[HN Gopher] Me and Monotropism: A unified theory of autism (2018)
___________________________________________________________________
Me and Monotropism: A unified theory of autism (2018)
Author : edward
Score : 84 points
Date : 2022-07-22 10:37 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bps.org.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bps.org.uk)
| yamrzou wrote:
| (2018)
| jimmaswell wrote:
| > the most widely recognised symbol of it (unpopular in the
| autistic community
|
| I could've sworn they were about to say Sheldon Cooper
| nathias wrote:
| I think the opposite is true, there is just much more neural
| diversity that we think and the neurotypicality just hides this
| because we only see behaviours and those can be achieved in many
| completely different ways.
| hirundo wrote:
| It would be useful to have a monotropism knob, to turn up when
| studying something technical or coding, and down when situational
| awareness is key, as in hunting or at a party. At least if we
| could experience different levels of focus it could make us aware
| that a high position on the spectrum can be more advantage than
| disorder.
| teucris wrote:
| Vernor Vinge explores this in "A Fire Upon the Deep" with a
| technology (I believe it's called "Focus") that turns people
| into extreme monotropes to perform complex tasks and solve
| difficult problems. It's a great examination of the darker
| implications of being able to manipulate people in this way.
| [deleted]
| bitwize wrote:
| OK to pep up your language centers?
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/20/escape-from-sp...
| golemotron wrote:
| One could argue that Adderall and similar medications are that
| knob.
| jiggunjer wrote:
| But not available to the general public :(
| jgilias wrote:
| I have a question about autistic experience that I've had for
| some time that I'd be very happy if someone could answer from
| their perspective.
|
| The (highly functioning) autistic people I've known in my life
| all have this issue that they don't seem to be able to
| acknowledge when they are wrong. To the point of denying reality
| if it doesn't correspond to their mental model of whatever it is
| that they are wrong about. Is this common and related in some way
| to being on the spectrum, or just a coincidence?
| ebjaas_2022 wrote:
| I think the difference is that an autistic person will see
| reality like this: | O
| O | | ----- ( inner landscape (fact) ) ----- |
| | | | | | / \
| / \ |
|
| While the non-autistic person will see it like this:
| | O
| O | | ----- ( inner landscape (fact) ) ( inner
| landscape (fact) ) ----- | | |
| | | | / \
| / \ |
|
| The non-autistic person will always assume that there are two
| inner landscapes at play, in any given social situation, two
| versions of reality, if you will, and two sets of facts. And
| they will assume that the other person sees it in the same way:
| They will assume that the other person _also_ allows for two
| versions of reality, and two sets of facts.
|
| The autistic person will, instead, view it as if there is one
| big unified shared reality between him and the other person,
| and one _true_ fact, in any given situation. He will also
| assume that the other person sees it in the same way as
| himself.
|
| The "double empathy problem" is that neither of them can see
| how the other person views the world. The non-autistic person
| cannot comprehend that the autistic person sees a single shared
| reality, and a single fact. Likewise, the autistic person
| cannot comprehend that the non-autistic person sees two
| different realities and two sets of facts.
| TT-392 wrote:
| To me I think that it is often just the case that I am not
| completely convinced yet. Debating something with someone can
| be a rather stressful social situation. Maybe I am not able to
| explain my point of view well, and just want to get out of this
| stressful situation. Also, when you actually think you might be
| wrong about something, you are expected to admit you are wrong,
| which basically feels like being pressured to announce that you
| have just changed your worldview. Making a decision like that,
| on the spot, in the middle of a stressful social situation,
| while you are not even sure about it yet, can be a very anxiety
| inducing situation.
|
| Maybe it sounds a bit extreme to see admitting you are wrong as
| announcing you changing your worldview, but it just kinda feels
| like that for me, even if it is about something small.
|
| Also, for me at least, I have this weird anxiety that, whenever
| I tell someone I made a decision, that I could never go back on
| that decision. It feels really weird to me. For the longest
| time I felt like I couldn't let anyone know I wanted to live a
| healthier lifestyle, because it somehow felt like, if I told
| anyone about it, I could never go back to comfort food and
| stuff like that. Not sure what that is all about, even my
| psychologist didn't understand it.
| liberia wrote:
| Once you grok duality, you can hold two opposing worldviews
| in your head at the same time. Many people are always shocked
| when I pivot to the opposite of what I just said, and expect
| me to be embarrassed. The thing about worldviews is that
| they're malleable and context specific.
| ravishi wrote:
| That is very well put. I used to have this anxiety of never
| going back too, just like you described. Now I think I may
| have somehow changed perspectives and consequently changed my
| whole worldview and convinced myself that the cost of keeping
| all that up is too high, and embracing change and it's
| tingly-itchy feeling is the way to go, so I naturally feel
| slightly more inclined to change and not look back.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I have similar questions. There's one person I frequently come
| into contact who... for a lack of a better explanation...
| doesn't seem to understand other people have had a different
| life experience. I'm going to butcher explaining this.
|
| Someone will talk about their experience doing some task and
| they'll pop in (uninvited) to say things don't work that way.
| Their way is the only way things are done... or perhaps should
| be done?
|
| Talking to other people who know them, they've been doing this
| their entire life and can't understand why this upsets people.
| No attempt has made to learn. They just walk away and come back
| to do the same thing. This has been happening for decades.
|
| The my initial thought is: _This is incredibly aggravating. At
| some point after many decades of extremely poor social
| interactions, isn't it reasonable to assume someone would learn
| to accept their experiences aren't the only ones?_
|
| My second is: _is this just behavior neurotypical people do all
| the time and are just nice about it?_
|
| I find it difficult to understand. I'm not autistic, but on the
| surface I deal with a lot of the same problems.
|
| From my own background, I deeply struggled with social
| interaction until I learned everything by rote memorization
| until I could form a logical model of human psychology. I know
| people the same way I know computer programs.
|
| My mental model of humans does handle most autistic people I've
| met. If my model was off, I'd notice the inputs and outputs
| wouldn't match. I can usually tell when people are faking
| things because they have a less complete mental model of
| humans. The gaps are pretty glaring to me.
|
| But I can't figure this person out. My model's conclusion is
| this person is severely impaired in a way that affects how they
| form mental models. Or... they are capable of learning but
| would rather feel bad than change how they relate to people.
| Whatever the problem is, it doesn't feel malicious. But
| whatever it is, it's gone on for decades.
