Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

the.scapegoat.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 521 posts

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#41

Post by [deleted] »

xSxY3fj5gVCmvWE wrote: post #21
korijn wrote: post #3

It's interesting to me that all four examples put the blame with the other party. I hope it's just worded poorly or I am reading too much into it. Edit: I'm not saying that invalidates the article's content (in fact I recognize the situations from personal experience), but it doesn't really put a positive spin on it.

So you want them to prepend every paragraph with "I know I'm wrong sometimes"? What does that achieve? The article is nice, concise, and gets the point across beautifully. Everybody's wrong sometimes, but some people are genuinely very rarely wrong in their area of expertise, and I'm willing to believe this guy is one of them. I'm glad he doesn't give in to the petty workplace politics, and I wish more people would.

[deleted]

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#42

Post by psyc »

I’ve acknowledged I was wrong countless times - often readily. I don’t find it inherently difficult or uncomfortable. There have also been many times I’ve refused to concede even a little, because that would have been a white lie (in my mind) even though I knew full well it would smooth things over immediately. Those people probably perceived me as incapable of admitting fault. That’s what they usually yell at me, after all. And I get told I’m arrogant about once a week. I never reply to that, but I’m always thinking in my head, “I never tell anybody that they’re anything (negative). Why is it so easy for other people to tell me I am this that and the other……”. Am autistic.

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#43

Post by lnxg33k1 »

I don’t know if I am autistic never got tested and I don’t care, but I’ve found myself at the start of my career in some compatible positions and thoughts, which now I have grown away from, are you sure that these things are about autism and not just simple immaturity?

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#44

Post by petercooper »

larve wrote: post #18
korijn wrote: post #3

It's interesting to me that all four examples put the blame with the other party. I hope it's just worded poorly or I am reading too much into it. Edit: I'm not saying that invalidates the article's content (in fact I recognize the situations from personal experience), but it doesn't really put a positive spin on it.

thanks for reading, author here! the article is very much a response to a blame already expressed. People can be wrong about factual things, which can be verified. Otherwise it’s a difference of opinions. These are my thoughts on why differences of opinions get phrased as “autistic people just can’t admit when they are wrong”, when myself and most autistic people I know in fact readily admit when we are wrong and mov…

People can be wrong about factual things, which can be verified.

We need to be careful, though, to not adopt black and white thinking even around "facts." Often, multiple contradictory factual things can be true at the same time and all pass verification.

Illusions are a lighthearted example of this that helped me appreciate this point. For example, the Yanni/Laurel audio illusion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanny_or_Laurel) where people on both sides argue, in good faith, that the sound is one or the other. And even if you analyze the underlying audio in depth, neither side is factually wrong because that is how they experience it and isn't merely based around an opinion :-)

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#45

Post by CoastalCoder »

gnfargbl wrote: post #25

> I needed to understand why our checkout had to be improved; I explained that technology choices made no difference to the user. However, the manager interpreted my words as outright rejecting their idea. That's an exceptionally patronising position to take. The manager almost certainly isn't a fool, and likely understands the author's point already. It's much more likely that the manager was actually asking if the…

Could you expand on why you see the OP's position as patronizing?

AFAICT, the OP identified a minimal set of questions he thought needed to be asked to give a good answer, and tried to ask them.

Are you taking exception to how he sought that information, or something else?

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#46

Post by themoonisachees »

Orothrim wrote: post #10

The issue with this article is how the author is approaching all of these discussions. There is no attempt to see the other person's perspective, or evaluate how the author should be approaching the discussion. This is very common among us Engineers but is a massive failure. If a manager comes over and suggests something to you, you need to understand their perspective for coming to that discussion, not asking questi…

I get what you're saying, but at the same time that is exactly what the author is trying to do, just that they are doing it in their own way, which just so happens to feel adversarial to the manager.

There is no right or wrong here. Asking the engineer to "think logically" in terms of how what they're saying might be interpreted is stupid. They are autistic, and you cannot reasonably expect them to do the exact thing autism prevents them from doing.

Asking the manager to try to understand is probably more efficient, but the manager might be geared to think the engineer is adversarial already, possibly because of demeanor, or past experiences getting similarly confused. In this case the manager is probably more able to reason logically that their counterpart is autistic and is probably genuinely asking, but that is not a default, and probably requires some diversity training.

