Explaining Humans: Winner of the Royal Society Science Book Prize 2020

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Millie uses covalent (stability through sharing) and ionic (attraction of differences) to define human relationships — our desire for connection is similar to the exchange of electrons essential for chemical bonding, where one can both be too distant and too close to form an effective, stable relationship. I’m going to have to remind myself of that because I’m not with my family and I’m heartbroken that I can’t see them, but that’s OK because they’re proud from afar,” she said. My neurodiversity created so many questions about what it meant to be human, but it also gave me the power to answer them. Sometimes people choose those who are just like themselves, (covalent bonding), and sometimes they choose people who are opposite but complement them (ionic bonding). It's more that she uses it to make arbitrary connections to human behaviours that she's observed and make it into some kind of metaphor.

Exactly what it promises, the instruction manual to human behaviour explained in a concept us science nerds can understand. Her perspective is insightful, humorous and belies a sense of confidence and depth of understanding in herself.This is an intriguing book, written from the perspective of someone who has had to self-consciously learn much of what most of us take for granted.

Whilst she was initially confronted with the fear of human connection, this book is a joyous ode to the fact that “being out of place also means you are in your own world where you are free to make the rules. Observe people's behavior and adjust your assumptions about them as you go along, getting a clearer picture with every step. Feedback loops, both positive and negative, are ways to use your neural networks to create desired outcomes or get rid of bad ones. Pang may have written this book as a manual to understand a world that sometimes feels alien to her, but it also allows neurotypicals to see the world from an entirely new perspective,” said Osbourn, praising how Pang “provides insights into different ways of thinking and the challenges of being neurodiverse in a ‘normal’ world”. There’s no need for flourishing, lyrical language as Millie lies out the logical, practical blueprint to which we can lead a more meaningful, happier life — that is perhaps the true genius of this memoir.

Once you are in the right environment with people that can see how to use the value your neurodiversity brings, you will thrive. The most useful chapters for me were the last three, which dealt with the challenges of relationships, learning from mistakes and navigating the confusing world of social rules using game theory and machine learning. We get information from all of our different senses, but what if they’re all really loud, and everything’s really intense, and you’ve got no filter, so you’re stuck in this kind of soup of limbo, when you’re trying to interpret these different signals that are really quite quiet? Acești oameni devin „parteneri într-ale armoniei”, adică undele lor sunt suficient de asemănătoare încât să le permită să se completeze reciproc, depășind cu eleganță eventualele diferențe și explorând împreună ceea ce îi unește.