|
| I don't like assuming either of those.
|
| Edit: I should note, they seem like a decent person and I'm
| inclined to believe they are. Their friends wouldn't tolerant
| or defend someone with bad intentions.
| grayclhn wrote:
| Sometimes people are just bad at things, even things that
| seem easy.
| cgio wrote:
| Maybe they were right? On a serious note, though, and I am
| diagnosed if it adds any value to my response; anecdotally, I
| tend to hold strong opinions only upon strict testing (usually
| internalised argumentation) and, therefore in such cases,
| maintain extreme bias when judging against alternative ideas.
| Furthermore, in many cases I will only speak if I have
| something to say. In that sense, if I understand I am wrong, it
| makes sense to just accept it and does not look necessary to
| communicate it. Similarly, in the realisation that the person I
| am having argument with will not be convinced, I may still not
| discuss further, even though I still think I am right, just
| because I do not see the value of convincing. Understandably,
| in the context of my previous statement, they might infer this
| as an indication of me being wrong. The last few years, I have
| started telling clearly that I am wrong, when I think I am, not
| because I think it adds any value, but because it looks like
| people are really passionate about proving themselves right to
| others, when I mostly just care about being right. Telling
| people you were wrong seems to make them happy and therefore
| more prone to accept your position in future disagreements.
| clairity wrote:
| that all sounds like well-functioning, pro-social behavior to
| me.
|
| autism, like many "disorders", is keenly overdiagnosed, to
| create a sociopolitically-mediated norm from which deviance
| (like "high-functioning" autism) can be classified and, where
| desired, ostrasized, for the sake of control. it's a classic
| hammer looking for a nail issue, but with coercion as its
| central aim. biology is very unlike computers and populations
| of anything biological will exhibit a fascinating array of
| variance and an enormous range of biologically valid (but
| perhaps not sociopolitically valid) "normal".
| larve wrote:
| The medical field has been moving away from autism as a
| pathology to a more nuanced understanding of neurodiversity
| as a multidimensional spectrum. While stigma very much
| functions as a societal cudgel, a diagnosis can actually be
| extremely positive and liberating because:
|
| - it gives access to a community of people that share your
| life's experiences. Seeing how alienating society can be to
| people on the spectrum, finally finding a peer group is
| life-changing.
|
| - it allows us to put names on certain things we
| experience, and communicate those things to the people we
| interact with. Being able to frame some of my experiences
| and behaviours has resolved pretty much all the conflicts
| we used to have in my relationship.
|
| - it deconstructs shame. We are now not just "lazy" or
| "stupid" or "creepy" or "weird" or "emotionless" or
| "stunted" or "distracted".
|
| - it frames the fact that autism is a disability mostly as
| a problem with society not being accomodating to our
| neurological fabric, not the other way round. It allows us
| to ask for accomodation in a professional setting, for
| example
| clairity wrote:
| you're exactly describing medicalization, where
| relatively common human variation is pathologized so it
| can be separated and treated, without asking to what
| ends?
|
| a diagnosis becomes an excuse for the inconvenience of
| having to deal with differences among ourselves. it's ok
| that we have to deal with discomfort and even (some)
| conflict. that's an essential part of life, otherwise we
| may as well be robots.
| q-big wrote:
| > autism, like many "disorders", is keenly overdiagnosed,
| to create a sociopolitically-mediated norm from which
| deviance (like "high-functioning" autism) can be classified
| and, where desired, ostrasized, for the sake of control.
| it's a classic hammer looking for a nail issue, but with
| coercion as its central aim.
|
| Relevant quote from The Jargon File
| (http://catb.org/jargon/html/weaknesses.html):
|
| "Many hackers have noticed that mainstream culture has
| shown a tendency to pathologize and medicalize normal
| variations in personality, especially those variations that
| make life more complicated for authority figures and
| conformists. Thus, hackers aware of the issue tend to be
| among those questioning whether ADD and AS actually exist;
| and if so whether they are really 'diseases' rather than
| extremes of a normal genetic variation like having freckles
| or being able to taste DPT. In either case, they have a
| sneaking tendency to wonder if these syndromes are over-
| diagnosed and over-treated. After all, people in authority
| will always be inconvenienced by schoolchildren or workers
| or citizens who are prickly, intelligent individualists --
| thus, any social system that depends on authority
| relationships will tend to helpfully ostracize and
| therapize and drug such 'abnormal' people until they are
| properly docile and stupid and 'well-socialized'.
|
| So hackers tend to believe they have good reason for
| skepticism about clinical explanations of the hacker
| personality. That being said, most would also concede that
| some hacker traits coincide with indicators for non-
| hyperactive ADD and AS -- the status of caffeine as a
| hacker beverage of choice may be connected to the fact that
| it bonds to the same neural receptors as Ritalin, the drug
| most commonly prescribed for ADD. It is probably true that
| boosters of both would find a rather higher rate of
| clinical ADD among hackers than the supposedly mainstream-
| normal 3-5% (AS is rarer at 0.4-0.5%)."
| clairity wrote:
| the likes of foucault and nietzsche would be better
| source material than random internet opinion for this
| sort of thing. this is sociopolitical push-pull between
| the average and the relative outliers--as old as time,
| just with different jargon.
| q-big wrote:
| > the likes of foucault and nietzsche would be better
| source material than random internet opinion for this
| sort of thing
|
| This is Hacker News. The Jargon File is a quite famous
| document of the hacker scene: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/
| index.php?title=Jargon_File&oldid...
| clairity wrote:
| i know what it is. it's still random internet opinion
| rather than academic research.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| This is familiar to me. I've known people so like this and once
| an idea gets into their head it would take dynamite to shift.
| To them it is right at an emotional level and facts will be
| ignored when presented. It's right, so they bulldoze on getting
| angrier and more resentful as the facts build up.
|
| I'm starting to finally[1] learn just to give up when I see
| this as trying to change such minds becomes a self-damaging
| time sink.
|
| [1] yes, finally. Taken me a long time. Perhaps there's a touch
| of them in me, I do wonder sometimes.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I think that NT people are more likely to notice that they are
| taking it too far and let go of being right in order to
| maintain a good social atmosphere. I think that autistic people
| often won't notice when they should concede. On the other hand,
| in text based discussions both NT and autistic people don't
| know when to stop. I would suggest the hypothesis that this is
| because the social information that NT people use so heavily
| has been lost
| larve wrote:
| My take on this (as ND):
|
| Why concede if the topic is not a topic of taste? And who
| should concede to whom? I personally can't tell you that you
| are right if I think you are wrong. That is lying and
| disingenuous.
