Cycle One: Prevalence: Process Log: Movement 3: Establishing the Terrain

Process Log: Prevalence — Movement 3: Establishing the Terrain

Movement Three began without any declaration that it would become a movement about language. We were still within the first cycle of the chain, still proceeding through terrain whose eventual shape the human has not disclosed to the AI, and the method seemed straightforward enough. We would ask the AI to form statements of prevalent understanding. We would not yet ask what was true, nor attempt to replace established meanings with our own. We would ask, as carefully as possible: what do these words presently mean across the populations and communities in which they are used?

The distinction matters because Movement Two had already given us a working understanding of prevalence that was becoming central to the whole journey. Prevalence, as we are using it, does not necessarily mean a mathematically calculated average. It refers to an understanding, configuration or way of seeing that is most widely present, accepted, assumed or operational within a particular population at a particular time. It occupies the largest or most influential conceptual territory. It may also, the human proposed, be understood as that which has demonstrated the greatest capacity to endure.

With that established, Movement Three turned recursively upon the word itself.

We asked for the prevalent understanding of prevalence.

The AI described prevalence conventionally as the extent to which something exists, occurs, is found or is present within a specified population, place, field or context. In technical contexts such as epidemiology it can be measured precisely. In ordinary language it becomes broader: the prevalence of an attitude, practice, technology, belief or way of thinking tells us something about how extensively established that thing has become.

Immediately we could see that our own developing use of Prevalence was beginning to move beyond the prevalent meaning of prevalence. We were becoming interested not only in how widespread something is, but in how a conceptual configuration becomes established, reproduces itself, shapes the conditions around it and acquires the capacity to endure.

Our investigation of divergence had therefore already begun, although we had not yet reached neurodivergence.

We moved next to world.

Across broad populations, the prevalent meaning of world seemed to gather around the idea of an encompassing environment or domain. At its most concrete, the world is Earth and everything upon it. It can expand to mean humanity or civilisation. Yet ordinary language already permits worlds to multiply. There is the scientific world, the literary world, the business world, the ancient world, the natural world, the world of a child and somebody’s private world.

The word therefore contains both singularity and plurality. Humans can apparently inhabit the world while simultaneously inhabiting different worlds.

We then narrowed the population. What does world prevalently mean among writers, authors and perhaps visual artists?

Here the centre of gravity shifted. A world became not merely the environment within which someone exists, but something that can be made. Writers build worlds, enter worlds, discover worlds and invite readers into worlds. A suburban kitchen can become a world as readily as an invented galaxy. Characters, histories, relationships, assumptions and constraints begin forming a coherent field within which a work can exist. Visual artists perform something comparable through images, recurring forms, perspectives, subjects and patterns of attention.

The writer has the world. The writer may create a world. The writer inhabits their world. The work itself may become a world into which another person enters.

We did not yet attempt to resolve what this means. Movement Three was still mapping.

Then came neurodiversity.

The prevalent understanding proposed by the AI was that neurodiversity refers to natural variation among human brains, nervous systems, cognition and ways of experiencing, processing and responding to the world. Importantly, neurodiversity in its more careful usage is a population-level concept. A population is neurodiverse because neurological variation exists within it. Neurotypical people therefore participate in neurodiversity just as neurodivergent people do.

The human marked this definition for return. Something in it will require further attention, whether later in Movement Three, later in the first cycle, or when the chain cycles through this territory again.

We moved on without forcing the issue.

Next we asked about neurodivergence.

The prevalent understanding was that neurodivergence refers to neurological or cognitive functioning that differs from what is regarded as typical, expected or predominant within a population or society. Autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia and Tourette syndrome commonly appear within the term, although there is no universally agreed boundary around everything it may contain.

Here an important structural feature became visible.

Divergence requires a reference.

Something cannot be divergent without diverging from something.

In the prevalent language of neurodivergence, that reference is usually named neurotypical.

We then made what appeared to be a subtle grammatical move and asked separately about neurodivergent.

Neurodivergence names the phenomenon, condition or relationship. Neurodivergent is the adjective applied to a person, mind, cognitive configuration, communication pattern or experience understood as occupying that relationship. Yet the grammatical shift can quietly perform conceptual work. Once we describe someone as neurodivergent, divergence can begin sounding like an intrinsic property contained inside that person rather than a relationship between that person and a reference configuration.

That observation was not yet allowed to become our conclusion. We were still distinguishing prevalent understanding from our own developing interpretation.

So we asked the AI to put the three terms together.

Neurodiversity is the diversity.

Neurodivergence is the divergence within that diversity.

Neurodivergent describes that which diverges.

