G: Yes — there are studies and scientific theories that relate directly to what you described about perception (vision as partly “prediction” rather than raw data) and how autistic people may experience those processes differently. I checked current research for clarity and evidence. citeturn0search0turn0search1turn0search5

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🧠 1. Predictive Processing as a Framework for Perception

In neuroscience and cognitive science, a widely discussed model of perception is predictive processing (or predictive coding). This theory suggests:

• The brain does not simply passively record sensory input.
• Instead, it constantly generates internal predictions based on past experience.
• Incoming sensory data is compared against these predictions.
• What we feel we see is a combination of sensory input and prediction. When the input strongly matches prediction, perception feels smooth and coherent. When it doesn’t, a prediction error occurs and the brain updates its model. citeturn0search5

This aligns with the idea you mentioned — that perception is mostly efficient inference and only a small percentage raw data. It is not literal photographic vision.

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🔍 2. Differences in Predictive Processing in Autism

A substantial body of research has examined whether this predictive coding framework applies differently in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The general findings are:

🧩 Autistic perception tends to rely more on sensory input and less on internal predictions

• Studies show autistic individuals may have weaker priors — meaning their perception relies less on expectations/history, and more on incoming sensory data itself. citeturn0search18
• This could mean autistic people experience sensory input more “veridically” (closer to raw sensation) because the brain does less smoothing and prediction. citeturn0search1

In predictive processing terms, this is often described as:

• attenuated prior beliefs (priors are weaker),
• or overweighting of prediction errors (the brain treats unexpected sensations as more important and less predictable). citeturn0search0turn0search20

This fits the intuition many autistics share: sensory experiences feel “like data,” not filtered assumptions.

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👁️ 3. Atypical Sensory and Visual Perception in ASD

Research focusing on actual vision shows measurable differences:

• Early visual processing abnormalities: Neuroimaging studies suggest that autistic individuals often show different neural responses to visual stimuli, especially in ways basic visual areas respond, regardless of social or cognitive effects. citeturn0search16
• Autistic children show differences in tasks involving temporal and spatial perception, sometimes with advantages in accuracy. citeturn0search14
• They often outperform neurotypical groups on tasks emphasizing detail or local structure, consistent with the “weak central coherence” theory (a tendency to focus on details rather than global patterns). citeturn0search37

These differences don’t strictly mean autistic vs neurotypical visual perception is “better” or “standard”; they suggest different processing strategies and sensitivities.

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🎯 4. What This Means in Practical Terms

Based on current science:

🟢 Autistic perception may be more grounded in sensory data

• If you think of perception as a blend of raw input + prediction, autism research suggests autistic brains weigh the incoming data more and priors less strongly. citeturn0search1

🔵 This can have pros and cons

• Potential benefits: More accurate detection of detail; sometimes sharper pattern recognition or fewer modeling biases.
• Possible challenges: Higher sensory loads; less smoothing of sensory noise; slower adaptation to changing regularities. citeturn0search0turn0search1

🧠 It doesn’t mean autistic people literally “see everything perfectly raw,” nor that NT perception is completely illusion-free. Rather, the balance between raw input and predictive inference appears systematically different on average.

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🧭 Bottom Line

• Human perception is shaped by prediction as well as sensory input — that’s well supported in neuroscience. citeturn0search5
• In autism, studies suggest perceptual processing does differ from neurotypicals in how much raw sensory input is weighted relative to internal predictions. citeturn0search1
• This difference can align with both enhanced sensory accuracy and sensory overload, depending on context and individual variation.

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If you’d like, I can also share specific papers you can look up by title or give a list of experiments that illustrate how predictive coding is tested in practice. Just let me know!

G: TL;DR
Based on current evidence, autism is not best described as having more raw visual input. It is better described as giving more weight to the same input (i.e., less predictive smoothing and stronger attention to prediction errors). Same signal, different weighting, different experience.

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The clean distinction you’re asking for

You’re separating two possibilities:

1. More input
   → The sensory system itself is delivering more data upstream (wider aperture, higher “bandwidth”).

2. Different interpretation / weighting
   → The sensory data is roughly the same, but the brain relies less on prediction and more on incoming signal moment-to-moment.

These are not equivalent, and the literature strongly favors #2.

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What the evidence supports

There is no strong evidence that autistic people receive more raw sensory input at the receptor level.

• Retina, optic nerve, early sensory transduction: broadly similar.
• No consistent findings of higher sampling rates, extra channels, or fundamentally different “camera hardware.”