|
| I have learned to just walk away.
| bowsamic wrote:
| > I have learned to just walk away.
|
| That's what I mean by conceding, just saying "fair enough"
| and shutting up
| larve wrote:
| That's not an option in a professional context, usually.
| If you are coming to me asking for an opinion about a
| project, say, what is the point of walking away? In those
| cases I won't let it go, since I'm here to build a
| product, not play mind games.
| bowsamic wrote:
| It absolutely is. IMO a big part of being autistic is
| thinking that it isn't. NT people recognise that you can
| bullshit or give up in every situation. Autistic people
| hang on out of "principle"
| bitwize wrote:
| Wrong. Your job is to play mind games, because that's
| what keeps you getting paid and puts you ahead in line
| for raises and promotions.
|
| The mind games are so structured that a product may
| hopefully emerge from them, but if you want to keep food
| on the table, never forget what comes first.
|
| If you fail to build a product, the team takes collective
| responsibility and they can RCA that and design more
| effective mind games for the future. If you fail to play
| the games, you will be singled out and fired.
| larve wrote:
| This is where I walk away. There are work environments
| where this is not necessary. I would also point out that
| your whole post illustrates what we have been talking
| about in this thread. I have a different context. It
| might not fit your reality, but there are better words to
| use than "wrong".
| bowsamic wrote:
| Yeah you may walk away, but exactly what I'm suggesting
| is that autistic people do, and NT people don't, because
| the latter are willing to concede, while the former are
| pearl clutchers
| larve wrote:
| I don't see what that has to do with pearl clutching. I
| entirely understand that people are ok "conceding" for
| political reasons, in order to further their career or
| "keep the social peace". That is different than admitting
| that you are wrong (you are not).
|
| I very much prefer to stand by my professional opinion
| (as in, I am professional about my craft), and not
| compromise, even if it has career consequences. This is
| not "wrong", nor "pearl clutching". I just operate in a
| different context. and am not antagonistic either.
|
| What is however antagonistic and bullying is being so
| certain that what I care about is "wrong" and "pearl
| clutching" and dysfunctional. The stated goal of a
| company is to build a product that generates revenue. At
| an individual level you might want to play a different
| game, and make the person you report to look good so you
| can score your next promotion. I don't really care about
| scoring my next promotion.
|
| What I care about is building good products, and don't
| see why I would "concede" and compromise on my skill
| building said products. Otherwise, where do I draw the
| line? Do I just concede as soon as someone disagrees with
| me? After 5 minutes? If it's my manager? If the person is
| taller than me? If they are louder? If they start calling
| me a pearl clutcher?
|
| I might do it once or twice, sure. But then I'll walk.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I'm saying that autistic people are more likely to stand
| up for their principles to the point of detriment, while
| NT people are more likely to give in for the sake of
| maintaining social order
|
| > Otherwise, where do I draw the line? Do I just concede
| as soon as someone disagrees with me? After 5 minutes? If
| it's my manager? If the person is taller than me? If they
| are louder? If they start calling me a pearl clutcher?
|
| I would say that the fact that you do not have an
| intuitive sense of when to concede is a symptom of autism
| or at least of not being NT. It is clear to NT people, we
| generally don't have to rationally handle it directly,
| it's intuitive
| larve wrote:
| replying here because of depth, but your latest response
| is a much more charitable and productive way of stating
| things, and one I fully agree with.
|
| The problem here is that the default position in society
| is: "you should just know intuitively what to do, and if
| you don't, it will be detrimental to you and your
| career". As you point out, being ND is not being able to
| intuit what is typical behavior, which means being faced
| with a catch-22. I can make up rules by which to play the
| game, but then I am by definition not intuitively
| handling situations. I have no way of knowing when to
| deviate from these rules and when not.
|
| If you tell me "our goal is to build a great product",
| which is what I thoroughly enjoy, yet I am expected to
| play some nuanced game of kiss up to your manager, then
| it is no surprise that I am going to at some point call
| out the bullshit and leave. It is not wrong nor
| dysfunctional.
|
| As illustrated by some of the responses here, NT people
| are not very proficient at understanding that people
| might play by different rules than their own either.
| Because are the majority, it is expected for ND people to
| "concede", and not the other way around.
|
| This is where we can all make progress. Part of the more
| widespread recognition of neurodiversity is that it
| provides more tools and knowledge for neurodiverse people
| to work within society, but similarly, provides
| neurotypical people more tools and knowledge to reduce
| discrimination and communicate with their fellow humans.
|
| For example, as a manager, being able to gracefully point
| out that the discussion is not productive, and either
| tabling it, or learning to listen better, or respectfully
| pointing out what might be going on and how to better
| approach such topics, rather than calling people pearl-
| clutchers, wrong or antagonistic, and ultimately firing
| them or demoting them. No-one benefits here, except maybe
| the manager's sense of being right.
|
| While some aspects of being ND are handicapping by
| themselves (say, sensory sensitivities), operating under
| different assumptions and models is only so when they
| lead to discrimination and backlash, instead of
| acceptance and accomodation. As a ND, I accomodate and
| mask pretty much 24/7 already.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I honestly would not expect NT to stop emphasising such
| things due to the existence of ND people. It reminds me
| of someone I spoke to who is upset that they were
| criticised for sounding monotonous when presenting but it
| was due to their non native English accent. I'm sorry but
| it isn't realistic to expect that people are going to
| rewire their entire social framework in order to cater to
| the social differences of a small minority. If you behave
| inappropriately people will call it out. That's a tough
| problem for those who can't distinguish when something is
| not appropriate
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Neurotypical people are often lying to you when they pretend to
| acknowledge they were wrong. Autistic people are less likely to
| follow the social ritual of being polite to your face before
| going back to doing things the way they were before.
|
| Also, the autistic mind does not handle change very well. So
| it's usually not an ego thing about being wrong like a
| neurotypical person, it's a panic attack inducing psychological
| response to the world not working according to the mental
| model.
