, like, a classic thing that humans do as part of a lot of religious traditions. We'll talk about that later. Or it can be used by them to create significance where no significance exists, which is a sin. I'm sorry. That's just like, we'll go into this later in some of our tracks.

But theory of mind. So what I think is happening with schizophrenic individuals is that their theory of mind is basically hyper stimulated and activates when it shouldn't be activating. And I think that this is what is happening with the auditory hallucinations. And I think auditory hallucinations are the most common is essentially, they are running models of other people when they shouldn't be running models of other people. And they can hear these models of other people that they're running in the background.

This is why, you know, one of the most common is just, like, hearing whispers, because they're not running full models. It's not, like, fully running. It's just, like, barely rumbling in the background. It's running in their mind, but they're not. It's nothing fully breaking into their consciousness.

There's other people they're seeing, like, full theory of minds. Well, this becomes relevant because almost every symptom of schizophrenia can be explained by a theory of mind operating when it's not supposed to be operating. Yeah. Like, on overdrive. Yeah.

So this happens when you see something like, you know, applying a theory of mind to the way things are arranged in a store window. Applying a theory of mind to, like, world events. Right. Like, oh, there's a theory of mind behind this. It's directly relevant to you.

Or a theory of mind creating a hallucination. Catatonia is the one counter example here. But what I suspect is really happening with catatonia is they're just so overwhelmed with so many theories of minds operating. At once that they become paralyzed by their thoughts. Yeah, that makes sense to me.

I mean, they're basically running like five consciousnesses simultaneously. Like, yeah, it's like when you are running too many programs on an older computer and it just like, stops. Yeah, that's basically what's happening. So autism, I think, is literally defined by the exact opposite. I think the core symptom of autism is a difficulty in running theory of minds of other people.

And this is what creates problems in autism, like not being able to recognize emotions as easily or not recognizing when people aren't interested in something that you're talking to them about. And as Simone says her, as an autistic person, Simone, I want to be clear. It is not normal to not have arguments with people in your head. That is something that normal people do. It is.

Simone Collins
That's something that a schizoid person would say sometimes, right? No, but that is, and this is what we talk about with me being more towards the schizoid side and her being more towards the autism side. Like, we are both opposite sides of, exact opposite sides of the spectrum where I run theory of minds too frequently and too easily, but I am uniquely good at it. And I think that people are like, why would like schizophrenia exist? Because it existed about equal rates across populations.

Malcolm Collins
And it exists likely because people like me have a genetic advantage over people not like me. I mean, one of the things. So, yeah, anyone in a social, like, living in a society, civilization, a tribe, a city is going to be to have an advantage if they're able to play the game of chess better, you know, to model other people's next moves, to anticipate them to think what they're thinking, because then it is easier to get ahead and to have an edge. But then I also think that maybe the reason why people carrying autistic traits have continued to perpetuate is that. But sometimes being free of that burden enables you to think more systematically in a way that makes you useful to society as an inventor, as a builder, as a producer.

Yeah, I agree. And so then that's why those genes have also been carried on. It's just a worker, like they, you know, you get the work done because you're not so busy socializing and thinking about people and modeling people and trying to play games, which is frankly not very productive. I mean, you see this in, like, other contexts where, like there was that one famous study of, I think, a travel agency building somewhere, a company in southeast East Asia that had people at the office and people at work from home and work from home. People were more productive, but they didn't get promotions.

Simone Collins
So it was really interesting. It was like, well, working in an office is good if getting ahead is what matters. Having people work from home is good if getting stuff done is what matters. And you kind of need both people in society, right? You need people who are capable of getting ahead and amassing power and amassing resources and wealth, and you also need people who are good at just getting things done.

That's why these two things on a. Spectrum now we have to worry. Are we washing out our jeans? Like, was my unique genius being able to model people? It appears that my autism is overpowered your.

Malcolm Collins
It does in our kids. I'll say that. Yeah. We can't tell yet. With our daughter, who's around, like, 16 months now.

Simone Collins
With our two sons, though, it is extremely clear. Well, autism appears more in males than. Females, so it manifests more in a diagnosable way. I mean, this is why I diagnosed until our son was. Remember when, who was it?

Malcolm Collins
Diana Fleischmann was on our show, and she was saying that in women, or. No, no, it wasn't. This was Louise Perry. She's saying that women, like a woman with a 70 iq has a better ability to model the emotional states of others than a man with a 120 iq. Yeah, I think that was Diana.

Yeah, no, it wasn't Diana. It was Louise Perry. Okay. Yeah, it was in the episode on feminism or whatever. Anyway, so the very interesting is, I think that that's what's causing that is because women have this naturally higher emotional intelligence that it often gets hidden in them when they have a lower ability to model other people.

Simone Collins
Hmm. Anyway, I love you to death, Simone. It is remarkable how many low hanging fruits there are within the sciences. People are like, well, why don't you, like, test them and prove them and stuff like that? Why don't you stay in the community?

Malcolm Collins
Because this would have been my entire career. This one theory would have been 30, 40 years of my life just proving out. And I've been able to have, like, a panoply of other series in the field of sexuality because I was able to do independent research on that. I'm able to have theories in the field of theology, which I'm really interested in because, you know, like, if I had trapped myself in academia, I wouldn't be able to live the life of a gentleman scientist, which I much prefer. Academia is collapsing anyways.

Right. Anyway, I love you to death, Simone. I love you too. And I'm glad you shared your thoughts on this because it's super interesting. So thank you.

Simone Collins
I love your beautiful mind.