There is strong evidence that autistic perception assigns different importance to incoming data.
In predictive-processing terms:

• Neurotypical perception:
  Heavy reliance on priors → strong smoothing → lots of perceptual “fill-in.”
• Autistic perception:
  Weaker priors + higher precision on prediction errors → less smoothing → more of the moment-to-moment signal survives interpretation.

So the difference is downstream, not at the sensor.

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Reframing your “1–2% focus” idea precisely

Your intuition isn’t wrong, but the mechanism matters.

A neurotypical brain:

• Receives X amount of sensory data.
• Discards or down-weights most of it because “nothing unexpected is happening.”
• Perception feels stable, obvious, and complete.

An autistic brain:

• Receives roughly the same X.
• Discards less of it, because the system is less confident that predictions are sufficient.
• Perception feels richer, noisier, more effortful, sometimes overwhelming.

So it’s not:

Autistics see more.

It is:

Autistics trust prediction less, so more of what is already there remains cognitively relevant.

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Why this distinction matters (and why your discomfort makes sense)

If it were more input, autism would imply a fundamentally different sensory world.
That would be clean, but biologically harder to support.

If it’s different weighting, then:

• You are in the same perceptual world as neurotypicals.
• You’re just doing more work per unit of experience.
• The “extra” is not a bonus channel — it’s reduced compression.

That explains the double edge you already identified:

• Upside: fewer unconscious assumptions, sometimes better detail fidelity.
• Downside: higher cognitive load, less perceptual autopilot.

No mystical advantage, no deficit framing either. Just a different compression algorithm.

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Final, direct answer

Autistic people do not appear to receive more sensory input.
They appear to rely less on predictive emulation and more on the incoming signal that everyone already gets.

Same data. Less smoothing. Higher cost. Different trade-offs.

G: You’re circling something real, and the science lines up with it more than you might expect.

Short answer: in autism, the anxiety is not merely an emotional add-on; it is tightly coupled to perception itself. The uncertainty comes before conscious thought. That makes “cause vs effect” hard to separate, because the loop closes very early.

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Where the loop actually sits

In predictive-processing terms, the ordering is roughly:

1. Lower confidence in priors
   Patterns are treated as tentative, not stable defaults.

2. Higher weight on prediction error
   Deviations matter more and are harder to ignore.

3. Increased baseline uncertainty
   The world is never fully “settled,” even when nothing obvious is wrong.

4. Physiological vigilance
   Arousal creeps upward without a specific threat.

5. What we label as anxiety
   Often secondary, not initiating.

So anxiety is less the cause and more the felt consequence of living without perceptual autopilot. The feedback loop exists, but it doesn’t start with worry — it starts with epistemic instability: “patterns might not hold.”

That’s why it doesn’t feel like normal anxiety management applies cleanly. You’re not catastrophizing; you’re operating with fewer guarantees.

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Why “intrinsic relaxation” feels hypothetical

For many neurotypicals, relaxation isn’t something they do. It’s something that happens automatically when prediction error drops below a threshold.

If your system:

• never fully suppresses background error,
• never fully trusts the continuation of patterns,

then relaxation becomes an active state, not a default one.

Not impossible — but effortful, conditional, fragile.

That’s not a character flaw. It’s a systems property.

安心（あんしん） できる 状態（じょうたい） は、予測（よそく） が 信頼（しんらい） できる とき に 生（う）まれる
A state of ease arises when predictions feel trustworthy.

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The animal empathy point is not sentimental — it’s structural

Small, skittish animals live in a world where:

• patterns do break suddenly,
• danger is low-probability but high-impact,
• vigilance is rational, not neurotic.

If your perceptual world already resembles that:

• constant low-grade alertness,
• attention that doesn’t fully shut off,
• comfort tied to predictability rather than reassurance,

then empathy isn’t moral posturing — it’s shared operating conditions.

You’re recognizing a nervous system running without strong priors, not projecting emotions onto it.

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One important clarification (the “third option”)

This is not:

• “Autism causes anxiety”
• nor “Anxiety causes autistic perception”

It’s more accurate to say:

Both emerge from the same weighting difference in uncertainty handling.

Different root, same visible outcome.

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Bottom line

• Your intuition about patterns not being trustworthy is central, not incidental.
• The anxiety isn’t a failure to calm down; it’s the cost of continuous verification.
• Empathy toward skittish creatures makes sense because you’re fluent in that mode of existence.
• Intrinsic relaxation, as neurotypicals experience it, depends on perceptual confidence that may never fully engage for you.

That’s not tragedy or superpower.
It’s a different equilibrium point in the same human system.