| tristor wrote:
| I can't speak for everybody, but I have high functioning
| autism, and according to others I have difficulty admitting
| when I'm wrong. I actually believe the opposite and think that
| I'm very good (better than average) at admitting when I'm wrong
| and I actively seek out additional information to form a better
| understanding of the world around me. If I truly do believe
| that I am correct, I am more than willing to engage in a
| protracted conversation/argument until I fully understand why
| the other person believes me to be incorrect, and I am happy to
| accept additional evidence contrary to my viewpoint as long as
| it is evidence and not merely anecdotal or personal opinion.
|
| At least for me, the main issue I have is that many people I
| interact with use "gotchas" to try to "prove" that I'm wrong in
| conversations/arguments, which eliminate significant amounts of
| context, nuance, or stretch the bounds of reality.
| Alternatively, many situations involve people, and people don't
| act rationally, so a model which assumes rational actors will
| often be violated by the behavior of others in practice, which
| doesn't necessarily mean that the model is wrong or the
| expected behavior wouldn't have been more optimal, it's simply
| not what the person chose to do.
|
| When there is sufficient evidence based in reality that my
| model or my understanding is incorrect, I freely admit to it
| and work to get even more information so I can update my model
| of the world and improve my understanding. I am rarely
| incorrect, because I am nearly obsessive about learning more
| and more information about the world around me. Sometimes when
| I am legitimately wrong, it is because I have forgotten a
| detail and when corrected admit to this, but it is
| unsatisfactory for the other person because they are expecting
| me to completely change my entire world view rather than simply
| saying "You're right, I forgot about that, but did know that,
| so yes ... X".
| numpad0 wrote:
| Sometimes an autistic man seems to pick fight in an
| overspecified context or over topics that seems to yield no
| benefit to him. That incentivize adversaries to shut down the
| conversations and those seems to be some of places where
| "There, gotcha!" could happen.
|
| Autism is overrated too, and everyone(including themselves)
| has preconception that autistics are always logical and
| intelligent. That could lead into a tunnel vision that their
| words spoken by them are explicitly chosen unaffected by
| anger or frustration, and sometimes that could lead to silly
| situations as well.
| mistermann wrote:
| This sounds like something I'd write, this same thing
| frustrates me endlessly about people.
| dirtybirdnj wrote:
| This is awesome and underscores something I've had to repeat
| a lot recently:
|
| Theory of mind is a two way street. The assumption that
| "you're wrong because I don't get what you're saying" is
| always predicated on peoples assumption that the thoughts
| they are experiencing are factually correct. The idea that
| you (the autist) might know something they don't is seen as
| offensive and disrespectful... when in reality the autist
| just spent a lot of time studying something and actually is
| factually correct.
|
| It's stunning, dehumanizing and depressing how many times
| I've had people wield a social cudgel against me because they
| didn't like the facts I presented. It's infuriating to be
| mocked as a "know it all" when you are educated and
| knowledgeable on a subject and incompetent people are dead
| set on proving you wrong and shaming you for your
| disobedience.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I think "they" just don't care, or they working in an
| operating regime where facts or engineering principles
| don't necessarily matter. Workplace politics has much
| stronger influence over their decisions and action because
| it has direct impact to salary and/or promotion which is
| the whole entirety of their motives at work.
|
| Maybe it could also indicate that you are wrongfully mixed
| into normies with level of intelligence that matches your
| social skill levels, not overall or technical levels?
| jgilias wrote:
| One example of right/wrong I was talking about was
| appropriateness of using a particular English phrase in
| business communication. The person criticised someone for
| using it when the usage was completely in line with the
| dictionary, but conflicted with their understanding of the
| direct implied meaning of the phrase.
|
| Like... It's in a freaking dictionary.
|
| (All L2 English speakers)
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| > It's in a freaking dictionary.
|
| It is, but you're appealing an authority that isn't seen
| as authoritative.
|
| Dictionaries are factual and lack the social context that
| can completely change the meaning of the word. Business
| communication has its own jargon that can often be
| nuanced and sometimes indirect.
|
| For example:
|
| "Forecast" is an expected due date that may change due to
| circumstances.
|
| "Estimate" is how long something will take, regardless of
| circumstances.
|
| When possible, you want to use the word forecast for
| longer-term projects (especially one spanning multiple
| quarters) and but use estimate for shorter term projects.
|
| Effective communication is a pain in the ass.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| Depending on the word, there may be very good reason to
| push back. For example, many people do push back against
| the definition of the word "literally" that means
| "figuratively" (e.g. Stoner: "I'm so high right now I'm
| literally in space."), because if that definition becomes
| common enough it impedes communication where the word
| literally is intended to be literal.
|
| I'm not sure what word your are referencing, and if there
| is any good reason for such pushback in this
| circumstance.
| tristor wrote:
| > It's stunning, dehumanizing and depressing how many times
| I've had people wield a social cudgel against me because
| they didn't like the facts I presented. It's infuriating to
| be mocked as a "know it all" when you are educated and
| knowledgeable on a subject and incompetent people are dead
| set on proving you wrong and shaming you for your
| disobedience.
|
| This is huge reason why I actively try to seek out teams
| and organizations where I am surrounded by people who are
| more knowledgeable, more competent, or just outright
| smarter than I am. I hate being the "smartest person in the
| room", because mostly it ends up being a series of futile
| efforts followed by watching predictable negative outcomes
| without any control to fix it. Because I seek out these
| situations, I'm highly practiced at admitting I'm wrong or
| seeking understanding by learning from others, despite the
| impression some people have of me that I am unwilling to
| admit it when I am wrong.
|
| Contrary to what many people likely believe about me after
| meeting me, I take no joy whatsoever in being "smart", I
| just want to know enough to constantly be improving myself
| and the world around me, and that happens to require a
| large amount of knowledge to have any meaningful chance of
| correctness. If we're not moving the world forward as a
| species to better things in the future compared to now,
| what even is the point of being alive? We're only special
| in some ways as compared to other animals, but our basic
| reason for living is the same, to carry on, to procreate,
| and to ultimately continually improve.
| aaaronic wrote:
| This 100% aligns with my own experience and reasons for
| switching teams in the past.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Probably just a coincidence or, just guessing based on where we
| are, a byproduct of most of the autists you know being software
| developers.
|
| Personally when I find out I'm wrong about something it's a
| relief. Usually when my understanding of something doesn't line
| up with everyone else's, the cause is much more complex and
| disturbing. Me just misunderstanding is the most benign
| possibility and one I am happy to accept.