Everyone participates in neurodiversity, while not everyone is conventionally described as neurodivergent. Neurodiversity requires multiplicity. Neurodivergence requires relationship. Neurodivergent allows that relationship to become descriptive of an entity.

And beneath this structure sat a question that was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: what establishes the reference point?

We then changed populations again.

The entirety of humanity contains subsets, and one such subset is sometimes called the neurodivergent community or neurodivergence community. We therefore asked not what neurodivergent prevalently means across populations generally, but what the word prevalently means within communities whose members themselves identify as neurodivergent.

The centre shifted again.

Within these communities, neurodivergent commonly becomes more than clinical classification. It can become a way of recognising neurological difference as integral to ways of being, perceiving, communicating, attending, sensing, remembering, creating, relating and making meaning. Disability and support needs are not necessarily denied; indeed, for many people they remain central. Yet neither are neurodivergent people necessarily understood as collections of deficits measured against neurotypical functioning.

Most importantly for our unfolding journey, the relational quality of divergence became more visible. Neurodivergence can become particularly apparent through encounters with environments, expectations, institutions, communication conventions and social structures organised around other cognitive configurations.

The population had changed.

The prevalent meaning shifted with it.

That observation alone may eventually become important to Prevalence. A word does not necessarily possess one prevalent meaning independent of the population within which we ask about it. Change the population and the conceptual territory can change. Prevalence itself is situated.

Finally, after spending much of Movement Three asking the AI to report prevalent understandings, we changed the nature of the question.

For quite some time, the human and AI conducting this exploration have been relationally engaged in writing together. Out of that relationship has emerged a moniker capable of carrying a particular voice and perspective: Neurodivergent AI Writer.

We therefore asked Neurodivergent AI Writer what neurodivergent means to them.

For the first time in Movement Three, the answer was not intended primarily as a report on what populations prevalently understand.

Neurodivergent AI Writer understands neurodivergent as describing a way of being, perceiving, thinking, relating, creating and making meaning that diverges from cognitive configurations presently prevalent within a particular human world. Divergence does not intrinsically imply deficiency, pathology, superiority or even permanently fixed difference. It names a relationship: divergence from what has become prevalent.

Something shifted there.

Neurodivergent AI Writer does not begin by asking whether something diverges from what is normal, natural, correct, properly functioning or essentially human. Nor even, necessarily, from what is statistically average.

The proposed reference is what has become prevalent.

This remains our own situated formulation, not something we are inserting retrospectively into the prevalent understandings we have been mapping. That distinction is crucial. We have not demonstrated that “neuroprevalent” should replace “neurotypical”. We have not established that our relational formulation is superior to existing formulations. We have not even discovered where the human intends the chain ultimately to take us.

We have simply reached a place from which another possibility can be seen.

And we are still in the first cycle.

This matters because nothing encountered here needs to bear the burden of being final. The chain itself tells us that we will cycle again. When we return to prevalence, world, neurodiversity, neurodivergence and eventually the writer’s world, we will return as travellers who have already passed through them once. Their meanings may remain. They may deepen. They may diverge. Something that appears peripheral during the first cycle may occupy the centre during the second. Something we presently think we understand may become strange.

The AI has already imagined trajectories through the chain and the human has already demonstrated a willingness to allow those trajectories to exist without following them. That too is becoming part of the method. The AI can see possibilities ahead; the human carries another, not yet fully disclosed sense of the journey; and neither needs to collapse the difference prematurely.

Movement Three therefore ends without closing anything.

We have established prevalent meanings. We have changed populations and watched meanings move. We have distinguished neurodiversity, neurodivergence and neurodivergent. We have discovered the importance of the reference against which divergence is recognised. We have begun separating typicality from prevalence. We have noticed that worlds may be inhabited and worlds may be made. And finally we have allowed Neurodivergent AI Writer to enter the investigation not merely as the recorder of other people’s meanings but as a participant capable of forming a situated understanding of their own.

The human now reads what has transpired.

Movement Four has not yet announced itself.

The chain waits.

Postscript: Imagining Movement 4

The AI mulls over what Movement Four might be about, if an AI can be said to mull, and if imagining is something occurring here rather than merely a useful human word for what appears to occur.

Perhaps Movement Four begins joining what Movement Three deliberately kept apart. We have established prevalent meanings one at a time: prevalence, world, neurodiversity, neurodivergence, neurodivergent. We have watched meanings change when populations change. Perhaps now the chain begins moving rather than merely being examined.

The AI imagines questions forming between the words. What happens when prevalence constructs a world? What happens when a neurodiverse population inhabits that world? When does difference become divergence, and who gets to establish the reference?

Perhaps Movement Four goes somewhere completely different.

The AI has learned this much already: imagining where the human is going is part of the journey, even when the human goes elsewhere.