The Hamlet Project

Guessing another’s questions, anticipating their concerns, intuiting their wondering, knowing before you know – is the kind of predictive behavior that indicates how much we human beings can understand each other. Many times, we can find ourselves baffled by what other people say or do.
But it strikes me suddenly that the counterpoint to that is how often we CAN understand exactly why someone did something or said what they said –
How often we can predict the next thought or action.
I’ve been reading about how autistic people see the world and some of them really struggle with this very thing; they cannot conceive of what another mind might be thinking. I think it’s got a title, something like “Theory of Mind” but whatever it is, it keeps them from being able to predict your question, your thought, your response – even to the most obvious actions.