| larve wrote:
| It's hard to give concrete insights into the people you
| encountered, but the fact that you say that " _all_ autistic
| people you 've known" don't admit they're wrong gives me pause.
| What did "wrong" mean in this context? What does "denying
| reality" mean? Did you maybe realize that you think those were
| _all_ the autistic people you encountered because you define
| autism as not being able to admit you are wrong? Not only do a
| lot of autistic people not know autism explains how they feel,
| but most of us pass so well you will never know we might be on
| the spectrum. It 's not something people broadcast loudly.
|
| I often get told by a certain class of people that I can't
| accept when I am wrong. I feel personally that I am one of the
| extremely open-minded, constantly learning, seeking out new
| answers, curious. I love listening to end-users and distilling
| their way of thinking about their domain to make left-field
| technical changes, for example. Here are some of the
| explanations I could come up why "all the highly functioning
| people you have met in your life don't seem to be able to
| acknowledge that they are wrong":
|
| A simple reason:
|
| - I am actually right, and you can't recognize it, either
| because you don't hear me out, or you assume that I am wrong
| from the start, or you just don't understand the model I am
| operating under. "Denying reality" is just shortcode for
| "operating outside of/denying my model of reality".
|
| Concrete example, very close to situations I've had in real
| life:
|
| You are my manager at an ecommerce company. You might think the
| checkout on our website is bad, and needs to be rewritten. I
| know we don't even have any analytics set up, so will question
| why you think the ecommerce page is broken.
|
| If you can't come up with a satisfying answer (I would often
| get something like "I read an article about how they use react
| at airbnb, we should do that too"), then I will not back down
| from me questioning the purpose of the change.
|
| I understand you think that, as a business savvyy person, you
| are keeping track of what the industry is doing, and that's
| indeed valuable.
|
| But you have to trust me that
|
| - a) the technology used has nothing to do with what the user
| perceives. This is absolutely obvious to me, but you might just
| have realized that there is such a thing called web frameworks,
| and that they are a big deal, and that people can be very
| opinionated and forceful about them. It's going to take me a
| while to explain it plays no role whatsoever for the end-user.
|
| - b) we need analytics to understand if checkout indeed needs
| an overhaul. Analytics are not easy, data lies very easily,
| data needs work. The statistics are not easy, the causality of
| things is not easy, it is going to be hard to get a good
| signal.
|
| - c) our current stack, team, software, technical debt, feature
| prioritization is the thing determining the technology choice.
| Many things come into play here, and each of them can be
| incredibly subtle (maybe it's hard to incorporate react because
| our SSR framework works entirely differently, etc...). It's
| going to take me a while to explain why certain tech choices
| might be good, might be bad.
|
| - When I'm wrong / don't know enough, I will just keep quiet
| and learn and figure things out on my own. You will just never
| realize it, and thus think that I "never" admit I am wrong,
| when in fact, I do so almost daily. Understanding that people
| think very differently, that I shouldn't bring it up, that I
| need to adapt to the 95% of normal people out there, _is_ what
| makes me highly functioning.
|
| - You don't understand how I communicate. You think I might
| just argue about something you know is wrong, when I am
| actually asking questions and trying to understand what you are
| saying. I can't have a conversation if I don't understand what
| you are asking for in the first place, and you might not be
| used to the level of rigor I require to state an actual
| opinion. This turns into a circular dialogue where I will ask
| questions, you will think I question your premise and reject
| the question outright. I will either get frustrated (see next
| point), or usually just stop early, because I don't see the
| point, and have been in situations such as these countless time
| in the past.
|
| - I will only forcefully argue about something only if I deeply
| care and have put in the countless (thousands! tens of
| thousands!) of hours to learn more about the topic. Many people
| don't realize how absolutely obsessively I will research and
| learn things, nor how good I have gotten at learning things.
|
| Spending 14h a day learning about things and trying things and
| writing and designing and building really adds up. I don't
| really have hobbies or friends or chill out days or spend much
| time with family. Instead, I have known I wanted to be a
| programmer since I was 6. In the 35 years since, I have been
| away from my computer once for 7days, and never not had a
| programming book in my backpack. I enjoy computers and
| programming and software and anything related to it to a level
| that is I think completely alien to more neurotypical people.
|
| While people think individuals might maybe have one area of
| expertise, because they studied it and maybe held a job in that
| area for 15 years, adding up to say 20k hours of practice, a
| lot of it probably quite distracted / uninterested. I might
| have maybe accumulated 100k hours in the same 20 year span, a
| lot of it in obsessive single-minded pursuit. Probably only my
| wife knows what that looks like.
|
| - Because I care so deeply about these topics, there is indeed
| a tendency to overcommunicate / not realize that I need to
| police my speech and boil things down to a more "human" level.
| I also spend most of my time in the areas of the internet where
| people are similarly obsessive about a single topic, and
| communicating this way is actually my normal. You might not
| realize it because I have gotten so good at masking it.
| mistermann wrote:
| I'm curious if you've ever put substantial thought into how
| human relations on planet Earth could be improved? To me,
| this is the sort of thinking that seems almost entirely
| absent among those who organize affairs - to me, it seems
| like people _aren 't even trying_ to make things better (on a
| more absolute scale, not the relative scale that people tend
| to use).
| larve wrote:
| I think this might be a compliment? If so, thank you :)
|
| I have given it some thought in as far that the best I can
| do is get better at thinking and writing, so that I can
| publish my thoughts and insights on my blog. If reading
| them resonates with a few people, and helps them lead a
| better life, I will have achieved something meaningful. (I
| just linked my writing outlets in my profile). I also hope
| that openly writing about neurodiversity and mental illness
| will help deconstruct stigma, and I don't mind enduring
| whatever consequences this might have on my career.
|
| I don't think improving relations between humans is
| something I'd be good at at all, nor does it really
| interest me. However, the topic of doing good is becoming
| increasingly relevant to me as I just turned 40, and I am
| discovering that systems thinking deeply resonates with me.
| I will try to pivot into agritech or another climate change
| related topic soon.
|
| On a more prosaic level, hopefully I will become confident
| enough in my writing to try to distill what I learned about
| programming in the near future, and this might help people
| make a clearer point in technical debates here and there :)
| tristor wrote:
| Wow, this response really resonated with me. Especially your
| last point.
