January 28, 2026
Spidey-sense or sad-sense?
Why Some People See Collapse Earlier
Are 'early doom-spotters' wired different—or just lucky? Commenters clash
TLDR: The essay argues some neurodivergent people spot trouble sooner because they focus on patterns and resist groupthink. Comments explode into a split: personal “I called it early” stories, skeptics saying it’s luck, and cynics blaming depression—raising big questions about who we trust to read the room when it counts.
An essay claims some neurodivergent folks—especially autistic and ADHD minds—spot “collapse” earlier because they obsess over patterns, ignore peer pressure, and see the math behind “infinite growth on a finite planet.” Cue the comment section turning into a three-way cage match. On one side, the seers: people like viggity tell real-life stories of calling COVID in late 2019 and getting polite side-eye from partners until the headlines caught up. On another, the skeptics: dbs insists there are no prophets, just people with the right info at the right time—“no seers, only luck.” And then the black-pill crowd shows up: giraffe_lady shrugs that it might just be depression—if you always expect the worst, you’ll “predict nine of the last five recessions,” but for everything.
The vibe? Spidey-sense vs. sad-sense vs. sheer chance. Fans of the piece celebrate “epistemic independence” (fancy talk for not going along with the crowd) and joke about having a built-in doom radar. Skeptics roast the idea as survivor bias in a trench coat. Meanwhile, meme-lords run with “I’m not pessimistic, I’m predictive,” while others post “prophecy bingo” cards. It’s messy, passionate, and oddly relatable—as the internet argues whether early warning is wiring, mood, or the luckiest broken clock of all time.
Key Points
- •The essay proposes a link between neurodivergent traits, especially autism, and earlier awareness of ecological and societal collapse.
- •It cites hyper-systemizing research (Baron-Cohen, 2006) to explain autistic focus on structural patterns and inconsistencies.
- •Jeremy Lent’s work is used to argue that cultural templates, especially Western narratives, can mask ecological limits.
- •Predictive-processing models of autism suggest reduced reliance on priors, enabling quicker detection of contradictions.
- •A 2014 study by Yafai et al. found autistic children less likely to conform to incorrect answers, supporting epistemic independence.