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I'm skeptical of the difference between high and low decouplers. I'd say high decouplers probably just repress their emotions well, but haven't looked into it.
Is there psychological literature on decoupling as a personality trait?
(Disclaimer: I wrote this before I read the articles in the sibling comment to this one.)
I self-test regularly; I know what I am, and what I am not.
(There are a bunch of weird side-effects that I've noticed in addition to this, and it inherently makes social interaction more difficult since "be normal" is not a free action to anywhere near the same degree that it is for others. But I've known this to be true for as long as I can remember to the point where I'm pretty sure it's something you're born with- some people are capable of both developing the emulation layer you need to function successfully and becoming properly aware it's just emulation, and some are not. I think we call those capable of neither "low-functioning" these days.)
I think there's a difference between a low-decoupler wishing they were a high-decoupler, and a native high-decoupler, and it can be difficult even for people who are high-decouplers to know which is which, especially because people who aren't native can still express native traits (by confusing the sum of a bunch of traits for being a high-decoupler in a particular area, by being overwhelmed with some emotion like lust, etc.) only to find out that actually, no, they aren't and now they're bad or tainted forever or something.
Plus, having enjoyed the fruits of being a high-decoupler can create trust issues when interacting with low-decouplers later even if no other risks manifest themselves, so...
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So the idea behind high/low decoupling comes from this post here:
https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/do-rationalists-exist/
That link has a lot of references at the bottom of the article with psychological studies, but reading the article itself should give a decent idea. Cognitive Decoupling is a well defined thing, it seems to be Keith Stanovich who came up with the idea in the first place two decades ago, he has book chapters like: http://www.keithstanovich.com/Site/Research_on_Reasoning_files/Stanovich_West_Toplak.pdf which discuss the idea (but are quite long to read and mostly of interest to people in the field, they aren't written for a general audience)
This article builds upon that idea, applying it to the Harris Kelin spat a few years ago:
https://everythingstudies.com/2018/04/26/a-deep-dive-into-the-harris-klein-controversy/
It's a bit long but a good read.
If you want stuff more directly relevant these are good:
https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8fnch2/high_decouplers_and_low_decouplers/
https://drossbucket.com/2018/04/08/the-cognitive-decoupling-elite/
Note that high decoupling isn't the same as high IQ. The two are highly correlated, but that's not the same as being identical.
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