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#47

Post by jiggawatts »

korijn wrote: post #3

It's interesting to me that all four examples put the blame with the other party. I hope it's just worded poorly or I am reading too much into it. Edit: I'm not saying that invalidates the article's content (in fact I recognize the situations from personal experience), but it doesn't really put a positive spin on it.

Sometimes the blame is with the other party.

An uncomfortable truth we all pretend to ignore is that more than half the population is below average intelligence.[1]

The comments in this blog post don't just apply to autistic people, but apply equally to people that are simply less wrong than average.

An observation I made is that some people make correct statements approximately 90% of the time. This is waaaay above the typical, which is more like 30-40%.

Typical people assume that everyone else is typical, because that's what typical means. Average people are average, and the Bell curve is the tallest in the middle. So when they encounter someone who isn't typical (not just autistic), they assume that their behaviour is arrogant, because someone who is right 35% of the time and talks like they're right 90% of the time must be arrogant!

Someone who is right 90% of the time faces an endless series of accusations of being overbearing, arrogant, self-important, not-a-team-player, or not "giving in" as in the blog post. Being contrary, argumentative, or not taking the blame to a sufficient degree are commonly said as well.

Speaking of giving in, most people follow the ten-thousand-year-old[2] tradition of doing whatever the grey-haired tribe leader says. Authority over correctness. Toe the line. Know your place. Keep your head down. Don't rock the boat. Part of the team.

The thing is, being old doesn't mean much, especially in a time of exponential change. In fact, the older you are, the more wrong your rules-of-thumb are, often exponentially wrong. This leads to endless fun conflicts of opinion where the young inexperienced buck is actually entirely correct in disregarding decades of experience[3]. But that leads to ostracism and exclusion, because we're all human, which is to say that we're basically strategically shaved gorillas in suits.

[1] If you don't know why more than half, well... umm... I have some bad news for you about which half you might be in.

[2] Did I say ten kiloyears? I meant megayears. Sorry. This is what we've been doing since before we were human. It's wired into us deep.

[3] A random example from very recently is that I had to explain with pictures to senior management that upgrading the WAN links for one hundred sites from 2 Mbps to 4 Mbps and locking in that telco contract for 5 years is a mistake three zeroes in size.

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#48

Post by feet »

larve wrote: post #18
korijn wrote: post #3

It's interesting to me that all four examples put the blame with the other party. I hope it's just worded poorly or I am reading too much into it. Edit: I'm not saying that invalidates the article's content (in fact I recognize the situations from personal experience), but it doesn't really put a positive spin on it.

thanks for reading, author here! the article is very much a response to a blame already expressed. People can be wrong about factual things, which can be verified. Otherwise it’s a difference of opinions. These are my thoughts on why differences of opinions get phrased as “autistic people just can’t admit when they are wrong”, when myself and most autistic people I know in fact readily admit when we are wrong and mov…

I've run into the same issues constantly throughout my life, especially when it comes to asking clarifying questions to get a grip on the situation. Something I'm going to do moving forward is first stating that I have a few questions that I need to ask to better understand the other's statement or question.

I think this sharing of my perspective may help the conversation to move forward in a more productive manner.

Thank you for putting this information out there! I hope it helps other people understand autistic communication and intentions a little bit better.

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#50

Post by larve »

gnfargbl wrote: post #25

> I needed to understand why our checkout had to be improved; I explained that technology choices made no difference to the user. However, the manager interpreted my words as outright rejecting their idea. That's an exceptionally patronising position to take. The manager almost certainly isn't a fool, and likely understands the author's point already. It's much more likely that the manager was actually asking if the…

Author here, thanks for reading. That is exactly the first question I would ask. If you ask me to make something better, I need to know what you mean by “better”. That’s where a productive discussion start, when we align the goals (and I don’t really care about them, they all turn into interesting technical challenges) and then discuss strategy (amongst which there is technology).

If me asking what the goal is is perceived as patronising, when I’m just trying to do my best, then sure I can work on that. But that requires good faith on the side of the manager. It’s not my decision to shut things down.

Post reply on HN