Category: Science & Nature

It’s true that computers have really evolved over time. But the evolution they show really isn’t accurate. A phone, which is somewhat of a computer, really isn’t the end all. My main computer is still quite large, and while I built it myself, it still falls far short of some of the supercomputers out there.

When speaking of supercomputers, some of them are still the size of a full room. So the meme is trying to make a point by being purposely dishonest.

This dishonest goes further as energy is much different that what they propose. Yes, oil is still a form of energy. We still have coal power plants. But we are increasingly moving towards solar and wind power, as well as hydroelectric power. There is a new push for nuclear energy that is highly effective, clean, and could be a massive game changer.

I’ll have a video coming out about this later on as well, but it’s dishonest to ignore that energy has changed over the years.

Growing up, my brothers and I were manipulated by our birth mother. We are not necessarily different in that. Many of us are manipulated at some point in time, and if you have a narcissistic person in your life, manipulation is a common ordeal.

Among us brothers, some of us broke away from the manipulation sooner than others. The youngest of us was the first to break away from our birth mother, and I, the oldest of us three, was the last. But even breaking away from the person doesn’t stop the attempts at manipulation. If you can spot them though, you can reduce, or prevent their effectiveness.

One of the problems with manipulation is that we are geared to be effected by it. Generally, we are more prone to trust others, and at the same time, we have a tendency to believe that we can’t be manipulated. This in itself opens us up to manipulation. This can lead some to distrust everyone, which doesn’t prevent manipulation, and over the long run, isn’t healthy.

So how do you figure out someone is trying to manipulate you? Part of it is catching the individual in their lies. For me, that was easy as our birth mother admitted to being a compulsive liar. While we all could see some lies from time to time, having her admit that she was a compulsive liar made everything she said questionable. Here’s the thing though, even her admitting that she is a compulsive liar was a form of manipulation.

This may seem counter intuitive, but it comes back to our innate predisposition to believe others. By her admitting that she is a compulsive liar, she is admitting a fault, and revealing the truth. At the same time, it’s accompanied by a promise that they will work on that. It’s meant to bring you in, and form a trust for them, as they are revealing a secret. It’s a small bit of truth, enough to pull you in, and not question them. For our birth mother, it had the opposite effect, and could be seen more as a last ditch effort on her part.

Another common tactic of manipulators is to pull on your emotions. Crying, acting in a panic, and even yelling can all effect your emotions, and by effecting your emotions, it becomes easier to manipulate a person as you’re preoccupied. It gets you to let your guard down, and once it’s down, it’s easier to manipulate.

This can eventually also lead into somewhat of a good cop bad cop scenario, where the person acts as if they are understanding, and then launches into anger, or into crying, and then comes back to understanding. It plays with your emotions by spiking them, and then giving you relief, only to spike them again, which makes a person much more susceptible to manipulation as the emotional and even physical toll on a person wears them down, making it more difficult to fully process everything going on.

This sort of tactic often comes out when the person is beginning to be found out. For our birth mother, she would use this when she was confronted. When I finally broke the ties, she did everything from admitting that she was at fault, to then threatening to sue me, to harassing my wife, to screaming obscenities.

Once you know there is manipulation going on though, it become easier to combat it. With a narcissist, it can often be a bit easier to spot it as well because they have such a high view of themselves, they see themselves as intellectually superior, and thus they see others as inferior. This often reminds me of Michael Scott from the TV show The Office, where he attempts to use reverse psychology. It’s clear to everyone else what he is doing, but he believes he’s outsmarting others.

From our birth mother, we’ve seen it quite often, especially since we started this page. Her tactic is to make it appear as if she likes the fact that we created this page and are speaking out, because it supposedly is helping her obtain evidence that she will never show anyone. Yet we know that isn’t true because actions speak much louder and she often reacts in anger, which ends up showing what she truly thinks.

The goal of this sort of “reverse psychology” is to make it seem as if speaking out, and exposing the narcissist for who they are, is actually helping them, so you might as well stop because it’s only hurting you. But the truth of the matter is that the person is just trying to silence you. They want you to be quite so that you don’t continue pealing away their lies.

Other forms of manipulation comes in terms of intimidation. Threats of lawsuits, or threats of exposing evidence are quite common. But the threats are almost always hollow because the narcissist, or manipulator, doesn’t actually have a foot to stand on. In our case, we’ve been waiting for the damning evidence or court case for almost half a decade. It will never come though because it doesn’t exist, but it’s meant to be intimidating.

Being aware that manipulation is going on though is key, and once you realize what it is, you can combat it.

I grew up thinking that I had a high tolerance to pain. The older I got, the more tolerance I thought I had. Part of that reason is that I try not to complain about pain. I don’t seem to have the same reactions as many do to pain. So in my mind, it meant that I dealt with pain in a better manner, and thus my tolerance was higher.

Lately though, I’ve been dealing with increasing amounts of back pain, which stems from me missing a portion of a disk in my back. So I decided to see if there was a relation between pain tolerance and autism, as that is a new standard that I simply do.

It turns out that I was wrong though. The manner in which many people who have autism deal with pain is different from those who don’t have autism. But they still feel that pain, and sometimes more so than others. It’s not just physical pain that is effected by this though, but the entire perception of pain can be different.

Now, not everyone who has autism is hypersensitive to pain. Even if they are hypersensitive to one form of pain, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are hypersensitive to all types of pain. Conversely, some with autism are hyposensitive, and they experience one or multiple types of pain less. Simply, it’s a bit of a mess when talking about pain perception and people with autism. This gets more complicated when other issues are put into the equation, such as various disorders that are more associated with people with autism.

When autism was first defined, it was believed that they didn’t feel pain. That was because those being studied were observed doing things like going outside naked and rolling around in the snow. They seemed impervious to both heat and cold. And often, when inflicted with pain, they didn’t show the common signs of pain. That view has changed, but studies still show that children with autism are often not given the same sort of attention that non-autism kids are because they don’t show that they are in pain, or they can’t communicate what they are feeling effectively.

That is one of the big points too; that people with autism often lack the communication skills they need in order to effectively let others know how they feel. They don’t talk about it as others would. Their facial and body expressions often don’t get the point across.

There is another thing at play though. New studies are being done that are really looking at pain perception in people with autism. One recent study compared brain imaging of people who have autism, as well as others you did not, while they were feeling pain. The study was relatively simple in that the individuals would undergo an MRI while they had a piece of metal strapped to their leg that would be heated up to a point where it was painful, but not damaging.

What the researchers found was that both participants had the same area in the brain light up, an area associated with processing pain, as the heat was beginning to ramp up. But while the participant’s brain who didn’t have autism would continue to be lit up, the brain with someone with autism would go dark. The way that the brain handled pain was simply different. These studies will need further research, as it is relatively new, but it’s showing that someone who has autism has a brain that simply works differently.

But it gets more complicated than that as well. It’s not just physical pain that is perceived differently. This can be even what most would consider an annoyance. One researcher who is making breakthroughs in this field has autism himself, and he describes that when he was young, his mom would vacuum the floors, and it would set him off. It was too much. He eventually learned to deal with this, but it resulted in him becoming numb.

The reason for that is that he was hypersensitive to noises, and to other stimuli, as many people with autism are. This is complicated in that people with autism often have a hard time distracting themselves, and instead they focus on the annoyance, which intensifies it.

All of this means that people with autism have to be treated differently from a medical standpoint, while they also have to use different ways to cope. And that is all a learning experience.