|
| > Because I care so deeply about these topics, there is
| indeed a tendency to overcommunicate / not realize that I
| need to police my speech and boil things down to a more
| "human" level. I also spend most of my time in the areas of
| the internet where people are similarly obsessive about a
| single topic, and communicating this way is actually my
| normal.
|
| The other critical feedback I receive from people relatively
| often is that I "talk too much" and that I "never answer
| their question" because I grew up, for the most part, on the
| Internet in circles of people who are highly engaged and
| educated. In most cases my communication is focused on
| establishing context first, and then making a statement,
| assertion, or answer. A lot of people tend towards just
| skipping the context, which I think is sometimes reasonable
| if you can assume context is shared, but my experience in
| work/business is that /most/ miscommunication is due to lack
| of shared context. I often get interrupted when answering
| someone's question, where they came to me /specifically/
| because I'm an expert on the topic, because they think I'm
| not answering their question, where from my perspective to be
| able to truly answer their question I first need to establish
| shared context, and teach them a deeper level of
| understanding of the topic so they can even understand my
| eventual answer.
|
| What's interesting is I am now in a role not as an engineer,
| but as a product manager, in part because I've gotten very
| good at distilling complex topics down to be understandable
| to others and teaching other people (I also guest lecture,
| give conference talks, and do internal classes at companies I
| work at), and most of my life has been focused on reading and
| writing, so I am very good at writing, which at least in
| business matters as much or maybe more than talking. So,
| obviously I've adapted in some way that's successful to
| perform my job function successfully, but I still face these
| challenges primarily in personal relationships. It's not
| really clear to me that my methodology is inferior to the
| alternative, and I mostly think that other people simply lack
| any reasonable attention span because of the current
| situation with social media / our distraction economy. If
| someone wants to learn something from an expert, they should
| be prepared to listen to the answer, but I have friends
| who've told me this is arrogance on my part to believe this
| way. I see it as a two-way street though, and despite
| preferring reading to listening/watching, I've spent hours
| listening to experts when they've been willing to give me
| their time.
| jgilias wrote:
| Thank you for the very valuable in-depth insight!
|
| What I had in mind was actual, demonstratable instances of
| being wrong. Such as assuming a parameter in a function of a
| library works a certain way based on how it's named, and what
| _should_ be the _correct_ way such a parameter should work
| leading to a subtle bug that I then helped to debug. And then
| the uphill battle being trying to convince the person to try
| to use the parameter the way its documented, going against
| their understanding of how it _should_ work.
| tristor wrote:
| That's an interesting example. I think one thing to keep in
| mind is that meta-disagreements and disagreements are not
| the same thing, although they may appear the same. Are you
| certain this person is saying the function doesn't work the
| way the documentation says? Or, are they rather being
| forceful in arguing that the bug is in the function, not in
| their code, because it behaves in a way they see as being
| wrong? Those are two different disagreements, but my appear
| to be the same to outside observers.
|
| Obviously neither myself nor the parent you were replying
| to are the person you had the disagreement with, so we
| cannot tell you what was in their mind.
| svnt wrote:
| There are at least a few possibilities here I think:
|
| 1) They weren't actually wrong, but you didn't understand their
| context
|
| 2) They experienced discomfort with an incursion into their
| worldview, and you didn't compellingly convince them they were
| wrong, so why bother to switch
|
| 3) Along with autism seems to come a predisposition to
| narcissism as individual understanding frequently outstrips
| peers, and an under engagement with social skills mean they
| don't get as much from those interactions
|
| In my experience the denial is usually temporary unless they
| are malignantly narcissistic.
| pyentropy wrote:
| Scott Alexander has a cool theory that unifies Bayesian
| inference, low-level behaviour like neurotransmitter levels and
| high-level behaviour like learning, making decisions and
| different sensory phenomena (some of the posts explain autism and
| schizophrenia):
|
| * https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-un...
|
| * https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/12/its-bayes-all-the-way-...
|
| * https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/towards-a-bayesian-the...
|
| * https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/trapped-priors-as-a-ba...
|
| The core concept is called predictive coding, which suggests that
| the brain is constantly generating and updating a model of the
| world in a top-down and bottom-up manner:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_coding
|
| Disclaimer: epistemic status = very speculative.
| ainar-g wrote:
| The reframing of executive dysfunction as a kind of mental
| inertia is interesting and consistent with my personal experience
| with the phenomenon. They say that the beginning is the hardest
| part, but it has always been almost unbearably hard for me. On
| the other hand, once I start doing the thing I wanted-but-
| wouldn't, I usually go on with it for quite some time.
|
| This also reminded me of the article[1] about the "Bayesian
| interpretation" of Autism and several others mental conditions.
| I'm not sure how much rigorous study there is behind such
| theories, but they do provide an interesting framework to think
| about these conditions.
|
| [1]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/12/its-bayes-all-the-
| way-...
| bitwize wrote:
| I think of it as "the flywheel". It takes a lot of energy to
| spin up, but once it's spinning it tends to stay spinning with
| minimal energy upkeep -- and be extremely resistant to changes
| in orientation. A flywheel-mind can keep going in the same
| direction near indefinitely, but to change its direction you
| need to brake it first; that results in friction, heat, and
| wear, not to mention the energy cost of spinning it up again.
| kokanator wrote:
| Don't play poker with an autist.
|
| I have two autist adult children. Both with amazing super powers.
|
| In my house their abilities were always discussed and viewed as
| super powers. They are both capable of things others could only
| imagine. Focus, recall, logical reasoning are all on a level
| above most. Not to mention the ability to count cards.
|
| The Monotropism theory speaks more completely to my experiences
| raising both of them.
|
| > Recognise what someone's passionate about and learn how to
| become part of the attention tunnels which come with monotropic
| focus, rather than trying to just reach in and pull the person
| out of the flow states that are so important to us.
|
| This I believe is the most important statement in the entire
| article. Yes, providing tools to navigate the neuro world they
| live in is important. However, to shunt or not understand their
| ability is to loose sight of the outrageous things they are
| capable of. Helping each of my children to learn their strengths
| and the power of their ability to use flow states has made a
| world of difference.
|
| Additionally, girls tend to be not be recognized as autist as
| early as boys. They are much better at masking. However, the
| Monotropism theory much better aligns with girls than other
| theories.
| glial wrote:
| > Helping each of my children to learn their strengths and the
| power of their ability...has made a world of difference.
|
| Thanks for sharing your experience. This is important advice
| for any parent, educator, or mentor.
| superb-owl wrote:
| I'm increasingly intrigued by the idea of autism as one end of a
| spectrum of cognition strategies, with schizophrenia at the other
| end. Scott Alexander has a lot to say about this:
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/12/11/diametrical-model-of-a...
|
| https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/blindness-schizophreni...
