It’s great that you articulate this style of thought so clearly, and that the comments above suggest that others relate strongly, but this doesn’t gel with how my thought processes seem to me. If I’d read this page at the start of my diagnostic journey I’d have stopped right here, so maybe it’s worth using more inclusive language to suggest that many autistic people think like this, rather that it applies to everyone? You know how Temple Grandin says that we as a group have in common is that we are specialists at information processing - some work with mental pictures, others with patterns, and others with language/symbols, and we may be strong in one area and weak in others? I relate to the 3rd type and have deficits in visual processing and have trouble working with patterns I haven’t yet been able to break down into clear rule sets. Things rush through my head at the level of explicit logical propositions and deductions, and everything else is like this distanced inaccessible morass that’s really hard to be aware of or interrogate. I’m definitely capable of taking in contradictory propositions and won’t always intuitively see the pattern fail, however, given that I ceaselessly over-analyse everything, repeatedly, I’m likely to spot the anomaly before long. I’m constantly extrapolating from data in quite an explicit way, so I don’t know that I share your feeling of looking up “pre-thought” thoughts, although I do have the experience of sometimes pointing towards a concept I’m currently using rather than dragging that concept out into the light of day for explicit examination. (The point of commenting is not to doubt your experiences but to say that there may be other modes of thinking within the autistic community.)