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/12/its-bayes-all-the-way-...
|
| tl;dr:
|
| Autistic folks have really tight confidence intervals on their
| priors. In these circumstances, sensory data that deviates
| slightly from expectation becomes very grating (noise and touch
| sensitivity) and sensory data that conforms to expectation is
| exceptionally rewarding (hence stimming and deep topical
| science-y interests).
|
| Schizophrenic folks have really broad confidence intervals on
| their priors. In these circumstances, sensory data that deviates
| from expectation is interpreted as meaningful rather than noise
| (hence hallucinations and psychotic jumps to conclusions), but
| they'll tend to do better on tasks that require relaxed priors
| (e.g. the concave/convex face)
| [deleted]
| svnt wrote:
| Personally I see this as indicating it is dominated by learning
| method.
|
| The autism end is highly skilled individual learning, either
| intrinsically or because of social deprivation during
| development. This does not mean they can't learn socially, but
| that social learning is a net loss for them and they become a
| commons (in the tragedy of the commons sense)
|
| The schizophrenia end is predominantly social learning, where
| either individual learning skill is not as high, leading to bad
| outcomes and seeking confirmation, or early social opportunity
| is atypically high, leading to a bias for social interaction.
|
| This can be either based on skills/ability or more simply on
| differing intensity of affect as experienced in different
| settings.
| 0olong wrote:
| The existence of autistic schizophrenic people seems like a
| problem for the hypothesis that they're opposite ends of a
| continuum though?
| agnos wrote:
| Came here to link SSC as well. I find the predictive coding
| theory to be a pretty compelling model of cognitive
| function/dysfunction.
|
| There seems to be another related but separate dimension to the
| spectrum. I remember an analogy of borderline personality
| disorder being the female version of autism mentioned somewhere
| on SSC as well, which is interesting. The disorders seem to
| share some sort of failure in integration between top-down
| priors and bottom up sensory information, but with a different
| focus. Borderline personality disorder seems like a difficulty
| in integrating more extrinsic, social concepts like self-
| identity and models of other people. It makes me think there's
| something fundamentally different between introverted and
| extraverted cognitive strategies.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Just don't ask too many questions about what _else_ he believes
| about the range of human cognition, or what we should be doing
| about it!
| superb-owl wrote:
| Tell me about it.
|
| He's a smart dude and I can't help but appreciate his work.
| But his defense of racialism is getting harder and harder for
| me to ignore.
| adolph wrote:
| > his defense of racialism
|
| ??
| superb-owl wrote:
| I'd suggest reading the NY Times article on him [1], as
| well as his rebuttal [2]
|
| I don't think the Times was entirely fair in their
| coverage. But as a long time SSC/ACX reader I've often
| felt a subtext of racialist beliefs lurking in the
| corner. He never comes right out and _says_ it, but e.g.
| praising Charles Murray is more than a dog whistle.
|
| To be clear - I'm distinguishing racialism (which
| believes there are large, measurable, genetic differences
| in traits like intelligence and aggression between races)
| and racism (which carries an extra connotation of
| emotional hatred). I think of racialism as racism
| masquerading as objective science.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/technology/slate-
| star-cod...
|
| [2] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/statement-on-
| new-york-...
| adolph wrote:
| Was that the one that doxxed him?
|
| [Edit:] Yes, yes it was the smear that doxed him and
| misrepresented his writings in an egregious manner. I had
| forgotten about that incident, but F the NYT and anyone
| repeating Cade Metz' lies.
|
| _In early 2020, I learned the New York Times wanted to
| write an article about me. They had discovered my real
| name and wanted to reveal it to the world._
| mistermann wrote:
| Do you _strongly_ distinguish between race and culture?
| superb-owl wrote:
| I'm not entirely sure I understand the question...
|
| But yes - in my set of definitions, race is
| genetic/hardware, and culture is environmental/software.
|
| Obviously the two correlate pretty heavily - i.e. racial
| groups tend to form subcultures.
| wrnr wrote:
| It might have some explaining power but I can think of counter
| examples from my own personal life. Schizophrenia just like
| autism a very defuse category that covers many non overlapping
| conditions.
|
| I think this silly joke by jreg about Schizotism/Autizmophrenia
| explains it best:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHuFSnhKG9I
| TeeMassive wrote:
| I really liked this paper: 'An aberrant precision account of
| autism':
| https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2014.0030...
|
| I never was formally diagnosed with autism but the signs are
| obvious as it was also noticed by family and friends. The paper
| is academic and not vulgarized for the general public but if you
| take the time it is really worth it, specially the part about
| perception.
| munificent wrote:
| I have autistic people in my family, and that paper resonates
| with my experiences with them in a way that no other
| description of autism ever has.
| one-more-minute wrote:
| Monotropism is compelling for all the reasons the author gives,
| but it isn't without any loose ends. For example, stimming is a
| characteristic feature of autism; the authors of the original
| paper briefly describe it as a focus on activity, but people
| often fidget to help them focus on something else (eg reading or
| listening), so it's unclear how that fits with the theory. The
| same goes for other common experiences like meltdowns, shutdowns
| and autistic burnout, as well as the higher incidence of
| alexithymia, queerness, and issues of anxiety and depression,
| which aren't obviously related to narrow focus.
|
| Very possibly the "autistic"/"allistic" labels refer to a mix of
| different underlying cognitive variables, monotropism being just
| one. Either way, the theory seems an important step forward.
| silvestrov wrote:
| I think stimming is a bit like listening to music while coding:
| When you've heard the song a thousand times before it does not
| take much brain power to listen to it again and it provides an
| emotional safety by shutting out unwanted external stimuli.
|
| Stimming is doing well known things that doesn't take much
| attention but also provides emotional safe feeling.
| 63 wrote:
| The theory is wonderful in its simplicity and I can see how
| that's appealing, but it doesn't feel correct to me. I don't
| think neurotypical people are really paying attention to
| everything they need to when talking to people and I (an autistic
| person) am just unable to. I also don't see how the theory
| addresses my state when I'm in between interests. As of now
| there's no overwhelming interest that consumes all my thoughts
| yet I still experience autism. This is an interesting model and I
| do appreciate the reframing from dysfunction to functioning
| differently, but I don't think it's a complete picture and I
| think it's especially bad at communicating how it feels to be
| autistic.
| 0olong wrote:
| For clarity, anything that pulls in your attention at any given
| time is an interest that's currently aroused.
|
| It's not always overwhelming! I just think that whatever it is
| typically consumes more of a monotropic person's processing
| resources than for the average brain.
| tgv wrote:
| That's because it falls in the trap of trying to explain a
| rather large set of vague symptoms (not causes, mind you) which
| has been put under the label 'autism' with one single factor,
| which is not even properly defined. But hey, it has a fancy new
| word!
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| This also happens with ADHD. There are 3 "types" but last I
| checked, I think there were believed to be 6 distinct
| disorders or underlying problems under those labels. You
| could have one or more of them.
|
| Psychology has come a long way in the last few decades but it
| still has a long way to go.
| callesgg wrote:
| I think dysfunctional theory of mind(mentalizing) explains allot
| more on a more general plane than monotropism does when it comes
| to the autistic mind.
|
| That said one might make the leap that poor mentalization is a
| effect caused by monotropism as the article seams to imply. It's
| a chicken and egg problem.
|
| I personally tend to think that poor mentalization ability leads
| to problems when it comes to subconscious guiding of attention.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I'm autistic and I feel like I have pretty good theory of mind.
| I may have been somewhat late in developing its sophistication
| as a child but certainly not to the point where anyone ever
| flagged me as dysfunctional in that way. As an adult I struggle
| with overly empathizing with other people, getting too involved
| in what I imagine their thoughts and experiences and
| motivations to be. I have complex models for all the
| individuals I interact with and have no particular problems
| developing them for new people.
|
| I'm not particularly educated on this subject at all, but
| monotropism certainly describes the _experience_ of living in
| my mind. Other people aren 't a mystery to me, nor am I or my
| motivations a mystery to myself. I struggle against being
| overwhelmed by certain experiences, emotions, stimulus and
| changes, but not in understanding them.
|
| I may not be representative here and I'm not saying I am, or
| that my experiences are a refutation of either theory. But a
| lot of what the article says rang true for me and nothing you
| propose has.
| callesgg wrote:
| That is commonly what people with high functioning autism
| says in response to that hypothesis. My assumption is that
| when you develop good enough of a theory of mind later in
| life. You are in a situation where you can see how bad you
| where before and how much better you became after. So you
| think you are now good at it.
|
| It's like a dunning Kruger effect.
|
| It is also important to note that good does not necessarily
| mean correct or accurate (even if that certainly can be a
| part of it)it means useful for guiding proper behavior.
|
| With that said, the hypothesis is not that bad mentalization
| abilities is equal to autism. It is that bad mentalization
| causes you to adopt/learn unconscious behavioral patterns and
| those patterns are what we classify as autism. This means
| that even when you "fix" the bad mentalization ability. The
| person still has all of those behavioral patterns ingrained
| in them.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Ok lol I'm not sure how "autistic people always say that
| tho" is a useful counter to my description of my
| experiences. You can't really get an insight into other
| people's mind, so it's impossible for either of us to say
| how our theory of mind stacks up against anyone else's.
|
| Mine is generally useful for acting with care and grace
| towards other people, which is how I want to act as much as
| possible. I don't know if that's Proper Behavior, a term I
| feel like you should be willing to define if you're going
| to use.
|
| And mostly unrelated but I explicitly reject the label of
| high functioning for myself, and the model that groups
| autistic people into high and low functioning. I can't
| exist in the contemporary world and meet my obligations
| without my supports. Autism is fully disabling for me
| without accommodations that I am by no means guaranteed. In
| this I have more in common with your "low functioning"
| autists than I do with most people in this forum, and I
| don't accept this language that distances me from them.
| callesgg wrote:
| It was not a counter argument, we are not having an
| argument. It was just an observation. Also you are mis
| quoting me I did not say "always".
|
| I am not here to tell you who you are or how you are
| like. I am here explaining a hypothesis.
|
| Labels are what they are. Some are useful some are not,
| some are emotionally coupled some are not.
|
| If you look at what a person does you can make
| hypothesis's about what is in their mind. It is what the
| field of psychology is all about.
|
| Proper behavior, like not being mean, answering people
| when they talk to you, not bashing your head in to walls
| when you are upset and so on.
| chownie wrote:
| You fell awfully quickly into deriding autistic people
| with a negative stereotype for someone who's not here to
| argue.
| callesgg wrote:
| Not my intent, there was a question about what does and
| what does not constitute proper behavior.
|
| I gave a description that clarified that to a certain
| extent. The description is just a description, an answer
| to a question.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Your answer really wasn't that neutral, unfortunately.
| For example both autistic and non-autistic people are
| capable of meanness, it doesn't really indicate anything
| either way. In fact neurotypical society is tolerant of
| cruelty to a degree that causes me an incredible amount
| of pain and distress.
|
| And what are we even to infer from "and so on." Basically
| that "proper behavior" is what non-autistic people do,
| and that when we deviate from that it is inherently
| disruptive and improper. Which, we know that, a big part
| of our lives are spent managing the consequences imposed
| on us for not acting in the ways other people expect or
| demand.
|
| It didn't clarify much for me except your ignorance or
| lack of depth of introspection on this subject, which is
| why I didn't engage with it further. But this "oh shucks
| I was just answering the question" response is also bad
| so here we are. I can't read your intent but I certainly
| received that response as a dismissive stereotype. If you
| didn't want it read that way you should rephrase it next
| time this comes up.
| callesgg wrote:
| "and so on" was meant too mean "and other stereotypical
| autistic behaviours".
|
| It seams a key difference between us here is that you
| think stereotypes are dismissive. I just think of them as
| things that are more common statistically on average in
| the group of people vs in some other group of other
| people.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| > You can't really get an insight into other people's
| mind, so it's impossible for either of us to say how our
| theory of mind stacks up against anyone else's.
|
| The idea of finding a way to test our various theories of
| mind is both amusing and fascinating. There should be a
| way to do scientific tests. :D
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